"No! I've told you, you can never trust a Florengian!"
That should have been the end of it. Werists did not argue. Incredibly, Heth persisted.
"Father, if what you say about the war—"
"No! He's a hostage! And a hostage for Celebre, which even Stralg admits is likely to prove critical. Saltaja asked me about him in her last letter, if he was still alive and available. Suppose the old king, or whatever he is, dies and Stralg calls for Orlad to replace him—and we send him a Werisrt What sort of puppet ruler would a Werist make?" "I can't see Orlad as anyone's puppet even now, lord."
Again knuckles rapped on the door. With relief, Therek barked "Enter!" This time it was the seer—he could make out the white blur of her robes. He barely waited for her to close the door.
"Well? What kept you? What's he thinking? He's plotting treason, yes?"
"We are not alone, lord." She was a fussy slip of a thing, this one, and young, from the sound of her voice. Women! It had been so long!
"I am well aware of that."
"As you will. The reason I took so long is that you forbade me to let anyone know what I was doing. Since I couldn't ask him direct questions, or have others do so, I had to rely on chance conversations, and he is currently so exhausted that he is barely capable of speech. The arrival of the caravan provided a fortunate opportunity for—"
"And what is he plotting? Is he subverting his entire flank against me?"
"Far from it, lord. What he says is exactly what he means, with absolutely no reservations. He is fanatically loyal to you and Huntleader Heth. He admires you so much he will not even let the cadets refer to you by the nicknames others use. He is determined to see the entire class initiated in record time, and his motive for doing so is so that he can join your brother and fight against the Florengian Werists."
"Wrong! You're wrong! You have got to be wrong!"
The woman screamed before he reached her.
Heth jumped between them and grabbed his father in a mighty hug. "Satrap! Wait!"
Therek struggled free. "She is lying! That cannot be right. He's a Florengian himself."
"Please let the seer finish, my lord. Carry on, Witness."
The Witness was curled up in a ball on the floor. "Carry on?" Her voice was shrill and shaky. "Had you not moved so fast, Huntleader, that crazy monstrosity—"
"Get up!"
She unwound. "He was going to rip me! You explain to him what would have happened then, because I have tried and failed. The agreement between the Heroes and the Witnesses would have—"
"Oh, shut up, you prattling sow," Heth said. "And get up. He didn't touch you. Tell him why Orlad hates his fellow Florengians."
"As long as the satrap behaves," she whined, dusting herself off. "The boy doesn't hate all Florengians, at least not much. He despises the Florengian Werists, regards them all as oath-breakers, because the first initiates had sworn loyalty to Bloodlord Stralg."
"You see, Father? All his life, here in Nardalborg, he has been derided for—"
"Blood!" Therek strode back to the window to let the cold wind cool his rage. "Stupid floozy. So you tell me there is one Florengian I can trust, just one who will not turn on me the first chance he gets?"
"I do not prophesy. I say only that you can trust him now."
"Ha! So I can't trust him?"
"I repeat what I just said."
"I think what the seer means, lord," Heth said, "is that fanatical loyalty can be fragile. There is no room for compromise in such allegiance. If a man who supports a cause fanatically decides that the cause is unworthy, he will change sides and support the opposition with the same absolute zeal. Am I correct, Witness?"
"I report facts, Huntleader. I do not make hypotheses."
"Blood!" Therek said again. "A dead Florengian wouldn't even make good manure. Read me that report.",
"I am not a scribe, my lord."
"I know that, half-wit! But you can tell me what it says."
He always had a Witness read his correspondence to him, because he did not trust scribes. When he dictated anything important, he had the seer read it back to him later. He tapped claws on the floor impatiently while she shuffled the little bricks.
"All of these are from Bloodlord Stralg to you. This is the first—"
"Begin with the latest, dung-head!"
There was a pause as she cracked the clay envelope on the table edge and extracted the tablet itself.
" 'In the sacred name of the most mighty—'"
"Never mind all that offal! I can guess he begins with a demand for more Werists, right?" He always did.
"Er... yes, my lord. He, er... he says that he must follow up his recent success at Miona, that the enemy are summer people and will not fight in winter, but to Vigaelians their weather is nothing, so he has a natural advantage in—"
"Toad piss! Florengia has no seasons; winter and summer all alike. How many this time?"
"Er... he expects Tryfors to supply one complete pack, at least two flanks being experienced men. You are also to send your best huntleader... my lord."
Impossible! Therek could not possibly spare forty-nine men and he was certainly not sending Heth. Heth was being discreetly silent. In the last few years he had watched men head out in sixties and sixty-sixties and only a dribble of cripples return.
"How many more caravans does he expect me to squeeze in before winter?"
"He did not say."
"Then how many men in total, mm?"
"He did not say, my lord... here."
Therek missed it, but Heth didn't. "Where does he say it?"
"With respect, my lord, I am authorized to advise only the hostleader."
"Answer him!" Therek bellowed, and then answered for himself. "You read the other dispatches! You can read them without opening them?" Why had he never thought of that? The bag-head cows had never told him they could do that. They never volunteered anything! He wondered if Saltaja knew they had that ability.
"I cannot read a sealed dispatch, lord."
"But you can tell the meaning?" Heth asked.
"If I am close enough to it," the seer admitted glumly, "and the content is important."
Therek chortled. "And were you close enough to the other dispatches that arrived today? Of course you were. You wouldn't have missed that chance to snoop. What did my dear brother write to our sister, mm? Tell me that!"
"All of it, lord?"
"Start with the most interesting news and I'll tell you when to stop."
She sighed. "Yes, lord. He wrote that he suffered a major defeat at Reggoni Bridge. Rebel Hordeleader Cavotti had sabotaged—"
"The Mutineer!" Therek screamed.
"The Mutineer, then. He had sabotaged the bridge and it collapsed when your brother's hunt was crossing, dropping the men into a gorge. The vanguard was isolated. It was attacked by the freedom fighters—"
"Rebels! Oath-breakers!"
"—and destroyed. The bloodlord lost more than sixteen sixty men, almost an entire host. He wants as many replacements ... His exact words in this case, my lord, were that your honored sister is to send 'as many men as the lunatic Therek can be forced to move over the Edge.' My lord."
Therek contemplated wringing her neck and reluctantly decided not to. "Heth, can you get five more caravans out before winter?" They had never managed six in a season before.
"I can but try, my lord. The weather will decide."
"Can you make the caravans bigger?"
"No!" Heth said firmly. "Not without more slaves and more mammoths. And if we did find some way to stock the food caches for more than four sixty men, most of the shelters will barely hold even that many. They were built for smaller caravans. Four sixty is the absolute limit... my lord."
Then Therek had an idea, a beautiful idea, a shining constellation of an idea. "Don't bother reserving a space for Warrior Orlad."