Sir Roderick saw himself reflected in the shining steel of those cold eyes and felt himself being moved into a column of unnecessary expenditures. He wondered if it was true that the spectacles were artifacts salvaged from the ruins of Neraka and that they gave the wearer the ability to see into one’s brain. Roderick began to sweat in his armor, though the fortress with its massive stone and concrete walls was always cool, even during the warmest months of the summer.
“My aide tells me you have come from Sanction, Sir Roderick,” said Targonne, his voice the voice of a clerk, mild and pleasant and unassuming. “How goes our siege of the city?”
It should be noted here that the Targonne family had extensive holdings in the city of Sanction, holdings they had lost when the Knights of Neraka lost Sanction. Targonne had made the taking of Sanction one of the top priorities for the Knighthood.
Sir Roderick had rehearsed his speech on the two-day ride from Sanction to Jelek and he was prepared with his answer.
“Excellency, I am here to report that on the day after Midyear Day, an attempt was made by the accursed Solamnics to break the siege of Sanction and to try to drive off our armies. The foul Knights endeavored to trick my commander, Lord Milles, into attacking by making him think they had abandoned the city. Lord Milles saw through their plot and he, in turn, led them into a trap. By launching an attack against the city of Sanction, Lord Milles lured the Knights out of hiding. He then faked a retreat. The Knights took the bait and pursued our forces. At Beckard’s Cut, Lord Milles ordered our troops to turn and make a stand. The Solamnics were summarily defeated, many of their number killed or wounded. They were forced to retreat back inside Sanction. Lord Milles is pleased to report, Excellency, that the valley in which our armies are encamped remains safe and secure.”
Sir Roderick’s words went into Targonne’s ears. Sir Roderick’s thoughts went into Targonne’s mind. Sir Roderick was recalling quite vividly fleeing for his life in front of the rampaging Solamnics, alongside Lord Milles who, commanding from the rear, had been caught up in the retreating stampede. And elsewhere in the mind of the Knight was a picture Targonne found very interesting, also rather disturbing. That picture was that of a young woman in black armor, exhausted and stained with blood, receiving the homage and accolades of Lord Milles’s troops. Targonne heard her name resound in Roderick’s mind: “Mina! Mina!”
With the tip of his pen the Lord of the Night scratched the thin mustache that covered his upper lip. “Indeed. It sounds a great victory. Lord Milles is to be congratulated.”
“Yes, Excellency.” Sir Roderick smiled, pleased. “Thank you, Excellency.”
“It would have been a greater victory if Lord Milles had actually captured the city of Sanction as he has been ordered, but I suppose he will attend to that little matter when he finds it convenient.”
Sir Roderick was no longer smiling. He started to speak, coughed, and spent a moment clearing his throat. “In point of fact, Excellency, we most likely would have been able to capture Sanction were it not for the mutinous actions of one of our junior officers. Completely contrary to Lord Milles’s command, this officer pulled an entire company of archers from the fray, so that we had no covering fire necessary for us to launch an attack upon Sanction’s walls. Not only that, but in her panic, this officer ordered the archers to shoot their arrows while our own soldiers were yet in the line of fire. The casualties we sustained were due completely to this officer’s incompetence. Therefore Lord Milles felt it would not be wise to proceed with the attack.”
“Dear, dear,” Targonne murmured. “I trust this young officer has been dealt with summarily.”
Sir Roderick licked his lips. This was the tricky part. “Lord Milles would have done so, Excellency, but he felt it would be best to consult with you first. A situation has arisen that makes it difficult for his lordship to know how to proceed. The young woman exerts some sort of magical and uncanny influence over the men, Excellency.”
“Indeed?” Targonne appeared surprised. He spoke somewhat dryly. “The last I heard, the magical powers of our wizards were failing. I did not know any of our mages were this talented.”
“She is not a magic-user, Excellency. Or at least, so she says. She claims to be a messenger sent by a god—the One, True God.”
“And what is the name of this god?” Targonne asked.
“Ah, there she is quite clever, Excellency. She maintains that the name of the god is too holy to pronounce.”
“Gods have come, and gods have gone,” Targonne said impatiently. He was seeing a most astonishing and disquieting sight in Sir Roderick’s mind, and he wanted to hear it from the man’s lips. “Our soldiers would not be sucked in by such claptrap.”
“Excellency, the woman does not make use of words alone. She performs miracles—miracles of healing the likes of which we have not seen in recent years due to the weakening of our mystics. This girl restores limbs that have been hacked off. She places her hands upon a man’s chest, and the gaping hole in it closes over. She tells a man with a broken back that he can stand up, and he stands up! The only miracle she does not perform is raising the dead. Those she prays over.”
Sir Roderick heard the creaking of a chair, looked up to see Targonne’s steel eyes gleaming unpleasantly.
“Of course”—Sir Roderick hastened to correct his mistake—“Lord Milles knows that these are not miracles, Excellency. He knows that she is a charlatan. It’s just that we can’t seem to figure out how she does it,” he added lamely. “And the men are quite taken with her.”
Targonne understood with alarm that all of the foot soldiers and most of the Knights had mutinied, were refusing to obey Milles. They had transferred their allegiance to some shaven-headed chit in black armor.
“How old is this girl?” Targonne asked, frowning.
“She is reputed to be no more than seventeen, Excellency,” Sir Roderick replied.
“Seventeen!” Targonne was aghast. “Whatever induced Milles to make her an officer in the first place?”
“He did not, Excellency,” said Sir Roderick. “She is not part of our wing. None of us had ever seen her before her arrival in the valley just prior to the battle.”
“Could she be a Solamnic in disguise?” Targonne wondered.
“I doubt that, Excellency. It was due to her that the Solamnics lost the battle,” Sir Roderick replied, completely unconscious that the truth he had just now spoken accorded ill with the fabrications he’d pronounced earlier.
Targonne noted the inconsistency but was too absorbed in the clicking abacus of his mind to pay any attention to them, beyond marking down that Milles was an incompetent bungler who should be replaced as speedily as possible. Targonne rang a silver bell that stood upon his desk. The door to the office opened, and his aide entered.
“Look through the rolls of the Knighthood,” Targonne ordered. “Locate a—What is her name?” he asked Roderick, though he could hear it echo in the Knight’s mind.
“Mina, Excellency.”
“Meenaa,” Targonne repeated, holding the name in his mouth as if he were tasting it. “Nothing else? No surname?”
“Not to my knowledge, Excellency.”
The aide departed, dispatched several clerks to undertake the task. The two Knights sat in silence while the search was being conducted. Targonne took advantage of the time to continue to sift through Roderick’s mind, which affirmed his surmise that the siege against Sanction was being handled by a nincompoop. If it hadn’t been for this girl, the siege might well have been broken, the Dark Knights defeated, annihilated, the Solamnics in triumphant and unhindered possession of Sanction.
The aide returned. “We find no knight named ‘Mina’ on the rolls, Excellency. Nothing even close.”