In the long, worrying days watching over a delirious von Stralick, Aubrey had time to wonder about the disposition of the Holmland armies. Having two fronts on the Gallian border a hundred miles apart puzzled him, but his brooding had thrown up an awful possibility. Could Dr Tremaine be planning to link the two fronts? It would make a battlefront of staggering proportions, just the thing he would need to achieve his ends.
The prospect was horrifying. Such a battlefront would commit huge quantities of war materiel, directing the entire output of whole nations to destruction. It would throw thousands, tens of thousands, of soldiers against each other. It was a possibility that any sane person would recoil from. No-one with any semblance of humanity would plan such a thing.
This, of course, meant it was entirely within Dr Tremaine’s scope of imagining, which left Aubrey grappling not with what but with how.
Aubrey found that he had drifted up toward the ceiling. He reached up and steadied himself, then turned to his magical awareness. Immediately, he bared his teeth as the basement became a chaos of magical splatters, cast-off residue from the intense magic that had taken place. Through the pseudo-sight that came with being magically endowed, it was like being in the studio of an extremely careless and extremely prolific artist, one who specialised in subjects malignant, festering and brooding.
Aubrey didn’t want to get close to the residue smears. They throbbed, which suggested that they still contained some magical power – the nature of which he couldn’t divine. Something unhealthy, something to do with channelling and amplifying was the best guess he could make.
‘Hugo.’ Aubrey pushed against the ceiling, moving himself until he was directly over one of the desks in the middle of the basement. With a few syllables, he adjusted his elevation until he could nudge a pile of sodden papers with a toe. ‘If you were in charge of the Holmland forces, how would you go about uniting the division that is currently bogged down in the Low Countries with the one that’s dug in around Divodorum?’
Von Stralick was peering at where a thick electrical conduit entered the room, high up on the wall near the stairs. Hand over hand, he lowered himself, then cocked an eyebrow at Aubrey. ‘Ah, the hypothetical! You Albionites love your games to fill in time. Charades, Donkey Tail Pinning, Hypotheticals.’
‘It’s not a game. You have some knowledge of the Holmland military mind. You should be able to put yourself in the shoes of the Supreme Army Command.’
‘That is not so difficult. More difficult, of course, is to predict what Dr Tremaine will do.’
‘Imagining yourself a Holmland general will be enough for now.’
‘There is not much to guess at, then. I would transport many, many troops to Stalsfrieden. A division or two. Or three.’
‘Forty, fifty thousand men? Why Stalsfrieden?’
‘It has good rail connections to Fisherberg. From Stalsfrieden, they can march to the Divodorum battlelines – or march to the Low Countries.’
‘Would it make good sense?’
‘Good sense is a slippery concept in war time, Fitzwilliam. I’m sure a build-up like that would appeal to many of the generals, which is probably reason enough to do it. We have been fighting for a short time, really, and many of them are impatient for what they see as glory. Commanding a force that made such a bold move would be very good for a career.’
Another thought crept up on Aubrey and elbowed him uncomfortably. ‘What if these new divisions simply aimed to capture Divodorum?’
‘That would be even bolder, and therefore more praiseworthy. Any general who championed such a strategy could become a hero.’
‘It’s not just Divodorum that I’m thinking of. It’s what lies on the other side of Divodorum.’
‘Ah. A direct route via river, rail and road to Lutetia.’
‘The Gallian capital would be laid bare.’
‘So which is it? Opening a wide front across the north of Gallia? Or a lightning strike toward Lutetia?’
Both would require much bloody fighting. Either would do for Dr Tremaine’s purposes. ‘I’m starting to think that Dr Tremaine, as usual, has more than one iron in the fire.’ Aubrey swept his gaze around the basement. ‘I’ve seen enough.’
‘I think I saw enough a long time ago,’ the Holmlander said.
Once outside, Aubrey took a deep breath and spoke the syllables that lowered them to the ground. The smell of ash and smoke was clean compared to the air in the crypt below.
Helmets, cables, restraints and blood. Nothing good happened down there. He still didn’t know exactly what it was, but he knew it was important. Dr Tremaine wouldn’t have spent a month here if something important hadn’t been going on.
‘What time is it?’ The clouds were breaking up to show that the stars were still there, bright and constant. He wondered if the soldiers at the front could see them.
‘Just after four. We have an hour until dawn.’
Aubrey yawned. ‘Enough time to investigate the house.’
Von Stralick went to reply, but stopped and put a hand to his ear.
Startled by von Stralick’s concern, Aubrey turned in the direction the spy was facing.
A motor, approaching but still distant. As Aubrey strained to make it out, he heard the crunching of gears that announced the beginning of the mountainside ascent. It suggested a lorry rather than a motorcar.
‘The guards are coming back?’
‘With reinforcements, most likely.’
‘I had hoped we’d have more time,’ Aubrey said. ‘We haven’t learned much, not really.’
‘Quickly then.’ Von Stralick picked up the rake he’d dropped. ‘Take the lantern.’
They ran through the gardens to the house, approaching from the west. Von Stralick didn’t slow down as they sprinted up the broad stairs from the gardens and across the terrace. He used the rake as a jousting lance and crashed through the glass doors. ‘No time for finesse!’ he cried.
Together, they lurched through the debris into a sunroom that was lavishly laid out with wicker furniture and a grove or two of potted palms. Gingerly, von Stralick brushed splinters of glass from his jacket.
Aubrey remembered the Directorate training facility, another handsome estate that had been taken over by military. Some things would, of necessity, be the same. ‘Somewhere on the ground floor should be an operations room. Near the front door?’
They found it off the entrance hall. Once, it had probably been the grand dining room, but instead of a long table and heraldic banners it was fully stocked with desks, each with typewriter and telephone, plus extensive pigeon holes on the walls for routing of documents.
While von Stralick hurried among the desks, glancing at documents that looked promising, Aubrey cast about in a circle, feeling for any trace of magic but being frustrated when all he could detect were mild touches in too many different places. Nothing outrageous, nothing promising at all.
To judge from the dowel hanging on the walls, and the traces of paper caught in them, maps had been torn down and disposed of. Smouldering remains in the huge fireplace showed that files and documents had also been eliminated. He stirred the ashes with a poker, hoping to find something that had only been half-burned, but whoever had had that job had been extremely thorough. The ashes were uniformly black and useless.
With a grunt, von Stralick used both hands to pick up a head-sized lump of stone from the mantelpiece. He rolled it over in his hands. ‘Remarkable.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Aubrey stared at the banded stone, dark green and blue, glittering in the lantern light.
‘This is Green Johannes stone.’
‘I’m pleased about that, but don’t we have more important things to worry about?’
‘I’m surprised to see it here. When I’m surprised, I become curious – and since I’ve seen how you respond to your curiosity I’ve decided to listen to mine.’