The Tyrant by Eric Flint and David Drake

The Tyrant Eric Flint and David Drake

The Tyrant Eric Flint and David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

PART I:

THE TRIUMVIR

Chapter 1

When Verice Demansk had been six years old, his grandfather had taken him one day on a tour of the statuary in the gardens of the family’s estate. The tour had finished in front of the statue of the All-Father.

“Whatever else you do,” the old man had told him sternly, “make sure it will meet the approval of this god. The others—gods of love and war, the harvest, whatever—must always be respected also, of course. But, in the end, this god will be the judge.”

Demansk was now a middle-aged man himself, with his own august presence, beard turning gray, long string of honors to his name, and bearing the title of Justiciar of the Confederation. His grandfather had died many years earlier. But, staring up again at the statue on a summer day, he could remember that moment perfectly. And he understood, finally, why his feet seemed to have brought him, without his even being aware of where he was walking, before this statue in the gardens.

He stared up at the painted marble face of the god for perhaps three minutes. Then, sighing softly, made his final decision.

Treason.

* * *

Another man would have called it something else. “The good of the nation,” “the needs of the hour,” whatever. Some wormy turn of phrase. But Verice Demansk would not. First, because he had never been given to euphemisms, nor to lying. Secondly—more important—because if he didn’t think he was honest he wouldn’t have made the decision to become a traitor in the first place.

“In this, as in many things,” he said softly to himself, “evil is wasted on the wicked. Only the virtuous can truly plumb its depths, because only they have the necessary strength of conviction.”

He recognized the thought as a modification of one of Prithney’s Dialogues. And he found himself wondering, for a moment, what comment the father of his own grandchild might make about it. All Emeralds were prone to flights of philosophic fancy anyway, but Adrian Gellert was even a graduate of the Grove. A genuine Emerald scholar—a breed which Demansk had always thought was about as far removed as possible from the hard-headed practical way of thinking of such men as himself.

He mused on the contrast between grandfather and father, for a moment, still standing before the statue of the All-Father.

Demansk was a Justiciar of the Confederacy of Vanbert, the great nation which ruled half the world. Adrian Gellert had been born in Solinga, once the capital city—insofar as that term wasn’t laughable—of the Emerald League, the collection of squabbling and quarreling city-states clustered on the north coast of the single great continent of the planet Hafardine.

The single great continent we know of, Demansk corrected himself. Emerald scholars had long since convinced their Vanbert conquerors that the world was round—and so, who was to say what lands might exist somewhere across the great Ocean?

The Confederation had conquered the Emeralds half a century ago. Demansk’s own grandfather, in fact, had led the army which forced Solinga itself to capitulate.

And what would he think now, I wonder?

Demansk could still remember the old man vividly. Fierce old man, as accustomed—unlike modern noblemen—to working with pigs and leading farmhands in their labor as he was with the Council chamber and army maneuvers. And, though this was perhaps fancy, Demansk thought he could remember his grandfather muttering, after the conquest was over, that no good would come of it. “Damn Emeralds! Put three of them in a room, you’ve got eight opinions on any subject under the sun. They think too much! That’s a disease, boy, nothing else. And it’s contagious, so be careful. Stay away from the bastards.”

His lips quirked a bit. “Well, I tried, Grandfather,” he whispered softly. “But . . .”

In this, too, he would be honest. It was always tempting to blame others for one’s ills. But, in truth, the rot within the Confederacy of Vanbert was not of Emerald origin. If anything, he suspected, the Emeralds might be part of the solution.

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