No, one segment of the Imperial Army, posted off beyond the borders of the farthest-flung Imperial Duchy, was not going to warrant any attention under conditions that drastic.
But no one born and raised in the Imperial Courts was ever going to stop with consideration of the most innocent explanations. Not when paranoia was a survival trait, and innocence its own punishment.
So, let us consider the most paranoid of scenarios. The one in which our enemy is the one person who might be assumed to be our benefactor. It was entirely possible that these mage-storms were nothing new to Emperor Charliss. He could have known all along that they were going, to strike, and where, and when. In fact, it was possible that these storms were a weapon that Charliss was testing on them.
Tremane grew cold with a chill that the fire did nothing to warm.
This could be a new terror-weapon, he thought, following the idea to its logical conclusion, as his muscles grew stiff with suppressed tension. What better weapon than one that disrupts your enemy's ability to work magic, and leaves land and people beaten down but relatively intact?
There was even a "positive" slant to that notion. Perhaps this was a new Imperial weapon that was meant only to act as an aid to them in their far-distant fight, and it simply had a wider field of effect than anyone ever imagined.
But far more likely was the idea that, since no one knew precisely what the weapon was going to do, it was tested out here, in territory not yet pacified, so that any effect on Imperial holdings would be minimal. Tremane and his men were nothing more than convenient methods by which the effectiveness of the weapon could be judged—
Which would mean that they are watching us, scrying us, seeing how we react and what we do, and whether or not the locals have the wit to do the same. This lack of communication was a deliberate attempt to get them to react without orders, just to see what they would do.
If this happened to be the true case, it ran counter to every law and custom that made the Army the loyal weapon that it was. It would be a violation of everything that Imperial soldiers had a right to expect from their Emperor.
For that matter, being left to fend for themselves was almost as drastic a violation of that credo.
In either case, however, this would not be above what could be done to test a candidate for the Iron Throne. Other would-be heirs had been put through similar hardships before.
But not, his conscience whispered, their men with them.
That was what made him angry. He did not mind so much for himself; he had expected to be tested to the breaking point. It was that the Emperor had included his unwitting men in the testing.
There was no denying that, for whatever reason, Charliss had abandoned them. There had been time and more than time enough for him to have sent them orders via a physical messenger. This silence was wrong, and it meant that there was something more going on than appeared on the surface. It was the Emperor's sworn duty to see to the welfare of his soldiers in times of crisis, as it was their sworn duty to protect him from his enemies. They had kept their side of the bargain; he had reneged on his.
It would not be long before the rest of the army knew it, too. In a situation like this, they all were aware they should have been recalled long ago. Since there was no way that a Portal could be brought up that was large enough to bring them all home, Charliss should have sent in more troops to provide a corridor of safety so that they could march home. And he should have done all this the moment the mage storms began, when it became obvious that they were getting worse. Then they would not only have been safely inside the Empire by now, they would have been on hand to deal with internal turmoil. That meant a kind of double betrayal, for somewhere, someone was going shorthanded, lacking the troops he needed to keep the peace because the Emperor had decided to abandon them here.
Or rather, it was more likely that he had opted to abandon Tremane and, with him, his men. He had probably written Tremane off as the potential heir because he had not achieved a swift victory over Hardorn, and had chosen this as the most convenient way to be rid of him.
And if I cannot contrive a way to bring us all safely through the winter, they will suffer with me.
That was the whole point of his anger. He had been schooled and trained as an Imperial officer; he had been an officer before he ever became a Grand Duke. This callous abandonment was counter to both the spirit and the letter of the law, and it made Tremane's blood boil. It represented a betrayal so profound and yet so unique to the Empire that he doubted anyone born outside the Empire would ever understand it, or why it made his skin flush with rage.
The men would certainly understand it, though, when they finally deduced the truth for themselves and then worked through their natural impulse to assume that anything so wrong could not be true. And at that point—
At that point they will cease to be soldiers of the Empire. No, that's not true. They will be soldiers of the Empire, but they will cease to serve Charliss.
He sat down in the nearest chair, all in a heap, as the magnitude of that realization struck him. Revolt—it had not happened more than a handful of times in the entire history of the Empire, and only once had the revolt been against an Emperor.
Was he ready to contemplate revolt? Unless he did something drastically wrong, it was to him that the men would turn if they revolted against Charliss. Was he prepared to go along with that, to take command of them, not as a military leader, but as the leader of a revolt?
Not yet. Not... yet. He was close, very close, but not yet prepared to take such drastic action.
He shook his head and ordered his thoughts. I must keep my initial goals very clearly in mind. I must not let anything distract me from them until the men are secured to face this coming winter. That is my duty, and what the Emperor has or has not done has no bearing on it. He set his chin stubbornly. And to the deepest hells with anyone who happens to get in my way while I am seeing to that duty!
He rose and went directly to his desk. The best way to ensure total cooperation among the men was to make things seem as normal as possible. So—to keep them from thinking too much about the silence from the Empire, he should keep up military discipline and structure the changes he planned to make to the military pattern.
He wrote his officers' orders quickly but carefully. He had already recruited a half-dozen literate subalterns to serve as scribes and secretaries since it was no longer possible to replicate written orders magically—and they would have to be able to read his handwriting in order to copy it. Now he was grateful for the "primitive" but effective and purely mechanical amenities of this manor. Nothing here had been affected by the storms. His lights still burned; his fires still heated. His cooked food arrived at the proper intervals from the kitchen. The jakes performed their function, and the sewage tunnels carried away the result without stinking up the manor. Somehow he was going to have to find men who could manage these same "primitive" solutions for an entire army.