Heirs of Empire

“It wouldn’t have done a bit of good to worry you with it while you were mucking around in the swamp,” she replied more tartly. “You were already going as fast as you could. All you could have done was fret.”

“But—” He started to speak sharply, then made himself stop. She was right, but she was also wrong, and he controlled his tone very carefully when he went on. “Sandy, don’t ever hold things back on me again, please? There may not have been anything I could have done, but as long as I’m in command, I need all the information we’ve got, as soon as we get it. Is that understood?”

He held her eyes sternly, and her nostrils flared with answering anger. But then she bit her lower lip and nodded.

“Understood,” she said in a low voice. “I just—” She looked down at her hands and sighed. “I just didn’t want you to worry, Sean.”

“I know.” He reached out to capture one of her hands and squeezed it tightly until she looked up. “I know,” he said more softly. “It’s just that this isn’t the time for it, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, and then her brown eyes suddenly gleamed. “But if you really want to know everything, then I suppose I should tell you what Harry’s been up to, too.”

“What Harry’s been up to?” Sean looked speculatively down at her, then raised his head as Tibold called his name. The ex-Guardsman pointed to the meal preparations, and Sean waved for the others to go ahead without him and returned his attention to Sandy. “And just what,” he asked in a deliberately ominous voice, “has my horrid twin done now?”

“Well, it turned out fine, but she decided to tell Stomald the truth.”

“My God! I turn my back for an instant, and all of you run amok!”

“Oh, no! Not us—you’re the one who’s been ru

“Think I hadn’t figured that out weeks ago? How’d Tamman take it?”

“Quite well, actually,” Sandy said wickedly. “I wouldn’t say he’s completely over it, but I did overhear a couple of the Malagoran girls sighing over how handsome ‘Lord Tamman’ is.”

“Handsome? Tam?” Sean cocked his head, then chuckled. “Well, compared to me, I guess he is. You mean he’s, um, encouraging their interest?”

“Let’s just say he isn’t discouraging it.” Sandy gri

“Well, in that case, I suppose you’d better catch me up on all the gossip before I join the others for supper.”

“Why? I could brief you while you eat, Sean. None of them understand English.”

“I know that,” Sean said. He picked out a relatively dry spot, spread his Malagoran-style poncho over it, and waved her to a seat upon it. “The problem, dear, is that I can’t eat very well while I’m laughing. Now give.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“All right, then. Everybody clear on his orders?”

Sean looked around the circle of faces in the late afternoon light. He and Tibold had spent weeks convincing their officers to ask questions whenever there was anything they didn’t understand, but, one by one, each captain nodded soberly.

“Good!” He folded the map with deliberate briskness, then turned and gazed northeast to the screen of dragoons deployed across his line of advance. Beyond them, he could just see a village that was supposed to have been totally evacuated … and hadn’t been.

Sandy’s warning that there were still people about had come in time—he hoped. He’d sent flanking columns of dragoons forward, then had them curl back in from the east, and they seemed to have caught all the villagers before anyone got away to Malz.

It was the ninth day since he’d set out for Erastor. By his original estimate, he should already have been in striking distance of Ortak’s rear; as it was, he was still south of the Mortan, the weather was going bad on him again, and the head of the Guard relief column should reach the Malz turn-off within four days. His time margin had become knife-thin, and if any of those peasants had fled with word of his presence, he was in a world of trouble.

Well, Sandy’s stealthed spies would warn him if the bad guys did figure out he was coming. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t going to help him a lot if they figured it out after he’d crossed the river and trapped himself between Ortak and High-Captain Terrahk’s relief force.

He shook off his worry and nodded to his officers.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then,” he said, and they slapped their breastplates in salute and dashed off.

Considering the unexpected rigors of the swamp crossing, the men were in excellent shape, Sean thought. Tired, but far from exhausted, and their morale was better than he would have dared hope. They’d hated the swamps, but despite the delays, their confidence was unshaken. Which was good, because they had another ten kilometers to cover this day, and Malz was tied into the semaphore chain which co

He called for his own branahlk and trotted back towards his infantry. Part of him longed to go with the dragoons in person, but Sandy’s stealthed cutter hovered above them. She’d tell him if anything went wrong, and he needed to be with his main body, ready to respond to any warning she might send.

He turned in the saddle to watch Captain Juahl lead the dragoons east. Juahl was a good man, he told himself, and he understood the plan. That was just going to have to be enough.

It was almost midnight, local time, when Sean’s lead rifle regiments reached Malz. Bonfires encircled the town, and parties of dragoons picketed its unprepossessing walls. It wasn’t a large town—no more than eight thousand even in normal times, and its population had declined drastically when the Holy Host came through en route to Yortown—but enough people remained inside those walls to stand off dragoons. Worse, there were plenty of potential messengers to warn Ortak what was happening, which was the reason for those pickets and bonfires.

A mounted messenger trotted up to him and saluted.

“Captain Juahl sent me to report, Lord Sean,” the exhausted young officer said. “We haven’t secured the Malz tower yet—they got the town gates shut and we didn’t have the strength to force them—but Captain Juahl and Under-Captain Hahna secured the fords and both towers between here and the crossroads. Hahna’s company is posted just east of the crossroads, and we got both towers intact. Captain Juahl said to tell you our men are ready to pass messages both ways, My Lord.”

“Good!” Sean slapped the messenger’s shoulder, and the young man gri

“Yes, My Lord!”

“In that case go tell him I’m delighted with his news. Ask him to thank all of his officers and men for me, as well, and tell him I’ll get infantry support up as fast as I can.”

“Yes, My Lord!” The messenger saluted again and vanished into the darkness, and Sean turned to Tibold.

“Thank God for that!” he said softly, and the ex-Guardsman nodded. Most of the men who’d managed the Temple’s semaphore chain across Malagor had fled the heresy, but enough had joined it to give Sean the perso