Mother of Lies

MARNO CAVOTTI

handed the reins to one of his guards and lurched down awkwardly from the chariot. More guards opened the cottage door, releasing a blaze of firelight into the darkness; they peered inside to make sure it was safe for the precious Mutineer to enter. Cavotti detested bodyguards because they made him feel like a child, but ever since his near-death and last-minute rescue by Vespaniaso at Tupami, the Liberators’ governing council insisted he go nowhere without them. He limped up the steps and pushed in past them. The door closed behind him.

Half a dozen men sat in a semicircle before the fireplace. Cavotti dropped his pack and hobbled over to them-his left ankle had not mended properly at Tupami and never would. He passed through the line without a word and knelt to warm his hands. Even in his alpaca cloak he was frozen, having driven for half a day over the wind-scoured, treeless moors of the Altiplano.

No one spoke. He could imagine the glances. The smoke was making his eyes water and he would not let this audience see his tears. Butcher’s hand came into view holding a smoke-stained pottery beaker with an enticing odor. Cavotti took it and drank. He scalded his throat and shivered deliciously.

When he had drained the cup, he could delay the inevitable no longer. He stood up, shed his heavy cloak, and finally turned to warm his back and survey the company-Filiberno, Nuzio, Vespaniaso, Fangs, and of course Butcher. Big, black-bearded Werists all, as hard and ruthless a collection of killers as you would find on all Dodec, veterans of their lifelong struggle to rid Florengia of the ice devils. All were oversized from too much battle-forming. Fangs and Filiberno were so brutalized that they barely looked human, while Nuzio was just a larger version of the fresh-faced boy who had ripped out his first Vigaelian throat eight years ago. They were permanently filthy and most of the time lousy. Even these days they often went hungry, but the very fact that they were daring to assemble like this showed that the bloody tide had turned in their favor. Including Cavotti himself, this was six-eighths of the Liberators’ governing council.

They had shed their Altiplano cloaks and furs, and were sitting around in their usual chlamyses. Freedom fighters pinned theirs under their right arms instead of on the shoulder, either just to be different from extrinsics or perhaps to flaunt their brass collars-he could not remember why they had agreed on that. A chlamys would double as a bedroll, and for emergency battleforming could be removed just as fast as the Vigaelians could shed their loincloths. The boy rebels had been able to afford nothing better in the early days of the mutiny.

No doubt they had been well warned what to expect. Butcher knew what Cavotti had become, and so did Vespaniaso. None of the others had seen him since it happened. At least now he would be able to look Filiberno in the eye without shame. Filiberno had looked like a bear for years. Cavotti was like nothing the gods had ever dreamed of. Children fled screaming from him. The miracle was that he still lived.

This temporary command center was one of the few habitable buildings in Nelina. Once a prosperous ranching and mining town, it had been the first in Florengia to learn the folly of resisting the ice devils. Stralg had raped and slaughtered, and finally burned the houses. Before leaving, he had poisoned the wells by stuffing corpses down them-but that had been fifteen years ago. Now the water was sweet again and Nelina had a few inhabitants. They could be relied on to support the Liberators.

Lacking furniture, the Heroes were sitting around on their packs or stacks of firewood. At dawn the chariots would roll; they and their guards would disperse again. Rarely in the last ten years had Cavotti spent two consecutive nights in the same place. There should be a woman present, too. His eyes had failed to grow in again completely at Tupami, and he needed a moment to find her, sitting back in the shadows, wearing a dark brown wrap. It was Giunietta, and from habit his heart jumped. Heart? said his conscience. That’s not your heart down there. He had known there would be a seer, not that it would be she. What must she think of the monster he had become? Still, sex was a complication he need never worry about again.

“What have you decided?” he asked. “I need something to eat.”

Butcher said, “Nothing.” He would never let anyone decide anything when his idol was not present. The others would have reached a consensus without his noticing.

“What have you discussed, then? Fangs?”

Fangs did have fangs, the right one badly chipped, but no nose. His smile was straight nightmare. “He was only a kid. Thought if he deserted as soon as he got here, we would forgive him. Spilled a lot of interesting stuff.”

Fangs would take all night. Cavotti should have asked one of the others, anyone except Butcher.

“Was he telling the truth, Witness?”

Giunietta said, “Yes. The hostleader promised him his freedom if he would, and he kept his side of the bargain. Every word he spoke was true. And when he had nothing more to tell, the hostleader killed him!”

“Quickly?”

“Reasonably quickly,” Fangs said. “He admitted he helped kill prisoners in his training.”

“Then I hope he paid for it.” Cavotti met the seer’s accusing stare with one of his own. He must reassure the others that his own ordeal had not softened him. “It’s standard practice, Witness. Standard on both sides. I don’t care what oaths he swore, he could have betrayed us, whether he meant to or not. Stralg has seers, too, you know. Will somebody please tell me what the prisoner said that was worth my coming all this way?” Butcher handed him a leathery slab of meat, cooked but cold. He tore off a chunk without looking at it, still on his feet, lording it over them.

Giunietta said, “Vigaelia is in revolt. Recruiting is down to almost nothing. Most new initiates never reach Nardalborg. He said his hunt started from somewhere near Ocean and was down to a sixty by the time he got to Nardalborg. The deserters are massing, preparing a revolution. He didn’t know where or when, but probably soon.”

Cavotti nodded. Good news, but not urgent enough to call a council.

“The prisoner crossed in Caravan Five,” the seer said. “He says there will definitely be a Six this year. Nardalborg was waiting until Five left to begin restocking the shelters.”

Nuzio was smiling. He was the logistics expert. He could work numbers like a tallyman. “It must arrive within the next few days or it won’t arrive at all.”

“But we discussed this,” Cavotti said angrily. He was tired-oh, gods, was he tired! — tired of the two-day race up here, tired of the endless homelessness, the slaughter, the whole Xaran-accursed war. He was already tired of being a monster, and he had the rest of his life to enjoy that. Meetings like this were still dangerous folly. Suppose Stralg had planted that informer? If the kid had not known he was being used as bait, the seer might not have detected the trap. “We agreed we wouldn’t try campaigning on the Altiplano in the rainy season.” The ice devils were far more tolerant of cold than Florengians, or so the Florengians believed, and a mere belief like that could tip a battle before it even started. “So we take out one caravan? We kill four sixty of the swine, but then we have to fight our way out again, past five times that many at Veritano.”

He saw the leers. Especially Fangs’s.

“You haven’t heard the best of it, Mutineer,” Nuzio said. “It looks like the Fist’s been counting on us thinking that way. He doesn’t have five hunts at Veritano, no more than five sixty men, the boy said. At the most. He was quite certain of that! They change stripes all the time, so our watchers think there’s more of them.”

“But the supply trains-Ah!” Now Cavotti saw the play. “Yes! Go on!”

More leering. “Yes! He’s been shipping in far more food than the real garrison needs. He’s stockpiling the fort so he can try a breakout in the spring, home to Vigaelia!”

Cavotti limped across to the door, fetched his pack, and found a place in the half-circle between Butcher and Filiberno, who was almost as good a strategist as he was himself. “So what do you want to do?”

“Depends how you are doing at Celebre,” Filiberno said tactfully.

The agreed plan for the rainy season was to stay out of the Altiplano and keep nibbling away at the Vigaelians’ perimeter. With both sides concentrated in the northwest and fairly evenly matched in numbers, the war had become one of maneuver. If Stralg let his forces get too dispersed, units could be cut off and wiped out. If he ever got too concentrated, he would be ripe for encirclement and starvation. But he had the inside lines now. He could concentrate his forces and break out at any time. It was a dance of scorpions.

“Nothing has changed,” Cavotti said. “Stralg keeps feinting at Celebre. He wants us to move in ahead of him to defend it. He needs a victory, and storming Celebre with us in it would give him one, very likely. We’d like to see him make the same mistake.”

He did not mention that a few days ago he had sent a message to the dogaressa, reminding her of the tholos signal. So far she had not fallen into the trap. Stralg would certainly have learned of the code from his seers, so if she had responded, the Fist might have stormed in to keep the Liberators out. That was not the sort of triple bluff to try and explain to Butcher.

“Famine, then?” Nuzio said. “We’re going to see famine by the spring. If we stop the Fist’s stockpiling, that would help a bit.”

The opposing hordes were wasting the whole northwest, using up the peasants’ surplus. When they had eaten even the seed corn, the only food left would be in the granaries of Celebre, and one side or another would be forced to take the city. And after that had gone…

Filiberno scratched a furry ear with a claw. “We could bring up half my host and feint at Veritano. If Stralg wants to keep his back door open, he’ll have to divert forces up here to defend it. Or we can add some of Fangs’s men and take it. Then he won’t have a back door! He won’t have any reinforcements next year to look forward to, either.”

It was damnably tempting, so tempting that a tiny inner voice of caution kept whispering that it must be a trap. “When?”

“We figure we can have three to one in a sixday,” Nuzio said. Those were the minimum odds for an assault on a defended position. “If the boy was right, and if we can get there before the caravan arrives.”

“They’ll be in no shape to fight if they’ve just come over the Edge.” Cavotti spoke dismissively and noted the grins that followed this hint of approval. They wanted to do this, every one of them. It was risky, yes, but doing nothing was risky too. After a year of victories they were losing momentum.

Butcher handed him a wine jar and another greasy lump of meat. Butcher was as loyal as a hound, but some of these others were future rivals. The end of Stralg would be the end of unity. Already men were slipping away and heading home to other parts of the Face. That was another worry.

“Then what?”

Filiberno shrugged. “Stralg will try to take it back. Then we hit him in the rear.”

And sacrifice the men left in Veritano? “How do you get those numbers there so fast?” Cavotti asked. “If we stick around, how do we avoid being pinned against the Ice?”

He was playing for time to think. To move a host into the Altiplano might be suicidal folly. The rains were already starting to wash out roads. The Fist would counter with his cold weather advantage-in fact this Veritano bait might be a trap like Cavotti’s tholos message to the dogaressa. But if Veritano was lightly manned, they could certainly raze it in a lightning strike and make sure both the Fist and the Face heard about it. Stralg would have lost another battle and another five sixty men. The ice devils’ morale would plummet even lower. But do not linger. Hit it, burn it, and run-safe but effective. And do not stay!

He explained. It took a while, but he brought them around without having to overrule anybody. “And if Caravan Six appears it can eat ashes,” he finished. “So there go four sixty more at no cost to us.”

They all grinned, excited at the prospect of another massacre. He did not point out that they would be stripping men away from the main theater, a force that might not get back easily if the weather changed, and would be badly missed if Stralg tried something. Nor did he tell them his hunch that Stralg would react by occupying Celebre and trying to use it as a bargaining chip to buy his way home to Vigaelia.

Always Celebre looked like the final prize in the war. It was the last big city left standing. If the Face was ever to be rebuilt, surely they must preserve it as a model of what civilization should be? Celebre was Cavotti’s hometown and he secretly yearned to save it, somehow. He did not know how. He had not saved any of the others, every one of which must have been somebody’s hometown.

“I want to do this one myself,” he said. “I need some action.”

“You can’t battleform any more!” Butcher growled.

Cavotti gave him a glare. His glares were much more deadly than they used to be. In fact he could battleform again, but only once. It would kill him.

“You don’t need to prove anything, Mutineer,” Vespaniaso said.

“I know that!” Cavotti roared, although he didn’t. “I also know that some of you find it a lot harder to give up ground than take it. I want to be certain there’s no sudden change of plans. Fili, you go and take over at Celebre for me. Nuzio, it may be a trap; we must keep close watch that Stralg doesn’t follow us up there. Can you get orders on their way by first light?”

Nuzio laughed. “Sound the trumpets!” He sprang up and departed, taking his pack. Quickly the others followed him, muttering about checking on their men. By the time Cavotti saw what they were doing, they had all gone, even Butcher, and when the door slammed he was left with what was probably the only really warm room in the town.

And Giunietta.

“You don’t mind if I sleep here too?” he asked the fireplace.

“Of course not.” Her voice in the shadows was low.

Not looking at her, he knelt and opened his pack to find the salt he used to clean his teeth… correction: his fangs. A thirty ago his arms had been smooth brown skin, like Nuzio’s. Now they were matted with black hair. Just about all of him was. His fingernails were black claws. His face…

“They warned you, I hope?” he said.

“I knew.” Her voice was closer. “It doesn’t matter.”

He looked up sharply. She was spreading a blanket in front of the hearth.

“I don’t mean I’m not sorry for you,” she said. “Of course I am. I am also enormously happy that you were rescued before they killed you. I’m relieved that I don’t smell madness on you, after what you went through.” She turned and stared at him. “In fact I don’t even detect any bitterness.”

“I’ve done my share of havocking. It was their turn, that’s all. And Vespaniaso made sure they paid for it.”

“You are a most extraordinary man! Hurry up. I’m waiting.”

“You know that’s impossible now,” he said. “I mean, I am very grateful for the offer, but no, we mustn’t and I won’t. There’s nothing more to discuss.”

Her wrap fell around her feet. “I know that you still have everything necessary under that chlamys. Come on, lover. You can’t deceive me.”

He sat down and began to fight with his boots. She knelt at his feet and used human fingers to untie the laces. “You can’t deceive a Witness, you know. You’re extremely horny. So am I.”

“Why don’t you go and find someone human?” he said desperately. “Butcher, or Nuzio. Or one of the bodyguards. You can’t want to have carnal relations with a beast!”

“Oh, don’t I?” She hauled off his right boot. Each foot ended in two small hooves instead of toes, but of course she would have known that before he even entered the cottage. “Butcher’s too quick, too eager to hump you and dump you. Nuzio keeps wanting to try odd things.” She leaned over Cavotti’s knees to unpin his chlamys. “I would try a bodyguard or two if you weren’t here, but you are and I am, and I am going to lay you. Lie back and enjoy it.”

He tried to push her away. She had stretch marks from childbearing. The fullness of her breasts showed that they had suckled. He knew nothing of her history or private life at all.

“Stop torturing me!” he said. “Stop torturing yourself. You know what would happen if I got you with child. You’d produce a monster. It would grow and grow until it burst you. You would die, Giunietta.”

She smiled sadly. “Poor Marno. Yes, that’s true. You can never have an heir now. But you forget I am a seer.”

Despite himself, he could not keep his enormous hands off her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are only certain times in a thirty that a woman can make a child. If I lie with every man in Nelina tonight I cannot conceive. Tonight is safe for me and I want you desperately.”

“Then do it,” he muttered. He clasped her to him and rolled back until he lay flat on the boards with her on top of him, like a child. She was not the most beautiful woman he had ever embraced, but she was a woman and willing; and probably the only woman who would accept him ever again.