So there is my life; reduced from candidacy for Emperor to a war against monsters and fleas.
Well, better monsters and fleas than other things he could name.
He had a full war sentry out on the walls; men posted every few paces with pitch torches burning between them at night. The watches were for four marks, but if it got as cold as Tremane feared it might, he intended to reduce the watches to two marks. It would be pretty pointless to make all this effort at building tight, warm barracks only to afflict the men standing sentry watch with frostbite.
Those that were not standing watch he'd assigned to finishing their own barracks. The floors were rough wood and needed to be finished and polished so they could be kept clean. There were still the partitions to put up, the bunks and storage lockers to build, walls to plaster, furniture to put together. And when they finished all that, he'd think of something else for them to do. Maybe build attic space beneath the thatch; lowering the ceiling would conserve still more heat.
And still no contact from the Emperor, not that he had expected any. Oh, it was possible that one of his agents could have made it back to the capital to report the looting of the warehouse, and it was possible that the Emperor would then have gotten together a score of powerful mages to open a Portal and fetch Tremane home to justice. It was even possible that Charliss would have sent a physical message with a physical, overland courier or with a troop of heavily armed men and mages. Whether or not he did so would depend on how badly the Empire was suffering the forces of the mage storms—if indeed the Empire was suffering them at all.
But as the days had stretched into weeks, the possibility of Imperial recontact diminished rapidly. Now, with the onset of winter, there was no way that even a physical courier would be able to reach them. It would take something the size of the army he already had to do so, for travel across the winter landscape would be impossible under these conditions unless one had an army.
So now Tremane stared down at the wintry isolation beyond his windows that was an uncomfortable mirror for the state of his own spirits.
Well, I certainly have my empire now. A small one, but all mine. I doubt that anyone is likely to dispute me for it until spring.
"Commander sir?" One of his many aides was at the door; he turned to face the boy, composing his own expression into one calculated to bring confidence.
"Yes, Nevis?" he replied, keeping his tone even.
"Sir, there is a rather—odd group of men here to see you." The boy was clearly puzzled. "Frankly, sir, I don't know what to make of them. They're none of them from the same units or even the same disciplines, but they say they wish to see you for the same reason and that they must speak with you personally."
"And they won't tell you what it is?" He pursed his lips at the aide's nod. "Well, perhaps you'd better show them in. it might be we have another nasty little insect to contend with, one that bites people in... places they'd rather not discuss."
The boy flushed, which amused Tremane; how had that youngster managed to climb through the ranks and still be able to blush at the idea of a flea that bit a man's privates? "I'll bring them up, sir." he said hastily, and took his leave.
Blue dusk outside the window gave little light for a meeting, and one thing they had in abundance was candles. There must have been hundreds of sealed caskets of candles, and hundreds more of the cruder tallow dips. Tremane set about lighting them himself before the delegation arrived. He'd set the last one alight and was trimming the wick when Nevis brought in the men.
They were a very mixed bag, some dozen or so of them. One mage, one of his high-ranking generals—which was probably why Nevis hadn't dared send them away without consulting Tremane—two sergeants, two leftenants, and an assortment of scouts and troopers.
That's odd. The one and only thing these men have in common is that they were all someone's agent, and I doubt any of them know that the others are agents—
He sat down behind his desk and contemplated the sober-faced group before him while Nevis closed the door. "Well," he said finally, "I hope this is not the prelude to a mutiny."
General Bram laughed. "Hardly, Commander. In fact, that's the point, and I'll be brief. I've no doubt you already knew this, but we're all spies—some of us reported to your rivals; I reported to the Emperor. We've decided to come admit it and fling ourselves upon your mercy. You're too good a leader to throw us away; our request is that you retain us in our current positions."
Tremane was very glad that he was sitting down; agents were not normally that blunt and open. Not normally? This is unprecedented! A mass defection to my side? I don't think that's ever happened in the history of the Empire! "I—ah—take it you all knew each other?" he said, hoping he did not sound as dazed as he felt.
"Of course," said the mage—a minor fellow, Tremane didn't even remember his name, but he had just recently been graduated from Apprentice. "Just as you knew who we were." He shrugged. "That's the whole game-within-the-game, now, isn't it? We all knew each other, though until we all got together this afternoon, none of us knew who the masters of the other fellows were."
"Were," Tremane repeated carefully. "Not 'are'."
"Were," General Bram said firmly. "What's the point in beating around the bush, hoping to flush a bird that scuttled away hours ago? We haven't had any more contact than you have, and what's the point of serving a man you haven't heard from since the beginning of a crisis? About half the lot that stayed on the other side when you organized that raid on the storehouse were agents, too, and if our masters were ever going to contact us again, it would have been a week or so after the raid." He shrugged. "There's no point in pretending otherwise; we've been abandoned out here, and we all know it."
"Bram called us all together to talk it over, but we'd all been thinking the same thing," the mage said, scratching his unruly hair. "They're there, and you're here; you could have had the Portal opened just for you and an escort big enough to get you to your estate. You stuck with us. By our way of thinking, that makes you a better master than the ones back home."
"The gods know you're more dependable," said one of the scouts in a disgusted voice. "Anyway, we came to show you who all the agents in your ranks were just in case you'd missed any of us, and let you know we're coming over to you so you can stop worrying about sabotage from inside. That'd be like poking a hole in the bottom of the boat you're riding in anyway."
"I see." He took a moment to settle himself, for of all the unlikely events he'd endured in the last several months. this was the least likely of all. It was utterly unprecedented; agents simply did not go over to the man they were sent to spy on, much less come over en masse!
"Fact is, Tremane, you're the most popular commander I've ever seen," Bram said, with wonder and a tinge of envy. "There isn't a man out there, for all the complaints, who doesn't know you could have left us high and dry, doesn't know everything you've done since we bivouacked here has been aimed at keeping 'em all alive and healthy. It wasn't just the way you kept up their pay; after the way you went around digging the men out of collapsed tents and making sure none of 'em was hurt or frostbit, there isn't one of 'em that wouldn't serve you for nothing. I'll stake my reputation on that."