"Teelu. Teelu. Teelu"
They were all chanting now, the whole militia, prostrate on the ground. "Teelu. Teelu. Teelu."
Getting louder. Getting stronger. "Teelu. Teelu. Teelu." Till they were roaring the word, fierce and proud, their voices ripping through the trees, echoing across the valley, rising to the hills.
"Teelu! Teelu! Teelu!"
Your Majesty. Your Majesty. Your Majesty.
Part 3
DONNING THE ERMINE
15
IDENTIFYING WIFTIM
The thing about chants is you need a signal when to stop. People want some leader to call out "Amen!" or a choir to start singing, or lights coming on, or curtains going down, or something. Otherwise, the chanters get to feeling awkward, and wondering when it would be polite to shut up, but not really comfortable just letting things dwindle and die off, because that takes away from the great uplifting solidarity. After three minutes of "Teelu, Teelu, Teelu," I could tell the warriors were trying to find a graceful way to give it up. They’d chanted enough; they wanted to move onto the next glorious thing, whatever it would be. I guess they expected me to wave my hands, call for quiet, then give some rousing speech that would channel their excitement into something useful. Trouble was, I didn’t have a clue what to say… and it would be horrible having two dozen kids waiting for me to speak when my mind was a total blank. They wouldn’t turn violent or anything; they’d just sit and stare, thinking, Well, he may be a blood-consort, but he can’t be very smart.
Desperately I peered into the darkness, hoping to catch sight of Admiral Ramos. It would be great if I could thank the warriors for their nice adulation, then turn everything over to Festina. She was an admiral; she had to be good at public speaking, even if she didn’t have a specific plan of action. While Festina talked I could stand back listening, all serene and placid… the way Queen Verity always posed on her silver dais as she let some cabinet minister read the latest speech from the throne.
But Admiral Ramos was nowhere to be seen. Either she’d left or was hiding, both of which were good ideas considering what the warriors might do if they noticed an unknown human lurking in the dark.
Without thinking, I lifted my hand to chew on my knuckle… and that’s all it took to stop the chanting dead silent. Shows you how eager the kids were to hear me pontificate. "Um," I said. "Well. Hi." Then I remembered a standard thing the protocol ministers had taught me to say years and years ago: in Troyenese, "Greetings to you all from the court of the high queen. You are valued; you are worthy. Just as you give your hearts to her service, so the queen gives her heart to you."
That brought on a big cheer… even though these kids had to realize the court of the high queen was twenty years dead. Maybe they thought the war was over: that Troyen had a new high queen who’d sent me to solve their problems. All of a sudden I got myself tongue-tied, worried I’d just given them false hopes and terrified I’d keep putting my foot in my mouth whatever I tried to say.
"Um. Don’t get all… I’m not…"
There were so many things I wasn’t, I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not what you think. I’m not what you need. "Okay," I said, taking a deep breath, "there’s a lot of stuff you don’t understand…"
That’s when the police skimmer buzzed in overhead and a loudspeaker blared, "Nobody move!"
The best way to get a Mandasar moving is to tell him, "Keep still." In a split second, the kids had scrambled to their feet and were gearing up for an outraged display of claws and shouts and stamping… but I yelled, "At ease! Parade rest!" and that got their attention. None of them had a clue how to stand at parade rest, but they all stiffened into postures that were unnatural enough to come across as military. I hissed to a few who looked outright hostile ("Close your claws!" "All feet on the ground!" "Why are you waving your hands over your head?") but it didn’t take long to get them settled into poses that wouldn’t scare the police too badly.
"You there!" blared the loudspeaker… and a searchlight stabbed down on me from the skimmer’s belly. "Are you in charge?"
"Yes!" shouted the whole militia. Thanks a lot, guys. "Are you Admiral Ramos?" the loudspeaker asked.
"No," I answered — thinking to myself these cops didn’t know much about the navy. Admirals wear gray; my uniform was black. Then again, after I’d swum the canal and run through the forest and hit the dirt I don’t know how many times, maybe it wasn’t so easy to tell. "I’m Explorer Second Class Edward York," I told the police. "Admiral Ramos is around someplace, but I’m not sure where."
"Here," Festina said, stepping out of the forest. I must have stared in her direction three or four times but never spotted her. She must know some really good tricks for hiding.
"Are you all right, Admiral?" the police asked.
"I’m fine," she replied, "but there’s been a murder. One of these warriors was killed in cold blood with a banned weapon."
There was a pause. I got the impression whoever was using the loudspeaker had turned off the microphone and was having a quick conference with other people in the skimmer. Finally, the speaker clicked on again, and a different voice, deep and male, said, "Are you sure it was murder?"
"I saw it myself," the admiral said, as I nodded too. All the warriors looked around the clearing, their expressions going grim. They must have been trying to figure out which one of them wasn’t there.
The policeman gave a heavy sigh, loud enough to carry over the loudspeaker. "All right," he said, "I want the Mandasars to return to their homes while Admiral Ramos and Explorer York stay to give us details. We’ll get statements from the rest of you later on, but for now, just disperse." Pause. "Please."
The warriors didn’t budge. They looked toward me, like they didn’t care a snifter for the police unless I said it was okay. "You can go," I said, "we’ll be fine."
But the warriors still seemed reluctant to head out… as if they didn’t trust the cops, or maybe they just wanted to hang around to see what happened next. Before anyone else could move, Zeeleepull stepped forward from the pack. He bulled his way up to me, then lowered himself till his head touched my foot. "Leave cannot I, Edward York," he said. "Sworn to protect, sworn to guard, sworn to defend."
"All right," I told him… and because every other warrior was a split second away from rushing forward to vow loyalty too, I held up my hands and waved the crowd back. "One bodyguard is all I need. It doesn’t look right for a consort to hide in the middle of an army."
Samantha had come up with that line for me, long ago when Verity wanted to assign a whole platoon of guards to keep me safe. The excuse had worked back then, and it worked now; warriors go all bashfully guylike when you suggest they’re undermining your honor.
Slowly, reluctantly, the militia slunk off into the woods till only three of us were left: Festina, Zeeleepull and I. We drew back to the edge of the clearing so the police had plenty of room to land. Despite that, their skimmer took its time… scanning its searchlights around the area, checking there weren’t big rocks on the landing site, and waiting till the warriors were really gone.
When the skimmer finally touched down, a gaggle of armored folks jumped out — most with truncheons but a few carrying rifles or pistols, and even a shotgun. You never saw police brandishing firearms on a Technocracy world… not unless they knew they were dealing with dangerous non-sentient criminals who had lethal weapons of their own. Then again, maybe this response team had heard about the Laughing Larry, in which case bringing out the big guns made perfect sense.