Salute the Dark

It was a strange thought, but Thalric had been given a lot of thinking time recently, and he was making full use of it. It seemed to him that he had spent all the years of his life chasing about the Empire, or to points beyond, and always with a timetable weighing on his back. His service to the Empire had involved a constant race from one town to another. When he had been alone, he had been running ahead of the tide of imperial expansion, preparing the way so that its wheels might roll smoothly over the foreigners. When he had been in company, he had been constantly hauling on the leashes of his underlings, packing them off to where they were supposed to be as if they were reluctant children.

But now he could sit back and relax. The road to Capitas provided a reasonable vantage point to watch the Empire go by, and it was only a shame that there were bars between him and the view. A further irony, for he had ridden with these prison automotives several times before – boxy, ugly, furnace-powered vehicles that jolted and juddered their way across the imperial roads on solid wheels – but he had never before been a passenger in the back.

Tonight they had stopped at a waypoint, one of the hundreds of little imperial outposts that existed solely as a place to rest for messengers and other individuals travelling on the Emperor’s business. From overheard conversations, old habits dying hard, Thalric knew that they were now only a day away from Capitas, since they had made swift time on the imperial roads, and those leading to Capitas were always kept in the best repair.

In truth all the days since Myna had been days he was not entitled to. He should have been executed out of hand, but he realized that his crime was so immense, so unthinkably bold, that someone more than a mere major – the highest-ranking officer left in Myna – would now have to deal with him.

And the chequered course of his career had given him insight into the might of Rekef politics, and General Maxin especially. Maxin would undoubtedly want to see the man who had removed General Reiner from the equation. There would be no handshakes or medals, however, and Thalric was under no illusions about that. He had done Maxin a greater service than perhaps any of the man’s actual underlings, but it was still not something that could be rewarded. Maxin would conveniently be able to wash his hands of the affair, luxuriate in the death of his enemy while condemning the executioner. Thalric guessed that this unexpected good fortune would put the man into a sufficiently indulgent mood to at least talk to him. Irony the third: If I had killed Reiner on Maxin’s orders, he would be forced to have me killed before I got back, in case I spoke aloud. There was absolutely no link between them though: no incrimination that Thalric could substantiate. Reiner’s death was a gift dropped unexpectedly in Maxin’s lap, and therefore so much the more to be relished.

I am at least still alive, so I have that much. And in the Rekef they taught you to be resourceful.

He became aware that a soldier was peering in at him through one of the barred windows.

Thalric stared right back. ‘What?’ he demanded. His escort had remained oddly coy with him, staying clear and never speaking. Thalric guessed that this one man left on guard had seized his moment to satisfy his curiosity unobserved.

‘They say you killed a general,’ the man said, so quietly that Thalric had to hunch forwards to hear him. That took him to the end of the chain that led from the locked shackles on his neck and wrists to the interior wall of the wagon.

‘And a colonel too,’ Thalric replied calmly, seeing the man flinch at the… at the what? The sacrilege of it? Had the imperial hierarchy become a form of sacred mysticism now, like the mad obsessions of the Moth-kinden?

What is a religion, after all, but blind faith in something entirely unproven? Yes, that theory seemed to fit.

The soldier was still staring at him as though he had two heads, so Thalric clarified: ‘A Rekef general and a Rekef colonel, to be precise. What of it?’

‘Why?’ the man asked him, horror-struck.

‘Well, I’m a Rekef major myself. Perhaps I wanted a quick promotion,’ Thalric drawled. The utter shock on the wretched man’s face was quite enjoyable. ‘Come now, soldier, have you never wanted to kill your sergeant?’