Bazil Broketail (11 page)

Damn witches!

“Alas,” murmured Lessis, in apparent total agreement. “It is true that the Sisters of my office bring bad news most often, when they bring news at all. It is our task to discover the plots of our enemies before they can be hatched. Thus do a small number of us keep vast forces of the enemy ineffective, even inert. Through intelligence operations we are able to nip many an enemy thrust in the bud.”

“Or so it is claimed,” said Burly. “But these claims are difficult to substantiate in every case.”

“Inevitably. The Sisters of the office work far from the safety of any desk where proofs might be manufactured. But would you have us cease to operate? Would you feel safer, Burly of Marneri, if the Sisters went not forth into the secret places of the enemy to seek out the evils hatching in those terrible shadows?”

“Bah, of course not,” grumbled Burly with a dismissive gesture.

“No, of course not,” murmured Lessis. Then her tone shifted to something sharper, which demanded their deepest attention.

“Listen to me, listen well, for I have recently returned from a major operation that we conducted in the depths of the subworld beneath the city of the skull, Tummuz Orgmeen.”

Horrified dread rose in everyone’s heart at that name, and they swallowed and stared back at her.

“In that hell upon the world, there are several hundred captive women. They are confined in grim holding pens, twenty to a cell, bearing imp after imp, until death releases them.”

There were visible shudders.

“How have so many been taken?” said General Kesepton.

Lessis shrugged sadly and seemed to convey the sadness of an entire world.

“Many have been bought from the Teetol, taken as captives from the frontier colonies. Others, sadly, were bought from the south, from Ourdh.”

“As before,” rasped Ewilra, “the Ourdhi sell their own women to the enemy. They are an ancient people with cruel, inhuman ways. They sell their own mothers to the enemy for a few pieces of gold and silver.”

Lessis refrained from comment. The problems in the ancient Empire of Ourdh were many and most resistant to solution. Lessis was always thankful that she was not attached to the effort made in Ourdh by the Office of Unusual Insight, the super secret service that Lessis actually worked for. The work in Ourdh was thankless in so many ways, for it dealt only with people, and the Ourdhi masses were quite intractable. Through countless aeons they had endured. Dynasties rising and falling endlessly down the centuries. This had bred a certain eccentric warp to their societies. Their cynicism and fatalism were extreme, their love of cruelty seemed bizarre to travelers from the other parts of the world. It was common for men in the villages to sell children to wealthy city folk who used them as they wished. The practice of eating the family pet, at least once a year, was widespread. The most popular sport among the poorest was rat fighting.

The tide of muttering concerning the Ourdhi subsided. Lessis spoke up again.

“In the cellars of Tummuz Orgmeen, the Blunt Doom is raising a great army of imps. It has also recruited a legion of fell men, renegades of the most evil spirit, who will happily do its work in subjugating and destroying other men. There are also many trolls, more in one place than I have ever seen before. I would expect the armies of the Blunt Doom to number twenty thousand full-grown imps by the spring. There will be more than two thousand trolls and many other monsters. The Blunt Doom has been experimenting with the codes of life. New horrors fill the vaults.”

They stared at her. Appalled. These names were writ in blood in an ancient book, one that these fair folk had not seen in their generation. These were horrors from the elder days, which had been held away from the Argonath for a hundred years by the power of the legions.

“Twenty thousand? Did I hear you correctly?” said Burly finally, in a voice reduced to a croak.

“Yes, and it may be an underestimate. We have no reports from further into the Hazog.”

“They will overwhelm us,” exclaimed Kesepton. “Our half-starved men will be swept aside.”

Ewilra licked her lips nervously. “How can we be sure? How can we know that their force will be that large?”

“We have managed to penetrate the underworld of the enemy. Tummuz Orgmeen depends on the labor of an army of slaves, many of them older women beyond child-bearing age. We have a few willing agents among them— to the last one they hate their masters. So these are not estimates, these are head counts from the bearing pens.”

Ewilra blanched.

Hektor leaned forward. “This is grievous news indeed, Lessis. Where do you think the blow will fall?”

“Towards Kenor will the main assault come. They will first seek to force the Argo Valley and reoccupy Dugguth.”

“We must be ready for them,” said Kesepton.

“We must. But this will be the feint, for some five thousand imps will be pushed across the Oon and up the valley of the Lis to attack Fort Teot. When we respond, which they expect us to do with all the forces we have left along the Lis, the treacherous Teetol will raid in towards Fort Picon and seize as many as a thousand women from the new colonies.”

There was a stunned silence.

“And it would work too!” said Hektor. “We would have been forced to concentrate much of our strength in the Argo Valley. Then when the second army marched on Fort Teot, we would have been forced to commit the brigades from Fort Picon. Necessarily Picon would be shorthanded as a result. If the Teetol came in after that they could not be resisted, and they could come quickly, because it is less than two days march to the villages of the Teetol from Fort Picon. In contrast it would take at least three days for fresh units to reach Picon over the High Pass. If there were any fresh units available. Most of our strength in the Malgund forts would have already been ordered out and committed to the defense of the Argo.”

“Hektor is right,” said Kesepton. “And in addition we should remember that it would take as much as eight or nine days before any sizable relief force could be sent to aid Kenor. As it is, Kenor has the bulk of the active legions present at any one time.”

“I have always said that it was a mistake to colonize Kenor,” said Ewilra in a deathly tone.

Lessis grew mildly impatient at this. In a gentle tone she remonstrated. “Now Ewilra, that’s so silly of you to say. It is the mission of the cities of the Ennead to oppose the enemy. We cannot shrink from the task, for the enemy will only grow more powerful if we do and eventually become irresistible.”

“We can withdraw all women from the frontier again!” snapped Ewilra.

Lessis agreed, reluctantly. “We may yet have to do that. Kenor is vulnerable, especially to treachery from the Teetol.”

Abbess Plesenta broke in with another complaint. “Long ago the legions should have purged the Teetol. They have betrayed our trust again and again. Now the tribes contemplate this fresh treachery. I say the legions must act against the Teetol.”

“then they will have to be paid!” said General Kesepton hotly.

“There can never be enough to satisfy you!” replied Plesenta.

Lessis turned to Plesenta. “My dear Abbess, all this will be extremely expensive whichever way it goes, no matter what we decide at this meeting. If we do nothing for instance, and the Blunt Doom succeeds in seizing a thousand more women, then we will have to face an army of twelve thousand fresh imps within the year. The cost of that I hardly need go into, I’m sure.”

Nonplussed, Plesenta stared at Lessis.

As usual Ewilra sought to place all the blame on Ourdh.

“This is catastrophic news. How many women are they buying in Ourdh? How can the Ourdhi not see that this is the doom of everything if they sell our enemy his most powerful weapon, the power to bring imps and fell fruit to term?”

Lessis shrugged sadly. In Ourdh the ancient ways of extreme patriarchy had continued from early times.

“They buy what they can from Ourdh, and they will seize many mothers and daughters from the farms of Kenor, if this deadly plan is allowed to take fruit.”

“It must be stopped,” Plesenta said with fervor.

“Yes, Plesenta, it must. But it will take all our strength and ingenuity.”

“Knowing their plan is the best weapon of all,” said Besita, still showing a naked admiration for Lessis that brought stares from Plesenta and Ewilra.

Lessis smiled at the princess.

“We will prepare defenses in the Argo,” said Kesepton, “and then catch their smaller force and destroy it to the last imp.”

“Or we might set the field of battle to our advantage and take the larger force in the Argo and destroy that,” said Hector.

Lessis nodded; Kesepton and Hector’s instincts were in the familiar direction of the legions. Theirs was the way with the sword, the decisive battle, the big campaign.

The Sisters of the Office of Unusual Insight, on the other hand, believed in preventive action wherever possible.

“Indeed, if we have to accept battle. Generals Hektor and Kesepton are right, we will have to set the field of battle to our advantage. On the other hand, we have the winter months to act in. What if we move suddenly on the Teetol in midwinter to take Wishing Blood, and probably Death Whisper and Red Hands too. They are all in the lodges of Elgoma, the high chief of the Northern Teetol.”

Hector grunted in admiration. Kesepton nodded.

“It makes sense, though we will have to field a well-fed legion. Kenor in midwinter is a harsh land.”

Plesenta was nodding to herself. Once again she was amazed. How did the Sisters know anything of what went on in the harsh, isolated, male-dominated world of the Teetol tribes? It was true what they said; the Grey Sisters had ears everywhere, their eyes saw everything. Breathe a word and they would know it.

Plesenta wondered idly which of the others on the council was the secret spy for the Office of Unusual Insight, the super secret power that worked within and without the greater Office of Insight itself.

Who could it be? Long ago she had thought it to be Flavia of the Novitiate. Then her focus had shifted to Glanwys, the chief of the police function within the realm of Marneri. But for Glanwys to be a spy broke with precedent and was far too clumsy. So suspicion had shifted to the generals. Hektor was a hothead, Kesepton too cautious at times. Plesenta could not make up her mind as to which would be the choice for such an informant.

“An expeditionary force of three brigades, given winter conditioning and training, must be assembled,” said Lessis. “It will move against the Teetol when they are in the lodges in midwinter. They break the treaties they have with us. They must be made to see that this will cost them dearly.”

“Three brigades! Too much, surely?” said Ewilra, determined to prevent any further taxation being levied on the farmers and estates of Marneri.

“Three brigades is an essential minimum. We should properly send two full legions. But I realize how expensive it would be. Still the Teetol need to be taught a sharp, bitter lesson. We will fight in winter if we have to—they cannot.”

“Where will we find three brigades that we can spare?” said Kesepton.

“There is the New Legion, now being raised here. Take the best two brigades from that and bring down a brigade from the Blue Hills to stiffen them. I believe Marneri has the famous Fourteenth Brigade in winter quarters in the hills. Activate them. That way there will be no warning from movements along the frontier where the enemy has so many spies.”

“The New Legion was not to move from Marneri until next summer,” wailed Burly. “It will cost thousands of crowns, thousands we have not budgeted for, if it is to go so soon.”

“That is understood. But the alternative is to have the Teetol attack us next summer with Wishing Blood at their head, rather than in a jail cell at Fort Picon. Without him the unity among the northern Teetol tribes is fragile. The Shugga Teetol have good reason to rethink their commitment to fresh war on the front with Fort Picon there.”

“We can destroy the lands of the Shugga in a single summer if we have to,” said Kesepton.

“Exactly, and without Wishing Blood to bind them they will not march on Picon at the behest of any ambassadors of the Blunt Doom.”

“The Doom takes the women of the Teetol, too.”

Lessis nodded gravely. “The Teetol are a complex people. Their history is writ in tragedy. But if we strike at them this winter and do enough damage, and take Wishing Blood, then we can prevent their attack next summer.”

“In which case, what will the enemy do?” said Hector.

“We can only hazard educated guesses. The Doom may throw his entire army at us in one force. It will be more than twenty-five thousand strong with two thousand trolls.”

Kesepton responded quietly. “By next summer we will have sixteen thousand men and a thousand dragons in the field.”

“And so it will be a very close thing. This will be the battle of our era, and upon its outcome will hang everything that has been wrought here in the Argonath in two hundred years of sweat and blood.”

“Thus we must be certain that we take the field when we have every advantage available from the terrain. Should we close with the enemy and suffer a defeat, the consequences would be devastating. The enemy might seize thousands of women, and with them produce a vast host of imps with which to assault all the cities of the Argonath shore. Once more Marneri could be ringed round with the hordes of the enemy.”

Plesenta stared at Lessis. Defeat in Kenor, hundreds of miles away, would lead to the doom of the cities? The abbess didn’t want to believe that. She refused the thought.

“Impossible,” she snapped. “The legions will hold them—they must.”

Lessis shook her head gravely. “At present the Argonath keeps eleven legions, of which six are inactive. Three patrol the frontier in Kenor, one is stationed at Kadein to guard the southlands, and the other is broken into brigades that shuttle around the cities and other postings all over the Argonath. It would take a month or more for the cities to put the inactive legions into combat shape. It would take them several months to get to Kenor. What would happen if we lost two or three of the frontier forces, or had them damaged so badly they could not contemplate further action for months? We would be left with a few brigades scattered among the cities until we could ship up the legion from Kadein. In that time, the enemy could do anything it wanted. We must remember this; our enemy can accept terrible defeats. It always comes back. We cannot accept defeat—for us it would be annihilation.”