David Drake - Tyrant

"Good enough," rumbled Forent. "I'll have the stakes brought out again. Haven't had to use them here since the third day of the occupation, but it won't hurt at all to have a reminder. I'll have them set up on the docks, in plain view of the whole city."

"How did the evacuation itself go?" asked Thicelt. "That must have been pure chaos."

"The gods, yes! It was a madhouse. Still" — he gave Demansk a look of admiration which any Vanbert patriarch would have basked in—"the whole thing went pretty much exactly the way Father predicted. I was surprised, to tell you the truth. I thought. ."

He let the disrespectful notion trail off. Even — a rarity, this, to be treasured! — had a guilty look on his face.

Demansk barked a laugh. "I was guessing , Trae, not predicting . An educated and informed guess, true enough. But the whole thing was still a gamble."

Demansk rose, went to a side table, and poured himself a goblet of wine. This would be the first cup of wine he'd allowed himself since the occupation began, weeks ago. But the news of how Trae had handled the mutiny was cause enough for celebration. Demansk was struggling not to let his pride show too openly.

My son! Damn me who will, but this too was my doing. I always knew Trae had the brains — the gods know he's good-humored — but I was never sure he had the steel.

When he turned back, however, his expression was simply one of mild satisfaction. The august patriarch. Approving of his offspring, of course, but still finding it necessary to correct minor errors.

"Albrecht went berserk, didn't he, when he got the news I'd taken the archipelago? I knew he would, the stinking pig. So he ordered an all-out assault across that causeway he's been building for the past year. The kind of frontal attack that produces casualties worse than anything."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Forent wincing. The ex-sergeant knew exactly what Demansk was talking about.

Demansk resumed his seat. "Let me explain a little secret of siegecraft to you, Trae. The thing that usually breaks the defenders' lines, at the end, is when the men on the fortifications start panicking. Not for themselves, but for their families. They know they're going to lose, you see, and so they desert their posts in order to try to find their own folks in the city. And save them — the gods alone know how — from the horrors of the ensuing sack."

Trae was watching him intently. Possibly for the first time in his life, Demansk's youngest son had not a trace of his usual cockiness. "That's what your evacuation prevented," continued Demansk. "Once the Islanders on Preble understood that there was a chance of saving their families — a chance which got better the more fierce a resistance they put up — most of the men would have stayed at their posts. And fought like demons."

"Truth," uttered Nappur. "There really aren't all that many cowards in the world, when the crunch comes down." He winced again. "I don't even want to think what kind of casualties Albrecht's soldiers suffered. But I'll tell you this — anyone Trae didn't evacuate from Preble was dead within a day. Including household pets. That would have been a massacre."

"I got off mostly women, children and old folks," agreed Trae. "Not too many men of fighting age."

"And you were expecting?" growled Thicelt. "No one's ever accused we Islanders of being pussies, you know, whatever else they say about us."

Demansk finished his wine. For a moment, he considered a second cup, but dismissed the idea. Pleased or not, he still had a titan's work ahead of him.

"Let this be a lesson to you, scion of mine. If at all possible, always leave your enemy with an escape route. A cornered rat is dangerous, always is. Whereas a rat huddling in a hole, after you've taken the house, is just a nuisance."

He toyed with the empty cup in his hands, for a moment. "What Albrecht should have done is immediately offered Preble the same kind of terms I gave the Islanders elsewhere. News of my conquest of the archipelago will have reached the defenders of Preble too. They'd know, then, that further resistance was hopeless."

"Why didn't he?" asked Trae. "I know you always said he wouldn't, but why not? He's not really that much of a hothead."

"You might be surprised. Albrecht's cool enough, most of the time. But when he gets jabbed unexpectedly, he tends to react like a maddened boar. I've never been convinced he's fully sane, frankly." Demansk placed the empty cup on the table next to his couch and pushed it aside. "But it doesn't matter, given Albrecht's ambitions. After I'd conquered the archipelago, mostly through negotiations, he needed a 'real victory' at Preble. If he'd settled for a negotiated surrender, he'd just look like a midget version of me. Instead, he can at least claim to be a 'real Vanbert conqueror'—and you can bet everything you own that his people in the capital are already accusing me of being false to our traditions."

"They'll be accusing you of worse than that, Triumvir," chortled Nappur. "For sure, Albrecht will try to claim that you undermined him."

Demansk shrugged. "Let him make the claim. I was careful to leave Jeschonyk a way to murk it all up politically. I didn't interfere at all — directly — with Albrecht's military command. But, as the Triumvir in charge of the new province of Western Isles— all of the islands — I saw fit to provide shelter for the relatives of my own new subjects."

He frowned at Trae. "Which is why, by the way, I'm personally glad you didn't have to attack any of Albrecht's ships. That would have made things a lot harder for Ion in the capital."

Trae's scowl was coming back, introducing itself with a snort of derision. "Them! Only two of his triremes even came around to my side of the island. The rest of his ships were supporting the assault. They took one look at me — they remember this steam ram, for sure, from last year — and kept their distance."

"Speaking of which," said Thicelt, "did it make it across the ocean?"

"Ha! I had to have it towed into Rope, where I left it," grumbled Trae. "Even with this mild weather, the damn thing takes on so much water in the open sea that the whole crew had to spend all its time bailing. Didn't dare keep the boilers going."

The scowl was in full bloom now. "All of which doesn't deal with my problem, Father! Sinking two ships of mutineers is not exactly the kind of reputation I need for—"

"Be quiet, boy." Demansk's tone was stern, almost cold. "Grow up, damn it. Who cares what kind of a reputation you have with Vanbert soldiers? I've got enough of that to do for the whole family — even leaving aside what Forent's men will make of it."

The giant was back to chortling. " 'So fierce was the countenance of young Trae — so terrifying the very name of Demansk itself — that Albrecht's navy recoiled and fled from his wrath.' We'll start there. By the time we get done with the mutiny, it'll sound like something out of the old ballads."

Even Trae chuckled. Demansk rose to his feet. "And what's more important — much more — is that you'll now have a reputation among the Islanders."

"We're partial to saints, y'know," drawled Sharlz. "It's a most important aspect to the creed of the Lady of the Sea. And Lemare's a far more important goddess to the common run of Islanders than the ones the former kings favored."

His face assumed an unusually solemn expression. "I'm not joking, Trae. 'Pirates' we might have been. But pirates are seamen, first of all, and no one understands better the dangers of the sea — or the blessedness of a man who rescues people from shipwreck. Which you just did on the largest scale in history."