David Drake - Tyrant

"My pleasure, sir!"

Again, the giant's hand moved much more quickly than one would expect from a creature his size. He had Willech by the scruff of the tunic again; and, with a short powerful jerk, forced his head down on the table. Willech's cheek was pressed flat to the wood. His eyes gaped; his mouth worked like a fish.

Finally, at the last instant, Willech understood just how completely he had been manipulated. Demansk could see the comprehension in the Governor's eyes; see his mouth frantically trying to mouth new and different words.

Too late. The sergeant's sword came down again, and this was no farmwife's onion-chopping. The heavy blade missed the sergeant's own hand holding Willech by not more than half an inch. The giant knew his swordwork. The spinal cord was severed cleanly. It took two more quick blows to remove the head itself, but Willech had died instantly.

Knowing what was coming, Demansk and the other soldiers in the room had stepped aside. So the blood fountaining from Willech's neck simply gushed onto the carpet — and, with the most energetic first burst, splattered the leggings of the two magistrates standing at the back of the room. One of them simply squawked. The other stared at his bloody legs for a moment before lunging for the door. A moment later, Demansk could hear him vomiting noisily in the corridor beyond.

He gave the ex-gladiator in the corner a look. The man's face was perfectly composed, not pale in the least. Obviously, he'd figured out what was happening long before his erstwhile master.

"I'll want you to accompany the delegation which will be reporting this to the Council," Demansk rasped. "I trust your testimony will be reliable."

The former bodyguard actually managed a smile. A thin one, true, but a smile nonetheless. "Shocking, sir. Just shocking it was, the way the Governor insulted the Triumvir. And in public, too. 'T'wasn't a gray thing, not in the least."

Demansk nodded. He'd have Sallivar keep an eye on the man. But he really didn't expect any trouble from that quarter, especially after a suitably discreet bribe. And killing the man would probably cause more problems than it would solve.

Having made his decision, he turned to the next matter. "Sergeant, please see to it that the magistrates are escorted safely back to their office. And post a guard for them. There's likely to be some tumult in the streets today."

That was a delicate way of putting it, of course. A guard for the magistrates was just as much a guard over them. Sallivar would be leaving with the magistrates for Vanbert in the morning, and once on the road he'd make sure the magistrates never had a chance to talk to anyone until they reached the capital.

"Yes, sir." The sergeant started to get his men moving, but Demansk held up his hand.

"One thing also. Two, actually. First" — he pointed to Willech's head, which had rolled almost to the wall—"please take that and have it stuck on one of the spikes on the fence outside the Governor's Palace. I imagine the crowd in Solinga will be cheered by the sight."

"My pleasure, sir." Two strides and the sergeant had the grisly object off the floor. It was fortunate that he was such a big man. Willech had favored very close-cropped hair, much too short to hold. But with his enormous grip, the sergeant had no difficulty holding the skull like a normal-sized man would hold a goblet.

"And the second matter, sir?"

Demansk studied him for a moment. Then, abruptly: "Come to my quarters this evening. I'd like to speak with you further. You'll probably have to wait around a bit, I'm afraid. Things are likely to be hectic all day."

For the first time since he'd met him that morning — Crann had recommended the sergeant and his squad — Demansk saw an actual expression on the giant's face. He found the little smile rather interesting. It was not the rueful smile of a veteran acknowledging the army's inevitable "hurry-up-and-wait." There was a real gleam to the thing, as if the sergeant would enjoy whiling away a few hours watching the powers-that-were scrambling frantically out of the way of the powers-that-are.

From his accent, the man was another easterner, signed up for a twenty-five-year hitch in the army as the only alternative to poverty. Who, with no help at all from Emerald philosophers, had apparently drawn his own conclusions about the dialectic of Being and Becoming.

* * *

When he got there, Demansk's headquarters were just as much in frenzied semi-chaos as he'd expected. By the nature of things, a coup d'etat is a messier business than a straightforward battle in the open field. Even experienced and steady officers will get a little rattled and uncertain, at such a time. Partly because the tasks involved are somewhat new and different; mostly because the penalty for failure is certain to be worse than being defeated by a foreign enemy. A foreigner, at least with noble prisoners, will want ransom. A shaken but surviving old regime will settle for nothing less than heads on spikes on official fences — and then seize all your property for good measure.

Which, of course, was exactly what Demansk was doing himself.

"We've got most of it," said Ulrich Bratten as soon as the Triumvir came into the room which served as the nerve center for the coup. "The bulk of it was in the form of bullion in Willech's own mansion. We had to torture Willech's wife — tough bitch, that one — but we got the secret out of her."

Demansk nodded. He'd hoped the woman would have yielded without resorting to torture, but hadn't really expected it. He'd known Sandru Willech since they were both very young also — she was another child of the elite — and hadn't liked her any more than he had Willech himself. But no one had ever accused the woman of being a coward. Even as a girl, Sandru had been tough as well as nasty.

"Too bad. I would have preferred returning her to her family. You killed her afterward, yes?"

Ulrich nodded.

"So be it," said Demansk. "It's easier to explain a cremated corpse than a mutilated but living matron."

Since the thing was done, he dismissed it from his mind. "How much?"

When Ulrich told him, Demansk almost whistled with surprise. He'd known that Willech had been gouging the province mercilessly, but hadn't expected to find that much in the way of hidden treasure.

"The rest of it?"

Bratten shrugged. "Good chunks where you'd expect them, both in the Governor's Palace and the Treasury Office. I imagine more will turn up in his warehouses. Not much of that'll be bullion, of course, nor even coins and gems. Goods, mostly. Linens, spices, that sort of thing."

"Doesn't matter. Emeralds will deal in anything without quibble, as long as they can sell it. Speaking of which—"

Bratten jerked his head toward a door on the far wall. "Eleven of them are here already, sir. More to come, you can be sure of it. They're practically dancing in the streets out there. I told them you'd speak to them as soon as possible."

Demansk nodded and looked to Robret Crann. The older brigade commander had been the one Demansk had selected to oversee the purely military side of the coup. He'd saved aristocratic and distinguished-looking Kirn Thatcher to settle the nerves of the Vanbert nobility resident in Solinga. By now, they'd all be as jittery as a herd of greatbeasts with the smell of predator in the air. Demansk didn't mind the jitter — within limits, in fact, he wanted the nobility nervous and unsettled. But he didn't want the mess which an authoritative elite driven to open resistance could create.

"Things went pretty smoothly," reported Crann, "all things considered. Neither of Willech's regiments ever left their compounds, although the Fourth Jallink did mill around outside the barracks for a bit. They'll need some watching, but I don't expect any real trouble. Not after Willech's head goes up on the fence, for sure."