Soldier at the Door(171)
“How?” Brisack asked, panic tightening in his chest when Mal mentioned the children. “You just said we can’t get him a message. No, we need to come up with a new strategy for breaking Perrin Shin. And since he’s manned the towers, I don’t know either how we can get someone in to reach his family or even the mother-in-law.”
“All right, Brisack,” Mal said smoothly. “Since you’re so averse to anything involving his children, there’s someone else we can get.” His voice was thick with planning. “Someone else close to him whose death would devastate the great Perrin Shin and bring him to his knees.”
Brisack pointed at him. “I already told you—no. It’s too risky. That would be crossing the line from tragedy to outrage, and I refuse to be found in that pit with you!”
“It’s the only way, Doctor. Nothing else has worked. But this will,” Mal said calmly.
Too calmly for Brisack’s tastes.
“I refuse to be a part of that! No!”
“Fine,” Mal shrugged with a movement that suggested easiness but meant business. “I have someone who will. Someone else with a plan, and with men readied, who will not fail me.”
Brisack stood up abruptly. “It’s your grave, Nicko!”
“I doubt it,” he smiled thinly as the doctor stormed out of the library.
A moment later Mal said, “Gadiman.”
A door that led to a back hallway opened into the darkened room.
“Did you hear?” said Mal, not bothering to look in the direction of the quiet squeak of hinges.
“Oh, I heard!” said a voice that sounded rather like a weasel that just happened upon a trapped warren of rabbits. “I told you he’d fail!”
“Yes, you did,” Mal intoned, but even Gadiman wasn’t going to annoy him tonight. “Tell your men to get ready. The Guarders are about to strike their most shocking and focused blow. Ah, the world will never be the same . . .”
---
Barker woke up and stretched lazily. He looked around at the neighborhood. It wasn’t his. He sniffed the cold fog that rested on Edge that morning. Without another thought he stood up and started trotting towards the main road before the sun rose.
“Whoa, look at the size of that dog!”
“I know whose that is—that’s Major Shin’s dog. Sniffer. Or Digger. Drooler . . . something like that.”
Emerging from the fog were two soldiers, just coming off duty from patrolling the village. Barker continued to trot, realizing that while they were dressed in blue, they didn’t smell like the Major.
“Should we walk him home?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Might as well. His home is along the way to the fort. But I get the feeling he’s walking us home. Whiner?” he tried, but the dog didn’t look at the soldiers trying to keep up with him.
“Certainly seems to know where he’s going, doesn’t he? The major always lets him run loose?”
The other soldier shrugged. “He has a fence around his garden. Not a very tall one, but certainly not something this dog could jump. Jumper?” he tried again to guess the dog’s name.
Barker paid no attention to the soldiers. He was finding his way home. He turned down one road, then cut across to another alley, with the soldiers right behind him.
“That’s got to be the most determined and quiet dog I’ve ever seen,” one soldier said. “His name certainly isn’t Barker, then.”
Barker’s black floppy ears twitched slightly as he continued home.
---
Corporal Zenos walked into Edge’s Inn and smiled at the older man standing behind the bar. Since it was the middle of the afternoon, most of the tables in the eating area were emptied, just waiting for a soldier in need of a snack.
“Let me guess, Corporal—pie?” the man asked with a smile.
Zenos chuckled. “I’m that predictable, am I?”
“I value my steady customers, son. I count on you being predictable!”
Zenos grinned. “I’ve got a short race I need to run later today, so I thought I’d get a little something to ensure a win. Is Mrs. Peto in?”
“I am, dear!” called a happy voice from the kitchen behind a partially closed door. She peeked out of the door, her round cheeks smeared with bits of flour as if she had been brushing it off, but only added more instead. “What are you in the mood for today, Corporal?”
Shem pondered that for a moment, waiting for the serving girl to make her way past him. She was deliberately slow about it, as she always was, bumping him in a purposeful sort of way.
It was because she was afflicted with a severe case of cleavage that Zenos kept his eyes on the ceiling as if in concentration.