He made a point of watching the men work at each section and complimenting the team leaders on their effort. At least the Hardornen rebels were no longer a factor. Where they had gone, Tremane had no firm answer, but he had some guesses and one of them was probably very close to being correct.
The rebels were, in the main, Hardornen farmers; the rest were young hotheads playing at being virtuous heroes. The former had crops to get in, and the latter were not numerous enough to make a head-on attack on a fortified town.
That was his optimistic guess. His pessimistic projection was far different, and he could not even begin to guess how probable it was.
There might be something out there that had eluded his own patrols; something that was concentrating on the Hardornens, who were not as well armed or armored, and not as accustomed to fighting eldritch creatures as the Imperial forces were. The Imperials were ensconced in one place, behind a wall; the Hardornen rebels had been in concealed camps scattered everywhere. It would be much easier for a clever, powerful creature to take men in a series of scattered camps than to pry the Imperials out of their protections.
On one hand, even the pessimistic guess allowed for a certain relief. If mage-warped creatures were out there picking off the Hardornens, then neither the Hardornens nor the monsters were attacking his men. But if that was the case and it was not simply that now that the Imperials were bottled up in one place, soldiering farmers had gone back to their farms, then sooner or later Tremane and his men would have to deal with whatever it was that was giving the natives trouble.
He hoped the reason for their current state of "peace" was just the harvest and the coming winter. He truly did. One thing that his scholars had managed to unearth was a series of chronicles and fragmentary tales from something called the "Mage-Wars." He did not want to have to face some of the creatures described in those faded pages. Even the names were ominous—makaar, cold-drakes, basilisks....
Perhaps some of those stories, which had thoroughly rattled his scholars, had leaked out to the men. That would account for the nervous haste—and yet the careful attention to detail—with which the wall was going up.
Try not to think of it for now. Wait until you have a chance to talk to those scholars. Perhaps there are physical defenses against those creatures suggested in the chronicles.
He only hoped that the defenses did not prove to be chimeras. Any defense that required more magic would be useless.
He completed his inspection and moved on to the troops on active patrol duty. There were always patrols coming in and out through the newly-constructed east gate; in spite of the fact that the walls were not yet up, he wanted them to be in the habit of coming and going by that route.
He was just in time to see one of his speculations made flesh.
Shouting and excited cries at the gate in one of the completed portions of the wall drew everyone's attention. Men ran toward the gates, where the shouting took on a tone of alarm; more men dropped their tools and ran to see what the matter was.
Tremane did not hasten his pace, however. The alarm trumpets had not sounded, so whatever it was that was causing the uproar, it was not an attack, and it would wait until he got there. The Commander did not, must not run, unless there was an attack in progress. No matter how he felt personally, he must maintain the dignity of his position, must show through his calm that he was in command of every situation. Panic, and even the appearance of panic, was contagious.
Now the gate, which had been standing open, darkened with a rush of people, both uniformed Imperial soldiers and civilians. At first, it only appeared that one of his patrols had run into some hostile farmers, but when he arrived at the gate itself, it was just in time to see stretcher bearers carrying away three badly-wounded men, and the too-quiet, covered forms of two dead.
The civilians were not under guard; it appeared that whatever had injured and killed, it had struck his men and the civilians indiscriminately.
Could it be that his worst guess was the correct one?
Heart in mouth, he looked for someone to interrogate, but the leader of the scouts found him first. "Commander, sir!" the man said, appearing right under his nose, snapping to attention and saluting smartly. "Reporting an encounter, sir!"
Tremane returned the salute just as crisply. "Report, scout leader."
By this time a cart drawn by a pair of sweating, nervous ponies had come into the compound through the gate, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered to await it. There was a tarpaulin draped over the back of it, hiding whatever it held. Someone unhitched the ponies and led them away before they bolted, which they threatened to do at any moment. Whatever was under the tarpaulin had them in a state of near-hysteria.
"We were on patrol, just past the ford across Holka Creek, when we heard shouting," the scout leader said. This was not a man Tremane knew personally; he fit the mold of the semi-anonymous Imperial officer candidates, so nondescript that they could all have been brothers of a particularly undistinguished house. Everything about them was average height, weight, appearance. Except, of course, for their intelligence, which was much, much better than average, and their ability to apply what they learned, which was quite exceptional. The young officer continued, his words crisp and precise. "We investigated, and we found six of the locals defending against that—"
"That" was revealed as the men pulled the tarpaulin off the cart, showing that it was filled with a creature so bizarre that he would never have believed a description. In general it was spiderlike; hairy with a round thorax, a rust-brown in color. It had far too many razor-taloned limbs, no discernible head, and a lumpy body which had been liberally feathered with arrows.
"It had already killed two horses and three men; a couple more of ours charged in before I could stop them and were wounded," the scout leader continued. "I ordered a withdrawal into safer range, then we kept hitting it with arrows until it dropped over."
"Good work," Tremane commended absently, unable to take his eyes off the monstrosity in the cart. Had it been a spider? If so, how did it get so large so fast? And if not, what had it been?
"Have any of the locals ever seen anything like this?" he questioned the scout leader, as they circled the cart, examining the dead beast. It stank, smelling vaguely of musk and stale sweat. No wonder the ponies had been afraid of it; the scent alone would have driven them half crazy. The rust brown limbs were also furred, but thinly.
The scout shook his head. "No, Commander, it was as new to them as it was to us. They're very grateful to us, by the way."
So here it is; something deadly the mage-storms conjured up. Exactly what I was afraid of. Are there more of these things? I hope not.
"Take it to the scholars," he ordered. "Perhaps they can make something of it. And send word to the town, as well; there might be a priest or someone else who can identify what it is—or was."
The scout leader saluted and marched off to attend to his orders. Tremane turned away from the bizarre scene and headed for the main camp site. He still had an inspection to complete.
He walked along the rows of tents, surrounded by his guards; the few men in camp left off what they were doing and jumped to their feet, saluting smartly as he came in view. The tents were closer together than was usual in an open camp, arranged in neat rows, with the ground between kept immaculately cleaned. He noted a number of makeshift ways to keep warm already cropping up; straw or hay mattresses under the sleeping rolls, quilts made of two blankets with more hay stuffed in between. Canvas tents were no real protection against the cold; they barely screened against the wind. The more money a man had, the more blankets he'd bought, but that was no kind of solution.
The tents, despite their makeshift contents, were up to an inspection; he nodded his approval to the officer in charge and moved on.
He completed his inspection with the latrines—which had already been replaced with an efficient, if involved, system that sifted and dried the waste and turned it into grain-sized dry gran
ules which were eagerly sought after by the local farmers for fertilizer. He didn't ask how it worked; he had a similar system on his own estate, and he had never wanted to know how it worked, either.
There are some things a man is not meant to know.
At least they wouldn't need to worry about their water supply being contaminated. He did not want to think about a plague of dysentery in the dead of winter. If even half the men survived something of that nature, he'd count himself lucky.
But as he turned his steps toward his headquarters, he found himself thinking about his estate, and his people, and wondering how they were faring. Were things better there than here? Could they be worse?
Absently, he returned the salutes of the men that he passed. He had been trying to keep thoughts of his home out of his mind, but they kept intruding.
At least I have no Duchess to worry about. For once, prudence has paid a dividend in having one less person to fret over.
Marriage had not seemed particularly wise once he became a candidate for the Iron Throne. He had not dared to marry for affection; his wife would have become nothing more than a target, a way to manipulate him, and he would put no woman he cared for through that kind of experience. He would not wed for pure expediency; his wife might well have been set upon him as a spy, or be in and of herself an attempt to manipulate him. He had kept all of his affairs strictly commercial, choosing comely and willing women from those on his estate, and setting them up with the husbands of their choice and a proper dowry after both of them tired of the situation. It satisfied the needs of the body, if not the heart, and he took care that there were no children to complicate the issue.
So although he had great affection for the land and the people of his estate taken as a whole, he had no particular concern for any single person on that estate. He felt warm fondness, in the way that a young man might have fondness for a favorite horse or dog, but nothing more passionate. He had always felt that the love of his heart was somewhere out there, distant, untouched. Gaining emotional attachment for his immediate surroundings... well, he hadn't deemed it to be of strategic advantage in the development of a Grand Duke or a potential Emperor. Prudence dictated that one should never extend himself past his ability to predict outcomes.
It was altogether fortunate, given the effect of these mage-storms, that his family had maintained a tradition of conservatism where the management of the estate was concerned.
People called us old-fashioned and sometimes laughed at us, but we'd never depended on magic to run the estate. Water was pumped by hand or by windmills, water mills ground the grain, transportation was by well-maintained roads, using horses and mules, ridden or driven. So of all of the lands claimed by the Empire, Tremane's duchy was probably one of those that was better off than most at the moment.
As for Kedrick, he's young, but he's sound, or I wouldn't have left him in charge in the first place. His current heir, a young cousin, was as well-schooled in the management of the estate as Tremane could manage before he left. Now he had plenty of incentive to do the job right; if he failed, he'd starve right along with the others.
I did everything I could for them. It will have to be enough. I certainly can't manage anything more at the moment.
Though if he could get back, with the troops, the duchy could certainly support that many more mouths to feed. It would be impossible to pry him out of his little kingdom with his own private army. That might be a thought to tuck away, for later consideration.
And as I recall, there was a scarcity of eligible young men round about there. It wouldn't be a bad thing, to tie the men to me by marriage....
Once back at the manor house, he dismissed four of the men and went on to his rooms with his usual two trailing along behind him. He stopped at the office where his chief aide sat behind a desk laden with lists. Young Cherin looked up at Tremane's footstep; the aide could easily have been the older sibling of the scout leader. Brown hair, brown eyes, sun-browned skin, square and unremarkable face; he was neither ugly nor handsome, but at least Tremane did remember his name, which had not been the case with his last aide. The poor boy had been so self-effacing that Tremane often forgot he was in the same room. He was so good at being inconspicuous that Tremane eventually sent him off to his spymaster for special training.
"Have you any reports for me?" he asked as the young man looked up, then jumped to his feet with a crisp salute.
"No, Commander," was the prompt reply. Tremane sighed; he'd hoped that at least one of his people would have some ideas for meeting the coming winter. But perhaps he was asking too much, too fast.
"Carry on, then," he replied automatically. The youngster saluted again and returned to his work; lacking anything else constructive to do, Tremane went back to his own suite to sit at his desk and leaf through the old reports listlessly.
A word caught his eye; Valdemar. It was nothing much; just a report that the Valdemarans had been working frantically on a way to block out the mage-storms themselves.
He hadn't thought much about the report at the time he'd first read it, but now as he reread it, he began to wonder about some of his earlier assumptions.
I was so certain that they were the source of the storms, he mused, staring at the fire in his small fireplace and listening with half an ear to the sounds of his men drilling in the courtyard below his office window. He found that sound rather comforting in its ordinary familiarity. I was so certain that this was some strange new weapon that Valdemar had unleashed upon us. But according to this, they have been suffering as badly as we have. Their Queen doesn't have the reputation for being ruthless that Charliss has. So would she turn something like this loose on her own people just to eliminate us?
She might, of course. just because Selenay did not have a reputation for being ruthless, it didn't follow that she was not ruthless. She might simply be a very good actress. She could be mad, too; that was hardly a novelty among royalty.
What was more, Valdemar did not depend on magic for anything. It didn't even have magic as Tremane knew the art. So the only hardships that Valdemar was suffering were those caused by the storms interacting with the physical world—
But there, his reasoning broke down, as he thought about the creature his men had brought in. Only? Not a good choice of words. There was nothing "only" about that monster.
And as a counter to the rest of his arguments, there was the entirely random nature of the storms and their effect. Why would anyone who was sane—and he had seen no reason to think that Queen Selenay was insane—unleash something whose effects were so completely unpredictable? If you had a weapon and you knew what it did, of course, you used it. But if you had a weapon and you had no idea what it was going to do—well, there was no sane reason to use it, not when it could harm you as badly as it harmed your enemies.
Now his head hurt, and he rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. He hadn't liked sending that assassin in to destroy the alliance Valdemar was making. Something had told him at the time that he might be making a mistake, but he had persisted in order to make the mage-storms stop.
But they didn't stop, did they? In fact, they got worse.
Could he have made a major error in judgment? Granted, the alliance hadn't been disrupted, but at least one of the more important mages had been eliminated. Since the storms hadn't started until after that Karsite priest had arrived in Valdemar, it made sense that he was one of the prime forces behind the mage-storms, if they were indeed originating from Valdemar. With him gone, they should have stopped.
What if Valdemar was not perpetrator, but fellow victim?
His head hurt worse than before. If he'd had better spies—but he didn't. He'd done his best to break up the alliance with Karse, and it hadn't happened. He'd tried to scatter them, leaving them as disorganized as a covey of quail scattered by a beater. But they weren't disorganized, and his assassin hadn't even made an appreciable difference in their level of efficiency. Furthermore, and this was the important
point, the mage-storms continued, increasing in frequency and in power.
So what if I was wrong?
He brooded on that for a while, feeling sicker and sicker the longer he thought about it. If that was the case, he had ordered the assassinations of people who could have been his allies against the storms.
Nothing like burning your bridges before you reached them.
I haven't heard from the assassin, and that fool of an artist would contact me if he thought he was in the tiniest danger. He shifted his position in the chair as his back began to ache and his legs to twitch restlessly. The fool must have gotten caught, though I can't imagine how. He's probably dead by now. Even the Valdemarans wouldn't keep an assassin alive. They're probably working out ways to pickle his head and send it to High Priest Solaris in Karse.
In fact, given the evidence from Valdemar, the assassin must have been caught before he did any damage. Only that would account for the seamless way in which Selenay and her allies were presenting themselves.
He botched the assassination, then he botched his attempt to escape. That's what I get for relying on operatives someone else puts in place.
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