‘Even if we take your word for it,’ Landis said, ‘might I raise the inconvenient point that we have been specifically ordered not to attack, and that we are, furthermore, disobeying our orders right at this moment by continuing to stand here?’
I nodded. ‘On that subject, I think we can expect Nimbus any minute now.’
Rain and Landis didn’t say anything more, and neither did I. We stood and waited on the rooftop. The midday sun shone down, heat radiating from the stone.
We heard Nimbus coming before we saw him. Raised voices sounded from below roof level, drawing closer. There. I pushed with the fateweaver, aiming for a point five or ten minutes away.
Nimbus came striding up the stairs, looking pissed off. Two Keepers were trailing him, Slate and Avenor; I knew both, and neither liked me. ‘Rain,’ Nimbus demanded as he walked towards us. ‘What are your men still doing here?’
Rain glanced at Landis.
‘I’m afraid a withdrawal isn’t viable,’ I told Nimbus.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ Nimbus snapped. He came to a stop ten feet away, with Slate and Avenor standing a step back. Rain, Landis and I stood facing him, the six of us forming two sides on the sunlight roof. Back at the stairs, a few other men hovered nervously.
‘We’ve got some concerns,’ Rain said.
‘I don’t care if you have concerns! You’ve been doing nothing but bending my ear about the attacks you’ve been taking. Well, now you’ve got orders to pull back. I’d have thought you’d be grateful.’
‘And then what?’ Rain asked.
‘That isn’t your concern! I am in command of this task force and I am giving you a direct order. Withdraw your men now!’
Behind Nimbus, I saw Slate shift. He and Avenor didn’t show anything on their faces, but I could tell they were uneasy.
‘Your command authority over this task force is delegated to you from the Council,’ I said. ‘You were granted that authority on the understanding that you’d use it to complete the mission’s objectives.’
‘A withdrawal is the best way to achieve them.’
‘How?’ Rain asked bluntly.
Nimbus looked as if he wanted to explode, but controlled himself with a visible effort. ‘With the loss of the accumulator, we no longer have a means to destroy the wards on the keep,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘Withdrawing will allow us to set up a strong defensive perimeter where we can wait for the Council teams to overcome the wards on this shadow realm. Once they do, we can bring in reinforcements as well as specialised siege equipment and end this battle without further casualties.’
‘The last I heard from the Council ward teams, they had no estimate for how long it would take them to break in,’ I said. ‘It could be hours, days or weeks. You’re gambling on something completely out of our control.’
‘I did not ask for your opinion, Verus!’
‘Second,’ I said, ignoring him, ‘anything that gives us time also gives them time. Drakh is going to be fortifying his position and laying contingency plans. He’s seen us attack once; next time he’ll be better prepared. And the situation with the marid is even worse. We killed Barrayar, but we didn’t kill the ifrit inside him. All the marid needs is another host body, and it can summon it straight back. Or summon something worse. The marid is an escalating threat. Pulling back and leaving it alone is the worst way to fight it.’
Nimbus looked at me in fury.
‘Director, I’m afraid I do rather share Mage Verus’s concerns,’ Landis said politely. ‘In addition, I feel we should bear in mind that the men comprising this portion of the task force are somewhat dispirited. They suffered heavy losses last night and they’ve heard what happened at the windmill. Add on the losses they’ve taken over the last few hours, and it’s starting to look rather like an unbroken string of defeats. If we order them to retreat, I’m quite certain they’ll do it, but I rather suspect that once they’re inside that defensive perimeter, they won’t be willing to leave.’
‘They’ll obey the orders they’re given,’ Nimbus said, his voice hard. ‘As will you.’
Silence fell. Neither Rain nor Landis moved, and the six of us stared at each other across the rooftop. The only sound was the whine of the wind.
‘Director, we were told that the marid represented a threat to the whole country,’ Rain said quietly. ‘If we’re not stopping it, what the hell are we doing here?’
Nimbus looked about to snap, then drew in a breath and seemed to calm himself. ‘All right,’ he said. He glanced around: no one else was in earshot. ‘You want to know the real problem? We’ve been in this shadow realm less than a day and we’ve got six dead Keepers and four dead mage auxiliaries. Ten mages. If the wounded don’t make it, it’ll be fifteen. We started this war with less than a hundred Keepers in the Order of the Star and a third of that in the Order of the Shield, and we’ve been bleeding numbers ever since. We just lost over ten per cent of our remaining combat-effective Keepers in one day. You want to lose even more? The Keepers are the backbone of the Council. The reason anyone does what the Senior Council tells them is because we’re out there making them. We go away –’ Nimbus snapped his fingers. ‘– and that’s it. Won’t matter who’s won.’
‘If the marid is able to carry out its plans and begin mass-producing jinn-possessed mages,’ Landis said, ‘then it will matter very much who won. How exactly are you expecting us to maintain the Council’s authority when there are twenty or thirty Calderas and Barrayars running around?’
‘Then we call in help,’ Nimbus said. ‘Or step up security recruitment. It doesn’t matter. There’s a line for acceptable losses and we’re over it.’
The futures looked peaceful – too peaceful. It couldn’t be much longer now. ‘Council orders were to stop the marid,’ Rain said. ‘At any cost.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Nimbus said impatiently. ‘You know what the Council means when it says something like that. If we win this battle but lose most of our Keepers, you think they’re going to care when you point to that order? Maybe they won’t put us on trial, but it won’t matter. It’ll be round our necks for ever.’
‘This is bigger than you or me,’ Rain said.
‘You going to tell yourself that when they pension you off?’
Rain looked at Nimbus in disgust.
‘Look, Rain, it doesn’t matter what you think,’ Nimbus said. ‘The Keepers here aren’t expendable. End of story.’
‘You don’t understand the Council as well as you think, Nimbus,’ I said. ‘In the long run, everyone’s expendable.’
‘Maybe you are,’ Nimbus said, his voice hard. ‘The rest of us? Not so much.’
I could feel the futures through the fateweaver, strands of fate drifting around us. I felt them brush over the men on the rooftop, considering. Slate and Avenor were ignored after only a touch. Rain was measured, then discarded. It was between me, Landis and Nimbus.
‘We have the opportunity to finish Drakh’s forces and end this war,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter what you think,’ Nimbus said.
Me, Landis, Nimbus. Landis, Nimbus, me. I pushed with the fateweaver, feeling the strands of fate shift under the pressure. It was harder without my divination, but combat is a chaotic thing. There are always little things, gusts of wind, shifts of position, tiny events that can nudge someone to choose one target over another.
‘Enough of this,’ Nimbus said. ‘Withdraw those men.’
Landis and Rain looked back at him.