the Deadliest Game (1998)

by Tom - Net Force Explorers 02 Clancy

  As for the stricken field, it was Shel who always felt stricken, the next morning, at the smell. Nor was it any wonder that the husbands and wives and other relatives of the fallen always showed up as soon as the battle was over, or anytime well before dawn, to ask permission to search for the bodies of their loved ones. They knew, from too much painful experience, what the place would smell like once the sun was up and had had a chance to warm things.

  Shel intended to be well away from here by then. His tent was already unable to keep out the battlefield stink of stamped-out guts--or of guts not lost, but just loose, the results of many a brave young warrior's first encounter with the battlefield. War is hell, went the saying. But at the moment, Shel felt more inclined to substitute another four-letter word for "hell." Certainly he would have preferred the smell of brimstone to the aroma most prevalent just now.

  "It's only a game," he told himself...and then made a face. The game's creator, a careful and thorough craftsman, had done his job too well for such bland assurances to make a difference. No action was permitted to evade its consequences. The air should have been sweet with the oncoming evening, and wasn't. There would of course be a great celebration of Shel's victory later, when he got back to Minsar, a mighty meeting to congratulate the heroes who had contributed to the win, and there the banners would fly and the trumpets would sing, and the bards would chant their praises...but not here. This place could be cleaned up by no lesser force than Nature, and even she would take some months about it. Even after the grass was green again and the daisies bloomed, the sheep that grazed these pastures would be working around swords and arrowheads and the stained bones of skulls for quite a few years.

  At least the grass would be of high quality, and lush, come the later summer. Blood was an extraordinary fertilizer....

  The tent-flap lifted. One of Shel's guardsmen looked in, an old companion called Talch. Shel glanced up at him.

  "When do you want to see him, sir?" said Talch. He was a big man, cavalry, still all spattered from today's work, with mud and blood and Rod knows what else. He stank, but then so did Shel, and so did everyone else for a mile around.

  "Twenty minutes or so," said Shel, reaching across the map table for a pitcher of honeydraft. "Let me do something about my blood sugar first. Has he said anything?"

  "Not a word."

  Shel raised his eyebrows, encouraged. Delmond was known for his tendency to brag even when he had lost, as long as he thought he had a chance of getting out of a situation. "Good. Have you had anything to eat?"

  "Not yet. Nick's been out hunting. Got a deer--they're butchering it. But no one wants to eat here really...."

  "Why would they? And we won't either. Send someone up toward Minsar to start some cooking fires outside the walls. We'll encamp there tonight. And tell Alla I'll hear her report now."

  Talch nodded, and let the tent-flap fall. Shel looked at it and wondered, as he sometimes did, whether Talch was a player or a construct, one of many "extra" personnel whom the game itself contained. There were plenty of them, since most people preferred to play more interesting characters than guards and camp-followers; though you never could tell. One of the greatest generals of the twenty-two-year-run of Sarxos, the cavalry-master Alainde, had spent nearly two years playing a laundryman in the service of Grand Duke Erbin before beginning his startling rise through the ranks. At any rate, in the etiquette of Sarxos, "Are you a player?" was not a question you ever asked. It "broke the spell."

  If a player chose to come out to you, that was different, and afterwards you thanked them for their trust. But there were tens of thousands of players in Sarxos who preferred to remain anonymous as to both their names and their status, people who might dip into the Virtual Domain for an evening's enjoyment every now and then, or who might come in night after night, as Shel did, in pursuit of something specific--amusement, excitement, adventure, revenge, power--or just escape from a real world whose reality sometimes became just a little too grinding.

  Shel took a long drink of the honeydraft, and sat and thought, pausing a moment to shake himself, and scratch. More pine needles down his tunic...it would be days before they were all gone. He would really have preferred to do the rest of this evening's work in the morning, but there was no telling what kind of trickery Delmond might attempt to pull if he were allowed the time. Even in his present strong position, Shel couldn't ignore Delmond's slippery reputation. The man's mother, Tarasp of the Hills, was a wizard-lordling, one notoriously nonaligned, who shifted stances between Light and Dark without warning. From her Delmond had inherited both some small measure of power as a shapeshifter, and a dangerous shiftiness of temperament that made him capable of signing a peace treaty with one hand while holding, spell-concealed in the other, the knife intended for your guts. Once he had actually attempted such an assassination in a tent where he was supposed to be coming to terms with someone else who had beaten him in battle. There were people in the game who admired this kind of tactic, but Shel didn't think much of it, and had no intention of falling foul of it now.

  In the meantime, Shel wasn't too worried about the success of any assassination attempt on him. Leaning against the tentpole, unsheathed, was his hand-and-a-half broadsword: a very simple-looking implement, gray steel with a slight blue sheen. It had many names, but then most swords in Sarxos did--the ones that were worth anything anyway. The sword that people around here called Ululator (or Howler) had a nasty reputation, and was well known for its ability to protect its master without him having to actually handle it. Few heard Ululator's scream and lived to tell about it.

  Shel cocked his head at the sound of footsteps outside, and the sound of complaints, and then emphatic swearing, in Elstern.

  "Talch?"

  A pause, and his guard stuck his head into the tent.

  "Our boy getting impatient out there?" Shel asked.

  His guard produced a sardonic grin and said, "Seems his dignity's injured because we haven't given him his own tent."

  "He should count himself lucky his dignity's all that's injured."

  "I think most of the camp would agree. Meanwhile, sir, Alla's waiting, when you're ready to start."

  "Ask her to come in."

  "Right, sir."

  The tent-flap fell, then was tossed aside again. Alla came in, her mail ringing softly over her long deerskin tunic as she moved, and Shel's heart bounced, as it had done for a while now when he looked at her after a fight. She was a valkyrie--not literally, but in body type: big, strong but not overmuscled, and dazzlingly blond, with a face that could go from friendly to feral in a matter of seconds...which it did, on the battlefield. She was another of the people about whom Shel was most curious in Sarxos. Was she real on both sides of the interface, or just this one? Again, he wouldn't ask, but in Alla's case, Shel's reticence had just a little more to do with nervousness than etiquette. He would have been unhappy to find that there was no Alla in the real world, and to find that there was one would immediately have raised the question And what are you going to do about it? For the time being, he left well enough alone. But someday, he thought, someday I'm going to find a way to work around to the subject myself...ever so gradually. And if she wants to say anything, well...

  "How are you feeling?" Shel said. "Did you see the barber?"

  She sat down, making a face that suggested she didn't much see the need. "Yes...he stitched the leg up all right. Didn't take long. He says it'll be healed tomorrow--he put one of those sustained-release spells on it. How about you? Got the shakes out of your system yet?"

  "Please," said Shel. "It'll be a week or more. I hate battles."

  Alla rolled her eyes expressively. "You must...you have so many of them. You want the accounting now?"

  "Yes."

  "Of our forces: one hundred ninety-six dead, three hundred forty wounded, twelve of those critical. Of Delmond's: two thousand fourteen dead, a hundred and sixty-odd wounded, forty critical."

  Shel whistled softly. Th
e news of this spectacular success would spread. It might keep some of the more land-hungry or fight-hungry denizens of Sarxos's South Continent out of his hair for a while. Many would think superior strategy had been involved. Even more would think it had been magic...which suited Shel. "Other captives?"

  "Thirty unwounded infantry captives. Not a lot of unhurt nobles, maybe ten. Almost all the rest of them are wounded, or went down fighting. Everybody else not accounted for seems to have run away, southward mostly."

  "Back to his cities. What's the matter with these people? Do they like being cavalry fodder?"

  Alla shrugged. She was not overly political. Her preferences ran to fighting and eating, though what she did with the calories was an eternal mystery to Shel, and a cause for some envy. If he even looked sideways at a meatpie or a haunch of roast boar, he gained weight. "Anything else?" Shel said.

  "You might want to look at the contents of their baggage train," Alla said, pulling a piece of parchment out of her tunic and handing it to him.

  Shel scanned down it, and as he read, his mouth dropped open. "What the...What did he need all this stuff for?"

  "Seems there was going to be a big victory party in Minsar tonight," Alla said, stretching lazily, though her face was wearing that feral look. "Fancy clothes and fancy food and an exhibition of rich booty for the victors: ritual humiliation for the losers...the usual thing. Nooses around our necks, people pelting us with beef bones and pig knuckles."

  Shel snorted. "As if they were likely to find any. This is sheep country."

  "Yeah, well. Instead of his big victory dinner and massive boozefest, and instead of all the other local rulers getting very nervous, now Delmond gets the scraps, and we get his baggage train."

  Shel nodded, though he was still incredulously reading the baggage manifest. "The absolute stupidity of bringing all this stuff along...I can't believe he's this naive...he must be up to something. I wonder. Who has Delmond been dealing with lately that it would be to his advantage to make them think he's stupid, or mad?"

  Alla raised her eyebrows. "Us?"

  Shel glanced at her. "You suggesting that he threw us this battle on purpose? Walked into the trap despite expecting it to be there?"

  "He doesn't care much about his people's lives, if that's the case," Alla said. "But that wouldn't be news."

  "Hmm." Shel sat there for a moment, thinking about it. "Well, we'll see. If it wasn't us he was trying to fool..." He sat back, thinking which of his recent opponents might have been behind Delmond's actions somehow. Who would it benefit? Argath maybe? Not him...he's usually a little more straightforward than this. Elblai? No, she's getting ready to square off with Argath, last I heard...some attempt to undermine the Tripartite Alliance.

  Shel thought about that, letting his mind range briefly among the possibilities, and his eyes strayed to something else on his map table, a rolled-up piece of parchment that had been lying there quietly smoking. Alliances were shifting all over Sarxos at the moment, as the Dark Lord began his nine-yearly movement out of his mountain-bordered land, seeking the final conquest of all the lands of the Dominion. Every time he tried this, the Sarxonian lords united to throw him back, but the last union had been a little less organized than usual, the alliance taking almost too long to come together...and the Dark Lord had begun his next round of "diplomatic initiatives" much sooner than usual after his defeat. Almost as if he thought this time he might actually win....

  It was complicated, but then most things in Sarxos were. That was what made playing the game worthwhile. Meanwhile, Shel would have to handle Delmond in such a manner as not to bring the man's enemies down on his back right away--especially his mother, who was a power in the Dominion in her own right, with many potentially troublesome connections. He had to handle Delmond in some way that would seem fair, possibly even make him look good.

  "I think you should kill him," Alla said.

  Shel gave her a slight, sidelong smile. "Not enough points in it," he said, but that was not the real reason, and he knew Alla knew it. She rolled her eyes again.

  "He's a waste of your time," Alla said.

  "If one would be Lord of All the Wide Dominion someday," Shel said, "one has to behave properly at the start of the game, as well as the finish. Let's just call this practice, shall we? Anything else I need to know about the cleanup?"

  Alla shook her head. "Quartermaster wants to know when we'll be converting all this junk into money. The troops are getting a little, well, restive at being so close to so much gold."

  "I just bet. We'll take care of disbursement in Minsar in the morning. Tomorrow's market day; the jewelers and platemongers from Vellathil will be there, and they'll be glad to take the stuff off our hands. Tell the troops it'll be a straight percentage disbursement, and I'm turning over my share to be divided up as a contribution to their funeral funds."

  Alla raised her eyebrows. "You get hit on the head today, Boss?"

  "Nope, just want to make sure I'll have a volunteer force I can depend on in a few weeks. Meanwhile, broach a few barrels of that wine from our provident adversary's baggage train and distribute it among the troops. And let loose the dancing girls. Assuming they want to be loose."

  "Most of them are 'loose' already."

  "Ouch. Just make sure they know they're free to go where they want." Shel sighed. "Anything else?"

  Alla shook her head. "All right," Shel said. "Talch?"

  Talch put his head into the tent. "Lord?"

  "Lord" meant that Delmond was right outside. "Bring in the prisoner," said Shel.

  A moment later, between two guards, Delmond swaggered into Shel's tent. They had taken away his trademark black armor, but even left only in hose and his quilted haqueton, he was still an imposing figure: broad-shouldered, muscular and stocky, his face presently twisted out of shape with anger. The only item of dress not usual for him was the iron collar locked around his neck, the infallible method for keeping a potential shapeshifter stuck firmly in the shape he was presently wearing.

  Following him was a tall, fair, slender man dressed in a herald's tabard emblazoned with a large blue dog, seated toward the dexter. Both man and tabard were scrupulously clean, Shel noted, as the herald bustled forward to officiously dust off the remaining seat before the map table.

  Delmond sat down with a grunt. The herald drew himself up and said, much more loudly than necessary, "I proclaim to your graces the presence of My Lord Delmond t'Lavirh of the Black Habiliment, Prince of Elster and Lord Paramount of Chax."

  Both these titles were accurate enough, but neither was worth bragging that loudly about. Elster was so hereditarily subdivided a country that it had princes by the dozen, and Chax was a small but population-heavy area of Sarxos best known for its ironwood forests, its light red wines, its strategically important position at the confluence of two large rivers, and its habit of being passed from hand to hand among the major gameplayers about once every two weeks. Delmond, however, had come to rule Chax by accident...a fact that seriously amused some of Sarxos's more established and experienced players. Since he'd won it (by his adversary badly mismanaging a battle), he had been swanning around among the Kingdoms as if he were much more important than he really was.

  You got this kind of response with new players, sometimes--people who were lucky early on in their history. Occasionally they steadied down and became forces to be reckoned with. More often, they hit runs of bad luck in diplomacy or battle as spectacular as their good luck had been, got burned out, and left the game; or else they so seriously annoyed their fellow players that the most wildly assorted forces would sometimes be assembled for the express purpose of stamping out the "new-sance," publicly and with a flourish. So far Delmond hadn't yet achieved that status, but he was getting close.

  Shel glanced at the herald, and then at Alla, and Alla said, not raising her voice, "And here is Shel Lookbehind of Talairn and Irdain, free leader of a free people, who today has beaten you in battle. We will now dictate term
s."

  The herald, Azure Alaunt, looked fastidiously shocked, as if someone had suggested a discussion about body odor. "Hear now the words of the Lord Paramount of Chax--"

  "He doesn't get to say anything," Alla said, "until the victor has spoken and named the terms under which he will accept your surrender."

  Azure Alaunt bristled. "First my lord demands that you show proper courtesy to his army, the fiercely armed, the mighty-thewed, we who have labored to tragic effect in the terrible toils of war today--"

  "Excuse me," Shel said to the herald. "Were you in the battle today, Azure Alaunt? I don't think so, because you don't look at all like the rest of us, and you sure don't smell like the rest of us. So you can just lose the 'we' part."

  "Ahem. Remembering that none can stand alone against the massing forces of the Dark Lord, if we do not all hang together, we will all hang sep--"

  "Oh, please, leave Ben Franklin out of this," Shel said. "As for the rest of it, well, 'Dark Lord, shmark lord,' that's what I say."

  Delmond's eyes widened. He opened his mouth, shut it again. "Let's you and I get real now," Shel said. "You shouldn't find the attitude so odd, because you sold out your contract with the Dark Forces and went freelance as soon as you had a chance. A dim move, but you don't need me to tell you that now, though everyone did try to warn you earlier. Even your mother. And now here you sit hoping that out of the dumbness--I mean the goodness--of my heart, I'll be merciful, and 'respect the usages of war,' and save your butt from the mess you've gotten it into."

  He took a longish drink of honeydraft. "Well, I have news for you. The 'usages of war' as they are honored in Sarxos means that I can dispose of an unransomed prisoner as I see fit. My wizards have been talking to all potentially interested parties since earlier this afternoon. They can't reach your mother, by the way; her under-wizards say this is 'her day to wash her hair.' There have been no offers of ransom for you...even when we discounted you. Sorry. So unless there is an offer by tomorrow at this time, which frankly I doubt, I can do with you, personally, whatever I like."