Heirs of Empire

He stretched, then lifted his face gratefully to the morning sun. The rain had moved further up the valley, and it was still raising the level of the Mortan, but sunlight poured down over him, and he felt his spirits rise even as concern over Sean’s slow progress simmered in the back of his brain.

Feet sucked through the mud towards him, and he turned and saw Harriet and Stomald. High-Captain Ithun had mentioned that the priest and “Ang—Lady Harry” had spent hours in the command tent last night, and he’d wondered why Harry hadn’t mentioned it to him herself. Now he detected a subtle change in their body language as they approached him, and his eyebrows rose.

“Tamman.” Harriet nodded as he touched his breastplate in the gesture of respect he and Sean always gave “the angels,” but there was something different about that as well, and he wondered just what the hell she and Stomald had been discussing last night. Surely she hadn’t—?

The question must have showed on his face, for she met his gaze unflinchingly and nodded. His eyes widened, and he looked around quickly.

“Would you and the boys pardon us a moment, Ithun?” he asked.

“Of course, Lord Tamman.” The man who’d become his exec after the Battle of Yortown nodded and waved to the rest of his staff. They waded away from the campfire through the morning mist, and Tamman turned back to Harriet.

A moment of silence stretched out between them, and Stomald’s expression confirmed his worst suspicions. The man knew. It showed in his wary eyes … and how close he stood to Harriet. Tamman felt his lips quirk, and he snorted. He’d seen this coming weeks ago, and it wasn’t as if he’d expected Harry to be his love forever. Neither of them was—no, he corrected himself, neither of them had been—ready to settle down like Sean and Sandy, and he’d told himself he was mature enough to handle it. Well, perhaps he was, but it still stung. Not that he could blame Stomald. The priest was a good man, even if his first meeting with Harry had been an attempt at judicial murder, and he shared the same compassion which was so much a part of Harry.

None of which changed the fact that she hadn’t so much as discussed her decision to tell him the truth! The possible repercussions of that little revelation in the middle of a holy war hardly bore thinking on, and her defiant expression showed she knew it. He considered half a dozen cutting remarks, then made himself set them all aside, uncertain how many of them stemmed from legitimate concern and how many from bruised male ego.

“Well,” he said finally, in Pardalian, “you look like you have something to tell me.”

“Lord Tamman,” Stomald replied before Harriet could, “Lady Harry told me the truth last night.” Tamman eyed him wordlessly, and the priest returned his gaze steadily. “I have told no one else, and I have no intention of telling anyone until the Inner Circle is defeated and you and your companions have gained access to this … computer.” His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar word, but Tamman felt his own shoulders relax. His worst fear had been Stomald’s invincible integrity; if the priest had decided Israel’s crew had defiled his religion, the results could have been unmitigated disaster.

“I see,” Tamman said slowly, then pursed his lips. “May I ask why not, Father?”

“Because Lady Sandy was right,” Stomald said simply. “We’re trapped in a war, and if I was wrong to think Lady Harry and Lady Sandy angels, the Inner Circle is even more wrong in what it believes. There will be time to sort things out once the Guard is no longer trying to kill us all, My Lord.”

The priest smiled wryly, and Tamman smiled back. Damned if he could have taken the complete destruction of his worldview as calmly as Stomald seemed to be taking it!

“At the same time, My Lord,” Stomald went on a bit more hesitantly, “Lady Harry told me of her relationship with you.” Tamman stiffened. Pardalian notions of morality were more flexible than he’d expected. Unmarried sex wasn’t a mortal sin on Pardal, but it was something the Church frowned upon, yet Stomald’s tone was that of a wary young man, not an irate priest.

“Yes?” he said in his most conversational tone.

“My Lord,” Stomald met his eyes squarely, “I love Lady Harry with all my heart. I don’t pretend to be her equal, or worthy of her,” Harriet made a sound of disagreement, but he ignored her to hold Tamman’s eyes, “yet I love her anyway, and she loves me. I … do not wish for you to think either of us has betrayed you or attempted to deceive you.”

Tamman gazed back for several seconds while he wrestled with his own emotions. Damn it, he had seen this coming, and Harry had been his friend long before she’d become his lover! They’d both known the forced intimacy of their battleship-lifeboat was what had made them lovers, and he’d known it was going to end someday, yet for just an instant he felt a terrible, burning envy of Sean and Sandy.

But then he shook himself and drew a deep breath.

“I see,” he said again, holding out his hand, and Stomald took it with only the briefest hesitation. “I won’t pretend it does great things for my self-image, Stomald, but Harry’s always been her own person. And, much as it might pain me to admit it, you’re a pretty decent fellow yourself.” The priest smiled hesitantly, and Tamman chuckled. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen it coming, either,” he said more cheerfully. “Of course, she couldn’t tell you what she felt, but the way she’s talked about you to the rest of us—!”

“Tamman!” Harriet protested with a gurgle of laughter, and Stomald turned bright red for just an instant before he laughed.

“She’s been watching you like a kinokha stalking a shemaq for weeks,” Tamman said wickedly, and watched both of them blush, amazed that he could feel such genuinely unbitter pleasure in teasing Harriet.

“You’re riding for a fall, Tamman!” she warned, shaking a fist at him, and he laughed. Then she lowered her fist and stepped closer. She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “But you’re a pretty decent fellow yourself,” she whispered in his ear.

“Of course I am,” he agreed, and put his own arm around her, then looked back at Stomald. “You don’t need them, but you have my blessings, Stomald. And if you need a groomsman—?”

“I—” Stomald began, then stopped, blushed even brighter, and looked at Harriet appealingly.

“I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself,” she told Tamman, “but assuming we all get out of this in one piece and I get him home to Mom and Dad, we might just take you up on that.”

* * *

“Shit!”

No one understood the English expletive, but Sean’s officers understood the tone. All of them were splashed from head to toe in mud, and Sean stood in cold, thigh-deep water that rose nearly to the Pardalians’ waists. The rain had stopped, but the air was almost unbearably humid, and swarms of what passed for gnats whined about their ears. The column stretched out behind them, for Sean was leading the way now, since his implant sensors made it far easier for him to pick a route through the swamp—or would have if there’d been a way through it, he thought savagely.

He inhaled and made himself calm down before he opened his mouth again, then turned to his staff.

“We’ll have to backtrack,” he said grimly. “The bottom drops off ahead, and there’s some kind of quicksand to the right. We’ll have to cut further north.”

Tibold said nothing, but his mouth tightened, and Sean understood. Their original plans had called for passing the column’s head through the swamp in ten or twelve hours, and so far they’d been slogging around in it for over twenty. What had seemed a relatively simple, if unpleasant, task on the map had become something very different, and it was all his own fault. He had the best reconnaissance capabilities on the planet, and he should have scouted their route better than this. If he had, he would have known the foot of the valley’s northern wall was lined with underground springs. The narrowest part of the swamp was also one of the least passable, and his stupid oversight had mired his entire corps down in it.

“All right,” he said finally, sighing. “We won’t get anywhere standing here looking at the mud.” He thought for a few moments, calling up the map he’d stored in his implant computers on the way through, then nodded sharply. “Remember where we stopped for lunch?” he asked Tibold.

“Yes, My Lord.”