The Invisible Chains - Part 1: Bonds of Hate (28 page)

At the main entrance of the tower he spoke to the guards.

“The person in my private apartments is not to leave the tower. I don't think he will, but if he should try to leave, retain him and simply leave him no other option than to return from whence he came. Use violence if you have to, but only when and as much as strictly necessary. And no disrespect. Whatever his rank may be, he is my guest and as such is to be treated with courtesy. Pass it on. I will check to make sure my orders are followed to the letter.”

Then he went to the kitchens, where he caused a commotion, just by entering. He looked around and saw Renda, who he recognized as one of the servants who brought them their evening meals. He made a sign that he wanted to speak to her. She dried her hands on her apron.

“You seem a nice woman,” he said. “I want you and you alone to bring the person in my room his food.”

“Yes, my lord,” Renda said. She looked at him expectantly.

“I want him treated with respect, and I would appreciate it if you could be... kind to him.”

Renda looked him in the eyes and nodded. She had of course heard of the renunciation. As she was truly a kind soul she was sorry for ‘that poor young man’. Her colleagues used an altogether different description for the fallen prince, though not to her face.

“I will be my pleasure, my lord. I'll see to it that his meals continue to be of the same quality as they always were. I'll even add something extra tasty as desert. A good, delicious meal, a fresh flower and a smile can do wonders against dark thoughts.”

Anaxantis sighed.

“Thank you. You're very kind.”

Renda smiled reassuringly. She thought it very endearing that the young lord governor was so protective and took such good care of his poor, older brother.

The weather until now had been relatively mild, but winter seemed determined to set in. Anaxantis had ordered a large tent to be erected in the north east corner of the clearing. It was there that he received Tomar.

“You have the documents ready for the transfer of his funds?” he asked. “I have his seal.”

“Yes, my lord, I have, but they are not necessary,” Tomar said.

“Not necessary?”

“No. I was making arrangements for the documents to be sent with the special courier of the paymaster of the army, since they make the trip to Ormidon every week. I have a friend there and I asked him if their service was dependable. As I fully expected, my friend assured me that it was and this time all the more so since they had an important document that concerned the lord governor. My friend has always been a bit of a gossiper and it was not very difficult to make him spill the details. It seems your brother came to them yesterday morning and had documents drafted whereby he transferred all his assets to your account.”

Anaxantis looked at him stunned and blushed.

They talked for a while about the correlation between good government and an efficient administration.

“That is one,”
Tomar thought triumphantly when Anaxantis asked him to take a look at his administrative duties and organize them, giving him a free hand to do so.

It soon became clear that Tomar had an extensive knowledge, not only of the letter of the various laws, but also of the reasons that had prompted them into existence. Anaxantis found Tomar's somewhat dismissive attitude in regard to the sanctity of the law refreshing. They also discovered that in many cases they had read the same books.

“And now, master Parmingh,” he said after a period of silence, “tell me some more about yourself. How does a young, talented man of the law like yourself find himself in these unpromising backwaters?”

Tomar cleared his throat and began his carefully prepared account of his career up until now. When he had finished Anaxantis laughed.

“OK, that will do for now. I hope one day, maybe you will trust me more than you do now and tell me the full story without skipping over little details you so obviously left out.”

“Really, this is about it,” Tomar said slightly distressed. “Mainly it was my big mouth that got me into trouble for telling the truth as I saw it once too often.”

“I hope you plan on continuing doing that,” Anaxantis said.

“If you mean will I tell you the truth, even if it is unpleasant? You can count on it, my lord. I'll try to be more diplomatic about it than I used to be, though.”

At that moment Bortram entered the tent.

“It's almost noon and we are feeling a bit hungry, Anaxantis.”

“Let's eat then. Tomar here will be joining us.”

“Then he can help set the table,” Bortram said, signing the notary to follow him.

When they had almost finished eating, Marak entered the tent.

“Ah, I'm just in time to be too late, I see,” he said.

“There's enough left, but you'll have to fight Bortram for it,” Lethoras grinned.

“No, thank you, no meal is worth the integrity of my ribs.”

He sat down at the table and poured himself a cup of watered down wine.

“I had a very instructive talk with my father,” he said hesitatingly, with a questioning look at the notary.

“Oh, yes, this is Tomar,” Anaxantis said, “he will be helping me with the administration. It's all right, he's a friend. Tomar, say hello to Marak Theroghall.”

“Yes, my lord. Pleased to meet, you sir.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Anaxantis said, smiling at Tomar. “My friends call me Anaxantis, and we're not very formal when it's just us.”

“And that is two,”
Tomar thought, deeply satisfied.

Marak nodded and proceeded to give an account of what his father had told him about the events in Dermolhea twelve years ago.

“So, you see,” he concluded, “no solutions there, only more mysteries.”

“Does that mean we had a traitor in our midst?” Lethoras asked nonplussed.

“Yes it does,” Anaxantis replied thoughtfully, “and now that Marak's father has given us, not more mysteries but, on the contrary, the last pieces of the puzzle, I can safely say the traitor is still in our midst. How could I have been so naive? All the time it was staring me in the face.”

The others looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“It's so obvious once you look in the right direction. I distinctly remember thinking that there must have been someone whose task it was to ensure that the Mukthars would not meet with any resistance at all. And there clearly was such a person. The next question was, who could make sure that the army wouldn't march in time?”

“The only one who could make sure of that was Whingomar,” Lethoras said, “but everybody keeps saying that it would be totally out of character.”

“Precisely,” Anaxantis said. “Besides, Marak's father said that immediately upon receiving his warning, Whingomar gave the order to mobilize the army and even to form a cavalry unit that could leave for Dermolhea the same evening. Why would he do that if he was planning to betray us? No, it proves exactly the opposite. He fully intended to meet the Mukthars in battle. Yet, a few hours later he rescinds both orders, retires in his private apartments and isn't seen anymore before late the following day. So, what made him change his mind?”

The others looked at each other with blank faces.

“Or, rather who changed his mind for him?” Anaxantis continued. “Because, most likely that is what happened. We know that because something similar happened a few days later in Dermolhea. Notwithstanding a desperate situation the lord mayor, Marak's father and a few others decide to prepare the city for a siege. Then a mysterious man with certain credentials arrives on the scene. Marak's father said that after their little talk the lord mayor was a ‘broken man’, and that he gave up on the idea of defending the city. He specifically says two things about the conversation in his private study. One. The army isn't coming. Two. The Forty will not lose a copper sarth. And, indeed, after the sack the Royal Treasury allocates a generous amount of money to help in the reconstruction of Dermolhea. I bet if we were to look at the details of how that money was spent, we would find that all the houses of the Forty that were damaged, all the warehouses that were plundered and all other losses were compensated.”

“Wait a moment,” Tomar intervened, “how could the lord mayor have known that? How could he be sure? Only the mysterious visitor could have told him that. And were did he get his information?”

“From the source, of course,” Anaxantis said.

“Of course. From the source,” Tomar repeated. “That means he was a Royal Emissary and that he knew already that compensation would be given after the sack.” Tomar paused. “But that implies that he knew there would be a sack, and he could only have known that because he was sure the army wouldn't intervene. That also means the royal administration in Ormidon knew all along.”

“Exactly,” Anaxantis said with clenched teeth. “They knew the army wouldn't intervene, because the only man who had the authority to stop the army had told them so. Father.”

“What?” Hemarchidas shouted. “The king himself gave the order to stand down?”

“Yes, it all fits, don't you see?” Anaxantis explained. “Whingomar wants the army to be ready as quickly as possible, but a Royal Emissary with credentials, and a charter that supersedes his authority, forbids him to march. So, probably under protest, he retracts his orders and retires to sulk in his rooms. Later, maybe as some symbolic act of rebellion, he sends a letter to mayor Fraleck to warn him in covert terms that he won't be able to come to the rescue. When the Emissary learns that nevertheless in Dermolhea some last ditch, desperate efforts are being made to defend the city, he does something similar there as what he did in Lorseth. But this time he uses the stick and the carrot. The stick being ‘You are all alone and you can't possibly hold the city.’ The carrot, ‘You will be compensated.’ In other words, it's useless and it doesn't matter anyway. Give up. Which is exactly what they did.”

Anaxantis had become white.

“I've always thought father had set a trap for us. That he wanted us to fail. What he really wanted was to teach us a lesson. We were never in any danger. At the right moment he will order Demrac to retreat with the army into the hills, behind the so called second line of defense, and wait.”

“But that's absurd,” Marak said, “why would the high king sacrifice a thriving city like Dermolhea? The loss in taxes alone...”

“Ah, maybe I can shed some light on that issue,” Tomar said. “To keep the army, such as it was, in the field for a year costs about three times as much as the loss in taxes for seven years and the money allocated for the repair of the damages. Mind you, those costs were already made, but the army was not very large. How big would the army have to be to resist the Mukthars successfully?”

“Oh, at least three times as big. Four times, to be on the safe side,” Anaxantis answered mechanically.

“Well, there you have your answer. The cost of fielding an army with at least a chance of successfully fighting the Mukthars would be prohibitive. And, mind you, that would only buy you a battle, not the certainty of victory. And the outcome of battles is famously uncertain. It was simply cheaper to let the Mukthars sack the city. Don't provoke them, let them plunder and go back to where they came from. As far as the kingdom was concerned the sack of Dermolhea was only a mosquito bite. A nuisance.”

“It was just business, nothing more, my father would say,” Marak said despondently.

“He was just saving money,” Bortram said stupefied. “All those people...”

The group fell quiet.

“That stinking rat, that filthy swine, how dare he?” Anaxantis suddenly burst out. “How dare he? How dare he? Fifteen thousand lives were lost. Fifteen thousand men, women and children, slaughtered, maimed for life, gutted, raped...” He halted, but a few moments later, even more lividly furious, ranted on. “Raped, by the Gods. And all for some measly sacks of rioghals. The miserable cur, the despicable traitor... Argh, how dare he?”

Anaxantis had stood up and threw his chair to a nearby tent pole, where it splintered, and then lifted and overturned the table, making cups, plates and food fly around and his friends scramble for safety. Seething with fury he grabbed his mantle, trampled the debris on his way to the open tent flap, kicking another pole, causing it to fall down behind him and making the tent partly collapse on his friends.

He ran to his horse, untied it, mounted and with a loud “Hyyya” gave it the spurs and galloped off.

Hemarchidas emerged from under the heavy canvas just in time to see him take off and was about to follow him, when Bortram lay his hand on his shoulder.

“Not this time, Hem, let him go.”

“He'll kill himself, the little fool, I must—”

“No, he won't. He knows the terrain and you have taught him well. Just let him go. He'll come back.”