Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (63 page)

“That’s right,” Kerwin agreed.  “Save your strength
for the sword fighting in five days.  That’s
where you’ll need every bit
you have.”

The group spoke during the walk, the subject of the
final event’s sword-on-sword combat renewing Hilliard’s interest in their
varied blade techniques with a vengeance.

Marik offered scattered comments.  Mostly he allowed
his mind to wander to the thrilling memories of Ilona.  Of the sweaty skin
shining under the candlelight glow, of the way her breasts hitched when she
panted for breath…

The group passed through the wall separating the Third
Ring from the Outer City.  Marik hardly took note of it any longer.  He had
become accustomed to Thoenar’s roadways, had learned his way amidst the
tangling street maze.  Thoenar no longer daunted his directional senses.

Slowly working their way north to the jousting lists,
Marik’s mind returned to Ilona and the incredible position she had taught him
last night—

Kerwin’s wordless shout jerked him from his reverie. 
Time not only slowed, it damn near stopped as Marik spun to see what bothered
the gambler.  Hilliard stood between them.

In that frozen moment in time, Marik saw that Kerwin
had rammed his shoulder into Hilliard’s right side in an attempt to knock the
young noble away.  But he had not been fast enough.

Spheres of glistening red hovered in midair before
Hilliard.  Blood.  Spraying back from the obscene length of crossbow quarrel
protruding from the young man’s chest.

*        *        *        *        *

“You!  Check that!  Have the reports arrived yet?”

“No sir, general sir!”

“Then run and find out where in the nine hells they
are!  You!”  Adrian swung to confront another of the aides who formed a
perpetual trailing coattail behind him wherever he walked.  “Explain to me why
Mellcoff is taking so damned long to get the Citadel moving east!”

The general stopped in the hallway to glare at the
aide, who stumbled, grasping for any possible answer.  Adrian had chosen him at
random from his following, meaning the odds were he knew as much about the
specific question as the servants streaming around them.  “Well, uh…sir.  I
believe I read a report saying the mages were troubled by some illness, or…I
think…”

“You do not know for certain?” Adrian thundered, his
mood foul.

“No, sir.  We’ve been waiting for—”

“I’m tired of waiting!  Go and find out!”

“Sir?”  The aide looked startled, jumping to follow
when the general strode forward in long, efficient strides.

“Where do you think you’re going?”  Adrian stopped
anew in order to turn full on the man.  “The stables are in that direction!”

“The stables?  Sir?  I don’t under—”

“Unless you’d rather have a Taur carry you west!  Is
that your preference?”

The aide blanched, as did most at the thought of being
near the Taurs much less cradled in one’s arms.  “No, sir!  I’ll, uh, I’ll go
straight away.  To the Citadel?”

“Go!” thundered Adrian.  “And don’t set foot on the
road back until you have my answers!”

Adrian resumed his march after the aide fled his
presence.  Though known for his cool command, General Adrian Ceylon was also
known to terrorize his staff if his military did not perform as he knew they
were capable.  Lately, it seemed, nothing proceeded exactly as expectations
predicted.

Much of that could be laid on this strange land where
none in his army had ever trod before.  Similar terrain as Tullainia’s normal
stretches could be found back home, but the minute differences exacted their
toll.  The moisture levels in the air came nowhere near approximating
Arronath’s matching landscapes and the dust levels were easily triple what they
were familiar with.  Adrian had only seen this much free dust in the
southernmost lands where he’d campaigned against the wild Taur tribes.  Of them
all, the Taurs alone were at ease in this kingdom.

And pollen.  Never before in any campaign had Adrian
been bedeviled by such a crippling element.  The floating dust in the summer
heat already caught in the throat.  Worse, several of the local inland weeds
shed their spoors in continuous bursts of reproductive clouds.  Spoors that, it
turned out, instigated severe allergic reactions in nearly one man in twenty. 
No Tullainians suffered from the affliction and at first there had been much
concern that the locals were slowly poisoning the soldiers.  Adrian’s army
chirurgeons spent time ill-afforded in study before finally declaring the alien
weeds to be their culprit, an assailant that required prolonged exposure before
finally overwhelming its victim.

Which meant, Adrian knew with a gnashing of teeth,
that even if they isolated themselves in a cave this very moment, any number of
his men could fall sick without warning for weeks yet.

Combine that with the bouts of illness sweeping
different regiments as a foreign fever wrecked havoc on his timetables, and the
general decided they might be lucky to finish Tullainia’s conquest this year if
nothing else went awry.

As it most assuredly would, given his luck as of
late.  Nothing progressed correctly.  Jide had found him nothing he could use. 
He had returned to studying the Traders Tongue.  Mendell and Harbon were the
least of his troubles but one did not leave a rotting apple in the barrel.  The
fruit’s decay would speedily spread until the farmer found naught but brown
mush and an overpowering smell of decomposition.

He had reined them in.  Let Jide disagree.  Adrian
refused to allow them their head any longer.  Bureaucratic games of politics
were the plaything of the court and its creatures.  They had no place in his
army.  So what if he could not prove what he knew for truth?  Those two had
violated every law of Taur conduct, had slaughtered Tullainians with nary a
care for the rights of bonded citizens living under Arronathian law.  This was
still his army, and he could see to it that they were stripped of the authority
to abuse their power.

Let them wander around Kallied, disconsolate colonels
without a command.  As long as they were within his sight, Adrian could put
them aside in his mind to concentrate on other matters.

“Has Darshield reported yet?” he barked at the mass
shadowing him.

“She has, sir.”

Adrian waited while he strode down the hallway,
realizing it was
this
aide.  Why had he not yet sent this one further
away than the aide who’d just left?  “Well?” he demanded, irritated by the
man’s refusal to deliver intelligence until his existence had been
acknowledged.

“She reports no progress as of yet, except to say she
has become certain a local is the cause.”

“I want
news
, man!  Inform her of that the next
time she returns!”

The aide paused, whether in hesitation or to gather
his oblivious thoughts Adrian could not determine since the man strode behind
him, and he did not care in any event.  “The deaths have become too regular to
be coincidental.  She reasons that no spy would have the knowledge to move
around with the ease this rebel apparently can, so the killer must be a local
Tullainian resident.”

Adrian rounded on his aides.  “How many days has it
taken her to reach such a conclusion?  How much time did she require to realize
a sudden outbreak of lethal altercations between our Kallied watch soldiers was
merely stage dressing to conceal their assassination?  These rebels can use our
weapons all they want, but I want her to put a stop to this without delay!” he
shouted, jabbing one finger into his palm for emphasis.  The sheer amount of
wasted effort to reach a conclusion obvious to him grated on his nerves as
sandpaper on raw flesh.

At a loss, the aide fumbled with a lame, “She wanted
your approval before shifting watches around.”

“I told her to remedy this unacceptable situation. 
You
tell her that if she wants high-level approval for every step necessary, then I
will assign another to the task.”

“Is this the reason I have been called back, general
sir?”

Adrian whirled back in the direction he had been
walking, finding the owner of the new, soft-spoken voice.  Colonel Harbon,
fresh from the field.

“Would you care to explain why it has taken so long
for you to follow orders?”

Harbon stiffened in his tooled boots.  “I rode as soon
as your orders were delivered,
sir
.  The ride from the southwestern
corners of the line is a long one,
sir
.  I attend to you upon the very
hour of my arrival.”

“Ah yes, your beloved trees, as I recall.  They will
have to manage without you.  Report to the dispatch office to receive your new
orders.”

“You are reassigning me?”  Harbon looked angry.  “I
demand to know why!”

“Go to dispatch or you will be assuming command over
dredging the cesspit!” Adrian shouted, in no mood to put up with Harbon.  He
ignored the rage seething under the colonel’s surface, leaving the man behind
as he stalked down the hall. 
Reassignment is the least of what you will
suffer, you vile creature!

The general continued hurling questions at his aides
during the walk, going nowhere, moving about to vent his frustrations and make
his presence felt.  In one courtyard he found several Tullainians under guard,
moving in the sunlight to exercise during the few moments allowed to them.

“Are those the political prisoners?”

“No, sir,” answered a different aide.  He did not wait
for Adrian to ask the next question.  “Those are the remaining citizens
detained for the initial questioning upon our arrival.”

“The merchants?”

“A few, and a magistrate, I understand.  Also the
prophet we brought to Kallied.”

“The madman?  Where?”  Before the aides could point
him out, Adrian found the wretch.  “I see him, crouched in the shade.”

Indeed, with the sun high, the only shade to be had in
this courtyard lay in the farthest corner where the walls’ angle cast a
triangle of darkness hardly four feet to a side.  Huddled in a ball therein sat
the madman Adrian had hoped would provide him with clues to solving the mystery
his king had set him.  A far cry from what the general had envisioned at
hearing of a wanderer prophesizing the future; the only aspect that fit
Adrian’s mental picture was the man’s dubious sanity.

The madman wore a finely cut pair of gentleman’s
pantaloons, lovingly cared for, but shunned any sort of tunic or shirt.  He
wore fisherman’s sandals with stained hemp cords running between his great and
second toe.  Every morning he would throw a fit until provided a razor,
whereupon he would carefully shave off his mustache, eyebrows and side beards,
yet left his chin and throat a tangled mass of bird’s nest.  His hair was
groomed to do the most vain narcissist proud, and he attacked everything from a
guard to the errant wind that dared to muss it.

Adrian’s hopes for garnering information on the dark
threat menacing his lands were dashed after a morning spent with the wanderer,
his words translated from Tullainian to Traders to Arronathian.  He would
answer no questions, apparently unable to speak on any issues other than those
that plagued his mind.  This madman spoke not in the vague, metaphoric images
of the king’s seers nor in the obscure prose of prophets Adrian had never
believed in.  Instead he would calmly explain to whoever lay nearby that the
trees meant to take over the world and would crush mankind beneath their
roots.  That demonic creatures would be born of the trees who would then be
sent forth into the open lands to devour them all.

At first Adrian took interest in his descriptions of
these supposed demons.  He quickly lost any faith that the man’s ravings might
contain kernels of hidden truth.  A man who attacked the wind and held advanced
discussions with crows perched atop walls was a man in whom sanity had long
since broken.  The time invested in this madman could have gone to unearthing
new leads.

“Why are they still held?” he demanded.

“There was concern that they might still retain
information useful to us relating to local political infrastructures.”

Adrian grimaced.  “We extracted all there is to be
had.  Any further questions can be answered by the high-lord we have in
custody.  Send them out to be instructed and placed back into local society.”

“What about the madman?”

The general paused from his sharp departure.  “He will
do himself injury if left on his own.  Find a citizen to look after him.  Pay
them the nursing fees we pay those who tend our injured soldiers.”

That accomplished, Adrian swept off with his covey,
demanding the latest updates on the cesspit, wanting to know if any new
developments had occurred in its fetid depths, and inquiring after similar
operations at other towns under their rule across Tullainia.

*        *        *        *        *

In a paralysis of total incomprehension, Marik watched
Hilliard rock backward, slipping through Dietrik’s fingers while still tilting
sideways from Kerwin’s blow.  Sound drained from the world.  The scene played
before Marik’s eyes in absolute silence.  Pain twisted Hilliard’s features into
a leper’s mask of disfigurement.