“We have set in motion the following countermeasures . . .”
First, he said, the Home Force, the four legions always stationed around the capital, had been regrouped to build a wall of bronze across the northern approaches to Hub—the Vth, XIth, XXth, and XXIInd. A sigh of relief rustled through the Rotunda. The capital itself was safe, then.
“Wall of bronze!” Ironjaw roared, in a voice like a rusty windmill. ”The vermin have eaten four legions already!” The comment had been too audible—faces turned and grimaced when they saw who had spoken.
The imperor continued unperturbed. “Recruitment to replace the losses has already begun. Substantial reinforcements are on their way. From the Mosweeps we have summoned the VIIth, and the XXIIIrd from Lith. The Ist is already marching up from the Ilrane borderlands, and the XIVth will cross from Qoble as soon as the passes open. We have sent to the Guwush theater for the IVth, VIIIth, XVth, and XXIVth. The IInd, normally charged with garrisoning the shores of Westerwater, has been ordered to retake Pondague Pass and cut off the goblins’ supply lines. You need have no fear that we can repel the invaders with this massive response!”
Flimsy applause flowered amid the senatorial benches and then withered into silence. Umpily had raised his hands to join in the clapping when realization came to him also.
Massive? It was altogether too massive. The cure sounded far more dangerous than the disease. How many legions? If Emshandar-who-had-been-Shandie thought he needed half the Imperial Army, then the danger must be close to mortal.
At Umpily’s side, old Whileboth reeled to his feet. “Idiot!” he screamed. “Twelve legions? No man has ever attempted to control twelve legions!” The cracked old voice echoed through the Rotunda, too plain to be ignored. The imperor swung around on his throne and glared up at the heckler, his face flushing scarlet. The assembly muttered as it recognized Ironjaw. Umpily cowered away from the maniac and tried to hide his face in the folds of his toga.
“Idiot, I say!” the old soldier bellowed. “You are stripping the whole Impire of its defenses—the jotnar and djinns and gnomes and elves will be right on their heels! How can you provision twelve legions? What supply lines do goblins need? How long until your orders arrive in Guwush? How long for those legions to march across Shimlundok?”
Umpily worked it out as everyone must be working it out: a thousand leagues at seven or eight leagues a day . . . four months! And they could not even begin until the orders reached them.
Consul Eerieo sprang up, but his words were lost in the sudden tumult.
Ironjaw tried to say more, stopped in apparent surprise, and toppled forward over the noble lords in front of him, slithering to the floor. They bent to his aid and then recoiled. Umpily heard the appalled whispers. Whileboth was dead.
In the shocked hush that followed, Shandie resumed his speech as if nothing had happened. “Turning to financial matters, we lay before you the following proposals . . . ” He began to outline expenditures enormous and taxes unbelievable. Julgistro had always been one of the richest contributors to the Imperial fisc, but it would not be contributing now.
Why did he not mention the Almighty? Why did he not explain that the Impire was safe because it was guarded by the greatest army of sorcerers Pandemia had ever known? Umpily wanted to jump to his feet also and shout the good news, but of course he could not speak of the Almighty.
The speech ended. There was no ovation, only horrified whispering. While the imperial couple and the officials trooped out, peers and senators remained slumped in their seats as if dazed. Four legions destroyed! Innumerable cities burned. Two invading armies still at large. Ruinous taxation.
And months until Shandie could assemble the gigantic force he seemed to think he required.
It was the coming of the millennium!
If the imperor had expected his response to soothe the nation, then he had gravely miscalculated. If he had deliberately set out to ignite a panic, then he had succeeded very well.
3
Dwanis was a drab, gray land, drained by the Dark River, brooded over by the grim Isdruthud Range on one hand and the even greater North Wall on the other. The straggling convoy of wagons had entered the realm of the dwarves through massively fortified gorges. Phalanxes of border guards had questioned, inspected, and grudgingly allowed it to pass.
Thereafter it had continued its snaillike progress over rutted, stony roads. Dwanish was more populated than the northern reaches of the Impire, but still bleak and stark. Its farms were lonely patches on the bleak moors, its towns squalid huddles of cramped cottages without pattern or plan. Trees were rare, flowers nonexistent. Except for waterwheels and windmill sails, everything was made of stone. Slag heaps of ancient mineworkings blighted the landscape and the air stank of smoke. Spring was an affair of mud and slush and bitter wind.
By and large the inhabitants ignored the caravan, or stared with surly, unfriendly eyes. Even the tiny children seemed uninterested, except when they caught sight of the two goblins or the young jotunn. Then they would run screaming home to their hovels.
Shandie had taken up wagon driving to keep himself from brooding over the fate of the Impire. As far as he knew, the invading armies must still be looting and destroying, for he had no information except,the negative certainty that the Covin had not intervened. Warlock Raspnex had detected no major sorcery, so the war remained mundane. The legions would be marching, and the imperor was not there to lead them. Weeks were slipping away in waste and worry.
Shifting from global view to personal was no improvement. Shandie could see no progress in his pitiful campaign against the usurper. Umpily had been captured; Acopulo had arrived in IIrane and then fallen silent. King Rap had stopped communicating, also. The counterrevolution seemed to be over before it had begun, and the remaining conspirators were resolutely marching into a trap in Dwanish. There seemed to be no way to accomplish what they had come to do without blundering into disaster.
One afternoon he was urging his weary ponies across a very boggy meadow. All Dwanishian rivers flooded in springtime, filling the air with a stench of mud. He was startled out of his black reverie by an apparition scrambling up on the bench beside him.
Young Gath was still growing at an incredible rate, visibly taller than he had been back at Kribur. His odd assemblage of clothing was worn to rags; pipestem wrists protruded from the sleeves. He walked as if his boots pinched his feet. Yet, way up there, under a mop of golden hair, his face was still absurdly boyish, despite the jotunn jaw beginning to emerge from childhood softness. He perched on the seat, adjusted his long limbs into position, and smiled nervously down at the imperor.
“You want me, sir?” His voice never strayed from its adult register now.
“I do?”
“Well, you will. You’re going to hail me as I go by. I mean, you were going to.”
Shandie forced a welcoming smile and scratched his bushy black beard as he disentangled that information. “I still can’t understand how you do that! It’s a paradox!”
“Dad used to say that, too,” Gath admitted glumly. Shandie winced. The lad must be just as worried now about his father as he was about his sister.
“Well, never mind. What do you think of beautiful Dwanish?”
“I never knew the world was so big! Mom says most of it looks better than this, though.”
“It certainly does. Er . . . I expect you miss your friends back in Krasnegar?”
“I miss Kadie! And my friends, I suppose. Yes.”
“Boys or girls?”
Gath’s pale face blushed bright red. “Both.”
If he was trying to put the lad at ease, Shandie thought, he was doing a horrible job of it. “I wonder why I was going to call you, though?”
“You want me to tell you, sir?”
God of Madness! Conversations with Gath were like no others. “Might save time.”
“You were beginning to think you needed some fresh ideas, you said . . . will . . . would have said, I mean.”
“Yes. Well, that’s true. Do you like puzzles?”
The boy shrugged uncomfortably. “Not much. I either can’t do them at all or I see the answer right away. No fun.”
The imperor chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll see this one right away. It’s got the warlock baffled, and the other sorcerers. I’m only a mundane, but I’m supposed to have a knack for strategy, and I’m stumped, too. Maybe if I explain it to you, it’ll help me see it better myself.”
Day after day, in pairs or larger groups, Shandie had been debating with the sorcerers, arguing over the problem awaiting them in Gwurkiarg. Talking about sorcery was agony for them, but gradually he had gathered up all the hints and slivers they had been able to confide. He prided himself that he had now gained an overall knowledge of sorcery that few mundanes in history had ever matched. It wouldn’t hurt to enlighten the young jotunn, also, and talk out the problem.