by David Weber
And if Brychar Tamdaran could help drop kick a prick like Thalmayr into the dragon pit along the way, so much the better.
“Now, Hundred,” he said briskly, bringing up his own copy of Thalmayr’s report, “let’s go through this from the beginning. You say the first intimation you had that Fifty Ulthar and Fifty Sarma were conspiring against you came when—”
* * *
“So there it is,” Mayrkos Harshu said grimly, looking across the steaming cup of bitterblack at Klayrman Toralk. He held the cup in his right hand and tapped his left index finger on the sarkolis crystal on the breakfast table between them. Sunlight streamed in through the chansyu hut’s window, pooling in the crystal’s heart with eye-hurting intensity. “The bastard tried to weasel out of it, but his lies started coming unglued from almost the very first question. Brychar got it all out of him in the end. And it’s all verified, all true.”
Toralk’s own cup sat on the table beside his plate, and he felt no temptation to touch either of them. The acid-churning lump in his stomach saw to that.
“The only thing I can say on his behalf—not in his defense, because I don’t think anything could constitute a defense—is that he seems to genuinely believe the Sharonians were deliberately torturing him and trying to ‘steal’ his mind. Apparently, the fact that the Sharonian healers at Fort Ghartoun testified under verifier that they’d only been doing their best to help him wasn’t sufficient to convince him. So he decided to return the favor and spent the next several weeks systematically beating them to death one inch at a time. From the sound of things, he’d’ve been doing even worse than that if his senior healer hadn’t refused to patch them up between sessions. He tried to emphasize the fact that he wasn’t really trying to kill them—after all, they’d’ve been dead long ago if that was what he’d wanted!—but the real reason for his ‘restraint’ was that he didn’t want them to die and deprive him of his entertainment any sooner than he could help.”
Harshu’s eyes were as bleak and grim as Toralk felt, but he sipped from his bitterblack cup and unlike the Air Force officer, he’d cleaned his plate. Of course, he’d had a bit longer to think about it, Toralk supposed.
“It’s impossible to be certain of everything that happened at this stage,” the two thousand continued, lowering his cup again. “I think Brychar’s pieced it together accurately, but all the verifier spell can really tell us is whether or not Thalmayr believes he’s telling the truth, not necessarily what the truth actually is. I’ll see to it that you get a complete transcript of the interview, but I’ll warn you now that he’s about as self-serving—and as able to convince himself that what he wants to be true has to be true—as a man could possibly be.”
“Are you saying he’s one of those…what-do-you-call-them…‘sociopathic liars,’ Sir? Or that he’s so delusional he genuinely doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong?”
“I think he’ll lie his arse off to stay out of the pit come dragon-feeding time.” Harshu’s tone was as hard as his expression. “Whether that makes him a ‘sociopath’ or not is another question. But while I’m godsdamned sure he feels justified in his own mind, there’s no question that he understands damned well that nobody else is likely to agree with him. And unfortunately”—for the first time, the two thousand looked away from his breakfast guest—“the fact that he headed for Karys rather than Mahritha and didn’t say a word to anyone about it on the way through or send any reports back up-chain suggests two things to me.
“First, he may claim he kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to spread any confusion or panic, but that’s as full of dragon shit as everything else he’s said. The truth is, he hoped like hell he’d be able to cover up what he’d been doing. He wanted me to hear his version, and he wanted me to hear it before anything could force my hand when it came time to deal with it. If Ulthar and Sarma’s actions had become general knowledge before he got here, I’d’ve had to set the official wheels in motion before he had an opportunity to spin the story in his favor. As far as I’m concerned, that’s proof he damned well knows he’s violated the Articles of War left, right, and center, however ‘justified’ he might have felt. An effort to conceal is pretty strong evidence of guilt.”
Harshu paused for a moment, gazing down into the PC on the table, and his dark eyes were as stony as the crystal itself. Then he looked back up at Toralk.
“That’s the first thing it suggests to me,” he said flatly. “But the second thing—the worse thing—is that the reason he wanted to get his version to me is that he hopes I’ll clean up the mess to protect my own arse. He hasn’t said so in so many words, but it’s pretty damned obvious what he really wants is for me to send out an air-mobile detachment with orders to run down the ‘mutineers’ and shoot to kill when they do. Dead men make piss-poor prosecution witnesses.”
“I imagine they do, Sir,” the Air Force officer agreed after a moment, meeting those stony eyes levelly.
“Well,” Harshu took another sip of bitterblack and cradled the cup in both hands, “I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. I’ll be sending an air-mobile battalion back, all right, but its orders will be a bit different from the ones he wants. I want Ulthar, Sarma, all their men, and any surviving Sharonians apprehended, but I want them taken alive, and I’m sending Thousand Stanohs to personally see to it they are if it’s humanly possible.”
He paused, and Toralk nodded. Valchair Stanohs commanded 2nd Battalion of the 703rd Infantry Regiment, and although he was junior to Tayrgal Carthos or Faildym Gahnyr, he was smarter than Gahnyr and far less loathsome than Carthos. More to the point, as the senior officer present, he was the acting commander of the entire 703rd, which made him Five Hundred Chalbos Isrian’s CO, and it was Isrian who’d selected Thalmayr to command Fort Ghartoun when his own battalion was called forward. Stanohs and Isrian didn’t much care for each other, and the fact that Stanohs’ one thousand’s rank was only an acting one—that he was Isrian’s commander on the basis of less than three months’ seniority—hadn’t made the five hundred any fonder of him. Nor did the fact that they didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on the treatment of Sharonian POWs.
“I can trust Stanohs to do his damnedest to pull it off,” Harshu continued, “and once he finds them, a full battalion ought to be enough to convince them resistance would be hopeless. I hope so, anyway, because I really, really want those men—all of those men—back alive, and then I want them immediately deposed under verifier and their depositions handed directly to the IG and Judiciary General. I don’t want them coming across my desk at all, I don’t want to know what’s in them, I don’t want anyone to even think I had the opportunity to tweak them, and above all”—his expression turned as hard as his eyes—“I don’t want Two Thousand mul Gurthak even finding out they exist until backup copies are safely out of his reach on their way back to the Commandery.”
Toralk looked deep into his eyes, then nodded slowly. If those reports went to the IG and the Commandery, they’d inevitably spark a massive investigation of Harshu’s conduct and the Kerellian violations at which he’d winked. The consequences would be profound, yet he felt gratified—almost but not quite pleased—by the proof Mayrkos Harshu truly did intend to face his responsibility for those violations. It wouldn’t undo a single thing he’d done or allowed someone else to do, but it might go a little way towards restoring the Army’s honor.
But underneath any satisfaction he might feel in that regard there was a cold ripple of fresh concern as he considered Harshu’s final sentence. There was no legitimate reason for Harshu to keep mul Gurthak in the dark. The Mythalan was not simply his direct military superior but the designated governor in whose area of responsibility the conflict with Sharona had begun. Legally, Harshu was required to report something as serious as a mutiny to the local military and political authorities. That meant mul Gurthak, and as Klayrman Toralk thought about the carefully worded directives Nith mul Gurthak had sent forward after the offensive he’d ordered
had kicked off, he found himself wondering just how thin the ice under the Expeditionary Force’s feet truly was.
* * *
“You’re sure about this, Lisaro?” Commander of Five Hundred Neshok tried and failed to disguise the intensity of his gaze as he looked at the noncommissioned officer of the other side of his desk.
“No question about it, Sir.” Lisaro Porath shrugged and stroked his thin mustache with an index finger. “I got it from Falmyn.”
Neshok pursed his lips thoughtfully. Shield Tyzar Falmyn was a clerk in Brychar Tamdaran’s cartography section. He stood well over six feet, with a powerful physique, but he was no more than nineteen years old, and while he was obviously devoted to Hundred Tamdaran, he was also a long way from home and more than a little homesick. “Home” in his case was the continent of Shalomar, but his Shalomar lay in New Tukoria, thirteen universes down-chain from Arcana. That universe had been settled just over a hundred years ago, primarily by colonists from the Hilmaran Kingdom of Tukoria, and his coppery skin and dark eyes reflected those ancestors. That heritage might also be one reason he’d become such a close friend of Lisaro Porath, given Porath’s Hilmaran birth back on Arcana itself. Aside from their ancestry, Porath and the youngster actually had very little in common, although Falmyn might be excused for not realizing that. Porath was almost twenty years older than he was, and it had no doubt been flattering—as well as comforting—to be taken under the more senior noncom’s wing, and Porath could be surprisingly charming when he put his mind to it.
Which was exactly what he’d done when Neshok pointed out to him how useful a window into Tamdaran’s shop might prove.
“And Two Thousand Harshu’s orders were definite?” the five hundred pressed.
“He was pretty damned clear, Sir…according to Falmyn, anyway. He wants Ulthar, Sarma, and the others taken alive—especially any Sharonians with them—and he’s sending Thousand Stanohs back to handle it very quietly.”
“I see.”
Neshok nodded slowly, drumming his fingers on his desk while he considered the news. His sources had reported Hadrign Thalmayr’s arrival almost before the dragon landed, and he’d had a quiet word with Senior Sword Kalcyr that same afternoon. Kalcyr had worked well with Neshok in the advance from Hell’s Gate, but he’d been less forthcoming than Neshok had anticipated. It had taken the five hundred the better part of an hour to worm the story out of him, because Thalmayr had ordered him to keep his mouth shut. And now Harshu was sending out his own troops to look for the mutineers under remarkably constraining orders.
And he’s not telling mul Gurthak about it. Neshok’s fingers drummed harder. That’s not a frigging oversight on his part, either. It’s deliberate. And if he wants those Sharonian bastards back alive, it’s not for any reason the Two Thousand’s going to like.
He caught his lower lip between his incisors as he tried to evaluate how this latest disaster was likely to affect his own precarious position. It was obvious there was no love lost between mul Gurthak and Harshu, and Neshok had quite a lot riding on the relationship between the pair of two thousands. There were times when he wished he’d gotten mul Gurthak’s instructions in writing before he’d been transferred to Harshu’s command, especially now that he found himself drifting in an ambiguous no man’s land between the Mythalan and his field commander.
The one thing I can be damned sure of is that someone’s going to be scapegoated now that the Sharonians have stopped that arrogant smartass Harshu in his tracks. I wonder…I know the bastard’s getting ready to dump everything on me if the IG starts nosing around about the Kerellian Accords, but did he realize from the beginning that the Two Thousand assigned me to him specifically to keep an eye on him? Did he plan to drop me to the dragons all along, no matter what happened, just to get rid of me?
The thought made a certain disturbing sense, but if that was what had happened, what did he do about it? It was possible, given the obviously…cool relationship between Harshu and Thousand Carthos that he might find an ally there, but how useful could Carthos be? He was too junior to be used as an active weapon against Harshu, and Neshok’s contacts reported that Carthos had operated far from gently against the Sharonians during his advance up the Kelsayr Chain. Unless the five hundred missed his guess, that meant Tayrgal Carthos was in very much the same fix as he was. So would any…arrangement with Carthos be a case of two men guarding one another’s backs, or would it be a case of two men fighting over the same life preserver?
No. Unless he discovered some presently unknown factor that changed things, he was on his own, and it would be wiser for him to make his plans on the assumption that he’d stay that way. But that, unfortunately, left the question of what sort of plans a man in his position could make. He’d kept his records, written his reports, done everything he could internally to protect himself, yet there was no point pretending. Without a patron of his own—a patron like Nith mul Gurthak—he was dragon-bait whenever Harshu decided to toss him into the feeding pit. And without something to make him valuable to mul Gurthak, there was no guarantee the two thousand would remember his promises. In fact, without something to make him valuable, it would probably suit mul Gurthak’s purposes far better to quietly forget about those promises and hang Neshok around Harshu’s neck like another anchor.
But there’s valuable, and then there’s…valuable, isn’t there?
He thought about it a moment longer, recognizing the risk, yet the water was neck deep and showed every sign of rising higher. Perhaps it was time to take what an arrogant bastard like Harshu was fond of calling a “calculated risk.”
“All right, Lisaro,” he said. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I don’t want you squeezing Falmyn too hard, but if he drops any more tidbits on you, I want to hear about them. Clear?”
“Clear, Sir.”
Porath nodded, saluted, and disappeared, and Neshok leaned back in his chair, toying with his PC while he considered how best to play what could only be described as a risky card. He was pretty sure no one on Harshu’s staff had tumbled to his discreet, private communications channel to mul Gurthak, just as he was pretty sure mul Gurthak didn’t realize just how much his good friend Alivar Neshok had recorded during his private briefings and instructions. He might not have gotten mul Gurthak’s orders in writing, but he’d managed to record enough of his conversations with the two thousand to make very interesting hearing for any representative of the Inspector General or Judiciary General. Clearly it was time to make Two Thousand mul Gurthak aware of the situation in Thermyn which Two Thousand Harshu was deliberately concealing from him. And when he did, perhaps he should use the same opportunity to make mul Gurthak aware—discreetly, of course—of the…potentially awkward information in his possession.
The trick, of course, was how to phrase his message most felicitously.
Chapter Thirty-One
January 31
“Come on, chan Resnair! It’s a frigging gangplank, not the grand staircase at Hawkwing Palace, for gods’ sake!”
Arlos chan Geraith smiled as the leather-lunged chief-armsman remonstrated gently with the petty-armsman staggering down the gangplank to the Shosara docks under his heavy pack and shoulder-slung rifle. The unfortunate chan Resnair didn’t look as if he felt particularly well, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The North Vandor in winter could be as unpleasant as any body of water in the world, and the division-captain didn’t doubt two thirds of his men had found themselves wondering whether or not seasickness was fatal.
From chan Resnair’s looks, the petty-armsman might well be among the sizable minority who’d wished it had been.
“At least none of the ships actually sank, Sir,” Regiment-Captain chan Kymo observed dryly, as if he’d read chan Geraith’s mind. “A time or two, there, I was pretty sure one of them was going to,” 3rd Dragoon Division’s quartermaster added.
“Nonsense. Nonsense!” Chan Geraith slapped the taller and much younger chan Kymo on the shoul
der. “Why, I never doubted the splendid seaworthiness of those transports for a moment! After all, the sea runs in Ternathians’ blood!”
“But not even Ternathians can breathe it, Sir,” Regiment-Captain chan Isail pointed out.
“A mere bagatelle which shouldn’t have occupied your minds for a single instant,” chan Geraith said sternly.
“I’ll try to bear that in mind next time I’m aboard a transport that seems intent on standing on its head, Sir,” chan Isail assured him, and chan Geraith chuckled. Not that chan Kymo and the chief of staff didn’t have a point.
“The important thing,” he said rather more seriously, “is that we’ve got everybody across now except for the Ninth and the Thirty-First. And we’ve got enough shipping to bring both of them over in a single lift. That means we can have them here and ready to move out in less than three weeks.”
Chan Isail nodded. They hadn’t managed the movement in as orderly a fashion as they’d hoped, which shouldn’t have surprised anyone, given the speed with which the entire operation had been thrown together. Brigade-Captain chan Khartan was still in place at Salbyton and wouldn’t be able to pull his remaining regiment—the 9th Dragoons—out of the defenses there until the first brigade of Division-Captain chan Jassian’s 21st Infantry Division arrived to replace him. Brigade-Captain chan Ursan’s lead regiments should reach Salbyton within the next three days, however. At that point, chan Quay would entrain back to Renaiyrton, link up with Brigade-Captain chan Jesyl’s 31st Dragoons—the last unit of Brigade-Captain chan Sharys’ 3rd Brigade, which was currently still en route from Jyrsalm, where it had been awaiting additional Bisons and Steel Mules—and follow the rest of the 3rd Dragoon Division to Renaiyrton and across the ocean as soon as the TTE transports could return from Shosara. The rest of 5th Corps’s infantry and supports would be arriving in Traisum over the next couple of months, aside from Brigade-Captain Desval chan Bykahlar’s 3rd Brigade of the 21st Infantry, which would be following chan Geraith’s division down the Kelsayr Chain.