Storm Rising (31 page)

“And they won’t tell you what it is?” He pursed his lips at the aide’s nod. “Well, perhaps you’d better show them in. It might be we have another nasty little insect to contend with, one that bites people in … places they’d rather not discuss.”

The boy flushed, which amused Tremane; how
had
that youngster managed to climb through the ranks and still be able to blush at the idea of a flea that bit a man’s privates? “I’ll bring them up, sir,” he said hastily, and took his leave.

Blue dusk outside the window gave little light for a meeting, and one thing they had in abundance was candles. There must have been hundreds of sealed caskets of candles, and hundreds more of the cruder tallow dips. Tremane set about lighting them himself before the delegation arrived. He’d set the last one alight and was trimming the wick when Nevis brought in the men.

They were a very mixed bag, some dozen or so of them. One mage, one of his high-ranking generals—which was probably why Nevis hadn’t dared send them away without consulting Tremane—two sergeants, two leftenants, and an assortment of scouts and troopers.

That’s odd. The one and only thing these men have in common is that they were all someone’s agent, and I doubt any of them know that the others are agents
—

He sat down behind his desk and contemplated the sober-faced group before him while Nevis closed the
door. “Well,” he said finally, “I hope this is not the prelude to a mutiny.”

General Bram laughed. “Hardly, Commander. In fact, that’s the point, and I’ll be brief. I’ve no doubt you already knew this, but we’re all spies—some of us reported to your rivals; I reported to the Emperor. We’ve decided to come admit it and fling ourselves upon your mercy. You’re too good a leader to throw us away; our request is that you retain us in our current positions.”

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 delegation 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.