Wartorn Obliteration

But, of course, they were not Felk, nor captured soldiers inducted into the ranks. They were the two who had attempted to assassinate this army's topmost commander, General Weisel.

Actually, Radstac conceded, credit where credit was due. It was Deo who had fired that crossbow bolt that—so the avid scuttlebutt went—had so nearly found its target. Truly it had been a magnificent shot. Miraculous. Or... almost so.

'It looks like time to take that thread out. You haven't been scratching at it?'

'In the noble family of the premier of Petgrad,' Deo said, fastidiously licking his fingers clean, 'we learn not to scratch our wounds from a very young age.'

'How very wise. Unbutton that tunic the rest of the way. I'll barely be able to see what I'm doing as is.'

It wouldn't do to light a lamp in here. Nights were safer for them than days in this camp, but every caution had to be strictly observed. Radstac peered closely at the line of gashed flesh. She had inflicted it and done so neatly. A cosmetic wound. It had served to fool the searching parties that were hastily mounted following the failed assassination of Weisel. Deo had pretended to be a scout, newly returned from the field and wounded by bandits. The Felk searchers had found Radstac tending to that very convincing wound. Then, during the ongoing commotion, the two of them had slipped away.

She snipped the stitches one by one, removed the bits of thread. Deo was admirably stoic about it. Nephew of Petgrad's premier he might be, but he was no coddled noble; so she had concluded some time ago.

'Radstac,' he said when the last binding thread was cut. The wound had closed tidily. The light inside the tent was almost gone. They were shadows to each other, familiar hinted shapes. She had her ungloved hand to his chest, atop the healing slash.

'What is it?' she asked.

'We have to get out of here. Out of this camp.'

'You don't want another shot at Weisel, then?'

'I do. I do. But I won't get it. Not now. He'll be guarded. It'll be impossible.'

In truth this whole venture had been impossible, Deo's self-appointed quest to assassinate the Felk war commander. It was vastly improbable that they'd made it as far as they had. Deo's bolt had almost caught the general. Almost...

'I agree,' she said.

'Then we must go.'

She lifted her shoulders, a silhouetted fatalistic shrug. 'That's a nice thought. But I don't think we can simply stroll our way out.'

'No. We go out the way we got into this camp.'

'By being Far Moved? And how do we convince one of those Felk wizards to accommodate us?'

Her hand was still to his bare chest. One of Deo's hands rose now and closed gently over her fingers. 'I think we might find a willing accomplice.'

* * *

The leaf was gummy, blue, and it came away from the wax paper in a slow peel. A moment after her teeth had bitten it through a third of the way up from its stem, pain—intense and expected—flared through those same teeth. Radstac bore it. She could not imagine ever not being able to handle that special pain. But if ever that day came, if ever she was tempted, as longtime addicts oftentimes were, to have her teeth pulled from her skull in order to eliminate that initial discomfort, that was the same day mansid would have defeated her, the day she would have lost her will, her strength, her dignity. If it came, her life as a professional mansid addict was done. All that would remain ahead would be the squalid, pathetic, debased existence of any hopeless amateur leaf user.

But, coincidentally, on the arrival of that hypothetical day, Radstac would open the veins down both her arms and have done with it.

She wasn't careless. She wasn't stupid. She respected her particular addiction, and she had sufficient faith in herself to cope with the powerful needs roused by the stimulant. Mansid, after all, brought clarity. She was very clear about its purpose and capacity in her life.

She was even clear that she was now consuming two-thirds of a leaf, when a quarter-lune or two ago she'd only needed half. Bodies contrived to build up tolerances. She understood this. There was a mathematics about it, a physical equation. It was one she'd worked many times before.

The pain had left her teeth. The other initial disorienting effects had passed. The clarity was enveloping her. Mansid grew only on the Isthmus, and so Radstac came to this wretched land, to fight its wars... and to find her leaf.

She pressed the remaining third of the blue leaf back onto its paper and made to tuck it into the pouch under her armor.

'No... no... no... please—I—I'll—I—'

Radstac hadn't needed the preternatural clarity of the mansid to see the need riding this Felk wretch so earnestly. Yet she would be hard pressed to identify the specific telltales. This soldier certainly appeared functional. He wasn't one of those toothless horrors that lay under a blanket out of the light and gummed leaves, with no other purpose left in life. But something in his comportment, in his eyes that focused intensely on irrelevant objects, in the slow gliding shadow of his being... something gave it away.

Nonetheless, she might have been wrong. But she wasn't wrong. And here was the proof. Dangle a leaf before a creature who desires its effects more than air to breathe, and watch the response. How entertaining. And tritely predictable. Amateur.

This was one of the units assigned to transporting food and equipment. Supplies were Far Moved, quite an expedient method of keeping an army provisioned. Actually, with that advantage alone, the Felk were fairly godsdamned overwhelming. It was such a mammoth undertaking. Full conquest of the Isthmus. But if weapons and rations and probably even fresh troops could be instantaneously conveyed to the field, to any place the active army might be, then the Felk's mobility became an unchecked force.

The odd thing about that, however, was that this army had for the past three days been standing fast. No movement. It remained in a state of readiness, as if anticipating the order to mobilize, but no such word had come. Both Radstac and Deo had eavesdropped on and interacted fleetingly with these Felk soldiers, enough to garner the rumor that General Weisel, following the failed try on his life, had either gone into hiding within this camp or quit it altogether. Certainly the Felk war commander could have had himself Far Moved to wherever he liked. It would be the prudent action, at least until his would-be assassins were apprehended.

Radstac had stalked and separated this soldier from his fellows. He wasn't one of the robed wizards, just a regular troop member, one of this army's list makers and invoice checkers. The two of them were huddled behind a great stack of sacked grain, received through one of the portals and not yet distributed to the mess corps. They were out of sight. She had lured him along with a few obvious seductive flourishes. But, having brought him here, she had used the mansid leaf rather than the promise of her body to capture his full attention.

She certainly had it now.

'Oh?' she murmured. 'Did you want a nibble?' Her smile, she knew, was unnerving. She treated him to it, there in the murky diffuse glow of the camp's many cooking fires.

'I do.' There was terrible longing there, worse than the desire the most foolish romantic felt for his object of affection. It wasn't properly said that one could love mansid. Addicts didn't love their narcotics. But need, if it wasn't purer or truer than love, was at least occasionally more damningly powerful.

'I could give you a taste,' Radstac said.

'Please.'

'But why should I? Can you answer me that?'

'Because—because...' Desperate search for words to express that great need.

'No, none of that. Not why you want it. I know why. Tell me why I should give you what you want.'

He was two tenwinters old, thereabouts. He was slim, slightly spindly, a callow face, anxious eyes. He licked his lips repeatedly as his mind worked.

'What can I give you?' he finally asked, fairly panting it.

Radstac nodded.