Jirri covered her mouth, yawned, and then coughed a little laugh behind her hand. "Don't think so. Everyone always teased me about how heavy a sleeper I am. But my mother says that's because I have a clear conscience."
I wish I did, lass, thought Demansk, as he watched her stumble to the bed and clamber onto it. Within seconds, she was curled against the wall and sound asleep. But I will say that you've helped. With my conscience even more than the numbers.
Thicelt cleared his throat. Demansk looked at him.
"The special courier ship left last night to bring word to Trae. If all works as planned, he will soon have a great accomplishment to his own name. At which point—"
Demansk grinned. "Odd, isn't it, how great minds think alike? At which point, needless to say, it will be time for my youngest son to think about getting married."
Chapter 20
But when Trae reached Chalice, three weeks later, he was anything but filled with self-satisfaction at his martial exploits.
"There wasn't any fighting at all, Father," he complained bitterly. He upended his cup of wine, drained half of it in one gulp, and almost slammed it down on the side table — without, amazingly, spilling anything.
Sourly: "Except for killing some of my own soldiers and sailors. On three of the ships — dammit, I gave clear orders ahead of time! — the bastards started raping the women." He gave Forent Nappur, lounging on a nearby couch, a glance of approval. "Next time, if there is a next time, I'll insist on having some of his men along. They'd have paid attention to them."
Demansk was not lounging, he was sitting upright. "So what did you do?" he asked. The question was not an idle one. In and of itself, he didn't much care about the travails of refugee women. Those who'd stayed behind on Preble would have suffered a much worse fate at the hands of Albrecht's vengeful troops, after all, when they sacked the island. But the way in which Trae handled such a challenge to his authority was. . critical.
Trae shrugged. "What could I do? There were only a handful of marines on each of those ships — which, as it was, were packed full of refugees. And — fucking swine — they were the ones leading the charge anyway. All I had was the steam ram."
He grabbed the goblet, drained the rest of it — spilling some on his tunic, this time — and slammed it back down. "Ha! The marines on the first ship I ordered to cease and desist even had the gall to make obscene gestures at me."
For the first time since Trae had stalked into the Governor's Palace, an expression other than sourness came to his face. Granted, it was a young man's snarl, a bit too flamboyant to be fully effective. But. . effective enough, Demansk thought.
"So, of course, I rammed the ship. Broke it in half! Then ordered the nearest three ships to pick up the refugees out of the water and leave the marines and the sailors to the sharks. They did it right quick, too, damned if they didn't."
The other men in the room, Demansk and Nappur and Thicelt, burst into laughter. Demansk more loudly than the others.
"Crude, crude," reproved Thicelt, still chuckling, "but I dare say it was effective."
The scowl was back on Trae's face. "I had to do it twice, dammit! The fleet was too big and spread out for all the ships to see what had happened to the first one."
Demansk nodded. "And the third ship?"
Trae jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing in the direction of the harbor below the palace. "I had the crew and marines arrested when we came ashore." With some heat: "I'd have had them—"
He broke off the angry statement. "But I'm not in charge here, so I just had them put in custody. Forent's men have them." He looked at Thicelt. "I guess you are, since you're the Governor. I think—"
Nappur's deep, growling voice went through the room like a predator's stalk. "No, he's not in charge, on this matter. I am, since it's a matter of army discipline. Those men disobeyed clear instructions from their commanding officer, given to them beforehand. You did, correct?"
Trae nodded vigorously, almost fiercely. "By the gods, yes! We spent weeks preparing for the expedition — months, rather. I even made a special trip to Rope to meet with the ship captains, all of them."
"Good enough," rumbled Forent. "I'll have the stakes brought out again. Haven't had to use them here since the third day of the occupation, but it won't hurt at all to have a reminder. I'll have them set up on the docks, in plain view of the whole city."
"How did the evacuation itself go?" asked Thicelt. "That must have been pure chaos."
"The gods, yes! It was a madhouse. Still" — he gave Demansk a look of admiration which any Vanbert patriarch would have basked in—"the whole thing went pretty much exactly the way Father predicted. I was surprised, to tell you the truth. I thought. ."
He let the disrespectful notion trail off. Even — a rarity, this, to be treasured! — had a guilty look on his face.
Demansk barked a laugh. "I was guessing, Trae, not predicting. An educated and informed guess, true enough. But the whole thing was still a gamble."
Demansk rose, went to a side table, and poured himself a goblet of wine. This would be the first cup of wine he'd allowed himself since the occupation began, weeks ago. But the news of how Trae had handled the mutiny was cause enough for celebration. Demansk was struggling not to let his pride show too openly.
My son! Damn me who will, but this too was my doing. I always knew Trae had the brains — the gods know he's good-humored — but I was never sure he had the steel.
When he turned back, however, his expression was simply one of mild satisfaction. The august patriarch. Approving of his offspring, of course, but still finding it necessary to correct minor errors.
"Albrecht went berserk, didn't he, when he got the news I'd taken the archipelago? I knew he would, the stinking pig. So he ordered an all-out assault across that causeway he's been building for the past year. The kind of frontal attack that produces casualties worse than anything."
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Forent wincing. The ex-sergeant knew exactly what Demansk was talking about.
Demansk resumed his seat. "Let me explain a little secret of siegecraft to you, Trae. The thing that usually breaks the defenders' lines, at the end, is when the men on the fortifications start panicking. Not for themselves, but for their families. They know they're going to lose, you see, and so they desert their posts in order to try to find their own folks in the city. And save them — the gods alone know how — from the horrors of the ensuing sack."
Trae was watching him intently. Possibly for the first time in his life, Demansk's youngest son had not a trace of his usual cockiness. "That's what your evacuation prevented," continued Demansk. "Once the Islanders on Preble understood that there was a chance of saving their families — a chance which got better the more fierce a resistance they put up — most of the men would have stayed at their posts. And fought like demons."
"Truth," uttered Nappur. "There really aren't all that many cowards in the world, when the crunch comes down." He winced again. "I don't even want to think what kind of casualties Albrecht's soldiers suffered. But I'll tell you this — anyone Trae didn't evacuate from Preble was dead within a day. Including household pets. That would have been a massacre."
"I got off mostly women, children and old folks," agreed Trae. "Not too many men of fighting age."
"And you were expecting?" growled Thicelt. "No one's ever accused we Islanders of being pussies, you know, whatever else they say about us."
Demansk finished his wine. For a moment, he considered a second cup, but dismissed the idea. Pleased or not, he still had a titan's work ahead of him.
"Let this be a lesson to you, scion of mine. If at all possible, always leave your enemy with an escape route. A cornered rat is dangerous, always is. Whereas a rat huddling in a hole, after you've taken the house, is just a nuisance."
He toyed with the empty cup in his hands, for a moment. "What Albrecht should have done is immediately offered Preble the same kind of terms I gave the Islanders elsewhere. News of my conquest of the archipelago will have reached the defenders of Preble too. They'd know, then, that further resistance was hopeless."
"Why didn't he?" asked Trae. "I know you always said he wouldn't, but why not? He's not really that much of a hothead."
"You might be surprised. Albrecht's cool enough, most of the time. But when he gets jabbed unexpectedly, he tends to react like a maddened boar. I've never been convinced he's fully sane, frankly." Demansk placed the empty cup on the table next to his couch and pushed it aside. "But it doesn't matter, given Albrecht's ambitions. After I'd conquered the archipelago, mostly through negotiations, he needed a 'real victory' at Preble. If he'd settled for a negotiated surrender, he'd just look like a midget version of me. Instead, he can at least claim to be a 'real Vanbert conqueror'—and you can bet everything you own that his people in the capital are already accusing me of being false to our traditions."
"They'll be accusing you of worse than that, Triumvir," chortled Nappur. "For sure, Albrecht will try to claim that you undermined him."
Demansk shrugged. "Let him make the claim. I was careful to leave Jeschonyk a way to murk it all up politically. I didn't interfere at all — directly — with Albrecht's military command. But, as the Triumvir in charge of the new province of Western Isles—all of the islands — I saw fit to provide shelter for the relatives of my own new subjects."
He frowned at Trae. "Which is why, by the way, I'm personally glad you didn't have to attack any of Albrecht's ships. That would have made things a lot harder for Ion in the capital."
Trae's scowl was coming back, introducing itself with a snort of derision. "Them! Only two of his triremes even came around to my side of the island. The rest of his ships were supporting the assault. They took one look at me — they remember this steam ram, for sure, from last year — and kept their distance."
"Speaking of which," said Thicelt, "did it make it across the ocean?"
"Ha! I had to have it towed into Rope, where I left it," grumbled Trae. "Even with this mild weather, the damn thing takes on so much water in the open sea that the whole crew had to spend all its time bailing. Didn't dare keep the boilers going."
The scowl was in full bloom now. "All of which doesn't deal with my problem, Father! Sinking two ships of mutineers is not exactly the kind of reputation I need for—"