The Redemption of Althalus (63 page)

“You didn’t invent war, Sergeant,” Dweia told him, her face pensive. “Can you see well enough from this height?”

Khalor looked down at the burning fields below. “Let’s go a little farther north before we drop down a bit,” he suggested. “There are probably things going on down there that I’d rather not see in too much detail.”

“Truly,” she agreed.

There was no sense of movement in the tower, but the view from the south window was constantly changing.

“Could we go a little lower here, ma’am?” Khalor asked Dweia. “I’d like to get a closer look at those soldiers.”

“Of course, Sergeant.”

Althalus joined them at the window.

“Their infantry units seem to be mostly Kwerons and Regwos,” Khalor observed. “I see a few Kagwhers, but not too many.”

“What about those horsemen?” Althalus asked him.

“They’re mostly cattlemen from the borderland between Perquaine and Regwos,” Khalor replied. “They ride horses well enough, but I’d hardly call them cavalry of the first order. Kreuter’s Plakands won’t have much trouble with them. There
are
some people mixed up with the rest of them that I can’t really identify, though. Who are the ones in that black armor who seem to be giving the orders?”

“Those are Nekweros, Sergeant,” Dweia replied. “Ghend likes to have his own officers in charge of the mercenaries.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Nekweros before.”

“You’ve been lucky, then.”

“Do they paint their armor to make it black like that?”

“Not really. It has to do with the way it’s forged—and the place
where
it’s forged. Those particular people aren’t entirely human, Sergeant, and their armor’s not so much to protect them as it is to hide their real appearance. You don’t really want to see them.”

Eliar and Gher came up the stairs from the dining room to join them in the tower. “The ladies are talking about clothes again,” Gher reported, “and Bheid and Salkan are talking about sheep. Eliar and I didn’t find anything exciting about what any of them were saying, so we came up here to see how the war was going.”

“What’s my Chief doing?” Khalor asked

“The same thing he’s been doing for the past few days, Sergeant,” Eliar replied. “He’s sitting there looking at Lady Astarell.” Then Eliar blinked and put his hand to the hilt of the Knife. “Is that Treborea down there?” he asked, coming to the window.

“Yes,” Althalus replied. “Your Sergeant wanted to have a look at the enemy troops.”

“Ghend’s down there somewhere!” Eliar said sharply. “The Knife almost jumped out from under my belt just now.”

“Can you locate him?” Khalor demanded.

“That burned-out village off to the east, I think.”

The ground blurred beneath them slightly, and Althalus felt a slight giddiness as his eyes told him that he was moving and the rest of his body insisted that he wasn’t.

“There he is,” Eliar whispered, pointing at two figures standing near the still-smoldering remains of a peasant house.

“Who’s that with him?” Khalor asked quietly.

“Argan,” Dweia replied shortly.

“The defrocked priest?” Eliar asked.

“Yes. Ghend doesn’t really like Argan very much. Argan’s overly civilized, and when you get to the bottom of things, Ghend’s a barbarian. Argan’s also ambitious, and he seems to believe that his blond hair is a sign of some sort of racial superiority. That’s what got him expelled from the priesthood.”

“I need to hear them, ma’am,” Khalor said urgently.

She nodded, and Ghend’s voice became audible. “I don’t care
how
you find them, Argan,” he snarled, “but get to them and tell them to order their soldiers to stop burning the fields. They’ll starve my army if they don’t quit.”

“Didn’t the notion of bringing supplies along ever occur to Gelta and the other mercenaries?” Argan asked.

“They’re primitives, and primitives graze off the land like cattle.”

“Gelta
does
rather resemble a cow, doesn’t she?” Argan noted. “And she even smells like one. I’ll go order Smeugor and Tauri to stop the burning, but I don’t think it’ll do much good.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You really ought to pay more attention to the hired help, old boy. You wasted a lot of good gold on those two. They have titles, but no real authority. Their army commanders are the ones making the decisions.”

“Then order them to get off their backsides and take personal command. I want those fires stopped.”

“I’ll tell them what you said, old boy—if you think it’s going to do any good. I think you’re wrong, but that’s between you and the master, isn’t it?”

“Are you keeping in touch with Yakhag?” Ghend demanded.

“Naturally, old boy. I’ve got him well trained. Yakhag doesn’t scratch his nose without my permission.”

“Tell him to keep a tight leash on the Nekweros. I
don’t
want Althalus finding out about them until much later.”

“I
do
know what I’m doing, Ghend.”

“Are you making any progress in Osthos?”

“Some.
Our
brand of religion has a certain appeal among assorted aristocrats. The word ‘humility’ doesn’t sit too well with the highborn, and that works out quite well for us.”

“Stay on top of those fools, Argan,” Ghend told him, “but go wake up Smeugor and Tauri first.”

“At once, great leader,” Argan replied with a mocking bow.

“Is there some way that we can kill Argan before he has a chance to meet with Smeugor and Tauri?” Khalor asked Dweia.

“No, Sergeant. Argan has some other things to do farther on down the line, so let’s keep him alive.”

“We’ve
got
to prevent that meeting,” Khalor insisted. “If those two turncoats take personal command, the fires are going to go out, and it’s the lack of food that’s holding back the invaders.”

“Excuse me,” Gher said tentatively.

“Go ahead, boy,” Khalor said.

“Why not just keep Smeugor and what’s-his-name in some room here in the House? That priest fellow couldn’t get near them, could he?”

“It’s a thought, Khalor,” Althalus said.

“Indeed it is, but I’m not sure exactly how we’d explain it to Wendan and Gelun.”

“Why not just tell everybody that the Argan fellow’s a hired killer?” Gher suggested. “Sort of tell them that burning all the wheat fields is making Gelta real mad, and she’s paid Argan to find Smeugor and what’s-his-name and cut their throats. That’d scare those two right out of their shoes, and they’d start looking for someplace to hide. Then we find some real strong fort, you see—way up on top of some hill. Then we tell them they’ll be safe there—lots of guards around to keep Argan from getting to them and all that. But even though they
think
they’re in that fort, they really aren’t. They’re here in the House instead. The guards are going to think that Argan’s trying to get in so that he can kill them, so they’ll be on the lookout for him—and
he’s
going to think that they’re hiding in the fort to keep Ghend from killing them for burning all that wheat and stuff. Wouldn’t that sort of work?”

“Since you won’t sell this boy to me, Althalus, what if I adopt him instead?” Khalor said just a bit plaintively.

“No, Sergeant,” Dweia said, gathering Gher in her arms possessively. “He’s
mine,
and he’s going to
stay
mine.”

“Did I do good, Emmy?” Gher asked her.

“You did just fine, Gher,” she assured him, nestling her cheek against his tousled hair.

“
Let
him,” Gelun said flatly. “I’ll even lend him my knife if he wants to kill them
that
much.”

“Not right in the middle of a war, Gelun,” the tall Captain Wendan objected. “Everything’d get all tangled up in arguments about succession. I’ll grant you that our clansmen would be a lot happier without Smeugor and Tauri, but we can attend to that
after
the war.”

“Am I starting to hear rumblings of mutiny here?” Althalus asked slyly.

“Rumble-rumble-rumble,” Gelun said sourly. “Satisfied? But Wendan’s right. Much as I’d like to attend a couple of state funerals right now, this isn’t the time or the place.”

“Khalor’s located a safe place for your Chieftains, gentlemen,” Althalus told them. “It’s an old abandoned fortress that dates back several hundred years. There’s always been trouble along this frontier, so there are lots of fortified ruins around. This particular one’s fairly intimidating, so a company of guards ought to be able to keep the hired killer out. You might have to repair the roof a bit, but otherwise it’s not too bad.”

“With stout walls and a lot of guards about, it’s almost like a prison, isn’t it?” Wendan mused. “It’ll
seem
to be a place designed to keep the assassin
out,
but it might really be a place to keep Smeugor and Tauri
in.
”

“And maybe we could sort of forget where we put them when the time comes for us to go home,” Gelun added.

“My memory for details
has
been slipping a little here lately,” Wendan said with a slight smirk.

“That’s to be expected, Captain Wendan,” Althalus said. “You’ve got a lot on your mind right now. Keep those welcoming fires burning, gentlemen. After the invaders have eaten all their horses, they’ll probably start on their shoes, and barefoot men don’t march very fast. Circulate that drawing of the assassin so that all your men know what he looks like. If you should get lucky and kill him, though, I don’t know that you’d need to tell Smeugor and Tauri about it.”

“They’re important men with important things on their minds, Althalus,” Wendan said piously. “We wouldn’t
dream
of bothering them with picky little details like that.”

“You’re the very soul of courtesy, Captain Wendan,” Althalus said with an extravagant bow. “I’ll keep in touch, gentlemen. You have a nice war now, you hear?”

“They’re starting to get a little desperate,” Sergeant Khalor observed from his post at the south window of the tower. “There’s nothing to eat out in the countryside. If they don’t take a city—soon—they’ll starve to death. I think we’d better get Laiwon and his clan inside the walls of Kadon. See to it, Eliar.”

“Yes, my Sergeant,” Eliar replied with a smart salute.

“I’ll go with him,” Althalus said. “Chief Laiwon and Duke Olkar look at the world differently, and there might be a little friction between them.”

“A
little
?” Andine murmured. “I don’t think Laiwon has the faintest notion of the meaning of the word ‘diplomacy,’ does he?”

“He
is
a bit blunt,” Khalor conceded.

“I’ll keep him in line,” Althalus assured them. “Let’s go get him, Eliar.”

“Right,” the young man agreed. “His clan’s in the southwest wing of the House.”

“How are you and Andine getting along?” Althalus asked his young friend as they went down the stairs.

Eliar rolled his eyes upward. “Remember how I used to be hungry all the time?”

Althalus laughed. “Oh, yes. I was almost afraid to take you into a forest, because I was sure that if I happened to doze off, I’d wake up and find that you’d eaten most of the trees.”

“I wasn’t quite
that
bad,” Eliar objected.

“You were close,” Althalus disagreed.

“Andine’s pretty much cured me of that. Sometimes just the sight of food makes me sick. Every time I turn around, it seems, she’s standing there with food in her hand, ready to poke it in my mouth.”

“She loves you, Eliar,” Althalus said, “and in the minds of some women—and all birds—food is love.”

“Maybe, but sometimes I wish she’d find some other way to demonstrate her affection.”

“I’m almost sure she will, Eliar, but Dweia’s sort of keeping a lid on that for the time being. I think that when that lid comes off, you’d better watch out.”

Eliar’s face turned red. “Do you suppose we could talk about something else?” he asked.

“Of course, Eliar,” Althalus replied with an amused look. “The weather, maybe?”

They went along the dim hallway toward the southwest wing of the House and found Laiwon’s clan plodding along the corridor with that now-familiar vacant look on their faces. “They believe they’re in the foothills of southern Kagwher,” Eliar quietly told Althalus. “Emmy told me when we first started this how to get people’s minds ready before I jump them from one place to another. I’m not sure how she does it, but when I tell them that something’s already happened, she fixes it so that they remember it as if they’d actually lived through it. She made a big fuss about the names of places. She told me to always say the name. As soon as I do that, they see it, and they remember walking for a month or two to get there.”

“I had a feeling it might be something like that. So she really came down hard on the point of saying the names of places, eh?”

“She went on and on about it. I guess that if I don’t say the name of the place, the people I’m taking there won’t even see it.”

“Words are very important to the Gods, I guess. Isn’t that Laiwon’s clan up ahead?”

Eliar peered down the corridor. “They’ve got Laiwon’s plaid on their kilts, right enough. You’ve got to be a little careful about that. Laiwon’s pattern’s very close to Twengor’s, and we probably wouldn’t want to make a mistake and put Twengor inside the walls of Kadon.”

“You’ve got that right,” Althalus agreed. “Sergeant Khalor’d jump all over you, and Dweia would probably talk to
me
about it for months on end.”

They were intercepted by kilted clansmen not long after that, and after a brief discussion, they were taken to Chief Laiwon. “What are
you
doing here, Chamberlain Althalus?” Laiwon demanded.

“Looking for you, actually,” Althalus replied.

“We’ve found you now, though,” Eliar stepped in rather quickly. “You made better time than we thought you would. The city of Kadon’s just over that next hill, and since you’re the closest to it, Sergeant Khalor wants you to reinforce the garrison there. The invaders are just a couple of days away, and they’re certain to lay siege to the place. Did you encounter any trouble on your way here from Kagwher?”

“Nothing significant,” Laiwon replied with a shrug. “The Kanthons seem to be concentrating on their invasion. We sort of tiptoed through their territory. How’s the war going? I’ve been a bit out of touch.”