The Chained Adept (1-4)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Rather than go up one side of the unloaded wagon column and back again, Penrys decided to drive straight to the head of the line and start a hundred yards in front. From there she could go back along one side of the spine, probing the goods on the ground in their two parallel lines.

It was tricky—she had to do the supplies a hundred yards before she got to them, and the wagons on either side as she passed, and it was hard to remember which of the piles of supplies she had already examined.

The first explosion, however, woke her right up, her heart pumping in recollection of the night before.

Her expectation had been that the goods were most at risk, like the mirror, but it was a wagon which blew apart initially. She stopped to let Chang’s outriders identify whose it had been and retreat from the dangerous neighborhood before she went forward. And she was glad she’d waited, because the wagon beside it, already riddled with wood fragments from the first one, went up next.

The driver focused on reassuring their horse that these loud noises were nothing to be alarmed about, and Penrys straightened up and concentrated.

They managed a few more yards before the first supply load boomed into the air, well ahead of them.

Their progress down the line was slow and tedious, and the damage in their wake was substantial—four wagons, and five loads. It was too dark to tell just what could be salvaged from the sabotage. Well, at least it was balanced. Would have been smarter to target more wagons, force them to leave supplies behind. Guess they didn’t think the wagons and supplies would be separated.

What if that Rasesni spy had triggered all of this instead of just fleeing? Why didn’t he? The only reason not to would be to trigger them later, when the surprise had more value.

Maybe last night was lucky, despite the cost. If they’d had to face all of this, unwarned…

She thought of the deaths that might have resulted, as they reached the end of the wagon column, and was more reconciled to the disaster of the previous night.

One of Chang’s outriders rode up to her as she clambered down to the ground. “He wants to see you.”

She stifled a yawn unsuccessfully. “Doesn’t he ever sleep?”

A fleeting grin flashed over his face. “Not tonight. We’ll be off tomorrow, mid-morning, after we re-load all the supplies. Those pack mules will earn their keep, for the leftovers.”

Penrys limped into the command tent, silently cursing new boots and long days. Her stomach rumbled at the smell of roasted beef, and her head turned involuntarily to a table along the tent wall, covered haphazardly with wooden platters and used metal dishes.

Chang, behind his table, noted her entrance and waved her over to the food. She seized one used dish, emptied its scraps onto another one, and carved fresh bits of beef onto it, with some slices off the loaf to eat them with. She dumped the contents of one stoneware mug into another, and looked for pitchers. The empty ones smelled of stale beer as she passed them by, but the water pitchers were hardly touched, so she filled the mug, drained it on the spot, and filled it again.

She found an vacant seat, placed the mug carefully on the ground beneath it, and balanced the plate awkwardly on her lap, the arm in its sling not much use in keeping it steady.

Chang left her alone for several minutes to let her wolf down the food. Her shoulder still ached from her tumble the night before, but her appetite had returned. As she slowed down, she glanced up tardily to find his eyes on her.

She used the last bit of bread to wipe the grease off her lips, and swallowed.

“Sorry there was so much damage, Commander-chi,” she said. “I still have to deal with that one thing, that charm. Could it wait until daylight?”

He held up a hand to stop her and turned to the man who had been sharing the thin end of his table, a discarded plate shoved away from the sheets of paper in front of him. She’d seen his face repeatedly since last night—dark and broad, middle-aged, and sparsely bearded.

“This is Tun Jeju, my Notju, Intelligence Master,” Chang told her. “He’s been running the interrogations—everyone whose property was compromised.”

She tipped her head to him. “You must have been busy today.”

He smiled slightly. “We’ve discovered some very interesting things while you’ve been turning the camp upside down.”

She rolled her eyes and tried not to belch while he continued.

“About half of the losses are not accounted for by the owners of the property or the drivers of the wagons. That is… not unexpected, if these are small devices, easy to hide.”

He paused. “But there’s a common thread running through several of the others. The first one you triggered, the soldier with the juk, the charm?”

She nodded.

“Well, two of the men in the destroyed tent also had similar charms they left there. And the list of items for two of the others, the laundry supplies and one of the food dumps, included charms, stashed there by the workers.”

“That’s awfully suggestive,” Penrys said.

He lifted a finger. “There’s more. We spoke at length to the rest of the herdsmen, as well as the lakju, the Horsemaster. When your man fled last night, all he had was what was on him. When we went through the possessions he left behind, we found more of those charms.”

“But I examined everything he abandoned first, before I did the main camp! Did I miss those?”

Chang interjected. “When we’re done here tonight, I want you to go look again. We’ve pulled them all out together and taken them a safe distance away.”

“But…” She stopped and stared off into space as something occurred to her. “Maybe I didn’t miss them. Maybe they aren’t… prepared yet.”

She focused on Tun Jeju. “I need to see everything he had, every scrap. He may have had tools and other things.”

“That will be your job in the morning, after you confirm they’re not dangerous,” Chang said. “We had your trooper who carried the charm in his pocket walk it back to the same place, separate from the others, so everything suspicious is in one general location. It’s under guard for the night.

“It’ll take most of the morning to set things back in order and prepare to move forward. I want you to take that time to tell me what you can find out.”

“All right,” she said, slowly. “What did that trooper tell you? Was the Rasesni giving those charms to others?”

Tun Jeju said, “Selling them when he could, giving them away when he couldn’t. We don’t know how many.” He looked at her. “The owners said he told them they had to wear it on their person for the charm to work, day and night.”

Penrys felt the blood drain from her face. “So he sold them death.”

She turned to Chang. “I believe we were wrong to think of this as a trap for Zandaril—that was accidental. This was a long, slow, thorough seeding of destruction throughout the expedition, waiting for an outside trigger, by the saboteur himself, I should think.”

“Yes, we’ve come to that conclusion ourselves,” Chang said. “The cost has been high—three percent of my men, the loss of some of our supplies and transport—but much less than it might have been, and not when the enemy planned it.”

“Why didn’t he trigger it all when he fled?” she asked.

“I’m sure he thought he could return and do it later. There was no reason to think we’d find any of his work, and now it’s too late for him.”

“If we’d known what it was, exactly, we could have saved some of the destruction today,” she said.

“Better to be sure, and no more men lost,” Chang replied. “And morale is back where it should be, now that the men have seen the threat removed for themselves.”

She could feel his confidence. A military leader’s answer—men first, logistics second. Merchants figured costs and benefits differently. And wizards? They interchanged knowledge and power so frequently they forgot which was which. Men hardly counted at all.