“I understand you were transferred into Hundred Olderhan’s company at the same time as Fifty Garlath?”
“Yes, Sir, I was.”
“I understand, as well, that you’d served under Fifty Garlath for some time?”
“Yes, Sir. Several months, Sir.”
“What is your evaluation of Fifty Garlath’s ability as a commander?”
Bok vos Hoven pursed his lips and appeared to give the question serious consideration. “Well, Sir, I’d have to say Fifty Garlath wasn’t nearly as able a commander as Hundred Olderhan.”
“Really? What prompts that evaluation?”
“Well, Sir, under Hundred Olderhan’s direction, the Fifty was a lot more efficient than he’d ever been. And he followed book procedure a lot more closely. We certainly got things done a faster than we ever had, before.”
“I see. In your estimation, then, Garlath was a better officer under Hundred Olderhan’s direction than he was under his previous Commander of One Hundred?”
“Yes, Sir. Absolutely, Sir.”
“Very good. Now, then, how would you evaluate Fifty Garlath’s efficiency the morning your platoon trailed the Sharonians to their camp?”
“Well, Sir, I know this much. The Hundred kept the Fifty on a very short leash. He quoted book regulations repeatedly, in a very abrupt manner.”
“Then the Hundred’s temper was fraying?”
“Yes, Sir, I’d say that, Sir.”
“Due to?” Sogbourne invited speculation, curious to see how vos Hoven would respond.
“We were all under stress, Sir, wondering what had killed poor Osmuna, wondering what other terror weapons these people-or creatures-might possess, how far ahead of us they were, how many of them there might be. It was nerve wracking, Sir, for all of us, and the Hundred seemed affected more than the rest of us.”
“Are you saying,” Sogbourne asked in a curious tone that masked his intense disgust, “that the Hundred was overwhelmed by fear?”
“It certainly looked that way to me.”
“Why?”
Bok vos Hoven blinked. “Well, Sir, he was jumpy as a frog in a pond full of crocodrakes, for one thing.”
“Jumpy as a frog?” Ten Thousand Rinthrak echoed. “In what way?”
“He kept watching the trees, nervous-like. Kept barking at the Fifty to stay on point, to stop dawdling. I was worried we were going to run up their backsides before he was satisfied.”
“The general idea, when trailing an escaped killer,” Rinthrak said in a severe voice, “is to catch him.”
“Well, yes, Sir. That’s true. But there’s hasty prudence and there’s hasty folly, Sir, and I can tell you I wasn’t too happy about the way he was rushing us ahead, like that, with barely a moment’s pause to consider any nasty surprises they might’ve laid in our path.”
Sogbourne frowned. Given the charges this man faced and the source of those charges, he’d expected vos Hoven to characterize Jasak Olderhan’s actions in the worst possible light, and so far those expectations hadn’t been disappointed. Unfortunately, there was a serious dearth of eyewitnesses to question, let alone question closely about nuances like vos Hoven was trying to impart. Or, perhaps, insinuate.
He made a brief notation in his PC to question the few witnesses they did have on this subject, but even there, he anticipated trouble. While Bok vos Hoven could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered an impartial witness, neither could the other three witnesses available to him.
Trooper Sendahli could have been impartial immediately after Toppled Timber, but he was only in Portalis to be interviewed because of his status as a victim of Lance vos Hoven in a case against the shakira soldier that hinged heavily on Hundred Olderhan’s testimony. It was a mess.
Battalion Chief Sword Threbuch was almost even more of a mess, from a legal perspective. Sogbourne had no personal qualms at all about Threbuch’s honesty, but his ties to the Olderhan family went back decades. He’d served under Hundred Olderhan’s father, earning high commendations and an income for life for saving the life of the current Duke of Garth Showma. Threbuch was ordinarily an honest and impartial witness, with an unimpeachable record for scrupulous honesty and meticulous accuracy.
However…
The situation wasn’t much better with Magister Kelbryan. Just for starters, she wasn’t a soldier. In fact she wasn’t remotely close to a soldier! Not only was she a civilian, she was a Ransaran who didn’t understand military protocols, regulations, and duties or even the standard operating procedures of a platoon-let alone the emergency procedures necessary to deal with a serious crisis. Had she been Andaran, trained to understand military realities, he would have been more inclined to trust her assessment of the Hundred’s performance.
But the gods had seen fit to give him a Ransaran, and Ransarans were notorious for their total lack of understanding of all matters military. Ransaran scholars, in particular, were noted for their appalling lack of military savvy and their inordinate pride in that lack, as though willful ignorance was a virtue. Amongst Ransaran academicians, it was.
So Sogbourne patiently took vos Hoven through the entire chase Olderhan had conducted through that distant forest, on the trail of unknown killers with weapons that struck horror into the very souls of the men doing that trailing, and tried to sift truth from skillful, vindictive manipulation of fact. Either vos Hoven was a great deal smarter than his personnel scores indicated or he’d received some highly skilled coaching from someone, because he managed to paint an ever blacker, damning picture of a rattled commander jumping at shadows, without quite crossing the line into outright fabrication and triggering the courtroom’s verifying spellware.
When they reached the fateful moment of arrival at the wind-toppled pile of twisted timber, Sogbourne asked vos Hoven to describe exactly what had transpired.
“Well, Sir, as nearly as I can recall, Hundred Olderhan ordered Fifty Garlath’s squad to search the clearing for concealed enemy personnel. Fifty Garlath had already lodged a strong protest over the advisability of pursuit, given the potential for a large number of the enemy to overwhelm our platoon. The Hundred told him that falling back to wait for reinforcements was out of the question. Magister Gadrial actually accused Fifty Garlath of cowardice, which was a dirty lie. The Fifty was only concerned for the safety of his men, and it turned out he was right to be. We were overwhelmed by enemy firepower and damn near lost the entire platoon as a result of the Hundred’s hasty actions.”
The lie-detection light might have flickered just slightly, but Sogbourne couldn’t be sure. Anger or hatred could be used to partially beat the truth spells if the speaker had enough boiling emotion to convince himself of a false reality, and vos Hoven had more than enough rage towards Jasak Olderhan to attempt it. For that matter, he probably had enough to achieve it completely spontaneously!
Sogbourne narrowed his eyes, but decided against pursuing the line of questioning that pile of dragon manure warranted. Not yet. Instead, he said, “The Hundred ordered the clearing searched. What was Fifty Garlath’s response?”
“Why, he complied, of course. It was plain suicide, sending men into the open, like that, but the Fifty did his duty, did it bravely, I’ll tell you!”
This time lie-detection light behind the witness did flash. But before Sogbourne could react, vos Hoven continued his embroidered-for-effect tirade.
“The Fifty obeyed the Hundred’s orders and he died for it, Sir! I know what you’re thinking of me, standing here in chains, but I’m telling you plainly, the Hundred sent the Fifty out there to die. Hundred Olderhan conceived a hatred of the Fifty almost from the moment he arrived in the Hundred’s company. I’m convinced the Hundred deliberately sent Fifty Garlath out to be killed, to rid himself of the problem his own prejudice had created!”