Great Kings' War (21 page)

He'd been both impressed by Clynia's quick memory and her insistence on being given half the silver in advance, but then he hadn't been looking for a common whore when he'd found her. He'd been on the look out for someone intelligent enough to learn quickly to act like a common whore and in the meantime keep her mouth shut, without being so intelligent that she'd realize that the climate in Harphax City would soon be to hot for her continued health.

Clynia was supposed to proposition Petty-Captain Ephentros and lead him toward the back of the tavern; meanwhile Geblon, pretending to be soused, would claim Clynia's favors for himself. When refused, he would launch an attack on Ephentros person. The whore would then scream a litany of curses against Geblon. A familiar enough tavern scene that Lamochares' soldiers would sit back to watch the fun instead of suspecting foul play. Next Geblon was to feign a fall, while Clynia told Ephentros: "Let's escape out the back way."

At least, that's what they'd rehearsed; however, plans on—and off—the battlefield had a habit of going awry. Phidestros was taking no chances. He stepped back from the door, then moved to the left. Now anyone coming out would be illuminated by the light from the second-floor bedroom window just above the door, while Phidestros would be as invisible as one of Styphon's fireseed demons.

A sudden explosion of howls and curses told Phidestros that someone had knocked down the torches in the front rooms. Geblon was doing double duty, picking a fight with Lamochares' men now that the slattern was gone. The dozen or so Iron Company soldiers inside the Drunken Harlot knew nothing about the plot, but would step in front of loaded pistols to protect their Banner-Captain. The fewer who know the real reason for this night's work, the less chance he and any of his men faced of meeting the Royal Executioner.

Phidestros had too little belief in any god to ask Galzar to ask him for aid in this plot; instead he made a Sastragathi gesture of aversion against snakebite. Two pistols went off practically together, then a third, then two more. Chairs stopped going over and started smashing as men fell over them or picked them up for use as weapons, while women screamed—the girls of the house—who hadn't expected the war to start in their own tavern.

Now Phidestros ordered Xelos to wrestle the barrel into the middle of the alley, where it wouldn't block the door but would confuse anyone bolting into the alley. He heard no more pistol shots, but an appalling amount of every other kind of noise. It reminded Phidestros of the bear pit in the Royal Menagerie of Hos-Zygros.

Without any warning the door flew open, crashing against the wall so hard that loose chunks of brick splashed into the mud. Five men burst out, followed by a cloud of thick smoke and the heartfelt curses of the Drunken Harlot's cook. Four of them were soldiers, two each from Lamochares' and Phidestros' companies. The fifth was Petty-Captain Ephentros, the only man fit to keep Lamochares' company together now that the Captain himself was too fever stricken to command it in the field. Phidestros would not have wasted time in prayers or thanks even if he'd known where to send them. He drew his pocket pistol and shot Ephentros through the head.

Then Phidestros threw his hideout pistol as far as his arm could propel it, over the alley and onto a rooftop.

In his fall, Ephentros knocked over the barrel. Between the pistol shot and the clatter of the barrel, the other four men seemed to think they'd run into a thieves' ambush. Three of them dashed madly for one end of the alley while the fourth headed in the opposite direction at a slightly more dignified pace. Halfway to the street he raised his pistol, saw Xelos trying to set the barrel upright again, and shot him in the throat. Xelos gave a horrible gurgling scream as he fell.

The inhuman sound frightened the couple in the second-floor bedroom into putting out their light, plunging the alley into complete darkness. It also made the man who shot Xelos stop at the mouth of the alley. The faint moonlight reflecting off the man's armor told Phidestros two things: first, that he wasn't a member of the Iron Company; and second that he was a fool not to darken his armor so that it wouldn't reflect the treacherous moonlight. Phidestros fired his pistol, and was raising the other pistol when the man collapsed with a groan and lay kicking in the mud.

Xelos was dead. He made certain of this after re-loading his pistols. He heard the thump of a bar dropping into place, the scrape of furniture against the kitchen door of the Drunken Harlot. Whoever or whatever was screaming and shooting off pistols in the alley, the people inside wanted to keep it outside.

He quickly exchanged his still smoking pistol for the one in Xelos' belt.

Phidestros hurried towards the south end of the alley, stopping briefly to see if the man he'd shot needed finishing off. While he wasn't completely dead yet, he was bleeding so profusely that nothing short of Styphon's Own Blessing would save him, or even let him speak before he died. Phidestros stepped out into the cobblestone street just as a party of the watch rounded the corner at a brisk trot, more than a dozen men with half-pikes as well as a few boys carrying torches.

Phidestros holstered his remaining pistol and strode toward the approaching watchmen, half of whom kept straight on and disappeared in the direction of the Drunken Harlot's front door. His troopers in the front rooms would do what they could to prove their innocence; he would have to do most of the work, both tonight and during the next few days. The stakes were high; he could end up with the authority over Lamochares' company, a hundred and sixteen good men, less the two he'd just shot, and two guns. He could also end up facing the axe as a traitor, or the noose as a common murderer.

At least he would not be breaking one of his iron bound rules. He would not be risking his authority over the Iron Company by wantonly expending them to advance himself. If he lost this gamble, the good will of the Iron Company toward a man under sentence of death would hardly matter all that much.

Two torch boys and four men of the watch approached Phidestros, their hands on the hilts of their swords.

"Greetings, Captain," he said, to the man who was obviously in charge, wearing a plate back-and-breast instead of leather jack.

"What are you doing back here, sir?"

Obviously the Guard Captain was aware of City politics and the practice of nobles to roam the city streets as armed soldiers. No need to unnecessarily offend one of Prince Selestros' favorites by accident.

"Forgive me, but I'm somewhat uneasy for my men."

"Your name?"

"Captain Phidestros of the Iron Company."

"Where are your men?"

"In that tavern. I was coming to join them for a drink when I heard shots in the alleyway. I ran back to help and found one of my troopers shot in the throat behind the kitchen. The cook has barred the back door and I was through the alley to make my way to the entrance."

"Please, give me your pistols."

"May I keep my sword?" Phidestros asked, while handing over the pistol from his belt holster. Then he bent down to remove the one holstered in his boot.

"Of course, you're not under arrest." Although the tone of the captain's voice indicated that might well be happening shortly, given the absence of any other suspects.

The watch captain sniffed both of Phidestros pistols. "Well, neither of these has been fired this eve."

Phidestros shrugged his shoulders.

The captain looked at his with squinted eyes. "Come with us, Captain. "I want to examine those dead men."

"What about my soldiers?"

"They will be dealing with the laws of Hos-Harphax and the will of His Majesty, King Kaiphranos," the watch captain said. "You, follow me."

One of Phidestros' men tripped and was promptly smacked across the face with the back of a halberd head. Phidestros clenched his fists, holding them low so the watch wouldn't see, swallowing curses, and fell in behind the watch captain.

The rabbit peered impudently from beneath the gnarled surface root of a lemon tree just downhill from Tortha Karf. Tortha could have sworn it also wiggled its ears at him.

Tortha reached for his needler, then remembered he was unarmed except for the muzzle-loading pistol from Kalvan's Time-Line he'd brought out for target practice after lunch. It was primed and loaded and maybe he could hit the rabbit with it; on the other hand, he hadn't had much practice. If the bullet kept going, it might reach the workers in the nearest grove before it fell to the ground. Solid projectile weapons weren't like needlers or beam weapons; those solid projectiles could bounce.

The workers would probably forgive him for accidentally shooting one of them, or maybe even doing it on purpose. They didn't think of Tortha Karf as quite a god perhaps, but certainly as the sort of hero entitled to a whim or two now and then. Considering their history, this wasn't altogether surprising. The Altides were descended from a Madagascar tribe on the Afro-Sinic Sector of the Yangtzee-Mekong Basic Sector Grouping. Tortha Karf's father had found them suffering not only from famine but also from slave raiders let loose by a civil war in China that kept the Chinese Imperial Fleet's patrol squadrons at home. Bringing them to Fifth Level Agricultural Sector as a work force for the Tortha family estate had earned their enduring, if not necessarily eternal, gratitude.

That was all the more reason for being careful with his shooting. An early lesson for any Paracop was not to take advantage of people's hospitality, women or superstitions for his own pleasure. One seldom knew when their patience was going to run out until it was much too late. Even if you escaped the people you abused, you were apt to become careless, then some other outtimer would save the Paratime Police Bureau of Internal Control the trouble of putting you up on charges.

Tortha Karf firmly put away both temptation and the pistol, then noticed he'd forgotten to turn off the recorded message playing on the portable recorder perched on top of the picnic basket. He played it back and listened to Verkan Vall's description of the latest crisis on Fourth Level Europo-American, where a number of penetrated subsectors were getting thoroughly embroiled in a war in a place called locally Viet Nam. A map showed it as part of the coastline on the southeast corner of the Major Northern Land Mass.

"The situation in Europo-American has grown worse since our last conversation, increasing the possibility that this war could finally trigger a full scale nuclear slugfest. Even if this doesn't happen, suspicion of anything unusual will increase and internal surveillance has become much more efficient throughout these subsectors since the Second Global War. There are also authors making fortunes with stories of aliens from space dropping in unannounced, making abductions and spying on the world. All we need is for the KGB or the CIA or the Vatican to start taking them seriously. Our dis-information program has been a great success to date, but increasing technological development in the areas of communications and electronics may hamper our present operations and force us to curtail future commercial operations.

"The odds definitely favor our having to pull out of other Fourth Level Europo-American, Hispano-Colombian Subsectors as well. The commercial interests that opposed you twenty years ago are going to make an even bigger stink now, so I'm not going to rush into things. I'm going to recommend that the Paratime Commission appoint a study group to analyze the whole Europo-American Sector, with representatives from everybody who thinks they have something useful to say.

"That will make it a committee much to big to do anything except talk, of course. However, nobody will be able to claim he didn't get a chance to be heard. Also, if we keep an eye on them, we may learn who are the real idiots and who, or who cannot, be trusted. I'm going to give Dalla the main responsibility for watching the Europo-American Study Group. I'm afraid that means she and I won't be going outtime this year, but she sees why."

Tortha Karf hoped Vall was right; a discontented Dalla could give the new Paratime Chief a full-time job he didn't need.

"I have to be in a position to spend at least the first two months of the campaign on Kalvan's Time-Line. Otherwise, I'll seem to be a man who ran out on his friends when they were in danger. Even if somebody doesn't shoot me for that, I'll certainly lose command of the Mounted Rifles and access to Kalvan."

The screen flickered into a map of the theater of the coming Great Kings' War. There were two red blobs, one in northern Ktemnos and one around Harphax City, facing one large blue blob in southern Hos-Hostigos. And a number of blue spots etched all the way back to Hostigos Town. "About forty thousand men for Kalvan, slightly less than twenty-five thousand for Kaiphranos and about the same for the Styphoni army in Hos-Ktemnos." With three opponents to every two of his own men, the odds didn't look good for Kalvan, although he was victorious with worse odds in the war against Nostor.

Suddenly a blue line lanced out from Beshta almost to Harphax City and then back again. Vall's voice explained:

"The armies would already be moving if they were of normal size, which on Kalvan's Time-Line for a major army would mean at most ten to twelve thousand men on a side. However, thanks to all the snow from the Winter of the Wolves most of the roads—they're all dirt roads on Aryan Transpacific except for main thoroughfares in the capital cities—have been washed out and a few are out-and-out running rivers—or sewers, depending upon the population density. It's only within the past few days that the roads have begun to dry out—although not enough for heavy wagon traffic."

Tortha laughed, remembering a few such 'streams' in his own forays on Second and Fourth Level 'barbarian' time-lines.

"On top of that, there still isn't enough forage to support either army advancing as a single body. That's the one advantage Kalvan has. With his better discipline and staff work he can probably maneuver two armies independently without losing touch with each other, that is, when he learns about the army in Hos-Ktemnos. I've already figured a way of leaking the information without letting anyone know it's coming from me."