“There are always patterns.” He smiled. “Sometimes we can read them, and sometimes we can’t.”
“Do you analyze patterns that affect the Ferrans?”
“I have, but there’s little point in that now.”
“When we’re at war?”
He shrugged. “Their response will be to build as many weapons, ships, and landcruisers as they can and train as many soldiers and sailors as possible. Ours will be to deny them effective use of all that materiel. Because we control the sea after last week’s battles, they will turn their fury against the Jariolans on land. The Jariolans will let them attack until they are overextended, and until winter is at its height, when the steam engines of the landcruisers have a tendency to freeze up, and they will counterattack. That is what the patterns indicate.”
“People aren’t patterns,” Isola pointed out.
“No, honored chorister. People are patterns. We could not function without routines, schedules, and habits, and the confluence of these create patterns in every society. Success in war is being able to maintain your vital patterns and to deploy others the enemy cannot replicate or counter while anticipating and disrupting all his patterns.” Quaelyn shrugged. “Those words make it sound far simpler than the strategies and tactics necessary to do so, but in the simplest terms, that is what war is all about.” He smiled at Isola. “One of the patterns that few recognize is that of titles and naming, but I would judge that you as a chorister would see that.”
I recognized that titles formed a pattern in any society, but what did that have to do with war? I didn’t ask, but I might as well have, because Isola read the inquiry in my expression.
“You have to remember, Rhenn, that names and titles are like chains. Some few people wear them like fine light jewelry links that can be snapped in an instant, but for most the links are heavy enough to bind them within the confines and expectations that their name and title impose on them. The more traditional or formal a society is, the stronger those links, and both the Ferrans and the Jariolans are like that.”
I frowned. “And we aren’t?”
“The Council is, and much of Solidar is. The Collegium, or those who lead and direct it, is not . . . and yet is. Think about your training.”
While I was thinking, she went on.
“This is also true in families. Names come with expectations. Parents don’t say that the eldest child should be especially responsible, but the way in which they act effectively adds that expectation to the child’s name, perhaps every time that the child hears his name.”
I hadn’t thought of it in quite that fashion. Then, I was more interested in the implications of what she and Quaelyn had been discussing . . . and how it related to me.
There was a silence. A thought had occurred to me. “You know so much about this . . . but you’re here in L’Excelsis . . .” I looked to Quaelyn.
He laughed. “I’m an analyst of patterns, not a military commander.” After a pause, he cleared his throat and added, in an almost embarrassed tone, “Every year, I teach a course at the staff college in pattern recognition and analysis. That’s for senior officers.”
“Oh . . . I didn’t know.”
“There’s no reason you should have,” he said gently.
It was just another example of something else that the Collegium did that appeared nowhere in writing.
After dinner, I did not return to my quarters, but instead walked to the south end of Imagisle, past the anomen, to the west side, where a stand of ancient oaks formed almost a second barrier between the grounds and the River Aluse. I had an idea, but as I was discovering, not all ideas translated into practice in the way I had envisioned.
I walked up and down the line of oaks, under the all too faint light of Artiema, only half full. Erion was full, but already low in the western sky, his grayish red light far less helpful, although it gave a sinister look to the abandoned and partly burned-out old mill across the river. I looked away from the mill, concentrating on the trees. The second oak from the north end had several large branches near the top that appeared to be dead.
After studying them more closely, I set to work, beginning near the branch tip, and imaging out a section of wood. The branch wavered, but did not break.
I imaged out a bit more of the dead wood. Nothing happened.
Another attempt brought a cracking, and then the branch broke, but only hung.
After wiping my forehead, I took a deep breath. Like everything else, making my idea into a practical device was going to take more work and skill than I’d thought. But I kept at it for more than a glass before I finally learned how to make the heavy wood fall in the general, and then the specific area where I tried to direct it.
33
Vendrei was misty, with intermittent rain, and a damp chill that suggested a bitter late autumn, although winter proper was a bit more than a month away. I slipped several times on the four-mille run, but Dartazn slipped more, and I managed to finish closer to him than usual. Master Dichartyn wasn’t there for either the exercises or the run, and I wondered when he would be returning to Imagisle . . . and where he had been.
After a cold shower and a shave that left my face blue, it took two full mugs of steaming tea at breakfast to lift the chill from my body, but I got to the duty coach early enough that I arrived on time for my last day of rounds with Alsoran. I even had to wait for him.
He was smiling when he walked into the station.
I couldn’t help smiling back. “Good morning. Ready to head out?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shrugged, and we left the station and started off up Fuosta.
“Will you miss any part of Third District, do you think?” I asked.
“I’ll miss some of the patrollers. Lyonyt was always good to do rounds with, and Zellyn’s a good fellow. Some of the others, too. But they say that Captain Telleryn runs a good station.” He smiled. “Jotenyr told me I’d eat a lot better out in Fifth District, and that he sees a lot more pretty women.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Have to admit I could stand better food than the bistros on this round.”
With that I could definitely agree.
As was usually the case in the earlier part of the morning, we didn’t see any taudis-toughs on the first two rounds, and only sniffed a hint of elveweed when we were two blocks or so past the Temple of Puryon on the first leg of the first round.
Youdh’s territory, I thought.
“Have you heard anything about the scripties, Master Rhennthyl?”
“All I know is that they’ve started somewhere in L’Excelsis, but I don’t know much more than that, except it’s west of the river.”
“They usually start in one of the taudis. That’d be Caniffe, most likely.”
“Then where?”
Alsoran shook his head. “Might do the nicer districts in the west or go straight for the hellhole. Can’t ever tell, and that’s the way they like it. They just move in and cordon off something like a ten-block square and move from house to house. We have to charge and send to gaol anyone who tries to attack them-if they don’t shoot ’em first.”
I hadn’t heard that aspect of the conscription teams. I’d only seen them twice, when they’d visited our house when I was something like eleven and then again when I’d been an apprentice for Master Caliostrus, just before I made journeyman. “I didn’t see a cordon when they’ve been through before.”
“They don’t use full force in some parts of the city, just in the trade and taudis quarters.”
We kept walking and watching, but the second round ended without incident. By the second round, we’d both removed our cloaks because the sun beat down more like summer, and the air was getting hotter and steamier by the moment.