"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. There was a man named Alexander. .
"Adrian? Adrian?"
Adrian shook himself, stopped squinting at the eye-hurting brightness of water on the purple-blue sea, and looked at his brother.
"Sorry."
"I know Scholars of the Grove are supposed to be detached, but we have a problem here." A scowl of frustration. "Or are you still mooning over that Confed girl?"
"Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't think of practical matters," Adrian said, slightly annoyed.
I've been getting that detached business since I was fourteen, he thought. One of the earlier Scholars had had the same problem from his family, and had cornered the olive-oil market for a year, just to prove a philosopher could also outthink ordinary men in ordinary affairs.
"Don't think of it as a problem," Adrian went on aloud, with a smile he knew was a little smug. "Think of it as an opportunity."
He began to speak. Esmond's eyes narrowed, then went wide. When he'd finished, the older Gellert spoke:
"Well, I will be damned to pushing a boulder up a hill for all eternity. That just might work — and it's a little longer before we have to let them know about the rest of your surprises. Captain!"
Sharlz Thicelt hurried over. "Sir?" he said.
Esmond looked up, frowning a little — there were few men taller than he — and spoke:
"What are the prevailing winds like here, this time of year?"
"My General, they vary. Usually from the northwest, particularly in the afternoons — an onshore breeze, very tricky. It dies at night and backs in the morning, though. Of course, the Sun God alone can predict the weather on any given day; at times there are strong offshore winds, particularly if we get a summer thunderstorm, and—"
"Thank you very much, Captain Thicelt," Esmond said hastily; the Islander loved the sound of his own voice — something of a national failing in the Islands as well as the Emerald cities. "That may be very useful. Very useful indeed."