the Deadliest Game (1998)

by Tom - Net Force Explorers 02 Clancy

  She passed as close to the buffet as she dared, listening hard, not daring to linger too close for fear someone should bump into her. It was dangerous business, invisibility. There were players who would react to feeling something they couldn't see with a knife.

  "--the salmon's very nice--"

  "--out of wine. Where is that girl? Place is shamefully understaffed--"

  "--not worth my trouble, I think. It's on the small side, and the squabbling has started already."

  "Oh?"

  "Of course. Just look around you. Anybody who's serious is off somewhere private, doing a deal. Though not with him, he's out of the loop--"

  The person speaking, some kind of duke or baron to judge by the small informal coronet, glanced at the mayor, smiled, glanced away again. He then came right around the table toward Megan, heading for where a small suckling pig was laid out.

  She backpedaled hurriedly to get out of his way. The duke or baron turned his back on her and picked up a handy knife.

  Megan got well out of range. There were people who could sense invisibility, and it was better to be cautious, especially around knives, which could fly out of someone's hand without warning...as she knew very well. Megan moved as quietly as she could to the big tapestry behind the throne, and slipped behind it.

  Well down behind it she could just see a Leif-shaped bulge in the tapestry. She assumed he could sense her here as well. He was carefully standing where the dais and tapestry would combine to keep anyone from seeing his feet. She moved down to join him.

  "You see him out there?" she said.

  "Huh--oh, it's you. What?" Leif muttered.

  "The mayor of the town," she said. "Buttering up the dignitaries. Literally."

  "Yeah."

  "Look, get this off me for now. This buzzing is a nuisance. I can't hear."

  "It's spell artifact," Leif said, and instantly it went away as he relaxed the spell. "No way to get rid of it without getting rid of the spell, too. If you insist--"

  "Not a chance," Megan said hurriedly. "I'm way underdressed for this crowd. And as for you, you look like you slept in a tree. Did you know that there's straw sticking out of your wizard's hat?"

  "It's for atmosphere," Leif said, sounding slightly injured. "A hedge-wizard has to look like he's been in a hedge recently."

  Megan snickered, for Leif had that aspect of his persona handled. "I'm going out once more," she said. "But this is really a pain. You can make yourself invisible again if you want, but I'm tempted to mug one of the serving-women and take her clothes and just walk around with a wine pitcher. It'd be easier to hear."

  Leif raised his eyebrows. "It's your call. Anything yet?"

  "Nothing but a suggestion that anyone we'd be interested in hearing is probably somewhere else."

  Leif grunted. "I guess that's no surprise. Still...I'll meet you back here in a few minutes. You want the spell, or are you really going to mug that wench?"

  She sighed. "The spell." A moment later the buzzing in her ears was back, and Leif was nowhere in sight. "Thanks. See you in a bit."

  The tapestry billowed out slightly and he was gone. Megan went out the other side, watching most carefully where she walked. Invisibility was useful, but you had to have eyes in the back of your head, never knowing from what unexpected direction someone might approach, and it was very strange walking around without being able to see your feet.

  She made for the buffet table again, and spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes becoming very adept at getting close to the food and the conversations without banging into anyone or getting banged into herself. She even started stealing food, very circumspectly. The salmon was very good, which was nice, since she was partial to it.

  "--just about finished here, I think," said a very simply dressed man in slashed and purfled midnight blue.

  The elderly woman he was talking to, with beautiful silvery hair pulled back tight, wearing an ornate dress in black and silver, said, "Well, I suspect the place's fate will be sorted out within a few days, for better or worse. A pity. I kind of liked it as a pocket democracy. But someone will make a bid--probably as a result of the action coming on the Marches."

  "What, the north Marches? So close? And so soon? I would have thought this business would drag on for a few more weeks, at least."

  The elderly lady looked around her before replying. No one else was close--or seemed close--and she lowered her voice and said, "Elblai has something up her sleeve, I think. I saw her going upstairs to talk to Raist...and without the man himself here, Raist would be doing the negotiating."

  "Argath's not here?"

  "He left about an hour ago--I saw him myself. In a hurry, too. I think things may be coming to a boil...something going on with his armies that he needs that world-famous charisma to handle."

  "Leaving Raist Wry-mind to sort out the details?"

  "I don't think Raist will be doing much sorting." The old woman chuckled. "My money's on Elblai...."

  They moved away. Megan looked at the tapestry behind the empty chair, saw it flutter, swallowed, and headed that way.

  Behind the tapestry, Leif was scratching. "The itch does really get to you," he muttered.

  "I wish you hadn't mentioned that," Megan said, suddenly feeling like a walking ad for an anti-flea preparation. "Look, I just heard something germane. Argath's not here."

  "He's not?" Leif paused, and then took a breath and started softly muttering something heartfelt in a language that Megan suspected was Nordic. The muttering did not sound like prayers.

  "Listen, just put a sock in it for a moment, all right?" Megan said.

  "All those miles wasted--"

  "Don't start cheapskating on me now, Leif. There's no time for it. You know who is here?"

  "Who?"

  "Elblai."

  He blinked at that. "That Elblai?"

  "The same. She's upstairs somewhere, having a quiet talk with one of Argath's people, so I hear."

  "Zaffermets," Leif said. "Remember what that guy back in the tavern was saying--"

  "Yes, and I'm not going to discuss it any further unless you tell me what language zaffermets is! I think you make some of these words up just to impress people. It's not like you don't already speak umpty-ump languages as it is."

  "It's Romansch," Leif said idly, looking around him. "Sursilvan dialect, I think. Look, I think I can manage one more bout of the no-see-um spell."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Do you want to go eavesdrop on Elblai, or don't you?"

  "Ohh..." Megan was deep in exasperation. "Come on...we've got to find them."

  "Shouldn't be hard. Staying invisible, though--"

  "Don't let it slip," Megan said, "whatever you do. Come on, the stairs are this way. We'll hug the wall and try not to run into each other, okay?"

  The stairs were guarded, but that was no obstacle to Megan and Leif. The guards, though alert, were not invisibility-sensitive, and were in no position to guard against what they couldn't see or hear. Megan and Leif stole up behind them and went silently up the stairs, which followed the left wall up to the second floor. Leif concentrated as best he could on holding the invisibility spell in place. He had paid for it, all right, as had Megan, but if you were careless, you could drop it, just as you might drop and break something expensive that you'd bought. And in this case, dropping the spell could be just as costly.

  The second floor was open-plan, one big room with carved or fabric-covered screens positioned here and there in the northern fashion, to make temporary privacy for anyone using the space. More thick tapestries were positioned around the walls to cut the drafts from the slit-windows. Off to one side, Elblai sat in a large, ornate chair positioned in front of a carved screen, and a man sat on a smaller chair in front of her. He was a small man, slender, short-haired and short-bearded, dressed in dark clothes.

  Leif moved cautiously in that direction, staying very close to the wall. He could hear the soft sounds of Megan following behind him. The l
ighting up here was subdued, and mostly in the middle of the room, from a pair of oil lamps on intricately wrought metal stands.

  Leif decided not to go any closer than ten feet or so, and flattened himself against the tapestry, being careful not to move it. He could feel a soft flutter in the wool as Megan did the same, and they both spent a moment examining Elblai. She's worth looking at, Leif thought: fiftyish, a little on the stocky side, with close-cropped silvery-blond hair and a face rather at odds with the housewifely body. She had eyes that were set a little slanted, giving her face a slightly exotic look, but her eyes were large, and thoughtful, and the deepest blue that Leif could remember seeing--almost a violet color. She looked like somebody's grandmother...but a grandmother sitting comfortably with a sword in one hand, point down on the stone floor, and wearing a beautiful glittering shirt of scale mail over a long padded silk tunic the color of the very tip of a candle flame. Her well-worn boots were up on a hassock in front of her chair, and she sat back in the chair holding her sword with one hand resting on the hilts, tilting it a little to one side, a little to the other, in a slow rocking motion as she talked.

  "Those three have been a thorn in my side for months now," she was saying in a soft Midwestern drawl to the small, dapper man sitting across from her. "Now, your master is in a position to do me a good turn."

  "I am sure he could be convinced to do you one," said the man, stroking his close-cropped beard, "assuming that you could demonstrate to him that such an intervention would be to his advantage." He was dressed all in shimmering black: quilted satin--another tunic meant to be worn under mail, but the mail had been laid aside, and he wore only a long dagger at his belt.

  Elblai laughed out loud. "Raist, you can't tell me that Lillan and Gugliem and Menel haven't been just as much pains in his butt as they are in mine. Since spring they've been wandering around the North country looking for a fight to interfere in. I didn't have anything going on that I wanted them interfering in, and I told them so, and told them to clear on out before I lost my patience. Well, they cleared out, all right, but where do they go? Straight off to the Orxenian Marches, and what do they do but sell off their armies' contracts to Argath."

  "Oh, now," said the dapper little man, "now then, Lady Elblai, but you have your facts somewhat confused. Those contracts were purchased by Enver, Lord of the Marchlands, who as we all know--"

  "--who as we all know doesn't fart without Argath telling him what color to do it in," Elblai said, with an impatient frown. "Don't insult my intelligence by trying to convince me that Enver is some kind of loose cannon. Argath instructed him to buy those contracts on the quiet, and point those three lords' armies at mine, which, I might add, have been sitting in summer quarters and very peaceably minding their own business. A state of affairs which your master cannot understand, and so believes that there must be some kind of plot behind it."

  Elblai uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way, all the while rocking the point-down sword idly and gently back and forth, back and forth, so that it caught the light of one of the oil lamps, and the reflection slid back and forth over a hanging tapestry there, and the running hunting dogs on the tapestry seemed to stare at the moving patch of light. "Well, he wants a plot, I'll give him a plot. Don't think I haven't noticed the troop movements the last few days. I know an encirclement when I see it. Attempted encirclement. Your master, Argath, had better look east, because my reinforcements are coming up, in force. And there are more than three times as many of them as he can field just now. I know his numbers, and his intentions, if he doesn't know mine. But that's what I hire my wizards for, and I make sure I have the best."

  The small dapper man sat very still. His face showed no change of expression at all.

  "Now your master has several possible courses of action," Elblai said reasonably. "He can go on the way he's going. In which case, late tomorrow or early the day after, Lillan, Gugliem, and Menel are going to be fertilizer, along with their armies. And having put them to their best possible use, I'll then turn my attention to doing the same for Argath. It might take a little longer, but my people are mobilized and ready, and his are scattered all over the place, supposedly cowing the surrounding kingdoms into inaction. Well, we'll see about that. My guess is that the minute somebody attacks Argath with a force big enough to make a difference, then all the neighbors, who have been putting up with his depredations for quite long enough now, will join in, too. You think he fancies an attack on five fronts? Because that's what we're looking at. If not more. Argath, King of the Orxenians, will be a red greasy smear on the ground by the time my horse and everybody else's finishes up with running all over him."

  Elblai paused. There was utter silence in the room, except for the tiny, tiny noise made by the point of Elblai's sword as it grated on the stone floor. Leif held his breath, sure that someone would hear him breathing in that stillness. Beside him, he suspected that Megan was doing the same.

  "Now," Elblai said at last, "that's one possibility. Another possibility is that he can call off his three little friends and tell them to take their armies somewhere else. In which case everyone will shortly know exactly what happened. None of them could ever keep a secret worth a damn, especially when they think they've been used for purposes which they didn't anticipate themselves. In this case, they'll sure think so, and your master will lose a lot of face, and lay himself open to all kinds of trouble, if not this year, then next. But I'd bet on this year myself."

  "You are very certain of all this, aren't you?" asked Raist.

  "Oh, you bet," said Elblai. "I'm equally certain that your master will not avail himself of possibility number two either. Too much chance that he'll come out of it looking bad. So there is also possibility number three...in which he comes down on Lillan and Gugliem and Menel himself, and wipes their armies out--thus giving his army something to do besides being wiped out by mine--and makes a reputation for himself by 'keeping order in the Marches.' He gets to look good for a change. A nuisance, by which I mean those three and their armies, is removed. And Argath doesn't lose any face."

  Raist opened his mouth.

  "But he wouldn't normally take possibility number three either, I don't think," Elblai said, "because he didn't think of it first."

  Raist closed his mouth again. "He'd probably have to kill Lord Enver, too," Elblai added as an afterthought, "but he's been wanting to do that for a while anyway."

  There was more silence for a few breaths. "So," Elblai said. "You go back to your lord--he left an hour ago, heading north for his army's encampment--and explain the options to him. Be nice about it. I really prefer the third one myself. But if he tries to force the issue, I am prepared to wipe him and his armies off the face of Sarxos, and not even Rod will shed a tear. You just have him be clear about that, because I always like to have one good fight before the autumn sets in...and if he insists, it'll be him. This is his last chance to change his mind, make it a nice quiet autumn for everybody...and ensure that he lives long enough to have one."

  Raist stood up. "If I have your ladyship's permission to go--"

  "In one moment more. I know, too, that after this campaign he has designs on Lord Fettick and Duchess Morn. Their countries have been in fairly precarious positions up until now. Well, we've been talking...and they're preparing to enter into a strategic alliance with another power--not me, let your lord and master do a little digging--who is eager to take them on. When that alliance is in place--within a matter of days, I'd think--the forces they're going to be able to bring into the field are going to be massive. They will almost certainly go straight to war, eager to get Argath out of their collective hair. And they'll take out Duke Mengor as well. They're perfectly aware to what use Argath has been putting that cooperative little puppet. So just have him understand that his troubles are just beginning."

  Raist stood there fidgeting, silent. After a moment, Elblai nodded at him. "Go on, then. Be careful on the road. There are a lot of wolves running loose a
round here at the moment...."

  Raist bowed hurriedly and left, his footsteps echoing down the stairs.

  Elblai sat quietly in the still room. After a moment there were more footsteps on the stairs, and a young blond woman in a long simple blue robe appeared on the landing. "Aunt El?" she called.

  "Over here, honey."

  Aunt? Leif thought.

  The young woman came in. "So?" she said.

  Elblai sighed and leaned the sword against the arm of her chair. "He's going to attack," she said. "I'm pretty sure."

  "So what're you going to do?"

  Elblai got up and stretched. "I'm going to run him and his troops right into the ground," she said. "I don't see that I'm going to have much choice, if I'm to sustain my position. As for him, I'd prefer to avoid the killing, but he hasn't got the brains Rod gave bluepoint oysters, and he will insist on doing the showy thing. Won't help him, not this time."

  The young woman sighed, almost exactly the sound her aunt had made. "All right," she said. "I'll talk to the other captains and update them, and we'll send out messengers to the reinforcements."

  "Do that. Tell them I think Argath will try to scrape together some more troops from the tributary kingdoms. I don't think he can find many more than a couple thousand extra, though, not at this short notice. We're still going to outnumber him three to one--which is just the way I like it. Never had time for these even-steven death-or-glory stands myself." She snorted--a sound Leif had heard from his own grandmother occasionally, so that he smiled. "Let's get that seen to...and then go down and have some dinner before everybody eats it all."