by Dragon Lance
“It was white lilies for three years,” commented Vinas soberly. “But for the past two years, it has been red roses.”
“Yes. Tradition requires of a widowed empress only one year of mourning. And that’s what I am, a widowed empress. I observed not one year of mourning but three. And then, I let love find root in me, again.”
“Please,” Vinas said, “please. I am as trapped as you are.”
“Do you know what happens when red roses are left untended, Vinas? They return to the wild. They forget how to bloom, and they become only a mangled mass of thorns.”
“Please, Empress – there is nothing I can do. It would be both our deaths —”
Before she could argue further, a sudden rush of wind battered against them from above. Out of the crystal-black heavens dropped a great, taloned, winged beast – a griffon. It stood twice the height of a man, with its eagle head peering sharply in the night. Its wings were easily thirty feet in span. It set to the stones atop the tower, and its rider saluted Vinas from the saddle.
“Well, Commander,” said Luccia to Vinas, “are you ready for your nighttime reconnaissance?”
“Nighttime reconnaissance,” whispered Phrygia darkly.
“Excuse me, Majesty,” said Vinas to her, dropping again to his knee. “I agree with everything you have said, but see no ready solution to our problem. But now, duty calls, and I must answer.”
“As must I,” said Phrygia blankly. “May Paladine guard your wings.”
Vinas smiled, dipped his head, and then climbed up behind Luccia. Her lean muscularity felt reassuring; her bundled hair was silken with natural oils. With a nudge from her heels and a tug on the reins, the eagle-headed lion leapt from the battlements into the empty air above the castle’s bailey.
For one heart-wrenching moment, they plunged. Then the wings spread wide, found purchase in the air, and their descent was slowed. Two more powerful surges of those tightly strung muscles, and the mount began to rise into the night.
Foreboding might have been Vinas’s word for the night. The western sky was a bruised blue, and pinpricks of light punctured the black east.
But Luccia felt none of that ominous anxiety. “You’re flirting with the empress again?” she asked as the griffon soared out past the dry moat and above the candle-winking shops and houses beyond.
“I do not flirt with the empress, Colonel Luccia,” said Vinas uncomfortably.
“Oh, come now, Commander Vinas. Don’t tell me she walked up those dank stairs, past the lab of that brimstone mage, just to take in the night airs,” parried Luccia.
He shook his head bitterly. “I don’t know why she came up,” he lied. “Now, take us out over the vulture pits. There are supposed to be two more executions tonight, and I want to make sure nothing is amiss.”
Luccia trilled a command to the griffon. The beast gave an answering shriek and banked. It climbed above the ruin of the old city walls, built in the time of the Quevalins. Its massive wings again came into play and sent them shooting toward the heavens. Roofs of thatch sped by below. Some leaked firelight into the starry sky. In four surging flaps of its great wings, the eagle-lion tore past the slums and into the tile-roofed quarter. It flew past the town houses and walled gardens where the artisans and petty nobles lived. Hard beside them lay a shantytown, built in the midden between the estates and the new wall. Riders and mount rushed out over the wall, heading toward the refuse pit that had become a killing ground for enemies of the state.
“You and your executions,” grumbled Luccia, beginning to sense her friend’s foul temper.
Vinas laughed. “Sometimes you just feel in the mood to see a guilty person die.”
Luccia frowned. “Don’t tell me we’re in for another moody month from the commander.”
“It may be a whole year this time.”
Her tone changed. “Vinas, what’s wrong? Friend to friend, not commander to colonel.”
“I can’t...” he said, shaking his head. “It’s an issue of national security.”
“You’ve always confided in me, and I’ve never told a single one of your secrets, have I?”
Whether it was her tone of voice, the stern set of her shoulders, or the months of badgering, Vinas at last spoke: “The emperor does not love his wife.”
Luccia laughed a single burst of surprise. “This is a state secret?”
“Nor she him. She has, for some time now, made certain... feelings clear to me.”
“Well she can’t have you,” said Luccia with sudden decisiveness. As though embarrassed, she quickly amended her statement. “You’re the commander of her husband’s imperial guard. How safe would Emperor Emann be if his chief bodyguard was his wife’s lover?”
“The problem is,” Vinas felt forced to reply, “I want her at least as much as she me. Oh, Luce, what am I supposed to do? I’ve fallen in love with someone I can never have.”
Luccia said nothing for a long time.
“What is it?” asked Vinas.
She lifted a hand from the reins and touched her face, then seemed to fling a thought away. “Why don’t you kill Emann and become the new emperor?”
“I’m serious,” said Vinas. “This is hard enough to talk about, let alone experience. I —”
“I’m sorry,” responded Luccia. “I understand what you’re going through.”
“Then, what should I do?” he asked.
“How should I know?” Luccia asked. She shrugged, guiding the griffon down toward a torchlit plot of ground. As they descended, the scent of detritus and rotting flesh struck them. “Most people in your position just hang on in silent suffering and pine away after their unreachable loves forever until one or the other dies.”
Vinas’s voice was wry. “Some solution.”
“Yes.” That said, she drove the griffon downward in a steep-bellied dive and landed it on the lip of the vulture pit. The carrion birds that had given the place its name started up and flew away from inert, humanlike forms, which lay among old broken tiles and mounds of smoldering rubbish. The griffon had hardly touched the ground before Luccia leapt from the saddle and headed toward the executioners, who were clustered like black-hooded buzzards on the edge of the pit.
“Wait for me, Luce,” called Vinas.
She muttered to herself, “Sometimes you just want to see a guilty person die.”
*
Late that night, Vinas walked through the tall double door of the emperor’s drawing room, and saw the white-haired man relaxing by a fire, a snifter of brandy in one hand and a comely, dark concubine at his side. The velvet-robed emperor did not rise at Vinas’s entrance, lifting only his eyebrows in weary greeting.
“You asked to see me, Emperor?” Vinas said, standing just inside the doorway.
“Yes,” Emann replied, his voice inflectionless. “Come in.”
As Vinas approached, the brown beauty leaned toward a white-tufted ear and whispered some seductive joke. They laughed indolently.
Vinas halted again, near enough to see that the woman’s clothing was not all that propriety would have demanded.
The emperor looked up, still laughing, though his eyes were black and humorless. “That is far enough. Commander Solamnus, there is an uprising in the east.”
“Solanthus?” Vinas asked.
“Farther,” said the emperor. “Vingaard itself. And this is no petty peasant bread war, like the one we crushed so many years back.”
Vinas refused to flinch at that lie. Facts mattered little – the emperor paid the historians, after all. “If it is not a bread war, what could it possibly be?”
“Open rebellion,” said the emperor. “Treason, pure and simple.”
“You needn’t worry. I have scoured Daltigoth of discontents. There will be no uprisings here, nor any assassins.”
The first sign of emotion showed on the emperor’s face, a kind of cruel glee. “True enough. In fact, you have done your job only too well. The only one in three hundred leagues capable of
assassinating me would be you, Commander. True?”
It was the sort of question that had no safe answer. “True, Your Majesty.”
The emperor nodded. “Which is, perhaps, the best reason to send you away to put down the rebellion. There are two other reasons, though. First, you are my best, most trustworthy, and most charismatic commander; Vingaard must be brought to heel. If Vingaard goes, how many others?”
“All of the others,” replied Vinas, stating the obvious.
“Yes. So, Vinas, you must succeed, or all is lost,” the emperor said. “But there is one last reason: my wife has requested it.”
Vinas could feel his blood draining. “Empress Phrygia?”
A sharp-toothed smile came from the emperor. “What other? You see, she heard of the uprising at the same time as I. You and,.. Lindas here, are the third and fourth people in Daltigoth to hear of it. My wife came to me an hour ago, shortly after having had a meeting with you atop the wizard’s tower. She said she had been secretly interviewing you to determine if you should lead our armies. Her conclusion was that you should, on the grounds of your expertise.”
“Thank the empress for her faith in my abilities.”
The emperor was not fooled. “I think she harbors another reason. I think the poor girl is in love with you and cannot bear to have you here, always just beyond her reach.”
Vinas tried to act dismissive. “I’m sure Empress Phrygia would not give over an emperor for a guardsman.”
“I’m sure she would,” replied the emperor coldly. “I do not begrudge her a wandering eye, especially given that official business has kept my attentions... elsewhere.” He glanced significantly at Lindas. “Besides, it is the right of emperors and empresses to toy with their subjects and to have a few playthings among them. On the other hand, any man who would indulge a similar desire for my wife would be, of course, castrated and hanged.”
“Of course,” replied Vinas as evenly as he could.
“Suffice it to say, you have many reasons to go to Vingaard, and you and your troops will crush this rebellion, or die in the attempt.”
“Yes, Emperor. And about those troops —”
“You will have the main share of Ergoth’s army. Three divisions, with three companies of heavy horse cavalry and one of light cavalry, a unit of scouts, a company of war wizards, a unit of elite escalade forces, and the rest – infantry.”
“Is the selection of these divisions up to me?”
“The decisions have already been made,” replied the emperor tersely. “Sealed sets of orders will be dispatched at dawn. I want your army assembled, provisioned, and marching by week’s end.”
“I request also the aid of VI Daltigoth, the elite griffon company,” said Vinas.
“What the devil for?” roared the ruler. “You’re going to have four hundred horses with you. Add a hundred horseflesh-eating griffons, and you wind up with no horses and sluggish, well-fed griffons.”
“I’ll keep them separated. I need the griffon riders for advance aerial scouting and air attack during escalade.”
Red with irritation, the emperor said, “Granted.”
“And I want to assemble my own staff – my personal guard and retainers,” said Vinas.
“Done,” said Emann, “but not for you – for Ergoth. Vingaard must be crushed. For that you are lucky. Otherwise you would, even now, be hanged from the scaffold for your impertinence.”
Meus Pater
“They are sending me away, Father,” Vinas said. His troops were already gathering in the growing dawn outside. The crypt, though, was utterly dark, utterly still, so that even pious whispers seemed impious shouts. “Perhaps forever. It is why I have brought these roses to you – one for each day of the year that I will be away. Perhaps the cold and dark will keep them longer than air and sunlight.
He let the huge thorny bundle fall from his scarred arms, onto the sunken patch of moist soil where his father lay. Vinas stared at those fresh-cut blooms, doomed to die. “I expect you’ll come with me. I can use your counsel on the march.”
There came no reply. He had not expected one. “Well, I have to go and make preparations. We’ll be leaving the castle by week’s end.”
V
Six Days Hence, 29 Corij, 1199 Age of Light
Morning dawned brightly over the martial esplanade of Castle Daltigoth. Pennants snapped in the breeze. Already, Commander Vinas Solamnus’s elite troops – heavy horse, escalade forces, heavy infantry, standard bearers and drum corps – stood ranked on the very paving stones where he and Luccia had first sought to join the divisions of Daltigoth. The two of them marched at the head of Vinas’s forces.
Only three thousand of Vinas’s troops – one sixth of his larger force – were mustered for the march out of Daltigoth. The commander had already dispatched two of his divisions to begin the long trek to Vingaard.
The first of these divisions, II Redroth, was to march from its staging ground on the western edge of Hylo. They would march through kender country and then capture and hold a high pass in the Rimrange Mountains. Leaving a contingent to guard the pass, II Redroth would converge upon Vingaard Keep from the west.
The second division, III Caergoth, was even now marching eastward from its muster point, heading for the northern tip of Qualinesti. From there, the division would move into the central plains of Ansalon. After a semicircular march through the grasslands and along the northern Khalkists, III Caergoth would descend on Vingaard from the northeast.
Meanwhile, the three thousand troops now arrayed at the castle gates would march the Solanthus road and be augmented to a full complement along the route. Once past Solanthus and at full strength, Vinas’s army would advance down the rebels’ throats and flush out any ambush. Though this division would take the shortest route, theirs would be a way paved with swords and skulls. Vinas’s heavy troops might be slow-moving and conspicuous, but they were also utterly ruthless. Their every battle would be calculated to be audacious and brutal, so that news of Vinas’s division would draw attention from the main share of his forces. This force would purge the belly of Ergoth and terrify Vingaard with tales of its deeds. Then, two months hence, when Vinas descended upon Vingaard, it would be with three dread divisions instead of one, and on three fronts.
Of course, Vinas’s scouts were already deep in rebel territory.
The first battle that any of the divisions would have to fight would be in Daltigoth. It was a popular battle, a war of perceptions and allegiances. The three thousand elite forces that Vinas had mustered on the ankle-breaking parade grounds could, in their march down the King’s Way, muster another twenty-five thousand souls – the citizens of Daltigoth.
Vinas stood in the saddle and raised his sword before him. “Forward!” He nudged his black charger, Courage. The beast gave an eager jerk and trotted into motion. Behind Vinas, his personal staff cantered. Among them rode Chancellor Titus, astride a burly plow horse easily twice the size of the other mounts.
The drumsmen began their bright march cadence – unhurried, measured, and violent. Then came a regiment of infantry, escalade forces, and heavy horse.
To win this war of hearts and hopes, the soldiers would have to get the people’s attention. Vinas had garbed his troops in polished armor and bleached livery. Bright banners waved in challenge above the grim, hard faces of the soldiers. Their boots were harsh on the stones, turning the very cobbles into myriad drumheads.
Vinas had drilled the troops for twelve hours each of the last three days, making certain their turns snapped, their knees rose in perfect alignment, their rows formed diagonals and semidiagonals. Vinas wanted the people to believe this was no desperately gathered and fielded mob, but a faultless and fail-safe machine of war.
But flash and roar and precision were not enough. Awe was not enough. These soldiers had to seem like young, courageous men marching into great danger. And so, the night before the march, Vinas had dressed in his full uniform and taken a carriage of flowers t
hrough the streets of the city. Whenever he spied a woman – young or old, beautiful or ugly, noble or peasant – he would drive up beside her and give her a luck-flower.
“It is free, dear,” he would say gallantly. “A gift from Commander Vinas Solamnus. Let this flower comfort you this night, before the great march.” When she began to thank him, he would move on, then would stop as if remembering something. “Oh, and if you give the flower to a soldier in tomorrow’s march, your family will be blessed, and the soldier will be guarded by Lady Branchala of the Flowers.” It had been so small and simple a bribe.
It was working charmingly. As the polished and sternfaced soldiers made their way down the thronging King’s Way, women would, at intervals, dart or hobble out to one of them with a flower. Some would even take the time to stick the stem in a lapel hole, or pause to kiss a cool, proud cheek. Such encounters made the soldiers flush in embarrassment. The women giggled and flirted. The rest of the citizenry gawked in amazement and talked of how the city loved her soldiery.
That was that. Flash, roar, precision, pride, courage, and flowers. Those petals changed the soldiers as commands and calisthenics could not have. They changed, too, the people who clung to the parade as it swept down the streets, laughing and weeping, and lingering for a long, stunned, tearful silence at the gate of the city.
*
Phrygia stood atop the wizard’s tower and looked down at Vinas’s army – a patient centipede crawling out the Solanthus Road Gate. He was at the head of that segmented monster, she knew, giving pace to its legs and pulse to its blood. How tiny was he at the head of that horde. How insignificant was that horde in the belly of wide Daltigoth, and was Daltigoth in the heart of Ergoth. Ergoth itself was the dead dry skin of the world. It seemed ludicrous that such a small cluster of men could make any difference at all in the great wash of time.
How could the inconsequential commander of that army change anything at all?
