The Deadliest Game

there in the northern fashion, to make temporary privacy for anyone using the space. More thick tapestries were positioned around the walls to cut the drafts from the slit-windows. Off to one side, Elblai sat in a large, ornate chair positioned in front of a carved screen, and a man sat on a smaller chair in front of her. He was a small man, slender, short-haired and short-bearded, dressed in dark clothes.

Leif moved cautiously in that direction, staying very close to the wall. He could hear the soft sounds of Megan following behind him. The lighting up here was subdued, and mostly in the middle of the room, from a pair of oil lamps on intricately wrought metal stands.

Leif decided not to go any closer than ten feet or so, and flattened himself against the tapestry, being careful not to move it. He could feel a soft flutter in the wool as Megan did the same, and they both spent a moment examining Elblai. She’s worth looking at, Leif thought: fiftyish, a little on the stocky side, with close-cropped silvery-blond hair and a face rather at odds with the housewifely body. She had eyes that were set a little slanted, giving her face a slightly exotic look, but her eyes were large, and thoughtful, and the deepest blue that Leif could remember seeing — almost a violet color. She looked like somebody’s grandmother…but a grandmother sitting comfortably with a sword in one hand, point down on the stone floor, and wearing a beautiful glittering shirt of scale mail over a long padded silk tunic the color of the very tip of a candle flame. Her well-worn boots were up on a hassock in front of her chair, and she sat back in the chair holding her sword with one hand resting on the hilts, tilting it a little to one side, a little to the other, in a slow rocking motion as she talked.

“Those three have been a thorn in my side for months now,” she was saying in a soft Midwestern drawl to the small, dapper man sitting across from her. “Now, your master is in a position to do me a good turn.”

“I am sure he could be convinced to do you one,” said the man, stroking his close-cropped beard, “assuming that you could demonstrate to him that such an intervention would be to his advantage.” He was dressed all in shimmering black: quilted satin — another tunic meant to be worn under mail, but the mail had been laid aside, and he wore only a long dagger at his belt.

Elblai laughed out loud. “Raist, you can’t tell me that Lillan and Gugliem and Menel haven’t been just as much pains in his butt as they are in mine. Since spring they’ve been wandering around the North country looking for a fight to interfere in. I didn’t have anything going on that I wanted them interfering in, and I told them so, and told them to clear on out before I lost my patience. Well, they cleared out, all right, but where do they go? Straight off to the Orxenian Marches, and what do they do but sell off their armies’ contracts to Argath.”

“Oh, now,” said the dapper little man, “now then, Lady Elblai, but you have your facts somewhat confused. Those contracts were purchased by Enver, Lord of the Marchlands, who as we all know—”

“—who as we all know doesn’t fart without Argath telling him what color to do it in,” Elblai said, with an impatient frown. “Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to convince me that Enver is some kind of loose cannon. Argath instructed him to buy those contracts on the quiet, and point those three lords’ armies at mine, which, I might add, have been sitting in summer quarters and very peaceably minding their own business. A state of affairs which your master cannot understand, and so believes that there must be some kind of plot behind it.”

Elblai uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way, all the while rocking the point-down sword idly and gently back and forth, back and forth, so that it caught the light of one of the oil lamps, and the reflection slid back and forth over a hanging tapestry there, and the running hunting dogs on the tapestry seemed to stare at the moving patch of light. “Well, he wants a plot, I’ll give him a plot. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the troop movements the last few days. I know an encirclement when I see it. Attempted encirclement. Your master, Argath, had better look east, because my reinforcements are coming up, in force. And there are more than three times as many of them as he can field just now. I know his numbers, and his intentions, if he doesn’t know mine. But that’s what I hire my wizards for, and I make sure I have the best.”

The small dapper man sat very still. His face showed no change of expression at all.

“Now your master has several possible courses of action,” Elblai said reasonably. “He can go on the way he’s going. In which case, late tomorrow or early the day after, Lillan, Gugliem, and Menel are going to be fertilizer, along with their armies. And having put them to their best possible use, I’ll then turn my attention to doing the same for Argath. It might take a little longer, but my people are mobilized and ready, and his are scattered all over the place, supposedly cowing the surrounding kingdoms into inaction. Well, we’ll see about that. My guess is that the minute somebody attacks Argath with a force big enough to make a difference, then all the neighbors, who have been putting up with his depredations for quite long enough now, will join in, too. You think he fancies an attack on five fronts? Because that’s what we’re looking at. If not more. Argath, King of the Orxenians, will be a red greasy smear on the ground by the time my horse and everybody else’s finishes up with running all over him.”

Elblai paused. There was utter silence in the room, except for the tiny, tiny noise made by the point of Elblai’s sword as it grated on the stone floor. Leif held his breath, sure that someone would hear him breathing in that stillness. Beside him, he suspected that Megan was doing the same.

“Now,” Elblai said at last, “that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that he can call off his three little friends and tell them to take their armies somewhere else. In which case everyone will shortly know exactly what happened. None of them could ever keep a secret worth a damn, especially when they think they’ve been used for purposes which they didn’t anticipate themselves. In this case, they’ll sure think so, and your master will lose a lot of face, and lay himself open to all kinds of trouble, if not this year, then next. But I’d bet on this year myself.”

“You are very certain of all this, aren’t you?” asked Raist.

“Oh, you bet,” said Elblai. “I’m equally certain that your master will not avail himself of possibility number two either. Too much chance that he’ll come out of it looking bad. So there is also possibility number three…in which he comes down on Lillan and Gugliem and Menel himself, and wipes their armies out — thus giving his army something to do besides being wiped out by mine — and makes a reputation for himself by ‘keeping order in the Marches.’ He gets to look good for a change. A nuisance, by which I mean those three and their armies, is removed. And Argath doesn’t lose any face.”

Raist opened his mouth.

“But he wouldn’t normally take possibility number three either, I don’t think,” Elblai said, “because he didn’t think of it first.”

Raist closed his mouth again. “He’d probably have to kill Lord Enver, too,” Elblai added as an afterthought, “but he’s been wanting to do that for a while anyway.”

There was more silence for a few breaths. “So,” Elblai said. “You go back to your lord — he left an hour ago, heading north for his army’s encampment — and explain the options to him. Be nice about it. I really prefer the third one myself. But if he tries to force the issue, I am prepared to wipe him and his armies off the face of Sarxos, and not even Rod will shed a tear. You just have him be clear about that, because I always like to have one good fight before the autumn sets in…and if he insists, it’ll be him. This is his last chance to change his mind, make it a nice quiet autumn for everybody…and ensure that he lives long enough to have one.”

Raist stood up. “If I have your ladyship’s permission to go—”

“In one moment more. I know, too, that after this campaign he has designs on Lord Fettick and Duchess Morn. Their countries have been in fairly precarious positions up until now. Well, we’ve been talking…and they’re preparing to enter into a strategic alliance with another power — not me, let your lord and master do a little digging — who is eager to take them on. When that alliance is in place — within a matter of days, I’d think — the forces they’re going to be able to bring into the field are going to be massive. They will almost certainly go straight to war, eager to get Argath out of their collective hair. And they’ll take out Duke Mengor as well. They’re perfectly aware to what use Argath has been putting that cooperative little puppet. So just have him understand that his troubles are just beginning.”

Raist stood there fidgeting, silent. After a moment, Elblai nodded at him. “Go on, then. Be careful on the road. There are a lot of wolves running loose around here at the moment….”

Raist bowed hurriedly and left, his footsteps echoing down the stairs.

Elblai sat quietly in the still room. After a moment there were more footsteps on the stairs, and a young blond woman in a long simple blue robe appeared on the landing. “Aunt El?” she called.

“Over here, honey.”

Aunt? Leif thought.

The young woman came in. “So?” she said.