John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

"Because, Sojass, he was with my army, with Omara's coven, in the Quaie War."

The light dawned.

"Bolzar will be executed on One-Day, for conspiracy against Sarkia."

Sojass stood stunned.

"I am trusting that you were not seriously corrupted by either Idri or Bolzar. I'm leaving you as executive officer, promoting Horgent to subcolonel, and making him your new commandant. Do you have anything to say to me about that?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Good." He surprised Sojass then by stepping around his desk and extending his hand. Flummoxed, Sojass met it, and they shook. Macurdy didn't try to grip him down, but he satisfied both of them that he could. It was the sort of action the Tiger could understand.

From that point, whenever he encountered Sojass, Macurdy made a point of casual friendliness.

The next morning Macurdy met with Horgent and Grimval, and they worked on plans for raider training. Only Tigers would be sent to the empire. Grimval's Guards companies would remain as defense forces, at least for the time being. In training they'd play the role of escorts and road patrols.

Macurdy began his own training in the geography of Yuulith. From a book, with guidance from Blue Wing, Vulkan, and Omara. Later he'd get a geography session from Finn Greatsword and his trade minister.

And he read more than geography. Amnevi, having seen the sorcerer's stone that Blue Wing had given him, showed Macurdy a translation of an ancient book on sorcery and circles and stones. He wasn't sure what good it might do him, but it was interesting.

On Six-Day, Idri's corpse was placed atop her funeral pyre, and the oil-splashed wood ignited. Only a few attended, including her surviving clone sister, Amnevi. And Macurdy, who afterward, via the great ravens, notified Varia of Idri's death, and how it happened.

Despite Idri's long enmity and cruelties, Varia quietly wept without knowing why.

Bolzar was throttled on the following One-Day, as Macurdy had promised. The execution was formal and private, carried out by the Tiger provost, a captain. The official witnesses were Macurdy as dynast-to-be, the dynast's deputy, and Subcolonel Horgent. As usual after executions, Bolzar's body too was burned, with the basic courtesies but without public attendance. Macurdy, Horgent, Sojass, and the sergeant major stood together, watching the smoke rise and thinking their own thoughts.

On the second day after Bolzar's pyre, Sarkia died quietly in her sleep. Her pyre was attended by the entire Cloister, and by the King in the Mountain and the wofnemst of the Commonwealth of Asrik.

Macurdy messaged Varia of this, too, and again she wept.

31 Winter Wonderland

Kurqosz slowed to a walk, his face damp with a mixture of sweat and melted snowflakes. It had been snowing since midday, large wet flakes drifting vertically down, so thickly he couldn't see two hundred feet. At breakfast the ground had been tan. Now snow lay on it halfway to his knees, which were very high knees.

At home he'd liked snow, liked to run in it. The hive mind showed the forefathers running on it, on broad skis split from birch and strapped to their feet, with furs laced on for traction. Their ancient homeland had been rich in snow, and the forefathers had run on skis to herd reindeer.

He himself had never had time to learn the skill. Few did. The lands they'd migrated to seldom had prolonged snow cover except in the higher mountains. In winter it rained a lot and snowed only occasionally.

Here in Vismearc he'd slighted running, as he had in Bavaria. He'd been too busy. Even on the march he'd slighted it, slowed by the pace of his human infantry. Then, after establishing their forward line on the Deep River, they'd begun setting up their winter base at the west side of the Merrawin Valley. And he'd begun running an hour each evening.

That had been late Ten-Month, barely a week past. Even allowing for the cold autumn, there should nave been time to build hutments for the troops before weather like this. As it was, most of the huts consisted only of survey stakes set by the engineers. Stakes now buried. The huts completed were for voitar and the higher ranking humans. Even most of them were without real roofs-log walls with a tarpaulin over a roof frame, their doors and windows mere holes in the walls, with curtains, blankets actually, that one could hook shut, more or less.

A truly wretched base camp! His father would not approve.

As it was, his father didn't know, for the hive mind had proven to have distance limits. Well before his army reached Vismearc, the rest of the species had faded out of touch. The historical hive mind it carried, but as for current events-they knew only those of the army's own seventeen hundred voitar.

They'd adjusted to the sense of disconnection, but it could still be disconcerting on occasion.

His run hadn't taken him through the hutment area and the vast bedraggled tent camp. That would simply have aggravated him. Instead he'd run in the quiet forest, on a narrow woods road, then followed his tracks back. Already they were little more than a shallow groove in the snow. Now he could make out his quarters ahead-a forester's cabin at the forest's edge, simple but comfortable. The ylvin torch had missed it.

He'd already decided to move his headquarters to a large manorial farmhouse he'd been told of. Not only the house, but the barns and other outbuildings had all escaped burning. It was much nearer the Deep River, where the 1st and 4th Divisions were on line. And where winter quarters were no more ready than they were in the Merrawin Valley base camp.

Major General Hohs Gruismak stood in the vacant doorway of his cabin, watching it snow. He'd never seen so much fall so early, or so fast.

Gruismak was not a commander. He was a human, General Orovisz's hithik aide, and his job was dealing with "administrative" problems. Mostly problems that could have been avoided if he'd been allowed advance input.

Troop morale had been low since Prince Chithqosz's army had been brought north. Their stories of the small-folk-of their ferocity and devilish ingenuity-had spread like a grassfire through the rest of the army. Stories enriched by the notion that dwarven sorcerers had called down the storm and the flood.

And now this damned snowstorm. The men had been busy much of the day trying to prevent the wet snow from collapsing their tents.

The army, he told himself, should never have left the Merrawin River, only twenty-five miles east. True the locals had torched the towns and villages, but many walls remained, needing mainly roofs and doors. And to the north, patrols had found pine woods. Thus it hadn't been necessary to move west to the edge of forest. Poles for roofs, and logs for hutments, could have been floated down the Merrawin. While here the forest was mostly of hardwoods, harder to cut, heavier to haul and raise, and requiring far more time-consuming dressing with axes to fit together halfway decently. Nor were hithik soldiers skilled at such work.

But none of that meant anything to Orovisz or the crown prince. They didn't have to solve problems. They just created them, and ordered others to solve them.

He turned to his orderly. "Corporal," he said, "make damn sure your men don't let the tarp come down on us. Otherwise the provost will have a busy day tomorrow with his strap."

"Yessir, General, sir!"

Gruismak walked to his bedroll near the fireplace. The chimney wasn't drawing properly, and the hut was smoky. He sat on his pallet to pull off his boots. Not even a damned stool to sit on, he thought. He wished devoutly he'd never heard of Vismearc.

At about midnight the snow had ended. The sky had cleared and the temperature plummeted. Now the newly risen sun glistened off miles and miles of white. Men moved like lines of ants to the firewood piles, or huddled around the thousands of warming fires whose smoke settled and spread among the tents. It was cold enough, the moisture from their breath formed frost on their collars.