Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

From a distance the bird looked much like the smaller variety of pigeon from which it had been bred. When seen near at hand the creature’s form took on a different substance. It was the size of a young sea eagle and muscled accordingly, with a predatory beak and eyes that scanned the world with far-reaching acuity. It wore leather gloves of a sort over its talons, with sharpened steel barbs at the tip of each toe that early training had taught it the use of. There was a tube fastened to its ankle into which rolled notes could be inserted. It was a messenger bird, a pigeon in name, perhaps, but a creature with a fierceness to match its dedication in flight. It almost never fell prey to other avian predators. Thus it was the bird of choice for the most urgent of dispatches, like the one sent late on the night Thasren Mein struck King Leodan.

The pigeon stepped off its keeper’s arm in the district of Acacia reserved for foreign dignitaries. Its wings beat down the salt-tinged air and lifted it into the night sky. It flew at first through the cascade of snowflakes, the world grayed and soft edged. Somewhere over the mainland west of Alecia the skies cleared. The bird kept on through the dark hours, its wings seldom pausing to glide.

It reached another keeper at a seaside village along the coast outside Aos at dawn the next morning. It glided in with a glimmering vermilion sky at its back. The message fastened to its leg was removed and attached-unread-to another bird. This one flew the stretch to lower Aushenia that day, rising and falling with the contours of the slab-broken prairie lands. Another carried on through the Gradthic Gap and arrived at Cathgergen about an hour before sunrise two days after the journey began. This time the message was slipped from its container and hurried through the chill corridors of the place and delivered to the expansive quarters which temporarily housed Hanish Mein’s younger brother, Maeander, and his entourage.

Maeander woke to the awareness that his name had been called. The caller remained outside his door, softly singing the coded prayer that both asks forgiveness for interruption and promises that the disturbance speaks to a matter of importance. He rose naked from the warmth of his nest and stood looking down on the puzzle of bodies and pillows and fur blankets amid which he slept. His bed was in fact the greater portion of the padded floor. It was heated from below by the vent system that distributed the earth’s steam through the fortress. Bits and pieces of smooth-limbed women peeked out here and there, a spray of flaxen hair, a length of leg, an arm wrapped over the naked back of another, fingers entwined in the soft mat of white fox fur. Five, six, seven of them: looking on such a mйlange one could not be sure. When Maeander took lovers he took them in quantity, and he wished them to look so similar that one faded into the next without a singular identity. Standing upright, the chilly air of the room pimpled his flesh. He liked it best when sensations fluctuated between extremes, from hot and cold, from delight to pain, from the soft contours of concubines in one moment to the hard edges and clipped formality of his military life the next.

By the time he snapped open the door and shot out his hand for the missive he was fully awake. He closed the door and read the note. Once, twice, and then again, brief as it was. It seemed he had waited a lifetime for the news it detailed. His heart reminded him of all those years by beating furiously, as if it would count out all the many days in as short a time as possible.

“Thank you, Fathers,” he said. “Praise you, Brother. You will not be forgotten. You’ve earned the honor you wished from life.”

As he walked back toward the center of the room, he heard a stirring among the furs and blankets. Somebody yawned audibly, rolled over, exposing the full curve of a hip. Maeander felt the stir of desire low in his body. He thought for a moment of the pleasure he could take in waking the women with shouts of excitement, coupling with them to announce his joy at the things about to happen, sharing it among so many vessels that would reflect his elation toward him. But he knew he could not allow himself such diversions now that the dispatch had announced the beginning of everything. Such a course would be as inappropriate as bemoaning his brother’s death. He cut away from the bed toward the next room. There was another way he could enjoy the day. Better that he saw to it without delay.

Thus, by the time Rialus Neptos walked in to find him reclined on a couch in the governor’s office Maeander had already set his work into motion. He had dispatched another pigeon out into the frigid wind blowing down from the north. He had also sent a rider thickly clad against the weather toward another northern destination. He had seen to it that the soldiers accompanying him made their way one by one into place inside the fortress as unobtrusively as possible, moving only singly or in pairs so as to draw little attention. His horses and sleds had been readied for his coming departure. He had only to speak to the governor to conclude his work in Cathgergen.

The governor entered preoccupied, mumbling something under his breath, his elbows tucked close to his body and shoulders hunched against the chill in the room. Seeing Maeander, he stopped so abruptly that he tilted free a splash of the steaming drink he had been carrying in a careful, two-handed grip. “Maeander? What brings you here so early?”

Maeander pulled a face of exaggerated insult. “What sort of greeting is that? One would think you take no joy in starting the day with me.”

Rialus was immediately caught off balance. He explained that he meant no slight at all. He was just surprised. Actually, he was on his way to the baths. He had just stopped in for a moment. He might not even have come to his office, in which case he would have left Maeander waiting. He rattled on without any sign that he was likely to abate soon.

“Enough!” Maeander dropped the sole of one black-booted foot to the floor with an audible impact. “I have a number of things to tell you. You may want to sit down.”

Rialus did not initially seem inclined to do so, but Maeander waited, eyes hard on him, until he changed his mind.

“Leodan Akaran,” Maeander said, “has been removed from his throne. Don’t interrupt me. I will tell you everything you need to know. My brother Thasren has sacrificed himself to end the king’s rule. I have received word that all but confirms he has achieved this. I expect in a day or two you will learn the Akaran has passed from this world. Have care for your coffee.”

Rialus, so stunned by Maeander’s words, had let his saucer tip to one side. “By his action Thasren has announced that the people no longer honor the Akaran line. He has declared war, and it is my intention to fully rally behind the cause he died for. I leave with a small contingent of my men in a few hours’ time. Do not look relieved; I am not finished yet. Now, Rialus, what I am about to spell out for you may send you into a fit of sputtering confusion, but do try to keep a hold of yourself. You have several important responsibilities today. The first has to do with the baths.”

“The-the baths?”

“Just so. The second company of the guard will have use of them this morning, yes? Well, what you are going to do is order the first company and the third also to join them in the steaming waters. It will be a great crowd of men and women, but I am sure they will not object. All that warm flesh rubbing and touching…Who doesn’t love the warm, moist heat of a crowded bath? But you would be better off not joining them. You will explain-if you must explain to anyone-that the baths will undergo their cleaning and maintenance this afternoon, so anyone who wants use of them must do so this morning. That sort of thing.” With a motion of his finger he indicated that these details he happily left in the governor’s capable hands. “And then…you will order all vents not linked to the baths closed. Once they are, you will have the tampers loosed on the main valves. You will release the full force of the stored energy in the wells.”

“I don’t understand,” Rialus began. “The heat inside the baths-”

“Will be considerable. I know. It will bring the pools to a boil. The soldiers will flush red as lobsters in the pot. They will claw over one another trying to get out of the water, but there will be too many of them. The air will fill with steam, and the heat will fill their lungs and they will suffocate. I know very well what will happen, Rialus.”

“But they will try to flee out into the halls, naked and…” The governor was too perplexed to continue. “Is this a joke?”

“Does it strike you as funny? You are a strange one, Rialus. Anyway, the lobsters will not escape the baths. I am leaving behind enough soldiers to bar the doors until the steaming is complete. After which they will dispatch any other soldiers they find. Then they will leave you to prepare for what is to follow. Is any portion of this unclear so far?”

Rialus answered this with a stammering description of just what would happen to the troops, as if the actual reality of what he proposed had possibly escaped Maeander. That would mean nearly three thousand soldiers, men and women-almost all the Northern Guard since Alain’s company had disappeared-would be steamed or boiled to death. They would swell and burst and leak all manner of fluids and die horrifically. He had never heard of such an idea. It was mass murder on a grand scale. An infamy and deception of epic proportions.

“It will be a horrible mess,” Rialus said, concluding with bewildered, indignant finality. “I could not possibly-”

Rising to his feet, Maeander clamped a hand down on the smaller man’s shoulder and made him stand. He slipped his arm more around his neck and turned Rialus toward his precious glass window. “It will indeed make for a horrible mess, but you need not worry about that. All you have to do is gaze out your window here. Watch that horizon. Remember that you have guests coming. They are nearly here. Actually, you will start hosting them this evening. They will be hungry and wanting for comforts. You will be glad then, my friend, to have so much freshly cooked meat to offer them.”

Maeander left without awaiting a further response. He was so pleased with himself he feared he could no longer keep the self-satisfied expression off his face. His heels slammed hard on the floor with each footstep. It was an almost painful way to stride, but he enjoyed that the earth beneath him accepted the punishment of his footfalls. He knew that Rialus watched him recede with open-mouthed awe. Such a little man, Maeander thought. A shrew. But he was useful and so easily manipulated; one could not deny that.

Maeander was in a fine enough mood to forgive the rodent his shortcomings. He had never been more pleased. Thasren was immortal now. Soon Hanish would be leading an army toward Alecia via the River Ask. For his part, Maeander would push another force through the mountains into Candovia. And his new allies, these Numrek, would rampage through Aushenia, a horror like nothing the Known World had seen in centuries. Then there would be a great meeting in which the bulk of the Acacian army would find themselves gasping for life before the battle even began…

The present, Maeander thought, was a blessed time to be alive.