[size=150]Chapter 16: Adding Things Up[/size]
___Portunista’s throat choked.
___She couldn’t speak. She barely breathed.
___Here she had been, blundering round in the back of nowhere—and at any moment Seifas could have given her what she’d been searching for!
___She tasted blood; and forced away her irrational anger, swallowing and relaxing. This was not worth chewing her lips to a froth.
___Her first impulse had been to peel back Seifas’ skin—she had also learned a few new jottings from Gemalfan’s disciplex, and wanted to test a theory of hers.
___But killing the juacuar would serve her nothing. She needed the man—he was an edge that few of her peers could match.
___Besides, she didn’t really doubt that he would help her; though whether to win, or merely survive…?
___Portunista wanted to win.
___She exhaled, as gently as she had inhaled, watching the deadly man who crouched on the other side of the maps…his eyes stayed locked with hers, his arms crossed lightly upon his knees. She watched him easily breathe…and knew that she would never intimidate him—not this way.
___And from the corners of her eyes, she watched the other men, watching her watch him…waiting to see what she would do…
___“Perhaps it is just as well,” allowed Portunista. “I might indeed have failed, not knowing the things I know, if you had told me earlier. What matters now, is now I know.”
___Possibly not the most coherent statement she ever had uttered…! But, she was pleased to see relief from Seifas, as he settled back onto his heels, with a nod. Perhaps he had been wondering how many quivering fragments she would blast him into.
___Well, she thought…he should!
___“Watching you two flare your nostrils, is very entertaining,” Gaekwar drawled. “But if you won’t be killing each other, I have things to do.”
___“I suppose,” admitted Portunista thinly, “I had better hear what you may know, Seifas, before I finalize my plans. Please,” she added, with an attempt at a smile.
___So, Seifas told how he and nine other men had been recruited from Wye, a border fort between Lemalsamac and Noi.
___“As far as I could tell,” he said, “the magus picked the other nine without regard for who they were as long as they seemed healthy.”
___“Didn’t much care who he got…” Gaekwar stroked his shaven chin. “Except for you. I don’t buy it. Something isn’t adding up…”
___“Too few,” Othon rumbled. Everyone turned to him. “Too few,” he insisted confidently.
___Seifas shrugged. “His tower wasn’t the size of a keep. And he barracked us on the bottom floor. Then again,” he pondered Othon’s implications, “the dell in which the Tower stands, provides at least two klips of clear diameter field. We set a couple of outside-roving pickets—I was one myself—but certainly not enough to properly cover the treeline.”
___“Too few,” Othon repeated, nodding once in satisfaction.
___“What was your squad expected to do?” Portunista settled into place, her anger now forgotten. “Why exactly were you there?”
___“As a garrison. ‘For mundane threats,’ as Qarfax said.”
___“Hmph!” Dagon interjected. “What ‘mundane’ kind of threats would bother a Cadrist?!”
___“Brigades and their scouts,” Portunista mused. “Or maybe bandits. As you can see on the map,” she briefly flung her hand, “the area is remote. Demimen hordes? Giants?”
___“Exactly,” Dagon nodded. “Even a ‘juacuar’,” he slightly sneered, “isn’t good enough to kill a brigade—or a horde, or anything else like that—and for bloody sure, a squad of faceless mercs would not be tipping the scales! And does anyone else remember what was going on, that Qarfax might have been specially worried about?”
___“Plenty!” Portunista snorted. “Cadrists had been launching wars against each other for nearly a year and—”
___“Dying,” Othon darkly finished. He slid his eyes to her; she yanked her line of thought to a halt.
___“Disappearing, yes,” she nodded. “Aside from killing each other, too.”
___“Like the do-gooding mouthpieces.” Dagon didn’t look at Seifas, but the man of the Guacu-ara knew at whom that barb was aimed.
___“No!” retorted the juacuar, although he quickly reined his irritation. “All the klerosa vanished at once; the Cadrists began to disappear later, in a progression. Yes?”
___Portunista nodded. “That seems right.”
___“Someone who kept his ears clean, would have heard enough to know the difference,” Seifas added as an aside. ___Gaekwar blinked and Portunista tilted her head; but Dagon jerked and reflexively rubbed an ear. Seifas smiled.
___“So, did Qarfax disappear on you?” Gaekwar asked.
___“In a way…” Seifas shuddered.
___He told how they had found the magus, on that final night.
___Dagon whistled lowly through his teeth. “So, we could end up burned to ash, hm? I hear the coast is lovely in the autumn…”
___“Clothes.” Othon squinted as he thought the matter through.
___“Right!” Gaekwar snapped his fingers. “You found his clothes and things piled on the floor, you said? Around the ash?” ___Seifas nodded. “So he hadn’t moved,” the ‘cowherd’ mused, his drawl receding as it often did when deep in thought. “Scorching? Damage from smoke? No,” Gaekwar murmured, as Seifas shook his head. “So he didn’t burn to death—not in any conventional sense. Talk to us, Portunista.”
___“Well…there are several methods…” But she trailed to silence, unable to give a fitting suggestion.
___“So—let’s take a tally,” Gaekwar resumed his ironic drawl. “We’re talking about a powerful Cadrist…right?”
___He flicked a glance at Portunista, who nodded: “Like many Cadre members, he was a researcher. Into principles of superspace, as I remember the rumors. Very strong in Yrthe and Watyr: he wrote a textbook we were taught from.”
___“Superspace,” Dagon muttered, “hm…”
___“Rogues.”
___Othon let the deadly word slip into the chilling air.
___Outside, the sun was setting. Seifas could smell the autumn, in the back of his mind. Earlier on that afternoon, he had been praying for its arrival.
___Now he felt decay, and death.
___“Did you see any sign of Roguents, Seifas?” Portunista asked; with perhaps a tremor to her voice…
___The juacuar shrugged once more. “No. But how would I know? We didn’t find a signature nailed in his entrails on the ceiling. Yet, Qarfax certainly died,” he emphasized in understatement.
___“Oh, this gets better and better…” Dagon sighed, with equal irony.
___“So…” Gaekwar cleared his throat. “We have a powerful Cadrist,” he started again, “who can probably mulch a horde of demimen, if he puts his mind to it; and who also feels reasonably safe in mucking around with the fabric of space. He hires one very good fighter, and a passel of mediocre ones, as some protection above and beyond whatever geegaws he’s woven around the area. Nevertheless, whatever he was afraid of still apparently whomped him, not even bothering Seifas and the others. Yet Portunista thinks we oughta traipse on out there anyway—which not only means we’re risking our arms being handed to us by maybe a ticked-off Rogue; but also we have to worry about being zorched by anything trip-wired into the place!” And he inhaled dramatically. “Did I miss anything?”
___“It might not have been a Rogue!” protested Portunista. “The Cadrists were fighting one another, remember?”
___“Then why should we go?” asked Dagon, not unreasonably. “They’ll have looted his place already!”
___“Clothes,” grunted Othon again.
___“Exactly,” nodded Portunista. “Whatever killed the magus didn’t kill you, Seifas, or your squad. You did find everything still in place, untouched, yes?” He nodded grudgingly. “Something, or someone, strong enough to kill Qarfax so easily, hardly would run and hide at hearing you and your squad coming up the stairs. Therefore, either it only wanted to kill him, or else to kill him and then get one or two particular things: because it left the other things behind. I say odds are good, that we’ll still find them there. And if the Tower has been looted already, then someone will have probably set off any traps, and we shall be quite safe.”
___“On the other hand,” Dagon wryly remarked, “this would seem to mean that Cadrists didn’t kill him—they would want his raw materials and equipment for themselves, wouldn’t they? At least the ‘geegaws’ from his body, right? So…” he finished, “do we feel better, or worse?”
___“Worse,” muttered Othon, shaking his head.
___But Seifas sighed, for he could see the light in Portunista’s eyes. She was looking beyond these problems, to the obvious reward.
___She might one day be like Qarfax!
___Of course, thought Seifas, that had not helped Qarfax…
Next chapter
) for a new author, I found a stopping place far short of Point B.
) Nor are they likely to grow much more in the next several weeks before winter while randomly wandering the hinterlands hoping to stumble on other small forces randomly wandering the hinterlands.
