“That is not your concern,” Conner said, his mouth -tightening.
“Hey, Roc,” Rachel said, grinning. “You really ought to take over, you know? At least you have a clue.”
“Roc is not going to ‘take over,’ ” Conner said, smoothing his features. “He is fully controlled.”
“Like hell,” Rachel said, frowning. “Hey, Roc, what do you think about Bedford Forrest?”
“He was a fine cavalry general,” the elf-thing replied. “He had the gaslan.”
“Elf word, damn,” Rachel said, wonderingly. “They’re not preprogrammed. The data on Zhukov could have been but why preprogram elvish…? This isn’t a construct, is it?” she added, horrified.
“That is enough,” Conner said, raising his hand. “One more word and you will find out how controlled Roc is.”
Rachel opened her mouth and then closed it with a clop. But she stepped forward, nonetheless, right up to the thing, staring it in the eye. It stank. Not human body odor, something like the smell of the orc Changed but much worse and included in it was the smell of the rotting blood in its harness. But she stayed there, for a moment, peering into his eyes, trying to find any spark of what he had once been. All she could see was that there was a world of fury behind those eyes. She reached up, gently, touched it on the face and then turned away.
“I’ve got more butchery to do,” she said, her voice catching. “But I guess I’m not the first, huh?”
“Just get back to work,” Conner said, gesturing the thing to proceed him.
“Goodbye, Roc,” Rachel said, softly, stepping over to the sink and starting to wash her hands again. “Whoever you were.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“What do you think, Lieutenant?” General Magalong said, looking out the window at the retiring New Destiny forces. Their first salient was already a hundred meters from the New Destiny fort and they appeared to be preparing the first parallel.
“I think we’ve got us a fight on our hands, sir,” Pedersen said. He was standing at parade rest in front of the general’s desk.
“I think so as well,” the general said, turning away from the window and waving to a chair. “Sit, Lieutenant, before you keel over.”
“That wasn’t that hard a fight, sir,” Pedersen said, but he sat anyway, sliding forward to keep most of the mess off the chair; he was still rather bloody.
“Those big… things…” the general said.
“I think the general consensus term is ogres, sir,” Pedersen said, grinning slightly. “Too… clumsy for trolls.”
“Ogres and trolls, oh my,” the general replied.
“Yes, sir,” Pedersen said with a nod. “They’re slow and clumsy but hard to fight. Very long reach. Might be better attacking them with a pike wall. Longbowmen will do a number on them, though, at least at any range under a hundred meters. Heavy crossbows as well. I don’t think they’re a carefully thought out construct; they seem to be just a human design… increased. That’s why they’re so clumsy; humans aren’t designed to be five meters tall and as broad and heavy as they are. I think… if we have some pikes made up with a sharpened edge that stretches back about two meters… Then assign a particular unit to drill with them. Intersperse them in the regular forces to respond when one of the ogres attacks. That should handle it. They just caught us off-guard.”
“Ogres and orcs and I saw at least two different types of Changed working on the parallels,” the general mused.
“Yes, sir,” Pedersen replied. “As long as they don’t come out with a corps of orc composite bowmen I’ll be happy, sir.”
“Not much to be happy about, Lieutenant,” the general said, nervously. “Why are they here? Why are they using standard siege techniques instead of swarming us?”
“That… is a good question, sir,” Pedersen said, frowning. “Waiting for something?”
“The rest of the fleet to arrive?” the general asked. “First Legion?”
“Possibly,” Bue said, musingly. “And, possibly, they don’t have all the troops in the world, sir. They may have to conserve them. We’re not the only group they are fighting.”
“I’m more worried about some sort of a trap,” the general said. “They haven’t done a number of things I would expect. No attempts at porting into the town. Port in here, set up a port on this side and we have trouble. No dragons. Just standard siege works. I don’t trust it.”
“Doctor Ghorbani,” Conner said, brightly, stepping in the small tent she had been assigned. “Come with me, won’t you?”
“You’ve got that ‘I know something bad that you don’t and I want to gloat’ look on your face, Conner,” Rachel said, frowning but getting up from her camp-bed.
“You know me so well,” Conner said, dryly.
“Hey, Roc,” Rachel said, looking up at the elf-thing. “Adelas tomall.”
“Do not speak to Roc,” Conner said, sharply, waving at her and muttering a word.
A wave of pain so strong it, for a moment, made her knees sag, washed over Rachel. Then it was gone.
“Okay, okay,” she gasped. “I get the point. No talking to the elf-thing. Damn. He was the only person in this camp that had a brain.”
“Come with me,” Conner said, striding down the line of tents. “So, here we are, peacefully carrying out siege operations against a town we don’t particularly need.”
“So I noticed,” Rachel said. “And soaking up casualties doing it.”
“Doesn’t it seem silly?” Conner said, getting back some of his sunny disposition.
“Yes,” Rachel replied. “It does.”
“Well, I hope it’s not too obvious,” Conner said as they came to a tent. A Changed was exiting, a new one from the looks of it, and hissed at them for a moment until it noticed Conner’s robes. Then it backed away, fawningly.
“So you’re making more Changed?” Rachel asked, her stomach dropping.
“I hope that anyone observing thinks that,” Conner replied, sweeping back the door of the tent. “But, no, we’re not. Behold.”
Within was a large frame made of some sort of silvery metal and a portal. He gestured her into the tent and then waved for her to follow through the portal.
When she reached the far side her stomach dropped. The portal was set up in the door of a castle in a large valley. And the floor of the valley was covered in tents. Changed were everywhere, most of them in semiorderly groups.
“There are eleven of these portals,” Conner said, smiling. “Each of them with a force of about seven to ten thousand Changed on the far side. They have been drilling on entering the portals and the gates of the camp are… large for a reason. Your father thinks we don’t know that he is on the way with archers. With Blood Lords. With another full legion. But we do, oh we do,” Conner said, quietly smiling. “And a little bird has whispered in the right ear that we have you as well. In the camp. Alive. Unharmed. Mostly.”
“My father will… not come for me,” Rachel said, bleakly.
“Oh, I think he will,” Conner replied. “Besides, he has to defeat us, doesn’t he? Your father always leads from the center of his main force. First Legion has assembled to the northeast of us and will come down from there, deploying near the head of the peninsula. The bowmen are at least a day further away but they will land near Wilamon and march overland, fast, arriving just in the nick of time and deploying to the north. Dragons will attack from sunward. Did I mention the anti-dragon ballistas? Edmund will feint that he only has one cohort to draw us out. We’ll ‘take the bait.’ Then he’ll attack us with the main force of the legion while the bowmen press us from the flank. We’ll retreat, run, back to the fort. They will pursue. And when they do…”