Wartorn Obliteration

PRAULTH (3)

There was no waiting this time, no lapse while she brooded over her place in the greater scheme of this war and this turning point in history. She heard the solid decisive footfalls, turned, and there was Cultat's broad frame—broader still in armor—blocking the chamber's doorway.

"Thinker Praulth," he rumbled, red-and-gold-maned head in silhouette, "I wished to make our farewell a private one. Thank you for meeting me."

Praulth bowed; it was almost an involuntary action. It was an artifice on the premier's part. The man had a great control of language, of etiquette. By taking the humbler stance of thanking her, he was contrarily reaffirming his already more powerful position. A manipulator, this one. Surely a prerequisite for someone holding such a high political office.

It never occurred to Praulth that Cultat might be sincerely thankful.

"We have very little time," Cultat said, striding inside, swinging shut the door behind him, "but enough, I think, to say what we will say."

"And what are we to say, Premier?" Praulth asked, her voice slightly edged. It was important she assert herself here.

The chamber was a small lounge in the same building where the Alliance conference had been held. It was expensively if indifferently furnished, and it smelled of disuse. Praulth was standing.

Cultat halted, rested his hand atop the sword at his belt; then began a slow circuit of the room, around the backs of the lush dusty furniture. A lone lamp burned. There was a painting on one wall of a nude woman sprawling on a leafy riverbank. Praulth hadn't noticed it until the premier passed before it.

"I would imagine," Cultat finally said, his tone now thoughtful, "that you will say your position in all these matters of war is unappreciated. Or underappreciated." The crags of his face shadowed his severe blue eyes.

Praulth gazed back at him, willing herself not to blink.

Cultat continued, "And I will say in reply that you are appreciated. Of course you are. When all this is done, I'll bestow some tawdry bauble on you and shower you with all the gaudy honors the Noble State of Petgrad has to offer, which won't mean much to you. As to what you'll say to that, I can't quite guess, since this grows increasingly speculative and abstract." He halted again. A wry smile moved under his beard. "But I'll wager I'm fairly accurate so far, yes?"

Praulth felt a tightness in her throat. She swallowed deliberately. "Without me you'd have nothing." It came hoarse and pained, but also audible and steady.

"We wouldn't have the Battle of Torran Flats."

"You wouldn't have my predictions about the Felk movements."

"True. We've had others—Petgradites, some who've studied wars with perhaps the same fervor you have, but not with the same total understanding. They've made their guesses, pored over the same maps you were receiving through Master Honnis in Febretree. They could not forecast with your success."

"No one can," Praulth said with a dire firmness.

"Again, true." Cultat didn't qualify the statement.

Her heart filled with pride, beating giddily. This was recognition. This was acknowledgment.

"But," Cultat added, "what do my words matter? Your place is in the chronicles that will make this war a history to be remembered above all others."

The Petgrad premier was still at the fringe of the chamber. Now he came toward the center, where Praulth stood beneath the lamp. His face, aged and robust all at once, came into glaring view. He came to a halt, looking down on her. Something had diluted the ruthlessness of his eyes. Perhaps fatigue. Perhaps wariness of the battle to come.

"Praulth," he said quite softly, "you are appreciated. You are necessary. You are crucial. I have sensed your discontent, and I respect it. How can I address it?"

Now she did blink. Repeatedly. She was taken aback. She turned her head. She hadn't expected this man—this man, this powerful man—to express such a keen awareness of her inner turmoils. How had he known? He was canny. That was how he'd sensed her thoughts. He needed her to be at her cooperative best before he took the assembling forces of the Alliance off to engage Dardas/Weisel on the Pegwithe Plains south of the city of Trael, which had of course fallen to the Felk.

His interest in her was self-serving. Yet his manner, the cast of his rugged features, made it seem sincere. He wanted from her what he wanted. It was nearly irrelevant that it was for a greater good, a much greater good. The defeat of the Felk. He was still manipulating her.

"I've been manipulated before, Premier," she said.

He wasn't fazed. He heaved a small weary chuckle. "Manipulated? Well, so have I, young Thinker. By my family, by the Noble Ministry, by the people of this state. Not once. Many times. It comes with the rank and the responsibility. Manipulation is a guiding force, if you're aware of it. And if you keep ahead of it. Can you keep ahead, Praulth?"

She thought of Xink. She thought of Honnis. She thought also of this premier. What exactly did she want from him anyway? What acknowledgment could he make that would satisfy her?

Praulth knew Cultat was departing this evening, a night ride with the Petgrad contingent. They would start making their way to the rendezvous site. The delegates who'd come to Petgrad had all returned or sent word to their home states and cities and villages for their forces to make for the gathering as well. There was no sure way to know precisely what numbers would finally assemble. Praulth of course would be kept scrupulously informed.

Using the intelligence provided by the Petgradite Far Speak scouts, she would oversee the first clash between the Alliance and the Felk. And if it went correctly, it would mean the end of this war.

Praulth lifted her chin. She met those blue eyes squarely.

"I want the rank of general," she said.

No flicker in the eyes. Nothing whatever to read on that astute intelligent face. What she was asking for could be considered a trifle or an outrageous demand. What, after all, did a title denote? But there was a sacredness about military conventions. They were almost fanatical, almost religious.

"Thinker Praulth" might not be remembered. But "General Praulth" stood a better chance, particularly since she intended to write this war's most definitive accounting.

Beneath a segmented breastplate Premier Cultat's hardy chest rose as he drew a deep breath. "I will see that the proper documents receive my approval before I leave," he said. Then he stepped past her, giving her his back as he strode from the chamber.

She was breathless and restless. Her and Xink's rooms were only a short distance away, but she turned in a random direction, following a wide street beneath the clouded night sky. It was cooler than when she'd arrived in Petgrad. It was coming into the heart of autumn, the season of fading, of dwindling. But this was her time of renewal. So it very much seemed.

Praulth hadn't dreamt of glories, not during her childhood in Dral Blidst. Her ambitions had involved only a deepening of her education, and those had led her directly to the University. Febretree was her refuge, a staunch fortress of learning, where intellect was celebrated above all else, where she could achieve and succeed and surpass. Where the very inclinations that had made her life so uncomfortable among her timber trade family here made her a fourth-phase student of first ranking, one with a very promising future.

She would have been content. She would have kept to her course and climbed from Thinker to Attache. She would have striven, and one day she would have taken her rightful place as head of the University's historical war studies.

If Master Honnis hadn't chosen her to study the Felk war, if Xink had never appeared in her life, if Cultat hadn't brought her here to Petgrad...

How different her life would have been, how normal, how predictable. And what a waste if she had never achieved this new, more exciting identity.

General Praulth, chief strategist of the Alliance. It was a worthy title. Now she had to make certain that the Alliance defeated the Felk. History remembered the victors.

She had examined the recent reports of the conquest of Trael. The Felk had initially surrounded the city, like water in a rising river encircling a stone. But there was a delay before the actual invasion commenced. It was a curiosity. Cultat's scouts, however, attested to the lag, and Praulth trusted them for their accuracy.

She had puzzled over the anomaly. It vexed her. She could deduce no military advantage in the postponement, not unless General Weisel meant to provoke a surrender.

But it wasn't Weisel, she reminded herself unnecessarily. It was Dardas. And Dardas wouldn't have wasted time in this manner, wouldn't have allowed the people of Trael the courtesy of deliberating their surrender. Sook had successfully surrendered to the Felk, but only because they had done so preemptively, before the great enemy horde was at their borders.

Something else must have been afoot at Trael, Praulth had concluded. Some other military operation... perhaps some smaller action. And Dardas/Weisel had been awaiting the results before committing his forces to overrunning the city.

It barely made sense. At least, as far as it fit with Dardas's historical tactics. And there, of course, was the thought that was most disturbing. Perhaps it wasn't Dardas any longer. Maybe Cultat's godsdamned nephew had succeeded in assassinating Weisel, and thereby had killed off the brilliant war commander who was living a resurrected life within that body.

What that would mean, most catastrophically, was that Praulth's ingenious plan to reenact the Battle of Torran Flats would prove useless. A new Felk war leader wouldn't recognize the battle pattern. Wouldn't try to recreate one of Dardas's greatest Northland victories. Wouldn't fall into the trap that Praulth had devised, whereby the Alliance forces would move suddenly and decisively and hack the Felk army in two, which would almost certainly be a crippling blow.

Praulth had said nothing of this to Premier Cultat or anyone else, not even Xink. It meant, of course, that she was committing this newly formed Alliance to a strategy that might fail utterly. And if this Alliance was defeated, there would be no other force that could rise up against the Felk advance. This was the last desperate chance, before the Felk conquered their way southward, all the way to Febretree and Dral Blidst.

Then the Felk would possess all of the Isthmus.

She wouldn't allow it. Whatever her personal goals and her ambitions for her place in history, she had no desire to live under an invader's rule.

She had turned several corners, onto various streets, without giving her direction much thought. She paused now, looking over her surroundings, looking upward. The district's towers were still there, stark and looming and just a little bit sinister in the cloud-muted moonlight and the glow of the huge city.

But this particular street wasn't familiar. Around her were the monuments of municipal buildings, but at this late watch there was no activity within or among them. A wind sounded through the great gully of the street, whistling eerily. She had come to think of Petgrad as a place of constant bustle, but this patch of it at least was quite inert at the moment.

Praulth glanced all about. She saw no one.

Petgrad had changed over the past quarter-lune or so. She was peripherally aware of the disruptions and burdens the rash influx of refugees had caused. People were fleeing ahead of the Felk, streaming south. Petgrad, no doubt, looked like an obvious sanctuary, the greatest strongest city of the southern half of the Isthmus. Surely the Felk wouldn't dare go against it.

It was foolish thinking, but Praulth understood it. She also understood that Petgrad's food supplies weren't inexhaustible. Nor was its housing. Something on the order of thousands of war fugitives had crossed into the city in a disastrously short time. Native Petgradites were raising irate protests.

But that wasn't Praulth's concern. She was no desperate stray evading the war. She was in that war. Granted, she wasn't riding off with Cultat and the Petgrad contingent of the Alliance; she would never walk a battlefield or be put in physical harm's way. But her contribution was invaluable, and her sacrifice was noble. After all, she had foregone a promising academic career—

Praulth heard a ruckus, above the whistling of the night wind. The large buildings in this district weren't jammed together side by side. They were separated by alleyways, and along these refuse had accumulated, probably over a long time. More recent deposits of trash were evident, including slops and offal from whatever kitchens serviced these institutions.

She had halted nearby the mouth of one of these alleys. The commotion was coming from there. Sounds of somebody rooting among the rubbish. It was dark down there, and the noises abruptly set her heart speeding. Memories of being caught out late in Dral Blidst's woods, hurrying homeward, hearing unidentifiable animal sounds in the trees around her, scavengers tearing at wild meat, no doubt scenting her as well.

Praulth backed away. There was still no one else within sight. She looked skyward, trying to orient herself. She couldn't have wandered too far. She could get back to her rooms quickly enough. Surely she was no farther than a few streets away. Xink would be there waiting for her, and quite suddenly she wanted very much to see him.

But the ruckus from the dark alleyway increased, something heavy now being tumbled over on its side, and at last a voice, savage and unintelligible and enraged, rose in the darkness. It scarcely sounded human, and it put a terrible deep chill into Praulth that the night alone could not have managed. She felt eyes watching her from that alley.

Then she heard footfalls. Coming up that alleyway. And more of those furious gibbering cries.

Praulth turned and started to run; and before she'd made her first fleeing step, she knew that the thing in the alley was human, and that made it all the more frightening. She tried to draw breath to shout, but fear froze everything she needed to make the noise.

The creature from the alley smelled of the foul slops it had been scavenging. It overtook her and knocked her to the ground from behind and laid a terrible weight on her.

She heard and felt the fabric of her clothing being rent.

Dardas the Conqueror. Dardas the Fox. Dardas the Invincible. There was one other moniker that history had awarded the Northland war master. What was it?

Dardas the Butcher. Yes, that was right.

He had earned every one of those titles. Likely he had been known by many more, names whispered fearfully, conjuring up images of implacable bloodshed, a relentless army sweeping the cold bleak reaches of the Northern Continent... and Dardas commanding its every crushing move.

How many had been slain in his campaigns, in total? How many deaths was that one man responsible for? The number could never be counted. It could never be guessed. One might as readily number the drops of water necessary to fill a lake.

And that number was only growing. U'delph had been a slaughter. Surely other such atrocities awaited.

"Beauty?"

Dardas. Dardas. Undying Dardas. There, that was yet another name for him. But none would ever know him by it. Weisel would take the credit for Dardas's deeds in this modern age.

"What's happened?"

In Dardas's original life two hundred and fifty years ago, he had faced quite a few adversaries. He was hardly the only war commander the contentious Northern Continent had produced. He had contemporaries, some quite skilled. Some of those warlords raised armies and did battle and held off Dardas's advances... for a time. But none of those foes were remembered. They had all been pulverized by the legend that the Butcher had left indelibly behind.

"By the madness of the gods, Praulth, what's happened to you?"

To be remembered she had to defeat Dardas, even if he was only in the guise of General Weisel. Besides, when she wrote her history of this war, she could reveal the truth of things, fantastic though it was.

Xink was holding her, fussing over her torn clothes, making a useless nuisance of himself. Just draw me a bath, she told him. But he acted as if he hadn't heard.

Praulth was tired. She was cold. She hurt, here and there. She hurt within. But she had made it back to these rooms. When it had all finished, she had picked herself up from the street and come here.

Perhaps there was yet one more name for Dardas, she thought. Dardas the Rapist. For what was his invasion but the unwanted penetration of the Isthmus by the Felk army?

Just heat some water and fill the tub. I will wash myself. I will scrub myself. I will scour away every last thing that has been done to me, and it will not deter me, will not daunt me, will not stand between me and my victory over my rightful adversary.

But Xink, sobbing now, still didn't hear her.