The Invisible Hands - Part 1: Gambit (54 page)

Boynar had no such doubts. His did.

One time, when he and five other, at first sight randomly selected, Clansmen were on a routine bodyguard service, they had halted for lunch at a small tavern. It had been high summer and the prince had asked for the meal to be served outside. It was then they had gotten their assignment. It turned out each one of them was there, not by accident, but because he had been chosen deliberately and carefully. Anaxantis had explained that he wanted a group of trusted Clansmen to discreetly go over the border and try to recruit new settlers for the plains. They would be given instructions and training by Tomar how to go about it, so as to be as efficient as possible and yet not draw attention to themselves. The prince had said that it was inevitable that sooner or later Ximerionian authorities, and probably the high king himself, would get wind of what was going on. It was unavoidable since there would be a lot more of them than the six Clansmen 45
present. The assignment was genuine enough. The Plains needed settlers. But that was not the end of it. Far from it. While the task of all the others was limited to recruiting, these six would get instructions for a far more important assignment.

Anaxantis needed eyes and ears in places where he couldn’t go himself. Trying to get people to immigrate to the plains would be their cover. A very convincing one, since nothing is as convincing as the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth. Anaxantis thought that once agents of the king or other official observers had identified his men as recruiters, they would look no further. One covert operation would cover another, more weighty one.

Tomar had told them which people to look for, and where, and how to approach them. Anaxantis had given them their secret mission, one by one, separately. Each of them was asked to keep it private, to not even talk about it with friends, only with the prince himself. They had left on different days, at the crack of dawn, unnoticed. The prince had ridden a few miles with Boynar to see him off. The highlander didn’t doubt for a moment that he had done so with the others as well. Or would do so. When their ways parted, he had given Boynar a little piece of parchment.

“Learn the addresses, the directions how to get there and the little phrase in Ancient Baltoc by heart, then destroy the note. One of the addresses is of my notaries in Ormidon. If you need money, ask for it from Meyman, Gernon and Staffling. They will want to know your name and they’ll ask you for the sentence. Then they’ll give you what you need. They will also convey longer reports and messages. They have a regular courier service to Dermolhea. Whatever documents you give them will reach me, together with my financial statements. It will likely take weeks though, and it’s not a very safe way. So be careful what you write. The other addresses are for shorter, more urgent, 46
messages. They’re far safer and faster as well. The people there will ask

you the same two things and send whatever you have to say by courier pigeon.”

Boynar had looked at the parchment.

Rono Perga Nistra Stannar.

He looked up at Anaxantis.

“No,” he had said, “not as long as you have friends.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be going then.”

“Take care.”

“Thanks, you as well.”

“No. I mean be very careful. This is a dangerous mission,” Anaxantis had said. “No information, no matter how important it might seem, is worth losing your life over.” There had been genuine concern in his voice.

“I will be very cautious, Anaxantis. Being a northerner will help with that. We’re not the trusting kind,” he had replied. “Not without a very good reason anyway,” he had added with a wry smile.

The prince had nodded.

Boynar had memorized the addresses while riding at the walk. To make certain he couldn’t forget them, when he had stopped by the side of the road around midday, he had made an extremely abbreviated version of them under the form of a seemingly meaningless string of letters and figures. He had divided this into three equal parts, and with his dagger he had scratched them on the inside of his belt in the wrong sequence. When he was satisfied it would be enough to jog his memory, should he ever need to, he ate the little parchment. The

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phrase he hadn’t needed to memorize because he knew it already. But

how, he wondered, had the prince learned about it? It wasn’t a random sentence. It had been the motto of Grannivall mern Debroc, the last great leader of the Highland Resistance.

Rono Perga Nistra Stannar. I Can Not Entirely Be Lost.

Long weeks Boynar had traveled from villages to hamlets and from hamlets to minor towns barely worth the name. Such a one was Vilgrod, a sleepy burgh, forgotten by time and man alike. Not much of a future to be had there, unless you were born into the affluent classes.

He had taken care to ask permission of the mayor for his recruiting efforts. He had been careful to point out that he would mainly appeal to people without any prospects. As expected the mayor had translated this as future undesirables, and he had graciously sanctioned Boynar’s efforts. As a result, about thirty young people, men and women, had decided to risk the journey. They were joined by some fifteen more from the demesnes east of the town. Boynar had persuaded these last, one night, in a tavern where the road to Vilgrod met the Northern Highway.

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It was the evening he had seen Rullio. He had feigned not to notice

him, but he wondered whether Rullio had recognized him as a Clansman. Not that they were even vague acquaintances. The count of Brenx-Aldemon, as he styled himself these days, and the highlander didn’t move in the same circles. For one, Boynar was Anaxantis’s man, Rullio Ehandar’s. Rullio might be of what they called in Ximerion old nobility. Boynar, on the other hand, could trace his lineage back for almost a thousand years, albeit the first few hundred years belonged more to legend than history. They must have seen each other in Lorseth, if only in passing.

The unexpected meeting had given Boynar food for thought. Was the count there on just a pleasure trip? Was he returning to his ances— tral home of Brenx? Or was he going to his new demesne of Aldemon?

The fourth possibility was that he was on a similar mission as himself, but for Prince Ehandar.

When he estimated he had done his part in the recruiting effort, and more importantly, that his cover was firmly established, he traveled on to Ormidon. After arranging for lodgings, Boynar had wandered through the city, much like Rullio had done, though he was unaware of this fact. He had overheard several spirited conversations in markets and in waterholes of varying respectability. He had ridden to Camp Prista and had sat under a tree for nearly a day overlooking it, without ever descending into the valley itself. He had seen soldiers come in uniform, and he had seen men in civilian clothes leave.

Strangely enough still in some kind of military formation, but the groups were smaller and the men were doing their best to give the appearance of just a group of random travelers. When he returned to Ormidon, he mulled over what he had seen. Why had the king chosen to let the part of the army he was planning to dismiss travel to Prista in small units and leave it in even smaller ones? What Boynar knew of such things — which wasn’t much, he had to admit — led him to 46
believe this was not how armies were disbanded. Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of ceremony? All the army standing together on some plain, and being addressed, if not by the high king himself, by a royal prince or at least by an army commander? Granted, there hadn’t been a battle, so no heroes, dead or alive, to exalt. But still, shouldn’t there have been some heartening words about a job well done, even if that job had been only guarding the frontiers?

Halfway back, it struck him. Doing it this way made it very difficult, nary impossible, to count just how many men were being let go.

And that went as well for the question as to where they were going. A casual observer, such as he, or a spy, again such as he, would have to spend weeks observing the camp, and still he wouldn’t be sure if more men were coming than going or not.

He was almost back at the Guild Station where he had hired his horse, when something else that had been irking him came to the surface of his mind. The little groups that left were not just travelers on the way home. They were units. Small, military units, minus the uniforms. He was almost certain they would reassemble somewhere. But where? And against whom?

After taking his dinner in the barroom, Boynar spent the evening and part of the night in his room writing his report to Anaxantis, using up three candles and a flask of undiluted wine in the process. Northerners could hold their drink. None the worse for this self-indulgent behavior, he delivered the parchments duly to the notaries of the prince the next morning. He also asked for a moderate amount of extra money for his expenditures. Then he went back to pack his bags and left for Fort Nira.

One of the possibilities Boynar had considered upon first meeting Rullio was confirmed when he saw the count again in Nira. He had noticed him just in time to duck behind a stall in the market, pretending

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to have dropped something. He looked cautiously up, and to his relief,

saw Rullio enter a tavern. Trying not to draw attention to himself, he left the square. Another thing to report. It seemed the count of Brenx-Aldemon and he were on the same or a similar mission, but for a different brother. Did this mean the foppish count had reported him already to his prince? No, that was very unlikely. Anaxantis had been very clever to bury his true mission under the cover of another, very real one. A cover that had almost been blown sky high, he shuddered to think. He supposed the count would go about his mission in his usual lighthearted and cavalier way. Not Boynar. He would seek out people in the know and ferret out the truth from them.

Noble intentions, but easier formulated than actualized.

He knew he had seen the man before. He had ducked behind a stall, but Rullio had a good visual memory. He could conjure the scene up before his mind’s eye and almost study it. After but a few moments, the count realized this was the man he had met in that tavern near the Northern Highway who had been recruiting the locals for settlement in the Renuvian Plains. What was he doing here? Had he followed Rullio? Not very likely. Rullio had no illusions of his own importance. It 46
was more probable that the little warlord had sent him out to gain

some much needed intelligence, although he had asked Rullio to do the same.

The implication was that His Highness Prince Anaxantis didn’t trust Rullio, Count of Brenx-Aldemon, very much. Well, no surprises there. But Ehandar was supposed to be his friend. So why had he sent Gorth to Ormidon? And to do what? If Ehandar was playing a game of his own, he hadn’t told Rullio. He had told Gorth, however. Most likely, anyway.

He ordered another tankard of dark brown beer. When it arrived he drank deeply. It was cool, luxurious tasting and went down easily, but it couldn’t prevent him from sliding into a morose and unhappy state.

“So, none of them trust me,” he thought. “The warlord doesn’t, my friend Ehandar doesn’t, and Gorth doesn’t.”

He hiccupped.

His family would rather be rid of him. Most of his other friends were dead or in hiding. Ehandar and Gorth. He supposed they would never say anything amiss to him or deliberately make him feel unwelcome. But he couldn’t simply forget what he had found out.

“Has Ehandar asked his brother to send me on a fool’s errand? Just to have me out of the way?”

He leaned back on the bench he was sitting on, and held his empty tankard high in the air. A refill arrived promptly.

He tried to consider his options. He couldn’t unlearn what he knew, but he could pretend not to know. He was good at pretending.

He would present them the same sunny, superficial Rullio they knew and loved. But didn’t trust.

Tomorrow he would seek an audience with the high king.

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“Maybe my main loyalties should lie with the one who made me a

count and thus independent of my big brother,” he thought, not without bitterness. “It’s not only the title. There is also the demesne and its revenues which make me my own man.”