Guardians of the Flame - Legacy Page 16

  Walter snickered.

  *All humans are too young and stupid.*

  Even Karl? Slovotsky asked.

  *I am prejudiced there.*

  "Ellegon?" Ahira asked. "Can't you just do some sort of spiral search? Try to find Jason."

  *There's no time. Daven needs to be resupplied, desperately.* The dragon flapped his wings and leaped high into the air; his mental voice went distant.

  *Jason, I'm sorry, but I just don't have time.*

  A huge wet drop struck Walter Slovotsky's hand. He looked up at the dark shape vanishing into the clear night sky.

  * * *

  As the dawn barely began to threaten the darkness, Walter Slovotsky, wrapped in his blankets, sitting on a flat stone keeping watch, poked a stick into the ashes of the night's fire, debating whether or not to relight it. He was also debating whether or not to stand up and move around before or after the cold stone froze his ass solid, even through three thicknesses of blanket.

  That's the way it was when you're on watch, he decided. Decisions came in two varieties: the really important ones, where you had no time to think and had to react instantly, and the relatively trivial ones, whose major purpose was to give you something to think about while there was nothing important to do.

  God, I hate being on watch, he thought, then tried to estimate how many times he'd thought that before, until he gave up doing that and tried to estimate how many times he'd tried to estimate . . . and then let the whole silly fancy drop.

  That was the way it was, on watch. Idle thoughts.

  Well . . . there was no particular reason why they shouldn't be where they were, but there was also, as always, an argument against a daytime fire, which would announce their presence for miles.

  As far as standing up went, he'd be miserable whether or not he stood. He huddled deeper in the blankets.

  Around the remains of the fire, all but one of the others slept quietly. Aeia looked very young and very vulnerable. Bren Adahan, lying facedown, huddled deeply in his own blankets, only his sandy hair visible. Ahira snored loudly, while Tennetty was gone. She had set up some sort of hammock high in the trees, adhering to the principle that setting a guard was fine, but having one of the party separate was better.

  Not that that would do much good if they were jumped.

  Walter shrugged, as he closed his eyes and strained his ears for sound. Nothing but the wind through the trees, a distant, mocking call of a crow, and the dwarf's damn snoring.

  He thought about waking Ahira for the dwarf's turn at watch, but decided against it. They were probably going to have an argument, and Walter wanted to put that off.

  Good luck, the dragon had wished them.

  Good luck, indeed. It would take more than that.

  If only the dragon could have stayed to search, it would have all been different.

  Yeah. And if dogs had thumbs, they could vote Democratic in Chicago.

  The big lizard was right, though: He was needed in Holtun-Bieme. But the dragon had missed a point or two. He was too used to mindreading to spend the effort figuring out what people would do.

  Such as Karl's next move, which was obvious.

  Like a mother bird leading a prowling cat away from her babies by offering herself as bait, Karl would distract the hunters on Jason's tail by offering himself.

  Where would Karl go?

  Where else?

  Given that Ahrmin probably had spies all throughout Holtun-Bieme, news would probably reach Pandathaway damn quickly that Karl Cullinane was on his way to Melawei.

  News wouldn't be the only thing that would reach Pandathaway. Ellegon had missed another point—Home searchers were surely out hunting by now, and they could find Jason as easily as Walter's group; Walter's group wouldn't make much difference. They were only five, after all; they could better be used spiking the guns of the slavers, so to speak.

  Over in his blankets, Ahira stirred momentarily. Then, perhaps moved by some internal alarm, he silently opened his eyes, glared at the new day, and rose, drawing his clothes about him as he walked into the forest to relieve himself.

  When the dwarf returned, he dug into a pack and pulled out a carrot, cleaning it somewhat by rubbing it against a rock. "Get some sleep; it's my watch, no?"

  "Yes, but . . . but I want to talk to you about what we do now."

  Walter started to marshal his arguments: the fact that a large Home party was certainly now scouring the countryside for Jason, while Karl was going to be riding into the cannon's mouth alone; the notion that a party of five wouldn't make much of a difference in the former effort, but might well make a big difference as Karl's unknown hole card—

  —but the dwarf stopped him by raising a gnarled palm.

  "I know how your mind works. And I agree," Ahira said chewing on a carrot. "But we've got to put in at least a few days looking for the boy. If we find him, then we can try to beat Karl to Ehvenor, and stop him."

  "And if we don't find Jason in, say, a week?"

  "I like Jason, and I wish him well. But . . ."

  "But?"

  The dwarf's face was grim. "Then we head into Pandathaway to slow down the dogs."

  "And then?"

  "Then we go after Karl anyway."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  The Council of Barons

  I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men . . . the grounds of this are virtue and talents.

  —Thomas Jefferson

  "Ladies and gentlemen, be seated."

  I'm going to have to do it myself, Karl Cullinane thought as he stood on the dark spot on the red carpet in the great hall of Castle Biemestren. This wasn't the sort of thing he could leave to anyone else.

  The only question was how to maneuver the barons into supporting him. He couldn't tell them what he planned since he didn't know yet.

  Force did have its place. The carpet was blood-red; the black spot was long-dried blood. The first time that Karl had called his barons together, Baron Derahan of Holtun had called him out, challenging him, man to man.

  A brave act, really; by making it personal, binding his barony to loyalty to Karl if Karl defeated him, Derahan had made the challenge tempting.

  Tennetty had advised against it, as she stood behind the baron, one hand gripping his hair, the other holding a dagger at the side of his throat, fully prepared to economically slice through a jugular and kick him on his way.

  There was no tradition of the prince being subject to such, of course. Holtun's Prince Uldren, like Bieme's Pirondael, had been a fat man, barely able to wheeze his form upright. A twelve-year-old boy could have danced around either and killed either with a pin.

  But Karl had just told her to let him go, then nodded at the baron. When Tennetty cut Derahan's hands loose, Karl had simply dragged him across the room, pushed him away, tossed Derahan a sword, and then batted the baron's sword out of his hand and hacked his head off.

  Karl nodded at Terumel, the new Baron Derahan, sitting next to the military governor of his barony. Terumel returned Karl's gaze levelly as Karl deliberately stood on the spot where he had killed Terumel's father.

  Karl faced the table where the barons sat, the Biemish ones with a senior adviser or majordomo, the Holtish with their military governors. There was one exception to that latter. Vilmar, Baron Nerahan, sat conspicuously alone, the seat to his immediate right conspicuously empty.

  The Holt had a sharp-nosed face and a bristly mustache; he always reminded Karl both of a weasel and that appearances could be deceiving—while the little baron looked like somebody had called Central Casting for a stool pigeon, he was a self-disciplined man, resolutely fair, always more concerned with gaining his barony the most benefit out of the Consolidation, never with evening old scores.

  Ellegon had mindprobed the little man more thoroughly than usual, and had been impressed with both his intelligence and his resolve.

  Karl itched to kill the bastard for some of the things he had done during the Ho
ltun-Bieme War . . . but that would have violated the amnesty.

  He smiled genially at Nerahan.

  Just give me an excuse, Nerahan. Just a little excuse, and I'll kill you with my own two hands.

  Sometimes, life really sucked. Nerahan had been a goddam Boy Scout ever since the war, never coming close to giving Karl an excuse to take his head. He never would; not only did the baron know what his future held if he turned against Karl, but events had persuaded him that the new ways were the better. He was a brutal man, but a flexible one.

  Behind Nerahan, General Kevalun stood quietly, looking more like one of Nerahan's retainers than the military governor of that barony. And a younger retainer, at that—his short blond hair hadn't receded with age, and his face was almost baby-smooth. Kevalun looked perhaps twenty-five, too young to be a general, but he was actually the father of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  "To begin," Karl Cullinane said, as he took his seat at the head of the table, General Garavar at his left, Thomen Furnael in the seat of honor at his right, "I want to make the obvious announcement: Effective immediately, the military governor of barony Nerahan is relieved of his duties and reassigned to the House Guard." Karl nodded to Kevalun. "General, I thank you for your services on behalf of all of Holtun-Bieme. You have done a splendid job."

  There were nods from around the table, mainly from the military governors of other baronies and from several of the Biemish barons. The only Holt to join in was Nerahan. "If," he said, raising a finger to emphasize the word as he repeated it, "if the emperor is ever . . . inclined to dispense with your services, General, I'll have work for you."

  At least for public consumption, Kevalun took it as intended. "I thank you, Baron." He bowed toward the baron—the first time he had ever done so.

  Karl smiled. "Dismissed, Kevalun. See Garavar later about your new assignment." He deliberately kept his eyes away from the far end of the table, where Baron and Baroness Keranahan sat, the military governor of their barony sitting between them.

  Kevalun's new assignment was going to be barony Irulahan, where General Caem'l was alternating between almost Prussian repression and Marshall Plan flaccidity. Karl had no objection to hanging people for fomenting rebellion, but it made less sense to lynch suspected robbers assaulting his tax collectors than to hang the lords who gave them protection. Noble necks snapped with more effect.

  Still, there was no need to embarrass Caem'l in front of the others; he would be allowed to retire with dignity. Or with what dignity was possible when a man was being relieved for manifest incompetence, which wasn't all that much.

  Kevalun stood up even straighter, his eyes fixed on infinity. "Yes, Emperor."

  He spun on his heel and stalked out of the hall, barely limping at all on his bad leg.

  "I don't know, Karl," Ranella said, sitting next to fat Lord Harven of Adahan barony, "but I think Adahan's about ready to be turned loose, if you can get the baron to do his job, instead of . . . being educated at Home." The master engineer cocked her head to one side. "Or let Harven be regent. He can handle it, Karl."

  To Ranella, he was always Karl. To Ranella, it was much more important that they were both Home engineers—she a master, he classified as a senior journeyman—than that he was the emperor and she a barony's governor.

  At least that was what she affected. Maybe she just liked to be able to first-name an emperor.

  Seated at the far end of the table, Andy-Andy shook her head. "It seems to me that that is not properly a matter for this council," she said. "If the emperor requires the advice of this body, he can ask for it."

  She kept her face grim; Karl nodded his agreement. He didn't want to rush into liberating the Holts. Nerahan's new freedom was going to make the Biemish nervous enough. Best to let them see how that went before freeing another Holtish barony.

  "No, Ranella," he said as he shook his head. "I see no need to rush forward and remove military government—we'll see how Nerahan does, first."

  The Holtish barons were good poker players; not a face creased into a smile. Thomen Furnael's frown even deepened.

  Damn Ranella, anyway. She was good at what she did, but only at what she did. Getting the Adahan mines and the Furnael steel plant into operation was going well, but Karl was often thankful that the influx of labor, money, and goods for the two projects kept barony Adahan well pacified; Ranella couldn't have handled an uprising, and another governor couldn't have handled the building of the plants so well.

  Part of it was that she was a woman. With the exceptions of clerics and wizards, women were expected to breed children, not practice formal crafts and professions.

  There was a payoff: The few women who did manage to succeed against such expectations tended to be pure cream of the crop. Tennetty was a good example. While Tennetty was a vicious, sometimes sadistic killer, it wasn't her naked brutality that had made her able to run squads on Karl's raiding teams; it was the general acknowledgment that her combat judgment was as good as there was.

  Plus, of course, Karl's sponsorship. That counted for a lot.

  Similarly, Riccetti had always been very openly impressed with Ranella's intelligence, and while the years had put wrinkles around her eyes and an unbecoming potbelly on her torso, her mind had only sharpened—but as a tool for building, not governing.

  "We'll discuss your administration of the barony tomorrow, Ranella. You're to stay over tonight; the barony can get by on its own for an extra day."

  "Whatever you say, Karl." Ranella shrugged. "And—"

  "Governor," Dowager Baroness Beralyn of Furnael put in, "if I can address his majesty properly, so ought you." There was a slight emphasis on the personal pronoun; Karl decided to let it slide. He had always had a problem trying to keep Beralyn in line; she blamed him for the death of Rahff.

  That makes two of us, Beralyn. He swallowed, hard. In Karl Cullinane's time, many, many good men had died fighting on the right side of their just cause, but the way that Rahff had died in his arms was always freshly painful.

  Tyrnael snorted in disgust. "This is—" He caught himself and swallowed. He shook his head, then raised a palm in apology. "I'm sorry, but there are babies lying dead on the ground in my barony and you are arguing over forms of address?"

  Arondael looked at Karl, then, at Karl's nod, spoke. "I am in agreement with Baron Tyrnael. We're faced with responding to an attack; let's not be distracted by minor issues of address and of who governs where."

  Getting out those last words was clearly difficult for the slim man; the freeing of Nerahan's barony bothered him. During the Holtun-Bieme war, in an attempt to bull Arondael into sending a detachment out of his besieged castle, Nerahan had begun catapulting prisoners over the wall and into the courtyard.

  The prisoners had included Arondael's son, his son's wife, and three of their children. War brings out the ugliest in men. All were dead long before they hit the ground; all—all—had been, within earshot of the castle walls, repeatedly raped by Nerahan's men, at Nerahan's orders.

  Arondael's eyes searched the table for support, finding some, which didn't surprise Karl. "We have to show the Nyphs that we won't be attacked without fighting back," he went on.

  Thomen Furnael's young face was grave beyond his years as he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly. "Baron, what if it wasn't the Nyphs who attacked us?"

  "So? What if it wasn't?" The older man dismissed it. "There's no way of knowing for sure. Say it wasn't; assume it wasn't. How can they know that we know that for sure?"

  Andy-Andy's chuckle sounded forced. "I think you lost me on that, Baron Tyrnael."

  "Baron Tyrnael? If I may?" Nerahan raised an eyebrow. At Tyrnael's surprised nod, Nerahan went on. "The problem is this: Assume that the raid was actually executed by non-Nyphien forces. Nevertheless, for all we can know, it might well have been done by the Nyphs.

  "The Nyphs know that. Now, if they discover that they can raid into Hol—into the empire without retaliation, won't that
encourage them? Regardless of whether or not they did so this time, won't they see it as weakness?"

  Tyrnael grunted an assent. "Exactly. Better for the Nyphs to know that if anyone crosses into Bieme to kill and enslave our people there will be a reprisal. Let the bastards guard our border from their side, instead of sending raiders across, or," he went on, the scorn heavy in his voice, "forgetting to stop them."

  Everybody started talking after that, although the Biemish barons carried most of the conversation.

  Karl sat back in his chair and let the argument flow undirected, Tyrnael and Nerahan urging immediate retaliation, Arondael and Ranella counseling accepting the official Nyph explanation.

  The trouble with Nerahan's argument was that it made sense. It was much better, as a general principle, to force your neighbor to keep his own country from being a source of raids into yours than it was to try to patrol a border. That last was doomed to frequent failure.

  Better an educational combination pursuit/reprisal raid à la Black Jack Pershing or Ariel Sharon than some Jimmy Carter-style loud talk while carrying only a small stick that you were frightened to use.

  But that was only a generality. Every case was different: Pershing had known he was chasing Pancho Villa; Sharon had always had good intelligence as to where the PLO was hiding.

  With Danagar yet to return from Nyphien—and that, all by itself, didn't bode well—Karl still didn't know who was responsible, and he didn't know where whoever was responsible was.

  Better to find out who was responsible, and punish him or them. While it probably didn't make much of a difference to a Realpolitik-oriented baron, Karl shrugged to admit that he had this fetish about trying to restrict punishment to the guilty. One of the troubles with war was that innocents died, but at least you should try to limit the damage to innocents on the other side.

  Still, as a matter of state policy, if the Nyphs allowed their rulers to strike into Holtun-Bieme, it was proper to hold them collectively to account.

  But what if it was Ahrmin? What if it was the Slavers' Guild, trying to trigger an empire-Nyphien war the way it had the Holtun-Bieme war?