God of Terror! A sorcerer! The warlock of the east, of course. The giant returned the salute, muscular forearm across chest. “You nearly screwed up!” he said, his voice deep as thunder, thrilling as a bugle call. Ylo wondered how women would react to this marvel. Of course all that would matter would be how he wanted them to react—a warlock got whatever he fancied.
“You could have helped!” Shandie snapped.
Ylo almost moaned aloud. How dare the prince lip a warlock? Then he remembered that the Protocol forbade anyone to employ sorcery on the imperor or his family, and Shandie was certainly family. So he was safe. But that didn’t mean that Ylo wasn’t in danger. The wardens were laws unto themselves. Sweat streamed down his ribs, his legs shook wildly. He had reached the limits of his endurance.
The sorcerer scowled. “I chose not to help.”
Shandie shrugged his armored shoulders. “Your Omnipotence, may I present—”
“An Yllipo? The old bugger will disown you!” the giant said, striding across to the chair. “You trying to kill him with an apoplexy?”
“Of course not!”
Protocol or not, how could Shandie dare use such a tone to a warlock? Or such a giant? Of course a sorcerer was not necessarily what he seemed, and Warlock Olybino was mentioned in the stories Ylo’s family told of his grandfather and the Dark River War, and that had been forty years ago.
He could not possibly be as young as he looked.
“He’ll breathe fire! An Yllipo?” The hostility seemed to be mutual. The warlock’s black eyes locked onto Ylo. “So you want me to tell you whether the traitor’s spawn is going to be loyal, or whether he’s planning to stick—”
“No!” Shandie barked. “That is not what I want. I told him Id trust him, and I will trust him. That is not what I want.”
“What then? Why’s he here?”
“Part of his education. Was his father a traitor?”
“No. One of his brothers was being stupid, but nothing serious.”
Shandie said, “Ah!” sadly, but he did not turn to look at Ylo. ”Besides, even if he planned to cut my throat in the next hour, you couldn’t warn me, could you?”
East scowled. He leaned back and crossed one massive thigh over the other. ”Don’t say `Couldn’t’ around me, sonny. ‘Shouldn’t,’ maybe. That’s not quite the same. ‘Sides, there are precedents for handing out warnings. That’s not direct use of magic.”
“My apologies.” Still Shandie did not turn. “Signifer, this is Warlock Olybino, warden of the east.”
Ylo saluted. If military etiquette required anything more than an ordinary salute for a warlock, the details lay beyond Ylo’s ken. He was far more concerned by the realization that the Protocol, while it forbade the use of magic against the Imperial Army, made exception in the case of East. The Imperial Army was the prerogative of the warden of the east. So Warlock Olybino could use sorcery on Signifer Ylo any way he liked, although no one else could, not even the other three wardens. He could pry into Ylo’s mind and discover whether he was truly loyal or was planning revenge. Ylo would like to know that himself.
But the warlock was now ignoring him. “So—you want me to report your great victory to the Old Man?”
“I’d be grateful if you would,” Shandie said respectfully. ”And that I’m well. He worries.”
“He should. Want me to tell him how that second javelin almost made a two-month baby heir apparent?”
“Better not, your Omnipotence. I did wonder if you’d bent that one a little?”
The golden horsehair waved as the warlock shook his head. “No.”
“Or organized our young friend’s feat with the standard?”
“No. I stayed out totally.”
Now why would the warlock of the east have refrained from influencing the Battle of Karthin? Why let the XXth Legion be demolished, and three others badly savaged, and all for no real gain?
Shandie did not ask, and Ylo certainly wasn’t about to.
But Ylo had grown up in a very political family. Politics, his father had told him once, was a matter of layers. If you could see it, it probably didn’t matter, and vice versa. The bottom layer was always the wardens. Their schemes were the real schemes, he had said. The Four got what they wanted, and they ruled by majority.
Olybino had been bought off, or scared off, but no one but the wardens themselves would ever know which, or why, or how.
“Fine,” Olybino rumbled. “I’ll tell him. It will ease the news about Guwush.”
“What about Guwush?” Shandie snapped.
The warlock bared his teeth. “Oshpoo has taken Abnilagrad. Razed it. Yesterday.”
The prince groaned.
“Everything you won has gone,” Olybino said meanly. Shandie muttered a curse and walked over to one of the chests. He sat down and glared at his boots. Ylo stayed where he was, wishing he was not now so exposed to the warlock.
“If I could just get the XIIth up there!” the prince muttered. ”No way,” Olybino said. “It would take a month or more to sail around Zark. I doubt that the caliph would give you safe conduct to march through.”
Shandie looked up. “We could go across Thume?”
Ylo gulped, and even the warlock seemed startled. He glowered.
“Not if you’re in your right mind, you can’t! The Protocol doesn’t apply in Thume, you know that! I can’t help there!”
“Seems to me an Imperial Army crossed Thume back in the XVth Dynasty.”
“And I can think of three that tried it and vanished without trace. Thume is totally unpredictable.”
Shandie sighed. “Then Hushipi will have to handle the gnomes without me. Omnipotence . . . tell me about the caliph.”
“What about the caliph?”
“Is it personal, his feud with the Impire? When my grandfather dies, will he relent? Gods know, I don’t want a war with a united Zark!” Without looking around he said, “Sit down, Signifer.”
Gratefully Ylo tottered over to a chest.
The warlock was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. He’s spent sixteen years making himself overlord. No one’s ever managed to unite the djinns before, except after the Impire’s invaded and they want to throw us out again. Yes, he has a personal grudge against your grandfather, but I don’t think he’ll stop now.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Olybino chuckled. “After all, you were there, too.”
Shandie looked startled. “Where?”
“In the Rotunda. You were only a child, but you were a witness when Emshandar insulted him.”
“Stole away his wife, you mean?”
“Exactly. The woman who is now queen of Krasnegar.”
“And that’s what’s been driving the man all these years?”
“Djinns never forget an insult, and Caliph Azak is no ordinary djinn.”
“No, he isn’t,” Shandie agreed mournfully. “The Impire is being stretched very thin, Omnipotence.”
“A few more victories like today’s and it will be stretched much thinner.”
“Exactly!” the prince snarled. “As I said—you could have helped!”
Ylo held his breath, but the warlock merely smiled. He stretched like a great bear; lamplight flickered on the jewels of his cuirass and rippled on the muscles of his forearms. “Why should I help in every little feint?”
“Feint? Karthin was a feint?” Shandie leaped to his feet. ”What’s he up to?”
No more! Certainly Ylo would like to see the caliph taught a lesson, a real lesson, but not now. Not with this army. In a month or two, maybe . . .
Olybino was grinning big white teeth. “Ever heard of the Gauntlet? ”
“No.”
“It’s a traders’ pass through the foothills, just outside of Ullacarn. While you’re licking your wounds here, the caliph is pushing his army through it. He’ll take the city, cut you off . . . The harbor at Garpoon is all silted up, of course. Four legions—”
“God of Slaughter! Tell me!”
“I’m trying to, sonny! As far as I know, no one’s ever brought an army through there, because it’s got more good ambush sites than there are fleas on a camel, but the caliph happens to know it personally—”
Shandie stamped afoot. “We can intercept?”
Olybino rubbed his hands together in a gesture that seemed totally out of keeping with appearance, something an old man might do, not a youthful giant. ”He’ll be all strung out in column of route, and you can come in on a side track and cut him like a snake.”
“A map! I need a map!”
The warlock shrugged and held out a roll of vellum that he had not been holding a moment earlier. Ylo’s gut tightened at this evidence of sorcery.
Shandie took it, but he did not open it. “Your Omnipotence, I ask a favor.”
“I thought you might.” The warlock’s deadly gaze settled on Ylo, who cringed. He just could not take any more of this! “It’s his first battle,” Shandie said. “He’s beat, and I need him. I was hoping to go over his duties with him tonight, if you would help—and now I need him even more!”