Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  “I don’t think I will, sir. Who are you?”

  “I am Lord General Herval, and—”

  “Are you in charge here?” the Verlaker demanded roughly.

  “For all intents and—” In Ingrid’s peripheral vision, the gun snapped up—and Herval keeled backward before the shot and its recoil even registered. She didn’t have to feign a twitch of horror: the blood-spatter over the frieze drew gasps and cries from the others, but she did not cry out. She had killed him, after all.

  The Verlaker did not give them time to think. “How about now?” he shouted as the reverberation cleared. “Now who’s in charge?”

  In the same moment another gun was cocked, and Reynard was out from the shadows of the opposite pillar, arm extended: the Verlaker’s gun instantly moved to him, and there was a brief, iron silence.

  “Who are you?” said the Verlaker.

  Reynard’s expression was impassive, but his voice was distilled fury. “Reynard Travers, head of Bernhelm palace security. How dare you come in here and—”

  “Are you in charge here?”

  “No,” Reynard said. “I’m just the man who is going to kill you. And who, precisely, are you?”

  “Captain Willem Niall Ahrens, First Ilona Army, Ryswyck Division,” said the Verlaker, cheerfully. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I was hoping to negotiate for safe passage out of this country, but it doesn’t look propitious.”

  The murmur of stifled outrage that greeted this rustic declaration rose and receded; Reynard didn’t move a hair. “And where is Lord Bernhelm?”

  “I don’t think I’ll tell you that, sir.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Reynard said calmly. He didn’t move his gaze, but Ingrid was suddenly aware of the guardsmen gathering like shadows behind and around them.

  Captain Ahrens sensed them, too. “Don’t you come near me!” The twitch of his muscles as he raised the knife wasn’t feigned either. And he instinctively curved his shoulder forward, as if to shield Ingrid from Reynard’s fire; Ingrid prayed that nobody other than Reynard would notice that he wasn’t just afraid for himself.

  Reynard’s eyes met hers at last. “Please, Reynard,” she said in a jerking whisper. “Just do what the captain wants.”

  The Verlaker had wit enough to recognize the signal: she felt him relax a little. “Parley,” he called up to Reynard, who gave a small facial shrug and held up both hands, tilting away his aim. The captain’s steady aim did not change, but very slowly the breath of his knife’s edge withdrew and the circle of his arm opened out. As she stepped away from him, he moved his gun hand to aim at her instead. She looked at him, and he cocked a little smile at her, pleased with his success at a delicate operation that should never have been necessary.

  Then, swiftly, he put the muzzle of his gun under his own chin.

  But not swiftly enough. Reynard’s sure hand was back at aim, his shot knocked the captain’s shot wide, and his men rushed in. He drew blood from one of them before his knife went skittering away, and as a phalanx of Reynard’s men surrounded her and drew her out of the way, she saw the captain struggling against a whole knot of them as he was dragged backward. And then she was out of the hall and secure.

  That was the first death.

  ~*~

  The second death was Dr. Berthau’s. Ingrid went to her own rooms for a much-needed shower and fresh clothes. Everything was in its place, untouched, yet it felt like the scene of a ransacking burglary. But she would get back what had been taken from her, oh yes.

  She summoned Reynard. “We were drugged and abducted,” she told him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I was drugged also. I was detained when I came to; Herval and Morin would have it that I had administered the drug to myself. Then the residue was found in your brandy set and traced, and the doctor and I switched places down below. Morin didn’t want to release me, but Herval realized the convenience of having me manage my own forces under his thumb.”

  “And Perenel and Dederich?”

  “There was an argument, I’m told,” said Reynard with a shrug. “It involved a court sword in a display case. Perenel really did know something about the plot, I think: it’s a pity he took Dederich with him.”

  Ingrid sighed impatiently. “When we get my lord back, we are going to have to devise a better plan for the succession.”

  “The younger crop look more promising, anyway. Can we get him back?”

  “I’m fairly certain General Barklay means us to. Eventually.”

  Reynard winced at the name. “Too much time has been wasted already. Why did he send you home?”

  Ingrid explained that she wasn’t supposed to have been taken to begin with. Reynard grunted. “And two dead guards. Very untidy. What does he want?”

  “Precisely what he’s getting,” Ingrid said dryly. “A major domestic disruption. Now, Reynard: what does Morin have to hold over your head?”

  “Nothing but the false accusation. And you’ve neutralized that.”

  She looked at him levelly. “And the true accusation belongs to me.”

  Reynard took the hit without cavil. “Yes, my lady.”

  “Do you answer to me, Reynard?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Do you answer to anyone else?”

  “No, my lady.”

  “Good. Your first task is to deal with Dr. Berthau.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “Not the Verlaker captain?”

  “I leave him to your discretion,” said Ingrid with a wave of the hand. “The doctor must not live. But before he dies you will find out how much he has compromised my lord’s medical confidentiality.”

  She didn’t need to explain the rest. Reynard thought for a moment and then said: “Will it make a complication for us retrieving him?”

  “Not in the short term,” Ingrid said, coolly. “In the long term you will set yourself to improving that security as well.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Meanwhile I want a daily briefing from the general staff on the state of our operations across the strait. You can reassure them if you like that I won’t interfere with their decisions, but I am taking charge of the domestic situation and I will be properly informed about what affects it.”

  “I don’t think anyone will object to that, my lady. Anyone still alive, that is. What shall I do about Morin?”

  “Watch him. Don’t let him get in my way. And keep me informed.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Reynard hesitated. “I was rather counting on Herval to neutralize him. Of course that did leave me with the much thornier problem of neutralizing Herval, if it turned out to be necessary. But your Verlaker escort handled that neatly.” She knew what he was implying. And what he was asking.

  “You may burnish my reputation for ruthlessness as much as you please, Reynard. At your discretion, as I said.” Plenty of those witnesses would work out that she had incited the Verlaker captain to kill Herval, and she would rather have them thinking about that than that General Barklay had abducted them and then condescended to free them unharmed. That was not to be borne.

  “General Barklay is not going to give my husband back,” Ingrid said. “We are going to take him.”

  ~*~

  It took most of du Rau’s spare hour to hear Ingrid’s account; but he did not regret spending it in the bath. He sank down on the bench, listening to her, and used three precious minutes of his shower ration playing the spray over his scalp with his head bowed. When he moved to hurry over the rest, Ingrid interjected mildly: “I think you’re well entitled to a double ration, Emmerich,” and he turned the dial another click, grateful for the suggestion.

  By the time she came to the end he was standing before his shaving mirror, finishing the rough work he’d started in the car. “One presumes the Verlakers appealed to Perenel’s ambition as an heir candidate,” he commented, wiping his hands on the towel around his waist. “But how did he think he was going to handle Herval?”

  “I can’t
say.” Ingrid’s lack of tone was a comment in itself. He snorted a laugh. Then he sighed.

  “As a stress test for our plan, this has yielded some disappointing results.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, simply. He turned to regard her closely: she had abandoned the cushioned bench and finished her brief standing near as he completed his toilet.

  “I underestimated you,” he said. “I thought I was finished doing that.”

  Ingrid gave a little shrug. “Perhaps I have discovered new limits.”

  “Or the lack of them.”

  The breath of a smile touched her lips. Oh for more time, he thought.

  “If you would care to leave our domestic difficulties to me, my lord,” she said, “I have a few ideas for dealing with them.”

  “By all means,” he said. “I look forward to your reports. No doubt the content will be very entertaining.” After all, there were still plenty of fools in the court.

  “I shall try to oblige.” Her smile came into full evidence, and the knot in his gut, companion to his thoughts for the last ten days, dropped away free. He closed the distance between them and took her in his arms, imbibing her softness, the scent of her hair, the taste of her mouth. Her embrace in response was both silent and urgent, her fingertips pressing into his bare skin. Still, it was Ingrid who recovered first. “Your meeting,” she said softly, as he quested for another kiss.

  Du Rau left his eyes closed and emitted a tiny groan, not disagreeing. Then reluctantly he stood away. “I’ll come back.” He lifted her hand and kissed the backs of her fingers lightly. “And thank you properly for my rescue.”

  Before he could reflect too deeply on the regret of leaving her, he slipped past and out of the bathroom.

  “And your knife?” she called, behind him.

  “Keep it for me,” he said.

  ~*~

  As he feared, the news from the general staff was very bad.

  His northern force had not progressed any further than taking the base at the mouth of the harbor. Despite the heavy bombardment from his scudders, two enemy emplacements were still operational, and had fired on the troopship that ventured into the harbor; it had been forced to take cover on the far side of the island. Worse, nothing could dock at the base itself: not only were the jetties in the line of fire from the harbor, but the enemy had sabotaged the geothermal network under the airstrip and the landing stage. The surfaces were already slick with rain, and it was now a matter of hours, not days, before the glaze began. The only forces on the island base were those who had originally captured it, and their ability to support the scudder attacks was hampered by the destruction they’d had to rain on the base to subdue it. The comms tower was destroyed, and though the weather tower still stood, its equipment was primitive and hardly usable. They needed to establish a defensible position inland to support aerial encroachment, and they had all but run out of time to do it.

  Their position on the south coast was a little better, but not much. They had decimated Verlac’s Boundary Fleet and gained a foothold at the entrance point, but the enemy had anticipated them and flanked the landing forces, trapping them in the coastal hills between the naval base on the coast to the east, and Ryswyck Academy further up and to the west. As a result, most of the troops were still waiting on their ships, bobbing off the coast and fending off aerial strafing from the enemy base. The only real bright spot was that a bombing run had taken out both overland supply lines to the base before being driven off, and the base was now being forced to fly their supplies in piecemeal, harried by scudders all the way.

  Lord General Herval had been a good tactician, but not inspired: Du Rau could see, watching the time-lapse maps on the projection, at what points vital opportunities had been missed. Wernhier, his second, replacing him, had risen to the occasion and protected their gains; but it wasn’t enough. They weren’t going to take the capital by spring just chewing away at the coasts.

  His men flicked apprehensive glances at him as he received these reports in silence. The younger ones had risen in the ranks under his command, and trusted him; the older ones had watched him outmaneuver highborn petty tyrants and venal senior officers alike, and feared him. Three of the four heir candidates were dead, and Lady Ingrid’s lack of concern for their fate was palpable. Du Rau sensed a feeling among them that any of their number could be summarily replaced at any time. Normally he would encourage such a feeling, at least a little, to keep them from growing complacent. But they weren’t complacent; they were afraid. They wanted new confidence that their show of force was not going to founder into helplessness.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said as the round of reports concluded. “You’ve made our position very clear. It’s high time we realigned our strategy: the last thing we want is to get dragged into a war of attrition on the coasts. We need to open distance. Lord Admiral Siebert.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Let the winter immobilize the north for us, and redeploy the scudder missions to patrolling the lane to the island base. See if you can’t get a light cruiser close enough to establish some kind of supply line to our men there. I suppose it’s just as well the Verlakers didn’t have time to destroy their own belowground supply lockers. The heavy bombers you’ll divide for their new mission, which is to finish destroying the Boundary Fleet. If we derobe them now, they won’t have any way of fending off our second stage. Lord General Guiscard.”

  “My lord.”

  “Your troopships in the south are going to pull back to give us room to attack the Boundary. So you will need to have the men who are landed fall back to their most defensible position and hold there. Lord Admiral Wernhier, reserve the rest of your dragon mines for any Boundary ships that try to run home. Don’t waste any more fire on the school; we still want it to stage our troops when we get more of them up there. I expect you’ve mined the eastern side of the inlet against any attacks from Amity Base?”

  “Yes, my lord, but unfortunately some of our troops were driven back upon the mines when they were flanked.”

  “Right. Have a scudder image the area every two hours at low altitude—” he drew up the meteorological data— “and keep looking for a weak point on the ground. There’s a storm system moving in, so there will be plenty of cloud cover.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “They’ll be expecting us to renew our attack from the south; it can’t be helped. Captain Alsburg—” he felt the captain straighten to smarter attention behind him— “you will be on comms during your waking hours; the executive commander will assign someone to spell you for your sleep shift. I will expect your report at the top of every hour.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Very good.” Du Rau rose, and the others rose to attention with him. “Let’s get to work. Alert me at once if anything changes.”

  And that was when the bomb hit.

  8

  The low rumble and shudder couldn’t be anything else. It rattled the cups on the service table and stopped them all where they stood; the projection flickered and then steadied. There was a horrified stillness.

  Du Rau broke the rigor first. He strode to the door, which burst open to admit a comms sergeant with a file. “My lord—”

  “Ah,” du Rau said. “This will be the advance warning of what happened ten seconds ago. Yes?”

  Tremblingly, the sergeant gave him the file. The leaf was not full, but what it held was grim. Du Rau shook it quickly through three pages and then handed it to Lord Admiral Wernhier. A missile, point of origin estimated mid-strait (sub-launched, of course), parabola identified too late; target—

  “If they were aiming for the palace,” Wernhier said, with mordant irony, “they missed.”

  “They weren’t aiming for the palace,” gritted du Rau. He dodged past the sergeant; down the corridor, his superior was coming out of the comms room, concertedly calm but very pale.

  “Direct hit to the Vardray Reservoir,” he confirmed. “And the irrigation works for the
vineyards are offline. Waiting for reports on damage.”

  Du Rau was willing to bet it was total destruction. The impact felt heavy enough. “Let me know as soon as you’ve got it,” he said. “Casualties too. Captain Alsburg, you stay here and assist. Lord General Guiscard, coordinate with the Estuary Guard to patrol near the impact site and provide assistance to the residents there. Quell any panic if you can. And Alsburg, message Reynard under my code to lock down the palace complex. We need one secure point in the city.”

  He sent the others about their suddenly-multiplied duties and took Lord Admiral Wernhier back to the conference room. The projection was still showing the detailed map of Verlac’s south coast.

  Wernhier looked at him uneasily across the glow. “If they fire another one—”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” du Rau finished, bitterly. “This is what Barklay was stalling for. That utter bastard.”

  The comms commander came back in with another leaf-file. “The report,” du Rau said, reaching for it, but it wasn’t.

  “This came in over an open line just now,” said the commander, voice taut.

  It was a single image, a surveillance snap of Vardray Reservoir—how the Verlakers had come by it was another aggravating mystery—and two words.

  Expect more.

  He lowered the leaf-file and spoke very softly. “Do we have any intelligence about the number and launch points of these missiles? Or, indeed, about their existence?”

  Wernhier gripped a chair and said nothing. “Working on that right now, my lord,” said the commander, trembling in spite of himself.

  Du Rau turned away from him. “No, in other words. We can do a post-mortem on that failure later, if there is a later. Come back when you have that damage report.”

  There was a long silence in the wake of the commander’s departure. Du Rau could feel the admiral hesitating to speak into it. “My lord,” he said finally, “the bombardment of the Boundary Fleet.”