9
“It’s been two weeks – no, less than that – how could Quenari put it together so quickly?” Jaksen demanded of Fendar, who brought news of the rebels’ first attacks.
“You know how.”
Jaksen did. “He knew he’d lose in the palace all along. He used it to distract us while he got other pieces in place.”
“He knew as well as we did that our hope was in a short battle, while his is in a protracted one. So, he gave us our short battle, and now he’ll have his long one. There are rumors that, in a month, every man in his army will carry a gun.”
Jaksen slammed his fist on the couch’s armrest. It didn’t produce the dramatic effect his frustration would have preferred. “A hundred fortunes worth of weapons. The old king asked the same men for that kind of support, and would they give it to him? Not one cent of it. Now they pour the money on. I know for a fact that we have only five squadrons of breka riders equipped with rifles. An army fitted with them . . . unless our riders do some real fancy maneuvering, their old advantage will cease to exist. Do you have any good news, Fendar?”
“Well,” Fendar said with the trace of a smile on his face, “I hear that Quenari picked a particularly inauspicious time to begin an attack – something about some planet in some group of stars. A card reader says that Damial will suffer from a horrible affliction, but they refused to say when. When I mentioned that we all eventually suffer from the affliction of death, the reader told me that Damial would have an affliction before he died.”
Fendar failed to get Jaksen to show even the sour, false version of his old grin, and though no one would ever say so to his face, the councilor was beginning to look his age. He was beginning to look old.
“Surely you didn’t think Quenari and Damial would give up without a fight?” said Fendar. “You knew this was coming. If you thought that it would happen precisely according to your scheduling, you didn’t give Quenari enough credit. Why are you acting like all hope is dead, Lord Jaksen?”
“Am I acting like that?”
Fendar glanced at Tayron, lounging in a nearby chair and listening in. “What do you think?”
The knight shrugged. “I haven’t known Lord Jaksen all that long, but I’ve had my downtime, and I’d be surprised if anyone didn’t.”
“Downtime?” Jaksen repeated, then chuckled, “I’ve gotten that bad, eh? Don’t worry, I’ll try to get back to uptime. Worst time to do it though.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage, Lord Jaksen,” Fendar said, “you’ve always been able to instill hope in us. Just don’t bother me tonight – I plan to get drunk.”
Aside from Fendar’s early morning warning, the day was devoid of humor. Tayron was learning to get sick of meetings, now that he was well acquainted with all the participants. He also became educated in the way politicians who were secure in their positions never made a decision unless a sword was at their throats.
“I say just focus our forces on a direct counterattack, roll them back,” Lord Gertain insisted.
“And the fact that your lands are next to be attacked has nothing to do with that, Gertain?” Haradr blasted.
“I suppose your idea that we should attack on both the front and rear has nothing to do with the fact that it would secure your lands from attack?”
“Enough!” the king shouted, eerily reminiscent of his predecessor. “It is time for us to decide on a course of action, and your king feels that, under the circumstances, he must take matters into his own hands. No disrespect to this esteemed council is intended. Jaksen, how well can we surround the enemy?”
The councilor was on the floor this time, shuffling through a stack of documents sent to him from every corner of the land. “They have very few elite units, but their common army is swelling. We outnumber them for now, and can easily surround them, but their recruitment is faster than ours – the factory owners might even get their employees to enlist – so if we try to surround early and are unable to connect our two forces together, they can divide us permanently.”
“Some of our relief forces on the Rath’rainol border are already in a position to move to the east, and act as the surrounding forces. If we carefully choose where to focus take our forces off the border, we can expose Damial to pressure from Rath’rainol as well. We can let the Rathi harass Damial’s rear, and when we don’t need them any more, we can close the gap and trap the Rathi forces behind our lines. We win both ways,” Haradr noted.
“Or, Rath’rainol might decide to make mincemeat of our forces first. We can only afford to bring our relief forces on this side,” Gertain said, “and as quickly as possible. We can’t let Rath’rainol catch us on the retreat, so we need to keep our main battle lines in place.”
Fendar spoke for the first time in hours of discussion. “I don’t think we can depend on Rath’rainol for anything. Whatever we want them to do, they’re liable to do the opposite.”
“Lord Jaksen,” the king addressed with clear frustration, “tell me clearly what you think.”
“I think it is foolish to keep our forces divided. Let us create as strong a line as possible, then surround them with those forces if possible. The reports I have received from the Rathi border are not encouraging, and I no longer think we can afford to pull anything but the relief forces from the border to engage Damial. In fact, I have good reason to believe that Damial is getting covert support from Rath’rainol.”
“But even you recognize that we need to resolve this quickly, Jaksen!” Haradr screamed. “Wouldn’t two fronts lead us to quick victory? Isn’t your way leading us to a long war that we can’t win?”
“Surrounding the enemy will not necessarily hasten the fight,” Jaksen said, “and we must be prepared in case the worst happens, in case Quenari gets his way. I’ve weighed the situation, Haradr, and the king has heard my advice. I believe our great and just sovereign will take every care to make the best decision.”
The king took Jaksen’s newly tempered advice, carefully explaining his reasoning so that there would not be any divisions in the court. On the whole, the gathered nobles were not as antagonistic to this plan as Jaksen’s last offering, and after the king’s will became clear, they proceeded to debate the positioning of vital troops and weaponry.
Tayron surveyed the map they regularly gestured to. Quenari had started attacking troop positions two week’s march from the palace. The train networks could easily move advance units to counter Quenari within a day, but those units would be underpowered and only able to slow the enemy advance. The enemy had not formed a front line, though – as might have been expected, Quenari employed concentrated strikes against existing bases, keeping his men constantly mobile. Tayron guessed the enemy had three independent forces of a few thousand each. No match for the king’s forces.
Looking to the border with Rath’rainol, Tayron traced the rail path the troops being pulled back would have to take. Quenari’s troops were perilously close to the tracks at one point and, with a slight stretch of his imagination, Tayron saw that one of the enemy forces stayed close to that track – not close enough to be obvious, but never attacking so far away that it could not return in the same day. Tracing two of the alternate rail routes from the Rath’rainol border, the situation was the same, with the other two enemy forces taking up position. The only other rails on which the troops could be moved on passed through Quenari’s own lands.
Waiting for a lull in the conversation, he poked Jaksen in the shoulder to grab the Councilor’s attention. “Lord Jaksen,” Tayron whispered hurriedly, not wanting to draw the king’s ire, “look at the tracks and where Quenari’s attacks have been. I think he’s going to sabotage the tracks, or try to attack the men coming back from the border.”
To Tayron’s surprise, Jaksen gave him a look that said all too plainly “I know that.” Then, as if reconsidering a play, Jaksen whispered “good eyes, though. Don’t think there’re two more in here who see it – nobles don’t study the basics as regularly as before. Still, probably not good to take advantage.”
To the room in general, which remained in the lull between topics, Jaksen said, “young Tayron here has just pointed something out to me.” He explained the matter in far greater detail than it had been formed with in Tayron’s mind.
Haradr wasted no time once he comprehended what Jaksen was saying. “In that case, my original objection to your plan . . .”
“That’s enough, Haradr,” the king interrupted. “This may turn out advantageous to us. Can we plan around this, Jaksen?”
To Tayron, it looked like Jaksen breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had been dreading the Haradr rebuttal. “Absolutely, I’ll get on it right away. Do I have your highness’ permission to go into the field after I submit the plan?”
“Yes. Our main task now is to save as much of the nobility as possible from these blasted meetings.” The king got a few chuckles. “Anyway, as our foremost strategist, you should be on hand to organize the traps. It should do wonders for your health. That’s all for today, gentlemen. Lord Haradr, you will stay, we need to speak a bit more.”
Jaksen spent the rest of the day drafting his plan, then sent it to the king for ratification. The time after dinner was spent packing – a task much easier for the knights than for Jaksen, who had trouble dividing the absolutely necessary from the superfluous. He complained that, not having gone on a trip for years, he had accumulated many items of comfort that he didn’t want to spend time without. His attempts to decide provided some entertainment for the two bodyguards, who marveled at some of the knick-knacks the councilor had picked up, many of which were magical.
“A reading lamp that doesn’t require any power,” Jaksen said, holding a flexible metal tube with a bulb at the end. “It’s one of a kind. A high mage I was friends with took the time to figure out the necessary enchantment. Looks simple, but sometimes with magic, difficulty is deceptive. Anyway, I haven’t done much reading in a while, and I’d hate if something happened to it while we’re in the field.”
“What’s that?” Bathis asked, pointing at one of the many objects Jaksen brought out to make a final judgment on, with help from his more field-ready bodyguards. This particular object was an enticing box with arcane symbols on it that looked replete with magical significance.
“Oh, the box looks nice, but it has no intrinsic value. It was a gift from my wife. Now what’s inside . . .”
“Your wife?” Tayron said alarmed.
“Well, yes, why?”
“I . . . I didn’t know that you were married,” Tayron apologized.
Bathis stared patronizingly at his fellow knight. “He’s human, Tayron, and old enough to have grandchildren.”
“But why isn’t your family here, Lord Jaksen? I mean, it’s the assassination thing, I know, but then when do you see them?”
Jaksen had lament painted on his face. “My wife, Diorna, did live here when we first got married. She bore through the threats and attempts on our lives with the kind of strength I married her for. But once our first son was born, we couldn’t chance it, so she went to stay at my estate. It’s only an hour’s breka flight from here, but even early on I could only spend three days with her out of every ten. I’ve usually managed to keep it up to two in every ten, but never more, and recently, with the old king on the edge, much less.”
“You don’t have to explain . . . “
“It’s one of the things I’ve needed to talk about for a long time now. You don’t know how it is – not seeing your wife and children for long stretches – the kids grow so quickly, and I’m little more than a stranger. And I’m never really sure they’re safe – it’s unlikely they’d be attacked at my estate, but possible. They’re adults now, and will have to become acquainted with palace life soon. This is not how I thought I’d be living out my old age. In my youth, when I saw myself in the ripe old age when my children had grown, my beautiful wife and I were living peaceably, together in the comfort of well-earned wealth.”
Tayron had a question, but hesitated on it. It must have shown up on his face, because the other two stared at him, expecting him to speak. “I was just thinking, Lord Jaksen, and I don’t mean any disrespect, but can’t you just retire?”
“Oh, don’t think I haven’t considered it. Also don’t think there’s any lack of things that keep me here. Most important is the rule of ancestors. In a noble family as old as mine, the descendant must do service to his ancestors. This service is simple – make sure to pass down at least what you receive, otherwise all your ancestors will plague you in the afterlife. My ancestors have set a rather high standard, and I have to maintain it. When my eldest son inherits my place, he will sit at the king’s right hand, as I did when I took my father’s place. Unfortunately, my son will only technically inherit on my death, so even if I leave the position to him now, he would be Lord Jaksen to the court but not the gods or ancestors. I would only put him in that position if I seriously could not perform my duties here anymore – from some infirmity or the like. Not all families are like this, and among the lords you know, Quenari, Haradr, and Gertain can safely retire. You yourself, Tayron, are under the rule of ancestors, though I dare say you have far less to live up to. Bathis . . . your family isn’t old enough to be held to that rule, is it?”
“Are you kidding? My family adopted that rule even though it didn’t have to. Anything to have the chance to make someone’s time miserable just a little bit longer. The temptation to justifiably harass people for all eternity in the afterlife was just too great. Umm, I don’t mean to change the subject, well really I do, but what’s in the box?”
“Oh, right, I was about to tell you,” Jaksen grabbed the box and held it to his eyes. He tapped certain symbols in a careful combination, and the box snapped open. “This,” he took a golden dumbbell-shaped ornament out, holding it up for them to see clearly, “is the symbol of my house, and what I will pass down to my son when I die. It signifies the fact that I am giving him everything I received.”
Bathis wore a shocked look. “But shouldn’t you definitely take that with you? Seems like it’d be an obvious choice if it’s so important.”
“That was my first thought. My second one was that it would be safer here than with me out there. My third was of my duty to my ancestors. My most recent was the practical matter that, while its here, few people would want to grab it, it has no value to anyone outside my family barring the value of the gold, but in the field there are many for whom the value of the gold is enough. So, I’m still of two minds about it.”
“I’d take it along,” Bathis said simply.
“I’m sure you would, given the kind of reception you’d get in the afterlife otherwise,” Jaksen chuckled, “but my family would let it go after the first thousand years, I think.”
The councilor eventually decided to leave the symbol of his house, but with all the things he decided to take, he sent Bathis to the palace task manager to get two baggage boys. As the knight left, Anni appeared at the doorway, panting. Tayron looked her over in wonder.
“I heard . . . you were leaving,” she said desperately, “can I come along? My boss said that if I get another scoop, I’ll be a full reporter.”
“We wouldn’t have thought to leave without you,” Jaksen assured, “I would have sent someone to invite you if you hadn’t shown up.”
Anni’s face was caught somewhere between ecstasy at being considered important by a powerful figure like Jaksen and disgust that her palace sprint to catch the high councilor before he left hadn’t been necessary. Composing herself, she asked “so . . . where are we going?”
Tayron suddenly realized that he himself didn’t know the answer to that question, and looked at Jaksen intently.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you for security reasons” was the response. “You’ll find out when we get there. Be sure to wear identification and clearly civilian dress. When I tell you to stay somewhere, do so, and you won’t be in too much danger.”
“Will there be fighting?” Anni asked uncertainly. “I only heard that you were leaving, I don’t know why. Is it because of the rebellions in the south?”
“Yes. I guess you can know that much. We are going to deal with the rebels.”
“Is it true that Lord Damial leads the rebels and is trying to take the throne?” Anni asked, fishing out a notepad, prepared to jot the most inane detail down.
Jaksen smiled, with almost an outright grin, and said, “Damial doesn’t lead anything, it’s Lord Quenari that has raised rebellion against the king. Damial is simply the excuse he uses. We would have dealt with them peaceably, even offered them concessions – short of the throne, of course. Instead of even attempting a dialogue, though, these men choose to attack the nation’s own armies, to in essence aid our enemies, to become an enemy themselves. So, the king must respond in kind. The exact form that response will take, I cannot discuss.”
“Of course,” Anni said, finishing her scribbling. Then, after closing and pocketing her notepad, she asked, “when do we leave?”
“In the morning tomorrow.”
Anni had clearly been expecting that they’d take the trip by night. “Isn’t that a long delay?”
“I have to wait until other factors are settled before making the trip.”
“And how are we making the trip? By train? Or – I heard this but I don’t know if it’s true – can you really get a mage to teleport you?”
Neither Tayron nor Bathis laughed, since both thought it entirely possible, but the councilor was making the most of the opportunity, having had little chance to laugh otherwise. “I’ve heard that one, too, actually. It’s ludicrous. Mages hate teleportation and even the best have enough trouble getting it right for themselves. They’d absolutely refuse me, fearing what would happen to them if an accident occurred. No, we’ll be taking breka for this trip. I can’t stand the trains. Have you ever driven a breka, Anni?”
“Yes, but badly. I wouldn’t be up for doing it again,” she said. Then, sensing the potential problem, she added, “hope that’s no trouble.”
“No, I’m sure Tayron wouldn’t mind giving you a ride.” The Councilor gave a slight wink in the knight’s direction. “And all the breka we’ll be riding will be for two. The smaller ones are faster, but they’re inconvenient and their turns make me sick.”
Jaksen’s admission eased her embarrassment. “Me too. I mean, that one time was a single-seater, and I’m not going through that again – not for the biggest scoop ever.”
Meanwhile, Tayron decided not to think to deeply about the Councilor’s wink. Despite his decision, he thought about it anyway. Did the Councilor know something about Tayron’s attitude toward Anni that the knight himself did not? The possibility that he was acting awkwardly worried him. Then again, Jaksen was exceptionally adept at judging personalities, so whatever he saw may not have been so obvious. Tayron was unnerved, especially since he had no idea where he stood with Anni, and suspected he wished to remain ignorant. The world was complicated enough already, and the brewing war was enough to make him crave solitude.
“All right, see you tomorrow,” Anni said brightly as she turned to leave. When she caught Tayron’s eye as she left, he decided that certain complications could be tolerated, if he was careful about it and the complication realized that he had serious work to do, work that had to take priority. The more stoic area of his psyche balked at how easily a glance could change things, and politely reminded him of any number of disasters that would likely begin with an imprudent act, including the end of the world.
Even with the sense of suffocation, the night passed peacefully for Tayron. Waking up, however, was a different matter.
“Wake up, Tayron,” Bathis stormed. The sly knight knew that so much as tapping the door would have alerted Tayron’s reflexes, getting him up and ready instantly. Instead, with this loud intrusion, Tayron was standing on his bed with sword in hand, fully dressed but without armor as was his habit while sleeping. There was no end to Bathis’ delight as he said, “the king is about to make a speech and Lord Jaksen wants to catch it before we leave.”
Once he toned his prepared stance down, Tayron said “another speech?”
“Actually, I think this is the king’s first public address, so I don’t think ‘another’ is the right word for it.”
Tayron tried to hop down off his bed, realizing how silly he looked, but ended up tripped looking at the floor. Bathis was howling with glee as Tayron scrambled up with the greatest care. “Guess it’s not my day,” Tayron murmured.
“As usual, Tayron doesn’t quite get it,” Bathis said to the universe. “Listen, you sorry excuse for nobility, you’re protected by the trickster god, who enjoys it when you play tricks. There is nothing he hates more than when someone plays a trick on you. So, he punishes you a bit, especially by embarrassing you. If someone insulted me and I didn’t come up with a witty retort, I’d get into trouble. It’s the flip side of the whole protection thing. Come to think of it, your family’s fall from grace might have come because they fell for a really bad trick.”
Tayron donned his standard mail, which was considered appropriate when riding a breka, in case of accidents. “That could be useful, though. I mean, you don’t always know when someone plays a trick on you. This way, I’ll always know, and can think back to what the trick might have been.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Tayron – a punishment is a punishment. Tayl will wait until you find out about the trick, then punish you. Bat doesn’t get me for insults said behind my back, but once I find out, I get walloped.”
Exiting his room, Tayron asked Bathis “so if I never find out a trick was played on me, I don’t get embarrassed?”
Bathis stared at Tayron as if his fellow knight was insane. “What you don’t know can hurt you. Ignorance will bite you back far more than any divine retribution. If Tayl doesn’t punish you when he’s mad, you can be sure it’s only because you’re going to get much worse than anything he planned. Never be eager not to know.”
“Good advice,” Jaksen said, peeking in through the open door, “but we need to get going.”
“Is it in the audience chamber?” Tayron asked, wondering whether he could carry his sword.
“No, one of the garden courtyards – the king wanted a setting that enhanced his image as a peace lover. Leave your things here, we’ll grab them before we leave. Before you ask, I don’t know why the king chose to make the speech so early in the morning, and yes, I think we’ve wasted enough time as it is around here given that the enemy is making progress daily. Maybe the king simply wants to end the odd way this war is working out by making an official declaration. Puts a more natural face on things. He’ll say the kinds of things I told Anni last night.”
“Another speech,” was all the response Tayron had.
“Another speech,” Jaksen agreed.