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Her cold look changed to one of unhappiness. “I do not like to quarrel with you,” she said.
“God knows I don’t enjoy it much either—”
“Please. Let me finish. All winter my father and I have waited for you to speak formally to him of our future.”
“I was waiting to be sure you wanted me to,” Rick said. “And I wasn’t sure when would be the right time—”
“I had hoped you wanted me.”
“I do. God knows I do. I love you,” Rick said.
“As I love you. More than you know. Our customs are not yours. Never in our memory has a woman married before she was avenged, yet—yet I was willing to do so. Rick, your ways are strange. You are not like my husband was. You are a warrior, but you do not wish to fight. I have seen men insult you, and yet you did nothing, though lesser words demand blood—”
“Is that what you want? Should I collect heads?” The Tamaerthon clansmen no longer kept the heads of their enemies as trophies, but there were many legends of heroes who had.
“Hush,” she said. “No. You should not. I have come to understand that although killing gives you no pleasure, you are no weakling. And I have seen you in the great battle, and again when you have spoken of the school you wish to build. I know which pleases you more. I have heard you tell of the things you wish to teach, and how this will help everyone—the clans of Tamaerthon and all the others on this world. There is much about you I do not understand, but there is much I do know, and I have come to love you. Not as I loved Lamil. That was nearly unendurable—no, do not look away, and do not be sad. I was no more eager for my wedding night with Lamil than I am to have you possess me. Between us there is more than Lamil and I ever had. Lamil was handsome, but he was frivolous. He had no daemon driving him as you do. Nor did I, then, but I have since learned what duty is, and no less a daemon rides me now. You and I, we may belong to each other, but we also have ambition. Not for wealth, but for something greater.”
He came to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Then why are we standing like this—”
She removed his hands gently and stepped away. Her face held concern and sadness. “Please. This must be said. Rick, when I believed Sarakos secure in Drantos, I swallowed my hatred for him though it burned like fire. I had thought you must feel the same, that the man who, who—gods! that a man who had done that to me should live!”
“You can’t know,” Rick said. “God, sweetheart, you can’t know—”
“I dream of flaying him,” Tylara said. “Yet, because of what we believe you will do for Tamaerthon—aye, for all the world—I have lived with the knowledge that Sarakos would never be punished. As did my father and my brother. We agreed—you are important to Tamaerthon, and we have no hold on you. There is no reason for you to stay in Tamaerthon—none save what I hope you feel for me—yet we need you. And so I have not died trying to avenge myself. As much as I hate Sarakos, I have grown to love you more. Once I lived only to kill him. Now I have you.”
“But now you want me to kill Sarakos for you.”
“Now it is possible,” she said.
“No. What’s changed?” Rick asked. “André Parsons has fewer men, but he still has more than enough weapons to destroy us, and without the pikemen, Tamaerthon is doomed. Do you trust Marselius? I do as long as he is afraid of my pike regiments, but not longer. And we may yet have to fight Caesar if Marselius fails.”
“Are you certain nothing has changed, my husband-to-be?” Tylara asked. “The starmen are divided. Sarakos has lost half his army. Is this nothing?”
“Is it enough?”
“I do not know. These are things you know,” Tylara said. “But this I do know. Chelm is mine. Lamil left no other heir. You have heard how it fares with the people there. They die. There is endless war. The Time approaches. Do I not have a duty to them? And do you not have a greater one?”
“Me? I’ve never been there—”
“You brought the starmen here,” Tylara said. “Now they are as wolves in the land. Have you no responsibility for this?” Tears welled in her eyes. “My love. My father feels as I do. If you truly believe that nothing can be done to rid the land of these evil men, then we will send Camithon on his way without aid. But I beg you, think on it.”
She would have to say that. My responsibility. I brought them here. I didn’t want to, and I—what the hell’s the point in quibbling? I brought them. But dammit—“My university will be more important than you know,” Rick said. “We can change this world. Should we risk all that merely to kill Sarakos?”
“My love, I know there is no other like you,” Tylara said. There was no banter in her voice at all. “But can not the lady Gwen and the man Warner teach much of what you could?”
There went my last argument, Rick thought. Oh, dammit. “Yes. They can,” he said. God help me, she’s right. And nobody else can stop Parsons and Sarakos. Can I? Sarakos is no problem. His medium and heavy cavalry don’t sound as effective as the Roman heavy troopers, and my pikemen have a lot more confidence now. But I still need massed formations, and Parsons has the mortar and at least a dozen riflemen—more than enough to scatter the pikes for Sarakos’ heavies—
Skirmishing archers could take Parsons, if we could get him on a decent killing ground. But he’s too damn smart to be caught that way. He’ll always have enough local cavalry with him to keep the archers at a distance. So how to get the Earth troops separated from the rest of the army—
“You have a plan,” she said. “I have seen that look before.”
“Something Warner said. Tylara, even if everything works properly, a lot of people are going to be killed—”
“More than will die if we do nothing?”
“No. Not nearly so many.” He sighed and took her in his arms. “I could have had my pick of a hundred women,” he said. “I could have a hundred women. So of course I have to be in love with you.” He kissed her. They stood close for a long time.
Then she pushed him gently away. “In spring,” she said. “And for now—we must send food for Camithon’s army before he loses more men and beasts to hunger.”
“Yes.” And a thousand other details. Summon the western clansmen and start drilling them in the new tactics. More pikes and arrows. Baggage and grain carts. Politics. Keeping the clans working together was hard enough; now they’d have Protector Camithon and the boy king to worry about as well.
And more details yet. Patrols to seal the passes and keep secret as long as possible the fact that Tamaerthon was arming for war. A second iron curtain so that when spies inevitably found that the clans were mobilizing they still wouldn’t be able to report that they were drilling with pikes. And inside that the greatest secret of all.
“Why do you smile?” Tylara asked.
“It would take long to explain,” Rick said. How could he tell her he’d thought of calling his inner circle “The Manhattan Project”? But of course he couldn’t use that name. It would signal Parsons as clearly as would a report that someone in Tamaerthon was gathering tons of manure and sulfur.
They’d need a secure area to leach saltpeter from manure.
His scholarship wasn’t good enough to make sulfa drugs or penicillin, but something simple like that would be no problem at all. Saltpeter seventy-five percent, charcoal fifteen percent, sulfur ten percent: fifteen to three to two, a formula tested in war’s caldron for centuries. And they’d need a gristmill with no metal parts in which to grind it.
And there’d be a thousand more details. The business of war. They sing ballads about heroes, but the details are what win campaigns.
Or lose them.