"Now—that is the situation as it stands," he concluded, with relief that his speech was over. "Have any of you anything to add?"
Gordun stood. "Following your orders, Your Grace, we are concentrating all our efforts on getting a single Portal up and functioning. It will not remain functional after the next storm, but we believe we can have it for you within a few days, with all of us concentrating on that single task."
May the Thousand Little Gods help us. Gordun by himself could have created and held a Portal before these damned storms started. Will we find ourselves wearing skins and chipping flint arrowheads next?
He nodded, noting the faintly surprised and speculative looks his officers were trading. Did any of them have an inkling of what he was about?
Probably not. On the other hand, that is probably just as well.
Finally, at long last, it was the scholar's turn; he did not even recognize the timid man urged to his feet by the sharp whispers of his fellows, which argued for more bad news.
"W-we regret, Y-your G-grace," the fellow stammered nervously, "there is n-nothing in any r-records to g-give us a hint of a s-solution to the s-storms. W-we l-looked for hidden c-ciphers or other k-keys as you asked, and there was n-nothing of the s-sort."
He didn't so much sit down as collapse into his seat. Tremane sighed ostentatiously, but he did not rebuke the poor fellow in any way. Even if he'd been tempted to—the man couldn't help it if there was nothing to find in the records, after all—he was afraid the poor man would faint dead away if the Grand Duke even looked at him with faint disapproval.
These scholars are hardly a robust lot. Or perhaps it is just that they are neither fish nor fowl—neither ranked with the mages nor bound to the army, and thus have the protections of neither.
Odd. That wasn't anything he would have taken much thought for, in the past. Perhaps because he knew they were on their own, he was taking no man for granted, not even a scholar with weak eyes and weaker muscles.
"Gentlemen," he said, even as those thoughts were running through his head, "now you know the worst. Winter is approaching, and much more swiftly than any of us thought possible." As if to underscore his words, the shutters that had been rattling were hit by a sudden fierce gust that sounded as if they'd been struck by a missile flung from a catapult. "I need your help in planning how we are to meet it when it comes. We need shelter for the men, walls to protect us, not only from the Hardornens, but from whatever the mage-storms may conjure up. We cannot rely on magic—only what our resources, skills, and strength can provide." He cast his eyes over all of them, looking for expressions that seemed out of place, but found nothing immediately obvious. "Your orders are as follows; the engineering corps are to create a plan for a defensive wall that can be constructed in the shortest possible time using army labor and local materials. The rest of you are to inventory the civilian skills of your men and pool those men whose skills can provide us shelter suitable for the worst winter you can imagine. Do not neglect the sanitation in this; we are going to need permanent facilities now, something suitable for a long stay, not just latrine trenches. Besides shelter, we will need some way to warm that shelter and to cook food—if we begin cutting trees for the usual fires, we'll have the forest down to stumps before the winter is half over." Was that enough for them to do? Probably, for now. "You scholars, search for efficient existing shelters, ones that hold heat well, and some fuel source beside wood. If you find anything that looks practical, bring it to my attention. Mages, you have your assignment. Gentlemen, you are dismissed for now."
The men had to wait to file out of the great double doors at the end of the hall, suffering the cold blasts penetrating the hall as one of the shutters broke loose and slapped against the wall. The Grand Duke was not so bound; his escape was right behind the dais, in the form of a smaller door at which his bodyguard waited, and he took it, grateful to be out of that place. The short half-cape did nothing to keep a man warm; he wanted a fire and a hot drink, in that order.
The guard fell in silently behind him as he headed for his own quarters, his thoughts preoccupied with all the things he had not—yet—told his men.
The mages probably guessed part of it. They were not simply cut off, they had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves, like unwanted dogs.
The Emperor, with all the power of all the most powerful mages in the world at his disposal, could (if he was truly determined) overcome the disruptions caused by the mage storms to send some kind of message. Tremane had never heard of a commander being left so in the dark before; certainly it was the first time in his own life that he had no clue what Charliss wanted or did not want of him.
There could be several causes for this silence.
The most innocent was also, in some ways, the most ominous. It was entirely possible that the mage-storms wreaking such havoc here could be having an even worse effect within the Empire itself. The Empire had literally been built on magic; distribution of food depended upon it, and communications, and a hundred more of the things that underpinned and upheld the structure of the Empire itself. If that was the case—
They're in a worse panic than we are here. Civilians have no discipline; as things break down, they'll panic. He was enough of a student of history himself to have some inkling what panicking civilians could do. Rioting, mass fighting, hysteria... in a city, with all those folk packed in together, there would be nothing for it but to declare martial law. Even then, that wouldn't stop the fear or the panic. It would be like putting a cork on a bottle of wine that was still fermenting; sooner or later, something would explode.
Tremane reached the warm solitude of his personal suite, waving to the bodyguard to remain outside. That was no hardship; the corridors provided more shelter from the cold drafts than half of the rooms did. Fortunately, his suite was tightly sealed and altogether cozy. He closed the door to his office with a sigh. No drafts here—he could remove his short winter cloak and finally, in the privacy of his quarters, warm numb fingers and frozen toes at a fire.
The second possibility that had occurred to him was basically a variation on what he, himself, had just ordered. The Emperor could have decreed that literally everything was to be secondary to finding a way for the mages to protect the Empire from these storms. There would be no mages free to try and reopen communications with this lost segment of the army. The Empire itself might be protected, but that might very well be all the mages could manage.
But the Empire would hardly spend such precious resources as Imperial mages on the protection of client-states. No, only the core of the Empire, those parts of it that were so firmly within the borders that only scholars recalled what names they had originally borne, would be given such protection.
Which means, he mused, feeling oddly detached from the entire scenario, that the client states are probably rearming and revolting against Charliss. If the Empire itself is under martial law, all available units of the army have been pulled back into the Empire to enforce it. They won't be spending much time worrying about us.