And now, with good cheer: “Look at it this way. If it does happen, you’ll come back covered with glory.”
Trae tried to maintain the sour expression, but it was obviously difficult. “Oh, bah. Nobody’ll understand it anyway. Except a bunch of stinking Islander refugees, and who cares what they think.”
“Not your own sailors and soldiers, boy,” said Demansk forcefully. “They’ll know—they’ll understand. Don’t think they won’t.”
He finished his wine, set down the goblet on the table, and ended a long day and night of plotting.
“Learn this much from your father, son. You build the respect of soldiers—real respect, not the shit that passes for it at triumphs—starting with the man next to you. Begin with the core, lad, and the rest will come when it comes. Without that core, it won’t come at all.”
And now, grinning: “As you and I both will soon be demonstrating to that foul bastard Albrecht.”
Chapter 17
It took Ion Jeschonyk almost two months to return to Vanbert. Some of that was due to the simple distance—about a thousand miles, in a direct line; and much longer than that, of course, following the actual road. Still, it was a good road, even by Confederate standards. He’d made the trip to Solinga in less than five weeks.
But that had been in the early spring, when the weather was still foul and Jeschonyk had simply wanted to get to his destination as fast as possible. Now, with summer approaching, the countryside was blooming and beautiful. And, deep in his heart, the old man thought this would be the last chance in his life to simply wallow in the beauties of nature. He could remember doing that a lot, growing up as a boy on his family’s estate. He wondered, as he had often before, what had happened to that carefree child.
So he ordered his caravan to maintain a slow pace, and stopped often—sometimes for half a day at a time, while he waded barefoot in a brook or simply sat under the shade of a tree and contemplated the meadow flowers. The soldiers escorting him didn’t object, of course, much less the drivers of his own coach and the wagons carrying supplies.
By the time he finally arrived in the capital, the reports he brought for the Council were already completely obsolete. The gigantic city, with its one million inhabitants, was abuzz with word that Demansk had launched his attack on the archipelago. The news had been brought by the fast couriers employed by the Confederacy as their elite postal service. Such men could make the trip from Solinga in ten days or less.
In fact, hearing what people were saying in the markets and streets as his caravan worked its way toward his own domicile, Jeschonyk could remember seeing such a special courier galloping past the caravan just a few days past. And he realized, wryly, that his brain had still been working even while he thought it entirely at rest with the waving flowers in the fields. Because Jeschonyk had ignored the courier completely, even though it was now obvious what it had to have meant. And had done so, of course, because that never-sleeping part of his brain had known full well that it was better for the reality to hit the Council before Jeschonyk had to start telling his lies to them.
They wouldn’t really believe him anyway, although most of them would want to. And this way, a good three fourths of the recriminations would be dispensed with. What was the point? For good or ill, the die was cast.
* * *
To his relief, there wasn’t a delegation from the Council at his mansion. Under normal circumstances, there would have been representatives anxiously waiting for him, day and night, for the past two weeks. But now, he had no doubt, all the Councillors were far too preoccupied with their own plotting and scheming.
By the next morning, of course, after the news of his return reached them, half the Council would be pounding on his door. But at least he’d have one final evening of rest and repose.
“Rest and repose,” in a manner of speaking. Jeschonyk was actually quite well rested, due to the leisurely way in which he’d made the return journey. And he’d been celibate for a longer stretch than any he could remember in decades. He’d not wanted to bring one of his concubines on such a politically delicate mission, and he no longer found the company of prostitutes very entertaining.