by Damien Lake
As they still did. Dietrik scanned the cloudless sky, looking for answers. If they were writ in the heavens, then the gods had chosen a means of inscribing that lay beyond a simple mercenary’s ability to discern.
* * * * *
Adrian could see, instantly, that something was wrong. The sort of wrong that meant a far greater inconvenience than a delay or a misunderstanding that required time to explain.
“Ah…I see,” the patrol soldier said hesitantly to Jide. “Well. I’ll go and take that up with the captain.” His about-face cut a line a bit too sharp, Adrian thought.
Jide sensed it as well. He sidled back several steps to mutter under his breath. “I don’t like the current here. I haven’t seen a greedy eye-gleam like that in a dog’s age. Since we left Arronath.”
“Watch them closely,” Adrian whispered back. “We have been out of communication too long. Once we return we can decide if whatever scheme this group works at is worth the trouble of upsetting, provided we do not have too many other crises on our hands.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Adrian could hear the frown in Jide’s words. The evening darkness prevented the sentiment from passing in any other form. “He was straight business until I declared we were escorting you back to the staging point. That’s when he turned shifty.”
“It is late, Jide,” Adrian sighed. “And no patrol man enjoys running into a superior officer while out on duty. It puts them in the jeweler’s monocle, their every slight mistake noticed.”
Jide leaned closer. “Adrian, this feels wrong, damn it!”
“Do not draw attention,” the general hissed back. “Worry about trouble when trouble comes. For the nonce, I need to return to our command structure! Honestly, I could not care less how much they are lining their pockets with local resources. There are larger problems to deal with.”
Whatever Jide might have said went unmentioned. The patrol soldier returned with a second man who must be the unit’s captain. “And what do we have in the middle of the night? Supposedly a dead general come back to life, is it?”
“Take caution with your phrasing,” Adrian replied in a cold tone. “I have been through as many trials as I care to face.”
The captain ran an appraising look over Adrian from head to toe through the moonlight. “If’n it’s true you’re Adrian, then I suppose you have. Tell me, what happened to all your insignia? The general had enough to cover a wagon.”
Adrian’s fingers traced over the bare shoulders of the non-uniform shirt. Jide had bartered for it from a caravan shortly after their escape. “My appearance, as it stands, has no bearing on my identity. Whether you believe my claim or not, you have a duty to escort me to the nearest staging point, either to verify who I am or to have me placed in confinement for fraud.”
Both parties waited while the captain evaluated the truth in Adrian’s statement. At last he nodded. “Ye’ae, I supposed that’s true enough. You’ve got me convinced you probably are the general.”
His colloquial accent, from a region near the Tillsar border unless I am severely mistaken, rubbed raw nerves. Most of his unpleasant experiences as a military leader had transpired in those regions.
“Then I expect…” Adrian trailed off. The moment the captain had uttered his last words, his men had spread out silently through the darkness. Adrian recognized it at once as flanking maneuvers.
Jide let out a shout. The bodyguards drew their swords while the patrol soldiers closed in from three sides.
Adrian blinked stupidly for several seconds before he fumbled for his blade. By the blazes, what could the patrol captain possibly be thinking? Did he believe Adrian’s little party were imposters after all, and intended to arrest them on the spot? That seemed the only logical explanation, yet the severity of the sudden fighting failed to coincide with this notion.
His nine loyal bodyguards, three unarmed, faced twelve opponents. Jide whirled in a cyclone of slashes against three soldiers who wanted to overwhelm him. They kept sliding sideways in attempts to move into his blind side but Jide, a master swordsman of highest degree, was not fooled for an instant.
The captain hollered in a rising temper. “Take them down! Down I say, but for him! Or the general will have your hides if’n I leave any scraps for him!”
Confusion saturated Adrian’s mind. The mild headache that had plagued him since dawn grew to a blacksmith’s thudding. He darted at the captain, sword bared. His quick stroke met the patrol leader’s blade the same instant a death cry shrieked from behind. One of his bodyguards was slain.
The night fell away around him. Adrian could feel it melting, the past blooming through the holes until the present was only a dim memory. Though well practiced with Jide as a sparring partner, Adrian had not personally fought for his life in over two decades. Not since he had been several rungs down the command ladder. A regimental officer taking his men into harm’s way in order to achieve mission objectives.
His body remembered the deadly dance even as his mind still grappled with the unreality that a soldier, one of the officers in his army, had dared to act thus against him. The army he had lovingly purged of its soiled spirits and corrupted crooks. Or as many of them as it was possible for him to find and uproot.
He returned a slash for every attack the captain sent at him. The man was no slouch. Adrian commended him silently for his ability, though four more moves into the warrior’s waltz would expose the man’s legs. Then it would be over. Three moves…two…
One of Jide’s opponents leapt wide to avoid a slash that had begun as a ricochet off his comrade’s elbow guard. Adrian’s sword nicked his arm. The spoiled stroke faltered, and the captain took advantage with a wide slice that tore into Adrian’s upper arm.
Adrian had seen the blow coming. Seeing it had not been enough. His body, nowhere near as young as it once had been, lacked the old reflexes. Fire burned in a sharp line along the wound bitten by the hungry steel.
His fingers loosened until instinct forced his hand to spasm shut. By rights his arm should have been severed except the patrol captain had pulled the blow. He wanted to bring Adrian back as a prisoner rather than a corpse. Adrian back-stepped so quickly he nearly stumbled. The captain’s expression tightened in concentration as he pressed harder.
Adrian’s heel struck a body on the ground. The sudden obstacle unbalanced him, causing the trip he had been fighting. He held his sword out sideways to prevent an accidental fall onto it. From the ground, he struggled to rise while his arm screamed in agony.
That captain advanced, accompanied by two of the men who had started the fight by facing his bodyguards. Human forms were motionless on the ground under the ebon sky. How many were still fighting, and who did they pay allegiance to?
One of his loyal guards, a man whom Adrian had known for the last six years, dashed between the faltering general and the three assailants. Adrian cried out when his sword was deflected by the first, leaving him exposed to the thrusting swords of the others. He fought to the end, wheezing his defiance into the blood-soaked grass. They stepped over his dying form to claim Adrian.
The captain opened his mouth to speak. Jide interrupted him. His flashing blade bit into the neck of the leftmost man before they realized their rears were exposed.
Adrian leapt forward. His unsteady legs held him enough to propel him forcefully in the low-to-the-ground lunge that was the specialty of his combat style.
His sword lanced into the second soldier’s chest. In heartbeats, the captain stood alone.
“Don’t!” Adrian cried to Jide. The leather and body suction fought him, denying him easy retrieval of his weapon. “We must have answers from him!”
A scream split the night behind him. He freed his sword at last and hurried to Jide’s side.
Jide had ripped a gashing hole in the captain’s left shoulder. The man had collapsed to the ground, all function in his arm lost. Before he could recover, before he could think of what to do, Jide kicked him hard in the face. Smas
hed flesh tore. Shattered teeth spewed from between his lips in a bloody froth. Adrian expected the man’s jaw must have broken.
“I will see to him,” Adrian hastily said, placing a hand on Jide’s arm when the bandit made to kick anew. “He will not be able to tell us much if he is digesting his teeth. Make certain his cohorts are no longer a threat, and find out how many of our men are still with us.”
Jide whipped his blade in a curt, sharp flick that divested it of the excess blood dripping from its tip. He became a shadow ghosting between shapeless mounds populating the silent battleground, a different shade of black moving through the night.
Adrian grabbed a handful of the moaning captain’s shirt and cleaned his blade. After re-sheathing it, he knelt to peer into his eyes. “I demand a full explanation of this…atrocity! If I am satisfied, I will be merciful and grant you a summary execution here and now. Otherwise I will make an example of you before the whole of Arronath! Well? Speak!”
A weak moan was the only reply offered. Adrian threatened nothing short of reinstituting the worst punishments he had drummed from the accepted practices, growing angrier with every passing moment, to no avail. His loyal men killed so unexpectedly…and for what reason? To advance a corrupt man’s selfish ambitions? To cover a crime in progress that would ruin the careers of those involved were it to come into the light? Rage burned hotly as each guard’s name and years of dedicated service echoed through his skull.
His arm throbbed from the sword cut. Worse, his head felt as if a stiletto were repeatedly stabbing through his scalp to stir his brains. He nearly kicked the whimpering captain himself at the man’s stubborn persistent incoherency.
Jide appeared from behind the captain. He knelt fast as a striking snake, grabbed a handful of hair to tilt the face upward to meet his gaze and, in a silky voice laced with venom, husked, “It’s only the three of us out here, farm boy. Your men are dead. Our men are dead. I hope whatever hell you end up in needs a few potato farmers, or else you’ll be shit out of luck and looking for work before dawn shines on me.”
The captain stared dumbly at Jide for several long moments, blood spilling over broken teeth. At last, “Shoulda recognized you,” he mumbled. “That dry-land pirate everyone talks about. You would have your fingers in…any shady dealings…”
“Glad you can see the damned chainmail for the links it’s made of after all.” He shook the man roughly. “Now I want to hear anything you might think we’d have a keen interest in!”
An apparent resignation entered the man’s eyes when Jide manhandled him with increasing roughness. Adrian, sickened by the affair, gave the captain something to think about. “It appears that he would rather undergo a full court’s martial, in hopes that we will fail to uncover whatever business he was about this night, I have no doubts. I assure you that we will learn the truth and your crimes be exposed, along with any cohorts you seek to protect through your silence.”
Jide frowned at his old friend’s words. “That won’t be good enough by a dog’s leg this time, Adrian.” He yanked hard on the captain’s hair until he cried out. “Moving goods through the night or standing watch for do-gooders out to ruin a well-laid scheme reeks a different smell than what’s coming off this maggot. And I’ve got questions.”
“No less than I.” Adrian could feel his temples throbbing. After the hard trek through enemy territories, slinking like the meanest refugees, for it to end in…this! Good men slain at one of his own’s hand. A man given a position of trust in his army. The army which once again shone with the honor it had known so very long ago, created to combat the chaos from whence it had been born.
“Start with your moxy,” Jide growled. “You didn’t dare say shit or go blind until after you thought you had the real General Adrian Ceylon in front of you. What did you possibly think you could make of having him at your mercy?”
“Only what any self-respecting soldier would do,” he exclaimed to make Jide stop his violent shaking.
“Meaning what, exactly?” Adrian demanded.
“We all of us heard about it. Orders come down from on high to bring you back to the general, whatever high water we have to wade through to do it. Not that any of us would disagree, mind.”
“Bring you back to who? Who’s your commanding officer?”
“Mendell. Who else is in charge this side of the mountains?”
Jide pushed him back with forceful disgust. The man sprawled in the dirt. “I should have read that plain enough to see,” he spat, rising to his feet. “A viper never looses its poison. First one, then the other.”
“This…goes beyond insubordination,” Adrian whispered in outrage. “Or simple power lust! Is he so afraid of the punishment he will face upon our return home that he seeks to destroy me first?”
“Sounds like the slug. A vile, rotten bastard to the core, like we figured. And calling himself a general now…someone has some high ambitions.”
“Don’t you dare!” the captain rallied enough to yell. He struggled to rise and failed, his arm hanging limply to the ground. “A man with the guts to stand up and face the threat to our homeland! If’n he’d been in charge in the first place, we wouldn’t be in such straights, I’ll wot.”
“You must be a masochist,” Jide snarled, and booted the captain hard in his gaping wound. He shouted over the man’s shrieks, “If you look up to a ragged bastard like him, I’ll be more than pleased to give you your just comings!”
“Rather put up with…a stern superior…than a traitor,” the patrol captain gasped. “At least he’s honest.”
“Treason?” Adrian felt his blood boiling under the stabbing pain in his head and arm. “He spins tales to bolster his position? I will not tolerate such flagrant corruption!”
“Not him.” The captain stared balefully at Adrian. “The real general. The one who serves the king, rather than stab him in the back. Xenos, of course.”
“What?” Jide thundered while Adrian felt his jaw drop at the accusation. In his entire life, when had he ever done other than faithfully serve his king? “Spare me your pathetic lies, worm! Xenos can’t be halfway across the ocean yet.”
“If’n you’d been at your duties, land pirate, you’d know well enough he’d arrived already. But you’ve been running around greedy tom-kitty with the general and his Galemaran friends, so it is little wonder. No doubt you were the ones who gave the local miscreants the knowledge they needed to destroy the Citadel. How much did you sell that information for?”
“What?” This time the exclamation exploded from Adrian.
“What’s the matter?” the captain sneered with all the derision he could summon through his pain. “Didn’t think they’d ever be bold enough to use what you sold to them?”
Jide kicked him with the steel toe of his boot again, breaking the cracked gravestones of his teeth still further. “If there’s any questions in the air, they sure as rain and hail won’t be coming out from between your lips!”
Adrian felt his mind reeling from the unseen blows coming one after the other. The accusation that he had ever done less than his best for the eleven-point crown stabbed deeper than this pathetic wretch could have possibly known. Then the absurd claim about the Citadel… Absurd, yes, but remotely possible? What had happened? He was stunned. Battle shocked. His head nearly rang with it, unable to do naught but listen dumbfounded as Jide beat the truth from the patrol captain.
He had expected to return to a deteriorating situation at best. But this! Could it be believed? If so, what, if anything, was still salvageable?
Most bewildering of all, would he, the most respected general the Arronathian Armed Forces had ever known, be allowed to salvage anything? Xenos, present at the king’s order, declaring Adrian a traitor? Issuing orders to apprehend his predecessor on sight? What madness reigned?
Jide continued to wring every last detail out of the patrol captain until blood loss made the man’s head swoon. At the end, Jide drew his sword to send the captain along after h
is men.
“How long has it been since we were last forced to such brutal actions?” Adrian quietly asked Jide while they departed through the moonlight.
“Twelve years,” Jide replied at once. “That warehouse lieutenant all the way down in pisspot Rensicollo. The one who was selling his weaker men to the slaver’s brothel.”
Adrian grimaced in distaste. “There, I felt that justice was well served by his hanging. This…travesty… I cannot abide such bloodshed over misunderstandings.”
“Mis…what are you saying, Adrian? Weren’t you listening to that worm back there? Xenos is doing his damnedest to turn the army against you!”
“Councilor Xenos only has the facts he can see to work with. Had I arrived on the scene and found a similar situation, I can’t honestly say I would draw any conclusions other than what he did. It is imperative that we return directly and treat with the councilor.”
“And what about the minor fact that every scurvy jackstraw under Mendell’s command is going to see gold coins sparkling in his eyes the instant they set sight on your pretty head? And don’t forget Harbon! Xenos is the one who pulled every string available to thrust those vipers into our ranks! Remember?”
“Of course I do.” Adrian’s mouth set in a tight line. “As I said before. Everyone, including us, keep in mind, is guilty of mistakes in judgment. The king trusts the councilor, and that is the end of the matter.”
“It should be the end of the matter, you mean. But there’s too many lefts in this mess where there should be nothing but straight paths. You can’t deny it.”
“All the more reason to meet with the councilor soonest. As privately as we can manage.”
“Which will mean not at all. Adrian, you remember the whole affair with the Marquis of Ostler? The servants reflect the master. That was as hard a lesson as ever we learned. Only a fool swims over a waterfall a second time as soon as he recovers from his first attempt.”
“That…is among the many questions I intend to put to him.”