He’d spent a good bit of the next year thinking. Besides starving there wasn’t much else to do. Gunny Rutherford had recited a poem one time, something about Black Sheep. One of the lines was about “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” That was his life in a nutshell. When you’re too dangerous to be a soldier, and too honorable to be a bandit and a lousy farmer, there wasn’t much going but “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” The only thing that kept him from thinking about it was what wine and beer he could afford working as a wandering laborer.
They’d found him in a miserable slop of a tavern, drunk as an owl on bad wine and near half dead. They’d sobered him up and then started asking questions. After a while, he realized that if the answers were wrong, he wasn’t walking out of the hut they’d taken him to. But the answers were right. And so he’d been given a new job. It wasn’t as good as being a Blood Lord and really getting it stuck in. But, and this was the key point, they’d promised him that if he was a good boy and played by the rules, he’d occasionally get to kill people. The flip side being that if he fisked with them, even once, he’d be visited by unpleasant gentlemen with similar abilities and then there would be no more Brice Cruz.
He’d thought they were crazy when they put him back in Raven’s Mill. But it was remarkable what a change of hair and skin color along with a few things you could do with a face could do. Nobody had twigged. And, after all, he knew the town and the Blood Lord Academy inside and out. He’d been there before half the buildings were built. Had built a third of them.
He’d taken a job in the kitchens and done a professionally middling job. Never so good that he could get promoted, never so bad that he got fired. And he kept his ears open. From time to time he passed on bits of information that he’d picked up. Nothing much, Raven’s Mill in a lot of ways was a backwater.
This morning was unusual, though. The commandant had called for a surprise inspection. And he’d heard one of the headquarters guards that was coming off duty saying that Councilwoman Sill and some undersecretary from the War Department were in the building. Just a surprise inspection wasn’t too odd; the commandant was a right bastard about them. But put it together with the visit, though, and something was happening.
He glanced at the clock and looked out the window. Right on time.
“Spell me,” he grunted to one of the assistant cooks. “I had too much coffee.”
He stepped out back to the latrines and opened up the door to the third stall.
“Clearly we need better facilities,” he said to no one in particular.
“It’s clear,” a voice answered from the next stall.
“Councilwoman Sill and an undersecretary from the War Department are at headquarters,” Cruz said, conversationally. “And there’s a surprise inspection. Maybe dog and pony show for them. Lots of tenseness going around.”
“I heard half of that already,” his control said in a hard voice. “And we have a problem.”
“What’s that?” Cruz asked, buttoning up his pants.
“You’ve got a mission,” the control said. “One that you have to take right now. Can you get in the headquarters?”
“Yeah,” Cruz replied. “If I really have to.”
“You really have to,” the control said, tightly. “It’s game time.”
“In the headquarters?” Cruz said, trying to keep his voice down.
“In the headquarters,” the control replied. “Now. There is exactly no time.”
“I can’t get out,” Cruz said, quietly but angrily.
“Let us handle that,” the control replied. “Just do it.”
“Fine one to talk!” Cruz snarled. “You won’t be looking down a platoon of swords!”
“It doesn’t matter,” the control replied. “This is game time. You took the salt. There is one way out of this organization and that is feet first. You can do it of old age or… other ways. But if you try to run, you’ll just die tired.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cruz said, quietly. “Fisk it. Everybody dies sometime. Who’s the target?”
“Do you understand your orders, General?” Edmund asked, watching First Legion file out of its fortified camp. They were leaving a half cohort to hold the walls; if everything went to hell, they could always fall back on it. The rest of them were marching silently to the south, towards the battle.
“Yes, sir,” General Lepheimer said. The legion commander was another political appointee but one that Edmund would have chosen himself. The UFS, the world, had precisely no military officers at the Fall. They were still trying to train a professional corps. But Lepheimer was a long term student of military history and his tactics, in simulated battles, map exercises and the few small skirmishes he had engaged in, had been sound.
Lepheimer chuckled dryly in the darkness and looked over at the duke.
“When I told my boys it was going to be a battle to tell their grandchildren about, I didn’t realize how right I was.”
“Well, if we have grandchildren to tell, it will be because of what they do today,” Edmund said.
As he said it the pipes of the legion began to swirl and the battle hymn of the Blood Lords was roared from six thousand throats.
“Blood to our blood, General,” Lepheimer said, saluting. “We’ll get it done.”
“Breakfast for the general,” Cruz said, waving the tray in front of the two guards’ faces so they could smell it clearly.
“Secure room,” the left-hand guard said. “Nobody goes in.”
“Blast,” Cruz replied. “If I don’t get this to him quick I’m in trouble.” He held the tray out to the left-hand guard. “Hold this for me.”
“What?” the guard said, automatically taking it. As he did Cruz swung a roundhouse punch into his face with his right hand and followed it up with a left to the right-hand guard. What looked like light gloves against the morning cold had steel inserts and lead palms for weight. It still hurt.
“Good thing they changed the helmets,” Cruz muttered, shaking his hands to get feeling back in them. “Never could have done that with a barbute.”
He palmed a dagger, then slipped the latch on the soundproofed door.
The room beyond was about ten meters long and occupied mostly by a large conference table. Harry Chambers was standing at the far end, holding a long dagger in his hand. Elnora Sill was sitting in the end chair, facing the door. Her head was tipped back revealing the gash in her neck that went almost to her spine. General Lanzillo was on the floor with a dagger in his back.
“Good,” Cruz said, closing the door and bolting it from the inside. “You managed it. Have you contacted higher, yet?”
“What?” Harry said, reaching down and pulling the necklace that held Elnora’s key from around her neck. “No.”