Lord Of The Silent Kingdom Part 71

"Messenger from Antieux," one of Hecht's lifeguards announced.

"No doubt Ghort whining for more money. Send him in."

A road-weary, dirty, damp courier entered, accompanied by Redfearn Bechter. The room was the warmest in the fortress, Camden ande Gledes, which stood a scant twenty miles from Khaurene. It commanded both old roads from the east.

Bechter presented a one-sheet estimate of the damage suffered by the Khaurenese and their allies. The fallen numbered more than fifteen thousand. Thousands more had been captured. The fools had fielded an army with no centralized command. Hecht had given them no chance to overcome that disadvantage.

"Good, with the Navayans. Some important catches there."

Bechter nodded. Hecht turned to the courier. "Yes?" The man behind the mud was one of Ghort's most trusted.

"The Colonel wants you to know he's been recalled. The City Regiment has been ordered back to Brothe. Never mind that they're in pay. The orders came from the city senate but were signed by Bronte Doneto. Colonel Ghort says the senators are scared there'll be major disorders after the election."

Hecht surveyed his staff, saw raised eyebrows. "Does that mean they expect another foreign Patriarch?"

"Colonel Ghort said, 'When he asks if they're going to pick a non-Brothen, tell him the guy in Viscesment, Bellicose or whatever, is running a strong fourth. And he's ex-communicate.'"

"I see." Hecht reflected. "How soon will he move?"

"He's already started. The orders gave him no wiggle room Doneto knew Ghort.

"Do the people inside Antieux know?"

"Of course."

"Any idea how much longer the election could take?"

"Maybe ages. There isn't much bribe money floating around. Extra funds got burned up financing the Calzir Crusade."

"Get some hot food and some rest. I'll have something for you to take back when you go."

Bechter led the courier out. Hecht asked the air, "What does this mean to us?"

Consent said, "You'll have to reinforce Sedlakova. Leaving us too thin here."

True. Losses had not been great and desertions refreshingly few but, still, there had been a sizable turnover. Hecht had little reason to trust the locals and defeated mercenary who wanted to join up.

Consent said, "We have to decide what we want to get done before a new Patriarch comes in. Everything will change once he does. He won't share Sublime's obsessions. He may fire us all to save money so he can afford to commission monuments to himself."

That was the future Hecht feared and expected. Few in the Collegium shared Sublime's obsession with eradicating heresy and recapturing the Holy Lands.

Hecht said, "We've been on borrowed time since Sublime died. Being aggressive hasn't gained us much. Sure. A blood triumph. Heroic in proportion. It'll be talked about for years. But it wasn't decisive. It just taught the Khaurenese to stay inside their walls. Send somebody over there tomorrow. Demand a huge fine and a commitment to root out the heretic What we've been asking for all along. Tell them they have no time to talk about it. Start pulling in the patrols, foragers, and raiders, so it looks like we're going to attack. Let it out that we have Society friends inside waiting to help us."

"Your point being?"

"Maybe they'll bite. Maybe they'll bribe us to go away. But once we have everyone together we'll move back to Castreresone."

Duke Tormond did not surrender. Did not offer to accept terms, despite Khaurene's suffering. The Captain-General was not surprised. Even the hotheads over there should see that their best course would be Duke Tormond's traditional strategy. Just sit and wait.

The Patriarchal army had exceeded the easy reach of its logistical support, in country desolated by fighting, in the midst of the worst winter the Connec had ever known. It lacked the backing of a distant, obsessed Patriarch. Its commanders were not driven by fanaticism, which was not lost on the snoops and note takers of the Society.

Khaurene had only one worry. Treachery.

Plots failed regularly. The plotters were, usually, outsiders who had entered Khaurene to escape the Patriarchals. So they claimed.

The Captain-General faded quietly, taking valuables but doing no great damage to homes or fortresses or public works.

Madouc asked, "You want something to happen to that a.s.shole?"

He meant a Society bishop who had just left, after raging at the Captain-General for not furthering the Society's agenda.

"Not at all. I just turned it all over to him. He can do whatever he wants, any way he wants, now. I won't interfere."

"You figure he'll get s.h.i.t on. Right?"

"The Connectens are a patient, long-suffering people. But they've pa.s.sed the point where they'll tolerate him and his kind."

"Good. Those crows need a lesson in humiliation."

"You had a reason for seeing me?"

"I need to put more men around you and keep them closer."

"Please! I've already got men unlacing my trousers for me when I need to use the latrine. Why?"

"The last courier brought a letter from your uncle. He told me to be especially vigilant for the next two months. There will be a serious effort to destroy you."

"My uncle?"

"The author said. Lord Silent? Or is someone playing tricks?"

"Possibly. I'm never sure how to take him. He's actually more like a great-grand-uncle. If he says be more although, we have to pay attention. Like it or not."

"I didn't know you had any family, sir." A hint of suspicion, there.

"I don't. In a blood sense. Lord Silent is a distant, secretive relative of Princ.i.p.ate Delari. He's part of that family's adoption of me."

"One must confess a certain curiosity about that."

"One must, mustn't one? I don't get it, myself. I think somebody saw something in a chicken's entrails."

Hecht had just sunk into sleep, in his down bed in the keep of the Counts of Castreresone, first night back. t.i.tus Consent burst in, accompanied by four of Madouc's lifeguards.

"What the h.e.l.l? It can't wait till morning?"

"I don't think. The populace may have heard by then. It could cause trouble."

"All right. Let's have it."

"We have a new Patriarch. Pacificus Sublime."

"Huh?"

"I don't know why he chose that reign name. He used to be the Fiducian, Joceran Cuito."

"A front-runner before Sublime died but not a name we've heard much since. What happened?"

"King Peter showed up. And spread a lot of money around."

"The Five Families are fit to be tied, I'm sure."

"I don't know about that. There wasn't much more to the message. But this could mean trouble here. Castreresone belongs to King Peter."

Hecht avoided the obvious counterargument. "Put patrols out. Tell them not to start anything but to be ruthless if they're provoked."

"Letting that word out should do wonders." Hecht treated everyone fairly, by his lights. But he was not merciful toward those who defied him. The Castreresonese would understand. "Can I get some sleep, now?"

There was a definite change in the White City. Antic.i.p.ation filled the air. Positively, not as a premonition or foreboding. The Castreresonese were willing to bide their time.

The officially sealed message wallet from the Patriarch arrived nine days later. His staff a.s.sembled while he reviewed the messages. "Nothing unexpected here. A formal announcement that the Connecten Crusade is over. A list of Connectens who are being restored to the bosom of the Church. Including Duke Tormond and Count Raymone Garete. The siege of Antieux is to be abandoned. Castreresone should be turned over to agents of its rightful master, who are on their way. We are to withdraw down the Laur and a.s.semble at Sheavenalle for transport."

Redfearn Bechter said, "That makes no sense. Why wouldn't he just tell us we're fired? Just leave us where we are?"

"We aren't fired. Obviously. Maybe we're needed in Brothe. People there won't be happy having a Direcian Patriarch. It would be Ornis of Cedelete all over again."

There was more to the letters but little of immediate import. Hecht told the staff to make ready for movement. To finish getting ready. The order to abandon Castreresone was no surprise.

t.i.tus Consent was last to leave. He observed, "Have you noticed who the big winner was in this crusade?"

"Navaya? King Peter?"

"Exactly. At small cost he's become the power in the Connec. He's been using his gains in the last crusade to take over Artecipea. Now he owns the Patriarchy. He's letting other people build him an empire."

"Clever."

Inasmuch as there had been no Patriarchal instruction otherwise, Hecht left a garrison in Castreresone's keep. They would guarantee access if he decided to come back. They would keep order. They received instructions not to resist Duke Tormond or Queen Isabeth.

Buhle Smolens prepared quarters. Despite losses, desertions, and the absence of the City Regiment the army numbered more than ten thousand. There were no forty-day men attached, either. The last of those had gone before the weather turned really ghastly. Hecht had won outside Khaurene with a third of the numbers he had had when crossing the Dechear, westbound.

Hecht a.s.sembled his senior officers and staffers.

"I wanted to thank everyone. We did well. Probably too well. The new people are afraid of us. Which leaves me suspicious of their gathering us here. They're up to something."

Sedlakova stood. His handicap lent no strength to his argument as he made an impa.s.sioned appeal for men of faith to enter the Brotherhood of War.

Hecht stopped listening. The others all talked about what they might do with their lives, now. The Connecten Crusade was over. Nothing had been concluded. They were not distraught, though. That was not a new experience. Castles and cities fell. Death and misery walked the earth. Little changed in the broader picture.

He sank into a reverie about Anna Mozilla and the children. Thoughts of home had had a powerful impact on him these past few months. Never had he been drawn that way back when he was Else Tage.

He had developed new dimensions here in the west.

Everyone was distracted by concerns about tomorrow, forgetting that today still harbored dangers more deadly than the nuisance perils lately offered by the Night.

Hecht and some staff went to the harbor to watch the ships come in. Peter of Navaya's ships, mainly fat traders flying the banners of Platadura. A few lean triremes boasting Navayan colors larked around the flanks of the convoy. Hecht studied those ships and wished Pinkus Ghort was handy so they could brood over shared suspicions. He noted that several older, more weary-looking ships flew Sonsan standards and resembled vessels he had seen falling into ruin along the wharves of that city.

Shrieking birds wheeled and dove where the ships churned up the water. Though it was winter, the harbor reek was thick. The chill had reduced the insect population to a tolerable level.

Clej Sedlakova, seated on a cask, said, "Them tubs is riding high in the water. They must figure on really loading them down." Sedlakova was in a permanent foul temper lately. He was sure that, given just a few more weeks, maybe just a few more days, he could have reduced Antieux. Even absent Bronte Doneto and the City Regiment. People inside the city had begun to put out feelers, looking for rewards.

"Put Antieux behind you," Hecht told him. "We get paid the same sitting here as we do risking our behinds in the field."

Colonel Smolens said, "It isn't the risking that bothers me. It's the freezing and starving."

Sedlakova said, "Listen to that s.h.i.t. What's he had going, this whole war? Hanging out in Viscesment. Then hanging out here. Check him out. He's gained fifteen pounds."

Smolens said, "I confess. The food is good. I'll miss it."

Hecht said, "You may not have to leave."

"What? What's this?"