The Larion Senators e-3

by Rob Scott

  Finally an older man with a distinctive roadmap of bulging veins criss-crossing his wrists got up to greet them. He had a pinched nose in a narrow face, and his scraggly beard was flecked with grey. His eyes were sunken. To Steven he looked simultaneously wise and insane.

  ‘Are you here for the class?’ he asked, his voice cracking. He clasped his hands behind his back to hide their trembling.

  ‘No,’ Gilmour replied with a reassuring smile. Steven nodded to a few of the others, hoping to put them at ease as well. ‘Who are you?’

  The thin man made a faint gesture towards the assembled group. ‘This is my class.’

  ‘They’re adults,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘Yes,’ the outlaw professor confessed.

  ‘That’s good,’ Steven interjected. ‘You’re a teacher?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re teaching adults?’

  ‘Teachers.’

  ‘You’re teaching teachers?’ The magic warmed him, bubbling up with Steven’s adrenalin. ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘We have one hundred and twelve altogether,’ the professor replied. ‘We mean no harm,’ he pleaded, ‘we just want to be able to instruct-’

  ‘No,’ Steven interrupted.

  The little man gave a reflexive jerk and shrank bank.

  ‘No, no,’ Steven said quickly, ‘you misunderstand me. I think this is wonderful. It’s a damnable shame that you have to meet here in squalor. That’s what’s wrong.’

  A sigh of relief passed through the classroom.

  The professor looked around. ‘You’re right, young man, but the neighbouring farms are not always safe. Patrols come through frequently, oftentimes just looking for food, but we cannot risk being discovered so we meet here.’

  ‘But they must patrol the university as well, surely?’ Gilmour asked.

  ‘They’re gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘The soldiers are all gone; most rode south towards Orindale a few days ago. Some looked to be heading for Wellham Ridge, but wherever they were bound, there are none left out this far.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘It’s true,’ said a woman near the brazier. ‘I saw them march past my farm. It had to be an entire brigade; they were making for Orindale.’

  Steven leaned over one of the tables and was paging through a textbook. ‘How old are these?’

  The professor joined him. ‘Nearly a thousand Twinmoons. I keep them in as good condition as I can, but they’re falling to pieces. Time and overuse, there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘There are no newer texts?’ Steven asked.

  Gilmour said, ‘Everything printed since Prince Marek’s takeover is nothing but-’

  ‘The party line,’ Steven felt growing anger meld with his magic in a flood of crimson and black. He wanted badly to find and kill Nerak all over again. To the professor he said, ‘I want you to keep going. I don’t want you to worry about the soldiers. I want you to keep teaching. I want you to find more students, more literate adults, and I want you to teach them economics and democracy, parliamentary government and language skills. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we can use what little-’

  ‘Good,’ Steven interrupted again. ‘I want you to find them and teach them, and I want all of you to tell your students – I don’t care if you’re teaching in a barn, a wood or a university classroom – I want you to tell them all that they have to get ready. One more Twinmoon, that’s all it will take.’ His voice was rising, but Steven didn’t care. ‘I want you to tell them that in one Twinmoon Eldarn will be free, and a fair, compassionate, democratic prince will return to Riverend Palace. You need to get ready. Tell them. We’ll need teachers, leaders, economists, business managers and-’ he looked around the sparse, cold room, ‘-at least one mathematician.’

  No one moved. Whatever relief they had felt at the discovery that Gilmour and Steven were friendly was dissipating: this was obviously a madman.

  Steven went on, still too angry at what these people had suffered to lower his voice, ‘Which one of you is a mathematician?’

  A frightened woman near the wall hesitantly raised her hand. ‘I am.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That clock across the street, it’s working again.’

  This news shocked them all. A few of the rag-tag students looked as though they might bolt, dive out the windows.

  Steven asked, ‘Can you learn to read it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, beginning to look less worried.

  ‘Good,’ he said, and then to the entire room, shouted, ‘Tell them to get ready! If you’re teachers, then you understand how important this moment is for Eldarn. One Twinmoon more. Then this world will be in your hands. If you know of outlaw classrooms elsewhere, in Praga or Rona or Gorsk, wherever they are, get word to them. I want it spreading like a prairie fire: Eldarn will be free in one Twinmoon.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The little professor with the pinched nose took Steven by the forearm and dropped it as quickly as if he’d been shocked with a bolt of electricity. His eyes widened and he backed a few steps towards the brazier.

  ‘What is it, professor?’

  ‘Sir, who are you?’

  Steven looked at Gilmour and then grinned. ‘We’re the Larion Senators.’

  BOOK III

  The Crossing

  THE EXODUS

  Gita Kamrec shouted, ‘What do you mean we don’t know where they are? Bleeding whores, but I need Brand here! I can’t get a decent piece of intelligence from this band of pissing-’ She stormed along the path; her lieutenants avoided eye-contact with one another, each fearing that one of the others would roll their eyes or chuckle and that would be the end of them all. Gita might be small in stature, but she’d have them gutted and filleted for a Twinmoon festival in a heartbeat. Gita missed Brand Krug, her tough, level-headed commander. He was still not back from his foray south, escorting the Larion Senator, Gilmour Stow, and his company of freedom fighters into Wellham Ridge.

  They knew he was coming, thanks to Stalwick Rees’s fit. He had collapsed, repeating over and over again: Brand is on his way and the Malakasians know about the Capehill attack. Several of her men were concerned, but Gita would not be swayed: she had agreed with Gilmour that taking Capehill would give the Falkans a foothold in the east, and she meant to follow through. It was an easier target than Orindale; the capital had a full infantry division, even without counting the Seron companies. She would need at least one more regiment and to make it a surprise attack if she had any hope of taking Orindale. Winning Capehill would give the Resistance a place to call home, a base in which to muster an army and prepare for a bloody march westwards.

  In spite of all Gita’s planning, a problem had arisen. The Falkan Army, moving southeast as covertly as possible, had encountered no occupation forces. A battalion of partisans, travelling in small groups disguised as miners or farmers, had encountered just one Malakasian, a woman apparently separated from her unit. Sharr Becklen had killed her, a miracle shot into the rising sun. Apart from the woman, there had been no patrols, no soldiers away on leave, nothing. It was far, far too quiet. And that worried Gita.

  Now, half an aven from Capehill, she wondered if she was marching her boys into a carefully baited snare. She had orchestrated what she believed to be one of the cleverest troop movements in the history of modern warfare, breaking her force up into its component parts and using everything from side roads to goat paths to move the squads and platoons – and she was certain no one, not even the country dwellers through whose land they were passing, had realised.

  And now here they were, within striking distance, and no one could give her a cogent report on the Malakasian Army’s whereabouts.

  She stalked through their temporary camp, fuming. ‘Tell me again!’ she barked, trying to think fast.

  ‘We just don’t know where they are, ma’am,’ said Markus Fillin, a lieutenant from the Central Plain, looking any
where but at his commander.

  ‘Is the city that big?’ she mused aloud. ‘Can they really be hiding a brigade down there? If Stalwick was right, they know we’re coming, but how much do they know – do they know we’re here now, that we were coming from Traver’s Notch? Do they know how many soldiers we have, what we ate for breakfast this morning? Can anyone tell me anything?

  Her officers and advisors shook their heads and Gita shouted, ‘Where is Sharr Becklen? He lives there, doesn’t he? He must know where the flaming horsecocks are hiding – what’s the most defensible position in the city?’

  ‘The heights above the wharf, ma’am,’ Markus interjected quickly. ‘It’s already been checked, but there’s no one there, ma’am, not one single soldier. The locals say they were in the city as normal, until sometime this morning, when they all disappeared.’

  There was a moment of heavy silence, broken only by the crackle and spit of the camp fires, then Gita was shouting again. ‘An entire brigade of occupation soldiers does not just disappear, Lieutenant, do you understand? And I repeat: where is Sharr Becklen?’

  ‘Here I am, ma’am.’ Sharr himself came over the rise, as if summoned by Gita’s cries.

  ‘Oh, thank the gods,’ Gita said. ‘So what can you tell us?’

  ‘I’ll show you, ma’am.’ He reached out, inviting the partisan leader to join him. ‘It’s just up here. I think you’ll find this interesting.’

  ‘Where are we going, Sharr?’ Gita said. ‘I have to tell you; I’m not amused by any of this.’ She glared at her officers, then took Sharr’s offered hand and allowed him to help her up the snowy embankment.

  At the top she released him. ‘Where are they dug in?’ she asked.

  ‘They aren’t,’ Sharr said.

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Be that as it may, ma’am, but apart from a bunch of very nervous-looking fellows on the wharf, the Malakasian Army is gone.’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘If you come a bit further up here, just up this next hill, I think I can show you where to find them, but we need to hurry, they’ve at least a two-aven head-start.’

  Gita frowned. She was not one who appreciated surprises, not on the Twinmoon, not at festivals, not even after she stood the tides with Rove Kamrec, all those Twinmoons ago. ‘Where are you taking me, Sharr?’

  ‘Up there.’ He pointed towards the rounded summit of a small hill they’d been using to watch the arriving groups of partisans forming up into an army. The gentle slopes around Capehill were teeming with Resistance fighters, every one of them awaiting Gita’s word, and they would take the city.

  She herself had expected to be fighting already; she had never dared hope they would make it all the way from Traver’s Notch without a fight. Her orders had been simple: kill or take prisoner every Malakasian soldier you see. If by some stroke of profound luck Stalwick had been wrong and their attack was still a surprise, the last thing Gita wanted was for a Malakasian to escape and reach Capehill in time to warn them.

  She looked behind her and called, ‘Markus, come with us.’

  The lieutenant hustled up the rise, his boots slipping in the snow. Markus Fillin was not thrilled to be in Capehill; he didn’t suppose he was alone in that. It was hard to leave home and wage war in another part of one’s own country. All his life, Markus had watched Malakasian troops on the Central Plains, as had his father and his grandfather when they were boys working in the family fields. Sometimes soldiers would come into the yard and buy food; other times – most times – they simply rode into the barn or the storehouse, or even broke into the canning cellar, and took what they wanted.

  He wondered how many fit young men had left farms like his to start this war. He was uneasy at the thought that he had left his own home vulnerable when he joined the partisans, but he was needed in Capehill, and if Falkan were to be free, this battle needed to be fought and won.

  Sharr helped Gita as she scrambled awkwardly up the icy slope to the relatively flat summit, then checked back for Markus. He made no move to assist the lieutenant.

  The two sentries stopped talking and stood to attention when they realised who had joined them. ‘Ma’am,’ one of them said, echoed by the second.

  ‘Good evening, boys,’ Gita said, trying to mask her wheezing. She was tired, and her stomach hurt from the climb. ‘Anything to report?’

  The two shared a nervous look then shook their heads. ‘No, ma’am,’ said one.

  ‘Everyone in place?’

  ‘It’s getting harder to see, ma’am,’ he told her, ‘but from here it looks like the third and eighth platoons are moving into position, south of the city.’

  The second sentry added, ‘Ma’am, we lost sight of Arden’s company when they passed across that snowfield there in the north.’

  ‘Captain Arden,’ Sharr corrected softly.

  ‘Sorry, sir, sorry, ma’am.’ The sentry coughed, and repeated, ‘Captain Arden.’

  Gita ignored his lapse. ‘Good. My staff are here, their companies assembled behind these hills and in that grove to the southeast… so we’re in position. All we need now is the enemy – and we don’t know where the enemy has gone.’

  Markus winced. ‘Ah, ma’am, if we-’

  ‘Just a moment, Markus,’ Gita interrupted, ‘Sharr was going to show us something. What is it, Sharr? I know you wouldn’t have had me haul my broken-down old body up here for nothing.’

  Sharr grinned. Capehill lay sprawled at their feet, glittering firelight casting a shadowy glow on otherwise silent homes and businesses. From the hilltop, the city looked a natural target.

  The harbour was different, however: something about it looked fundamentally wrong, though Gita wasn’t sure what had changed. There was a veritable fleet of boats moored in the shallows and lashed to the docks, and even from this distance she could hear the faint chime of a hundred or more bridges as bells rang out the aven changes. It had grown dark and there was no colour; the boats all looked like hulks, floating shadows. Gita shook her head, trying to figure out what was different. ‘What is it, Sharr? Where are they?’ she asked.

  The erstwhile fisherman pointed towards the horizon, darker in the east. ‘You see that group of stars out there, just off the water?’

  Gita sighted along Sharr’s outstretched arm. Her vision wasn’t what it had been two hundred Twinmoons earlier, but finally she focused on the low-lying constellation. ‘What is that?’ she asked, adding, ‘I’ve never seen those before.’

  ‘Demonpiss,’ Markus whispered to himself.

  ‘What? What is it? Someone tell me.’ Gita was irritated now, feeling as if she’d been left out of a secret everyone else knew. Behind her, the two sentries stood a bit straighter.

  ‘It’s a squadron of ships, ma’am,’ Sharr explained. ‘They left with the tide about two avens ago. They’re naval ships. There’s a bark, two brig-sloops, square-rigged, and a frigate, a big fat bastard, that one.’

  ‘And who in the names of the gods is on them?’ Gita was still confused, and angry at her own ignorance. ‘What do I care if-?’ She cut herself short. ‘That’s it. This harbour,’ she said. ‘I knew there was something awry, but I couldn’t figure it out. That’s it; that’s what’s different.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Now Sharr looked confused.

  ‘The boats, Sharr. Markus, look at the boats. What do you see?’ Gita didn’t wait for them to reply. ‘There’re only fishing boats, no big merchant vessels, and no naval ships, only the trawlers and net-boats. See?’ She waved an open hand at the wharf as if the answer was obvious. ‘There’s no accommodation at Capehill Harbour for big merchant ships because passage through the North Sea is essentially impossible – unless there’s a northern Twinmoon and high tides in the archipelago – and anyway, very few merchant ships make the passage around the Ronan peninsula-’

  ‘Because the Malakasian navy has it blockaded,’ Markus finished up for her.

  ‘No one knows why,’ Gita went on, ‘it’s something
to do with Estrad Village and the Forbidden Forest, but there haven’t been big merchant ships around Ronan point in generations, so, in turn, Capehill rarely plays host to those size vessels.’

  Markus scanned the small fishing boats, owned and operated by independent fishermen like Sharr. He said, ‘So the only large vessels moored in this harbour would be-’

  ‘The Malakasian navy,’ Sharr interrupted, ‘and there they go, ma’am. That little group of stars fading on the horizon are the watch-lights on every Malakasian ship in these waters. They loaded stores, took on water, and then boarded all the Malakasian soldiers in Capehill, except for a handful securing the wharf, and I’m guessing the next ship to round the point, perhaps one of those policing the Estrad Inlet, will be coming north to pick them up.’

  ‘That’s the group of nervous-looking men you mentioned earlier?’ Gita asked, dazed.

  ‘Right,’ Sharr nodded. ‘They’re acting as if things are normal, they’re still in command of the city, but there are maybe fifteen of them on the wharf, and they must know already that they’re on tomorrow’s lunch menu.’

  ‘Why would they leave a squad behind like that?’ Markus asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ Gita said. ‘No room on the ships? Orders? Who’s to say why these horsecocks do what they do, but Sharr’s right; we’ll carve those whoring bastards up and grill them for dinner – that’ll be easy. What I don’t understand is why did they leave? And where are they going?’

  ‘North,’ Sharr said.

  Gita laughed. North? Is there some kind of armed insurrection going on in Gorsk that we don’t know about? That’s even more confusing – and it’s gods-rutting reckless; they’ll lose half their ships just trying to navigate the archipelago. If they’re loaded to bursting and they actually didn’t have room to take on fifteen extra men, they’ll be scraping their hulls inside the next Moon.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Sharr. ‘How much draft do they need to make it through those islands?’