Blade shrugged. One of these days that tender conscience of his was probably going to get him killed. But there wasn't anything he could do about it, and probably never would be.
After about an hour the Emperor came back and sat down on the same log. It was full daylight now. Blade saw that the Emperor had washed his face and combed his hair with his fingers. He still looked ready to fall on his face with exhaustion. But he also looked like a man finally at peace with himself.
«Blade.»
«Your Majesty.» Blade knelt.
«You have spoken truly of Our duty. We shall return to Karan and lead Our subjects in avenging this defeat.»
Blade bowed his head even more, but said nothing to show the relief he felt inside. He suspected there was more to come.
«Your counsel has been immensely wise this day. In fact, it might be said that you have saved Our life twice in two days, and many of Our subjects as well. We are exceedingly grateful.
«Therefore, it is Our wish that from this day forward you shall be a Lord General in Our service, and receive all the rewards and honors that accompany the rank. It also is Our wish that you serve at Our right hand, and continue to give us the same good service and good counsel that you have given us these two days.»
«Your Majesty is gracious beyond what I deserve.»
«Oh, nonsense,» said Jores, with sudden cheerful contempt. «The gods alone know how much you've done for Karan. It would be damned stupid not to put you where you can go on doing even more. Ah-you may raise your head, Blade. As a Lord General you have noble rank and can look the Emperor in the face.»
Blade raised his head and looked at Jores VII. On the thin, unshaven face was the first smile Blade had ever seen there.
Jores' good intentions weren't enough by themselves to get the two men safely out of the mountains and back to the camp. That also took hard marching and a good deal of luck.
They took everything they could carry from the dead horse, including a chunk of its flesh which they ate raw as they marched. They headed down through the pass and were on level ground by noon. Blade set a course straight across the plateau toward the camp and they moved out at a good clip. After the first few hours it was obvious that Jores was staying on his feet by sheer will power. But he did stay on his feet, and gradually the mountains sank down toward the horizon behind them.
Blade was prepared to walk all that night and all the next day if they had to. But just before dark a patrol sent out from the camp met them. The officer in command was stunned to learn of the disaster, although he had already suspected something of the kind. He was much too stunned to worry much about Blade's sudden elevation in rank, or object to obeying Blade's orders. They reached the camp about midnight.
Fortunately the camp was not completely defenseless. The commander of the regiment on guard had wanted to lead his Guardians up into the mountains at the first rumors of the battle. But he fell off his horse and broke an arm. The second in command had more sense and realized that it would be complete folly to leave the camp without any protection at all.
Since the camp was more or less secure, Blade and the Emperor decided to remain in position for a few more days. There might be some survivors of the massacre still making their way out of the mountains.
There were. By the time everyone marched off toward the Pass of Scador, several hundred survivors had trickled in. To Blade's delight Zogades was among them. He not only marched out himself, he led a band of twenty he had rallied around him. Blade promptly used his new rank to promote Zogades to the rank of captain.
Unfortunately Count Iscaros also got clean away from the slaughter of the Guardians. He was honorably wounded, so there was no way he could be called a coward. But at least Blade could enjoy the spectacle Iscaros made of himself when he discovered Blade's new position. The count was loudly indignant at the idea of a former Arena slave who had slain his Three now being a Lord General, and much more in the Emperor's favor than he himself was or probably ever would be! Blade wondered what Pardes would say, when he found out what had happened.
For better or worse, Blade was no longer a piece in the game Iscaros and Pardes were playing. All at once he was a player himself, whether he liked it or not. There was nothing to do but play as well as he could.
Chapter 18
Blade promptly found himself working twice as hard as a general as he had when he was an ordinary trooper in the Guardians. The only difference was that instead of carrying out orders he gave them. Like generals in every other Dimension, the generals of Karan spent more time in chairs wielding pens than they did in the saddle wielding swords and lances.
Blade liked to lead from in front when it came time for him to lead in battle. But there wasn't any battle in prospect. The job at hand was getting the whole mass of largely unarmed people in the camp safely through the Pass of Scador. Fortunately the Scadori were either too weak or too complacent to follow up their victory by driving the Karani infantry away from the pass. A heavy fall of snow could also have made things difficult, but there too luck was with the Karani.
«Perhaps the gods think they have punished us enough already,» said the Emperor to Blade. They were riding side by side at the head of the column as it wound its way up from the plateau, toward the pass.
«Perhaps,» said Blade. «Certainly seven thousand or more Guardians is a generous sacrifice to even the most bloodthirsty of gods!»
At the pass, Jores held a council of war with all the generals on hand, introducing Blade to them. Blade noticed a few of the more elegant generals glowering at him, but none dared openly defy the Emperor by being openly hostile. They simply voted down every point Blade raised, instead.
That was bad. Blade was convinced that the Pass of Scador and the frontier lands of Karan could and should be held by the infantry regiments alone. Or at least he was convinced this should be tried.
But the generals had never considered fighting a major war without the Guardians of the Coral Throne. As far as Blade could tell, none of them had the faintest idea of how to do so. All they could think of was pulling far back from the Pass of Scador.
«What will be said of us if the Scadori then swarm through the pass and ravage all the frontier lands for many days' travel into the Empire?» snapped Blade angrily.
Several of the generals shrugged this off. It was notorious that the nobility had few or no estates along the frontier, and distrusted the stubbornly independent free farmers there. One said, «Much will certainly be said of us if we continue the fight against the Scadori blindly, and lose thousands more soldiers. Much may be done to us, as well.»
Even Jores nodded at those words. The general had put his beringed finger squarely on something on the mind of everyone here in the tent. What would the mob in Karanopolis do? What was the best way of keeping them quiet?
Jores VII was a better man than he had been when he led the Guardians up through the Pass of Scador. But neither his new self-confidence nor Blade's urgings could make him willing to go against the advice of eight of his senior generals. The Imperial Order went down: the lands around the pass are to be abandoned. Aid will be given to those farmers who wish to flee. Those who stay will stay at their own peril.