by Damien Lake
Celerity threw her opinion in. “Not the likes of Orburn. Men such as he have their desperate plays thought out well before they come within twenty moves of needing them. Too short a span has elapsed since Nolier resumed hostilities for him to be clutching at dead weeds to prevent a fall. That he brings such to the table at this juncture means, I believe, that he wishes to outfox us.”
“And what would that accomplish?” Tybalt barked. “You don’t make an enemy lower his guard by opening your shirt and daring him to stab you between the ribs.”
“No,” Ulecia agreed. “You certainly do nothing of the sort. What you do is deceive in such a way that your opponent turns aside and exposes his vulnerable areas.”
“That sounds in keeping with the man,” Celerity affirmed. “Bronwen, what is our likely reaction to such a blatant justification?”
The crown’s chief diplomat cocked her head enough to cause an audible crack from her neck. “My inclination was to laugh, but diplomatically, I was bound to bring the claim to the council before making any official reply.”
Tybalt’s hard voice cut through Celerity’s follow-up inquiry. “Before you attempt to read sly ploys in his every breath, you should remember that political dissemination is nothing other than bluster. If he has a lethal dagger to use in his capacity as Nolier’s representative, then he has to wait for the right moment to use it. Until such time, he will cloud himself in a veil of apparent struggle in order to use his assault at peak effectiveness owing to our underestimation of him. Now shall we move on to more pressing matters?”
Celerity considered Tybalt across the table’s curve with annoyance. She prevented her ire from effecting her professionalism. “And what specific issues would you bring before the council at this time, knight-marshal?”
He returned her stare measure for measure. “This is no minor infraction caused by a foolhardy trader tripping over a trade agreement. It is the birth of a war. Diplomacy is not the answer when an opposing kingdom chooses to take what it wills with no regard to their neighbors. My respect to Diplomat Bronwen, but I feel we should spend our efforts in preparing for the battles we know are inevitable.”
“A battle ended before the swords clash is a battle won twice over,” Bronwen retaliated. “A quote from none other than Faustus Hueart, I might add. We must exhaust all diplomatic possibilities before we cast the lives of our soldiers across the Tenpencia’s shores.”
“And I might add that, ‘A skirmish avoided is tomorrow’s pitched battle’.” Tybalt’s tone matched hers in acidity. “Failton Grealy’s words for you, Bronwen, and words well worth consideration in our present circumstances. We cannot afford a second war as costly as the last. We must strike at the earliest possibility before they can take root in those cursed mountains again!”
“If you attack their soldiers before diplomatic talks are concluded, you may well kill our one chance to end this dispute without bloodshed!”
“Peace among the council,” Ulecia announced softly, lifting one hand and severing the glaring line-of-sight between the two. “Arguments are best saved until such time as they have the most relevance. Tybalt, your men will not be in a position to carry out a feasible assault for eightdays yet, is that correct?”
The knight-marshal bowed his head in admission. “You see the truth, your majesty.”
“Then save your squabbles for the day when our army has the capability to make any such action,” Raymond declared. “Bronwen, you still have time enough to spar with Orburn. Providence should reveal his intentions and the possibilities of successful negotiation by the day our forces are in place.”
“On that matter,” the seneschal cut in. “First Grade Quartermaster Delano should have his numbers in order.”
“Not so much as I expected, given the staff I’ve put in place,” Delano said by way of an opening statement. He stood to distribute several papers he had brought with him among the councilors. None of the people in the room held a high place in Marik’s favor, but Delano had made the oiliest impression on him. During the last meeting the man had spent his entire time either dodging a direct answer or laying the groundwork for blame to be shifted elsewhere. “I’ve saturated my warehouse and supply staff with the most competent people I could find after the last war, yet despite it all, they haven’t been able to give me their reports fast enough to please the council.”
Tybalt’s neck grew redder where his collar squeezed it tightly. He desperately wanted to verbally bite Delano’s nose off, an act he had been longing to perform in truth for the past several months. As before, the seneschal intervened keep the council members focused on dealing with the pressing problems rather than devolving to angry infighting.
“Is that to say you have not pieced together a complete list of in-theater resources currently in store? Or that your staff is still struggling to arrange for proper supply routes with which to funnel your stocks to the men who need them?”
Marik marveled at the man. In any other mouth, those same words would have carried bitterness, accusation, even implication. What magic did the seneschal employ that he could speak so while keeping his voice utterly devoid of emotion or trace resonances? No one ever knew if they should be offended by his direct statements or not.
Delano only hesitated a moment before tendering his reply…in typical evasive form. “The supply routes two years ago were effective. It was seen that no solider went hungry, cold or lacked the required goods to maintain his cleanliness. Nolier forces made numerous attacks against supply depots, never to any great effect. We prevented them from destroying our caches and successfully protected the routes feeding stocks to the depots in turn. As you can see, the life’s blood of our army remained…”
The words faded from Marik’s awareness when he stopped devoting the effort to pay attention. To listen to Delano, his tightfisted supply officers had single-handedly repelled Nolier’s attempts against the depots. Marik had vowed before not to let it infuriate him. He, along with his fellow mercenaries and reluctantly allied soldiers, had shed their blood to defend those warehouses. Delano’s men had as much to do with protecting the supplies as with actually butchering the meat they later doled out. Tybalt would agree with him on that, if never on anything else.
Marik listened with surprisingly mild interest. For a council meeting to organize a war, it proved exceedingly mundane. A far cry from the way he would have imagined such momentous undertakings during his purgatory of an apprenticeship to a woodworker named Pate in his hometown of Tattersfield. Or even a year or two ago.
Soldiers and mercenaries. Over the years of contracting with the Crimson Kings, he had reached the conclusion that the only difference between them was that mercenaries were the far more realistic of the two. No ragged lowlifes or failed soldiers were they. They were every inch as intimate with warfare as any regaled man of the army, despite no one honoring them for it. Seeing the topmost men and women in the kingdom struggling like this only hammered the final nail into his conviction.
He had been greatly discomforted at first by the notion that a common mercenary would be polluting the exalted council’s decisions with his views, crudely forged on battlefields from splintered steel and quenched in barrels of blood still hot enough to steam in the winter air. The first council meeting had struck him as a fluke, an oddity, surely an off day. Listening to this second session droning on without end, where the people spoke without saying anything, where inconsequential technicalities were beaten relentlessly while the seneschal strove to maintain order, Marik knew where he would bet his coin if there were to be a battle between mercenaries and soldiers at three times their number.
For all that they were commoners from various scattered corners of the land, he believed that his friends in the Ninth Squad could do a better job of preparing for a war than what the council was accomplishing. They were men who lived and breathed the reality of warfare.
Each council member whittled the afternoon away with their personal reports, which naturally
was of greater significance than all the others. Once they each had their say, it went back to Celerity, who launched a new issue that she, unsurprisingly, proclaimed to be vitally important. Ulecia kept sifting her words, restating them in the plain language a mercenary would have used in the first place, enabling Raymond to keep track of the actual facts. Marik felt his eyes drooping from the stuffy heat that intensified the longer the doors remained shut.
Celerity’s words washed over him without effect until a distant part of his brain caught her mentioning his name. He pummeled his attention to return, focusing until he found every eye in the room directed at him. His hurried glance at the chief mage prompted her to add, “I believe this council is ready to receive the fruits of your labor, Mr. Railson.”
He straightened his posture. A quick search located the display he had hurriedly fashioned and left in the council room earlier that morning. The pages had shoved it into the furthest curving of the wall to make room for the civilians who would be crowding the area.
If the council held little love for Delano, that would be an understatement concerning their regard for Marik the Mercenary. Only Raymond and Ulecia looked upon him with the same intent interest they had given every previous speaker.
“And so?” grunted Tybalt loudly, irritated at Marik’s hesitation. “My professional analysts have been working ceaselessly. I am most anxious to hear how closely your evaluations will match theirs.”
He is like those dogs herding the cattle, Marik abruptly associated. Barking to make noise and frighten the cows into staying along the path they want. Well, he certainly was no walking beef roast, trotting down the path of least resistance, too concerned with the annoyances of the moment to consider what fate awaited at the path’s end.
“I was asked by…this council,” Marik stated boldly, hesitating only an instant, “for my opinion about the Arronaths invading our western border, and what possible actions I thought would be appropriate.” Not bad. Perhaps lacking the eloquence of the other speakers, but he was a mercenary and refused to be anything else. “I have no idea what your analysts have come up with regarding them, knight-marshal, since I have only heard you reporting on the Noliers. And your men haven’t shared their thoughts with me or the enclave’s researchers either.”
Tybalt offered no reaction. That worried Marik only slightly. He had wondered if the implication before the king that Tybalt was being uncooperative would anger the man. The knight-marshal would store the slight in memory, nursing it until the opportunity arose to pay it back.
“That is correct,” Celerity declared with a hint of ice. “The concerns of other regions are not yours. So please inform the council of your findings relating to these strangers.”
“First of all,” he began, leaving the display where it lay for the moment, “I think you’ve heard enough information to appreciate that you can’t fight them the same way you fight the Noliers, or the Tullainians, or the Perrisans. Man for man, their soldiers and fighting abilities are not that different. It is the fact that they’re more than men that I was supposed to look into. Or so I understood.”
Raymond nodded. “And now I would like to hear it ‘from the horse’s mouth’, I believe is the saying.”
Marik returned the nod. “Every regular army force that came into contact with the Arronaths was destroyed. Many didn’t have any survivors that were able to escape and report what happened to them.”
Tybalt nearly burst with the desire to retort, and was unable. Marik had carefully phrased it as ‘regular army forces’ so the knight-marshal couldn’t muddy the waters by objecting that the special forces had managed better. Such as the quickly assembled strike force led by the Arm of Galemar.
“The Crimson Kings Mercenary Band has fought against the Arronaths a number of times,” Marik continued. “Myself included. I have firsthand knowledge about their fighting capabilities, their strengths, their weaknesses, and most importantly what it is to stand feet away from them and feel the power of their…presence, I suppose is the best word.”
Each councilor maintained their hardened expression. To the hells with them. Marik spoke to King Raymond and Queen Ulecia.
“I learned much on the battlefield. Since you have given me the opportunity to work with the royal enclave and speak to the prisoners, I have confirmed most of our suspicions and uncovered several new disturbing aspects. I will start with the beasts they call Taurs, since we are concerned mostly with them.”
He stood on the far end of the round table, speaking at a higher level to ensure his voice carried strongly. “The beasts are exactly that. Beasts. In the lands where the Arronaths come from, Taurs roam in tribes across the vast southlands. Apparently it is dry, dusty and flat, an area wider than a horse could journey in a month.”
“Sounds like half of Tullainia,” Joletta commented. She mostly remained quiet throughout the session unless a horse was mentioned in any context.
“Right,” Marik affirmed. “That’s the same feeling most of us had when we spoke to the prisoners. The Taur tribes war among each other the way a wolf pack will fight off any foreign pack that enters its territory. Except the Taurs aren’t merely mindless animals.”
“I’m certain,” Tybalt allowed, “that they attend religious services every fifth day and debate philosophy over imported brandy.”
No one laughed, but no one called Tybalt down either. “I meant that the Taurs have a level of intelligence. They live in crude structures that they build from mud and brush. One prisoner swore their huts looked brittle enough to fall over in a slight breeze, but are sturdier than they look. Also, they use animal pelts to clothe themselves in a simple fashion. They are naturally aggressive and fight barehanded for dominance among their fellow tribe members.”
“This hardly sounds like a…a race, if you will, who would ally with anyone, let alone outsiders of a different species,” Rancill observed. “Such territorial traits would preclude an ability to welcome others, to leave their homes to fight alongside strangers, or maintain an orderly behavior with the humans they work with.”
“That is—” Marik began.
“Not to mention the weapons they wield,” Delano interjected. “You say they fight barehanded, yet the facts we already have seem to put your statement into doubt.”
“One fact does not, alone, create an absolute, Delano,” Celerity mentioned. Marik doubted she was supporting him as much as taking a shot at the quartermaster. “Because you wore an expensive shirt with tortoise-shell buttons today, should I infer you wear nothing else on any other day?”
“My question stands. Weapons of that size are a supply nightmare, and it is proven that these Taur creatures are able to use them to great effect. How trustworthy is a report that contains inconsistencies?”
“Let us allow Marik to continue,” Ulecia spoke softly, “and see whether any loose threads weave into the larger tapestry further along.”
Marik hesitated. He could gain no feel for how these people worked. Were they being contrary to spite him, or would they be so with whoever presented the same information? “The short of it is this. These Taurs are no willing comrades of the Arronaths. Their minds are enslaved through an application of sorcery that is unknown to those within the enclave who possess the same talent.”
He faced Magistrate Rancill directly. “This should satisfy the facts you know. The white-robed magic users who travel with the Taurs are sorcerers trained to control the beasts. An average white robe can control two or three Taurs at a time. A truly skilled one can handle four. You should remember the reports of causing mayhem in their ranks by killing the white robes. This is why. When their controllers are killed, the hold over their minds is shattered. They are in a killing fury until other controllers can bring them back under their thumb.”
“I would assume their use of weapons is a reflection of human dominance over their minds, however such a feat is accomplished,” Raymond observed. The comment made Marik pause. Raymond, as king, was not generally wel
l-known for astute observation.
Tybalt offered his opinion, preceded by a derisive snort. “As informative as this might be, I fail to see any great accomplishments that my own staff will be unable to achieve once they have time to interview the prisoners.”
Raymond bestowed a benign expression on his army commander, letting the man’s words roll off his back like water. It reminded Marik that it had originally been the king’s idea to bring the mercenary before the council, to give him the task of looking for creative solutions. What did the crown ruler truly think of him? As a person worthy of respect or as a person who simply had luck on his side?
“Their use of weapons might be the result of their controller’s abilities to make them act outside their natural instincts,” Marik said, repeating a statement made by Philantha, an enclave esper and whose sorcery talent was the strongest among the royal group. “In the end, what it means is that as long as the white robes are there, the Taurs act as forces of nature. They power through the enemy frontlines like a thunderstorm and smash their organization to pieces. What the Taurs don’t kill, the human forces coming in behind finish off. The white robes stay behind the Taurs to keep protected. They aren’t good targets until the battle is in the thick and both lines begin spreading out. And then if you do kill the white robes, the crazed Taurs are a worse threat than ever. You can’t count on them to retaliate against the Arronaths. That means traditional defensive lines are a hazard. A different approach is needed to provide the greatest protection against the Taurs while at the same time providing heightened chances for archers to kill the white robes before both sides close too much. If they can be killed at a distance, then the Taurs will almost certainly slaughter the Arronaths. They seem to attack the closest available targets.”
Everyone watched him with eyes holding neither warmth nor frozen contempt…except perhaps for Raymond’s. While everyone studied him as if contemplating his very existence, the king seemed to hold a slightly different air than when Tybalt or Delano had been speaking. Marik could put no precise name to the difference. Perhaps, if it were possible, King Raymond was enjoying listening to him speak, whereas it had been part of a day’s work with the others. Why would that be?