'I've heard that before somewhere,' she muttered.
'And you, Sergeant—take your group and start them on weapons drills. If you run out of Barrayaran drills, the Oseran standard procedures are in the computers, you can filch some of them. Ride them. Baz will be running his people into the ground down in engineering—spring cleaning like they've never had before. And after I've gotten these regs straightened around, we can start quizzing them on those, too. Tire 'em out.'
'My lord,' said the Sergeant sternly, 'there are twenty of them and four of us. At the end of the week, who do you think is going to be tireder?' He slipped into vehemence. 'My first responsibility is your hide, damn it!'
'I'm thinking of my hide, believe me! And you can best cover my hide by going out there and making them believe I'm a mercenary commander.'
'You're not a commander, you're a bloody holovid director,' muttered Bothari.
The editing job on the Imperial Regulations proved larger and more grueling than Miles had anticipated. Even the wholesale slaughter of such chapters as those detailing instructions for purely Barrayaran ceremonies such as the Emperor's Birthday Review left an enormous mass of material. Miles slashed into it, gutting almost as fast as he could read.
It was the closest look he had ever given to military regulations, and he meditated on them, deep in the night cycle. Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and material to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival—to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory—organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue.
He recalled a remark of his grandfather's—'More battles have been won or lost by the quartermasters than by any general staff.' It had been apropos a classic anecdote about a quartermaster who had issued the young guerilla general's troops the wrong ammunition. 'I had him hung by his thumbs for a day,' Grandfather had reminisced, 'but Prince Xav made me take him down.' Miles fingered the dagger at his waist, and removed five screens of regulations about ship-mounted plasma weapons, obsolete for a generation.
His sclera were red and his cheeks hollow and grey with beard stubble at the end of the night cycle, but he had boiled his plagarization down into a neat, fierce little handbook for getting everybody's weapons pointed in the same direction. He pressed it into Elena's hands to be copied and distributed before staggering off to wash and change clothes, the better to present a front of eagle-eyed, as opposed to pie-eyed, command before his 'new troops'.
'Done,' he murmured to her. 'Does this make me a space pirate?'
She groaned.
Miles did his best to be seen everywhere that day cycle. He re-inspected sickbay, and gave it a grudging pass. He observed both Elena's and the Sergeant's 'classes', trying to look as if he were noting every mercenary's performance with stern appraisal, and not in truth nearly falling asleep on his feet. He squeezed time for a private conversation with Mayhew, now manning the RG132 alone, to bring him up to date and bolster his confidence in the new scheme for holding the prisoners. He drew up some superficial written tests of his new 'Dendarii Regulations' for Elena and Bothari to administer.
The mercenary pilot officer's funeral was in the afternoon, ship time. Miles made it a pretext for a rigorous inspection of the mercenaries' personal gear and uniforms; a proper parade. For the sake of example and courtesy, he turned himself and the Botharis out in the best clothes they had from his grandfather's funeral. Their somber brilliance artistically complimented the mercenaries' crisp grey-and whites.
Thorne, pale and silent, observed the sharp turnout with a strange gratitude. Miles was rather pale and silent himself, and breathed an inward sigh of relief when the pilot officer's body was at last safely cremated, his ashes scattered in space. Miles allowed Auson to conduct the brief ceremonies unhindered; his most soaring thespian hypocrisy, Miles felt, was not up to taking over this function.
He withdrew afterward to the cabin he had appropriated, telling Bothari he wanted to study the Oseran's real regulations and procedures. But his concentration was failing him. Odd flashes of formless movement occurred in his peripheral vision. He lay down but could not rest. He resumed pacing with his uneven stride, notions for fine- tuning his prisoner scheme tumbling through his brain but then escaping him. He was grateful when Elena interrupted him with a status report.
He confided to her, rather randomly, a half dozen of his new ideas, then asked her anxiously, 'Do they seem to be buying it? I'm not sure how I'm coming across. Are they going to accept orders from a kid?'
She grinned. 'Major Daum seems to have taken care of that angle. Apparently he bought what you told him.'
'Daum? What did I tell him?'
'About your rejuvenation treatment.'
'My what?'
'He seems to think you were on leave from the Dendarii to go to Beta Colony for a rejuvenation treatment. Isn't that what you told him?'
'Hell no!' Miles paced. 'I told him I was there for medical treatment, yes—thought it would account for this—' a vague wave of his hand indicating the peculiarities of his body, 'combat injuries or something. But—there isn't any such thing as a Betan rejuvenation treatment! That's just a rumor. It's their public health system, and the way they live, and their genetics—'
'You may know it, but a lot of non-Betans don't. Daum seems to think you're not only older but, er, a lot older.'
'Well, naturally he believes it, then, if he thought it up himself.' Miles paused. 'Bel Thorne must know better, though.'
'Bel's not contradicting it.' She smirked. 'I think it has a crush on you.'
Miles rubbed his hands through his hair, and over his numb face. 'Baz must realize this rejuvenation rumor is nonsense, too. Better caution him not to correct anybody, though, it works to my advantage. I wonder what he thinks I am? I thought he'd have figured it out by now.'
'Oh, Baz has his own theory. I—it's my fault, really. Father's always so worried about political kidnappers, I thought I'd better lead Baz astray.'
'Good. What kind of fairy tale did you cook up for him?'
'I think you're right about people believing things they make up themselves. I swear I didn't plant any of this, I just didn't contradict it. He knows you're a Count's son, since you swore him in as an Armsman—aren't you going to get in trouble for that?'
Miles shook his head. 'I'll worry about that if we live through this. Just so he doesn't figure out which Count's son.'
'Well I think you did a good thing. It seems to mean a lot to him. Anyway, he thinks you're about his age. Your father, whoever he was, disinherited you, and exiled you from Barrayar to …' she faltered, 'to get you out of sight,' she finished, raising her chin bravely.
'Ah,' said Miles. 'A reasonable theory.' He came to the end of a circuit in his pacing and stood absorbed, apparently, by the bare wall in front of him. 'You mustn't blame him for it—'
'I don't.'
He smiled a quick reassurance, and paced again.
'You have a younger brother who has usurped your rightful place as heir—'
He grinned in spite of himself. 'Baz is a romantic.'
'He's an exile himself, isn't he?' she asked quietly. 'Father doesn't like him, but he won't say why . ..' She looked at him expectantly.
'I won't either, then. It's—it's not my business.'
'But he's your leigeman now.'
'All right, so it is my business. I just wish it weren't. But Baz will have to tell you himself.'
She smiled at him. 'I knew you'd say that.' Oddly, the non-answer seemed to content her.
'How did your last combat class go? I hope they all crawled out on their hands and knees.'
She smiled tranquilly. 'Very nearly. Some of the technical people act like they never expected to do that kind of fighting. Others are awfully good—I've kind of got them working on the klutzy ones.'
'That's just right,' he approved eagerly. 'Conserve your own energy, expend theirs. You've grasped the principle.'
