He turned and beckoned the two men standing in the corridor beyond. Both of them were elderly, with the stoop-shouldered appearance of scribes who had spent a lifetime hunched over state documents. The appearance was not far from the truth. The old men were actually magistrates of the city, not mere scribes. But Vanbert law, especially on a local and regional level, primarily involved the settlement of complex property claims. A magistrate on that level of the judicial pyramid spent most of his life consulting records and precedents.
Nervously, gingerly, the two entered the room. One of them gasped faintly, seeing the dying soldier on the floor. The other just looked away, his prim face contained and withdrawn. Neither of the men was there by choice. Demansk had selected them, in fact, precisely because they had the reputation for being among the few incorruptible judges in Solinga. That, and the fact that both of them were "First Twelve" by ancestry. He wanted no one claiming later that the witnesses were either bribed or, what was even worse, scatterbrained Emeralds.
The timing was perfect. Willech's words finally stumbled into something approximating coherence. Of a very profane nature, of course.
"Demansk — you fucking idiot! What do you think you're doing! I'll have you drawn and quartered, you stinking shit! I'll have you—"
He got no further. The giant soldier, whose mind was perfectly competent even if his body resembled that of a troll, strode forward and literally seized Willech by the scruff of the neck.
He even remembered his lines perfectly. "Outrageous! Public disrespect to the Triumvir!" He hauled the shrieking Willech into the center of the room and forced him to his knees, as easily as a man wrestling with a child.
"The penalty is clearly stated, sir," boomed the giant. "Do you wish the punishment applied immediately, or should I take this malefactor before the magistrates?"
"Malefactor," no less. Demansk made a note to talk to the giant in private afterward. He'd chosen the man simply for his size — he didn't even know his name — but clearly the fellow had a brain to go with the bulk. Given the new realities of Demansk's life, it could be handy having such a soldier as a personal bodyguard. The man was the sergeant of his squad, which also indicated some talent for leadership.
"No need to wait for the magistrates," said Demansk loudly. "As it happens, two are present with us." He turned slightly and gestured toward the two oldsters standing in the back of the room. "As you say, Sergeant, the penalty is clear and well known."
He'd intended to use two of his men specially prepared for the task, but decided to test this interesting ogre a little further. The sergeant had been present at the briefing, so he knew what Demansk wanted.
"Do me the service yourself, if you would."
"My pleasure, sir!" The huge soldier cast a glance at the upended writing table and made a little motion to one of his men. The squad member quickly turned the table right side up. In an instant, the giant relinquished his grip on the nape of Willech's tunic and seized his left wrist. Then, again manhandling him with ease, forced the hand flat onto the table top.
Like all squad sergeants, the man carried a short and heavy sword at his belt in addition to his assegai. The weapon was more like a large knife than a sword, really. It was primarily a ceremonial blade indicating his rank, which was carried in lieu of the three short javelins carried by front rankers. But most sergeants made sure the blade was kept sharpened in case of need.
This one was no exception. And his reflexes were excellent for such a big man. Almost instantly, he had his short sword drawn and then—thunk! — the heavy blade sheared through flesh and bone. The strike was clean and economical. The sergeant used his blade more like a farmwife chopping vegetables than a giant warrior wielding a sword. The four fingertips, severed at the first joint, simply rolled neatly aside. The wood of the table below was barely nicked.
It was done perfectly. The first offense penalty for publicly insulting an official was to have the entire hand removed at the wrist. Left hand if the man was right-handed, the reverse for left-handers. But the giant noncom had clearly remembered Demansk's instructions to the two men who were supposed to have done the work.
And, again, his thespianism was excellent also.
"My apologies, sir!" he boomed. "I seem to have missed."
"No matter, First Spear. That'll—"
The meaningless phrase which would have followed went unspoken. Demansk was watching Willech carefully, waiting to see if his scheme would work as he'd expected.
It did. Had Willech's hand been severed at the wrist, the man would probably have been in too much shock to have said much of anything. But simply losing the fingertips, as painful and shocking as it was in its own right, was not actually that serious an injury. Plenty of peasants and artisans suffered as much every year working in the fields and shops — and were back at work, as a rule, within a few days.
Willech was no peasant, but he was tough enough. After gawping for a moment at his severed fingertips and the blood staining the table top, he burst into another stream of profanity. These curses were uttered even more wildly than the first batch, and were only vaguely coherent.
Still, it was clear enough that they were aimed at Demansk. The Triumvir turned his head and gave the two magistrates in the back of the room a cold-eyed gaze. Both men were very pale-faced, now. One looked aside; the other down at his feet. But neither, obviously, was at all inclined to argue the matter.
When Demansk turned back, the huge sergeant was watching him. Demansk nodded slightly and the man went back on stage.
"Outrageous! Insulting the Triumvir again! And a second offense!"
It would all go quickly now, there was no reason to play charades any longer. As much as Demansk detested Willech, he did not enjoy watching this. Not in the least.
"The penalty for which is clear and well known also," he said firmly. "Attend to it if you would, Sergeant."
"My pleasure, sir!"
Again, the giant's hand moved much more quickly than one would expect from a creature his size. He had Willech by the scruff of the tunic again; and, with a short powerful jerk, forced his head down on the table. Willech's cheek was pressed flat to the wood. His eyes gaped; his mouth worked like a fish.
Finally, at the last instant, Willech understood just how completely he had been manipulated. Demansk could see the comprehension in the Governor's eyes; see his mouth frantically trying to mouth new and different words.
Too late. The sergeant's sword came down again, and this was no farmwife's onion-chopping. The heavy blade missed the sergeant's own hand holding Willech by not more than half an inch. The giant knew his swordwork. The spinal cord was severed cleanly. It took two more quick blows to remove the head itself, but Willech had died instantly.
Knowing what was coming, Demansk and the other soldiers in the room had stepped aside. So the blood fountaining from Willech's neck simply gushed onto the carpet — and, with the most energetic first burst, splattered the leggings of the two magistrates standing at the back of the room. One of them simply squawked. The other stared at his bloody legs for a moment before lunging for the door. A moment later, Demansk could hear him vomiting noisily in the corridor beyond.
He gave the ex-gladiator in the corner a look. The man's face was perfectly composed, not pale in the least. Obviously, he'd figured out what was happening long before his erstwhile master.
"I'll want you to accompany the delegation which will be reporting this to the Council," Demansk rasped. "I trust your testimony will be reliable."
The former bodyguard actually managed a smile. A thin one, true, but a smile nonetheless. "Shocking, sir. Just shocking it was, the way the Governor insulted the Triumvir. And in public, too. 'T'wasn't a gray thing, not in the least."
Demansk nodded. He'd have Sallivar keep an eye on the man. But he really didn't expect any trouble from that quarter, especially after a suitably discreet bribe. And killing the man would probably cause more problems than it would solve.
Having made his decision, he turned to the next matter. "Sergeant, please see to it that the magistrates are escorted safely back to their office. And post a guard for them. There's likely to be some tumult in the streets today."
That was a delicate way of putting it, of course. A guard for the magistrates was just as much a guard over them. Sallivar would be leaving with the magistrates for Vanbert in the morning, and once on the road he'd make sure the magistrates never had a chance to talk to anyone until they reached the capital.
"Yes, sir." The sergeant started to get his men moving, but Demansk held up his hand.
"One thing also. Two, actually. First" — he pointed to Willech's head, which had rolled almost to the wall—"please take that and have it stuck on one of the spikes on the fence outside the Governor's Palace. I imagine the crowd in Solinga will be cheered by the sight."
"My pleasure, sir." Two strides and the sergeant had the grisly object off the floor. It was fortunate that he was such a big man. Willech had favored very close-cropped hair, much too short to hold. But with his enormous grip, the sergeant had no difficulty holding the skull like a normal-sized man would hold a goblet.
"And the second matter, sir?"
Demansk studied him for a moment. Then, abruptly: "Come to my quarters this evening. I'd like to speak with you further. You'll probably have to wait around a bit, I'm afraid. Things are likely to be hectic all day."
For the first time since he'd met him that morning — Crann had recommended the sergeant and his squad — Demansk saw an actual expression on the giant's face. He found the little smile rather interesting. It was not the rueful smile of a veteran acknowledging the army's inevitable "hurry-up-and-wait." There was a real gleam to the thing, as if the sergeant would enjoy whiling away a few hours watching the powers-that-were scrambling frantically out of the way of the powers-that-are.
From his accent, the man was another easterner, signed up for a twenty-five-year hitch in the army as the only alternative to poverty. Who, with no help at all from Emerald philosophers, had apparently drawn his own conclusions about the dialectic of Being and Becoming.
* * *
When he got there, Demansk's headquarters were just as much in frenzied semi-chaos as he'd expected. By the nature of things, a coup d'etat is a messier business than a straightforward battle in the open field. Even experienced and steady officers will get a little rattled and uncertain, at such a time. Partly because the tasks involved are somewhat new and different; mostly because the penalty for failure is certain to be worse than being defeated by a foreign enemy. A foreigner, at least with noble prisoners, will want ransom. A shaken but surviving old regime will settle for nothing less than heads on spikes on official fences — and then seize all your property for good measure.
Which, of course, was exactly what Demansk was doing himself.
"We've got most of it," said Ulrich Bratten as soon as the Triumvir came into the room which served as the nerve center for the coup. "The bulk of it was in the form of bullion in Willech's own mansion. We had to torture Willech's wife — tough bitch, that one — but we got the secret out of her."
Demansk nodded. He'd hoped the woman would have yielded without resorting to torture, but hadn't really expected it. He'd known Sandru Willech since they were both very young also — she was another child of the elite — and hadn't liked her any more than he had Willech himself. But no one had ever accused the woman of being a coward. Even as a girl, Sandru had been tough as well as nasty.