When the last man had gone, Khorea sat on the edge of Ingild’s couch. Ingild fought back an angry scream. Instead he smiled at Khorea and gave him a fatherly pat on his arm.
‘At last, my general,’ he said, ‘you have returned to me. I have prayed for your safety.’
Khorea made an impatient motion. ‘Listen very carefully. I have had an address prepared. It minimizes the damage to the Citadel.
‘Basically it says we fought back a cowardly surprise attack. We drove the enemy away and killed many of them.’
‘But,’ Ingild protested, ‘your report—’
‘Forget my report,’ Khorea snapped. ‘That was for my officers.’ Then, almost as an afterthought: ‘And for you.’
Ingild swallowed his indignation.
‘You will emphasize the casualties to the cadets. They were mere children, after all.’
Ingild looked at him in surprise. ‘But there were few cadet casualties.’
Khorea gave him a withering look, and Ingild bit back any other protest.
‘Everything is ready for your system-wide address,’ Khorea continued. A small pause for effect. ‘My speechwriters have appended an appropriate prayer.’
‘What do we do next?’ Ingild blurted, hating himself for it.
Khorea smiled.
‘We fight,’ he said. ‘Total war. These are only mercenaries, after all. They will collapse after a few engagements.
‘Especially when this amateur Sten, who leads them, is proven only to be lucky and not in fact a qualified leader at all.’
‘Who is he?’
Khorea grimaced. ‘Ex-Imperial Guards. Court-martialed and thrown out. Hardly a worthy opponent.’
Khorea stood up. ‘But Sten and the mercenaries are the worry of the Jann. You must see that the faith of our people is behind us.
‘I wouldn’t advise any more stimulants before your address,’ he warned.
Ingild shivered, but involuntarily nodded obedience.
Khorea smiled his cold smile again, drew himself up, and delivered a perfect salute. Followed by a low, mocking bow. ‘The Jann will await your further orders, O Keeper of the Flame.’
He wheeled and marched out. Ingild looked after him, hating the clicking heels and the ramrod back.
A moment later, his guards drifted back in.
Chapter Twenty
Even pioneer clusters, settled by dissidents, fanatics, and malcontents, and crippled by two warring religions, can have a minor Eden.
Such was Nebta, the temporal version of Sanctus. Parral’s power base.
The Nebtans controlled mainstream trade, which meant whatever merchanting the Bhor weren’t able to wangle, connive, blackmail, or smuggle.
Nebta was a very rich and very beautiful world, a world where even the poor were rich – at least compared to the other habitable Lupus Cluster planets.
Nebta’s oceans were slightly salty and its minor moon provided gentle tides. It swam in a perpetually mild climate, and most of its small continents were located inside the planet’s temperate region.
The ugly necessaries of warehouses, landing fields, and brokerage houses had been sensibly located on the large, equatorial, desertlike main continent.
Nebta’s merchant princes preferred their mansions, luxury, and indolence to the realities of trade. Sten had wondered how long it would take Ida to own the entire planet if she were there.
The government of Nebta was based on strength. Each of the merchant princes had his private army and generally confined himself to his own fortified city and fortress mansion.
Nebta was ‘ruled’ by a council of these merchant princes, a council that had been suborned, subverted, and threatened into acquiescence by Parral many years before.
Inside the fortified cities lived the clerks, shipping specialists, bankers, and such. The farmers lived outside the cities and were, by mutual agreement, kept out of the constant political connivings of the merchants.
Parral’s own fortress-estate was actually a series of mansions, covering more than 150 square miles of hand-manicured parkland. Grudgingly Parral had housed Sten and his mercenaries in one of those mansions, a sprawling marble monstrosity the mercs were happily turning into a cross between a barracks and a bordello.
After the astonishing rapier stroke against the Jann Citadel that had opened the war, Parral had decided a masque was in order.
According to Parral’s social secretary, those invited were the best, the most beautiful, and the brightest men and women from Nebtan high society.
Plus, slightly reluctantly, the guests of honor. This did not mean all 201 mercenaries: this portion of the guest list was restricted to Colonel Sten, his executives Ffillips and Vosberh, and, at Sten’s insistence, Alex. And at Kurshayne’s insistence, Kurshayne.
Sten and Alex had decided the monster’s protectiveness was going too far. They didn’t know if telling Kurshayne no party would produce tears or a battle royal. Besides, it was just a party.
But, Sten admitted as the five soldiers walked up the sweeping steps to Parral’s main mansion, past too many rigid guards, it might be quite a party.
The invitation had specified uniform, so Sten had tucked himself into the Third Guards’ blue full-dress and shako that his cover identity required. Ffillips was also in Guards uniform, wearing medals that Sten knew damned well she wasn’t entitled to.
Vosberh moved behind them, wearing a neat, undecorated brown uniform that Sten theorized was of his own design.
Kurshayne’s uniform, on the other hand, was his Guards parade uniform. The sleeves still had the thread-patterns where rankstripes had been laboriously sewn on and then ripped off a dozen times. He wore none of his campaign ribbons, having explained, worriedly, that he’d hocked them all for quill and was that a problem?
Sergeant Alex Kilgour was the glamour, though.
Somewhere – Sten didn’t think it’d been in his kit, although he never knew exactly what Alex chose to lug around in that elderly, battered leather trunk – Alex had put together the following: flat, low-heeled, very shiny black shoes; knee-high, turned-down stockings of a horrible, clashing-colored pattern of squares; a black, silver-mounted, jeweled dagger tucked in the right silk-flashed stocking. Above that Alex wore a hairy skirt in the same pattern as the stockings. In front of his groin a pouch made from the face of an unknown animal hung from silver chains. The chains were attached to a broad, silver-buckled leather belt, with a diagonal support strap running over one shoulder.
Suspended from the belt was not only the pouch, but a half-meter-long, single-edged, hiltless dagger on the right as well as a long, basket-hilted broadsword.
Sten didn’t know if Alex thought he was going to a party or an invitational massacre.
To continue: under the belt was a black doublet and vest, both with silver buttons. At Alex’s throat was a ruffled silk jabot and, at his wrists, more lace.
Over that was another couple of meters of the hairy, colored cloth, belted to Alex’s belt in the rear and then attached to his left shoulder with a silver brooch.
Finishing off the outfit was what Alex called his bonnet – looking a bit like an issue garrison cap, but with more silver and some kind of bird-feather pluming rising from it.
Also, Sten knew, tucked out of sight in that pouch was a nasty little projectile pistol.
Sten couldn’t decide exactly what was going on and wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.
Naturally, all of the sentries outside the mansion saluted Alex and ignored the others. Only Ffillips seemed upset by the error. They went into the hall.
Just inside the door Sten gratefully parked the shako and walked into the central ballroom.
The first thing he saw was a woman wearing nothing else but a quiver of arrows with a bow tucked beside it taking three glasses of some beverage from a servibot.
Startled, he looked around the ballroom. From the nude Amazon on, his impressions became a little chaotic.
The princes of Nebta seemed
to have a vague idea about uniforms but a very definite idea about making these uniforms unique.
Sten saw a pastiche of every army that had ever fought in the thousand years of the Empire and the prehistory before it.
Sten thought he recognized about one tenth of the uniforms. But just barely. There was, for instance, a podgy, red-faced man wearing the fighting cloak of the Thanh, but under it was an aiguelette-crowded purple tunic. There was someone wearing a skirt like Alex’s, but of common cloth, with a broad, short-bladed sword, hammered metal helmet, greaves, and shoulder-plate, and even somebody wearing a full metal suit.
He turned to Ffillips in puzzlement.
‘That’s called armor, Colonel,’ Ffillips said as she passed Sten a glass.
‘But … those holes in the facemask? Wouldn’t it leak in space?’ Ffillips laughed for some reason and Sten decided to quit showing his ignorance.
Then Parral was standing in front of him, in a costume as fantastic as any of his guests: a long, embroidered robe, a square hat, a huge sword – swords were evidently very popular – and slippers.
‘Welcome, gentlemen,’ Parral silked. ‘Since this fete is in your honor, we are delighted.’
‘The pleasure is ours,’ Ffillips replied smoothly. ‘We can only hope that our campaign is successful enough to provide many other occasions as wonderful.’
Parral looked at Ffillips, then ostentatiously turned his attention to Sten.
‘Colonel, there are a few minutes before the meal. Perhaps you and your … underlings would care to circulate?’
Sten nodded stiffly.
Sten’s ideal party was a certain amount of quill, beer, four or five congenial companions, and a bright woman he hadn’t bedded yet. Certainly not this kind of panoply – there must’ve been a thousand people milling around the ballroom.
But Sten smiled his thanks to Parral and then moved slowly off through the crowd, flanked by Alex and the silent, non-drinking Kurshayne.
‘It ain’t the heavy haulin’ that ’urts the ’orses ’ooves,’ Alex murmured, ‘hit’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer on the ’ard ’ighway.’
‘What are we doing here?’
‘Bein’ heroes,’ Alex said. ‘An’ gie’in these wee parasites a chance to dress up.’
‘Oh,’ Sten said, and set his untouched glass back on a passing tray.
‘W’ll lurkit around here until they feed us, makit our ’pologies, an’ gie back to our wee homes an’ gie drunk like civilized sol’yers,’ Alex said. ‘Dinnae tha’ be a plan?’
Sten agreed and started looking at his watch.
The merchant princes of Nebta religiously held to a pattern for the banquet. Dinners were multicourse – a twenty-course meal was regarded as vaguely bourgeois. Each course consisted of a main dish, the cooked barley that had originally sustained the first settlers on Nebta, coupled with a highly exotic side dish.
Of course the princes ignored the barley side dishes and concentrated on the goodies.
Sten had decided the only way to survive terminal obesity was to nibble a lot. He sampled something strange from a dish, then nodded to his waiter, who promptly removed the dish.
He wasn’t much impressed by the supposedly exotic dishes. In Mantis he’d relentlessly eaten anything that didn’t (a) poison his skin when rubbed on it; (b) move too much; or (c) try to eat him.
The waiter bowed up with the next sample, and Sten tried to behave the way he thought an experienced ex-Guard officer, experienced in affairs of state and the gut, would behave.
Kurshayne hulked behind him. He’d not only refused drink but food as well. Sten thought he was taking this bodyguard thing entirely too seriously.
Alex, on the other hand, was enjoying himself. And eating most of everything in sight. His table area looked a little like ground zero on a very sloppy nuclear test. Sten could not understand where the man was putting all the food – perhaps in that pouch.
The waiter removed the dish. Sten waited. And then heaved a sigh of relief, when he saw other servitors removing the plates. At last it was over.
A few more minutes, listen to some speeches, and then Sten would head for the mercenaries’ mansion and bed. He did, after all, have an appointment to keep a few hours before dawn …
Parral hissed politely for silence, and the conversational hum in the room died away. Parral stood and lifted his glass.
‘I thank you, honored guests, for joining me as we, the defenders and supporters of the True Faith of Talamein, celebrate the victors of the battle of …’
And Sten shut his ears off. He was sure this speech would not tell him anything he already didn’t want to know.
And the speeches went on, and the toasts went on. Sten barely touched his glass to his lips at each toast.
And then, mercifully, Parral finished, there was applause, and, from some unseen niche, music began.
‘Colonel Sten,’ Parral said. The man had an odd ability to materialize unseen. Not that Sten noticed, because beside the prince stood a young woman. About Sten’s own height; close-cropped dark hair that Sten could already feel on a pillow beside him. She would have been nineteen, perhaps twenty years old.
Her costume was not a uniform; instead it was a high-necked, dark-colored tunic skirt, very conservative until you noticed the hip-high slit up one side of the skirt and until the lights caught the dress.
It turned translucent under certain lighting and at certain angles, suddenly promising flashes of the tanned, smooth skin underneath.
Sten would have thought that his suit radio was suddenly malfunctioning with a static-rush – but he was not wearing a suit.
Dimly he heard Parral: ‘This is my youngest sister, Sofia. She expressly wanted to meet and congratulate you.’
Sofia extended a soft hand. ‘I am honored, Colonel.’ Her voice was low and throaty and full of promises.
Sten stumbled his return greetings, realizing he sounded like an utter clot. He couldn’t help staring at her, and then he realized with a start that she was staring at him too. Sten was sure it wasn’t true, but it seemed as if she was just as taken as—
‘Perhaps,’ Parral broke in, ‘you would do Sofia the honor of dancing with her.’
Sofia blushed.
‘I’ve never – I don’t—’ and Sten shut up, because he suddenly knew he was going to learn how to dance in record time.
He took Sofia by the hand and led her around the table.
Trying not to look at her, trying to eye the moving feet of the dancers already on the floor. Hell, it can’t be that hard, he reasoned/ rationalized. First they move a foot to the side, then the other comes up beside it and – what was the Bhor prayer? … By the beard of my mother, don’t let me blow it.
Then, somehow, it was all natural as Sofia was all softness melting into his arms. He could smell the perfume in her hair, and Sten, who had never cared much about music, felt something in the dance and was floating across the floor with her. He felt a building tightness in his throat as he found himself drowning in intense deer-eyes staring solemnly up at him.
‘Are you enjoying the party?’ she whispered to him.
‘Not until now,’ he said. It was a statement, not a flirt.
‘Oh,’ she said, blushing again.
Then, if it was possible, she was snuggling closer in his arms. Sten thought he had died and gone to whatever heaven was sanctioned in this part of the Empire.
Suddenly, nearby, he heard a table crash over. Sten spun, Sofia forgotten, his right hand started to curl to bring the knife out.
The center table was overturned and, standing in the rubble was Alex and a young, heavily muscled man that Sten vaguely remembered as being Seigneur Froelich.
‘I do not challenge underlings,’ Froelich was saying. ‘I merely wished to convey my compliments to your superior, express my admiration for his abilities, and then to allow my considerable dismay that he had decided to company the lady Sofia.’
Sten was across the dance flo
or, costumed Nebtans scattering before him.
‘Sergeant!’
‘Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel.’ Alex’s voice was down into that deep brogue and almost whisper. ‘Ah hae a wee bit a business ae th’ moment.’
Sten, properly, shut up. And then there was a tap at his shoulder. He turned, and fingers flicked across his face.
Momentarily blinded, Sten dropped into attack stance, clawhand coming out to block-feint … and then he caught himself.
Another man was there, someone who looked enough like Froelich to be his twin. It was Seigneur Trumbo.
‘As Seigneur Froelich’s cousin, I must also confess to being offended. I also wish to extend my compliments.’
Sten caught a glance of Sofia as the crowd gathered around. Very interesting, he flashed. In a dueling society like Nebta, she doesn’t seem delighted. She looks scared. For me? Come on, Sten, he reprimanded himself. Shut your clottin’ glands off.
And now Parral. ‘This is bccoming an interesting evening,’ he said. ‘Colonel, perhaps I should explain some of our customs.’
Sten shook his head. ‘Don’t bother. These two bravos want to fight. S’be’t,’ Sten mocked.
‘Then, tomorrow,’ Froelich’s cousin began …
‘Tomorrow I am very busy,’ Sten said flatly. ‘We fight now. Here.’
A murmur floated through the crowd, and then eyes brightened. This would indeed be a fete worth talking about.
‘As first challenger, then,’ Froelich said, ‘I believe I have precedence, if you’ll excuse me, Seigneur Trumbo?’ He bowed to his cousin.
‘Ye hae a problem, lad,’ Alex said. ‘Ye’ll nae b’fightin’ m’colonel. It’s be me.’
‘I have already told you that—’
And the great sword hung in Alex’s hand and then crashed down, splitting the thick overturned table down the middle.
‘Ah said ye’ll be fightin’ me. Ah challenge you, as Laird Kilgour ae Kilgour, frae ae race thae was noble when your tribe was pullin’ p’raties in ae wasteland. Now ye’ll fight me or ye’ll die here ae y’stand.’
Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) Page 36