A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  3

  The sheep station lay in the hills west of Castino, in eastern Qoble, under the beetling spires of the front range. It probably saw very little excitement between one century and the next, so Hardgraa had felt no compunction in taking it over for a day or two. There was nothing at the station itself; it just happened to provide a suitably large establishment at a strategic midpoint on the charts, and the owners should feel honored that the imperor needed it. Not that there was an imperor at the moment, but they weren’t to know that.

  In the hills the nights were evilish cold even close to midsummer. Some lowly legionary had been told to light a fire, and legionaries were expected to display zeal, so the blaze that roared in the hearth would have roasted twin oxen. Nobody wanted to stand close to it. The cool end of the room was packed with metaled men and the other almost empty. The candles stood tall and fresh, although dawn was not far off.

  Feeling frowsy after a mere hour’s sleep — the first in two nights — Hardgraa paused in the doorway to glance over his squad. They would not have described themselves that way. Most of them were centurions, with a few optios and a couple of signifers who knew the quarry well by sight. The ineffectual Tribune Hodwhine was present, and nominally in charge. Two more tribunes were out in the field, supervising the sweep, and they were real soldiers, not aristocratic jellyfish.

  For a group so giddily honored by rank, this one was singularly failing to live up to the standards of the XIIth. Shandie would have stalked around the room like a jaguar, ripping stripes. If Hodwhine knew his job, he would be slamming down on the yawning, the slouching, and those unshaven chins. A man should not waste time sleeping if his armor needed cleaning, either.

  Hardgraa could not interfere in those matters, but everyone knew who was really in control. He marched into the room and a ripple ran through it, turning heads and stopping conversations. Here was the imperor’s man. Legate Ethemene had assigned three cohorts to this man’s personal command, purely on the strength of his reputation as Shandie’s chief of security. He wore the imperor’s four-pointed star. One man who had displeased him had been flogged to bare bones in front of the legion. He had their attention now.

  He nodded perfunctorily to Hodwhine and snatched himself a tankard of coffee from the mess table. Then he turned to the crowd around the chart table and centurions backed out of his way to make room. He knew by the shape of their silence that there was something new. It couldn’t be capture, or he would have been told at once. A good sighting, then. His eyes scanned the green chalk marks that represented sightings, the red marks for his troops. There had been no additions since he went off to catnap. There had been deletions.

  He tapped a thick finger on the paper. “The cherry orchard didn’t pan out?”

  “A priest,” Hodwhine said at his back, “and his bishop’s wife, would you believe it?”

  Just for once, Hardgraa let his sense of humor out of its cage. A priest and a bishop’s wife? No wonder they had tried to evade questioning! Yes, that was worth a smile, and of course the smile was being noticed. “An unfrocked priest, sir? Would that be an instance of a little bit of good in every evil, or a little bit of evil in every good?”

  “Depends,” Hodwhine said quickly. “Depends how good the goods are, I’d say.” He’d probably been tutored in witty rejoindering.

  Hardgraa let the chuckles fade away while he continued to study the chart. The deletion was not enough to explain the new sense of expectancy — not in this exhausted group at this hour of the night. They knew something he did not. Nevertheless, the pattern was clearer now. Without the priest the sightings clustered better. Almost he could feel that the chalk marks were footprints and he was some great sharp-eyed raptor soaring over the foothills of the eastern Qobles, tracking his prey.

  You run. Master Ylo. You try to hide. Master Ylo. You double back and circle, Ylo, but you can’t shake me. Do you feel my breath on you now, Ylo? Can you hear my claws on the rock?

  “He’s going east,” Hardgraa said. “He’ll cross the Angot road about here. Then… Then we’ve got him, haven’t we!” He leaned across, but the light was too poor to be certain. “There’s no trails marked through the mountains there, are there?”

  “No, sir,” said the optio at that corner of the table.

  Hodwhine coughed. “Oh, Centurion?”

  Hardgraa turned. “Sir?”

  “Letter here for you,” the tribune drawled. “Came a little while ago. Imperial post from Angot.”

  So that was what was new! Hardgraa accepted the packet and glanced over the inscriptions. The seal was intact. “Thank you,” he said, and tucked it away in his pouch.

  “You’re not going to read it?” Hodwhine said, frowning.

  “I have read it, sir. I mean I’ve got the message, sir. That’s Ylo’s hand.”

  The annoyance on the tribune’s face showed that he had known that. One of the signifers must have identified the writing.

  “Posted in Angot,” Hodwhine said sharply. “Addressed to you at the barracks; forwarded here. Posted in Angot, Centurion, yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the message.”

  The tribune colored. “Centurion!”

  “Look!” Hardgraa barked, and turned back to the table. He pulled out his dagger and used it as a pointer. “They’re here. Within a league, they’re here. One of these fruit farms, likely. And we’re all round them, and they must know that now. There’s the road to Angot.”

  “So he slipped by us!”

  “No, sir. He did not slip by us. He chose a woman heading down to Angot and slipped her one of his smiles to post a package for him in Angot. That’s what he did, sir. That’s the message, sir — Here I am, come and get me! But it’s a lie, sir. He’s not in Angot. He’s here. Right here!” Hardgraa slammed his dagger into the chart and left it standing there.

  Hodwhine bared his teeth. “Read the letter!”

  Hardgraa almost shrugged. They must all have been speculating for an hour on what it said, and it didn’t matter. “Yessir.” He pushed out of the group and marched over to stand beside the inferno on the hearth — alone, with every eye in the room watching him. Only then did he pull out the package and break the seal. The heavy parchment crackled as he opened it. He expected to see cipher, the code that Shandie had used within his personal staff, the old “handful of men” he had trusted: Hardgraa himself. Lord Umpily, and Sir Acopulo, Prince Ralpnie, later Ylo…

  To his disgust, though, the letter was in clear, its text a shameful breach of security.

  Signifer Ylo (retd.)

  to

  Centurion Hardgraa, assigned to the XIIth:

  Greetings!

  We were friends. If the Covin has enslaved you, then I am truly sorry. If you are still your own man, then how can you imagine that our former leader would ever have put any consideration at all ahead of his child’s welfare? He always maintained that every individual should have the right —

  There was a lot more. Hardgraa tossed the thing into the fire and walked back to the table. He switched to the northeast corner of the chart and, when space had been made for him, he was looking across at a red-faced, glaring tribune.

  “Horse piss, sir. The only message was the Angot post seal, and I told you how he did that.” Putting the letter out of mind, Hardgraa turned his attention back to the maps.

  Got you now. Libertine Ylo! Always knew your lechery would be the death of you. Acopulo said you’d go to the Evil crotch first.

  “We can move up here, checking every house, and drive him over there. Then he’ll be pinned between the mountains and —”

  And Thume. Why did that not feel right?

  He looked up, searching the ring of faces until he found the local expert. “Optio? What’s in Thume?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “What sort of nothing?”

  The youngster looked alarmed. “Just trees and stuff, sir. Nobody lives there. I mean, nobody ever even goes there!”

/>   “That’s all right then,” Hardgraa said. He glanced at the tribune to make sure he was conscious, or as close to it as he ever got. “You can concentrate forces now, sir. We’ll pin him between the mountains and the Thume border. Bring up the VIIth Cohort to close off this sector. Then… Optio, is this river fordable?”

  “The Brundrik, sir? I suppose so. But there’s nothing on the other side… sir?”

  Hardgraa was about to ask what sort of nothing, and realized he’d asked that before. Gods, but he was tired! And he’d have to head out at first light. Two days more. Pretty-boy Ylo, and I peg out your hide! Maybe he could steal a few more hours’ sleep. Still, there was something wrong, somewhere, he just knew it.

  “Why does nobody ever go there?” he demanded.

  “Where, sir?”

  “Across the Brim-thing River. Into Thume?”

  “Well — There’s nothing there, sir.” The optio was clearly at a loss, as if Hardgraa’s question made no sense.

  It did, didn’t it? He thought it over carefully and decided it was the sort of question that usually had an answer.

  He leaned his hands on the chart and glared at the youngster. “What would happen,” he said in his most menacing tones, “if I ordered you to ford that river?”

  The optio’s chain mail jingled. “I’d-d-d ob-b-bey, sir.”

  “And what would happen to you then?”

  “Dunno, sir. An uncle of mine did it and came back mad as midges, sir. Know of a fellow went hunting and got his face clawed off. Most don’t come back, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about them sooner?”

  “I — I dunno, sir.”

  “Mmph!” Hardgraa looked for the tribune, but he’d wandered away somewhere. He selected a centurion instead — good man, been at Highscarp. “Tiny, line up some elvish trackers, will you? If the target should make a break for it into Thume, we’ll have to follow.”

  To the ends of the earth. Lecher Ylo. To the ends of the earth!

  4

  To advance up a valley without controlling the heights was normally rank folly, but sometimes a man had no choice. Short of winching everything — including the camels — up sheer cliffs, the caliph had to come this way. He had interrogated his scouts closely and had even ridden ahead to see for himself, escorted only by the horse cavalry of Fifth Panoply. He had returned satisfied. The sides were too steep for a charge, too high for an archery attack. The upper end was closed by a sizable lake, and there would be a steep climb up a tributary valley on the morrow, but that could be managed. Furkar reported no evidence of sorcery at work, except for the Covin’s continuing surveillance. Azak set a guard on the exit and moved his main force into the valley for the night. It was an excellent location. The floor was level and wooded, with a stream providing the first adequate water the army had seen since leaving Quern.

  Following his custom, the caliph rode around as camp was set up, inspecting, criticizing, and acknowledging the cheers of his troops. Arriving back at his own quarters, he observed that the seraglio wagons had been arranged to form an enclosure by the stream, with the gaps between them curtained to keep out prying eyes. A ring of armed men surrounded this silken bivouac, all standing with their backs to it and ignoring the shrill squeals emanating from within.

  So his women were enjoying a bathe? Azak told his bodyguard to stand down and ducked through the draperies to enjoy the view. At his appearance, of course, they all prostrated themselves. The sight of seventeen bare bottoms in the air was intriguing — sixteen? One woman had merely turned her back and sat down. That one was a wench of a different color, of course. He signaled to Nurkeen that the festivities should continue, and he continued to watch with approval as the girls began showing off for him; all but that one, who remained where she was. Her defiance intrigued him far more than all the juvenile gymnastics of the others. He began to feel quite aroused. Inosolan was the only woman who had ever humiliated him. Tonight he would administer another rebuke.

  At sunset Nurkeen informed Inos that she was his Majesty’s first choice for the evening. Somehow Inos had expected that. She braced herself to endure more hurt, more humiliation. She had absolutely no way of escaping the constant surveillance, and she could acquire no weapon. Her only satisfaction would be to minimize Azak’s enjoyment, and so far her success in that direction had been nonexistent. In Quern she had struggled and he had overpowered her. In his tent, two nights ago, she had remained completely passive, so he had thrown her around. The end result had been the same either way — he was just too big, too strong. She could win no points in this game, except to conceal her fear and distress.

  She might refuse to obey the summons, of course, but then she would just be carted to his tent bodily, like a parcel. Or he might even come and abuse her before the rest of his women. That would be no answer. When she had been suitably adorned and perfumed, she set off submissively with Nurkeen and an honor guard, walking into the night.

  Someday, by all the Gods, he was going to pay for this!

  The journey was short. Even in her all-enveloping wool robe, she shivered in the sudden chill of a desert night. Camels bellowed in the distance, and she could hear the thousands of men and horses — but she heard those every night. Scenery she had seen only rarely since her imprisonment. Steep mountains framed the valley; the sky over them was afire with stars. Odors of sage flowed down from the hills to blend with the smoke of innumerable fires. Thume, she recalled, was always beautiful. The evil at its heart was human.

  The caliph’s tent was very large. The guards remained outside; Inos entered with Nurkeen. Azak was not there. The interior was opulent, with bright-hued rugs and silk hangings, warmed by braziers and lit by lanterns attached to the many poles. Thick quilts had been piled for the royal bedding, and a meal spread out on a cloth nearby. There were damask cushions and two solid chests for documents; no other furniture.

  “Give me your robe,” Nurkeen said. “His Majesty will return shortly, I expect. Warm your hands.” Filmy red eyes peered out over her yashmak. “I suggest you strive to please him this time, and avoid unpleasantness.”

  Inos said nothing.

  The old hag departed, leaving her standing there, garbed only in a swirl of obscenely transparent gauze. Her face was still purple from his last wooing; her shoulder still hurt.

  As soon as the tent flap fell, Inos stepped over to the display of food, seeking a weapon. She found nothing more dangerous than a small silver spoon, not even a knife for peeling grapes. She eyed the braziers, but they were cunningly crafted of fretted bronze. If they fell over, the coals would not spill. She might contrive to set the tent on fire, but that pettiness would not harm Azak and he had a million cruel ways to retaliate.

  Shamed by her fear, vulnerable in her state of undress, she settled cross-legged in a corner and wrapped herself in a quilt.

  She had to wait a long, nerve-wracking time. That was probably deliberate. Eventually, though, she heard hooves outside, and gruff Zarkian voices. Then he entered, throwing off his cloak. He wore his usual green — loose trousers and shirt. Across his wide chest the emerald baldric of Arakkaran glittered like a river of green fire. That alone would purchase her whole kingdom, and he was liberally draped with other jewels. When she had first known him, he had preferred to sport the sash as a belt, wrapped many times around his waist. It would not go many times around now. He seemed larger every time she saw him, for he had added beef to his great height. He would be almost a match for the largest jotnar in Krasnegar, even Kratharkran. He was not sporting any weapons. Azak, unfortunately, had brains.

  His big hands sparkled with rings — they would add to the pain when he struck her, and she had no doubt he would strike her. There was white now in his red beard. There was blood in his red eyes.

  “Take off that quilt!” he said, seating himself beside the food.

  She dropped the quilt.

  He reclined on one elbow, spreading himself out along the cushions like a baskin
g walrus. He began to eat, stuffing food in his mouth one-handed without seeming to notice or care what it was, barely taking his eyes off her.

  What had she ever seen in the man? Once she had been sorry for him, she recalled. Once there had been hints of greatness, where now remained only pride and cruelty and debauchery. She remembered wise old Sheik Elkarath prophesying what happened to a sultan who trod the red road of war. In those days Azak had loomed above Arakkaran like a human thunderstorm — dangerous, frightening, but also awesome, full of menace and might and potential. Now he was a blood-soaked tyrant, glutted on twenty years of battle. Now — as she knew only too well — he was physically repugnant, gross and disgusting. She had not felt clean since he first laid hands on her.

  Unfortunately, although he now held no appeal for her at all, the reverse was not true. His lusts had more to do with power than sex, although he enjoyed that, also.

  “You have worn well,” Azak mumbled. “Come and sit there.” He pointed to the floor just across from him.

  Steeling herself not to tremble, Inos rose and did as she had been told.

  “Pour me wine.”

  She poured. Each tiny obedience ranked as a defeat, and yet each itself seemed too small to justify provoking violence. How far would she pander to his demands? Soon he would tell her to strip. Would she go that far without compulsion? She did not know.

  He leered. “More cooperative tonight? Speak. Amuse me.”

  “I have nothing to say to a turd like you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Revenge is very sweet, Inosolan.”

  I am sure it will be.

  The tent flap moved in the background. For a moment she wondered about that, then decided it must just be the wind.

  “I have waited twenty years for my revenge,” Azak said, still chewing. “And I find it exquisite. Now, stand up and dance for me.”

  “I cannot dance that way.”

  He chuckled and reached under one of the cushions. He brought out a coiled whip and laid it on the rug for her to see.