David Weber - The Road to Hell

“You’ve given him his very own romantic victory, and all he needs to do is say, ‘yes’ at the right moment.”

Andrin took a few moments to compose herself. It wasn’t every day the succession of an empire was decided, and she wanted to get it right. As Crown Princess and not yet Empress, she wasn’t really entitled to the “royal we” just yet, but under the circumstances-

“First Councilor, Privy Voice, Councilors Yamen and Dulan, thank you for your recommendations and advice on Our Imperial Marriage. With due consideration of all candidates, We have made Our decision and are ready to so inform the Conclave.”

Taje leaned forward and squeezed her hand. Andrin looked back at her friend and mentor, finally confident.

December 16

“I hope this works,” Therman Ulthar murmured from the corner of his mouth as he and Jaralt Sarma walked placidly across Fort Ghartoun’s parade ground towards the administrative block. Their breath plumed in the frigid air, smoke-white in the icy moonlight, and Sarma slapped his gloved hands together as if for warmth, flexing his fingers energetically, and smiled at the other commander of fifty.

“The good news is that if it doesn’t work, we probably won’t have a lot of time to regret it,” he pointed out in turn.

“Oh, thank you,” Ulthar replied, rolling his eyes.

He heard a snort from behind him and glanced back at the noncom following them across the parade ground. Shield Fraysyr Hathnor was Sarma’s platoon clerk, and he was carrying the record crystal which had been carefully loaded with stacks of routine paperwork. None of it meant anything in particular, but if their calculations proved in error and more than the night orderly was on duty, that paperwork would be their excuse to get close enough to take out the extra bodies, hopefully before any alarm was raised.

He looked farther back, over Hathnor’s left shoulder towards the stables, and those blue eyes narrowed as he caught a brief flicker of movement. It was as much imagined as seen, something gliding smoothly across a patch of moonlight and back into the darkness beyond it. The moon was almost full, and the splotches of light breaking through the trees the fort’s builders had left unfelled to shade its interior were so bright they made the dark beyond them seem even blacker, denser, almost solid. He would have preferred an overcast, or even fog, but the visibility they had was bad enough to suit their purposes.

Probably.

“The truth is,” he said, glancing back at Sarma as they started up the steps to the admin block’s covered veranda, “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since that bastard got the Company massacred. I know the dragon shit we’re about to step into’ll only get deeper if we end up killing him, but I can’t help hoping Firsoma lets him be as stupid about this as he is about everything else. I mean, that would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re a very strange man with a nasty sense of humor, Ulthar,” Sarma told him. “It’s one of the things I particularly like in you.”

* * *

Namir Velvelig’s eyes opened.

He woke up the way a septman in the presence of his enemies woke up, which was to say that, aside from his eyelids, not another muscle so much as twitched, and the regiment-captain kept it that way, listening to the deep breathing and snoring around him. The cell in which he and the other officers and senior noncoms of the PAAF garrison had been confined would have provided ample space for a third as many human bodies. There was room-barely-for each of them to have his own patch of floor at night, but anyone who rolled over in his sleep was going to awaken quickly when he was pushed off of whoever he’d rolled onto. On the other hand, there was something to be said for the congested conditions. This far back from the stove, the air temperature was frigid, to say the least, and no one had bothered to issue the prisoners any blankets. The warmth of crowded bodies could be welcome under those conditions.

Velvelig kept his own breathing deep and steady as he tried to decide what had awakened him. He couldn’t identify it at first, and his jaw tightened as he heard the catch and painful wheeze of Tobis Makree’s breath. The Healer had survived another beating the day before, but he wouldn’t survive many more. The Mulgethian was two inches taller than Velvelig, but he’d never been physically robust, and his Healing Talent’s sensitivity made him especially vulnerable to the malice and gloating cruelty behind Hadrign Thalmayr’s brutality. Velvelig wasn’t surprised by his increasing fragility. If anything, he was astounded that the Healer hadn’t already willed himself into the merciful escape of death.

He may not be as “robust” as a good Arpathian septman , Velvelig thought, but he’s tougher than an old boot inside .

It would have been better if he wasn’t, the regiment-captain reflected bitterly. It wasn’t as if any of the Arcanans’ prisoners had any illusions about what was going to happen to them in the end. Especially not Makree or Golvar Silkash. Thalmayr had completely convinced himself that they’d been trying to torture him rather than to Heal his paralysis, and only the intense pleasure he took in beating, kicking, and stomping them had kept them alive-more or less-this long. And of course the Arcanan Healers couldn’t be bothered to waste the magical healing abilities which had restored the use of Thalmayr’s legs on his victims! There’d be no-

Velvelig’s dark thoughts jerked to a halt as the sound which must have awakened him repeated itself. Knuckles rapped on the brig’s sturdy outer door, and his stomach muscles tensed. Thalmayr usually waited at least one more day between beatings to allow his victims to recover a bit of endurance for the next one, but he took a special sadistic pleasure in dragging Silkash and especially Makree out of a deep, exhausted sleep to face his truncheon and his fists, his boots and the heated poker he’d taken to using over the last week or so. The regiment-captain turned his head slightly, looking through the bars at the guard room, wondering if this time Thalmayr had screwed up and sent less than four men to collect his prey. If he had, it might finally be time.…

The knock came again, and Velvelig’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t the usual deliberately thunderous pounding Thalmayr’s toadies used to announce their status as Kraisan’s own minions. In fact, the three regular night guards went right on snoring.

Despite the tension in his belly and the quickening of his pulse, the regiment-captain felt his lip curl in disdain. He’d learned very little about the Arcanans’ military, aside from the fact that Fort Ghartoun’s current tenants were quick with a boot or a fist or the butt of an arbalest, but he knew damned well they weren’t from the same unit as the prisoners he’d held in custody while the fort had belonged to the Portal Authority Armed Forces. Those had been elite troopers, with a deeply ingrained sense of discipline-both as a unit and personally-who’d maintained their military bearing and dignity even in captivity. None of them would have kicked back in chairs around the coal burning stove’s welcome warmth and dozed off on duty! And if they had, their officers and noncoms would have sorted them out quickly enough.

But any military unit took its cue from its CO, he reminded himself. He was still convinced that whoever had trained those original prisoners of his, it hadn’t been Hadrign Thalmayr. No, the slovenly attitude he saw in the guard room’s current watch was more Thalmayr’s speed.

Whoever was knocking, knocked again-harder-and Velvelig found himself wondering if the real reason the guards dispatched to haul Silkash and Makree back and forth pounded so hard on their nocturnal visits had more to do with the difficulty of awakening their sleeping fellows than a desire to terrify their victims.