Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (36 page)

If he decides to, you mean. 
Adrian forced the thought from his mind with a
ruthless shove.  His friend Lutehor would never have occupied a foreign kingdom
for longer than absolutely necessary.  Impossible that the son he had raised
would do otherwise.  Arronath was already as large as it needed to be.  The
duties stemming from its founding and its current problems were more than
enough to engage any leader without adding to them. 
But then, Lutehor never
would have ordered you to conquer the Merinor kingdoms like this either.

This time Adrian stopped to grit his teeth and firmly
force away the disloyal thought.  His life had been devoted to serving his
king.  In the twilight years of it, he could afford no room for doubts.  He was
devoted, body and soul, to his king and kingdom.  Others, though…

He reached the sally, surprised to find Jide already
waiting.  “I had a feeling you’d want a good workout as soon as you could,” the
rugged veteran growled in greeting.  Jide had also requisitioned two large
soldiers to act as guards for their privacy.

Adrian addressed them personally.  “See to it no one
interrupts us for any reason.  The building can burn down for all of me.”  The
soldiers nodded and took positions to the door’s either side.

They entered the indoor sparring room.  Except for the
mats piled in one corner the large room was empty.  Two men could easily practice
their fighting skills without restriction.

The moment the door shut, Adrian asked his friend,
“You discovered the truth?”

“As much of it as I could,” replied Jide, adjusting
the patch covering his left eye socket.  He had worn it so long it seemed a part
of his tough-as-leather features.  The rough stubble shadowing his face looked
as though he had not shaven in days.  Adrian could never imagine him without
it.  Jide apparently gave no thought to his appearance…except the stubble had
been there since the day Adrian met him.  Never once had it been either longer
or shorter than a few fingernails width.

The two sat on the mat pile and withdrew their
swords.  They knocked the blades together every few moments to give the guards
outside noise to listen to.

“First off, I think you were right about those two,”
Jide whispered in a low, dog-like growl.  “As far as I’ve been able to tell,
Mendell and Harbon are exactly the type we’ve always said should never be left
in command of a potato farm.”

“What can I work with?”

“Nothing solid.  Those rumors what drifted up to you
seem to be true.  Several outlying Taur patrols on the fringe have been feeding
Tullainians to the beasts.  Making an example to the rest of the village.  You
know the writ.”

Fist clenched, Adrian spat.  “Then I’ll have them hung
for war crimes!  Such…
vileness
goes against every code of Taur conduct
under military law!”

“It won’t be so easy, Adrian.  I tried to trace the
orders back, but they were all smoke.  Everyone knows it was an order from up on
high, except no one can say who issued it.”

“Those two!  Ever since I had to take them into my
ranks, I’ve
felt
their rotting cores.”

“And they’re good at hanging a shield over their
asses.  If you start an official investigation on them, you won’t find a damned
thing.  Straight to the point, I think you might regret doing so in the end.”

Adrian shifted.  “This is
my
army, Jide.  I’ve
rebuilt it over thirty years, strengthening the points grown rusty from
complacency since the founding.  You and I have both redesigned the force
structures down to the very unit.  I will not allow anyone within to run amok,
satisfying their lust for power through the system that I built.  Especially
those two!”

Jide glanced over with his one eye.  “Be careful,
Adrian.  You don’t want to attract attention from the wrong places!”

“Xenos, you mean.”  Adrian sighed.  “He is my king’s
trusted councilor.  I have no right to gainsay him.”

That hardly satisfied Jide.  He pressed.  “Mendell and
Harbon are evil.  I don’t doubt it, not after slinking around in their shadows
for the last month.  Isn’t that enough to judge Xenos by, knowing they owe
their positions in our army to him?”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Adrian countered, if
uncertainly.

“Including Lambert.  I know you don’t want to hear
it,” the leathery man persisted at Adrian’s sidelong glare, “but you know
that’s the truth.  Has it occurred to you that all these dark visions of the
seers we’re supposed to be investigating only started
after
Xenos
arrived at the court?”

As tempting as it was to believe Xenos might be behind
all their troubles, a lifetime of unwavering support for his liege refused to
allow such a supposition.  Doubts would crack the foundation of his beliefs,
negating everything he had ever held of value.  Instead, he said, “They arrived
after many things happened.  Hoping to nail it down to a single event is
pointless.”

Jide knew Adrian better than anyone else.  He gave
up.  For now.  “Whatever the truth is, Mendell and Harbon are dangerous.  You
can’t prove they gave those orders, and you can’t kick them out for no reason
without stomping on the wrong toes.  Any investigations will turn back on you. 
They’re like set traps, waiting for your dumb, clumsy foot to step in them.” 
After a moment, he added, “Our best bet might be to make
sure
evidence
for their crimes is found.”

Adrian refused that vehemently, as Jide had known he
would.  “Manufacturing evidence is exactly the type of activity we have worked
so hard to stamp out of the army, Jide!”

“Every situation has its extremes.  We put a stop to
it, or tried to, because every mother-loving son-of-a-bitch with so much as a
thread of insignia on his chest was scheming like the hells to get his superior
officer’s job.”

“I have no desire to fight corruption with corruption.”

“Is it?  We aren’t slinking around to further our
positions in the ranks.  We’re cleaning them out!  I think that’s a completely
different matter, especially since those two have already started abusing their
power.  How far will they go?  Do you think they’re satisfied with what they’ve
attained?  You and I both know the answer to that question, when garbage like
them are part of the equation.”

Scowling, Adrian countered, “It may not come to that. 
Have you heard about Durrac?”

“A rumor or two.”

“Mendell says he found a conspiracy.”

“My ass.  Mendell wanted to teach the other towns
under his jurisdiction what happens when they get cute with him.”

“I’m certain, but I need you to find me proof.”

This time Jide scowled.  “How?  All the citizens are
dead, and I can’t speak Traders anyway.  It’ll still be at least a month or two
before I can at my current rate, which is to say, slow.”

“No one is perfect.  The proof exists.  I need you to
find it.”

Jide sighed.  “This will push back my language studies
further.”  But he did not disagree.

For the next half-hour, Jide managed to get Adrian
talking about alternative methods for dealing with the two rotten apples in
their barrel.  Adrian was only barely persuaded to refrain from jerking the two
colonels straight into a holding cell.  In the end, they both re-sheathed their
blades and left the sally.

They paused while Jide made a show of complimenting
the general on how well he kept his fighting skills in trim.  When the battle
veteran strode away, Adrian heard one guard whispering to the other.

“Look at them!  Over a half-hour of fighting and they
aren’t even breathing hard!”

A grunt followed, elicited by the second guard’s elbow
being thrown into the first man’s ribs.  Adrian glanced over to see them
hastily straighten to attention.  The first guard gazed at him with a mixture
of awe and pride in his superior.

New stories to add to my reputation,
Adrian thought, then walked away, his mind running in
circles.

*        *        *        *        *

Marik was glad that he was, essentially, an outsider. 
Not being a Thoenar citizen, he could remain apart from the tense undercurrents
running through the population.  The longer he mingled among the tournament
crowds the clearer those currents became to him.

Repeatedly it reminded him of a boiling stew over a
camp fire.  Unstirred, it bubbled, the liquid expanding until it overflowed
into the flames.  In this case, one of the spoons stirring the kettle, keeping
the contents from raging beyond control, was the tournament.

He knew full well that the arrival of the largest
tournament held in centuries during an uneasy time was hardly coincidental. 
Galemar had been at peace so long it barely remembered the last major upset in
inter-kingdom relationships.  People were nervous, others were concerned; only
the practical sharpened their blades while looking over their shoulders.  Marik
could perceive the unseen currents, as well as their causes.

The Nolier war had ended in a stalemate with no clear
victor.  Blue-uniformed soldiers had been chased back across the Hollister
Bridge but they still sat on their side, glaring across while Galemar returned
the favor.  Thousands of men had lost their lives on both sides.  Just as many
had returned to their homes bearing fewer limbs than they had departed with. 
Maimed soldiers were forced to find other work suited to their lessened
capabilities.  Most were bitter and spent days beside common room hearths with
tankards or pain-killing opium, endlessly retelling their horrible stories.

Everyone in Galemar had been touched by the aftermath,
and the knowledge that the Noliers were not fully vanquished, that they might
return at a whim, gnawed at their minds. 
We might have to go through that
all over,
was the common, unspoken thought.  The first round had exacted a
heavy price, the soldiers with amputated limbs in front of their eyes every day
keeping warfare’s reality fresh in their memories.

And if that were not bad enough, refugees by the
thousands streamed across the Tullainian border, testifying that life could
rapidly become far worse.  Their stories were terrifying.  They pleaded for
humanity and aid, but their presence created a whole new slew of problems for
Galemar’s citizens.  While rich in fertile soil, the previous war had taken
many fieldworkers away for an entire growing season.  A substantial portion of
the harvests had been directly routed to the warfront, meaning the winter
stores, thinner than customary, could barely support their own population. 
Finding food and clothing enough for so many meant the Galemarans would watch
their own families go hungry.

Isolated in Kingshome, Marik had escaped the worst
Galemaran winter in over a hundred years.  The band had taken so many losses
that even their own reduced food supplies were not a substantial problem. 
Outside, desperate refugees starved to death on the roads.  Families with
malnutrition sores watched each other waste away while the children’s tears
fell and their wraithlike bodies consumed their own flesh.

Broken Tullainians had traveled from door to door, begging
for any kindness or food scraps with which to feed their weakening young.  Many
Galemarans had finally had enough.  Men and women who possessed warmth in their
souls for those less fortunate began to shut their eyes against them.  Unable
to aid all who came to their door, they instead hardened their hearts to the
refugees, killing part of themselves in the process.  They ignored their
deteriorating philanthropy by ignoring the refugees who required it.  Despite
Galemar’s roads being clogged with them, not one refugee could be found
anywhere around Thoenar during the tournament.  No one wanted to be reminded of
such harsh truths while they worked so hard at enjoying life.

All the while, the stories from Tullainia grew worse
with every passing day.  With a known enemy to the east, Galemar feared to face
the prospect of another to the west.  Everyone prayed that whatever transpired
there would stop at the border, that whatever Tullainia had done to anger the
gods, the deities would leave Galemarans be.  But in their homes or in dark
tavern corners, they worried.  Life had changed over the last year.  It had
become altogether different.

Marik read these dark secrets in the people around
him.  He sat atop a crate lost in the festival’s sprawling tent city.  The
Thoenar citizens’ enthusiasm to have the best time in their lives was only
outstripped by those who had traveled from beyond the capitol.  Their faces
were masks that slipped at times, revealing the coiled tension beneath.

He disliked cities for many reasons.  This reason had
always topped the list.  Just as in Spirratta, the people were determined to
avoid reality.  Closing one’s eyes never made flab into muscle, or stopped a
criminal from opening your stomach with his knife.  Marik believed the population
might be less jittery if the king required everyone to spend a year serving
with the guards.

A man dressed in a Galemaran soldier’s uniform stopped
before Marik.  He had been walking slower than the flowing crowd, studying the
people around him.  Marik knew what the soldier meant to say before he opened
his mouth.  This was another reason he felt glad to be an outsider, though one
with a purpose.