That math did not work out.
Else thought he knew Gordimer. Gordimer was subtie enough to put a potential rival out where death might overtake him. But would he do that to Else Tage? Else could not imagine Gordimer seeing him as that serious a threat
Else chose to temporize. He would serve Brothe. How better to serve Dreanger than to soar in the councils of Dreanger's foes?
Pinkus Ghort turned up. 'The Deves want to see you, Pipe.'
'They say why?'
'Nope. I'm not one of their pals.' Ghort glanced around, making sure no nearby shadow harbored anything unfriendly. Constant, unconscious examination of the local scene was second nature in the west.
'Not even a hint?'
'No. I assume it's news from al-Khazen. The vedettes found some Deves beside the road, bickering about whether or not to light a fire.'
Ghort did a quick pantomime wherein the freezing-our-asses-off party battled the smoke-will-get-us-killed party.
The weather was miserable and getting worse. Today, there were several kinds, all cold. Bitter winds reminded Else that he had spent last winter cozily tucked into prison. Sleet became snow, falling thickly. There seemed to be a thousand ghosts behind the curtains of white, loping parallel to the road south.
The Instrumentalities of the Night became ever more active as the regiment approached al-Khazen.
The regiment had not yet moved five miles that day. But Else was in no hurry. He was out here alone with a mob of unblooded and poorly trained soldiers likely to panic at their first glimpse of the elephant. It was imperative that they avoid heavy pressure unless the Brotherhood of War joined in.
Else ordered camp to be made at a site less than an hour ahead.
He wanted to visit with the new Deves.
31. Andorayans Far from Home
Svavar hated life. Svavar hated Firaldia. Svavar hated the bandit mercenaries of Ochska Rashaki's company. Most of all, Svavar hated the Instrumentalities of the Night. He was ready to lie down and find peace.
Shagot slept twenty hours at a stretch, now. Or more. Although his spans of awareness and activity now sometimes stretched out, too. He could be furiously active for twenty hours before he collapsed into a sleep deeper than any coma.
The lone spark in the darkness of Svavar's existence was his confidence that Arlensul stalked these cruel foreign hills beside him. Each day she let him glimpse her from the corner of his eye, or slipping into shadow ahead if the band was making one of its rare moves.
The rogue Chooser wanted him to know she was there. Was she guardian or death sentence? Or just a tool? The Arlensul of myth was obsessed with vengeance.
Svavar felt no empathy for Arlensul. She wanted him filled with nothing but an abiding resentment of his horrid immortality so powerful he would be her ally when her hour came.
Asgrimmur Grimmsson was not a brilliant man. Given time, though, he worked things out. In these mountains, taking the Emperor's shilling while giving little in return, he had time to brood and hatch ideas.
Svavar, the Imperial mercenary, was in no way the Asgrimmur Grimmsson sturlanger who had tagged along after his big brother a few hundred years ago. This Svavar bestrode the boundaries of the Realm of Night, slowly becoming the thing he hated, tiny fry on the verges of the shoals of the Instrumentalities of the Night. As had been the case a million times before, never noticed by those involved, he was drifting toward becoming something more than a man.
And the exiled daughter of the All-Father was easing his path.
Not one man in a million ever learned that mere mortals might become something more. Godhood itself was there for the man who enjoyed the will and the luck.
The one in a million seldom recognized the role of chance. A great sorcerer might devote his life to grasping ascendance and kill himself in the effort. An ignorant barbarian like Svavar might succeed just by not knowing any better. Shagot's enchanted head once graced a shaman determined to become one of the Instrumentalities of the Night. The Instrumentalities already out there used him, manipulating him through his ambition, in an age when a warmer world was sloughing the rule of ice and both gods and men were simpler.
Svavar developed a sense for Arlensul's whereabouts. It worked better than his sense for Shagot. He felt the cold and the empty, the hatred and the despair, that were the essence of Arlensul the Exile. Not normally interested in the feelings of others, Svavar nevertheless wondered what it might be like to swap war stories with the daughter of the Gray Walker.
Shagotdeveloped a disconcerting habit of moving from the coma state to full awareness in a blink. Svavar was roasting a slow, stupid hare betrayed to him by Arlensul. Shagot popped up and roared, 'What the hell is going on?' as though he had not been in another world completely for the last twenty-six hours. 'There's something wrong.' He ignored the two feet of snow that had not been there before.
'It's that asshole Ockska,' Svavar said. 'He don't want to do what he's supposed to. Rabbit will be ready in a bit.' Svavar knew Shagot was not thinking about Rashaki.
'Huh?' Shagot took a moment to orient himself. 'He isn't watching the pass anymore?'
'It isn't that, Grim. Since you went to sleep we had three messages from Vondera Koterba. The Emperor wants us to move down past al-Citizi and cut the east-west road. Not to block it, just to intercept messengers.' Svavar spoke softly so Rashaki's intimates would not hear. 'He says he's holding out for a bigger payoff. I think he's afraid to show us what a stupid ass he really is.'
'He defied orders from Koterba and the Emperor both?'
Svavar relaxed slightly. Shagot had been diverted from a strangeness surely to do with Arlensul.
Shagot wolfed down more than his share of the hare. As he cleaned his fingers, he said, 'I need you to back me up, little brother.' He produced the monster head and the enchanted sword forged in the time before time.
Members of the band, scruffy bandit scum rather than real soldiers, gaped as Shagot strode toward Rashaki's hut. Shagot shattered the feeble door. Inside, he removed the head of one lieutenant and the face of another before saying, 'You defied the Emperor's command.' His tone was soft, gentle. It betrayed no strain. It was the tone of a man disinterestedly asking the price of a sack of turnips. He kicked his surviving victim for bleeding on his leg.
Ockska considered the old head, the bloody sword, and Shagot. 'I thought we could get more money.'
'The Emperor is an honorable man. He keeps his word. He expects you to do the same. It's time for a leader who will do his job.'
'I suppose you're right.'
'Good. Good. You're a reasonable man, after all. You won't find me a harsh captain. And my brother and I will move on soon. Little brother, help our lieutenant rise so we can shake hands on the new arrangement.'
Rashaki was an average size man who had made himself leader by being more clever and hard than the others, rather than through sheer wicked brawn. 'Are you the Emperor's special agents?'
'Something like that,' Shagot admitted. He drove the ancient sword into Rashaki's chest. Svavar held Rashaki for the strike. 'Though we serve a power higher than any ephemeral lord of the earth.'
Ockska heard that before the light went out of his eyes. He believed because he saw what no one else could see.
Rashaki's surviving lieutenants quickly reported the change to the rest of the band.
No one argued. Everyone recognized that agents of the night walked among them.
Svavar knew Rashaki's lieutenants harbored the same thoughts that Rashaki had before the bronze sword relieved him of a need to think. Play along with the mad foreigner. It would be no trouble to murder his brother, then him, once demonic sleep reclaimed him.
Shagot counted on the Old Ones to get him through. If he thought at all. Svavar trusted Arlensul. Arlensul was immediate and real and had a vested interest in sustaining the Grimmssons.
