The Bandit (Fall of the Swords Book 2)

by Scott Michael Decker

  “No, it wouldn't, but that'd be a waste. What if, Infinite forbid it, the remaining son dies, eh? Then I'd have slit my own belly. Didn't you hear what the Matriarch Water said?”

  “The Imperial Whore? Is she the wench who divined the Consort's pregnancy? I don't listen to every rumormonger. What did she say?”

  “She said one would be too few.”

  “That could have a hundred meanings. You know the vagaries of prophecy. Besides, how does this concern me?”

  “You live near the Elk Raiders, eh? I imagine they've a woman among them mature enough to help you and young enough to lactate.”

  “What a coincidence,” Lofty Lion said. “The barbarian Elk invited me to break the sleeping fast with him soon—wants me to bathe for some ridiculous reason. Why would I need a woman's help with anything?”

  “Can you breast-feed a child, Lord Lion?”

  “Eh? Did you say 'child'?”

  “After the Consort gives birth, I'll fake the death of one twin and bring him to you, Lord Lion.”

  The former Emperor nodded slowly. “You surprise me. You're smarter and have fewer scruples than I thought!”

  Flying Arrow smiled then recited the code to disable the man's mind.

  Lofty Lion collapsed to the riverbank, the gnarled hands letting go of the staff.

  The Eastern Emperor sighed, relieved that the disabler had worked.

  “Implant him,” Flying Arrow ordered, massaging his aching left shoulder.

  Chapter 15

  How do I tell you how much I love the land? I stand here before you today, a human being, and you applaud my entrance. I'd have you applaud the land instead. Without the land, I'm nothing. We mean little when we place ourselves beside the earth. Think of the land as our mother and father, the soil from which we spring, the dirt to which we return. In that context, we human beings have the arrogance to say we own it? How ludicrous! We'd more appropriately say that the land owns us. We can't escape our dependence upon it. The land is our home and earth and loving companion.—The Lectures of Guarding Bear, 9323 to 9335.

  * * *

  On the Nest-Bastion road traveled a group garbed in green and gold. All other travelers stopped and bowed as they passed, recognizing the man with the unruly hair and unpretty face as the Prefect of the region.

  With Guarding Bear were the Wizard Spying Eagle and the medacor Healing Hand. The young man was finding the pace difficult and the boy, impossible. Near the crest of a hill, the General signaled another rest, his own endurance untested. The twenty-guard escort slowed as they did. Guarding Bear greeted and nodded at bowing passersby as the group moved off the road.

  The rolling terrain of the Caven Hills spread before them like a pattern on a tapestry. Terraced and un-terraced hillsides undulated gently away, down toward Nest and up toward Bastion, the prefecture's seat of government. Supporting the terraces, the rock walls were the slate-gray basalt of the region. On terraced hills grew crops of early spring lettuce, the individual plants no larger than a thumb, the first planting of the year young yet. Stakes bearing bare and gnarled grapevine raked rows across un-terraced hills. In the valleys, amorphous plots of viscous water wandered beside the streams, the rice paddies wearing a green fur of new shoots. Between low-lying rice paddies and hillsides of lettuce and grape, varieties of orchard orchestrated their dancing in the blustery breeze of early spring. Interspersed among all the crops were wild trees of indeterminate age. Graded around the trees, the terraces traced the hills, as did the rows of grapevine, the rice-paddy dikes and the orchards. Guarding Bear carefully husbanded the land and its ecology.

  From the hill they could see but a solitary dwelling. Across the valley from the average-size abode, a man plowed a field. A set of furrows ripped straight lines across a field of soft soil. Watching from nearby, the farmer pulled his hand parallel to the furrows. He crimped his hand in a claw as if he dragged the hand itself through the rich, rich ground.

  The cultivation abutted a road wide enough for ten travelers abreast. An ancient tree shaded the site where the procession rested. Beneath tree was a pleasant patch of cut grass, the plot well-cared for, a favorite place for resting travelers. Nearby was a clay sluice-pipe for elimination and an elevated fountain for washing afterward. The sluice-pipe shunted the wastes into a tank, from which local farmers drew fertilizer.

  Spying Eagle stepped to the edge of grass and dropped himself there, exertion giving a copper tint to his brown complexion. Soon Healing Hand joined him, his face bright red.

  After meeting that first time at the temporary offices of Guarding Bear, they'd quickly become friends. Both felt they'd known each other before then—long before—despite their having never met. The feeling persisted despite their different backgrounds, affinity their propinquity. They enjoyed each other's company, moving toward each other in many social situations. As they did here, at a stop somewhere along the road between Nest and Bastion.

  “There's an easier way to do this,” Spying Eagle gasped, looking dizzy from oxygen deprivation.

  Healing Hand simply nodded, his breathing so ragged he couldn't even answer.

  Sighing in satisfaction, Guarding Bear adjusted his loincloth, stepped to the trough and washed, then moved toward the disparate pair. I'm a warrior hardened by years of travel and battle, he reminded himself. They're a boy and a young man who've traveled little and battled less. The General refrained from mentioning their non-existent endurance.

  “Beautiful sight, eh?” he said, lowering himself to his haunches beside Healing Hand, Spying Eagle on the other side of him.

  “Uh, forgive me, Lord, but where?” the Wizard asked.

  With a casual sweep of the hand, Guarding Bear gestured at the farmland.

  “Just looks like crops to me, Lord General.”

  Nodding, he repeated, “Beautiful sight.” He reached across the edge of grass and scooped up a handful of rich crumbly soil. “ 'From dirt we spring, to dirt we return,' ” he quoted from the Book of the Infinite, letting soil sift through fingers.

  The younger two exchanged an amused glance.

  Guarding Bear smiled within, knowing city-born indifference to the land.

  Approaching, the Captain Silent Whisper bowed, glancing between the two Wizards. “Lords, if I may make a suggestion?” Hearing no objection, the Captain continued, “There are ways to increase your endurance, Lords Hand and Eagle. Frequent travelers develop this technique quickly. With your talents, I see no reason why you two can't do the same. I, uh, don't know how to explain this, but if you'll watch what I do?”

  The boy and young man both nodded, probing Silent Whisper while he showed them. His metabolic rate suddenly increased. Snatching oxygen from cilia in the lungs, the blood quickly deposited it where needed and returned to the lungs fully laden with carbon dioxide.

  “Oh,” Healing Hand said. “That's easy! Thank you, Lord.”

  “I thought as much, Lord,” Silent Whisper replied, nodding and retreating.

  “I just didn't think of doing that,” Spying Eagle said, shrugging at the blond-haired boy. Healing Hand shrugged back, his large palms supinated beside his shoulders.

  Guarding Bear smiled; the process had become so automatic he'd forgotten he used it. He considered ordering their procession back to the drudgery of travel. Instead, he decided against it, enjoying this moment in the midst of nowhere, this moment at the center of everything.

  Land.

  The real source of power, the General reflected—of everything, really. Even the Swords were merely chemicals extracted from land. Like the humans who lived off the land, the Swords would return to the dust whence they came. Nothing mattered without the land.

  This land had become his … No, I have that all wrong, Guarding Bear thought. He didn't own the land, knowing that no human being could really own the land. He restructured his thinking.

  Years ago, he'd become steward of this land and had never forgotten his origins. Somewhere in the hills east of Bastio
n, he'd grown up in terrain much different in appearance. Then, the Caven Hills had been a trackless region. The thick scrub forest and steep hills were almost impenetrable to outlanders.

  Only the inertia of ancestry had stopped seven Tiger Prefects from making the region productive. Scowling Tiger, like his forebears, simply lacked the initiative to extract the region's wealth. A wealth that was there because the land was there.

  The luck of the Infinite had blessed Brazen and Guarding Bear. Luck, in the General's opinion, was the meeting of opportunity and preparation—not the fickle flatulence of fate.

  Born at a time of unfair taxes, reared in a region unable to pay them, taught enough of government and leadership to unify the people, the Brothers Bear had incited them to insurrection and gained control of the Caven Hills. The two young men had spent much of their early twenties making the land arable and productive. Near the geographical center of the Caven Hills was Bastion Valley. From there they'd begun to transform the land.

  Previous bids to colonize the region had tamed the outskirts, then extended that dominion inward. Those attempts failed. Once tamed, the land attracted the attention of neighboring Prefects. Their vision narrow, most Prefects sought to extend their own domains hectare by hectare, unable to see the region in its entirety. Thus, their cultivation of the Caven Hills had died like a vine stripped of grapes unripe, the harvest sour.

  The Brothers Bear had approached the cultivation from the center of the region outward. During the first ten years of extending the arable areas, they left a ring of impenetrable terrain to discourage the greedy grasping of neighboring Prefects. Five years after their revolt, the Emperor Smoking Arrow granted them hereditary rights to the prefecture. Before they cultivated that last slim strip ringing the region, the Brothers Bear had ensconced themselves.

  Those were the good years, Guarding Bear thought, treasuring the memories more than he had the experiences. In retrospect, those years had indeed been good, times of turmoil having followed.

  Thus, Guarding Bear valued the land, the true source of all material wealth.

  He stood, noticing that the other two watched him.

  “In that respect, Lord,” Spying Eagle said, “it is beautiful.”

  “What's beautiful?”

  With a casual sweep of the hand, the Wizard gestured at the farmland.

  Guarding Bear laughed, realizing that his shields had been down. “I'm glad you can appreciate it, Lord Eagle.”

  “More than Scowling Tiger did,” Healing Hand replied.

  “Perhaps he was simply a product of his society. Most nobles regarded the land as beneath their notice, or at most, a prize to enhance to one's name.” Guarding Bear shrugged. “Let's go, eh?”

  The three of them walked to the road and rejoined the traffic headed southeast, toward Bastion, the detachment of warriors in two orderly columns behind them. Guarding Bear erected his shields, wanting to process while his body traveled.

  During the past week, since volunteering to lay siege to the Tiger Fortress, Guarding Bear had chafed at the usual bureaucratic delays, at waiting upon messengers. Arranging the details of such an undertaking bored him. Settling easily into a moderate pace, he smiled to himself, grateful to be moving and acting.

  The three of them were traveling to Bastion to prepare for the siege. Nearly on the opposite side of the Empire from the Tiger Fortress, Bastion was the wrong direction to travel. Only Bastion was safe enough, however, to test the talents of the young man and boy. In addition to them, Guarding Bear had gathered four other Wizards, selecting some because he knew them personally and some on recommendation. All were the most talented psychological Wizards in the Empire. With the combined talents of the six Wizards and a single battalion of warriors, Guarding Bear hoped to destroy the Tiger Fortress.

  The nature of the siege needed to remain secret. Geographical isolation made Bastion a good place to prepare. Near the city of Bastion was Bastion Valley, where the Caven Hills natives had gathered thirty years before to celebrate their victory over the Eastern Armed Forces. Bastion Valley was little different now, Guarding Bear having preserved it. Only a single dwelling marred the perfect wilderness, a vacation home he'd built as a retreat. To him, that was Bastion, not the thriving metropolis a few miles distant. In that valley, Guarding Bear meant to prepare.

  In Emparia City, Bubbling Water and Aged Oak were preparing in other ways. The Empire couldn't conceal that Guarding Bear had volunteered to besiege the fortress. Scowling Tiger therefore would see a conventional investment's preparation. Bubbling Water and Aged Oak would perpetuate the hoax, whose scale surpassed anything Guarding Bear had ever tried.

  What the Traitress Fleeting Snow knew had already proved valuable to Guarding Bear. She'd earned the misapplied epithet by mating her former mate's betrayer. When the expatriate traded her away, she'd left with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tiger Raiders: of their fortress, of their members, of their affiliates, of Scowling Tiger's spies within Emparia Castle.

  While interviewing the Traitress, Bubbling Water had learned the names of these spies months ago, but hadn't had the resources to do what she wanted with them. Killing them was counterproductive. Others would simply replace them. Subverting them produced little better result, the effect not always lasting. Implanting them to pass along incorrect information was the best, and invaluable for creating the hoax of prodigious mobilization.

  Corresponding to the misinformation, the Commanding General Aged Oak would move troops around as if gathering them in Burrow for an incursion northward. These troop movements would have some substance of mobilization but would only double the forces at Burrow, not octuple them as the spies would misreport.

  An important factor was time. In two short weeks, Guarding Bear hoped to have the cabal of Wizards ready to beguile the fortress. Aged Oak and Bubbling Water were already weaving the illusion that Guarding Bear had scheduled the investment for a month hence. Guarding Bear hoped Scowling Tiger prepared accordingly, wanting to catch the bandit general's loincloth around his knees.

  Thus the investment's real nature might go unnoticed.

  Thus they prepared.

  His feet pounding the packed dirt of the road, Guarding Bear smiled again, pleased with the preparations thus far.

  The group neared the last major crossroads on the outskirts of the actual region known as the Caven Hills. The boundaries of the prefecture itself reached all the way to Nest. The geographical region, however, where the hills themselves became so steep they were inaccessible, began beyond the crossroads ahead.

  At the crossroads itself were several trees of great shade and one small, lonely building, a combination refectory and hostelry.

  Guarding Bear slowed. “Lord Captain,” he said over his shoulder, “we'll stop here for the night.”

  “Yes, Lord.” Silent Whisper signaled to the men. As a group, they stepped off the road.

  Walking toward the building, Guarding Bear glanced at the two Wizards. Healing Hand sweated with the effort of travel, but didn't look as exhausted as at their other stops. Spying Eagle also looked as if he handled the travel better. “We'll stay the night and arrive in Bastion about noon tomorrow.”

  “Where, Lord Bear?” Healing Hand asked, looking at the building set back among the trees. A hundred paces diagonally back from the crossroads, the structure appeared too small to shelter Guarding Bear's detachment.

  “The main part of the structure sits below ground, Lord Hand,” he replied. “In the summer months, the weather here is torrid. Lord Captain, see if they have three adjacent rooms for our group. Have the warriors take one. You and the Lords Hand and Eagle take another, eh?”

  “Yes, Lord.” Bowing, Silent Whisper signaled to the warriors, who knelt in a group near the hostelry entrance. The Captain entered alone.

  Guarding Bear looked toward the crossroads. Two smooth streams of traffic knotted into the usual mob of pushing, shoving, angry individuals all moving in different directions. The General
wondered when Probing Gaze would arrive, having asked the Captain Sectathon to meet him here, where the Nest-Bastion road crossed the Burrow-Eyry road.

  “Lord General?”

  Guarding Bear glanced at Spying Eagle. “What is it, Lord?”

  Nearby, Healing Hand looked up into the branches of a tree, then quickly scrambled up the trunk.

  “Have you had your talent tested?” The Wizard wiped sweat from his copper brow.

  Frowning, Guarding Bear shook his head.

  “When I examined you, I noticed that you have an extremely strong talent,” Spying Eagle explained. “By all accepted standards, Lord General, you're a Wizard.”

  “I've always suspected as much, Lord. Why should I have it tested?”

  Spying Eagle shrugged. “Oh, perhaps for the title, Lord, but you don't need any more titles, eh?”

  Laughing, Guarding Bear shook his head and glanced toward the crossroads. From the knot of traveler emerged a tall, blond-haired man. Seeing the green-and-gold-garbed group at the hostelry, he stepped toward them. Guarding Bear smiled. “Lord Gaze!”

  “Infinite be with you, Lord General!” Probing Gaze strode toward them, grinning. “And with you, Lord Corporal. Catch any traitors lately?”

  Spying Eagle laughed, bowing to his former commander. “Thank the Infinite, I've received my discharge, Lord Gaze.”

  Bowing back as an equal, the six-foot six sectathon smiled. “Thank the Infinite, indeed! If you hadn't, you'd have disrupted the entire Eastern Armed Forces, eh?”

  Snorting, Spying Eagle grinned.

  Silent Whisper stepped out the door and nodded to Guarding Bear.

  “Lord Eagle,” the General said, “see that your room's adequate, eh?”

  Glancing at Probing Gaze, Spying Eagle said, “I'll check to see that it is, Lord General.” Bowing, Spying Eagle entered the hostelry, Silent Whisper and the detachment of warriors following him.

  Guarding Bear gestured away from the crossroads. Probing Gaze followed him. The two men began to stroll.