Frays In The Weave

Trindai couldn"t have hoped for a braver team of men and women following him into battle with only surgeon"s equipment, and now they looked more like a ragtag band of beggars than the skilled professionals they were. And a few were unconscious from fatigue.

So he had to order the deaths of even more of his men. A few had to die now so that most of them would live to see Verd again, and to that end he had to order the medics to rest.

How had he become an executioner? When did he cross the line between hardened soldier and cold-blooded murderer? Had he? As unthinkable as the idea was he needed to pick it up, examine it, turn it over to see it in a different light and learn. Because if he didn"t he wasn"t certain he would want to live with himself. This wasn"t the kind of suspicion someone left unattended, at least not anyone who intended to get old and look back at his life with satisfaction.

So he rode on, eyes half closed, and he wondered how many of the men he pa.s.sed thought him asleep. They would want him to. In their eyes he was close to a G.o.d, but they didn"t have to carry his doubts, and he wouldn"t load them with that burden. For their way back home he would be their hero.

For all they cared they had ma.s.sacred the enemy in one decisive battle. Later some of them were bound to understand just how bad their own losses had been. He would be criticized then and questioned, but he didn"t care. No one would question him the way he did himself.

He grinned despite the dark thoughts he nurtured. One might. Walking Talking was perpetually moody. From what de Markand had said he"d held on to a nightmare for over a greatyear.

#

Ken whistled as he rode past a tent. Less than an eightday ago he"d convinced General de Markand to give up on the idiocy of moving badly wounded soldiers north. To stay behind with the outworlder medics, a company"s worth of the Imperial Guard and Juanita from the news team was not even a decision that required a thought.

This was something he"d done countless times before. Stay behind and help care for the wounded.

He wasn"t a magehealer by any account, but he"d learned that Weaving helped the body to heal itself, and what was more important, he could give those helping a night of deep sleep. No nightmares stalked those he covered in the Weave.

The difference this time was the presence of modern medical equipment, or futuristic as far as he was concerned. And the mental mind-set of those using it. More crafter than artisan, and that set them apart from magehealers. They weren"t gifted. Hard work and solid knowledge should be enough to handle a body no longer working properly, at least with the right equipment handy. It was a way of thinking much closer to his own than the one he"d grown accustomed to here since that day an eternity ago when his life changed and he no longer walked the daily life of a normal human.

Magehealers were mages, with the mind of mages, the gift of mages and the limitations of mages. The only reason for them to stop and rest would be if one of their own was disabled as a result of transferring whatever their patient suffered from. The idea of proper training, proper methods and proper environment was simply not central to them.

He shrugged the thought away and continued in his pursuit of Juanita. One of the ugliest women he"d ever had the honour to know, but by all G.o.ds unholy, there wasn"t a vehicle she didn"t master.

He was learning a new skill. When she deemed him fit enough to drive a hovercraft on his own he intended to help with the transports between the field hospital and Verd. Someone in that council of theirs had agreed to help sustain the hospital, but there were simply not enough drivers to keep the supplies coming.

#

When the first hovercraft, and the news with it, arrived a few eightdays earlier Mairild almost collapsed from the relief.

It was one thing to see the outworlder moving pictures and a totally different thing to be able to speak with a real person who had been there and seen what happened.

When one"s job was to gather, spread and withhold information then something tangible was sometimes a must, and she"d had little enough to show for the reports about their steady progress far, far south of the capital.

Then one hovercraft arrived with a few medics so tired they had to be carried to their waiting beds and one member from that outworlder group of tale tellers. He"d barely taken the time for a proper greeting before he vanished to the rooms they"d rented before the madness began for real.

Asked about the reason for the hurry he only answered with a cryptic string of words even the interpreter found hard to understand and even harder to convey. From what Mairild could discern he planned to enhance an eye"s reception to put the audience in awe. She knew it had something to do with those flying cams of theirs, and the moving pictures they captured, but she didn"t understand exactly, and as a trader of news that grated on her.

By now it was clear they had taken a severe beating, but it was a victory nonetheless. A costly one.

Sects of devoted sprung up all across Keen and her client states. It would take years to put them down, but that was a minor concern of hers. Hepaten fumed and planned. As soon as he deemed his forces strong enough he"d send them out on their ugly work. Mairild didn"t agree, but that was a thought she kept close to herself.

Far worse was the loss of Mintosa. The Termus gorge was one of the few ways down from the plains to the Narrow Sea, and from what Olvar said Count Friedhafen could defend Mintosa with a minimum of men from any attack Keen could launch. With the port firmly in his hands Mintosa was all but impenetrable.

If they were to retake her Keen needed to send her forces almost to Erkateren and fortify small fishing villages in order to build a fleet with which to attack Mintosa from the sea. It would be a bloodbath, but one they had to accept.

First Erkateren needed to be bribed though. The punitive expedition Keen sent east hadn"t won her any favours there. At least that expedition had reached the Sea of Gra.s.s and its commander was no longer in any position to make an a.s.s of himself on this side of the mountains. What he did closer to Gaz Mairild didn"t care. Gaz lay at the end of the world.

There was good news as well. The plague was in control. Outworlder medics and magehealers from Ri Khi had put a stop to it unknown to each other. Mairild planned to keep them in the dark indefinitely. Anything else was a threat to her own health, but she suspected she"d let slip too far this time. When things calmed down some of her mistakes would come back to haunt her, and in their wake Magehunting with the Inquisition squadrons.

Her life was forfeit. It was only a matter of time. It was, strangely enough, something she didn"t worry overly much about. She had served Keen to the utmost of her ability, and that was what counted.

The sky port prospered once more. Outworlder sky ships came and went. That the people in control called themselves New Sweden instead of the Terran Federation didn"t bother her at all. Outworlders were outworlders. As long as the metal and mechanical wonders arrived in a timely fashion to be traded for clothes, art and other seemingly worthless objects she was happy.

Which reminded her that she had a meeting with Anita Kirchenstein-Yui. The sky kingdom wanted to erect houses close to the sky port, and even though Mairild planned to drive as hard a bargain as possible she saw an increased presence of armed outworlders as a benefit. Soldiers thought of the world in one way, but traders, artists and craftsmen wanted little more than to live a pleasant life, and that made them share her own personal view of what mattered.

An eightday or two would see Trindai back with the bulk of the army. One regiment stayed behind. They guarded the northern end of the Termus gorge. If Keen couldn"t retake Mintosa because of it at least neither was Count Friedhafen able to push north for the very same reason. Keeping that regiment fed and happy would be expensive, but most of those problems belonged with Tenanrild.