by Swanson, Jay
“It's gonna be a long day...” he said as a soldier handed him a cigar.
“Sir, Anders isn't in the building.”
“What?!” Merodach about exploded, biting down through his cigar without realizing it. “What do you mean he's not in the building? I saw your boys grab him just like I asked! He's supposed to hang tomorrow!”
“He's gone, sir. We found some of our own dead around the premises, necks broken or throats slit. Looks like Khrone's got to him first.”
Merodach spiked his broken cigar on the floor in a rage, his mouth spewing a long line of tobacco-laced expletives that made the soldiers around him blush. Eventually he stood between them, breathing heavily, staring at his broken cigar on the ground. “Well find him! They have to make their exit, and it won't be to the north. Alert the gates, and for the love of God don't let them escape alive!”
The Mayor didn't have time to waste, however. His plans had gone smoothly enough up to this point, and he couldn't stop for every bump in the road. “Get me to my office, and tell your commander to join me there. He's gonna have a lot on his plate now that Lucius is dead.”
“What about Rast, sir?”
The mention of the Premiere cemented Merodach's scowl on his face for a moment. “Just let him be; he's injured and frail enough as it is.”
It didn't take long to get to his office, but finding whoever had taken control of the forces near Liscentia in Lucius' place was a convoluted mess. Lucius hadn't left a clear line of succession, as it seemed his ranking officers were with him when he died. The man who seemed to be in control now was a quartermaster, a logistician who was as scared of a fight as he was of an imbalanced inventory. Merodach told him to organize the troops to march, and assured him that relief was on the way. Securing Liscentia and the coastline were his priorities. He just hoped that the stupid bastard didn't muck it up in the next twenty-four hours.
“Sir.” A tall colonel appeared in his office almost immediately after he was off the phone. The purple lining at the hems of his uniform marked him for the Western Battalion. “Colonel Cram reporting, sir.”
Colonel Cram? Good God, where do they dig these morons up? Merodach shook his head to clear the sarcasm before he actually spoke. “You're in charge... Cram.”
“Sir?”
“You're in temporary command of the military, and I'm moving you south immediately.”
“But sir,” Cram hesitated as his mind worked the pieces together. “My men are here, sir.”
“Your men are everywhere now, Colonel. And the ones in Liscentia need you the most.”
“I thought we'd subdued Liscentia, sir.”
Merodach shook his head. He couldn't tell him what he really feared, that the Demon was moving to crush them all. That would be the path to losing credibility he had only just regained. “It's not the desert rats I'm worried about, Cram, it's Silverdale. That horse shit in the courtroom today wasn't entirely inaccurate.”
“It wasn't, sir?” Cram looked increasingly uncomfortable in his carbon-gray cotton.
“Not about me, you idiot!” Merodach walked over to the one low table in his office that hadn't been broken and poured himself a drink. “About the Demon influencing people. That much is true. I've seen it, and I've seen how he's going to attack us through Silverdale.”
“Silverdale doesn't have much in the way of a military though, sir.”
“Enough of one, and more than we realized.” Merodach drained his glass and poured himself another. It had been too long since he'd been able to get his hands on anything worth drinking. “They think that with Liscentia down we're looking for them by land. But they've got transport ships, hundreds of them, and they're bringing them to the Central Harbor.”
“Where the Demon first tried to invade? That doesn't make any sense, sir. Why would they bring their army into the harbor by transport ships?”
“I suppose they're just about as smart as he is.” Merodach walked back to his desk and stared out at the Elandris. “Poetic, in its own way. We need to move immediately to dust off the old guns and make sure the defenses are ready. Just so long as it still looks abandoned.”
“Then we can lure them in and destroy them in the crossfire.”
“Precisely,” Merodach turned. Maybe he's not an idiot after all.
“I should go now then, sir.”
“Indeed. There's a transport waiting for you at the base of the tower. I'll be coming with you.”
That took Cram by surprise. “Coming with me, sir?”
Merodach had seen what was coming, and the pretext of Silverdale's invasion could only get them so far for so long. “I need to stretch my legs a bit. Besides, I want to see the looks on their faces when we accept their surrender.”
“Sir!” Another soldier came bursting into his office. “Sir, Anders has escaped.”
“He's what?”
“They cornered them by the farmer's gate, killed one of them even, but they got away.”
“How?!” The ice in Merodach's glass began to clink and clank as his temper flared.
“Reports vary. They crashed into a shop and lost the pursuing soldiers in the alleys running through the neighborhoods behind it.”
“Weren't all of the gates sealed?” Cram looked like he might start yelling too. “How could they escape? They should still be in the city!”
“They got out through the southeast man gate, sir. Killed the detail on the door and walked right out.”
“Shit.” Cram stared at the ceiling.
“Well then, Cram, set up some sort of decoy in the city.” Merodach put his glass on the desk.
“What?”
“Don't tell anyone I'm coming with you, keep Anders focused here. Hopefully you can trap him that way.”
“You want me to sneak you out?” The wheels in Cram's mind were already spinning.
“You can do that much, can't you, Cram?”
“If I can pull off an ambush in the Central Harbor, I should be able to sneak you out of your own city. Civilians won't like knowing that you've left the city so quickly after all of what's happened. The possibility of revolt is still very real.”
But revolt was no longer what worried Merodach the most. Annihilation was.
“They won't figure it out,” Merodach smiled. “The people in this city get dumber by the day.”
ANDERS KEATON WAS A BROODING MASS OF CONSTERNATED RAGE. His plans had failed spectacularly, leaving him so far behind where he had started that there seemed no possible way of pressing onward. The Hunters' escape from Elandir had been so close that he was surprised to be alive. Over the course of the last week they had managed to lose a quarter of their strength, and now his plans were dead in the water.
They had been fortunate to still have a safe house south of the city to hole up in, but he knew that it wouldn't last long. It was large enough to hide his entire team, but not far enough from the city to escape notice. The poor farmers who had sympathized with them would receive no mercy from the Elandrian government should their involvement be discovered. Even though they were prepared to suffer for the cause of removing Merodach, Keaton wasn't about to be the one to bring it down on them.
I should have just shot Merodach when I had the chance... The admonition rang louder and louder in his head the longer he sat and seethed. If I had killed him or let the Woads have him... everything would be different.
He no longer felt Merodach deserved a trial. That conviction had died at the one they had given him. The man was too dangerous to be allowed time to plan his own escape. He needed to be put down.
And Lucius would have done it too... was I right to kill him?
His men were still with him; that was a strong consolation. They were as fired up and furious as he was, and they were bent on nothing less than Merodach's execution and disappearance from history. The threats that the day's events had raised were not lost on Keaton, however; there were still parties in play who would support Merodach. Powerful ones, apparently. How dee
p their loyalties ran was the mystery, but he knew now that the threat of civil war was even more real than he had feared.
They would have to figure out exactly who the players were and neutralize them all. No more trials, no more attempts at civility in justice. They could only act with prejudicial violence and hope that the shock was enough to keep the rest in line.
But how? There was no clear course of action to Keaton. For every move he played out in his mind, the reaction was unforeseeable for all the variables in play. He had no way of knowing if, hiding behind Merodach, there stood an apprentice raised to take his place, or what alliances he had erected to exact revenge. Which military leaders would they have to take out, and whose allegiance would be compromised in the process of removing them? He had been so far removed from the politics of the black city that he no longer knew what to expect, and he was only now realizing just how potent his ignorance was. Phelts might have a decent idea, but Keaton half expected the minister to sit tight from now on for fear of discovery. After Merodach's disdainful execution of the Council today, he couldn't truly blame him if he did.
Saltman came to sit with him for the third time that day. He was as anxious as the rest to get back to the task at hand, a sick optimism the Hunters shared when the end goal was being considered.
“Sir, we're gonna have a hell of a time getting back into Elandir.” He pulled out a blueprint of the city's wall. “We snagged these from the Mayor's office when we were going through his files for evidence.”
“Evidence that was never even put forward...” Keaton coughed as he took the blueprint and held it up.
“The drains and ventilation shafts in every part of the wall have been sealed with new security systems. Some have even been rerouted in the last few months.” He pointed at a particular point on the wall next to one of the towers. “You can see where they made notes about the changes, but nothing definitive. When we were using the gates and our friends to get us in, we had no problems. Those are closed to us now, and we have no idea what we're facing if we try to sneak back in.”
“This is the most... recent blueprint they had?”
Saltman pointed to the date in the corner. “It's only a month old, sir. These are far newer than the ones Phelts gave us, not to mention more detailed. The security was probably updated to calm Merodach's nerves after the Shadow King popped up in his building and then again in that crowd.”
“Why didn't this affect...” He coughed again. “Why didn't this affect your movements earlier?” Keaton couldn't see how this slipped past them.
“We weren't using drainage pipes or ventilation to get in. Too messy.” Saltman shook his head as if the idea was repugnant. “We walked in wearing plainclothes or scaled up to the power stations from the outside. There wasn't any need for that much stealth.”
“If Phelts gave us outdated blueprints, it means Merodach... didn't even trust the men in his own office.”
“He covered his tracks pretty well, yeah. There's not even an indication of who it was that did the work, but you can tell it's been done. There are marks that note when each bit was completed, and when we were digging up the electrical systems, we could see that work had been done all over the wall in the last few months. We just didn't know it was this extensive. There are ways in; all of the entrances we might exploit are still there, but what lies behind them is the mystery.”
Keaton put the blueprints down and rubbed his throat for a moment.
“Sir, without friends, it would require an act of God to get in there again to take a shot.”
“His windows...” Keaton looked up.
“Might as well be part of the wall.” Saltman shook his head. “If you have a gun that can shoot through them, I'm a Titan's nephew.”
“I've seen them break though, at least heard about it.”
“Once again Silvers is at the root of that.” He pointed to the Northern Tower on the blueprints. “Updated and secured. There's no way in or out of that tower that Merodach's fat thumb isn't covering. We got lucky with the blackout and the Woads, but that opportunity won't be coming again. Basically anything short of leveling that portion of the wall is beyond us.”
“Which leaves us swimming without legs.” Keaton leaned back and put his head against the wall.
“No arms either, sir. We don't have quick enough access to that kind of explosive, even if we actually wanted to follow through on it. Outside of traveling back to the mountains in the east, we've got nowhere to turn.” Saltman rubbed his eyes and shook his head to keep a yawn at bay. “We're just about one miracle short of being able to get rid of Merodach.”
“Then I know you'll want to hear this.” Grimes stuck his head in. “I love being the bearer of miracles.”
“What is it?” Keaton didn't bother sitting forward. “If you've scraped together a decent meal, I'll take it.”
“Better, sir. It's Merodach.” Grimes grinned. “The moron's leaving Elandir, today.”
“What?” That caused both Keaton and Saltman to snap to attention.
“Phelts has a guy in the Western Battalion, and he says Cram and a massive portion of his men have been reassigned to the south to deal with Liscentia. It looks like Merodach is sneaking out with him.”
“Why would Merodach leave the city?” Saltman was trying to piece this into the mental puzzle he had been building all day. “He can't be... I mean, could this be some sort of trap?”
“How reliable... is Phelts' guy, Grimes?” Keaton asked.
“He's solid, sir. I actually know him, went to Khrone with me for selection. He didn't make the cut, but he's as good as a Hunter at heart. And he's close enough to Cram to tell us where they're actually headed: the Central Harbor.”
“What?” Saltman's puzzle was getting shaken and scattered in every direction. “Why? Liscentia doesn't even have a navy.”
“No.” Keaton turned to Saltman as it hit him. “But Silverdale does.”
“If he's going to the Central Harbor, sir, he'll be out in the open.” Grimes was still smiling. “And apparently Phelts has been asked to tag along to investigate and levy reparations against Liscentia. He says if we can get in position ahead of them, he'll mark Merodach's location for us.”
“And if we can put an end to him before Silverdale arrives... we can surrender peacefully.” Keaton stood up. “Get your gear, we're headed south.”
TWENTY-ONE
ARDIN LAY ON HIS BACK, STARING AT THE BRILLIANT ARAY OF STARS IN THE NIGHT SKY OVER GRANDIA. His parting with Donovan and Hevetican had been ominous to say the least. The old Truan's words of warning hung over him much like the night sky. His parting words rang clear in Ardin's memory. “Beware the Dread gods, Ardin. They will not stand to have you join the ranks of the Swift, and they will do anything in their power to bring you low.”
The strange thing was how strongly the concept spoke to him, regardless of how new it was. The fact was that he could see the Dread forces at work, even if he didn't think of them as gods himself. He knew that the danger was far closer at hand than he would have otherwise liked to believe, and perhaps Shill could even help protect him, even in his weakened state. So long as the old soldier kept up with him, he had told him he could come along.
In the first few days of their journey, Shill had done fairly well. Ardin was actually somewhat jealous, because as soon as his head hit his pack in the evening, Shill was asleep. The travel took its toll on the old man, to be sure. His wounds had only served to catalyze the aging process in him, but he was resilient and made up the difference in getting more sleep than Ardin was able. They had crossed through the hills only the day before, and now they set their course to the northwest in hopes of catching the high road and making for Islenda.
That was the only idea of direction that Ardin had at this point. He couldn't be sure that he would find Rain and her brother there, nor could he be certain of whether they would even strike out to attack the Demon or rescue the refugees Rain had worked so hard to free. His gut tol
d him they would seek the Demon out, but he didn't know where that would take them. He wanted to search for them, to send his consciousness out over the burned plains and hills and reach out to Islenda to see where they were, but his previous encounters with the Relequim on the borders of his mind kept his ambitions in check. He would have to find them the old fashioned way.
A gentle thrumming in the air caught his attention, then repeated itself two more times. He sat up in the darkness, Shill still snoring gently on the far side of the low-burning embers of their fire. The horses seemed as still as the windless night, but something was different; he could feel the presence of a power he recognized.
Ardin picked himself up slowly, trying to keep from waking Shill. As much as he wanted to trust the old soldier, he found that he didn't truly. Something told him it was wise not to, even beyond Hevetican's warnings.
He walked back over a low rise, picking his way carefully among the low foliage and strange trees. The terrain was similar to where he and Cid had first met Rain. We must be getting close to Cid's road inland, Ardin thought as he ducked under a low tree branch. It wasn't difficult for him to see, his eyes already adjusted to the darkness and augmented subconsciously by the warmth. He smiled to think of his friend. I wish he was still here.
He walked down and through a draw, knowing instinctively where he was to go. As he came around another cluster of trees, he saw the gentle white glow emanating out as if through rippling water. The Brethren.
“Ardin.” Tristram looked up as he entered the clearing. “We have much to discuss.”
There were three of them, Ardin realized. He had never met the third. “I'm Ardin,” he said dumbly, uncertain of how to approach one of these things for the first time. Every time previous to this, they had simply thrust their presence upon him.
“I know.” The voice was deeper than Tristram's, wiser somehow. “I am Oscilian. You have already met Ishtel, I believe.”