Storm rising

by Mercedes Lackey

  Tremane was very glad that he was sitting down; agents were not normally that blunt and open. Not normally? This is unprecedented! A mass defection to my side? I don't think that's ever happened in the history of the Empire! "I—ah—take it you all knew each other?" he said, hoping he did not sound as dazed as he felt.

  "Of course," said the mage—a minor fellow, Tremane didn't even remember his name, but he had just recently been graduated from Apprentice. "Just as you knew who we were." He shrugged. "That's the whole game-within-the-game, now, isn't it? We all knew each other, though until we all got together this afternoon, none of us knew who the masters of the other fellows were."

  "Were," Tremane repeated carefully. "Not 'are'."

  "Were," General Bram said firmly. "What's the point in beating around the bush, hoping to flush a bird that scuttled away hours ago? We haven't had any more contact than you have, and what's the point of serving a man you haven't heard from since the beginning of a crisis? About half the lot that stayed on the other side when you organized that raid on the storehouse were agents, too, and if our masters were ever going to contact us again, it would have been a week or so after the raid." He shrugged. "There's no point in pretending otherwise; we've been abandoned out here, and we all know it."

  "Bram called us all together to talk it over, but we'd all been thinking the same thing," the mage said, scratching his unruly hair. "They're there, and you're here; you could have had the Portal opened just for you and an escort big enough to get you to your estate. You stuck with us. By our way of thinking, that makes you a better master than the ones back home."

  "The gods know you're more dependable," said one of the scouts in a disgusted voice. "Anyway, we came to show you who all the agents in your ranks were just in case you'd missed any of us, and let you know we're coming over to you so you can stop worrying about sabotage from inside. That'd be like poking a hole in the bottom of the boat you're riding in anyway."

  "I see." He took a moment to settle himself, for of all the unlikely events he'd endured in the last several months. this was the least likely of all. It was utterly unprecedented; agents simply did not go over to the man they were sent to spy on, much less come over en masse!

  "Fact is, Tremane, you're the most popular commander I've ever seen," Bram said, with wonder and a tinge of envy. "There isn't a man out there, for all the complaints, who doesn't know you could have left us high and dry, doesn't know everything you've done since we bivouacked here has been aimed at keeping 'em all alive and healthy. It wasn't just the way you kept up their pay; after the way you went around digging the men out of collapsed tents and making sure none of 'em was hurt or frostbit, there isn't one of 'em that wouldn't serve you for nothing. I'll stake my reputation on that."

  I'm a popular commander? he thought, with another twinge of bemusement. Again, it was nothing he had expected, although it was something he had hoped would happen. He hadn't a clue what made a "popular" commander, and he wasn't certain anyone did. Commanders who had not only kept up pay, but paid bonuses, had not been popular; successful commanders had not been popular. Even commanders who had made attempts to curry favor with the troops had not been popular. I'm working them hard and I intend to go on doing so to keep them busy. I've asked them to perform tasks wildly outside their duty. I might have been keeping up with their pay, but it's no secret that the pay chests are going to run dry some time in late spring or early summer. I try to be fair and impartial when I'm administering justice, but there is no guarantee that I will always be right. I simply haven't done a thing that should make me so overwhelmingly popular that even Bram should notice.

  But if Bram and the other agents had made note of the fact, that he was "popular," there was no doubt it must be true, and he was not about to inquire too closely into the lineage, of this particular gift horse.

  I can only hope that I continue to enjoy that popularity. The winter is young. And it's going to be the hardest winter, these men have ever seen.

  "Gentlemen," he said finally. "I accept both your allegiance and your request to remain in your current positions. I only ask that you in your turn continue gathering intelligence—or rather, let us call it, simple information—and report back to me directly." He fixed Bram with a stern gaze, picking the General as the ringleader of the group. "I don't want to hear about the men's private lives. I don't want to hear about simple grumblings. You are all experienced enough to know when the men are just venting frustration. I want to know about real difficulties, complaints that need attention, things I can do something about. Or serious situations I might not be able to do anything about directly, but which I must be aware of."

  With thought, or even direct appeal to the men, I might even be able to cope with those. The Hundred Little Gods know that no one in the Imperial Army has tried direct appeal to the men in generations.

  "Oh?" Bram replied, putting a volume of meaning into the single word.

  "I have no choice," he said heavily. "I am being frank with you all, because you are all intelligent men. We have no choice. I believe I am the only man in this benighted place with the experience, with the fitness to lead here. You must think the same, or you would not be here. If I am to be the leader I must have all the information I can get, and I must not ignore unpleasant information because I don't like it. I rely on you to bring me that unpleasant information because I am not sure my own people will, every time."

  That was a bit of a lie, but a tiny lie of that nature might well cement them further to his cause. And the truth was, these men who had been used to looking for weaknesses in his leadership on behalf of another master were more likely to see such weaknesses than his own agents. They'd have had practice, after all.

  General Bram nodded, very solemnly. "We can do that. Are you at all interested in any of us taking a more active role, if we see something a word or two can set right?" He smiled rather grimly. "The Hundred Little Gods themselves know we are used to looking for situations where a word or two can set them wrong."

  "Yes," he replied decisively. "You aren't stupid; you know not to expose yourselves. I'll make this bargain of trust with you. You can trust me to do the best I can for every man in our forces; I will trust you to do the best you can to keep me in power." Again, he fixed Bram with that gimlet stare. "This is not a situation where the men can be permitted to rule by popular vote, for there will be things I must do that will not be popular. My hand must remain on the reins, mine and no other, or there will be disaster." He smiled slightly. "There is a saying that it is not wise to change drivers in the middle of a charge. I am the driver of the war chariot in this charge, and you had all better stick with me or be thrown beneath the wheels while you're grabbing at the reins."

  Bram, who had led no few charges in his time, nodded. "I can agree with all of that—and I believe that I can speak for all of us in agreeing with your conditions." He looked down at his feet for a moment, then looked up again, with a peculiar expression on his face. "You are the best leader we could hope for in this situation, Tremane. You've got civilian experience we old war dogs lack; and where you get your foresight, I'll be damned if I know. And you've got two other things that can't be calculated; you've got luck, and you've got heart. We won't be rid of a leader with that combination."

  Tremane closed his eyes for a moment. Of all the many things that had happened here, this was of a piece with the rest. Luck, was it? Well, he was not about to spit on luck and he would capitalize on every piece of luck he got, but he was not going to count on it either. Perhaps that was the essence of luck.

  He opened his eyes. "Gentlemen, thank you. Never forget that we must all work together to save our people here. Remember that our people now include these Hardornens of Shonar, although they may not yet realize that fact—and never forget that in the future to continue to preserve all our lives, we may have to look for friends in strange places."

  The General saluted slowly in answer to this, and without another word, led the delegat
ion of former spies out and back to their posts.

  After the snow cleared off, they had steady cold but sparkling and beautiful weather for two days. The weather was so cloudless that Tremane began to wonder if the Hardornen weather-wizard was losing his talent at weather prediction to the mage-storms. The old man kept insisting that there was more bad snow on the way, and a great deal of it, but where was it?

  If they couldn't rely on the weather-wizard for predictions, it would make preparations a great deal more difficult.

  The third day dawned just as clear and beautiful as the first two, and Tremane was just about resigned to the fact that the old man was slipping. Restlessness made him eager to stretch his legs in the afternoon, after a long day of dealing with the paperwork needed to keep up with the state of the supplies in the warehouses, and he decided to go in an unusual direction. Rather than taking his walk down, to make another informal inspection, he would go up, to the walkway at the top of his tower. The weather was good, the air still, the sun bright enough that even up there, exposed, he shouldn't get too chilled until he'd walked out his restlessness. The tower was the highest spot in all of Shonar; he should get a good view of the surrounding countryside outside the walls from there. He might even spot one of the furtively lurking monsters.

  It was a long walk, but worth it; he left his escort at the foot of the last stair, for he intended to savor the rare experience of being outdoors and yet completely alone.

  I have not been alone except in my own rooms since I accepted this post. I have not stood alone beneath an open sky since my last hunt on my own land.

  The stairs came right up onto the roof; there was a small slant-roofed affair covering the last few of them, rather than a trapdoor one had to push open. He approved of the arrangement; if there'd been enough heavy snow, he wouldn't have been able to budge a trap door.

  He opened the door at the top to emerge into brilliant sunlight that made his eyes water even as it lifted his heart. What was it about sunlight that made a man feel so much better? He was glad now that he'd ordered a general standing-down for all the men during the past two days; he'd heard they were doing absurd, lighthearted things, acting like schoolboys, making snow forts and having snow fights—creating snow sculptures. I wonder if I ought to give out prizes for the best snow sculpture? Should I order a winter festival? That wouldn't be a bad notion! It would give the men something to occupy them that had nothing to do with duty! He resolved to find out what sort of festival these people celebrated; he could make it a joint effort of garrison and town, foster some friendly competitions between the two.

  Skating races, sled races—an archery contest—could we somehow adapt stickball to snow or ice?

  Someone had been up here already, clearing away the snow. The brilliant sun had evaporated what had been left behind, leaving bare stone beneath his sheepskin boots. He moved forward to the edge of the parapet and looked down.

  Below him were part of the manor, a few of the barracks, and beyond them, the walls. His men stood at their regulation intervals along it; not at all like statues, for he had made sure his orders included that they move about to keep themselves warm, and that each man be permitted to chat with the ones next to him provided they kept their regulation distance and didn't bunch up. Some of them were stamping their feet to warm them, others leaned on the edge of the wall, talking, and one was even making snowballs and lobbing them off into the distance, while the ones stationed at either side of him watched. They were probably wagering on how far he was throwing them. There was no sign at all from here of the night-monsters, although prints had been reported in the snow and the mages were trying to work out what kind of creature could make such prints. Tremane wished them luck; judging by the spider-creature, there was no telling what odd beasts might suffer changes into something unrecognizable.

  I would rather not imagine a vole, which must eat its own weight in prey three times a day, transmuted to something the size of a cart horse.

  He made a quarter-turn, and now looked out at Shonar, all of which lay beneath the level of this tower. It was not a big town by the standards of the Empire, and from here it was easy to see the signs of decline; abandoned houses where the thatch had disappeared or rotted, warehouses and workshops where walls had fallen in or been broken down. There were a lot of them; more than he had guessed, and certainly more than the Town Council would want to admit. If Ancar had not been killed, he would have driven his land into oblivion in a few more years, by taking the able-bodied and leaving behind those unable to keep towns, farms, and businesses going.

  He was mad. There is no doubt of it. Irrational anger stirred briefly in Tremane's heart, but it faded quickly, for what, after all, was the point? Ancar was dead, dead as last year's grass. What was important was this; there were empty and abandoned structures in the town that could be taken over and put to good use. That was what he would do when the men were finished with their barracks; he'd send them into town and begin repairing and refurbishing the houses, warehouses, and workshops. Those would become Imperial property—and he would have his quarters for married couples, his workshops for men wanting to retire into a profession.

  Satisfied with that idea, he made another quarter-turn to look out over more of his barracks and empty land beyond the walls.

  The men down below him were drilling in an area cleared of snow; the ones on the walls doing much the same things as the men on the other side. The one difference was that two of them were having a snowball-hurling contest with improvised slings. Now there's an idea for a festival competition Target-throwing snowballs with bare hands and with slings. There certainly won't be any dispute about where they hit!

  But as he raised his eyes past the level of the walls and out over the landscape beyond, he was puzzled, sorely puzzled. There were no mountains in that direction, so what was that long, dark line on the horizon? A forest of exceptionally tall trees? But it was so far away!

  A moment later, a wind sprang up out of nowhere, and the long, dark line moved nearer—and he knew what it was.

  Huge clouds, black and heavy with snow, were hurtling toward him on the wind that blew into his face. The old weather-wizard had been right!

  Before he could call out anything to the sentries on that side, they had already reacted to the rising wind by leaving off their games and conversations and peering toward the horizon. It took them longer to see what he had because of his higher vantage, but as the clouds raced into their field of vision, they reacted.

  "Is that a storm?"

  "Looks like one to me!"

  Shouts up and down the line quickly confirmed what Tremane knew, and one of the men with an alarm-horn at his belt lifted it to his lips and began to blow.

  Three long, steady tones and a pause, repeated for as long as the man had breath, that was the agreed-upon signal for a heavy storm approaching. It might seem alarmist to signal the approach of a storm, but Tremane was taking no chances. He'd heard of dreadful snowstorms in the far north where men could get lost and freeze to death not a dozen ells from their own doorstep. if there were men outside the walls, hunting or gathering wood, he wanted them alerted and homeward bound before a storm hit.

  Other men with alarm-horns all across the walls took up the call, amplifying it and sending it out over the snowcovered fields and into the woods.

  The men drilling stopped what they were doing at a barked order; a moment later, the officer in charge divided them into one group for each barracks, and marched them off to the piles of dung bricks, peat bricks, and wood to stockpile fuel beside each barracks furnace. Below him, Tremane saw men going off purposefully in small groups, presumably sent on other errands by their officers. He didn't even have to send men into town to fetch back the ones on leave of absence—they were coming in through the gates by threes and fours, secure that although their excursions had been cut short the time would be made up later.

  It was all running like a smoothly-oiled clockwork, and he marveled at it
. It wasn't just my foresight; they understand why the orders are there, and they're cooperating. If a bad storm is on the way, I want our men here so that their officers can account for all of them and we can send out search parties for the missing.

  Well, he had better get back to his desk so his officers knew where he was! The clouds had already filled up half the sky to the north, and now even the men below the walls could see them. They weren't getting any lighter the nearer they got, either, and the wind was picking up. There was a damp bite to the wind, something that was almost, though not quite, a scent.

  Was that lightning? He paused for a moment and stared in fascination. It was! It was lightning! He'd heard of lightning in a heavy snowstorm, but this was the first time he'd ever seen it!

  As if to remind him that he was lingering too long, a growl of thunder reached his ears.

  He turned and pulled open the door to the roof, hurrying back down to the escort of guards waiting.

  "Bad storm coming," he said to them.

  "We heard the alarm, Commander," the leader told him. "Is there anything you want to assign us to?"

  He thought for a moment. "Just to be on the safe side, once you leave me at my office, go down to the chirurgeons and see what they'd want in the way of a snow-rescue kit and put one together for them. I don't believe there's anyone of ours likely to get caught out there, but you never know, and that's one thing I forgot to look into."

  The leader of his guards saluted, and once the escort left him at the door to his office, they hurried off to follow his orders.

  He walked back to his desk and sat down but restlessness was on him and it was hard to just sit there and wait while the windows darkened and the alarm call rang out, muffled by stone and glass. The one thing he could not do in a case like this, however, was to run off and see what was going on. If there was an emergency, he needed to be where people expected to find him.