The Road to Hell - eARC (58 page)

If there’d ever been any doubt in Mayrkos Harshu’s mind that mul Gurthak had deliberately maneuvered him into the position of the officially out-of-control field commander in order to make him the scapegoat when the official lightning bolt came down from on high, it had long since disappeared. And as Toralk and his single exhausted, overworked Army Air Transport Command aerie struggled to keep the existing Expeditionary Force fed and supplied with essential matériel, the men under his command had clearly started to sense that all was not well. When word got out that the Union Army had just experienced its very first mutiny on top of everything else…

“I understand your point, Klayrman,” he said, after a moment. “But if what you and I both think happened actually did, I can’t do that. I can’t do it for a lot of reasons, but especially not given the fact that it’s Thalmayr’s senior surviving subordinate when he was in command in Mahritha and the Sharonians overran the portal in Mahritha who’s apparently mutinied against him. You think anyone’s going to believe Fifty Ulthar would’ve done that if he thought Thalmayr had done a
good
job defending the portal? Or that he and his men—men who were
there
—agree with the intelligence analysis Neshok produced…and I used?” He shook his head. “That’s going to point a big, ugly finger at what happened at the Swamp Portal in the first place…and shine a big, bright spotlight not just on Neshok and me but on Thalmayr’s treatment of the prisoners under
his
charge. The Andaran Scouts aren’t exactly a low-profile outfit, and given the present situation, any questions about Thalmayr’s conduct would turn into a political nightmare, with senators and delegates crawling all over them, even without my own ineffable contribution.” He shook his head again, harder, his expression grim. “At the very least, that’s going to get Duke Garth Showma and the Commandery involved, and the Army can’t afford any hint that anything’s being swept under the rug at this point.”

He held Toralk’s gaze again, and the office’s silence seemed to buzz about his ears with the weight of the dozens of things which weren’t being said. Enough ugly things had been strewn about in the AEF’s wake to destroy a score of senior officers’ careers, after all, and Mahrkrai and Toralk knew it as well as Harshu did. How much additional damage could one more…irregularity do?

But that wasn’t really the point, and Harshu knew Toralk understood that, as well.

“All right,” the two thousand said, turning his attention back to Mahrkrai. “Before we do anything else, we definitely need to wring Thalmayr dry and find out what the hells really happened in Thermyn. Let’s get Brychar in here so I can give him the bad news and discuss Thalmayr’s interrogation with him personally. Once we’ve done that, I’ll have a better idea of what to do next.”

* * *

“Good morning, Hundred Thalmayr,” the smartly uniformed Ransaran said, laying his briefcase on the table and opening it to withdraw a PC. “My name is Tamdaran, Brychar Tamdaran. I’m on Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence staff, and I have a few questions to ask you.”

“Questions?” Hadrign Thalmayr shifted uneasily from the other side of the table. “What sort of questions?”

“There are a few points which Two Thousand Harshu would like clarified,” Tamdaran replied, and brushed his fingers across the PC’s surface. “And, for your information, and pursuant to the requirements of the Articles of War, I’m notifying you that I’ve just activated verifier and recording spellware.”

Thalmayr stopped shifting and froze. His remaining hand locked on his wrist stump in his lap under the concealing tabletop, and his eyes narrowed.

“Verifier spells? Why?”

“Hundred Thalmayr,” Tamdaran said patiently, “you’ve just reported that troops under your command have mutinied when we’re in a de facto state of war. That’s a capital offense, as I’m sure you’re aware. Obviously, the Two Thousand doesn’t want there to be any ambiguity when he convenes the court-martial himself or sends his recommendation for one further up the chain of command.”

The Ransaran watched Thalmayr relax ever so slightly and kept his own expression bland and thoughtful. Tamdaran intended to be as objective as possible in his questioning, but he’d read Thalmayr’s written report carefully. Carefully enough that he was already confident of where his questions were going to lead. That confidence sharpened the edge of his own bitter disappointment in Mayrkos Harshu, yet the two thousand had ordered him to get to the truth, whatever that truth might be. If Tamdaran was right—if
Two Thousand Harshu
was right—about what had really happened at Fort Ghartoun, the consequences for Harshu would be devastating, but he’d instructed Tamdaran to write up his own independent report of this interrogation for the Inspector General and the Judge Advocate’s Corps. And that, in a strange way, proved that despite the way the two thousand had sacrificed the Kerellian Accords and Articles of War in the name of expediency, he was ultimately true to them in the end.

And if Brychar Tamdaran could help drop kick a prick like Thalmayr into the dragon pit along the way, so much the better.

“Now, Hundred,” he said briskly, bringing up his own copy of Thalmayr’s report, “let’s go through this from the beginning. You say the first intimation you had that Fifty Ulthar and Fifty Sarma were conspiring against you came when—”

* * *

“So there it is,” Mayrkos Harshu said grimly, looking across the steaming cup of bitterblack at Klayrman Toralk. He held the cup in his right hand and tapped his left index finger on the sarkolis crystal on the breakfast table between them. Sunlight streamed in through the chansyu hut’s window, pooling in the crystal’s heart with eye-hurting intensity. “The bastard tried to weasel out of it, but his lies started coming unglued from almost the very first question. Brychar got it all out of him in the end. And it’s all verified, all true.”

Toralk’s own cup sat on the table beside his plate, and he felt no temptation to touch either of them. The acid-churning lump in his stomach saw to that.

“The only thing I can say on his behalf—not in his
defense
, because I don’t think anything could constitute a defense—is that he seems to genuinely believe the Sharonians were deliberately torturing him and trying to ‘steal’ his mind. Apparently, the fact that the Sharonian healers at Fort Ghartoun testified under verifier that they’d only been doing their best to
help
him wasn’t sufficient to convince him. So he decided to return the favor and spent the next several weeks systematically beating them to death one inch at a time. From the sound of things, he’d’ve been doing even worse than that if his senior healer hadn’t refused to patch them up between sessions. He tried to emphasize the fact that he wasn’t really trying to kill them—after all, they’d’ve been dead long ago if that was what he’d wanted!—but the real reason for his ‘restraint’ was that he didn’t want them to die and deprive him of his entertainment any sooner than he could help.”

Harshu’s eyes were as bleak and grim as Toralk felt, but he sipped from his bitterblack cup and unlike the Air Force officer, he’d cleaned his plate. Of course, he’d had a bit longer to think about it, Toralk supposed.

“It’s impossible to be certain of everything that happened at this stage,” the two thousand continued, lowering his cup again. “I think Brychar’s pieced it together accurately, but all the verifier spell can really tell us is whether or not Thalmayr
believes
he’s telling the truth, not necessarily what the truth actually is. I’ll see to it that you get a complete transcript of the interview, but I’ll warn you now that he’s about as self-serving—and as able to convince himself that what he
wants
to be true
has
to be true—as a man could possibly be.”

“Are you saying he’s one of those…what-do-you-call-them…‘sociopathic liars,’ Sir? Or that he’s so delusional he genuinely doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong?”

“I think he’ll lie his arse off to stay out of the pit come dragon-feeding time.” Harshu’s tone was as hard as his expression. “Whether that makes him a ‘sociopath’ or not is another question. But while I’m godsdamned sure he feels
justified
in his own mind, there’s no question that he understands damned well that nobody else is likely to agree with him. And unfortunately”—for the first time, the two thousand looked away from his breakfast guest—“the fact that he headed for Karys rather than Mahritha and didn’t say a word to anyone about it on the way through or send any reports back up-chain suggests two things to me.

“First, he may claim he kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to spread any confusion or panic, but that’s as full of dragon shit as everything else he’s said. The truth is, he hoped like hell he’d be able to cover up what he’d been doing. He wanted me to hear
his
version, and he wanted me to hear it before anything could force my hand when it came time to deal with it. If Ulthar and Sarma’s actions had become general knowledge before he got here, I’d’ve had to set the official wheels in motion before he had an opportunity to spin the story in his favor. As far as I’m concerned, that’s proof he damned well knows he’s violated the Articles of War left, right, and center, however ‘justified’ he might have felt. An effort to conceal is pretty strong evidence of guilt.”

Harshu paused for a moment, gazing down into the PC on the table, and his dark eyes were as stony as the crystal itself. Then he looked back up at Toralk.

“That’s the first thing it suggests to me,” he said flatly. “But the second thing—the
worse
thing—is that the reason he wanted to get his version to me is that he hopes I’ll clean up the mess to protect my own arse. He hasn’t said so in so many words, but it’s pretty damned obvious what he really wants is for me to send out an air-mobile detachment with orders to run down the ‘mutineers’ and shoot to kill when they do. Dead men make piss-poor prosecution witnesses.”

“I imagine they do, Sir,” the Air Force officer agreed after a moment, meeting those stony eyes levelly.

“Well,” Harshu took another sip of bitterblack and cradled the cup in both hands, “I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. I’ll be sending an air-mobile battalion back, all right, but its orders will be a bit different from the ones he wants. I want Ulthar, Sarma, all their men, and any surviving Sharonians apprehended, but I want them taken alive, and I’m sending Thousand Stanohs to personally see to it they are if it’s humanly possible.”

He paused, and Toralk nodded. Valchair Stanohs commanded 2nd Battalion of the 703rd Infantry Regiment, and although he was junior to Tayrgal Carthos or Faildym Gahnyr, he was smarter than Gahnyr and far less loathsome than Carthos. More to the point, as the senior officer present, he was the acting commander of the entire 703rd, which made him Five Hundred Chalbos Isrian’s CO, and it was Isrian who’d selected Thalmayr to command Fort Ghartoun when his own battalion was called forward. Stanohs and Isrian didn’t much care for each other, and the fact that Stanohs’ one thousand’s rank was only an acting one—that he was Isrian’s commander on the basis of less than three months’ seniority—hadn’t made the five hundred any fonder of him. Nor did the fact that they didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on the treatment of Sharonian POWs.

“I can trust Stanohs to do his damnedest to pull it off,” Harshu continued, “and once he finds them, a full battalion ought to be enough to convince them resistance would be hopeless. I hope so, anyway, because I really, really want those men—
all
of those men—back alive, and then I want them immediately deposed under verifier and their depositions handed directly to the IG and Judiciary General. I don’t want them coming across my desk at all, I don’t want to know what’s in them, I don’t want anyone to even think I had the opportunity to tweak them, and above all”—his expression turned as hard as his eyes—“I don’t want Two Thousand mul Gurthak even finding out they exist until backup copies are safely out of his reach on their way back to the Commandery.”

Toralk looked deep into his eyes, then nodded slowly. If those reports went to the IG and the Commandery, they’d inevitably spark a massive investigation of Harshu’s conduct and the Kerellian violations at which he’d winked. The consequences would be profound, yet he felt gratified—almost but not quite
pleased
—by the proof Mayrkos Harshu truly did intend to face his responsibility for those violations. It wouldn’t undo a single thing he’d done or allowed someone else to do, but it might go a
little
way towards restoring the Army’s honor.

But underneath any satisfaction he might feel in that regard there was a cold ripple of fresh concern as he considered Harshu’s final sentence. There was no legitimate reason for Harshu to keep mul Gurthak in the dark. The Mythalan was not simply his direct military superior but the designated governor in whose area of responsibility the conflict with Sharona had begun. Legally, Harshu was
required
to report something as serious as a mutiny to the local military and political authorities. That meant mul Gurthak, and as Klayrman Toralk thought about the carefully worded directives Nith mul Gurthak had sent forward after the offensive he’d ordered had kicked off, he found himself wondering just how thin the ice under the Expeditionary Force’s feet truly was.

* * *

“You’re sure about this, Lisaro?” Commander of Five Hundred Neshok tried and failed to disguise the intensity of his gaze as he looked at the noncommissioned officer of the other side of his desk.

“No question about it, Sir.” Lisaro Porath shrugged and stroked his thin mustache with an index finger. “I got it from Falmyn.”

Neshok pursed his lips thoughtfully. Shield Tyzar Falmyn was a clerk in Brychar Tamdaran’s cartography section. He stood well over six feet, with a powerful physique, but he was no more than nineteen years old, and while he was obviously devoted to Hundred Tamdaran, he was also a long way from home and more than a little homesick. “Home” in his case was the continent of Shalomar, but his Shalomar lay in New Tukoria, thirteen universes down-chain from Arcana. That universe had been settled just over a hundred years ago, primarily by colonists from the Hilmaran Kingdom of Tukoria, and his coppery skin and dark eyes reflected those ancestors. That heritage might also be one reason he’d become such a close friend of Lisaro Porath, given Porath’s Hilmaran birth back on Arcana itself. Aside from their ancestry, Porath and the youngster actually had very little in common, although Falmyn might be excused for not realizing that. Porath was almost twenty years older than he was, and it had no doubt been flattering—as well as comforting—to be taken under the more senior noncom’s wing, and Porath could be surprisingly charming when he put his mind to it.