“Damn girl,” chuckled Demansk. But the tone had a certain warmth in it, and the harsh lines in his face seemed to be fading a bit. “I know she’ll drive us both half insane, but . . .”
Quietly: “I think I might go insane altogether, if she weren’t with me along with Olver. This is going to be . . . difficult.” He placed a hand on Adrian’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “I thank you for this, son.”
Adrian nodded. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. At some point, he knew, he was going to have to raise openly and straightforwardly with Demansk the dangers of the future. But—
Not now. Let the man finish the job of becoming a tyrant—the task of a titan already—before you start nattering at him about all the ways he should start unraveling his work. That’ll be the last thing he wants to hear at the moment, any more than a man feverishly building a dyke to contain flood waters wants someone prattling in his ear about the danger of future droughts.
“I don’t imagine you’ll have any trouble getting her ready,” said Demansk. The chuckle this time was full of warmth. “Even though the expedition leaves tomorrow.”
“Not hardly,” said Adrian sourly. “Just remove the bolts and chains and armed guards and hexes and amulets and fetishes and—if that stupid spell had worked right—the demons that were supposed to have been keeping her locked safely away in her chambers.”
Demansk laughed. “Which spell was it? Druzla probably tried it herself, years gone by. Didn’t work, of course.”
He lifted the hand of comfort and thanks from Adrian’s shoulder and gave it a hearty clap. Exactly the kind of hearty clap on the shoulder which fathers-in-law have given sons-in-law throughout the ages. Well, boy, she’s all yours now. Have fun. I’m going to get some rest.
“Tomorrow morning, then,” he added as he turned away. “I’ll have Jessep and Uther keep an eye on her, Adrian, I swear. And by the time the siege has settled in, you’ll have arrived yourself with the guns and the rest of the train.”
The last remark had, at least, the virtue of distracting Adrian from his worries over Helga. Fine for his father-in-law to talk serenely about a “siege train.” Since Adrian—not he—was in charge of actually getting the thing to the siege.
“Train.” Ha! Remind me again, Center, what a train is supposed to look like.
Now and then, Center had flashes of something close to a sense of humor. He gave Adrian, first, an image of a mechanical behemoth snorting its smooth way across a countryside. Then, the piled-up jumble of a trainwreck.
Yeah, what I thought.
* * *
Luckily for Adrian, Center’s quasi sense of humor manifested itself but rarely. So, in the weeks which followed, as he struggled and strained and cursed and beat his breast in despair trying to keep huge and ungainly cannons moving—slowly, slowly—across a ravaged countryside in the middle of winter, he was at least not forced to grit his teeth at the computer’s witticisms.
Raj Whitehall, of course, was a different matter. Yes, true enough, the former general was also a fount of excellent advice. But Adrian could have done without the jests and wisecracks—much less the disquisitions on the ironies of military life.
—never fails either. Just when the risk of an epidemic ravaging your troops has passed with warm weather, it comes right back again with the hard soil of winter. Nothing soldiers hate worse than digging latrines in winter—grouse about, anyway—but if you don’t—
—lucky at that your winters are so mild. On—
And so it went, week after week. Excellent advice, yes; which got Adrian out of many a jam. Complete with commentary.
—can’t do that, lad, I’m giving you fair warning. You’ll have a mutiny within a week—
—logs as paving. Pile ’em straight down through the muck. It’ll work, trust me. I did it during—
—and the time the only good surgeon got too drunk to work, right in the middle of a battle. Let that be a lesson to you, lad. Always—
On and on, week after week. By the time Adrian crested the hill overlooking Vanbert, the siege train coming up behind him, he was desperately trying to figure out a way he could make both Whitehall and Center materialize in front of him. So he could strangle the first and turn the great guns on the other.