The Reformer

'Sorry, Father,' Helga said, dropping her eyes. 'I'm just trying to put the best possible face on it.'

Demansk sighed and rubbed a hand over the gray-and-brown stubble on his chin. Small insects were coming through the laced opening of his tent and immolating themselves in the oil lamps with small spppt sounds and a disagreeable smell; the scent triggered old memories of camps, running back to his earliest manhood. Helga had been conceived in a tent like this, to his second wife; she'd accompanied him on several campaigns down around the southern border, when he'd been one of the senior officers overseeing the building of the wall against the barbarians.

'Your mother was a lot like you,' he said heavily. 'Perhaps if she'd lived. . maybe that's why I've indulged you so. Too much, probably.'

He sighed again; with commendable self-command, Helga held her piece. 'Oh, we could patch up some sort of match. . '

'You'd have to pay heavily, and I wouldn't be getting any prize, Father. I'd rather be a spinster. It isn't as if you don't have grandchildren already, and besides. .'

'Besides, there's this pirate,' Demansk said dryly.

'He's not a pirate!'

'Mercenary, then,' Demansk said, with a slight wry smile. 'Emerald rebel, surely.'

'Redvers was the rebel, and he was Adrian Gellert's patron,' Helga said reasonably. 'A client has to follow his patron, doesn't he?'

'Well, that's the tradition.' Demansk gestured at the wine jug, and Helga poured for them both again, adding dippers of water from the bigger clay vase by the door. 'I think sometimes it would be better for the State if it wasn't.'

Helga chuckled. 'Father, you're not rebelling against the Customs of the Ancestors yourself, now?'

'Our Ancestors were a bunch of pig farmers,' Demansk said bluntly. 'My grandfather used to be out every day, weeding the fields beside his slaves. Times have changed; Audsley's rebellion, Marcomann's dictatorship, the proscriptions. . things are falling apart.' His gaze sharpened. 'And evidently my daughter has been driven mad by a scratch from one of the cats that draws Gellerix's chariot, and has become besotted with a rebel.'

Helga shook her head. 'Adrian's not. . not really a rebel. His brother, Esmond, yes-Esmond would bring the whole Confederacy down in ruins, and everyone in it, I think, if he could. Adrian's more. . reasonable.'

'Reasonable and learned,' Demansk said, keeping his voice casual. 'He's the one that came up with this damnable hellpowder stuff, isn't he?'

Helga laughed ruefully. 'You know, Father, the reason Adrian put me ashore was that he didn't want me to be forced to betray the Confederacy. And here you are, trying to worm his secrets out of me! I'm between the mad velipad and the direbeast.'

'If you don't want to talk about it. . I suppose I do owe this man something for getting you out of Vase, and for putting you ashore.'

'There's not much for me to say,' Helga said. 'I don't know how the hellpowder is made-Adrian didn't tell me, and it's a close-kept secret. So are the other weapons.'

'Other weapons?' Demansk said sharply.

'There were all sorts of rumors, and I saw what happened in Vase-the city wall pounded to rubble, and the gates of the citadel smashed like kindling.'

'Hmmm.' Demansk rubbed his chin again. 'I suppose. . larger barrels of hellpowder thrown by catapults? That could get nasty, very nasty, especially in siege operations, or at sea-and here we're faced with both!' He slammed a fist into the arm of the folding camp chair, hard enough to make the tough wood and leather creak. 'I spend my whole life learning the trade of war-not leaving it to the underofficers, but really learning it, the way Marcomann did, damn his soul to the Ash Fields-and this whippersnapper of an Emerald turns it upside down, all at once. A philosopher, a rhetorician!'

'Father. . I don't think Adrian really is a rhetorician, not anymore. He studied rhetoric, and he's very good at it. . but what he mostly seems to be interested in now is. . is the. . way the world's put together.'

Demansk's eyebrows shot up. 'A natural philosopher? Hmmm. There haven't been any of those since the League Wars! If this hellpowder is what comes of it, I'm glad there hasn't been. Still, the wine's out of the jug now, no use trying to put it back.' His shrewd green eyes fastened on his daughter's face. 'Just what do you think this Adrian fellow will do, facing us now.'

'Facing you now,' Helga snorted. 'Jeschonyk couldn't find. . what's the soldier's expression?'

Couldn't find his dick with both hands and a hooker to help, Demansk thought automatically. Still, however much of a tomboy she was, there were things you didn't say to a daughter.

'Couldn't find his arse with both hands on a dark night,' he chuckled aloud. 'Not quite fair. He has enough sense to leave details to experts, and he listens . . occasionally. But he's set in his ways even for a man of his generation. And I asked you a question, missy.'

Helga's chin went up. 'Adrian will do what you least expect, and when you least expect it,' she said proudly. 'His brother's a good soldier and a demon with a sword but Adrian. . thinks about things.'

Demansk shuddered, a little theatrically. 'Allfather Greatest and Best, this business is bad enough without scholarship,' he said, and then cocked an eye. 'Rumor has it that the gods talk to your Adrian.'

He hid his surprise when Helga looked distinctly uneasy; she was as skeptical as any young noble-the way the younger generation openly said things that were whispered in his younger days shocked him, now and then. In his grandfather's day they'd been killing matters.

'I'm. . not altogether sure about that,' Helga said. 'Sometimes. . sometimes I'd catch him murmuring to somebody. Somebody who wasn't there.'

Demansk grunted. 'Perhaps he's mad, then.'

'I don't think so, Father. Madmen hear voices, but if Adrian's listening, it's to someone who tells him things that are true. Or at least very useful.'

That's a point, a distinct point, Demansk thought.

He was lifting the cup to his lips when the alarm sounded out across the camp.

NINE

'This time they're being cautious,' Esmond said, bracing his feet automatically against the pitch and roll of the ship.

'How so?' Adrian said curiously, peering towards the shore, where the causeway swarmed with workers and troops, like a human anthill.

'They're putting in a wall with a parapet and fighting platform along the edge of the causeway as it goes out, see? And they've got their building yard completely surrounded with a ditch-and-stockade, and they've brought out those two fighting towers-they'll push them out as the causeway proceeds. The catapults on them outrange anything a ship can mount, and they've got archers packed tight in there too. They can shoot from shelter.'

'Hmmm,' Adrian said. 'Not good, brother.'

similar situations tend to produce similar solutions, Center said.

Meaning what?

Center tends to get a little oracular now and then, son, Raj thought with a chuckle.

Well, that's appropriate.

What he-or it-means is that this isn't the first time these tactical conditions have come up. Back on Bellevue, I got a reputation for originality partly because Center kept feeding me things that other generals had done, back on Earth before spaceflight. I've studied more since Center and I have been. . together.