by Steven Gould
The commissioner bowed. “Yes, Gentle Guide.”
Zanna’s father did not consider the investigation “of the highest priority” and was not pleased when she reported to him on the findings of the hearing. “Why did you say that? The police have better things to do than chase riffraff all over the country.”
Zanna stared at him impassively for a moment, then said slowly, “All right. Someone mounts a concerted attack on an officer in the service of Noram and the son of a Principal of the Council, and you don’t want to know who did it?”
Not if it’s Cotswold. “I didn’t say that! I said it shouldn’t be given any higher priority than usual. Why’d you go to that meeting, anyway?”
“I thought one of us should go. Is there something I’m not understanding here? Do you truly think this incident isn’t worthy of your attention? What if it had been Marshall de Gant? Or Aunt Margaret?”
“Don’t be silly. That would be different.”
Zanna shook her head. “I don’t understand why. When organized groups of thugs attack any of our citizens, it’s a signal that something is seriously wrong here.”
“An isolated incident. Probably some vendetta brought from Laal. It doesn’t concern us. Laal is one only one of our many stewardships. It’s high time they stopped getting special treatment.”
Zanna leaned forward in her chair. “What aren’t you telling me, Father?”
He stood and turned his back on her, walking over to the window. “What are you talking about?”
“If Laal gets any special treatment it’s because they’ve earned it. They double-tithed. They’ve taken the brunt of the Cotswoldian raids for two decades. And Dulan de Laal was instrumental in keeping the country together when Grandfather died.” She stood and walked around to where she could see his face. “Has Laal done something you haven’t told me about?”
“No.” He turned away again, and walked back to his desk. “But it’s high time people realized that Noramland is governed from this room. Not some backwater town in the southern mountains.” He sat in his chair again and said, “Go ahead—conduct your investigation. But don’t keep the police from their other duties. For that matter, don’t keep me from mine. I’ve several people to see.”
Zanna bowed. When she rose again her face was composed though her eyes were narrowed slightly as she regarded her father. He had to struggle not to snap at her.
“Good day, Father,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your meetings, then.”
After she left he stared at the door for several minutes, his hands clenched into fists on his lap.
Was it Cotswold?
Leland was quiet as he rode back to the estate. The escort of thirty soldiers seemed comfortably large—a force large enough to discourage even thoughts of an attack, much less the attempt itself, but he fretted over the lost training time for the men.
He resolved to stay away from the city for the rest of their stay, though the thought of not seeing Marilyn again was physically painful. Still, there were only three days left until the Eight Hundred was scheduled to march.
If Cotswold, then why? Especially puzzling were the instructions to capture him. What on earth did they want with him? He remembered the bodyguard his father had set when Siegfried Montrose was in Laal. What do you know, Father?
Phillip had sent a coded report of the incident via heliogram. His father knew of the incident but the only instructions back had been to increase security.
He found Gahnfeld waiting for him at the front of the estate house, a puzzled look on his face. “A moment of your time, Warden?”
“There’s that damn word again. What did I do this time, Halvidar?”
“I’ve been talking to the soldiers who were with you at the Good Landing.”
Leland walked up the steps, into the cool interior of the entrance hall. “Good men. They should be commended—perhaps decorated. By the way, how is the coronet?”
“Coronet Pearson seems all right. He remembers arriving at the inn, but that’s the last thing he remembers. He’s been examined by the unit medic and by the factor’s personal doctor. They’re guardedly optimistic. He’s on bed rest and under observation.”
“Very good. I’m very sorry that I put them in danger. Is that why you’ve gone back to calling me Warden?”
“No, War—sir. Given the message, I don’t blame you at all for going to the inn. In fact, from what I’ve been able to get out of the men, you seem responsible for getting them out of there alive.”
Leland waved his hand. “It was a group effort.” He entered the reception parlor, walked over to the bar, and poured himself a glass of water from a waiting pitcher. “A drink, Halvidar?”
“No, sir. Squadman Kantoff said you took out six of the attackers. He also said you were unarmed.”
Leland felt his ears turn red. “Is Kantoff blond? Green eyes?”
“That’s him.”
“Ah—he kept me from taking a nasty blow. Took a man’s hand off. I wasn’t unarmed. I had a staff—two of them, come to think of it. Besides, it was dark—Kantoff’s probably counting people who tripped over each other.”
Gahnfeld opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, but he shut it again.
Leland drank. “Well, what is the problem? I must’ve done something.”
“I wish you’d told me you had extensive unarmed combat training.”
Leland’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think that?”
“I had a conversation with Coronet Jeston. He told me about your mornings at Falling Water Aikikai back in Laal.”
Leland frowned. “Coronet Jeston has a big mouth.”
“He was very reluctant to tell me. I had to threaten him.”
“Threaten him? With what?”
“I told him I’d send him back to Laal before the campaign.”
Leland laughed. “That’s a threat? ‘Look, Jeston—you can face death and combat and tell me about the boss’s dirty laundry or you can go back home to peaceful Laal.’ I don’t understand soldiers.”
Gahnfeld glared at him.
“Why are you so upset, Myron? Think what you’d be facing now if I’d gotten myself killed or kidnapped. Of course, you’d be rid of an untried commander, but you would have to deal with my father.”
Gahnfeld blew out hard through his nose, then dropped his shoulders and rubbed hard at his face. “Aiiii. To be honest, I don’t know. I guess it’s just that I don’t like surprises. In war there are too many and they are all too likely to get men killed.” He dropped his hands back to his sides and stood at attention. “Is this a Cotswold action? Your father first put the guard on you when Siegfried and Sylvan were in Laal. Sylvan is here.”
Leland shook his head. “I don’t know. You saw his message. Did Captain Koss say anything else before we left? Did he have special security instructions for here or in the Plain of the Founders that gives you any clue?”
It was Gahnfeld’s turn to shake his head.
“Well, then, we’ll just have to muddle through.”
To call the raised mound a hill would be generous. It rose ten meters above the hot rock waste, a slight bump in the flat desert ten kilometers south of the Black River and well east of Jaren’s Ford. On its meager crest, Siegfried sat in a camp chair beneath a canopy, outwardly patient, inwardly seething.
He wished for wind, to cut the heat, but this time of year, all you could really count on was clear weather, hot sun during the day, and cold nights.
Two of his signalmen looked north through tripod-mounted telescopes. Between them, a heliograph with a four-meter exclusion tube pointed at a very specific spot in the mountains across the border. Siegfried’s personal guard waited just down the hill, on the southern side of the hummock. His full escort was a kilometer away, in the shelter of a ravine.
They’d traveled in the dark to give the dust kicked up by their horses time to settle before dawn. That much dust could be seen from beyond the border, and Siegfried wanted to keep
Laal’s attention away from this part of the desert.
He used a horsehair whisk to flick a cloud of midges away from his face, then looked at the sundial set up beside the canopy. The shadow of the gnomon was touching the quarter-after-ten graduation. Unless the signal team in the mountains had mucked up the orientation of their dial, the shadow of their gnomon should be pointing at the same indicator.
“They’re sending,” one of the signalmen said.
Siegfried looked up, squinting, but without the telescope the flashing light was too faint to see from fifty kilometers. Both signalmen were talking quietly, dictating the message to the cryptographers.
“Message ends,” the man at the first telescope said.
The cryptographers compared the message. “I show a match.”
“Agreed.” One of them took both copies over and bowed to Siegfried.
He took the sheets from the man and set them on the field desk, then took a paper from the pouch at his belt. It was from the traitor, delivered anonymously to his agent in Laal. It purported to be the Laal military code, a sliding cipher that used a complex equation, based on the current date, to encode the message in one long block of letters.
The two sheets of paper held a message sent by his secret signal station agents on the lines-of-sight between the Laal’s main signal posts. It was an intercepted message, encoded and unreadable, but retransmitted verbatim.
Hopefully, verbatim. It took Siegfried twenty minutes to decode the message.
When he was finished it said:
To: All border posts
From: Koss, Commander Laal Forces
Siegfried left Montrouge late afternoon by Eastgate.
Escort of ninety troops, two water wagons, ten pack mules. If possible determine destination and purpose.
Siegfried didn’t know whether to laugh or swear. The exact numbers! I didn’t know they were watching me that closely. But, on the other hand, their code is mine! He folded the pages carefully and placed them in his pouch, then looked over at the waiting signalmen.
“The message is: Record and transmit all coded traffic.”
Unlike the Laal code, Cotswold used a code book for their communications.
Hundreds of appropriate phrases had been assigned two-letter/digit codes. This let Siegfried’s message be broken down into DE for “Record and transmit” and 2C for “All coded traffic.” Then, in addition, there was an offset based on the day of the month lest one of the code books fall into enemy hands.
The cryptographers encoded the message, checked each other, then gave it to the signalman at the heliograph. The other signalman held a white target before the end of the exclusion tube, to help refine the angle. When they had a clean circle of light projected on the target, they lowered it and the first signalman transmitted the message while the other manned the telescope.
“Message acknowledged, sir.”
“Carry on.” He walked back to his horse.
His guard fell in with him and they rode their horses at the walk, to avoid dust, back to the ravine where the rest of the troops waited.
Siegfried gestured to the escort commander, and the man trotted over quickly.
“Sir?”
“Set up a heliograph relay between here and Montrouge. Exclusion tubes. Offset the last one to the south of the city. I want no chance of interception, so patrol the lines-of-sight, as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We leave at dusk. I want to be at Montrouge by morning.” I have some spies to catch.
Charly, Zanna, and Marilyn came down to see the Eight Hundred off. Gahnfeld put the dignitaries on the makeshift reviewing stand he’d used to direct training in large-scale troop movements. Marilyn and Zanna’s mounted personal guard, increased after the recent attack on Leland, formed an impressive backdrop behind the stand.
Charly had a sad expression on her face and Leland asked her what was wrong. “How many of these children won’t come back?”
“Ah. Hai.” Leland looked at the troops waiting in neat rows, standing beside their mounts. They were all older than he.
CHILDREN, ALL.
Zanna shrugged. “What can we do?”
“Give the Rootless the plain. We don’t need it anymore. We have enough farmland under cultivation.”
Zanna looked shocked. “It’s not just the farmland. It’s the Plain of the Founders. We have a duty.”
Charly turned to her and quoted, “‘To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.’”
SUN TZU.
Zanna blinked, staring at the troops again. “It’s been tried. Eighty years ago, Pappilion de Noram sent a delegation to Nullarbor. They proposed sharing the plain. The Rootless considered it but eventually refused. ‘Give us the plain or defend it. Do not expect us to share it.’”
“But what have you done for me lately?” said Marilyn.
Zanna turned to her younger sister. “Meaning it’s time to try again?”
Marilyn had been quiet, listening to her sister and Charly talk to Leland, but she smiled brightly and said, “What could it hurt?”
“Perhaps I should talk to Father,” Zanna said.
“Perhaps I should talk to Father,” Marilyn said. “If you want him to actually consider it.”
Charly and Zanna both laughed.
Gahnfeld, who’d been dressing the lines, rode up then and saluted. “At your command, Warden.”
Leland glared at him and saw the corners of Gahnfeld’s eyes crinkle. He turned to the three women and said, “Ladies, I must leave you.”
Charly stepped forward and hugged him, followed by Zanna, who said, “I’ll be there in a few weeks.” Marilyn hesitated slightly before hugging him fiercely.
“Be careful,” she whispered, then stepped back, blushing. There were spontaneous whoops from the troops.
Leland felt a lump in his throat but turned and slid into the saddle of his horse, waiting by the stand. The soldier holding the reins passed them up and Leland said quietly, “Thank you, Collins. Mount up.” Leland edged his horse forward until it was by Gahnfeld’s. “Pass the men in review, Halvidar.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And sing something.”
“Yes, sir.” He raised his signal fan and gestured.
The Seventh Hundred, still leading in the unit competition, went first. As they completed the turn, preparatory to passing before the stand, they began singing:
One for the Morning Glory, Two for the early dew,
Three for the man that’ll stand his ground,
And four for the love of you, my girl, Four for the love of you.
On the stand, behind Leland, Charly exhaled. “Children. Glorious children.”
The caravan from Cotswold was closely watched.
There were a hundred freight wagons, each with driver and assistant, a farrier’s wagon, a portable wheelwright’s shop, three cook wagons, a coach for the master, and thirty mounted guards. All together, two hundred and forty-seven men.
Captain Koss shivered. It had snowed the day before, though all of it had melted, and the exposed parapet of the observation tower accentuated the slightest breeze. He shifted the telescope on the rail until it focused on the head of the caravan. “None of them have slipped off? They’re all there?”
“Yes, sir,” said the intelligence halvidar. “We count them each hour. I had men standing by, to follow, if they hit the taverns in Brandon-on-the-Falls, but they kept to themselves. Except for the Master, and, as you know, he dined with Mr. Pierce.” Mr. Pierce was the chairman of the Laal Council of Merchants. Four of the wagonloads had been sold to Laal merchandisers.
“Well, they paid the import taxes. That’s a lot of olive oil. It should make an interesting splash on the Noramland market.” He finally put the telescope down. “Watch them very carefully. Their outriders are moving like cavalry and their order of march is a bit too disciplined for merchants. I don’t w
ant that many men loose inside of Laal. Report when they’ve cleared the pass into Acoma.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Koss handed the telescope to the watchman on duty, then turned and led the way down the many flights of stairs to the ground below. This was Fort Bayard, one of four permanent military installations in Laal. The unit here patrolled the three passes into Noram that were passable in winter and did the occasional bit of mountain search and rescue.
“Any word from Cotswold?”
The halvidar said, “Only the daily troop activity report. They still have no idea where Montrose was for the last two nights. Do we want to push it?”
Koss walked on for another flight of stairs. “No. Some of those agents have been in place for fifteen years. We don’t want to risk them. We’ll hear about it. Eventually some soldier will talk in some tavern. Just wish I knew what Siegfried was up to, though. It doesn’t fit his usual pattern.” He reached the bottom floor and walked down the hall to the commandant’s office, displaced while Koss was at the fort.
“Shut the door,” Koss directed.
“Yes, sir.”
There was a map of Greater Noramland on the wall and Koss jabbed his finger at a spot on Laal’s eastern border, where the Stewardship of Laal butted up against the Stewardship of Pree. “This is our easternmost heliograph station, at Apsheron village. We’re going to set up a series of heliograph stations across Pree and Napa to link up with the Laal forces at the Plain of the Founders.”
The halvidar blinked. “But, sir, we have that capability now, routed through Noram City or through the Pree and Napa heliograph systems.”
“Guide Dulan is aware of that.”
The halvidar stood at attention. “This is the steward’s order?”
Captain Koss leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “It is.”
The halvidar stood still for a moment while he thought. Finally he said, “I see. Guide Dulan wants a line of communication that is completely under his control. Covert? How heavy will the message traffic be?”
