Blood of the Redd Guard - Part Two (7 page)

It could also mean that cooler heads had prevailed and they’d decided to see what Semal had been able to learn before deciding whether they needed to murder such a high profile figure.

Helam needed to strike a blow to the Kopal and push them back into hiding to have a chance at providing Molach with a fresh start. If Helam could bring these traitors to justice in front of Semal’s scribe, she’d be able to tell a convincing story about how Helam wasn’t involved. It wouldn’t be enough to convince Adar, because he’d never be convinced, but it might be enough to convince the other generals and the Rarbon Council members. That would keep Adar at bay for a little longer.

“How far to the house?” Helam asked.

“Less than ten minutes. Five if we run.”

“Will thirty men be enough?”

“There were about twenty but as I said, they don’t have a guard posted. We can take them by surprise.”

“Better make it fifty. Briggs, you have five minutes to gather the men and have them meet us at the gate, will that be a problem?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. After that, I want you to begin marshaling our forces. Do not sound the alarm. Once that is done, take this list of people.” Helam removed the paper from his pocket. “Round them up and execute them. Use Hargash and Mondel for the dirty work. They won’t talk and they’ll obey your orders. I’ll see to the proper paperwork later. I want them all dead by the time I get back. Understand?”

Briggs took the list. “Sir?”

“What is it?

“There are prominent Paroke officers on this list. I’ll have to go into Rarbon city for a couple of these.” Briggs froze when he saw the last name. “Councilman Barrow Hobson?”

“All Kopal. Kill them by the time I get back. Can you do it?”

Briggs swallowed and looked at the list again. “Yes, sir.”

Adar wasn’t sure what time it was when he walked onto the Napael grounds, but he wasn’t tired despite the late hour. He was surprised that he wasn’t more fatigued given that he’d spent the last couple of days traveling. Perhaps it was all that had happened at the Paroke base or maybe it was a combination of that and the possibility that the Rarbon Council may assign his first task in the morning. Whatever the cause, he was glad for the energy boost because he still had a full night ahead of him.

Before returning to the Napael base, Adar had escorted both Nelion and Semal to their respective homes.

On the way, Adar had insisted that they stop at a Rarbon City guard station where he requested guards for both Nelion and Semal. The local captain had been hesitant to give Adar the ten men he’d asked for but Adar had promised to relieve the men within a couple of hours with some of his own. Figuring that Nelion was in the least amount of danger of the two—the assassin had targeted Semal—he’d left three guards with Nelion at her apartment and the rest had been assigned to protect Semal and his home.

When Adar had arrived back at the Napael Inner Wall gate, the first thing he had done was to send ten men over to replace the three city guards he’s assigned to Nelion and twenty over to guard Semal. If the Kopal were going to make a move on either one of them tonight, Adar wanted them both to have more protection than they needed.

The Kopal had proved to be slippery and devious in the past. It was best not to take chances.

While it wasn’t likely to turn anything up, Adar had also summoned Maual and instructed him to take several men and keep watch at the Paroke Inner Wall gate for General Helam and follow him if he left the Paroke base. Maual had looked surprised when he had heard the instruction, but hadn’t said anything about the order. It was likely a waste of time, but given everything that had happened tonight it seemed the prudent thing to do.

Adar had promised Maual that he’d find some men to relieve them in twelve hours but Maual had said that wouldn’t be necessary. Maual had a group in mind for the task that had done this sort of thing before, and they had a system worked out. Adar had been so distracted that he hadn’t even thought to ask Maual what that had meant until after he’d departed. Adar made a mental note to find out more the next time he saw Maual.

As Adar crossed the Napael base, he couldn’t help but compare it with Paroke. In place of what used to be a mountainous refuse pile, several large bins for trash were now emptied every hour. The base was far quieter and lacked the tumult of the tavern.

When he passed the training grounds, he noticed the recruits he’d seen earlier in the evening standing at attention while their sergeant yelled at them. He spotted Landal among the men and noticed that his sword was in the correct position. In the dark and standing at attention, Landal almost looked like a soldier. Give it a few more months and the kid would be able to fight as well.

Several smaller groups of men also sparred a little further out from the recruits. Adar longed to join them because he hadn’t had a good practice session in a couple of days, but he needed to see how much progress Tere had made with the prisoner.

Calling it the dungeon was a bit of a misnomer as it was just a small shack on the far side of the training grounds that didn’t even have a basement. Adar might one day name it something more appropriate, but there were enough other things to do that changing names was at the bottom of his list for now.

There was a crowd of soldiers around the shack and they grew silent when they noticed Adar approaching. One of the soldiers nudged another and he disappeared into the structure. Both Tere and Lucas had come out to meet Adar by the time he had reached them. The looks on their face told him everything he needed to know.

“How?” Adar asked when he met up with them.

“There was foam around his mouth,” Tere said. “Sycanon root.”

“We searched him.” Adar had ordered the man stripped and had all his clothes examined for this very reason. “Did he have a vial hidden under his skin or in a crevice somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.” Tere shook his head and motioned for Adar to move out of earshot of Lucas and the others. “A Lieutenant Briggs from Paroke Army was here earlier, trying to pick him up. He had a warrant. Something about the whole thing was unsettling. What are the chances of both Keen forgetting a poster and then this Briggs fellow showing up the same night we came in with the captive? So I began to dig into it, even before our guy here swallowed the root.”

“You think that the warrant was a plant?” Adar growled, he’d been bothered that Keen hadn’t known about the warrant but he’d written it off to an oversight on the part of Keen. He should have known better. Keen’s memory was well known throughout the officers, which was part of the reason he’d been promoted despite his past.

Tere nodded. “I sent somebody I can trust over to Laor army with a copy of the warrant. If he finds a duplicate, I wasted time and proved I may be paranoid. If he doesn’t, I told him to go to Korew as well just to double check. But that’s not all. Jarren Alfaro has disappeared. His shift doesn’t end until morning. When I asked him a few questions about the warrant he seemed nervous but answered everything to my satisfaction. Within the hour, our prisoner was foaming at the mouth and Jarren wasn’t anywhere to be found.”

“How long ago did you send your man over to Laor?”

“Maybe half an hour.”

“Were you able to start the interrogation?”

“I didn’t get too far with it before I received a messenger that Briggs had showed up.”

“Did Briggs have a chance to talk with--?”

Tere cut him off. “Nope, I made sure that he was kept waiting at the Inner Wall gate. We didn’t even let him onto the base. I had the guards set out a few chairs and he sat there with his men while I started poking around. He left pretty quickly when I told him what had happened.” Tere paused. “Briggs was calm during my interactions with him, but I’m telling you now, he was hiding something.”

“I just got back from the Paroke base,” Adar said, “you’re more right than you know.” He relayed to Tere the events of the night and the precautions he’d taken to keep both Semal and Nelion safe.

Tere was shaking his head by the end of it. “How many times have I said that you should have reported that incident outside the bar with Helam? We wouldn’t be in this mess now if he’d been court-martialed.”

“You already know why.” Adar wished that he’d never told Tere about it. He didn’t regret his decision not to report Helam. It would have been dangerous for Adar to look like a complainer or even worse, a weakling. Even though Adar had been drunk, he didn’t need everybody in Rarbon knowing that Helam had taken advantage of him and given him a scar that covered half his chest.

“I need irrefutable evidence,” Adar said. “Or we’re going to have to handle him ourselves.”

“Hold on.” Tere waved his hands, as if to get Adar’s attention. “I recognize that look in your eyes. Slow down. You’ve already pushed your luck once today by executing those men. If you start thinking about solving this problem with Helam in your usual way, it’s going to end badly. For everybody involved.”

“He made it clear that he will do whatever he can to keep me from becoming Ghar. He said those words to me where others could hear them. That’s something that he’s never done before; it was almost as if I’d pushed him over the edge. But that can’t be right though, I’d just showed up. There is something else going on with him. Perhaps Maual will come back with something useful.”

“Maual?” Tere asked.

Adar kept from frowning as he explained to Tere the assignment he’d given to Maual, he hadn’t intended to tell Tere about that quite yet but he didn’t want Tere to know that he’d been planning to keep it a secret. Adar was too agitated and starting to slip up. He needed to take control of himself.

“Are you serious? You sent Maual to spy on a general. I’m not saying that spying on Helam isn’t a good idea, but to do it so brazenly with a large group of men is asking for trouble.”

Adar didn’t have a response and wasn’t going to waste words defending his actions to Tere, who was right, of course. It was risky but something about the whole situation spelled out the need for urgency. He couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was the way Helam had been acting earlier. Perhaps it was the fact that the Kopal had raised their heads again. He didn’t know.

Tere and Adar both looked over at the sound of boots, two men were heading their way. Before the men reached them, Adar recognized that they were two of the soldiers he’d sent to relieve the guards keeping an eye on Nelion.

“She’s been taken,” said the first as he came to a stop, despite the hard run, his breathing was normal. Adar couldn’t say the same about the other who gasped for breath. “We found two of her guards dead and the other unconscious.”

“Walk with me,” Adar said, motioning for Tere to join him as well. “Where are the others I sent with you?”

“I had two take the wounded man to the healers, two I left at her place, one I sent over to Professor Bray’s, and the others are canvassing her apartment building and the street to see if they could find any witnesses to the event.”

There was little hope that they’d turn up anything useful because of the lateness of the hour.

Adar didn’t respond as he increased his pace and refrained from giving into his urge to run. By the time they reached the Inner Wall gate, Adar had decided what he was going to do.

“I need you to take twenty men…” Adar trailed off as he spoke to the soldier who was in better shape. “No, take double that number. Go to Semal and keep him safe.” He looked at Tere. “Rouse all the men you can without raising the alarm. Have them ready to fight.”

Adar cursed under his breath. They only had five thousand soldiers on base and he wondered if perhaps he should transfer more in from the outposts. It wouldn’t do him much good tonight, but the words he’d spoken to Tere earlier in the evening about the biggest challenges coming from within Rarbon were proving to be true.

He discarded the thought because the outpost encampments were already stretched thin as it was. He should work on recruiting more from within the Rarbon territories. Most of the armies relied on Rarbon and the general recruitment efforts but it wasn’t unheard of for an army to do its own recruiting to bolster its numbers.

Adar glanced over at Tere and realized that he was thinking something that he wasn’t saying because the other soldiers were nearby. Tere was careful to avoid criticism or unasked for advice when others were within earshot. There wasn’t time for such niceties.

“Out with it.”

“You can’t take Helam on alone.” Tere earned a hard glance from one of the soldiers; the other was too busy breathing to notice anything unusual. “If it comes to that. His outposts are undermanned because he keeps more of his soldiers here. He may have close to fifteen thousand soldiers on base.”

“It shouldn’t come to that,” Adar said, hoping that he was right, but knowing it was best to take precautions if he could. The question was how to go about doing that when he still didn’t have any evidence that Helam was behind any of this.

As they approached the gate at the Inner Wall a man passed through at a dead run. When he saw Adar, he headed in their direction. Adar wondered if something had happened to Semal as well, but he didn’t recognize the soldier as one of the men he’d sent to Semal earlier.

“Maual sent me.” The words were out of the soldier’s mouth before he’d even come to a stop. “Helam just left the base with a host of fifty men and we followed them into the city.”

Adar turned to Tere. “How long will it take for you to round me up two hundred soldiers?”

“You still want to avoid raising the alarm?”

Adar frowned. “Yes, for now.”

“I’ll have two hundred of our best ready to go in seven minutes.” Tere took off at a run.

Nelion sat tied to a chair with a hood over her head and was unable to make out anything her captors said because they had moved out of earshot. Their indistinguishable voices made her imagine all sorts of terrible things they were planning to do to get her to talk. She stifled a snort because she didn’t know much that would be of use to them. Once they figured that out, she’d be out of time.