Talion Revenant

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Jevin I think I understand what you mean, but..."

  The Fealareen chuckled, a low, evil chuckle. "It is rather simple, Nolan. I'll just apply labels to things you've already seen and understand. Until the Empire fell apart the duty of the Talions was clear. We were the Emperor's instrument of Justice.

  "After the Empire fell apart, thought about the Talion role in the world changed. One faction wanted to reconquer all the lands and forge a new Empire with Talianna as the capital, because they felt without an Empire the Talions lost all legitimacy. Without an Empire we would wither and die. Once the Empire was rebuilt, and the Master was acknowledged as the new Emperor, we could continue our work."

  I knitted my brows in concentration. "Obviously we did not take that route, so there must have been another faction that was more powerful or made more sense."

  Jevin nodded. "Yes and no. The other main faction believed Talions should act as guides. They hoped, through subtle pressure, we could keep the world from falling apart. We could prevent a total collapse, as happened with the old Empire of Kartejan, and keep the world civilized. The guide faction wanted Talions to help keep the Imperial laws alive and to act in a positive manner."

  I closed my eyes for a second and thought. "You mean by training troops and having Justices bring the lawless down we could keep everyone on an even footing and prevent total barbarism from swallowing up the world?"

  Jevin nodded. His bobbing head eclipsed the rising Wolf Moon. "Those are still the two biggest factions in Talianna. Two others split off. One advocates doing nothing more than keeping the peace. The other says all men are guilty of something, and that only terror and fear can keep people honest. Many Justices end up adopting the latter view, especially after they've tracked down a series of ruthless killers."

  I shivered. "Unless I miss my guess Lancers want to reconquer everything, and Justices believe in guiding?"

  "In a nutshell. Add to that the feeling among Lancers, Warriors, and Archers that Justices exert more of an influence on policy than they should and you can understand why Gaynor feels the way he does."

  That made sense to me. The Master made all policy decisions but he consulted with the lords of the different divisions in regular meetings. With Lords Hansur and Isas in agreement, and His Excellency, the head of the Services, backing them, they formed a small but powerful faction that could block the ambitious plans of the military divisions.

  Before I could make a comment, our political discussion ended abruptly. A black wave swept up over the Citadel wall and splashed over us. A muddy concoction of horse manure, urine, and straw from the stables, it stank enough to drop me to my knees as I tried to stagger over and see who had thrown the stuff up at us. I fell forward and spat even as Jevin stood and looked over the roofs edge.

  Two clumps of manure hit him, one in the chest and the other in the face. He spun away and dropped beneath the wall. "Damn, Nolan, those were Lancers!"

  I shuddered and shook my head to clear it. I got my legs under me and stood. I stumbled two steps to the left and leaned heavily against the inside Citadel wall. I spat again to rid my mouth of the sour taste.

  Gaynor marched to our position. "Having some trouble, Justices?" He wrinkled his nose. "You stink."

  Jevin's fists clenched and unclenched; then he lunged at Gaynor. I stepped forward and firmly planted a hand in Jevin's chest. I felt his heart racing and pounding against his ribs, but something within him recognized me and he stopped. "No trouble, Lancer, beyond that which you caused us."

  Gaynor balled his fists and puffed his chest out. "You accuse me of some duplicity in this when it was your own slovenly manners and lack of vigilance that permitted this outrage!"

  Anger burned off the weakness in my knees and cleared my head. I shoved Jevin back and stood nose to nose with Gaynor. "Perhaps I should remind you, Gaynor, that we are in your command and to have two of your men so attacked does not reflect well upon you." That put him off a bit, because he'd clearly not considered that angle for viewing this incident. "I just want to add that if you ever feel you need to test your belief in your superiority I'm ready and willing to meet you any time and any place."

  I inched even closer and Gaynor gave ground. I couldn't blame him, because I smelled horrid.

  Gaynor straightened himself and sneered. "Clean your post up then go clean yourselves. I'll file the report on this evening, Nolan, and while I may be criticized for my actions, there is no way either of you will escape a reprimand for your frivolous attitude. Even those who want to be Justices must play by the rules."

  Lord Hansur called both of us into his room after we had cleaned up. Though the sun had stolen over the horizon only an hour before, he already had a two-page report on our actions. He invited us to sit on campaign stools while he read the report. The dark woods of his desk and the shelves lining the walls lent the room a powerful, brooding sense that made me uneasy.

  Finally Lord Hansur, sunk deep in a high-backed chair, looked up from the report. "Well, novices, did you openly defy his authority?"

  "Yes, my lord." My answer earned a scowl from Lord Hansur.

  "Let us be more specific. Did you comment and laugh during his instructions to you?"

  We answered together. "Yes, my lord."

  "Did you relax at your post and ignore what was happening in the courtyard below?"

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Did you threaten to beat the Lancer to a pulp?"

  I shook my head. "No, my lord. I merely offered to meet him later if he felt the situation needed resolution."

  Lord Hansur shook his head. "It was kind of you to offer, Nolan, but this report has resolved the situation itself."

  I swallowed hard to get my heart back down out of my throat.

  Lord Hansur rose from behind his oak desk, turned, and stared out the narrow window in the wall behind him. "I can understand your chafing under the command of a Lancer, especially that one. I can understand that he might have it in for you, Jevin, and that he might resent you, Nolan. I know he could have been hard on you—as hard as a Lancer could possibly be on a Justice—and that you bristled at this treatment. Still this does not excuse your action."

  He turned and riveted us with an iron stare. "Patrols are not organized for the protection of Talianna. If there was a threat we would not have half-grown boys guarding us." Jevin and I both blushed. "Patrols are to teach you to work together. They are a basic military operation, and they are performed to teach you both to accept commands, and to understand how others command."

  He sat again. "I have to discipline you. Gaynor reached Lord Eric very early with this report and I was forced to sit through a discussion of respect and the lack of it among the Justices for the other divisions. Lord Eric also suggested there was no military discipline in the Justices and that for a force that is supposed to do anything any of the other Talions can, there is no way we can be thought of as martially competent."

  I looked down at my feet. I wished I could melt and run down through the cracks in the floor. "We understand the difficulty..."

  Lord Hansur frowned hard. "Do you, do you really understand the difficult situation you put me in? I have to prove you are capable of planning a military operation and executing it. That means I cannot tell you what to do. And even if you and Jevin manage to research and come up with a historically brilliant campaign, Lord Eric can dismiss it as impossible to verify, or can suggest that any campaign using Talions would be assured of success because there are none who can stand against us."

  Lord Hansur sat silently and the silence settled over the room like a thick blanket.

  Jevin spoke. His voice, though kept low and soft, shattered the quiet like a Hawk's scream. "It appears, my lord, that Nolan and I must accept sole responsibility for our actions, and be disciplined if we cannot prove to Lord Eric's or your satisfaction that we do grasp the importance of military planning and execution."

  Lord Hansur nodded. He turned to me. "Nolan, are you willing to
join Jevin in his attempt to prove the accusations about you incorrect?"

  I nodded.

  "Even if it means being dismissed as a result of failure?"

  That took both Jevin and me by surprise. My stomach felt full of wriggling snakes, and Jevin paled to an ashen gray. We nodded.

  Lord Hansur smiled as if he'd expected this outcome since the beginning of our meeting. "Very well. I expect your plan in a sealed envelope by the end of the day. The plan should be executed two weeks from tonight."

  Jevin and I rose and bowed, then turned and left the room. We barely concealed the smiles on our faces. The night Lord Hansur picked was moonless, and Gaynor commanded that night's patrol.

  Although we'd done dozens of exercises in planning over the past two years, no military campaign we'd designed ever saw so much extensive work put into it. Jevin and I haunted the library and pored over maps by the hundreds. We even got permission to fly two Hawks out toward the area where the Justice Fourteens were supposed to camp out on the night of our operation. Everyone who knew something was up clearly assumed we planned to ambush our comrades to prove our understanding of military strategy and tactics. That won us our first victory and proved we understood the value of intelligence and counterintelligence.

  Lord Hansur scheduled the Justice Fourteens for a field exercise west of Talianna on the night of our operation. He threw that in as an extra wrinkle, to make our job more difficult, but we turned it to our advantage. After questioning Allen about the terrain in the camp area we managed to cajole some rope and rock-climbing gear out of him so we could surprise our comrades by coming over an unscalable cliff at them.

  Jevin and I planned to work alone originally, but it was difficult to keep our mission a secret. We invited Lothar and Marana to join us, and we told them we trusted them completely, but even they did not know our true target until that night. They liked the plan we told them about and they agreed to it enthusiastically.

  Lothar's opinion of our plan changed, that evening, when we told him what we were really going to do. "You're going to attack Talianna?"

  I smiled easily. "Yes. Look, if a couple of Lancers can sneak up on Jevin and me and do what they did to us it should be easy for us to slip into Taltown and enter the Citadel."

  Lothar looked at me like I was utterly mad, but before he could protest I turned to Marana. "You're still with us, right, Marana?"

  She smiled easily and shouldered a coil of rope. "Sure. This should be an adventure."

  I smiled at Lothar and his eyes blazed back at me. Marana's involvement gave him no choice, which I knew as well as he did. I tossed him a bag full of clothing.

  "Never again," he mumbled. Jevin and I chuckled and led the way back toward Talianna. Our team walked well behind the other Fourteen groups and none of them noticed our departure. Part of the field exercise required each team to navigate to the campsite by the stars and a complex set of directions given us by Lord Hansur. In following the directions we'd find a number of hidden landmarks and had to write down the symbols we found on them. By looking at our individual course assignments and the symbols we wrote down our instructors could determine if we knew what we were doing or if we found the campsite by accident.

  Our journey back to Talianna went off without serious incident. We alternated the position of scout and moved as quickly as possible while trying to be silent. Two groups of Lancers rode past us, but we hid well enough at the road's edge to escape detection. While they probably wouldn't have paid us any attention even if they had seen us, we wanted surprise in our operation and we took steps to insure it.

  We came in toward Talianna from the west and cut up toward the north near the Mews. We left Jevin hidden in the shadows near the northwest corner of the Siegewall with our gear, while we changed into Elite tunics and quickly joined with Elites heading back into Taltown from feeding and caring for their Hawks.

  "Damn birds get so testy when they molt," I commented aloud as we reached the gate.

  Marana agreed. "And they can't be flown with any sort of speed. I hate it."

  The Warriors warding the gate looked at us, saw a bunch of Elites returning from the Mews, and let us pass without a second thought. We wandered casually into Taltown and headed off west. We reached the corner of the wall and, there in the shadows between a bakery and a small home, I pulled some string from my pocket. I tied it to a stone and sent it sailing up over the wall.

  Jevin tied his climbing rope to my line and tugged twice on the cord. I pulled the slender rope over to our side, where the three of us held the rope as Jevin climbed up over the Siege-wall. Once on top, Jevin, dressed in his totally black nightsuit, dropped our supplies and then lowered himself over the edge of the wall. He let himself hang down to his full height, then released. His total drop was a little over six feet, so he landed soundlessly.

  The other three of us pulled our nightsuits on over our uniforms and headed west. We successfully passed from the north wall to the south wall of Taltown and reached the manure pile easily. As we expected, from personal experience and two weeks of intelligence gathering, the novices at that end of the roof had moved away from their post. They talked and laughed with the pair of guards at the next station over.

  Lothar arched a padded grappling hook over the lip of the wall. It hit with a muffled clank that sounded like thunder to me, but none of the novices paid it any attention, if they heard it at all. Lothar pulled on the rope to test how well the hook had set itself. It slipped once, and Lothar stumbled, but then the hook caught and held firm. Lothar signaled me all was clear, and my mouth went dry.

  I climbed the rope first. Lothar held it at the bottom so I could pull myself up and virtually walk up the wall. Still the climb was difficult. I'd gotten only halfway up the line when it went slack and I fell against the wall. I tightened my grip and felt the fire starting in my shoulders, but I could do nothing to lighten the load on my arms.

  My heart stopped pounding thunderously after a moment or two, and I heard the two novices patrolling above me. Each scraping step echoed louder and louder. Their voices were just loud enough for me to hear, but I couldn't make out any words. I calmed myself, forced air in and out of my lungs, and relaxed the muscles I didn't need to keep me on the rope. Below me Jevin, Lothar, and Marana had vanished, and from my vantage point, nothing looked out of the ordinary in the darkened street.

  Finally the voices receded and Lothar stepped from the shadows to grab the end of the rope. He signaled me to come down but I shook my head and completed my climb. My shoulders burned with pain by the time I finished and elbowed my way over the crenellated wall. I dropped into the shadows, checked the hook, reseated it to my satisfaction, then waited.

  Marana followed me up with no trouble. We moved forward, up and away from the hook, toward the novices. I looked over at Marana but could see nothing but a narrow band of flesh around her eyes. The nightsuits, complete with gloves and hoods, made us invisible unless one knew where to look.

  I heard Jevin come up over the wall; then I felt Lothar touch my hip to signal his readiness. The four of us crawled forward and got close enough to the four novices—two Warriors and two Lancers—to hear their discussion. My heart leapt, and I suppressed a laugh. They were talking about what Gaynor had done to Jevin and me.

  Like dust borne on night breezes, the four of us flowed forward. I swept up and grabbed a Warrior from behind. I pressed a dowel of wood into his back and clapped my left hand over his mouth. "Were this steele and not woode, thou wouldst be dead. Act as it were soothe."

  We'd decided to use High Tal to make the guards think this was a training exercise organized by their lords. Because of my difficulty with the tongue I had practiced my little speech for days. The novice stiffened, then slumped as if he'd fainted. I didn't know if it was an act or not, but he was still breathing so I left him and advanced.

  We took one more pair of novices before Gaynor came into sight. He marched along like a lord making his rounds and praised
his men for their obedient and vigilant service. He looked very self-possessed. Baton tucked under his arm and a sneer of contempt riding confidently on his lips, he came toward us like a man with an appointment with destiny.

  We overwhelmed him quickly. "Thou arte our captif. Do nothing or thou wilt be as dead in thys exercise."

  He stiffened for a second, debated resistance, then surrendered. We led him back to the station above the manure. "Ye will climb down the rope, and wait for us at the bottom." Gaynor turned to protest my command, then seized the rope and quickly started his descent. He knew he would reach the ground before us and be able to escape.

  Seeing hope flash in Gaynor's eyes, Jevin laughed and drew a real knife. Remorselessly he sliced through the rope suspending Gaynor over the manure pile.

  Under the cover of Gaynor's sputtered screams of outrage the four of us climbed down the interior Citadel wall. As Gaynor's patrol responded to his screams by raising an alarm, we ran across the exercise fields and fought our way up the stairs to our rooms. Other novices poured down and out of the Citadel as we did, so intent on seeing what the fuss was all about. In our rooms we took off our nightsuits and hid them under our mattresses. Jevin put on an Elite's vest and we joined the stragglers running down the stairs.

  Absolute chaos reigned in Talianna. The patrol's panic spread to the rest of the novices and then on into some Lancers who heard one of their own had been attacked. Full Talions shouted orders and tried to station novices in places they'd be useful. We ignored the commands shouted at us and joined the mass exodus of Elites toward the Mews. No one at the gate stopped us and none of the Elites noticed when we headed off west. And though difficult, we even managed to get all the symbols correct on our map to the campsite, though our instructors noted our tardiness and assigned us the early watch.