Guardians of the Flame - Legacy Page 6

"Oh. Sorry." Riccetti shook his head. "We've got a messenger from Khoral. There's been a slaver raid in Therranj . . . numbers to follow—I think that's Artyn, rushing the elf along—three days ago. Major raid . . . they hit a baronial capitol hard, took treasure and slaves—elves and humans. Khoral's soliciting our help. We can keep the treasure; he just wants the raiders punished and the elves freed."

  Riccetti nodded to himself. "The old elf is learning. He can afford to lose a few pounds of gold to us more than to let them get away with a raid."

  Ahira bounced nervously in his chair. "And what does he use for soldiers? Marshmallows?"

  Riccetti shook his head. "Most of his troops are on the Melhrood border, not dispersed along the west. He is anticipating trouble with Melhrood; he wasn't looking for an attack from the west—we've got a peace treaty with Therranj. You started the negotiations for it, remember?"

  "Yeah, a treaty. Not a mutual assistance pact. Mmm . . . still, it is slavers and all. . . ."

  "Exactly." Riccetti looked at Ahira. "The only difficulty is, what with a lot of Daherrin's people up in the mines, we're deficient in manpower."

  Ahira snorted. Riccetti was sounding more and more like a bureaucrat. "You mean you don't have enough warriors handy."

  Riccetti glared at him. "It'll take at least a couple of days to bring them out and get them all organized; we'll have to send runners, since we haven't strung the telegraph wire that far."

  Ahira walked over to a sideboard and uncorked a bottle of Riccetti's Best, tilting it back for a long swallow. The fiery liquor burned its way down his throat. "Okay. What can you do?"

  "Maybe I could spare a hundred warriors, but a lot of them would be fairly inexperienced."

  "Unblooded. That's not good."

  Riccetti jerked his thumb toward the telegraph. "I don't know the size of the raiding party, but it's not going to be any smaller than a hundred. I just hope it isn't a lot larger."

  He paused expectantly.

  * * *

  Deep inside, the thought of violence still frightened Ahira as much as it always did, save for the times when his rare berserker rages washed such feelings away in a red flood.

  But he just shrugged. "You could use an additional dozen or so? Thirteen blooded dwarves, plus Walter." If there was a better recon man than Walter Slovotsky, Ahira had never even heard legends of him.

  Riccetti looked at him for a long moment. "I think so." He tapped a rapid message on the key, then turned back to Ahira. "I'm ordering horses, weapons, and supplies for a party of a hundred and twenty—half of the scouts are to be diverted to finding the raiding party. And a war council. Petros, Bast, Daherrin, Daherrin's second, you, me, Slovotsky. Hmm . . . I'll add Valeran, Bren, Jason, Aeia—"

  "Why Jason? Why Aeia, for that matter?"

  "She's got as good a head on her shoulders as anyone I know. And he is Karl's heir; he's got to find out how to do things like this."

  "Then it's on?"

  Riccetti shook his head and momentarily chewed on his lower lip. "All that's on is a war council." He tapped on the key again. "For the time being."

  * * *

  Walter Slovotsky held his peace through most of the discussion. Everyone was talking about whether they should send a raiding party, and Walter wasn't interested in arguing over closed cases. It was clear from the start that Lou was going to dispatch a raiding party after the slavers, but was letting everyone burn out his concerns while the team's equipment was being loaded.

  Slovotsky was impressed. Riccetti was getting clever; it was a trick Lou had probably picked up from Karl, and one Karl had picked up from Walter.

  The counterraid was a necessity, both political and financial. For one thing, local raiding-team pickings had been too thin for too long—Daherrin's team hadn't hit on a good slaver caravan for better than a year, and many of his men and dwarves had taken up mining or cropping to fill in. The thought of a nice slaver caravan, heavily laden with an elf baron's treasury, was irresistible.

  It would have been nice if they'd had Ellegon to do a skyside recon, but the dragon wasn't due for several days, at a minimum.

  Even that squared nicely with Karl's doctrine, which had always been to try to stage raids just before the dragon's arrival—Ellegon's arrival as the air cavalry had saved more lives than Walter could count.

  Still, some kind of recon was necessary. Walter had a hunch who was going to get to do one, once the slavers were located. That didn't bother him, just as it wouldn't have bothered Paderewski to play a few arpeggios on a piano.

  There was one thing that did. . . .

  "Lou—is there any chance that this could be some sort of diversion, some sort of trick? Could the guild be trying to divert the Home Guard?"

  "There's a theoretical possibility of almost everything." Riccetti considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "But it doesn't look that way."

  Daherrin shook his head. "Doesn't matter. We got those cannons we been casting for Karl; there's about seventeen of them—"

  "Sixteen," one of the junior engineers corrected. "The new one cracked under test this morning."

  "Sixteen usable cannons," Riccetti said, picking up the train of thought as Daherrin acknowledged the correction with a smile and a nod, "ready to set up on the ridge. With grapeshot, we could hold off a terribly large force. There's been no word of any army marching on us; I don't think this is a decoy."

  "Okay, it's not likely to be a diversion for an attack on Home." Walter shook his head. "Is it possible that they're trying to draw out a raiding team? Get us to chase them into an ambush?"

  Daherrin shook his head, a merciless smile on his face. "You're always too tricky, Walter Slovotsky. So what if it is? If they try an' ambush us, we jump them, kill them, free the slaves, take the money."

  "I still don't like it." Walter wasn't crazy about the dwarf's clumsy English, either, but he didn't mention that. Slurred words and bad grammar wouldn't get him killed. A trap very well could.

  "I think we should go." Valeran toyed with a wine goblet. "Assume—"

  "Excuse me, Valeran," Ahira said, "but I don't know why you think that you're going along. As I understand it, your job is to keep Jason intact, not go chasing after slavers."

  Valeran looked at him coldly. "I think that is properly between me and my emperor. Or between me and the raiding-team leader."

  "Ease up," Daherrin said, waving the matter away. "The boy'll be safe here; Valeran's in on the party if he wants it. You was saying, Val?"

  "Valeran," the soldier corrected. "Suppose the slaver caravan is heading for a rendezvous with a much larger force—what are they going to do, hope that we arrive to attack them at the same time their reinforcements arrive? Prevent us from properly scouting ahead? Make us blindfold ourselves during the fight?"

  Bren Adahan chuckled at that last. Sitting next to Aeia, Adahan had kept silent, his attention only occasionally distracted by Aeia. Which impressed Slovotsky; the man had good concentration.

  As for me, little one, if you weren't Karl's adopted daughter, there'd be a bedtime story I'd be dying to tell you.

  There was a certain exoticness to her barely slanted eyes, high cheekbones, and creamy smooth complexion, and while Walter Slovotsky loved his wife—Kirah was a swell girl—he'd never made more than a pretense of faithfulness; that just wasn't the way he was built. Her preference for tight clothing, both her shorts and gray knitted pullover, emphasized the changes he'd seen in her.

  Still . . . no, best to skip it.

  Bedding Karl's future wife had once come a heartbeat away from getting Walter killed; he wasn't interested in finding out if trying the same trick with his adopted daughter would do the same.

  And maybe during a war council isn't the best time and place to figure out where and how and with whom I'm sleeping.

  Then again, there was no time like the present to open negotiations, even if he wasn't sure if he wanted to bring them to the obvious conclusion.

  He reached ove
r and patted her bare knee in what could have been an avuncular way. "What do you think, little one?"

  She covered his hand with her smaller one, a grin creeping across her face as Bren Adahan's easy smile turned into a glare. "I think, Walter, that all of you are going to go anyway, so the best thing to do is to figure out how to do it, rather than wasting time on whether."

  "Right." Impressive girl. Not only did she have remarkable legs and what appeared to be a set of nicely firm breasts—but brains, too? Evidence of any skills of discretion would make Walter's decision easy. Of course, even then, she could ruin things by saying no. That happened to Walter, about one time in ten. His rare excursions away from Endell were usually successful in all respects.

  "And a good point." Riccetti nodded and rose, speaking in rapid English. "Then I'm going to turn in; I've got a long night scheduled, and I don't see any reason to change things—except to get the cannons emplaced and manned, just in case. Aeia, Petros, Jason—you all have enough to do tomorrow without staying up for a planning session. Go to bed—you can say your farewells in the morning."

  Wordlessly, Aeia smiled a general good night, rose, and left.

  "Petros, you'll guest with me at the New House; Jason will fix up another room for you—it's far too cloudy tonight for you to ride home in the dark. Daherrin, you're planning on leading this yourself?"

  The dwarf nodded, smiling broadly. "You betcha," he answered in English. "It's my kinda party, boss."

  "Then leave me somebody good to act as chief master-at-arms while you're gone, and be sure we've posted extra guards. And watch yourself," he said, addressing them all. His brow furrowed, he turned to Jason, who was sitting quietly, listening intently. "Jason, I told you it was—"

  "No." The boy bit his lip. Walter looked closely at the boy.

  Uh-oh. Walter Slovotsky had seen that particular grim expression before, although not on Jason's face.

  It was the look of someone about to do something that scared him shitless. Walter Slovotsky would have seen the expression more often if he ever carried a mirror into combat.

  He wasn't surprised when Jason shook his head and raised his voice, each word echoing with the loud slap of a quiet step through a minefield.

  "I'm going along," the boy said.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  Judgment Day

  It [is] more beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should suffer . . . because it is of more importance . . . that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished, and many times they happen in such a manner that it is not of much consequence to the public whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned . . . the subject will exclaim, "it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security." And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject there would be an end to all security whatsoever.

  —John Adams

  *Good morning, your imperious majesticness,* sounded in his head. *It's time to get up.*

  Go away, Karl Cullinane thought, pulling the vaguely musty blankets over his head, as he summoned up a mental image of himself holding Ellegon's saurian head under the water until the dragon gurgled. Goddam, goddam world, where the best blankets you could get smelled like horses had been using them.

  As they often had, come to think of it.

  *First of all, you couldn't do it, because I wouldn't let you. Second of all, you wouldn't do it, because you love me, and third of all—*

  "Third of all, that's imperial majesty, not imperious majesticness."

  Out in the courtyard, flame roared skyward. *You say it your way, I'll say it mine.*

  Go away. Just go away. I'll get up soon.

  *Fine.*

  So, go—

  *As long as "soon" means now.*

  "Leave me alone." Huddling in his blankets, Karl Cullinane tried to go back to sleep.

  Being Prince of Bieme and Emperor of Bieme-Holtun wasn't, by and large, a whole lot of fun, but the job was supposed to carry with it some perquisites, and—according to Karl Cullinane—foremost among them was sleeping in late in the morning. He wasn't going to give that up. No way.

  *I always find it amazing, the stoicism with which the wealthy and powerful manage to bear their horrible burdens, and the deep resolve with which they refuse to have those burdens made more cumbersome.*

  Translation: I should stop bitching and get my lazy ass out of bed.

  *You have a keen eye for the obvious.*

  Even his morning-tasting mouth had to quirk itself into a smile. I take it I needed that?

  *That was my guess.*

  Part of the dragon's job, after all, was to yell Cut the nonsense! when Karl got out of line, even if Karl thought that the dragon was the one who was out of line this time.

  But still, dammit, it was only fair.

  After all, as rulers went, Karl Cullinane didn't demand all that much.

  On the Other Side, the lowliest of French nobility had thought nothing of ordering their subjects flogged or killed for trifling offenses; of obliging peasants to stay up during spring nights, beating the surfaces of ponds with sticks and branches, frightening frogs to silence and thereby preventing the mating cries of frogs from interfering with Monsieur le Baron's sleep; or of taking advantage of the droit du seigneur or lettres de cachet, phrases that Karl didn't even translate mentally into English, not wishing to soil the language.

  Hmm . . . come to think of it, the phrase "French nobility" was a contradiction in terms, as far as Karl was concerned. Not that the French were alone. Lèse majesté, no matter what it was called, was punishable by death in most countries.

  Unlike Chinese and Japanese emperors—and many lords and princes on This Side, for that matter—Karl collected only this year's taxes this year, leaving next year's for next year.

  Karl Cullinane didn't keep peasants up at night, and he didn't punish anyone outside the nobility for running off at the mouth. He neither seduced nor raped peasant girls; he didn't practice his skills with a lance by skewering boys.

  He just wanted to sleep in.

  That wasn't much to ask.

  *Well, life isn't fair, and you're going to have to get up. And that's the name of that tune,* the dragon added. *Andrea and her escort have left to kill some rot in Bieme's Village; I've got to leave on a supply run; and you've got to finish your new letter to Lou and maybe the one to Walter and the dwarf before I leave.

  *And remember, Thomen has that poacher to sentence this morning, and you really ought to supervise the sentencing—and then you have to hold court.*

  I'll cancel it.

  *Sorry. You've got to see the ambassador from Khar. And I've got to grab some sky.*

  Goddam Khar. To hell with Nyphien. Fuck Pandathaway and—

  *And get up.*

  Right.

  He swung his feet to the floor and rubbed his eyes for a moment before forcing himself to his feet and, naked, padding over to the mottled-glass window.

  Down below, in the inner courtyard, several porters and soldiers were strapping Ellegon's cargo to his scaly back: various leather sacks, containing food, powder, shot, and comfort rations for Frandred's raiding team, which was prowling about the coastal areas, trying to grab a slaver caravan.

  *You'd better hurry up; I'm less than an hour from leaving. You go use the bathroom; I'll order up writing materials and breakfast.*

  He nodded; taking a silk robe from his nightstand and belting it around him, he walked down the hall to the garderobe.

  When he returned to the bedroom suite, his pen, ink bottle, and lap desk were already in the window seat; he sat down and put his feet up.

  He set his lap desk on his lap; it was a wedge-shaped box of wood, the lid hinged; inside were paper and other writing materials. He swung the lid open, pulled out the six or so pages he'd
already written, and quickly scanned them.

  He also had some Dragon Express messages for Home, including Master Ranella's notes on her latest innovation: an improved wash for guncotton, which seemed to bring the spontaneous-detonation problem under control.

  And a couple of long letters for Jason. I miss you terribly, he thought. Maybe he should have kept the boy around.

  No; Andy was right. Jason would get a better education at Home: Valeran teaching him the soldierly arts, Aeia working on language skills, Riccetti and the rest of the engineers teaching him what they knew—and without Jason having to labor under the burden of the security considerations that applied in Biemestren, where he couldn't take a step out of the castle without an armed guard.

  Perhaps more important, it was best for Jason to spend as much time as possible being treated merely as someone important, rather than as the heir apparent to the silver crown of the Prince of Bieme, the Emperor of Holtun-Bieme.

  Karl shook his head and forced himself to get back to work, as though it was something he didn't relish. There were just a couple of notes to be made to clarify Karl's rough sketches for his railroad—which might be the most important thing he ever did. A railroad was a catalyst for trade, almost literally.

  He idly whistled a few bars from Gordon Lightfoot's "Steel Rail Blues." If he could tie Holtun and Bieme together with a railroad, and then expand the line into Nyphien and on to Khar and eventually Kiar, it would be a damn fine bit of work. In effect, Holtun-Bieme would conquer two or three other countries in his lifetime, without hurting anyone, without firing a shot, enriching both sides.

  Not a bad way to win a war: never declare it, never fight it, never make anyone lose it. Cheaper transportation was a form of wealth; wealth would lead to better lives for the peasant class—better prices for grains, shorter hours, meat on the table every day instead of twice a tenday.

  *A chicken in every pot, eh?* He could hear Ellegon's mental smile. Despite everything, despite the fact that humans had chained him in a cesspit for three centuries, Ellegon had learned to like humans.

  *Some of them.*