The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (116 page)

"Dolan?"
The Commander's voice rose, and his hand suddenly gripped the papers. In the next moment, his voice was level as he said, "You protect your men well, Lieutenant. I'm sure that you would have been sorry to lose your sublieutenant."
Quentin-Andrew smiled inwardly. The Commander was the one man in the Northern Army who kept up the pretense that Perry-John's son was nothing more than a lesser official who occasionally advised the Commander on matters concerning the southern lands of the Great Peninsula. To everyone else in the Northern Army, Dolan was the Commander's boy, the favored young man who had no talents other than a radiant worship of the Commander and a gift for listening attentively to the Commander as he thought through his strategies aloud.
If there was any soldier in the Northern Army who was more necessary to the Commander than Quentin-Andrew, it was Dolan, but this fact could not be commented upon in the Commander's presence. So Quentin-Andrew replied, "The Chara knows Dolan's value, sir. Since the time that you granted Dolan refuge from the Emorians, he has lent legitimacy to the Northern Army's claim to be more than a rebel army. And if you should enter Koretia accompanied by the son of the heir confirmed of that land . . ." Like the Commander, he allowed his sentence to remain unfinished.
"Yes." The Commander's eyes had taken on an expression that Quentin-Andrew recognized, a look combining determination with vision. "Yes, I have thought of that much during the past six years of this war. With the Jackal dead from old age and Perry-John dead from chill-fever, the only legitimate claimant to the throne can be Dolan, and he is clearly unsuited to be a ruler. He knows this himself. He has hinted more than once that he would support me if I claimed Koretia's throne, and his support would make a great difference in whether the Koretians accepted me. But it would still mean war. If we reached that far south, Emor would be ours and would be in no position to dispute my claim, but Daxis surely would. And I do not make war lightly. War is a terrible thing, Lieutenant; it brings the horrors of destruction and fear and torture—"
He stopped abruptly, as though suddenly aware that he was condemning the evils of torture to the wrong person. After a moment he smiled and said, "And what do I have to offer Koretia that any other leader could not offer that land? Only this: that for the first time in the history of the Great Peninsula, two of the Three Lands would be willingly united under one ruler – for I have no doubt that, in the end, the Emorians will accept me as their ruler. After all of the heinous acts that the Chara has committed during this war – this latest assassination attempt is the least of his crimes – they must see the need to start over, to begin afresh with a new ruler, new laws to replace the corrupt ones, new customs to wipe away the evils of past years. I will fully support any man who has the ability to bring about this rebirth, but until such a man arrives, I cannot let Emor suffer under a tyrant, nor can I let Koretia be destroyed by rulerless anarchy. To bring Koretia and Emor closer together, to take another step in creating a single law for the whole of the Great Peninsula—"
"Yes, sir," said Quentin-Andrew. "Would you like me to send Dolan to you now?"
The Commander, who had risen to his feet in mid-speech and was striding up and down the small chamber with his eyes still full of visions, stopped abruptly and looked over at Quentin-Andrew, sitting motionless with no expression on his face. After a moment, the Commander laughed and reseated himself.
"I take your point," he said. "I will reserve my flowery speeches on the destiny of the Three Lands for when Dolan arrives this evening. I know that your concerns are more practical. In a word: your unit has captured a dozen intruders while you've been gone, and all of those prisoners need to be questioned. But you needn't start work on that until tomorrow. You've had a hard recovery, and the shapeless gods know that I owe you much for this sacrifice. As does Dolan, of course, but perhaps this evens out the debt you owe him."
"Sir?" Quentin-Andrew's voice was cool.
The Commander raised his eyebrows. "I'm referring to what you told me shortly after you were wounded. . . . You don't remember this?"
"No, sir. I was unconscious at the time."
"Not the entire time." The Commander's hand tapped the papers lightly, the sound swallowed by the winds moaning about the hut and by the crackle as the orderly added fuel to a fire in the adjoining chamber. The Commander's gaze remained fixed on Quentin-Andrew's. After a while, he said, "Well, it's a story that you should know, if you no longer remember it. Dolan, you see, was left to watch over you while I was being fetched from the battlefield. Aside from your captain, no one else knew that you had been wounded. You were taken to the Blue Tent – you remember that?" This as Quentin-Andrew shifted his feet slightly.
"No, sir." He had been reacting, in fact, to the words "taken to the Blue Tent," a phrase that was said to strike terror into any prisoner who had the misfortune to possess information that was of value to the Commander. The phrase, Quentin-Andrew well knew, was now regarded by inhabitants of the Three Lands to be as terrible as "May the Jackal eat his dead" and other such curses. Quentin-Andrew had never expected to hear the phrase used about himself. The usage made him feel uneasy.
"Your workplace seemed the best place in which to keep you in isolation for a short time," the Commander explained. "No one visits there aside from yourself. Unfortunately, on this particular evening, three of your men became drunk and goaded each other into visiting the Blue Tent to see what lay there. They thought that you were still on patrol. At the entrance to the tent they found Dolan—"
He stopped abruptly. His orderly had entered the room, holding a sheaf of papers. The Commander shuffled through them, nodded in approval, and said, "Let me know when Dolan arrives, Marcus. Otherwise, no more interruptions until I have finished with the Lieutenant."
The orderly murmured an acknowledgment, casting a nervous glance in the direction of Quentin-Andrew. Quentin-Andrew noticed it in the same way in which a man notices that the sun has risen once more. The Commander waited until the orderly had left the chamber before saying, "Dolan judged it better that you not be disturbed. You were . . . in pain at the time, you see. He defended the tent against their entrance."
No trace of a smile appeared on Quentin-Andrew's face, but the Commander smiled himself, saying, "Not in that way. We both know that Dolan couldn't use his blade against another man if his life depended on it. No, what happened was that he cut his palm with his dagger and took a blood vow to kill himself if any man entered the tent." The Commander paused, pushed his cloak further back against the chair as though he were smothered by midsummer heat, and said quietly, "You told me that you believed he would have carried out his threat."
In a voice not noticeably warmer than a Marcadian mountain in winter, Quentin-Andrew said, "The men left."
"The men left indeed. Dolan, in his rare moments of stubbornness, can be very persuasive, as I know to my own cost. More than once he has convinced me to soften some harsh course I had planned to take in this war, and always, I believe, to the advantage of the Northern Army. He may never be a ruler, Lieutenant, but a ruler with that young man by his side would be beloved by the gods." The Commander suddenly sent his fist crashing down onto the table, causing the papers to flee to the floor. "A stubborn young man but a gentle one, as peaceful as a child." His voice grew hard. "When I finally meet with the Chara, Lieutenant, I will not forget what he tried to do to Dolan. I swear that to the invisible gods."
His fist remained white-knuckled for a moment more. Then he loosened his hand in order to pick up the wine cup, which had spilled red wild-berry wine over the papers that did not escape in time. With a sigh, he said, "But that will have to wait until we reach the Emorian capital, and whether we reach the Emorian capital depends on whether you remain well-rested." He smiled at Quentin-Andrew. "Your work, Lieutenant, remains vital to the Northern Army's survival. Without the information you obtain, we are blind to the Chara's schemes. Little though I like having to use such methods against prisoners, I trust that the gods who judge me will remember the number of lives that are saved each time we go into battle knowing what our enemy's plans are. I want this war to be short; I want the Great Peninsula to lie in peace once more."
He stood up. As Quentin-Andrew rose from his chair, his flesh aching, the Commander walked over and laid his hand on Quentin-Andrew's shoulder. "Welcome back, Lieutenant. I'm sure that your men are celebrating your return now."
And that, Quentin-Andrew thought darkly as he struggled his way toward his unit's hut through the evening wind, was the closest the Commander had ever come to telling him a lie.
The patrol unit's hut stood at the edge of the camp, separate from the other buildings. On this moonless night, it was as effectively hidden as though it were cloaked in mist. Quentin-Andrew passed a slender figure stumbling through the dark: Dolan, on his way to spend time with the Commander. They crossed paths without speaking; Dolan's vision was not keen enough for him to see which soldier he was passing. He would have made an easy target for the assassin, Quentin-Andrew reflected, and his memory lingered for a moment on an episode from his own past. Then he shrugged the memory away. He was oath-bound to the Commander, and though oaths meant nothing to him, the work suited him well enough. There was no point in worrying over whether his work in the past had been more pleasurable.
He paused at the edge of the hut doorway. The door was closed against the biting wind, but through the cracks in the wood came light and warmth and voices. The day patrol was off-duty now, and its members were exchanging candid remarks. Usually they had a lookout posted to ensure that Quentin-Andrew did not hear such remarks.
". . . will ask for a transfer, I tell you." The voice was deep and crisp, belonging to Meleager, the best swordsman in the unit. "These past two months have been like a release from the pits of destruction. I had forgotten what my life was like when I didn't have to be forever on my guard, fearing his approach."
"Are you converting to the Koretian religion, Meleager?" Quentin-Andrew could hear the grin in the voice of Northcott, his Second Blade. Like the Commander and most of Quentin-Andrew's men, Northcott was a native of Emor's northern dominion of Marcadia. "'Pits of destruction' is putting it mildly, don't you think? I'd say it was more like the ice prisons at the end of the world."
"Then you agree with me."
"The shapeless gods above, who wouldn't? But if you think you'll be safer from the Lieutenant if you request a release from his unit . . . Well, I'll ensure that your mother doesn't see your corpse. The sight would undoubtedly cause her heart to fail."
There was a pause; Quentin-Andrew pulled his cloak closer against the knife's edge of the wind. Then Orvin, the oldest guard in the unit, said, "This is ridiculous. We're scaring each other like nursery boys exchanging tales of death spirits. We all know that the Lieutenant won't lay his hands on anyone unless the Commander orders it, so we're all safe."
"Are we?" asked Northcott reflectively. "I wonder. At the rate that the Commander is purging his ranks of traitors, I wonder whether any of us is safe, however loyal we may be."
A pregnant pause followed. Someone tossed fuel into the fire, causing scented smoke to drift through the door-cracks. Then Meleager said, "Dolan is safe."
There were a few chuckles. Xylon, the youngest guard, spoke for the first time: "Dolan likes the Lieutenant. I wonder why?"
"Oh, Dolan," said Northcott, in a voice that did not even carry contempt – the subject was of too little importance for that. "Dull-witted Dolan likes everyone. If a barbarian raised his blade over Dolan's head, Dolan would give him a leaf bouquet."
The tension was broken by laughter. A moment later, the laughter stopped abruptly, and a silence deeper than death followed. Quentin-Andrew had chosen this moment to enter the hut.
Two of the guards, the ones who had not spoken, were in a corner by themselves, exchanging sips of wine from the same cup. Revis and Edel were long-time wine-friends, and they had a strong instinct for survival which caused them to avoid taking part in such conversations. The other four guards looked as though they had just stripped their bodies of all armor and placed themselves directly in front of the Chara's vanguard. Xylon, blushing violently, ducked his head and began to polish the sword on his lap; Orvin gave a soft moan and raised his eyes upward toward the gods; Meleager turned as white as a blizzard and clutched the flue-pipe, ignoring the heat under his hand. Only Northcott, who had been caught in this situation so many times that he forever carried the look of a man who is under a death sentence, had the strength to rise and approach Quentin-Andrew. Without a word, he handed Quentin-Andrew the patrol unit ring.
Quentin-Andrew slipped on the ring of his authority, allowing his gaze to drift again toward the men frozen before him. He said to Northcott, "The reports."
"Over there, sir." Northcott gestured toward a reed table at the far corner of the hut. Quentin-Andrew walked over to it, pausing on the way to ladle himself a cup of wine. By the time he sat down at the table and began reading through the reports that Northcott had prepared in his absence, a vigorous exchange of wine had begun taking place at the other end of the hut. Xylon was sharing wine with Orvin, Orvin was sharing wine with Northcott, and Northcott was pressing his wine upon Meleager, who seemed unaware that his hand was beginning to singe. Quentin-Andrew, his nose tickled by the familiar smell of burnt flesh, smiled inwardly. One of his credits as an army official, he thought to himself, was that he inspired strong friendships between his men. His very presence guaranteed that the other guards would cling together in a desperate fashion.
His own wine cup remained untouched by anyone but himself. The minutes drifted by, then the hours. There were many reports to read, and Quentin-Andrew always had a tendency to linger over the reports of how prisoners were captured. Gradually he became aware that the guards, now preparing for sleep, had broken their silence.
"I knew a man," Meleager said loudly, "who was wounded in five places, but he made no sound when the doctor sewed his wounds."