Betrayals (58 page)

Naran was extremely pleased by Tamma’s comment, but not nearly as pleased as Jovvi and the others to have their dilemma solved. They also took a moment to speak to Pagin Holter and his group, who were eager to get more experience with their own Blending entity. The two Blendings would be stationed on either side of the rest of the fighting group, hopefully doing their best to save their peoples’ lives.

And they had just enough time to set themselves before the riders came storming through the camp. Everyone was ready and properly linked, not to mention expecting the terror tactics the guardsmen had hoped to rout them with. The element of surprise was turned in the other direction, especially when shallow trenches opened in the earth in front of the leading line of horsemen. The horses stumbled and many of the riders were pitched off, and then the following riders blasted into them before it was possible to slow or stop. Link-group battles were already taking place, and the murdered landscape all around echoed to a renewal of what had killed it in the first place.

The entity hovered in front of its flesh forms, fully determined to keep all harm from them. Some of the enemy jumped their horses over the tangle of men and beasts and continued to come on at top speed, but little good it did them. The men disappeared in a flare of intense brightness, and the now riderless horses were easily turned aside. After the initial attack, most of the enemy concentrated its efforts in the entity’s direction, but again to no avail. The entity’s allies struck hard again and again, and soon there were very few left of the two hundred men who had attacked.

Then there were none left, none but the trembling officers who were their captives, some of whom had tried to attack at the same time as the guardsmen. That particular treachery had been expected, and those who tried found that they weren’t killed out of hand as the guardsmen were. They were struck unconscious instead, so that their punishment could be decided on and meted out at leisure by those they’d wronged. Death would be too merciful, their former captives had decided, and the entity’s flesh forms would make no effort to disagree.

With all enemies in sight either down or gone, the entity made a quick check to see if any of them had refrained from joining the attack in order to fall upon them later, when they considered the battle over and won. But that hadn’t been done, which meant the danger was completely over. The entity sent a greeting to its brother Isister entity on the opposite side of camp, received an answering greeting, and then Jovvi had dissolved the Blending.

Some of their own people had been hurt a bit during the fight, people who had started out too badly starved or beaten to begin with. Jovvi took a link-group of Spirit magic users to help Lorand and his own link-group of Earth magic users, and they began to soothe and heal their wounded. Happily there weren’t that many of them, and they had just finished up when a rider came galloping into camp from the opposite direction from which the guardsmen had attacked.

The man wore a uniform with small collar tabs and looked as sweaty and foam-covered as his horse, and he didn’t seem to notice the remains of the battle so recently over. That no link-group had stopped him meant they knew—or suspected—how terrified the man was, and realized they all needed to know what had frightened him. As he pulled his horse to a dirt-scattering stop near the former officers and leaders of the section and half fell to the ground, Jovvi and the others moved closer to hear what he would say.

“Lord General… forgive me for … taking so long,” the man panted out, trying to speak and gasp for breath at the same time. “You must… gather your forces and … leave here at once, or … the section will surely … be overrun. All the rest of… our army in … their path has been … destroyed. They’re so strong … and there are so … many of them …”

“How many?” Valiant asked, and the newcomer’s head snapped around to stare at him. “Don’t talk to the leech, man, talk to me. The leech won’t be runnin’ this section again, not in this lifetime. Tell me who’s comin’, how many there are of them, and about how strong you think they are.”

“ The… the ones coming are the army Astinda put together to resist us,” the man replied haltingly, uncertain about speaking to a stranger but needing to get his warning delivered. “I’ve never felt such strength or seen such utter destruction, and they’re coming so fast… I saw one section try to surrender, but they didn’t even answer. They just destroyed them, and continued to come on…”

“You still haven’t given us the most important answers, boy,” Alsin growled as he stepped forward. “How many of them are there, and how soon do you expect them to be here?”

“I’m not a boy!” the young man flared, then he shook his head once, dismissingly. “As if that matters. There are ten times the number of them than you, and they’re no more than a day’s march away. One of their day’s march, which seems to cover more ground than our own. I think they’re headed for the border, and I don’t think they mean to stop when they reach it.”

At that point there wasn’t a sound to be heard anywhere, not in the midst of all the shock that Jovvi could feel in everyone’s mind. Having the empire invaded in retaliation for the invading the empire’s forces had done could be considered only fair, but it wouldn’t be the nobles who paid for their evil. It would be all the innocent people between here and Gan Garee….

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“That can’t possibly be true!” Kambil snapped at the fool standing like a block of stone in front of him. “Everyone dead in the stockade in Quellin, and word from the second command of guardsmen too long overdue? Someone must have made a mistake, and I demand that you go back and find out who that is! We’re being given a false picture here, and how are we supposed to make proper decisions with false information?”

“Excellency, there’s no mistake,” the fool repeated doggedly, just as he’d been doing for the last ten or fifteen minutes. “Do you imagine that I would have brought word like this to you without making very sure it was accurate? Three men serving in the Quellin stockade survived because they were on leave and not close enough to be called back, and one of them had experience with the birds. He reported that everyone but the commandant and one private—the private having been in a cell after being … questioned about something—were dead, and the commandant’s mind was gone. The private insisted that he was unconscious during whatever happened, and so knows nothing about it. We’re told that that’s very probable.”

“Have him brought here anyway,” Kambil ordered in what was almost a snarl. “When I get finished with him, we’ll know for certain whether or not he’s telling the truth. What about the second guard command?”

“Six of the dozen birds they had left have returned here, but they carried no message,” the man, Lord Falas Grohl, said with a sigh. “We’re forced to believe that they were released accidentally, so for a while it was possible that no message was sent because the command intended to save what birds it had left. Now that’s no longer a possibility, not when three reporting times have passed with no word. If we haven’t heard from them, it’s because they aren’t able to report.”

“Could it be something else in that part of the country which might have…sidetracked or delayed them?” Kambil asked, almost desperate for any sort of reassurance. “We were told that the army is operating not far from there in Astinda, so maybe they became involved …”

“Excellency, I truly wish it were possible,” Lord Falas said stolidly, refusing to offer even the least crumb of hope. “The reports from our army are at least as alarming, screaming for more segments rather than supplying details of their operations. That’s when they communicate at all, which they aren’t doing nearly as often as they’re supposed to. Something is very wrong over there, and I’ve been asked to … request the aid of the Five.”

“Request our aid?” Kambil echoed, finding it hard to believe his ears. “Are you asking us to volunteer as segments, or just to take a pleasure trip over there to rescue an ARMY! Are you people out of your minds, or just a bit retarded?”

“Excellency, this could very well be the crisis your Five is meant to overcome,” Lord Falas said, obviously as thick in the head as in the body, for pressing the point. “Historically, each new Five is called on to face the challenge of crisis, and more than a few people are already saying that yours has come. Even the common folk know there’s some kind of trouble in the west, and they’re also expecting the Five to respond.”

“Are you suggesting that we’re answerable to the city’s rabble?” Kambil asked, stopping the pacing he’d been doing to stare directly at the man. “Or even to you and your friends? We are the Seated Five , and what we do and when we do it is our decision! Is that clear enough so that even you can understand it?”

“Excellency, I’m a very unimportant man,” Lord Falas said, something odd stirring in his stolid gaze. “I’ve often had to pretend otherwise, but in my heart I know the truth. You and the rest of the Five, however, are not unimportant. You are vital to the safety and prosperity of the empire. When the crisis comes the Seated Five must respond, otherwise all of us are lost. We all rely on your courage and ability and judgment, and we know you won’t fail us. There’s nothing else I can say.”

Kambil parted his lips to retort with something sarcastic, but at the last instant realized that the man was speaking the absolute truth as he saw it. Here was someone who believed everything he’d ever been told about the Five and what they were and weren’t supposed to do, and he’d actually made no demands. He’d all but begged for the help of the Five with what he seriously considered a crisis, and because so many people thought the way he did, the man had to be handled carefully.

“What you’ve already said has made a very great impression on us, Lord Falas,” Kambil replied, his tone now as solemn and calm as it should have been all along. “My Blendingmates and I will do some investigating of our own, and then we’ll discuss the matter among ourselves. If this is our crisis, we’ll certainly handle it as promptly and thoroughly as we’re expected to. You’re excused now, but don’t forget to have that private brought here to the palace.”

Falas bowed low to acknowledge the command, then backed out of the room still somewhat bowed over. Everyone waited until the door had closed behind the man, then Bron made a sound of scorn that his expression echoed.

“What a fool!” Bron said with ridicule thick in his voice.

“Talking to us about crises and fairy tales like that! Doesn’t he know that the last three or four Seated Blendings couldn’t possibly have handled any sort of crisis, not when they weren’t even Highs? The whole thing was a mockery to fool the commoners, but it seems to have caught a few members of the nobility as well.”

“Mockery or not, you’re forgetting something,” Kambil said, turning to look at him and Selendi and Homin. “Our predecessors may not have had our strength, but what they did have was the help of a group of Advisors who knew what was going on in the empire, people who were in control of most of it. We don’t have that sort of help, and it may turn out to be more crippling than a lack of aspect strength.”

“Can they possibly be serious about this being a crisis?” Selendi asked with no sign of Bron’s skepticism. “I remember that my tutor talked about the crises faced by the various Fives, and there are actual records of the times. Lots of other people witnessed them, so they couldn’t have been nothing but complete trickery.”

“And if they aren’t, then we have a serious problem,” Homin put in, his expression faintly worried. “That blasted five seems to have headed straight for whatever trouble is brewing in the west, and I would not put it past them to add to it in some way. Or to be responsible for a good deal of it. But I still can’t understand how they could possibly have accounted for two hundred guardsmen.”

“Or an entire garrison in the Quellin stockade,” Bron added, less mocking but still unconvinced. “Weren’t there more than three hundred men there? It’s simply and patently impossible.”

“It’s not impossible if you remember that the segments being held there were dead as well,” Kambil countered. “Chances are good that they’re the ones who accounted for the garrison, working in link-groups. There weren’t enough of them to get away unscathed themselves, but they were all Highs or strong Middles. I’d say they took down most of the garrison before they were taken down themselves, and probably finished it with their dying breaths.”

“But it had to be our fugitives who freed them to do it,” Selendi said with something of a headshake. “They probably wanted to recruit those segments, but had to leave without them when they died. And yet they were able to account for those two hundred guardsmen, and probably with only a handful of Highs from the convoy to help. How did they do it?”

“I’m more concerned with what they intend to do now,” Kambil retorted, a hand in his hair as he tried to think coolly and logically. “Wherever they are they’ll want to make trouble for us, of course, and using the idea of a crisis will come to them eventually if it hasn’t already. That means we can’t give in to any pressure to travel west, no matter who insists on it.”

“I think we’ll have to start some counterstories to the effect that the fugitives are trying to trap us,” Homin said thoughtfully. “If we claim that they want to lure us away to the west in order to overwhelm us with help that they couldn’t bring to the competitions, the pressure should ease off quite a lot. We’ll tell everyone that we refuse to let them steal what they couldn’t win honestly when they faced us.”

“That’s really good,” Bron said with a grin and a nod of approval for Homin. “People call you sullen and uncooperative when you simply refuse to do what they want you to, but if you calmly give them a reason for the refusal that they can’t argue, they call you logically cautious.”

“But we still have to do something about those five people,” Selendi said, no more satisfied than Kambil himself. “They seem to have found a way to get around the orders given under Puredan, and they’ve learned how to defeat large numbers of opponents. If we don’t go to them , they’ll probably end up coming back to us.”