I'm a popular commander? he thought, with another twinge of bemusement. Again, it was nothing he had expected, although it was something he had hoped would happen. He hadn't a clue what made a "popular" commander, and he wasn't certain anyone did. Commanders who had not only kept up pay, but paid bonuses, had not been popular; successful commanders had not been popular. Even commanders who had made attempts to curry favor with the troops had not been popular. I'm working them hard and I intend to go on doing so to keep them busy. I've asked them to perform tasks wildly outside their duty. I might have been keeping up with their pay, but it's no secret that the pay chests are going to run dry some time in late spring or early summer. I try to be fair and impartial when I'm administering justice, but there is no guarantee that I will always be right. I simply haven't done a thing that should make me so overwhelmingly popular that even Bram should notice.
But if Bram and the other agents had made note of the fact, that he was "popular," there was no doubt it must be true, and he was not about to inquire too closely into the lineage, of this particular gift horse.
I can only hope that I continue to enjoy that popularity. The winter is young. And it's going to be the hardest winter, these men have ever seen.
"Gentlemen," he said finally. "I accept both your allegiance and your request to remain in your current positions. I only ask that you in your turn continue gathering intelligence—or rather, let us call it, simple information—and report back to me directly." He fixed Bram with a stern gaze, picking the General as the ringleader of the group. "I don't want to hear about the men's private lives. I don't want to hear about simple grumblings. You are all experienced enough to know when the men are just venting frustration. I want to know about real difficulties, complaints that need attention, things I can do something about. Or serious situations I might not be able to do anything about directly, but which I must be aware of."
With thought, or even direct appeal to the men, I might even be able to cope with those. The Hundred Little Gods know that no one in the Imperial Army has tried direct appeal to the men in generations.
"Oh?" Bram replied, putting a volume of meaning into the single word.
"I have no choice," he said heavily. "I am being frank with you all, because you are all intelligent men. We have no choice. I believe I am the only man in this benighted place with the experience, with the fitness to lead here. You must think the same, or you would not be here. If I am to be the leader I must have all the information I can get, and I must not ignore unpleasant information because I don't like it. I rely on you to bring me that unpleasant information because I am not sure my own people will, every time."
That was a bit of a lie, but a tiny lie of that nature might well cement them further to his cause. And the truth was, these men who had been used to looking for weaknesses in his leadership on behalf of another master were more likely to see such weaknesses than his own agents. They'd have had practice, after all.
General Bram nodded, very solemnly. "We can do that. Are you at all interested in any of us taking a more active role, if we see something a word or two can set right?" He smiled rather grimly. "The Hundred Little Gods themselves know we are used to looking for situations where a word or two can set them wrong."
"Yes," he replied decisively. "You aren't stupid; you know not to expose yourselves. I'll make this bargain of trust with you. You can trust me to do the best I can for every man in our forces; I will trust you to do the best you can to keep me in power." Again, he fixed Bram with that gimlet stare. "This is not a situation where the men can be permitted to rule by popular vote, for there will be things I must do that will not be popular. My hand must remain on the reins, mine and no other, or there will be disaster." He smiled slightly. "There is a saying that it is not wise to change drivers in the middle of a charge. I am the driver of the war chariot in this charge, and you had all better stick with me or be thrown beneath the wheels while you're grabbing at the reins."
Bram, who had led no few charges in his time, nodded. "I can agree with all of that—and I believe that I can speak for all of us in agreeing with your conditions." He looked down at his feet for a moment, then looked up again, with a peculiar expression on his face. "You are the best leader we could hope for in this situation, Tremane. You've got civilian experience we old war dogs lack; and where you get your foresight, I'll be damned if I know. And you've got two other things that can't be calculated; you've got luck, and you've got heart. We won't be rid of a leader with that combination."
Tremane closed his eyes for a moment. Of all the many things that had happened here, this was of a piece with the rest. Luck, was it? Well, he was not about to spit on luck and he would capitalize on every piece of luck he got, but he was not going to count on it either. Perhaps that was the essence of luck.
He opened his eyes. "Gentlemen, thank you. Never forget that we must all work together to save our people here. Remember that our people now include these Hardornens of Shonar, although they may not yet realize that fact—and never forget that in the future to continue to preserve all our lives, we may have to look for friends in strange places."
The General saluted slowly in answer to this, and without another word, led the delegation of former spies out and back to their posts.
After the snow cleared off, they had steady cold but sparkling and beautiful weather for two days. The weather was so cloudless that Tremane began to wonder if the Hardornen weather-wizard was losing his talent at weather prediction to the mage-storms. The old man kept insisting that there was more bad snow on the way, and a great deal of it, but where was it?
If they couldn't rely on the weather-wizard for predictions, it would make preparations a great deal more difficult.
The third day dawned just as clear and beautiful as the first two, and Tremane was just about resigned to the fact that the old man was slipping. Restlessness made him eager to stretch his legs in the afternoon, after a long day of dealing with the paperwork needed to keep up with the state of the supplies in the warehouses, and he decided to go in an unusual direction. Rather than taking his walk down, to make another informal inspection, he would go up, to the walkway at the top of his tower. The weather was good, the air still, the sun bright enough that even up there, exposed, he shouldn't get too chilled until he'd walked out his restlessness. The tower was the highest spot in all of Shonar; he should get a good view of the surrounding countryside outside the walls from there. He might even spot one of the furtively lurking monsters.
It was a long walk, but worth it; he left his escort at the foot of the last stair, for he intended to savor the rare experience of being outdoors and yet completely alone.
I have not been alone except in my own rooms since I accepted this post. I have not stood alone beneath an open sky since my last hunt on my own land.
The stairs came right up onto the roof; there was a small slant-roofed affair covering the last few of them, rather than a trapdoor one had to push open. He approved of the arrangement; if there'd been enough heavy snow, he wouldn't have been able to budge a trap door.