Operation Arcana

by John Joseph Adams

  Halveric said nothing, staring at him, or through him; it was hard to see in the lamplight. All at once Ilanz felt old, exhausted. He felt the soreness where the stone had been; his back hurt; his eyes burned. Halveric was young and had his pride, a young man’s pride; perhaps he himself had pushed too hard. His stomach rumbled suddenly, loud enough to be heard, and Halveric glanced at it, then back at Ilanz’s face.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “My hospitality failed—and I am hungry, when I wake this time of night. I will send for food.” Halveric’s voice was gentle, courteous, but carried no other meaning, agreement or disagreement. Before Ilanz could think what to say, Halveric was already standing, moving to the tent door, speaking softly to the man outside. When he came back to the table, Halveric spoke to the boy still sitting on his cot. “Go to sleep, Garris. Tomorrow will be busy.” The boy scrambled back under his covers and rolled over.

  “It won’t be much, this time of night,” Halveric said, in the same easy tone. “But we will both be better for some ballast to the wine, watered as it was.”

  “Your squire who brought me—Kieri, he said his name was—is that your son?” The boy looked nothing like Halveric, but perhaps the mother was very light. Ilanz wondered if she had also been a mage, or even perhaps an elf.

  “No.”

  “He is . . . unusual. Remarkable, I would say, for a boy his age. There is power in him. He will be a fine commander some day, I judge, if he does not have a domain to take over when he inherits.”

  Halveric’s expression sharpened. “Why do you say that?”

  “What he said to me—how he was captured, how he escaped, and then how quickly he took advantage when he found himself in a room with a strange man asleep. From the way he carries himself, I would think his father a rich man, possibly even a king.”

  For a moment Halveric said nothing, then: “No, alas. If he . . . if he had an inheritance, it was lost to him. He came to us—to my home in the north—as a waif, homeless and hungry.”

  “Even more remarkable, then. You have done very well, to take such a one and turn him into this. May you have many sons, for you deserve them.”

  Even in lamplight, he could see a flush rise on Halveric’s cheeks. “I did no more than any man would.”

  “My lord, here is food—” Kieri entered with a tray piled with raggedly-cut bread and pots Ilanz hoped contained honey or jam or even pan drippings.

  “What did the surgeon say, Kieri?” Halveric asked as the boy put the tray on the table and stood back.

  “I am fine,” the boy said. When Ilanz looked at his face, his eye had swollen completely shut now, and the bruise on that side of his face had darkened more. “I am not to get hit in the face again for four hands of days, he said.”

  Halveric handed a slice of bread drizzled with honey to Ilanz and another to the boy. “Here, Kieri—you must be hungry. Eat this and lie down, get some rest.”

  The boy took his slice of bread to his cot and ate. Ilanz bit into his slice and had finished that and another one before Halveric spoke again. The food settled his stomach and cleared his head.

  “It is getting toward dawn,” Halveric said first. “Cooks will be starting breakfast—there’ll be more than just bread and honey then.” He finished his own slice of bread, took a swallow of the watered wine, cleared his throat. “I . . . understand what you said. And I am trying to think clearly. And admitting to myself that you are my elder, who—assuming you to be honest, and I have no reason to think you are not—knows more of Aarenis and war than I do, young as I am. About honor—yes, my people deserve my care absolutely. And yes, Vonja lied to me. But the contract—it is not a matter of law only, you see. I must feel that my gods agree.”

  Ilanz nodded. “I understand. That is exactly what a man of honor must do. I do not know what gods you follow . . .”

  “I am Falkian. Do you know of Falk?”

  “Indeed—the story is well-known in Aarenis. He served in place of his brothers, and they repaid that sacrifice with scorn.”

  “Yes. And so keeping a promise means a great deal to Falkians. To break one for any reason is a serious matter.” A pause Ilanz did not dare to break. Then Halveric sighed. “And yet I believe that you have the right of it, that my duty to my people is far greater than my duty to Vonja, who lied to me. So tell me what it is you were thinking of—though I admit I am not happy if that means us turning tail and running away.”

  “It is not that,” Ilanz said. “Here is what we might do instead.”

  Ilanz rode up to the gates of Margay on one of the captains’ horses, wearing clothes borrowed from one of Halveric’s soldiers and his own shoes with new laces. The guards at the gate gaped and wanted to ask questions.

  “I haven’t time,” Ilanz said. “I’ve been to parlay with Halveric, and there’s much to do. Send someone to fetch the captains; meeting in my office in half a sun-hand.”

  Halveric would be meeting with his captains by now, he was sure. He wished he could have stayed for that, but he was needed here. Already people were on the street, startled to see him riding an unfamiliar horse, wearing unfamiliar clothes. He smiled at them, greeted the ones he knew, but did not stop.

  At the door of his own house stood a cluster of people with worried faces; they turned at the sound of hooves. “Sir—my lord—where you been?” Kemin, retired sergeant and now his servant, sounded half frightened and half angry.

  “Preventing disaster, I hope,” Ilanz said. He dismounted. “This fellow needs a bit of grain and a rub-down. I need breakfast, a bath, and my own clothes—I have a captains’ meeting very shortly.”

  Someone came to take the horse; Kemin followed him into the house and upstairs. “Sir, please—”

  “I had a busy night,” Ilanz said. “But I’m here now, and you’re welcome to sit in on the captains’ meeting. Right now—a bath.”

  Bathed, dressed again, a platter of stirred eggs and ham consumed, he went down to his office and met the worried gaze of his captains. Before they could speak, he held up his hand. “We have a rare opportunity,” he said. “And we must prepare at once. Halveric Company’s commander has agreed to my proposal.”

  “They’re leaving?”

  “Not immediately.” Ilanz outlined the situation—Vonja’s lies, Halveric’s contract, the certain presence of Vonjan spies—and his own solution.

  “A mock battle?” Meltarin, his senior captain, scowled. “You trust them to hold to the bargain? Halveric hasn’t broken a contract yet, and they’re a good company.”

  “He has more reason to distrust me than I to distrust him. And he took my point about his honor being tied to his men as well as to his employer. Now—here’s the plan.” Ilanz outlined it quickly; his experienced captains understood at once, and he released them to complete their parts of it, then instructed his majordomo to block up the entrance Kieri had used, posted two guards outside his bedroom, and went back to sleep for a few hours.

  By the morning of the battle, two Vonja and two Sorellin spies had been caught and isolated in the town, high enough in the other tower house to see beyond the wall, but with only one small slit window to look out of. Ilanz had inspected the view from that window. It would have been easier to fake a battle if he’d been able to hire a wizard, but a narrow window high up would do. The local rag-picker had been paid for his entire stock of old clothes and ripped blankets; the local farmers had moved their flocks away from the designated field of battle, and the local butchers, though puzzled, contributed offal, skins, and jugs of blood.

  Ilanz woke well before dawn, dressed and armed himself, and came down to find his men all in place, having eaten a battle meal just after the turn of night, as usual. He ate his own breakfast, then—as the sun rose through layers of mist—climbed to the top of the wall. Yes. There was Halveric Company’s vanguard, exactly as agreed. Someone on a gray horse—Halveric himself, he thought—rode along the line.

  Ilanz grinned, then walked along his own defenses, remi
nding his men to keep their swords scabbarded unless he himself gave the order to draw them or they were attacked with bare steel. They grinned back at him. Then he spoke to his council, reminding them that everyone but troops must stay indoors. “Do not mind the noise,” he said. “There will be yelling and screaming and other noises. If they get so far, there may be pounding at the gates. Do not worry. I know all that is happening, and you will be safe.”

  They nodded, not looking particularly confident except for a group of young men who had staves in hand and had been—he knew—part of the group that had sent the Vonja militia home weaponless. “I’m sorry,” Ilanz said now to that group. “You also must stay out of this. These are hardened soldiers come against us, not the Vonja militia. We will defeat them, but you are not, forgive me, a match for them. Later, you may join the militia here. Go home and protect your own houses from within.”

  Halveric’s vanguard advanced, then halted suddenly, as if noticing the town’s fortifications for the first time. Four men on horseback rode closer, halting outside bow range and peering at the wall, hands up to shield their eyes from the sun. Three rode away from the one on the gray horse, parallel to the wall around the town, then rode back to report. Arms waved. Hands pointed. It was, Ilanz thought, a masterful job of acting out disagreement in command and the senior commander’s power to settle it.

  He noticed also that Halveric had figured out which wooded rise Ilanz had placed several tens of archers on, and avoided giving them a close, easy flanking shot. Good thinking . . . but he had not anticipated the second trap. Ilanz’s half-cohort of mounted archers swept in on Halveric’s vanguard from the sun side, and in seconds the battle was truly joined; instantly the morning quiet shattered into the sounds of battle: screams, bellows, horses’ whinnying, hoofbeats, the thud of weapons on weapons and bodies. Flocks of birds burst from every tree and bush, adding to the confusion.

  Halveric responded with an instant half-turn, facing three ranks of the vanguard cohort into the sun . . . excellent training and practice, Ilanz thought, and glanced up at the prisoners’ window. They would see only part of that, which was exactly what he wanted. And then Halveric’s surprise took his own in the flank—up from the tall grass sprang Halveric’s own archers. Riders fell, infantry fell, and Halveric Company marched on, nearer, fending off the flank attack. The noise grew louder, the familiar sounds he had known so long. So far it seemed both sides fought with blunted weapons, not bare steel, but the prisoners should not be able to tell that at this distance.

  Another cohort came into view. Ilanz signaled his nearest captain, lowered his own helm, and nudged his mount—Halveric’s captain’s mount—forward. His senior captain would lead the other half of those in town out the gate on the other side of town, supposedly out of Halveric’s sight, though he knew the gate was there. Would he think of it?

  Along with Ilanz’s troops came both two-wheeled handcarts and wagons bearing his physicians and their gear, spare weapons, and the rags and offal and sheepskins and pots of blood he had ordered collected, all positioned on the far side of the troops from the prisoners’ window.

  As the sun climbed up the sky, the battle raged, noise and confusion, dust and smoke. At times the two armies pulled back, and water carriers ran up and down the ranks. Scattered bodies lay in the grass, some moving feebly and others motionless. Overhead, scavengers appeared, wheeling high over the battlefield, then swooping low to check out any unmoving body. A few even landed to start pecking.

  Cohorts and parts of cohorts maneuvered, struggling for advantage, but as midday passed, it was clear that Halveric could not advance all the way to the walls, and had, indeed, been pushed back half the width of the big pasture. In midafternoon, they began a disciplined withdrawal; Ilanz’s forces made short dashes at them, but did not press the pursuit. It looked as though the Halverics had lost almost a third of their force, leaving the brown-clad troops in command of the field, and well before dusk the Halverics had returned to the previous night’s camp, helping their wounded. War-crows and vultures descended on the motionless figures. A half-glass later, Halveric appeared again, with a red flag, and Ilanz met him mid-field. He was glad to see that Halveric looked as dirty and tired as he himself felt. Practice or not, it had been a long, hard fight.

  “A good training exercise,” Ilanz said. “I had good reports of your company before, and now I know those were not exaggerated.”

  Halveric nodded. “I learned from you. You nearly took us at the start—I knew you had archers, but not mounted ones. Where did you hide the horses last night?”

  “Two hills back.” Ilanz pointed. “But your counter-flanking movement was excellent. I knew you had anticipated my archery contingent in the woods—”

  “May I just ask how many extra troops you got last winter? Were we really outnumbered, or are yours that much better?”

  Ilanz laughed. “You were outnumbered. I hired fifteen tens, sent ahead in small groups, over the winter. No shame to you for needing to withdraw.”

  “Well, that’s good to know.” Halveric grinned back. “I thought we could hold longer than we did at evens.”

  “How much damage?” Ilanz asked. “We had some broken bones and a lot of bruises—outnumbered or not, your troops fight very well.”

  “Much the same, but for one death. Hit square in the throat on a backswing—choked—”

  “That’s bad . . . did you get him back?”

  “Yes. Carried as wounded.”

  “Good. We can let the scavengers do their worst, then. Will you come to supper tonight?”

  “Tomorrow, I think. Frankly, all I want now is a bath and a good sleep.”

  “I, also. Tomorrow, then.”

  The Captains’ Banquet had been a great success; Halveric’s captains and his own had exchanged names and stories, congratulated one another on the performance of their cohorts, and at a nod from Halveric had excused themselves to go back to the camp, picking up any stray Halverics along the way. The prisoners would not be able to see any of the festivities.

  Now Halveric and Ilanz had the terrace to themselves as the long summer twilight lingered and a fresh scent of green leaves and fruit came from the lower end of the house’s walled garden. Ilanz sent thanks to Simyits and Tir, that they dined as friends, that only one had died in the training exercise. And thanks also that he would have, for the rest of his life, a place of his own. No more need to spent half a year in a tent, the rest in rented lodgings. When his sight failed, he would have this place, where he would know every wall, every door . . . and a sweet-scented garden. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  He felt gratitude to Aliam Halveric as well, and hoped the younger man would accept a little more advice. Two things, in particular. He glanced over. Aliam, as he now called him, leaned back in his chair, legs stretched out before him. He looked like someone contemplating both success and a new worry.

  “If I may,” Ilanz began.

  Aliam gave him a lazy smile. “If you’re going to offer me more advice, Ilanz, go ahead. Your advice has been to my advantage so far.”

  “Well, then. You need a new tent, a tent fit for the commander you are, and will become: in your own colors, at least three rooms, and the front one kept for the reception of visitors. Table or two, chairs, your weapons on display, space to store maps and so on.”

  “I thought you were looking down your nose at my tent.”

  “No—I understood you spent first on your men and their needs, and that is good. So did I, when I began. But to deal with merchants who care more for gold than anything else, you must make a show.”

  Aliam nodded. “I’ll take your advice, and, as soon as I can, I’ll order such a tent.”

  “And . . . one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “In Valdaire, I have four more years’ winter lease—Evener to Evener—of a caravanserai large enough for your company. I know you asked about it. But now, I will not need it. If you still want it, I will gi
ve you a note to the owner’s factor: you can take over the lease.” Aliam opened his mouth, and Ilanz shook his head before Aliam could speak. “I want nothing back for it. By the gods, man, you could have killed me and did not. You kept to our bargain about the battle. You have acted, dare I say it, like the son I wish I had had, but never sired. And so, in this one thing, being a mercenary commander, I see myself your father, and give you what I would give a son.”

  To his surprise, Aliam’s eyes glistened, as if tears were near. “Thank you, Ilanz,” he said. “I am honored to be able to accept.”

  Ilanz thought of telling him more, but reflected that every man had his limits, where advice and gifts were concerned, and it was best to let the young learn for themselves.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elizabeth Moon, a Texas native, is a Marine Corps veteran (Vietnam era) with degrees in history and biology. She has published twenty-six novels in both science fiction and fantasy, including Compton Crook Award winner Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Hugo-nominated Remnant Population, and Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark (also nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), as well as three short-fiction collections, including Moon Flights (2007) and the e-book collection Tales of Paksworld (2014). She received the Heinlein Award for body of work in 2007. Over forty short-fiction pieces have appeared in anthologies and magazines. Her latest novel is Crown of Renewal, fifth and final volume of Paladin’s Legacy, a return to the world of The Deed of Paksenarrion.

  THE GUNS OF THE WASTES

  Django Wexler

  The six days it took the mail cutter to traverse the pass at Rusthead were the longest of Pahlu Venati’s life. The slope and the rocky ground cut the landship’s speed to a crawl, her eight fat tires bouncing and shuddering in their pods at the ends of her long, articulated legs. The ceaseless chug of the engine was his constant companion, faster than a heartbeat, broken every so often by the whistling hiss of venting steam.