by Guy Antibes
~
Lorna walked through the door to the Pent embassy and removed her dripping coat. She walked up to one of the staff working for the ambassador. “I’d like to see Baston Blox and the ambassador please.”
She hadn’t been to the Embassy since her arrival, days ago.
“And you are?” he said.
“I am Lorna Baltac working directly for the Marquessa of Pent. I came on the same carriage that brought the Foreign Minister and his mistress.”
“Oh, her.” The worker leered at Lorna. What an odious man. “Just a minute and I will announce you. I don’t know quite where they are.”
She waited for half an hour before the staffer returned,walking quickly. “The embassy isn’t big enough for you to be gone this long,” Lorna said, not happy for the intentional delay.
His face had turned pasty white in his absence and Lorna could see a hint of panic in his eyes. “It seems the ambassador and the Foreign Minister have been recalled to Pent. I am to tell you to return to the Korvannan Embassy for further instructions and wait for Minister Blox to return in three weeks. The Embassy is closing.” He jogged away, leaving Lorna goggling at his retreating figure.
“What?” Lorna yelled it out. “I am not to be treated this way.” The man began to run just before he turned into a corridor.
She walked in the direction the man had originally returned from, opening every door, trying to find Blox and his cousin.
As she stomped up a back stairway, Lorna saw Blox rushing out of a door, pushing Merra in front of him on the far side of the corridor. “Blox! You stay right where you are.” Merra looked back at Lorna, wide-eyed with fear, and kept running in stocking feet with her heeled shoes in one hand. They ran towards the front stairway.
They were soon joined by Trell Blox. The two men clutched bags to their chests as they ran down the stairs. Lorna called for them to stop, while she stood next to the railing looking down at the reception hall. Only Merra responded with a look of panic on her face as they fled out the front door.
The staffer stood at the opened carriage door with bags of his own. Before she could reach them, they had boarded the vehicle and hurtled out of the gate and down the street. She chased them into the street, but they had escaped. Lorna stood, clothes and hair ruffled because of the chase, the rain pelting down on her dress. She turned around to the clanking and locking of the Embassy gate.
“I need to get back in there.” Lorna told the servant. “My cloak! I left my cloak in the embassy!” The man ignored her and walked away. She shook the railing in frustration, looking at servants closing drapes in the windows of the embassy.
By the time she reached the Korvannan Embassy, Lorna was in tears, soaking wet from the rain and as upset with her crying as she was with the situation. She stood before the gate to collect herself. Thinking of Panix, she closed her eyes and focused on the inside of her mind. With significantly more calm, she walked through the gate and into the Embassy.
~
There were four seated in the Korvannan Ambassador’s office. “Lorna, you did what you could. Fear not. We had the carriage picked up at the city gates and our agents are following it southeast. We think they might try to make it to Murgontia.”
“Can you send a message to the Marquessa?” Lorna asked. She felt at sea listening to these people.
“After we’ve decided on a course of action,” Corilla said. “Always go to your superior with a problem and at least one solution. We’ll need more than a solution.”
Moshin patted Lorna on her shoulder. “For one, we need to get inside the Embassy. They couldn’t have destroyed everything. I’ll bet they had valuables in those cases and not papers. This Murgontian incursion isn’t over yet. Those two idiots panicked,” Moshin said. “With your permission, we’ll send some of our men to secure the Embassy as soon as we can. Tomorrow, you come with me to the Embassy and we’ll get in to look around.”
“I agree, Moshin, but the Pent papers are secondary to the situation. We need to secure them, but I doubt if the information will help us in this crisis.” Tobet stood and went to the window, looking at the rain. “Jorlan is next in line to the throne, but the King’s death is a murder, so the Gerellian Council will have to ratify any succession.”
“But what about the Pent accusation?” Lorna asked.
“It’s a smokescreen… something to bide time for the Murgontian advance on Pent. If they can keep the army advancing, once they enter Pent, it doesn’t matter what happens in Gerellia,” Corilla said as she grabbed some embroidery from her basket.
How could these people remain so detached? Lorna fought for an idea to help create a solution. Then she brightened with a suggestion. “Why not make me acting Ambassador? We can, with all legality, take possession of whatever papers remain and use whatever influence the position holds to stop the Murgontians,” Lorna said. They all looked at her.
“Why not indeed,” Corilla smiled. “Pent certainly needs a representative and we can get an appointment over the messaging token. The question is who can recognize her standing?”
“Boidan?” Moshin asked.
“It certainly won’t be Jorlan. However, Jorlan has no official standing in Court as anything other than an advisor at present and Boidan is the Foreign Secretary. He has enough influence with the Council to get Lorna’s credentials accepted unless Blox and his cousin show up to contest the appointment and I don’t think we’ll see them until the smoke clears,” Tobet looked at Corilla. “Let’s send two messages. One from Lorna and one from me. I’ll recommend Lorna for the interim post. Lorna you write up what you just experienced and we’ll include that.”
Corilla smiled and grabbed a laptop-writing box from the shelf and gave it to Lorna.
“I’ll write a note to Panix instructing him to head for Gerell. The sooner we have him look at those wheels, the sooner we’ll know how the king died,” Moshin said.
~
The leader of the squad wouldn’t let Panix mount his horse. His captors rode and Panix walked through the mud towards the front of the Third Army. As Panix trudged in the thick mud, he passed hundreds of soldiers cleaning up their breakfast in the Murgontian camp. He wondered how long it would take for their food to make them sick. Panix looked down most of the time as he walked in the midst of his mounted captors. As he passed the wagons, he cast more weakening spells on as many wheels as he could and spoiled what he could of the food.
“Is the general fit for visitors?” his captor said to the guard at General Bollet’s tent.
“Am I fit for what?” Bollet’s voice came from inside the tent. The flap was thrown back. “Who is this?”
“We caught him spying on our column, sir,” the man said. “He says he is from the—”
“Gerellian Agricultural Ministry. My name is Quill Ventrano,” Panix said. “I’ve been up in the hills for the last few weeks seeing what kind of effect the rain has had on the vegetation. I saw your column run into sinkhole problems on the Old Pent Road. I haven’t seen that before... perhaps some minerals leeching to the surface and hardening just underneath the mud along with sinkholes. I was so amazed by these natural phenomena, that I observed your difficulties through my telescope.”
“That sounds feasible, but we can’t take such chances,” Bollet said. “Where are his things?”
A soldier brought up Panix’s horses with all of his belongings from the camp rolled into his sodden tent. “I found this at his camp.”
Evidently Harlan escaped with all of his gear and his packhorse before the soldiers arrived at their camp.
General Bollet went through the equipment. He took his time, favoring his injured shoulder. “All of this is Pentish. Now why is that?”
Panix tried not to look as afraid as he felt. “I took a carriage to the town of Hortwell and supplied from there. I only want to ride a horse in one direction down to Gerell.”
“I’d like to believe you, but I can’t take the risk.” Bollet laughed in a way Pani
x didn’t like. “You have just been drafted into the Murgontian army.” Bollet’s smile turned grim. “Tie his hands and feet and put him in a wagon. Let him see the flora from a moving observation post. We can let him go at Hortwell.” The general laughed as a junior officer rode into the camp.
“General, your arm. What happened?” The young man looked at Panix. “Who is he?”
“My horse slipped and fell on some slippery mud. We also encountered sinkholes along the route. We’ve lost two horses and a lieutenant, so far. We’ll see how the horses heal. We’ve stopped for the day.” Bollet looked at Panix. “This is likely a Pentish spy masquerading as a Gerellian, Lieutenant Mustak.”
Mustak? The officer did look a bit like Sovad. Could he be a son?
“The sinkholes must explain why General Crissor has taken a large part of his forces and is coming up on a parallel column to yours. I ran into his scouts. They are a league behind and a league and a half to the west.”
Bollet looked apoplectic. “I’ve given the general no such permission. The Seventh Army is to stay two to three leagues behind us. My last messenger verified that by delivering a message to Reggor—and now his superior moves on past us. I won’t let that happen.” Bollet slapped Mustak on the back. “Get to your unit, we are moving west.”
“Get the troops ready,” Bollet told his second in command. “We’ll leave the sick men with the wagons here and confront Crissor’s forces in the field with such a show of force, he’ll have to turn back.”
“The prisoner, sir?”
“Get him tied down first. Feel free to introduce him to a little Murgontian military discipline.” Bollet smiled grimly and then rushed into his tent. Panix didn’t like the sound of that.
The scouts and their leader led Panix back towards the wagons. Their ‘introduction’ began. One man kicked Panix in the back of one knee, sending him sprawling in the mud. They all kicked his body and Panix curled into a ball. He’d been through this before at the Academy.
Panix couldn’t use magic or they’d kill him. He put his bound hands up to his head, to protect himself from getting another dizzying injury. He felt the sharp blows on his back, buttocks and shins. He had nowhere to run.
“That’s enough for a start. Let’s get him to his new home.” They lifted him roughly to his feet. Panix was gasping as each breath brought pain from his ribs. He considered running, but he was in no shape to outrun these men.
Panix felt something slip into his pocket. He looked down. A message!
One of his guards followed Panix’s eyes. “What’s this? Sergeant, something just appeared in the prisoner’s pocket.”
The leader put his hand into Panix’s pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He read it and then gave Panix an angry glare.
“The General will want to see this. I don’t expect you’ll last until breakfast, spy.” He slugged Panix in the stomach and then hit him in the face when he slumped to hold his stomach.
“Here’s a boat wagon.” Panix could see the humpbacked shape of a small boat on a wagon frame. A large coil of rope hung from just behind the wagon’s seat. He realized that this boat would be used for crossing rivers and stretching a line for the foot soldiers. The scouts untied his wrists. Panix rubbed them as the men grabbed an arm and threaded the rope through a tie-down on the boat. Another tied up Panix’s horse to the wagon.
The scouts cut a stretch of rope from the coil and tied one end to a wrist. They threw the rope under the boat and pulled, and then tied his other wrist after stretching the rope. Panix could only look up into the sky, over the upside-down bottom. He gasped at the pain of being bound to the convex shape of the hull. His feet were likewise secured to tie downs towards the stern. There he lay spread-eagle over the bottom of the boat. It started to rain again with great drops of rain mixed with his tears of pain as the mud washed from his face.
The leader took an oar from its holder on the wagon and swung it on edge, hitting his lower left leg. Panix could feel the bone crack against the wooden hull. He gasped, but the pain was so severe no sound came out. He fought for breath. Panix needed respite and he realized what would do it. The men discussed what bone to break next when Panix remembered the stomach-twisting spell. He cast it on the leader as quickly as he could. The man clutched his stomach and screamed. Panix saw the men drag their leader back to the medical tent. He looked up at the sky, seeing it darken. The pain intensified. Panix could only think of one thing to protect himself, he went into a trance and let his spirit separate from his body. The pain disappeared, but he sensed his body, below him, spreadeagled over the boat, open to the rain.
~
“You fool.” Pokkan looked with disgust at Baston Blox. “Why did you run away like a man with something to hide?”
“I do have something to hide. With Tomlano dead, they were looking at Pent as the culprit. I had no idea the Marquessa would do such a thing.”
“She didn’t, we did. A rather skillful assassination attempt, don’t you think? Sovad is an artist.”
“You knew? Why wasn’t I told?”
“I don’t need to tell you anything. You are merely a tool that has outlived its usefulness. I imagine you didn’t take any papers with you, but you did bring valuables, is that right?”
“Certainly. If I have to flee, I’ll set myself up as best I can under new circumstances.”
“The property you brought into Murgontia is subject to seizure. Since I’m a government official, you will relinquish the contents of all the bags to me.”
“Absolutely not. If I do that, I’m destitute. Lorna Baltac knows we left. The only way I can go back is if Murgontia wins.”
“Then hope we win.” Pokkan paused for a long while, as he thought through his alternatives. He shook his head as the inevitability of it all hit him. “Actually, Blox, you’re not going back anywhere.” Pokkan looked at his guards. “Take all four and dispose of them. Since Blox is of noble birth, you can put them in a shallow grave—dead or alive, I care not.”
Pokkan’s only thoughts, as they dragged away Baston Blox, were the valuables brought out of Pent by Baston and his mistress. He winced at the sound of the woman’s scream.
~~~
Chapter 22
“Panix!” A muffled voice called to him from off the road.
Panix heard the call and gradually returned to his body and felt a flood of pain. “Harlan, I think all of the soldiers headed west to fight the other army. Get me down.”
His partner appeared from the brush and cut the ropes. Panix fell to the ground. His broken bones and bruises didn’t even allow him to stand. There was no way he could ride away with Harlan.
What to do? He wished he could float away. Then he realized he had the power to do just that. He cast the floater spell on the boat. The boat, now a floater, would be easy for Harlan to flip over and move off the wagon. “We’ll use the boat as a floater.”
“What a brilliant idea—now I can tow you behind me,” Harlan said. He put oars in the boat and arranged their gear to prop up Panix. Harlan tied the boat to Panix’s horse and used some of the rope to extend the reins.
Harlan struggled to get Panix into the boat. Panix lay there waiting for the haze of pain to subside while Harlan rigged some kind of harness with the rope. Off they went through the deserted column back up into the hills leaving the slower packhorses behind. The few soldiers left around camp seemed to be too sick to care.
They didn’t have much time. The rains would be filling up the dams and they had no idea how long the army would be gone.
The small boat had to fit on the wagon, so the gear that they had could be arranged to prop up his leg. Without friction, the horse had no trouble dragging him up the slopes. Harlan tied the little tiller to the transom and had Panix lower the boat enough to keep the boat from slipping off the path. They came to the southernmost dam they’d prepared. Water already spilled over the dam and Panix expected the rest of them to be overflowin like this one. Harlan moved to th
e south side of the dam to loosen the rock with the other oar. Panix struggled from inside the boat to magically loosen the rock on the north side. The dam broke and water and rocks cascaded down the slope smashing down trees, more rocks and more mud. The debris acted like an avalanche when it hit the road below, the debris fanned out a hundred feet into the bog-like margins of the road.
Harlan looked down at their handiwork and let out a whoop. Panix felt the satisfaction of success from where he sat. They had five more dams to break.
“Want something hot to eat?” Harlan said. He grabbed a pot and dipped it in the stream and took it over to Panix for heating and then fixed a trail meal with their provisions. They both ate for a while, and then travelled to the next dam, and the next and the next until all six had done their damage. It took them three more days.
They reached the flat ground and moved south again, filling the road and the edges with more sinkholes and slick-mud patches. When he felt they had gone far enough and Panix could do no more in his condition, they headed west on their way to Gerell.
~
“General Crissor, General Bollet is the commanding officer for this operation.”
“Under whose orders?” Crissor said. His eyes were blazing and his anger was rising fast.
“Nirov Kyrod, as delegated by the Murgontian cabinet,” Divvid Mustak said.
“I only recognize Wovin Yetter as my commanding officer. I am taking my army north to Pent. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Crissor looked at Reggor. “Take Divvid and General Bollet into custody, I’m through with this charade. We’re taking over the combined armies.”
“This is mutiny!” General Bollet said as he strode into the tent.
“Call it what you will. The Seventh Army will be the first into Pent. You are failing to make adequate headway.”
Bollet drew his sword first, and fighting broke out between the two generals and their staffs. As it boiled out of Crissor’s tent, the fighting began to spread between the two armies.
Divvid backed away. He wasn’t trained to fight. Crissor cried out, “Come back here, you coward.”
