The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (33 page)

“Perhaps tomorrow.” The adjutant yawned. “Domina Lehar may have returned from his estate. Or perhaps not. Certainly he’ll be back by the Twenty-Sixth Day, for there’s an important parade, in honor of the Prince of Hermonassa, then.

“But don’t worry, Captain á Cimabue. He’s aware of you. We’ve all heard of your coming.

“By the way. Congratulations on your promotion. I’m
sure
you deserve it, and hope that a combat veteran such as yourself encounters no difficulties with the customs of the Golden Helms.”

He turned and looked at a chart. “Mm. Yes. I think I’ll put you in charge of B Troop. They call themselves the Silver Centaurs. Legate Nexo was in temporary command of the troop, but you have rank on him. Perhaps he’d be willing to serve on under you, although I doubt it.”

I’d known this would happen, even in a line regiment. My rapid promotion over who knows how many thousand young legates would rouse resentment not only in the hearts of those I overleaped, but from my superiors as well. I would have to soldier well to find approval in their eyes.

“I’ll have a word with the legate,” I said. “Who is my troop guide?”

“At the moment … well, you don’t have one. He bought himself out of the army a month or so ago, and Domina Lehar hasn’t gotten around to promoting one yet. See what you think of your men, and offer some suggestions, there’s a good man.”

I saluted, and turned to leave.

“One more thing, Captain. Are those your horses outside? I thought so. Well, you can certainly keep them for off-duty mounts. But all the men of B Troop ride blacks. I’ll notify the remount officer you’ll be needing a new charger. You can select one at your leisure.” I withdrew, somewhat shaken at my more-than-casual welcome, and went to my troop area.

Each troop had a separate building, with the regimental headquarters at the center of the cluster, and behind that the necessary shops for the unit’s support. When I arrived the barracks were nearly deserted, and the only warrant in the orderly room was a junior lance-major. He sprang to attention, and I noted that his uniform was immaculate, as was everything else I’d seen.

I told him who I was, and asked where Legate Nexo was. He said in the city, visiting friends.

I made no comment, but thought this was the most social unit I’d ever seen. Where were the men of my troop? A few on detail, some in the stables, but most of them, since B Troop was standby troop this week, on pass in Nicias.

“Standby, eh? What are we on standby for?”

“Well, sir, in the event of any emergency.”

“How would they be summoned, if they’re all farting about in taverns?”

The lance-major looked perplexed. “Well, sir, there’s never been an occasion like that in the six years I’ve been with the regiment. But I suppose we’d have to wait until they reported back. Maybe send messengers to the taverns the troop usually drinks in.”

I began to growl an opinion, but caught myself in time. There is no bigger military fool than the one who joins a new formation and instantly knows what must be changed. I politely thanked the lance-major, and had him show me to my quarters.

As a troop commander and captain, I’d expected a room to myself, but I was quite pleased with how large it was, including not only a bedroom and separate office, but also a bathroom and small chamber for Karjan. I ordered Karjan to take Lucan and Rabbit to the stables. He saluted, started to leave, then hesitated.

“What’s the problem, Lance? You may speak freely.”

“Beggin’ th’ leg — captain’s pardon, sir, but what the
hells
kind of army have we went an’ joined?”

It was a good question, and became a better one in the next several days. First came Legate Nexo, a rather effete young man who affected a lisp. No, he’d rather not remain with B Troop, but wished to transfer where he’d be, er, among friends of his own sort. I could probably have put him in hack — sentenced to quarters — for a week for insolence. But I would rather have taken him back of the barracks, stripped off my sash, and invited him to discuss the matter in a more direct manner. But I knew an officer of his ilk would never, ever stoop to striking someone with his bare hands, and would have immediately reported me.

As for the 120 men I had under my charge: On the surface, it appeared I was in command of a unit an officer dreams of. I was only five men short of a full troop’s strength, which is always a miracle. Almost all of my men had at least a year’s service, and about half of them were career soldiers. They were all good-sized, the smallest being only five inches short of six feet, and a few even towered over me. They were in the best of health — no one could complain about the quality of our rations, nor the manner in which they were prepared and served.

Our horses were groomed twice a day, well exercised, and fed properly. The harness was always freshly soaped and polished, and the brightwork shone like a mirror.

The men’s turnout was equally spectacular. I ordered a series of inspections, and the biggest offense I could find was a man who hadn’t completely cleaned the blanco off the inside of his helm, where the strap was riveted. I did not chastise him. Even the soles of their boots were blackened before they fell out for parade.

They maneuvered perfectly, and every parade-ground evolution was done precisely, from “Squad … Assemble” to “Pass in Review.” They could raise a cheer and charge past dignitaries without their line wavering more than a foot.

They could … enough!

They were the shittiest group of soldiers I’ve ever had the misfortune to command. Even now, all these years later, I find it impossible to refer to them as “mine,” or “we,” but only “they.” If, Irisu forbid, they had ever been forced to fight a single squad of my sometimes-scruffy, sometimes-underfed, mostly undersized Lancers, the skirmish wouldn’t have been remembered by the men of the Seventeenth.

These “Silver Centaurs” knew nothing of how to fight with their weapons, although they did wonderfully pretty pirouettes when they paraded through the streets of Nicias. Sabers were to be presented, lances were to hang pennons on, and daggers were for ornament.

They stood guard in front of the government buildings in Nicias, but if a mob had charged, they would have screeched and run in dismay, not having the slightest idea of what to do next.

As far as tactics, if I’d ordered them to dismount and advance with bare saber using all cover, I might have been speaking Kaiti. Camouflage, scouting, skirmishes, courier service, flank guard — all the real duties of a cavalryman in war were unknown. The only regimental charge they could manage was across a flat, well-groomed parade field for the approval of diplomats and cheering citizens on holiday.

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with these men. Almost all soldiers are the same; it is their leaders who make the difference. These same men, well and hard trained, could have been as good or better than any Lancers.

But the Golden Helms were as rotten as the Rule of Ten. Domina Lehar was more interested in the mansions and rice fields he owned a day and a half’s journey beyond Nicias to the west, in the delta. The rest of the officers were the same sort of popinjays, fools, and idle gentlemen I’d seen at the lycee, of various ages, ranks, and states of disrepair, and in the Helms there was no one to bring them back to reality.

I’ve heard that in some puffed-chest regiments like the Helms it’s forbidden to discuss business, that is soldiering, in the mess. There was no such ban with the Helms, nor was it necessary. If any of us had talked about our day’s duties, we would have sounded like housewives discussing which brand of polish did the best job on our silver, or else horsedealers nattering on about what someone’s mount might do in the furlong.

The sole exception was a rather disheveled legate three years older than I, who seemed completely uninterested in the latest gossip or horse-breeding, did not drink, did not gamble, and seemed to have little interest in women. Instead he buried himself in history, mostly military, and in the few broadsheets specializing in the military. He’d been eagerly and mistakenly drafted by the Helms because he was the top graduate at his lycee. They didn’t find out until he reported that he’d achieved the position completely on ability in the field or classroom, with never a pin’s notice mentioned about his appearance or failure to suck up to his superiors.

His name was Mercia Petre. Yes,
that
Petre, for the most part no different as a legate than when he held a tribune’s baton not very long afterward.

I can’t say we became friends — with one exception, I doubt if Petre ever had what conventional people call a friend. But I spent long nights in the shambles he called quarters, sipping tea, studying old battles, re-laying them out so the outcome might be different, and reading all we could find on the Border States, on Kallio, and even Maisir. Part of me may have been bored cross-eyed by the dryness of the books, but this was a necessary part of my trade. I was never bored by Petre’s company, although others were, since he had but one interest, and that was serving the war god Isa.

He was the only pleasure I found in that cantonment during those long, drear months with the Helms.

This situation is a favorite in the romances. It’s a great tale, of a staid, pigheaded formation, and how a brave, stubborn young officer stands true for what he knows to be right, and in spite of hostility hammers his own small part of the unit into fighting order, and then is vindicated when war comes and they all ride out and do something terribly heroic.

Reality, however, was that if I’d tried to behave like that young officer I would have had my head handed to me, most likely on the silver salver the domina had his first brandy of the afternoon served on. I could not chance that. Not after Captain of the Lower Half Banim Lanett and the rõl match with the Lancers.

So I followed soldiering’s oldest commandment: “Shut up and soldier, soldier!” I used the few hours allotted for Commander’s Time to try to teach the men some tactical sense, but because we were never allowed out of the city to practice these tactics, nor was there anywhere to learn city-fighting techniques, I fear my talks only provided the men a chance to learn that most soldierly of all skills — to sleep with your eyes open.

All I could do was wait for the year or so to pass until I was forgotten, and then attempt to transfer back to the Frontiers.

That, and explore the world beyond the barracks, beyond the regiment — the wonders of the City of Lights.

• • •

I have never thought of myself as a city man, nor do I especially enjoy a metropolis. But Nicias is a city to fall in love with.

Its most remarkable feature is responsible for its name. When the first men were created by Umar and sent down to this earth, before he withdrew into silence and let the world be ruled by Irisu and Saionji, they found a roaring pillar of flame, flame from a gas that poured from a spring in the rock. Centuries later, that fire was somehow extinguished, and the gas channeled into pipes that were first laid beside and then beneath the streets of the city. When the fire was relit every house, from mansion to shack, and the streets themselves had and have free light that also provides a measure of heat. Nicias has more fires than other cities, but the citizens count that the price to be paid and especially venerate Shahriya. The supply of gas has never slackened, never run out. There is a legend that the day it does is the end of Numantia and perhaps the world itself.

It’s easy to numb the mind with figures about Nicias — capital of Dara Province as well as of Numantia, sitting on the eastern edge of the Latane River’s great delta, forty-five square miles, perhaps a million people, although I doubt if the bravest census taker has ever ventured into the towering, rickety slums of the eastern side or the evil streets of the northern docks that jut into the Great Ocean, nor has anyone numbered the people of the streets who sleep where sundown catches them, wrapped in their single garment.

There are half a hundred parks, from those no bigger than a city square that are owned and maintained by those living around it to the great expanses like Hyder Park or, to the north on the outskirts of the sprawling city, Manco Heath. There are at least twelve branches and who knows how many tributaries of the Latane River that twist through the city. Some of them, like the main navigable branch the ships use, are untamed. Others are channeled into stone banks like canals. Still others run underground, and are used to hurry the city’s sewage to the sea.

I cannot conceive of anyone becoming tired of Nicias. Someone once said that a man could dine at a different restaurant every meal of his life and die before seeing them all. I could cynically add he might die of surfeit or, remembering some of the street vendors I grabbed a hasty snack from, stomach poisoning, instead of old age, but I’ll accept the saying as truth.

Nicias has everything, from cool, quiet streets where the rich have their townhouses to the poorest garrets; shopping areas from twisting alleys with the strangest tiny shops imaginable to stalls to market squares to great emporiums that will sell you anything from a needle to a funeral. But enough — if you wish to know more, purchase a guidebook or, better yet, journey to Nicias and experience its splendor for yourself.

Sometimes I went out on my own, sometimes, when I felt like chancing the riskier parts of the town, I asked Karjan if he wished to accompany me. If he found no other pleasure, he could at least drink enough so I wouldn’t be sneered at for my temperance, and he had an amazingly good bass voice that made him popular in the minstrel bars.

I called on Seer Tenedos, and found him honestly delighted to see me. That became a bit of a habit. If I didn’t have night duty, which only fell once every three weeks in the Helms, and had no other plans, I would drop by the Lycee of Command, which was ten minutes distant, to see if he had any ideas for the evening.

He’d ask how my day went, of which the telling took but boring seconds, and then tell me of his. I assumed he had a Square of Silence cast around his office, since his comments on some of the high-ranking officers he was teaching, or on the staff of the lycee, were scathing.