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  I thought of defending Kutulu, but caution took me, and I said nothing.

  “Now, we have more important matters,” the emperor went on. “We’ll start with your new assignment, the importance of which I was not exaggerating.” An impish grin came. “But I’m not going to tell you what it is.”

  “I beg pardon, Your Highness?”

  “You heard me clearly. By the way, I’ve changed my mind. Pour me a drink from that other bottle, the one shaped like a rearing demon, over by my desk. In the cabinet below it, you’ll find various mineral waters.”

  I obeyed. Tenedos sat down, leg hung over the chair’s arm, and watched, still smiling. I decided I could outwait him, and did.

  “You won’t ask, will you?” he said.

  “No, sir. I figure you’ll tell me when it’s important for me to know.”

  The emperor laughed aloud. “Sometimes I suspect you know me better than I know myself. Do you ever find yourself missing the old days, Damastes? Before we had all the power and gold? Back when we wanted, instead of having?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I can’t think of ever wanting to be somewhere, or in some time, other than where I am. Unless it’s really shitty, like Sulem Pass. Then I want to be anywhere.”

  “That was horrible,” he said. “But on the other hand, it was glorious. I remember that infantry captain … what was his name?”

  “Mellet, sir. I make sacrifice to him, and his men, every year on the anniversary of that last stand.”

  I was amazed he could have forgotten Mellet, and the others of the Khurram Light Infantry whose bravery enabled us, and the Numantian civilians we escorted, to escape the doom planned by the Men of the Hills.

  “Yes,” Tenedos went on. “I remember him, and all the others, very well. I think it’s well we remember men like him, and even brave beasts like that dying elephant that tried to rally to the trumpet when we first met at Ghazi. For that’s the part of war that makes us all great, worthy to stand proud in front of the gods.”

  But I shivered, thinking of bloody times and the black wasteland war dragged across the world. I should have marked what the emperor said, but I merely thought it the romantic words of a man who’d known little of real war, and that almost always victorious. The emperor seemed to want no response, thankfully.

  “Yes,” he went on. “Glory still must be sought and won, or men grow lazy, weak, and stupid and are dragged down by those who are stronger and more brutal than they.” The emperor sipped brandy and stared at me. Strangely, I thought he was seeing through me, or seeing me at the head of another great army, caprisoned for battle. I remained silent until the emperor’s reverie came to an end.

  “Great times,” he mused. “But there shall be greater ones to come.” He drained his snifter. “I still won’t tell you what your next task shall be. But I’ll tell you who shall. Seek your friend, Tribune Petre. For it’s all, or everything beyond my initial idea, his doing.”

  • • •

  I’d met Mercia Petre when we were misassigned to the Golden Helms of Nicias. Petre was a completely earnest sort, whose only life and interest was the military, its history and ways. In the long, dull weeks of parade-ground duty, we’d done what many young officers do and dreamily designed our very own army. But then the Seer Tenedos had given us the chance to make it real, and so the trudging, bloated divisions of the past became the swift-striking sabers that slashed into Kallio and ended the civil war.

  Petre had been in charge of the dragoons during the war, then, as tribune, was given the nominal duty of commanding the army’s center. But our full forces hadn’t assembled since we’d destroyed Chardin Sher, and so he took charge of reforming the army’s moribund training. To make sure he didn’t stale in his post, Petre made periodic visits to the frontiers on “tours of inspection,” where he threw himself into the heat of the savage little skirmishes as eagerly as any freshly named legate hungry for glory. Somehow he’d taken only the most minor wounds and had become legendary for his luck, just as tribune Le Balafre was known for always winning, but somehow always taking hurt as he did.

  I was probably as much a friend as Petre ever allowed himself or wanted. All but one, and I met him on that day. Since the war, we’d both been busy on imperial business and met only half a dozen times, generally in distant, tiny outposts. I’d never been to his house. I imagined it would not be large, for Petre was a man of simple tastes, much more than a bachelor officer’s quarters, probably with a library the size of a lycée’s attached.

  Petre’s mansion swept up the side of a hill, in the heights with Nicias’s richest. It was utterly beautiful, a series of sweeping curves, stone with marble facing in gentle hues that never seemed to reach a corner or a straight line. There was nothing stark, nothing harsh. Even the plants in the gardens were soft and tropical. Two smiling men, wearing unobtrusive livery in pale colors, took Lucan’s reins and led him away. A finely dressed woman, about ten years older than I, greeted me, and said Tribune Petre awaited me in the library. The servants, mostly young men, were dressed in the same uniform as the footmen.

  The library was big, open, airy, with many skylights and windows between the endless shelves. There were maps aplenty rolled on racks.

  At least Petre hadn’t changed. He wore a plain dark gray uniform with no medals, and the sash of rank around his waist was sloppily tied. His uniform looked like standard quartermaster issue, about half a size too big. Also Mercia was barefoot instead of wearing cavalry boots.

  “So what am I to do next, then?” I asked. “What scheme have you devised this time? And by the way, you could always offer me something. It’s still brisk out there.”

  “Oh,” Petre said. “Oh, yes. Uh … some tea? Yes, we’ll have tea.”

  “That would go well,” I said.

  Rather than signaling for a servant, Petre went to the door and called. After a time, the door opened and a tray was brought in by a very slim, almost uncannily handsome young officer.

  “This is my aide,” Petre said, and perhaps no one but myself would have caught that slight hesitation before the word “aide.”

  “Legate Phillack Herton.” He looked at me almost challengingly. If he’d expected to see disapproval, he was sore disappointed. If Herton was more than Petre’s aide, what of it? My province of Cimabue might be backward in some respects, but unlike Nicias it didn’t much care whom one chose to partner with. My only hope was that he made Petre’s life a little less lonely, although I’m not sure that strange man knew the meaning of the word. Herton served tea, then, unbidden, curled catlike on a sofa, eyes intent on Petre.

  “You and I are going to create a series of elite divisions,” Petre went on. “I called them strike forces; the emperor decided they’d be named the Imperial Guard, and numbered. There’ll be half a dozen at first, more as we raise the men. They’ll be big units, at least ten thousand men, maybe more.”

  He went to a wall and pulled a curtain aside, revealing a chart: two Heavy Cavalry regiments, 1,000 men in each; two Light Cavalry regiments — lancers, 700 men in each; four dragoon regiments — mounted infantry, 1,000 men in each; one regiment of skirmishers, 500 men; one pioneer unit to cut roads, build bridges, etc., 500 men; one of a new unit, what Petre called gallopers — messengers who’d enable the Guard commander to maintain a sort of order in the march and, in battle, to hopefully have some idea of what was going on, 250 men; one unit composed of the quartermasters, farriers, animal nurses, 1,000 men; what I privately called the odds and sods — military warders, bandsmen, heliograph operators, stretcher bearers, chirurgeons, 300–500 men; and finally the command staff. Petre said there’d be at least fifty to a hundred in this unit, and I whistled. He shook his head.

  “No. That’s a bit small as it is. The way the Guard will be fought, its commander will need to subordinate all the authority he can, just to keep his mind clear for the greater picture. The staff won’t be standing around admiring its medals for sycophancy.”

  �
�All right,” I said. “I’ve got your Guard unit — call it a corps, perhaps — in my mind. How will this unit be fought? How’ll it operate differently from our present tactics?”

  “Not a great deal,” Petre said. “Our cavalry’s already trained to strike for the heart of the enemy. The Guard will only be an extreme version of this. Right now our cavalry can fight ahead of our lines for how long?”

  “If they stay mobile, maybe two or three weeks,” I hazarded. “Far less if they’re pinned and brought to static battle.”

  “The Guard will fight like that — but if a corps is stopped by a superior force, it’ll be able to continue the attack. The Guard’s objectives will be what the cavalry’s are now — fortresses, commanders, the enemy’s capital — but they’ll be able to stay out, stay moving, longer. Essentially they’ll be an army within themselves, so when we’re fighting on the suebi, they won’t have to worry about when the rest of the army — the quartermasters, the magicians, the bakers — will catch up. If they have to, they can take an enemy city and hold it as their winter quarters, although we can’t allow ourselves to be doomed by campaigning through the Maisirian winter.

  “You’ll have noticed,” he added, “no more war elephants. They’re slow, require infinite fodder which the suebi won’t be able to provide, can’t carry that much, can be killed by any infantryman who can dodge their trunks and tusks, and don’t scare anyone but the greenest troops.”

  “Good,” I added. “Plus they scare the whey out of horses.”

  I studied his chart for many minutes.

  “I like it in a number of ways,” I finally said. “I’d add two more units. First archers. Give me, say, five companies, a hundred men apiece. Let them train together, then break them up in detachments to be used wherever necessary.”

  “Good,” Petre said, making a note.

  “And one other, smaller unit. Magicians. We need battle-trained sorcerers who can feel for the enemy’s magic and lay counterspells and spells of our own.”

  Now it was Petre’s turn for surprise. “And what god is going to teach magicians to get along with each other for a common good?” he said skeptically. “Aharhel? He can talk to kings, but I think sorcerers would be beyond his capabilities.”

  “The god will be Emperor Tenedos,” I said flatly. “If he can bring you and me to battle, then he can damned well horsewhip his brethren into the same harness.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Petre said. “And I’ll very cheerfully leave that to the emperor, as you suggest. What problems do you see?”

  “First,” I said, “it’ll take time to train these units if they’ve got to be able to fight in great bodies, and we’ll have to have a lot of space to practice in.”

  “The emperor is already building training camps in Amur,” Petre said. “Room there to maneuver whole armies.”

  That province was secluded, barren, yet close to the Latane River for swift communication with Nicias. The gold our army would spend there would be welcome.

  “What about time?”

  Petre shrugged. “As soon as you tell the emperor you’re ready to implement my — I mean his idea there’ll be a decree issued and we’ll send men, each corps’s future cadre, to every post looking for volunteers. If we can’t get enough of them fast enough, or if we get stuck with slackers, then we’ll use an imperial edict to draft the troops we need.”

  I thought again, then nodded. “Maybe your idea takes away some of the worry I’ve had about all those leagues and leagues of Maisir.”

  “There’s only one real problem remaining,” Petre said, and I thought I caught a flash of amusement in his eyes. “We’ll need some sort of uniform for them. I suppose you’ll find the time to design something?”

  I looked at him hard, but his gaze was innocent. Herton was examining a nearby tapestry. I’d achieved a certain amount of … well, I suppose notoriety is the word, for my rather flamboyant taste. Marán had designed some; sometimes I’d had an idea of my own.

  “Is that joke yours?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Petre said. “The emperor came up with it, and when he finished laughing he ordered me to repeat it — exactly — to you.”

  “Thanks, Mercia,” I said. “Maybe first I’ll ask his permission to redesign the battle garb of my fellow tribunes. Something in reds and greens. Floor-length robes. In velvet.”

  • • •

  Marán and I didn’t return to the Water Palace, but to our own mansion on the riverfront, five stories that could have served as a blockhouse. I had no time to worry about the Tovieti, so I ordered my reformed Red Lancers to be quartered in the mansion, using two ballrooms for the men. There were more than enough disused rooms for the officers. Marán, by now, had become quite used to having soldiers garrisoned in our home. At least, she said, this place was big enough so we could keep them on the first floor and have the upper stories to ourselves.

  Then Mercia and I set to work building an army for the emperor for the second time.

  • • •

  “Ah,” Kutulu said, showing a trace of surprise, “this is a true turnabout. I visit you when you’re in disgrace, now you have done the same. You are a friend.” He picked up a box of the omnipresent yellow cards I thought he had every citizen of Numantia logged on, and was about to set it on the floor of his tiny, cluttered office. He plucked one card from the box first, though. “I must remember to deal with that man,” he muttered to himself. “I doubt, though, if your visit is completely social,” he added.

  Actually, it was mostly that. I had a couple of questions, but didn’t know how to tell Kutulu that, yes indeed, I remembered when he’d come to call some time earlier, and how it had heartened me.

  “I wanted to know,” I said, “if you’d been able to find any hard links between the Tovieti and Maisir.”

  “None, which is another reason for imperial ire.”

  Quite suddenly the small man’s face twisted, and his lips worked. I was reminded of friends whose loves had betrayed them, and how they could be unexpectedly reminded of the catastrophe and their control would shatter. Tenedos had been the sun, moon, and stars to Kutulu, and to be in eclipse must have been as awful as any ruined love affair.

  I looked away, then back, and the warder regained his rigid control. “My apologies. Perhaps I’m overworked.” Kutulu’s life was nothing but work, but I nodded yes, so it must be.

  “Speaking of the Tovieti,” I said, slightly changing the subject, “what wainscoting are those rats wandering in? Or are they no longer your responsibility?”

  “I’m still pursuing them, and every now and then I trap one or two. I think they’re getting larger — there’s more and more signs of them. But I’ve still been unable to find their leaders, their central organization. Perhaps the emperor is right. Perhaps I’m working beyond my capabilities.”

  “I doubt that,” I reassured him. “Come on, man. You told me the emperor would come back to his senses about me, and so it happened. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you? He just has many things to worry about now. Particularly Maisir.”

  Kutulu began to say something, but caught himself.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “What I was about to say might be taken as disloyalty.” I snorted disbelief. “I thought once,” he said, in a very low tone, “that I could serve two masters. It appears I was wrong.”

  “You puzzle me.”

  “I should say no more, but I’ll add that I became a warder because I wanted to serve the truth. Perhaps I made it my first god.”

  I had a sudden inkling of what Kutulu’s mysterious words might mean, and did not want to pursue the matter. “Back to the Tovieti. Have you heard of this phenomenon called the ‘Broken Men'?”

  “I have,” Kutulu said. “Numantia’s always had a problem with the landless, called by assorted names. I suppose any country with a rigid system of place will have the equivalent.

  “It worries me, though, that they’re
on the increase. And I’ve picked up some linkage between these drifters and the Tovieti.”

  “Should we be worried?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Kutulu said. “I should, just as I worry about anything that threatens the stability of Numantia. As you said, rats in the wainscoting.”

  “Another question,” I said. “Should I still consider myself a target of the stranglers?”

  “Absolutely,” Kutulu said. “Especially with the emperor having named you to command his Imperial Guard.”

  “You may be in disgrace, but it appears your ears aren’t stopped,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Kutulu said. “I’m not dead.”

  “Good. I think your talents will be needed in the near future.” I stood up. “My real purpose in coming was to convey an invitation from my wife to dine with us, perhaps tomorrow night?”

  Kutulu looked amazed, and I wondered if anyone had ever asked him to a completely social event. “Well … I normally work late … No. Never mind. Of course I’ll be there. At what hour?”

  “Two hours after sunset would be ideal.”

  • • •

  Our driveway was filled with a dozen or more expensive carriages. On one I saw the Agramónte coat of arms. Wondering what this portended, I tossed Rabbit’s reins to Karjan and hurried inside.

  My new majordomo met me at the door. Marán’s brother and some fourteen other noblemen were in the upstairs library, waiting. I shed my cloak, helmet, and sword and went to meet them in the circular meeting room.

  Praen, Marán’s oldest brother, stood just inside the entrance. It was sometimes hard to believe this big, bluff man was related to my delicate wife, or rather that she was a true Agramónte, since Praen and her brother Mamin looked exactly like their late father.

  The other men in the room were older than Praen, but they were all of his class: well-fed, richly dressed countrymen of power and confidence.