Ari Marmell - The Warlord_s legacy

Glancing around furtively, Cerris stepped through the doorway and slid the bar back into place behind him. Moving as swiftly as he could manage with the awkward load, he dragged the soldier away from the prisoners' bunkhouse, easily avoiding the few wandering patrols that remained awake so late at night. He dropped the body behind a mess tent only after taking the man's own sword and driving it several times through the corpse's face, hiding the true nature of the fatal wound. He couldn't avoid rousing suspicion, not with a dead soldier in the camp, but at least he left nothing behind to point directly at an escaped prisoner.

That bloody business aside, Cerris rose and chanted yet another illusion beneath his breath. The chain hauberk and gryphon-stitched tabard that shimmered into view over his prisoner's tunic wouldn't stand up to close observation, but they would do until he could find another guard-one who, unlike this useless fellow, was near Cerris's own build. ONCE SAID GUARD HAD BEEN LOCATED, and throttled from behind, the sheer size of the Cephiran occupying force actually proved an advantage. Unable to memorize the face of every soldier, secure in the knowledge that the prisoners were under control and that the highway patrols would prevent infiltrators from beyond, the men-at-arms at Rahariem's gates waved Cerris through with scarcely a glance at his uniform.

Within the walls, Rahariem didn't actually look all that different. Crimson pennants flew from flagpoles, yes. Many of the people wandering the streets wore tabards of a similar hue, and atop the walls and makeshift platforms rose an array of engines-mangonels, ballistae, even trebuchets-which had served to aid in the Cephirans' conquest of Rahariem, and served now in its defense. But those streets seemed no less busy, the laughter in the taverns no less raucous. While the bulk of Rahariem's working-aged commoners had been hustled into work camps throughout the city, the young, the old, and the infirm were permitted to continue their daily lives. Shops still fed the local economy, taverns and restaurants provided services to citizens and invaders alike, and of course the officers definitely knew better than to deprive their own soldiers by shutting down the brothels or taking the prostitutes off the streets.

Cerris strode casually along those streets, offering distracted nods to his "fellow" soldiers, salutes to the occasional officer, glowers to those citizens who had legitimate business being out after curfew. He made good time, as he knew he would. Intended to facilitate merchant caravans, the city's broad streets were smoothly paved, running in straight lines and recognizable patterns. It was a layout that had served the city well-right up until it facilitated the invading troops just as handily.

'It's astounding these people even have the brains to know which end of themselves to feed. Ants and termites build more defensive communities than this. Serves them right, what happened.'

"They didn't deserve this," Cerris argued with that voice-his voice?-under his breath.

'Oh, I see. They only deserved it back when it was you who was-?'

"Shut up!" He barely retained the presence of mind to whisper the admonition rather than shout it to the heavens.

Glass lanterns on posts burned away the darkness, accompanied by stone-ringed bonfires the Cephirans had constructed in the midst of major intersections to illuminate the night more brightly still. Nobody was going to be sneaking around, not on their watch.

Nobody lacking a stolen uniform, anyway.

His back quivered with the strain of maintaining a steady walk when every instinct lashed him with whips of adrenaline, demanding he break into a desperate sprint. Every few steps he rubbed the sweat from his palms on his pant legs, and his eyes darted this way and that with such spastic frequency that he was sure he would soon learn what the inside of his skull looked like. Cerris wasn't one to succumb to fear, and frankly being found out and executed as a spy would be a far more pleasant death than many he'd courted, but something about the need to remain so godsdamn casual got his dander up.

'Or maybe,' he swore he heard that demonic voice whispering, 'it's that you still believe, deep down, that they should be afraid of you.' A moment of blessed silence, then, before 'Even if you and I both know that there was never any good reason to be. Not without me doing all the heavy lifting. You never were much more than a porter, when you get down to it, were you?'

Finally, after a few more minutes during which Cerris was certain he'd exuded enough sweat to float a longboat, he neared his destination. The streets grew smoother still; some avenues even had mortar filling in the gaps between the larger cobblestones, to prevent carriages from rattling. The houses here were of a larger breed and stood aloof from one another, boasting sweeping expanses of lawn behind wrought-iron fences or stone walls. Here, in the city's richest quarter, most traces of invasion vanished-except for the guards who stood at the entrance to each gated estate. These were clad in the ubiquitous crimson and boasted the night-hued gryphon, rather than the various colors and ensigns of the noble houses.

Just another example of Cephira's commitment to "civilized warfare"-a concept that, where Cerris was concerned, had about the same legitimacy as "playful torture" or "adorable pustule." The commoners might be pressed into service, but the nobility? Their soldiers and much of their staff were stripped from them, and they were confined to house arrest, but otherwise they remained unharmed and largely unmolested. There they would linger, until either their families offered sufficient ransom to buy their release, or until someone in the Cephiran military command decided that they posed a threat or possessed knowledge the invaders needed.

At which point, all bets were off. Civility only goes so far in war, after all.

"Colonel Ilrik requires information from the baroness," Cerris announced as he advanced up the walk toward one particular estate, dredging from memory a name overheard during the past weeks. "I'm to question her at once."

"What questions?" asked the first guard, a young man whose sparse beard did little to hide either his rotted teeth or his smattering of pock-marks. "What could Colonel Ilrik need with…?"

Cerris halted and slowly, deliberately, turned the full weight of his contempt upon the soldier. Eyes that had seen horrors few could imagine bored into the guard's soul, and the younger man visibly cringed within his armor.

Expression unchanging, Cerris looked the soldier up and down as though examining a rotting, maggot-ridden haunch of beef. "My apologies, Baroness," he said, his tone frosty as a winter morning. "I didn't recognize you in that outfit."

"I… Sir, I just thought…" The guard glanced helplessly at his companion for support, but the other soldier had the good sense to keep his mouth firmly shut.

"You're still talking," Cerris informed him. "You really ought to have a physician look into that before it affects your health."

The pair moved, as one, to open the gate, the younger even tensing his arm in an abortive salute as Cerris marched past. The guards already forgotten-or at least dismissed as unimportant (he'd never forget a potential enemy at his back)-Cerris made his way up the familiar pathway. Around a few small fountains of marble and brass, and through gardens of carefully tended flowers, all of which were actually rather understated where the nobility were concerned, he followed until it culminated at the Lady Irrial's front door…

Cerris paused a moment to scrape the muddy snow from his boots on the stoop, then entered the Lady Irrial's parlor, all beneath the unyielding and disapproving gaze of a butler who probably only owned that one expression-perhaps borrowing others from his employer when the rare occasion required it.