In Zark the legions continued their slow retreat before the advance of the caliph’s rebuilt army.
The harvest ripened and brought thoughts of fall. In retrospect, the Impire was to look back on that last summer of Emshandar’s reign with longing.
SIX
Strange intelligence
1
The clouds were dazzling white on limitless blue and they trailed their shadows over the sunlit hills. Below them, straight as an arrow, the Great East Way ran onward to the horizon, pointing the way to Hub. It was the most welcome sight Shandie had seen in months. The horse’s hard muscles moved smoothly between his legs, iron shoes rang on the stones, and the wind cooled his face. At the end of the road was home, with his wife and the daughter he had never seen and soon the Opal Throne.
Up front rode Ylo with the shining standard. Hardgraa followed, flanked by two others. Then came Shandie and fifty on his tail. Other traffic heard the hooves and saw the glitter of bronze and made way. As the company thundered through hamlets or toll gates, small boys waved and citizens cheered. Probably few of them noticed his emblem on the standard; perhaps few even knew that he wore a legate’s insignia. They were cheering the idea of Impire.
He was going home at last!
The passes had opened at last, and Shandie’s party had been the first to cross, fighting through drifts. Unwelcome business in South Shimlundok had delayed him another month, but now he had reached the Great East Way, which ran from Hub to the Morning Sea— “a thousand leagues without a bend,” one of his ancestors had boasted. That was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Only five hundred leagues separated him from Eshiala now.
Already the fields on either hand were turning gold and the hay had been gathered . . . a good crop, too.
Eshiala, with her serenity, her sweet voice, her perfect features! Her body was smooth as a rockdove’s breast and flawless. There was not a mole on her skin anywhere. Her hair is black as the raven’s wing . . . He had never seen a woman move as she did—she floated.
His favorite memory of her was the first time she came to court. Amid all the frippery and ostentation, she had wom a simple apricot-colored sheath and a thin coronet of diamonds. She had drifted through the aristocrat rabble in all their finery and she had cut them down like a scythe.
Others might think her cold, but he knew she was merely shy. She was not a passionate person, but then neither was he. Passion made him uncomfortable; fire and ice would not do well together. They were well matched and they had shown they could make children together, which was what mattered, especially for a future imperor. And perhaps there would be a little passion when they were reunited . . .
Common sense said he should be taking his time on this journey, inspecting the cities and garrisons, because it might be years before he could make a personal tour through these parts. Common sense be damned!
As soon as Shandie shouted to him, Hardgraa seemed to know why. He let his mount drop back and the two cantered side by side. The centurion was scowling already.
“You’re going to make a run for it?”
“Did you ever doubt I would?” A company of fifty could not travel at top speed, for no post ever held fifty good mounts. Tonight Shandie was going to push on ahead with just a handful of men.
“You’re being predictable,” Hardgraa growled, “and that’s asking for trouble.”
All his life Shandie had been guarded and it was true that there had been attempts on his life, although never anything very efficient. On the road he was far more vulnerable than he was in camp or palace. A couple of times he had outwitted conspiracies accidentally, by sheer speed, only to learn of them later. But now he had a reputation for speed.
“How much warning would you need to set up an ambush against a troop like this?” he demanded, shouting over the hooves.
Hardgraa spat while he thought over the problem. “Don’t need to. Just one good bowman.”
“Good suicidal bowmen are scarce. But it would still need time and a fair idea of when I’m due to ride underneath, wouldn’t it? You can’t keep bow or man strung tight for days on end.”
Hardgraa grudgingly nodded agreement to that. “So?”
“So we’ll outrun our news.”
Even the imperturbable centurion was shaken by that suggestion. “Outrun the mail?”
A fit rider with money and good weather could ride three posts a day. If he was desperate enough, he could even fourpost, although few could keep that up for long. By law the imperial posting inns were supposed to stand eight leagues apart, and on average they did. A man on foot could walk from one post to the next in a day, and even a pack train could usually manage two. Four-posting meant more than thirty leagues a day, usually employing eight or even twelve horses; it was fast travel and slow suicide.
The Imperial Mail went faster than that, but a mail pouch changed men as well as horses. A courier blew his post horn to warn of his arrival, and another rider grabbed his sack before he even slowed down. No mundane rider could outrun the mail.
“State of emergency,” Shandie said with a grin. “A proconsul can stop the mail.”
What he was suggesting was so close to blasphemy that he seemed to have shocked his chief of security, for the first time ever. Shandie jerked a thumb to indicate the men following. “You think Okratee can handle it?”
Hardgraa nodded confidently. Optio Okratee was his handpicked deputy, so of course he could handle anything. “How long?”
“Three or four days will do it,” Shandie said. “Then the government stuff will take precedence, so any private letters will be held up longer.”
The centurion was grinning now, as the idea seized his imagination. “Who do we take?”
“Sir Acopulo and Lord Umpily, of course.”
Neither looked capable of surviving one of Shandie’s mad rides, but he knew them of old.
Acopulo, his political advisor, was a small, birdlike man, but his white hair made him look older than he really was, and he had one of the sharpest minds in the Impire. He could trace a strand of spider web a thousand leagues and name the spider. Acopulo could read all the patterns.
Umpily, the chief of protocol, was twice Acopulo’s size. He was riding near the rear, with the billows of his gray cloak making him look even more bladderlike than usual. The fat man had more curious sources of information than the entire imperial bureaucracy in Hub. Young Ylo thought he knew everything that was happening in the Impire because he read all the official correspondence, but those told only the official facts. Shandie learned many more important facts from Umpily’s gossip, just as he learned what those facts really meant from Acopulo’s devious reasoning. The flabby Umpily would find the trip hard, but he was much tougher than he appeared.
“And me?” Hardgraa said, suddenly wary. “Of course.”
Shandie would not omit his bodyguard and chief of security, nor a couple of good swordsmen to back him up. They should not be required to do anything except look dangerous, but to travel with no guards at all would be plain stupidity—and also unkind to Hardgraa, the paradigm of the fighting man, old campaigner, ex-gladiator and loyal as they came. He ate granite for breakfast and bronze for lunch.
“And Ylo.”
“Him?” Hardgraa barked, astonished and obviously wanting to add, ”Why?”
“Think of him as a mascot,” Shandie said, smiling.
Ylo was undoubtedly enjoying himself up front, holding the standard high and letting the ends of his white wolfskin flap in the breeze. The promiscuous young demon reveled in his good looks and his reputation for heroism because they brought him women. He probably did not realize how his legend inspired the legions, also, and thereby aided Shandie. If he did know, he did not care. There were very few things Ylo did care about, except Ylo. Ylo was loyal because he chose to be, but Shandie had some thoughts about using Ylo when they returned to Hub.
Hardgraa, Acopulo, Umpily, Ylo. Yes, those few. At the next posting inn Shandie would stop the mail and leave Okratee and the troop behind to see that it stayed stopped. He would carry on with his chosen few and Evil take the saddle sores!
These same few were going to be the nucleus of the next imperor’s court, the inner circle. The Impire was moribund and due for a shakeup such as it had not known since the morning his great-great grandmother Abnila threatened to abolish the Senate. Shandie was ready to do the shaking, with the help of his friends. He would start by winning justice for Ylo, so that there could be no doubts about what the next imperor stood for. The chosen few.