Mercedes Lackey: The Price Of Command

Messy, that was what it was. Seems like the moment religion enters into a question, people’s brains turn to mush. Messy wars and messy thinking. Messy thinking causing messy wars.

The Karsites had been causing trouble since long before the disaster in Menmellith, and had continued to do so afterward. But this was the first time that the followers of the Sunlord had ever actually moved openly against Rethwellan. The so-called Prophet, claiming to be the original Prophet, reborn into a female body to prove the Oneness of the deity, had managed to raise a good-sized army on the strength of her charisma and the “miracles” she performed. She had moved that army into the province south of Menmellith during the winter, while travel was hard and news moved slowly. By spring she had taken it over and sealed it off.

The King of Rethwellan made no secret of the fact that he suspected collusion on the part of the provincial governor. Kero was fairly sure, from her sources of information within the Guild, that he was right. The governor was an old man, a man who had suffered through a series of serious illnesses. Kero had seen his kind before, and sniffed cynically as she thought about him. Odds are he’s figured out that he’s as mortal as the rest of us for the first time in his life, and he’s been looking frantically for someone, anyone, who’ll promise him a quick and easy route into some kind of paradise when he kicks over the traces.

She sipped again at her wine; carefully, it wouldn’t do to have a head in the morning. But wine was the only thing that kept the dreams away.

She resolutely turned her mind away from those dreams. Not because they were unpleasant; quite the contrary, they were too pleasant. Seductively so. The trouble was, they featured Eldan, and he was a subject she was determined to forget.

He can’t have forgiven me for sending the Guild up to collect that ransom instead of going myself. Either that, or else by now he’s completely forgotten me, assuming he’s even still alive.

She’d dreamed of him often ... far too often for her own comfort. The dreams had come frequently, in those first years, when she was unsure in her command, and unhappy—and lonely. Sometimes in those night-visions they hadn’t done more than talk, and she’d come away with answers she desperately needed.

But sometimes, especially lately, they’d done a great deal more than talk. Since she was half-convinced that her dreams were simply fantasies conjured up by her sleeping mind, those dreams were a cruel reflection on her current state of isolation, and while those incorporeal rolls in the hay might be what she wanted, they didn’t make waking up any easier of a morning.

She told herself, over and over, that her self-imposed loneliness didn’t matter. Look at what she had built in the past few years! Most male mercenaries never made Captain, most male Captains had not achieved their rank until well into their late forties. That it had cost her little more than hard work, sleepless nights, and a lack of amorous company was hardly something to complain about. And she knew very well the reasons why she needed to keep herself free from amorous entanglements. Tarma had explained that aspect of command to her in intimate detail, with plenty of examples of what not to do.

A Captain of a Company did not take lovers from the ranks; that was the quickest way in the world for suspicions of favoritism to start—and that let in factionalism and divisiveness. A Captain always remained the Captain, even among old friends.

The hired charms of the camp-followers were not at all to Kero’s taste—and her peers either regarded her (rightly) as possible competition, or at best, a rival and equal power. But there was more to it than that, though most of Kero’s peers would have laughed (if uneasily) if she’d told them her chief reason. It was asking for trouble to take someone into your bed with whom you might well find yourself crossing swords one day. You never know who’s going to be hired to come up against you. Having someone on the other side who had that kind of knowledge of me—in no way am I going to take that kind of risk.

She put the flask down, and traced little patterns on the table with her wet forefinger. That’s the one thing Tarma never warned me about, she reflected, waving away another puff of sharp-scented smoke. She never told me that rank and holding yourself apart makes for lonely nights. She always had Grandmother for friendship—and she never wanted a lover thanks to that vow of hers. Gods know being Swordsworn would be easier than overhearing some of what goes on in the tents after dark. She could ignore it; I try, but can’t always.

Being Captain didn’t necessarily mean an empty bed, even if you didn’t much care for whores. More than a few of her fellow Captains went through wenches the way a ram goes through a flock of ewes. They tended to pick up country girls bedazzled by the glamour and danger, and abandon them when their lovers got a little too possessive. Kero had never been able to bring herself to just lure off some wide-eyed farmboy as if she was some kind of mate-devouring spider. And besides, more than half the men she met these days seemed overwhelmed by her.

I’ve been awfully circumspect, she thought, with perverse pride, looking back over the years. There were three—no, four minstrels. That worked. All four of them were too cocky to be intimidated by me. The only problem was, while the Skybolts make good song-fodder, they don’t offer much more to a rhymester. So I lost all four of them to soft jobs in noble houses. There were a couple of merchants, but that didn’t last past a couple of nights. And there was that Healer. But every time I went out he was in knots by the time I came back, figuring it would be me that got carried in for him to fix—that alliance was doomed from the start. It’s been cold beds for the past two years now. Unlike Daren.

She had to smile at that, because this campaign against the Karsites had brought her back into personal contact with “the boy,” as she had continued to think of him. Meeting him again had forced her to change that memory, drastically. He’d matured; not his face, which was still boyishly handsome, if a bit more weathered, but in the expression around the eyes and mouth. Not such a boy anymore—

They hadn’t renewed their affair; it would have been a stupid thing to do in the middle of a war for one thing, and for another, while they found themselves better friends than ever, they discovered at that first meeting that they were no longer attracted to each other.

Daren had achieved his dream of becoming the Lord Martial of his brother’s standing army. One thing about him had not changed; he still worshiped his older brother. Kero toyed with the flask, holding its cool surface to her forehead for a moment, and wondered if the King knew what a completely and selflessly loyal treasure he had in his sibling. She hoped so; over the past several years she’d learned that loyalty in the high ranks was hardly something to be taken for granted.

Daren was as randy as Kero was discreet. He hopped in and out of beds as casually as any of the Captains she knew, and there’d even been rumors of betrothal once or twice, but nothing ever came of it.

We’re too much alike. She smiled, thinking about how even their battle plans still meshed after all these years. Far too much alike to ever be lovers again. Just as well, I suppose. He just makes me feel too sisterly to want him.

“Captain?” Her aide-de-camp stuck his head just inside the flap of the tent. “Shallan and Geyr to see you.”