Fort didn’t seem to care much for what she said but continued, “At any rate, a spark might be able to take advantage of some of their weaknesses.”
The short exchange told Benayle many things, but the moons were not in the right place to discuss them. “More than your own weapons?” Benayle asked.
“They won’t be as strong here as they were…” the lord began.
The lady again cut him short, “It will take your people some time to use them as effectively as we can. I’m sure that’s what Lord Casius means.” The glare she was giving the commander was physically sharp.
The social exchange was too extreme for Benayle to handle with the kind of decorum that he’d been struggling so hard to maintain. He gave up and decided it was better to be himself than to try and keep up a false appearance. If his new-found allies couldn’t handle that, then they’d be of little use to his people in the long term. “Why have Fort here advise me, if he’s not allowed to say anything?”
The outburst obviously shocked Simon and Benayle could see the beginnings of a laugh on the commander’s mouth, but Lady Valanna kept her composure perfectly. She smiled in a way that the vykati sensed was not sincere and said politely. “The commander is not as familiar with your language as I am. I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion.”
“I see,” Benayle responded, making sure the skepticism was palpable in his voice. His eyes met Fort’s and he noticed that the commander was looking directly at the paper the wolf still held in his hand. The vykati turned his back to the lady and pointed directly at the paper so that only Fort could see him.
Lord Casius gave a barely perceptible nod.
Why try and tell him whatever he was getting at, and also write it down? Was he afraid that the paper might be taken or lost? Or that Lady Valanna might want to read it first? Benayle placed the paper as casually as possible in his shirt pocket and made a few hand motions to Simon that included him pointing at the pocket in question.
Simon gave a quick nod, glanced down at a watch he’d managed to pull from somewhere and then placed one hand on Benayle’s shoulder. “Lord Benayle, isn’t it time for your meeting with Emperor Eduardo?”
The vykati feigned surprise. He was pretty sure it didn’t fool anyone, but he was trying. “Oh yes, I’d nearly forgotten. Best not to keep the emperor waiting.” He turned to Lady Valanna and said, “Thank you so much for your gracious hospitality, my lady.” He bowed and then turned to the military commander, “And Fort, so glad to have met you. But the time has passed too quickly and we must beat a hasty…”
Simon cleared his throat.
“…rather, make haste so that we aren’t late. We will see you again tomorrow, as we agreed earlier?”
Lady Valanna rose and returned the bow graciously. If she suspected anything, Benayle didn’t notice. “Of course. A servant is waiting just outside the doorway to guide you out.”
The vykati waited patiently while Simon bowed to each elf in turn and made his formal farewells. They were greeted by a slight gust of wind and an amiable looking elf as they passed through the doorway.
The elf greeted them by name and introduced herself as “Nara” and then began quietly leading them through the tunnels that would take them back to the series of gates separating them from the rest of the dwarven kingdoms. While it was obvious that someone had told his hosts about his food preferences, it seemed unlikely that anyone had warned them that vykati have the ears of a wolf.
Benayle could just make out Lady Valanna saying, in a voice that dripped with hidden threats, “If you endangered this alliance with your inane babblings, Casius, I don’t care that the Queen hand-picked you for this. I’ll see…” He’d have stopped and listened to more, but felt like that was all he needed to know.
Once they had returned to the imperial palace and dealt circumspectly with the questions that arose from their sudden disappearance, Benayle placed the paper from Fort on the desk in his room and changed into some wearable clothing.
Simon talked to him through the door, apparently not wanting to wait any more to discuss the preceding events—Benayle had to cut him short a few times on the trip back, not completely trusting that they weren’t being listened to. He still worried, but not as much here as he did in public. “That seemed a little odd at the end, don’t you think?
Benayle picked up the paper from his desk and then walked out. The conman, the wolf wasn’t surprised to see, had not bothered to change. “Very odd,” he agreed. He told Simon what he’d overheard.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t think to allow him to at least pass on some of his information in person, such as he might have been allowed, but I got the impression you were ready to go.”
Benayle laughed. He’d been ready to go as soon as he’d put on those awful clothes. “Well let’s see what this paper holds.”
“It should be…” the conman started, but he was interrupted by the puzzled look that Benayle was giving him.
The paper was blank. The vykati turned it over a few times, but there was no sign of any writing on it at all, not even impressions.
“How very odd,” Simon said.
“I thought I signaled you to take it from me?” Benayle accused.
“I did take it from you, you silly wolf, and replaced it with the menu options from the imperial kitchen.” He did sound a little hurt from the accusation.
“There’s no cake on here.”
“Or on here,” Simon said, handing him, what the vykati hoped, was the original paper from Fort.
Benayle opened it quickly. It was the letter it was supposed to be. The writing was very clear and very short. It read:
Mr. Benayle,
I feel you should know one small fact before you continue with this alliance. The information and equipment you would be receiving is not of the same quality as that which we used on our home world in the fight against, what is now, your enemy. It’s not because we are willingly withholding it from you—we have a vested interest in your ability to triumph over our old enemies. The reason that it is weaker is that our magic isn’t as strong on Terah as it was there.
The treaty will still provide you a much better chance against the fercar forces, but you will have to be able to outthink and outmaneuver the enemy, rather than rely entirely on our equipment. I don’t see how, in your current situation, you can afford to not accept our aid, but I could not, in clear conscience, allow my government to misrepresent our own abilities.
Yours faithfully,
Fort
So, Benayle found himself thinking, Simon stole a paper, so that the elves could steal a paper, so that we could have this paper and all this paper told us was something we can do very little about. The inner workings here were almost as bad as the ones at home.
One advantage to the massive gathering of elven forces in central Zenache was very obvious: it made taking out supply lines both to the new depot and to the front lines, so much easier. While some had an occasional squad protecting them, most convoys right now were made of two or three vehicles with drivers and a single gunner each.
It was like Sestus was asking her to take the food, ammunition, and small arms they were carrying. She took what she could use or send out to aid the Zenache resistance, and then completely destroyed the rest—leaving nothing, except the troops, for the enemy to use. Occasionally, one would put up a token resistance, but that was very rare and always ended quickly once they saw the banner of the Copper Wolf.
There had been one convoy that made her smile when she saw it on Ginger’s screen: a single super transport, weighed down with gold, and with twenty-five behemoths, and a full battalion of infantry escorting it. Sestus had learned one thing at least. Her crew cheered when she told them about it over dinner that night. Each of them had been given 125 gold bars from the one successful raid and a promise for more each month—and even if they all stayed a year, it left plenty for supplies and a nice set of bonuses for her leaders. There was time before they had to do another gold raid.
Sajani stopped her musings when Ghenis approached her. He had a very solemn look on his face.
“I’ve been counting the days,” he said slowly and carefully.
The Copper Wolf knew immediately what he was talking about—Bean. They did now know that her name was Anace, but the nickname stuck. Sajani had given the old wolf more than the month she originally promised. The prisoner had been able to provide them with some information, although not much given her rank. In exchange for this information, she’d been allowed to stay another month. If the elves thought she hadn’t been exposed to Terahn healing, it would make sense that her recovery would take so long. In the interim, she’d been kept away from Ginger and Tenner and their work and kept locked up in a transport during every mission.
Sajani nodded. “I’m sorry, my friend, but it’s time then.” She rose and placed a hand on his shoulder to help comfort him. His eyes were already misty. “Do you know where Doc is? If he can cast his spell for you this one last time…” She allowed her voice to trail off.
“He said, he’d save it for me and that he’d meet us over at her transport.”
Her transport. That made Sajani smile. It’d been called that for a while now and not just by Ghenis. She wondered how long it would be called that after Bean left. “Then all we need is the information from Ginger and we’re set.”
“Due west. She’ll run into a road that runs mostly north and south. North will take her to an elven checkpoint where she can return…” a small sob came from his lips.
The Copper Wolf patted his shoulder. “I trust her loyalty more than I did at first, I’ll admit old wolf, but she has to go eventually. For your sake, by this point, better sooner than later.”
“I am grateful you’ve allowed her to stay as long as you have, my lady. It has been my atonement for past wrongs.”
With her hand still on his shoulder, Sajani gave what she hoped was a comforting laugh. “We all have sins to bear—yours no worse than most.”
Ghenis nodded. “I’d like to believe that. I’ve tried to believe that, but I gave no quarter during the battle for Altaza. It still haunts me what I had to do there. So much destruction; so much killing. I lashed out and destroyed any enemy that got in my way. I thought I did it for your mother. I thought I did it for my country.”
Sajani had never heard him talk about the battle in this manner, but knew better than to interrupt while he was remembering.
“I must have been a terrible visage on the battlefield that day. So many of them died with fear in their eyes. So many died looking like they wanted to ask for my mercy—driven by anger and what I thought of at the time as righteous fury, there was no mercy in my heart. I was no more than a crazed and unleashed animal out for vengeance.
“I thought that my troops would see through it. I feared they would, but instead, they shared in it—gloried in it even. They were ready to die to enact my vengeance. Many did.
“With her…” Ghenis paused, “With her, I felt like I could finally see an enemy as a person. With her, I felt like I could, at least with one single person, undo a little bit of all that.”
Sajani had heard similar words before from others who were exposed to battle, from some of her own crew now. There’d been a time, over a decade ago, that she had spoken similar words to Westa and begged for atonement herself. She remembered still very clearly what the den mother had told her then and told it to him in a kinder and more loving way. “I know what you wish I would say. You want me to say that you did what was necessary and that you’re no worse of a person for having done it and its true. It really is.
“But no matter how often someone tells you that, and I know that there’s no way possible that I’m the first, it will continue to go past your ears. Before it can finally mean anything at all to you, you have to first believe it yourself. If you haven’t believed it for this long, there’s no way I can change that.”
Ghenis nodded.
That had been all that Westa had said to her. “But I can add something that no one else has been able to add. I can do something that no one else has been able to do for you.” With her hand still on his shoulder, she moved to stand before him and looked him straight in the eye. “I can forgive you. I can say that I know that my mother would forgive you as well.”
Bean had no idea why she’d been allowed to stay an extra day. Doc had showed up at her transport and motioned that he was waiting on Ghenis. After about ten minutes of waiting, Captain Sajani approached and had some words with Doc, who cast a single spell on her before leaving.
The Copper Wolf herself approached and gave a rather disappointing greeting. “Hi,” she said.
It was the first word that the captain had ever directly spoken to her. She’d been around during a lot of Ghenis’s visits, but she never had anything to say. Bean had heard her speak to others in the distance, but always in the growl-like language of the wolf people. Now, thanks to whatever it was that Doc did periodically, she could understand what the Copper Wolf was saying.
The elf had already packed up what little gear she had and started to place the satchel Ghenis had given her over her shoulder. Her old uniform, cut and still stained with her own blood was in there. The only human in the camp had brought her a simple shirt and pants in a very ugly shade of brown to wear shortly after she’d arrived.
“You won’t be needing that. Not right now at least,” Sajani said in a subdued voice.
For a moment, Bean dared to hope that the captain was going to allow her to stay, but the wolf’s expression said otherwise.
“I do appreciate all you’ve done for me, my lady,” Bean told her.
Sajani simply nodded.
“I understand why my people fear you and I want you to know that I won’t do anything to try and change that.”
The captain again nodded and then said softly, “Sorry to have to delay your release back to them, but now is not a good time.”
The elf was hit with a sudden a feeling of panic. “Is Ghenis ok?”
A smile appeared across Sajani’s face. “He’s just fine. Probably a lot better today than he has been in a long while.”
Her comments did nothing to ease Bean’s panic. “He’s not…” she couldn’t bring herself to ask if he was dead. She knew that the wolf was old, but when she’d seen him walk by just moments before he didn’t look any worse than usual.
Laughter, quiet and subdued, but still obviously heartfelt came from the captain. “No, child. He’s very much alive and will be able and willing to see you off tomorrow. It’s just…” there was a long pause as Sajani seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “…today is not a good day for me to have you go.”
While the wolf people were in many ways foreign to her in both appearance and culture, this was, by a long stretch, the most confusing exchange she had with any of them. Bean had no idea what Sajani could mean by that. If Sajani had been an elven officer, she’d have assumed that the captain meant that her leaving would be tactically inappropriate, but no elven commander would have ever shown so much emotion or hesitation. It wasn’t the normal modus operandi of the wolf leader that she’d seen up until this point either.
“I’d stay longer if you’d let me ma’am,” Bean said truthfully. “You are not the savages I was led to believe you are. You not only spared my life, you ensured that I was back to full health and even gave me time to emotionally recover. I’d be honored to help you in whatever capacity I can.”
A slow burn seemed to be forming in the captain’s eyes. She spoke directly and with confidence, and underneath the words, Bean felt there was no intended spite or hatred of her personally. “I spared you for the same reason I spare any others of your race that I can. You are neither better than, nor lower than any of them, no matter what promises you can make. When you return to your own people, you can tell them that I spare them, not out of weakness or pity. I spare them because I refuse to be like them. I refuse to stoop to their level.”
“I would nev
er call that weakness, Lady Sajani.” Bean felt the need to justify herself somehow, even if there was no way to convince the wolf commander of the veracity of her words. “It’s why I’d follow you, rather than return to my own people. They are driven by fear and you are driven by loyalty, patriotism, and the desire to protect others. They give me a reason to be afraid and you give me a reason to hope.”
The last word seemed to physically strike Sajani back to a calmer state.
“Hope,” the wolf repeated.
Bean felt like the word had brought back a memory—possibly a pleasant one.
“Then you can say that it is hope that paid for your extra day here. It is hope that allowed you to live. It is hope that makes it possible for you to return to your own people.” With that rather cryptic comment, the Copper Wolf rose and walked off.
The elf didn’t dare say anything else to her.
Colonel Frack was surprised at the calm and reserved way that General Sestus was taking this news—and had been taking similar news in the last couple of weeks. The bulk of their losses had been from the Copper Wolf, but there were an increasing number of well-armed, and much bloodier, assaults from Zenache partisans.
The general had stood and listened to the entire report. He’d asked no questions and made no interruptions. Silence was not uncommon from the commander—it was how most situations and daily interactions were approached by him. At the same time, Sestus was not known for handling bad news well.
Frack dared to try and find out why. “I have to say, sir, you’re taking this much more calmly than I was afraid you would.”
Sestus actually smiled at him and that terrified the colonel. “Oh,” he said off-handedly, “the Senate can worry about it.”
“Sir?”
“They drew up this plan. They’re taking the blame, not I.”
The missing supplies didn’t amount to much, but Frack had to wonder how the people at home were taking the dramatic slowing of the plan meant to protect them. It was impossible for word of this Copper Wolf to have not reached Therfass. The emperor had originally (and publically) said that Rhidayar would fall within a month of Zenache and that hadn’t happened. “It’s still a noticeable amount,” the colonel warned. “Shouldn’t we be putting more into each convoy and better protect it?”
Wolf's Pawn (Sajani Tails Book 1) Page 23