David Drake - General 07 - The Reformer

The Reformer

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Maps

The Reformer

S.M. Stirling and David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-57860-X

Cover art by Gary Ruddell

Interior maps by Preston Wilson

First paperback printing, April 2000

Library of Congress Catalog Number 99-17126

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Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Brilliant Press

Printed in the United States of America

To Marjorie Stirling

NOT WITHOUT MY BROTHER!

. . .Suicide, Adrian thought.My brother can't possibly cut his way into Vanbert—riots, chaos, street

fighting—and get out with her.

probability of success 35%, ±7, Center said.

Raj's mental voice cut in:If you're going to stage a raid into a major city, riot and insurrection

make it a lot easier.

"If I help him . . . how much does that improve the chances?"

There was a long silence in his head; he was conscious, somehow, of Raj and Center speaking at a level

and speed beyond his comprehension.

Tell him, Center, Raj said at last.

probability of successful rescue attempt increases to 53%, ±5, with your participation, the new

weapons, and full support from raj whitehall and myself,Center said.however, this is an

unnecessary risk to you, our operative, and does not advance the prime objective to any

significant degree.

Raj's voice added with a flash of amusement:You're going to do it, son—I would, if I were you and

alive—and we hardly have a choice other than to give you all the help we can.

Adrian nodded and walked out into the bright morning light. "Fered," he shouted. "Gather the grenade

slingers. I need their help."

Also in this series:

The Forge

The Hammer

The Anvil

The Steel

The Sword

The Chosen

Warlord(Omnibus)

Conqueror(Omnibus)

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BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

Hammer's Slammers

The Tank Lords

Caught in the Crossfire

The Butcher's Bill

The Sharp End

Cross the Stars

The Belisarius series

with Eric Flint:

An Oblique Approach

In the Heart of Darkness

Destiny's Shield

Fortune's Stroke

The Tide of Victory

Independent Novels

and Collections

Birds of Prey

The Dragon Lord

Redliners

With the Lightnings

Lt. Leary, Commanding

(forthcoming)

Starliner

Ranks of Bronze

Lacey and His Friends

Mark II: The Military Dimension

All the Way to the Gallows

The Undesired Princess andThe Enchanted Bunny

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Lest Darkness Falland

To Bring the Light

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Enemy of My Enemy

(with Ben Ohlander)

BAEN BOOKS by S.M. STIRLING

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The Draka series

The Domination

Drakon

Drakas!

(forthcoming anthology)

with Jerry Pournelle:

Go Tell the Spartans

Prince of Sparta

Blood Feuds

Blood Vengeance

The Children's Hour

with James Doohan:

The Rising

The Privateer

The City Who Fought

(with Anne McCaffrey)

The Ship Avenged

Snowbrother

Saber and Shadow

(with Shirley Meier)

ONE

The High City of Solinga had been the core of the ancient town once; first a warlord's castle, then the

seat of the city council. Three centuries ago, when Solinga was capital of the Emerald League, several

million arnkets of the League's treasury had mysteriously found their way into a building program to turn it

into a shrine to the city's gods—to the Gray-Eyed Lady of the Stars, first and foremost.

Money well stolen and spent,Adrian Gellert thought, as the procession mounted the broad flight of

marble stairs that led to the plateau. Right hand tucked into the snowy folds of his robe, left hand holding

the gold-capped scroll that marked him as a Scholar of the Grove, he kept to the slow hieratic pace

suitable for a religious occasion. About him gulls swooped and shrieked; before him stood the

cream-white marble pillars, the golden roofs, the great forty-foot statue of the Maiden holding Her

bronze-tipped spear aloft to guide the mariners home. Behind him was the tarry workaday reality of

Solinga smelling of fish and offal and sea salt, narrow crooked streets and whitewashed walls peeling to

show the mud brick, tile roofs and only occasionally the walls and colonnades and courtyard gardens of

the rich. But here, amid the scent of incense and the light silvery tones of hand bells, was the ideal the

reality served.

We may have fallen from our forefathers' power, but this at least we can say—that we alone gave

godlike things to the gods,he thought with a melancholy pride that edged out the anxiety and grief of his

father's funeral.

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The procession halted as a priest confronted them, a blue-edged fold of his blanketlike mantle over his

head like a hood. "Why do you come to this holy place?"

"To render homage to the Goddess, in such seemly wise as is allowed to mortal men," Adrian's uncle

said, speaking as the eldest adult male of the Gellert clan. Besides, he was paying for the ceremony. "In

memory of Ektar Gellert, a free citizen of this city, that the Maiden may judge him kindly; and in the name

of his sons, Esmond and Adrian Gellert, that She may watch over them in the trials of life."

"Come, then, and do worship."

The procession resumed; Adrian, his brother Esmond, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, hangers-on, with

hired musicians following behind playing double-pipes and lyres. Pilgrims and priests and citizens making

sacrifice parted before them. Their sandals scuffed across the pavement, slabs of white-veined green

marble edged with gold. They passed the Plinth of Victories, a huge column set with the beaks of

captured warships; past the black-basalt fane of Wodep the War God, the pink and gold marble of Etat

the All-Father, and at last to the great raised rectangle of the Maiden's fane. It was a simple affair of giant

white columns, each ending in a riot of golden acanthus leaves. The roof was copper-green tiles, and all

around from pediment to architrave ran mosaic panels done in gold glass, lapis, amber and semiprecious

stones. Some showed the Goddess giving Her gifts to men—fire, the plow, the olive, ships, the art of

writing. Others were scenes from the Five Year Festival, the city's knights on their velipads, the Year

Maidens bringing the great embroidered shawl, the athletes naked in their iron pride.

"Follow, then," the priest said.

Hot charcoal fires burned in a pair of tall tripods of fretted bronze. Gravely, Esmond and Adrian strode

up the steps. Each took a silver bowl from the acolytes, pouring a stream of translucent grains into the

white-glowing bed. Fragrant smoke rose, bitter and spicy.

The others drew up a fold of their mantles to cover their heads as the priest raised his hands; the

Goddess' moon was visible over the horns of the roof, the other two moons being below the horizon at

this hour. Adrian's uncle led the sacrifice forward, a white-feathered greatbeast with four gilded horns

and a myrtle wreath around each. It came to the altar willingly enough—drugged,he thought: no sense in

courting a bad omen—and collapsed almost soundlessly as the broadaxe flashed home with a wet, heavy

thud on its neck.

Slowly, the tall ebony and silver doors of the temple slid open, rolling soundlessly on bronze bearings.

Adrian's mind reflexively murmured three citations and an epic poem on the building of the Maiden's

Temple; all of them described the effect, and all of them inaccurately as far as he knew. The cult image

came forth on brass rails set into the marble of the pronacs floor, gliding with oil-bath smoothness. It was

hidden in a tall cedarwood and silver shrine, emblazoned with the full moon on all sides. At a touch the

sides sank down to reveal a rock. Black, slagged and metallic-looking in spots with a trace of rust, a

metorite and very ancient.

Adrian Gellert had long since been trained in the precepts of the Grove; that God was Number and

Form, and all the lesser images merely avatars or imaginings of men unable to conceive of the One. God

did not need to Do, only to Be—but he still felt a trace of numinous awe as he extended his hand. And of

course a gentleman showed respect for the ancient cults.

"Scholar of the Grove—"

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Adrian held up the scroll in his left hand.

"Scholar of the Blade—"

His brother Esmond raised his sheathed sword.

"Receive the blessing of the Goddess, your patron."

Adrian closed his eyes and let the hand rest on the sacred rock. It was cool, cooler than it should have

been, and—

* * *

Where am I? Where am I?

He thought he screamed the words, but he had no lungs. No eyes, for surely even the darkest night at

the bottom of the silver mines of Flowerhill was brighter than this. He was nothing but Fear, adrift in a

world of midnight. Stroke. Heart attack.

Compose yourself,he thought sharply.Remember that anything that can happen, can happen toyou.

All men are initiates of the mysteries of death.

That was the comfort of philosophy, but a little hard to remember when one was only twenty-one.

Light. He blinked . . . and saw a room around him. Furnished in an alien style, strange padded furniture,

a fire burning in an enclosed brick space in one wall, tables and chairs of subtly foreign make. And a man

standing there, a dark man with bowl-cut black hair. Odd clothes, something like those worn in the

Western Isles, or even among the Southron barbarians; trousers, those marks of the savage, a curious

tailored coat of blue with tails dangling behind. A curved sword and a holster with something rather like a

carpenter's tool were lying on one table.

Either I have gone mad, or something very strange has happened,Adrian thought. He was

conscious of his own terror, but it was distant, muted. He looked down at himself, and he was there

again—not in the snowy draped robe of ceremony, but in an everyday tunic, with inkhorn and pen case

slung from his belt.

"Adrian Gellert," the oddly-dressed man said; he spoke good Emerald, with a hint of a soft accent.

"What is it that you desire?"

It was the manner of the Academy to teach with questions. He closed his lips on his own enquiries, on

the fleeting ephemeral desires of every day, on the anxieties of his father's untimely death. That question

had asked fortruth . Perhaps there was truth in the old stories of Divine intervention in the lives of men.

"I want toknow ," he blurted.

The dark man nodded.

* * *

"An excellent dinner. Many thanks, Samul," Esmond said, from his couch across the table.

Adrian nodded and murmured something. His brother-in-law Samul Mcson had been a catch for his

sister Alzabeta. A catch of sorts; the Mcson family was important in the dye trade and had a fish-sauce

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works whose products were sold by name as far away as Vanbert, the Confederacy capital. He'd never

liked the man, and the sneer on the heavy fleshy features showed the feeling was returned. Also there

was honey-glaze sauce on the front of his robe, which was rose-colored silk from the Western Isles.

Probably brought back on one of Father's ships, he thought, smiling and nodding at his surly relative

by marriage.

The servants—Mcson retainers as well, since the Gellert retainers were dispersed—cleared away the

fruits and pastries and cheeses; the dinner had been the traditional seven courses, from nuts to apples.

Restrained, at least by Confederacy standards; the simple tastes of the antique Emeralds only survived in

Cadet training and the Academy's dining halls. The broken meats and scraps would be distributed at the

door to the city's poor, who gathered whenever the garlanded head of a greatbeast was hung over a

door to mark a household that had made sacrifice.

Adrian dipped water into his wine and poured a small libation on the mats set out on the tile floor. He

suppressed a stab of unphilosophic anger at his father for dying at such an inopportune time; the business

had been going well enough, but the capital was all in goodwill, contacts and ongoing trade, and neither

of the Gellert sons were inclined to take up the shipping business to the Western Isles. Their father

wouldn't have heard of it, anyway; what had all his ignoble labor been for, if not to buy his sons the

leisure to be scholars and athletes, gentlemen of Solinga, greatest of the Emerald cities? But he'd died too

early. By themselves the physical assets were barely enough to cover the debts, dower their youngest

sister and provide a modest but decent living for their mother. The younger Gellerts would have to cut

short their education and find their own way in the world.

He looked around the room; two dozen guests reclining on the couches, some of them rented for the

occasion. It was the men's summer dining room, open to the garden on one side, with old-fashioned

murals of game and fish and fruit on the walls. Scents of rose and jasmine blew in from the darkness of

the courtyard, and the sweet tinkle of water in a fountain. Most of the guests were older men, friends or

business acquaintances of his father. Esmond lay on one elbow across from him, his mantle falling back,

exposing the hard muscle of his chest and arm, tanned to the color of old beechwood. It made the

corn-gold of his hair more vivid as it spilled down his back; a rare color for an Emerald, and the only

thing besides blue eyes he and his brother had in common physically.

I'm weedy, in fact,Adrian thought. Short, at least, and only middling competent in the athletic part of the

two-year course of Cadet training every well-born Solingian youth had to take when he turned eighteen.

Once it had been preparation for military service, but that had ceased to be important long ago, in his

great-grandfather's time, when the Confederacy's armies had conquered the Emerald lands.

The servants brought in another two jugs of wine, yard-high things with double looping handles and

pointed bottoms. They splashed into the great bulbous mixer; light from the oil lamps flickered on the

cheerful feasting scene painted across its ruddy pottery. Not much like tonight's memorial dinner; no

flute-girls or dancers or acrobats here, since it wouldn't be seemly. His father hadn't hired such for most

of his parties.These things are for men with no conversation. He smiled slightly, remembering the

deep gravel voice and the face weathered by twenty years of sea weather and spray.

"Excuse me," he murmured. Three parts wine to one of water now, and the talk grew louder.

The garden was warm and still, starlight and two of the moons showing the brick pathways between

beds of herbs and flowers. Not very large, only fifty paces on a side, but tall cypress trees stood around

the perimeter wall, throwing pools of stygian blackness. The pool and fountain shone silver; he could see

the mouths and tentacles of the ornamental swimmers breaking the surface, hoping for a few crumbs of

bread as he passed. Down towards the end of the garden was a little pergola, an archway of withes

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covered in a flowering vine, with a stone seat beneath and a mask of the Goddess in Her aspect as

patron of wisdom set in the wall behind.

The most private place in the house.Outside the womens' rooms, and from the noise coming from

those, the female side of the party was getting more lively than the mens'. He'd often come to this bench

to read, meditate and think.

"If you wish to speak—if you are more than the imaginings of my mind—then speak," he murmured.

it is not necessary to vocalize your thoughts,the cold, relentless voice in his head replied. It felt . . .

heavy, as if it were packing more meaning into the forms than the words could properly carry.merely

articulate them internally.

He did so, not an easy task . . . but then, he'd trained himself to read without speaking, or even moving

his lips, an uncommon skill even among scholars.

Who are you?

We,the other voice replied, the voice of the strange dark man.I am Raj Whitehall, and my . . .

companion is Center. I'm . . . I was a man, on another world. Center is a computer.

Despite the utter strangeness, Adrian's dark brows drew together at the last word.Computer . It wasn't

one he was familiar with, but in the Scrolls of the Lady's Prophet there was a remote cognate . . .

A daemonic spirit?he thought.Interesting. I thought those superstition. And you are a ghost, you

say?

A mental sigh.Not exactly. Let me start at the beginning. Human beings are not native to this

world . . .

An hour later he was sweating. "I . . . understand, I think," he muttered, and looked up at the starry sky.

Other worlds, wholeworldsattendant on the stars! The stars are suns! It was more radical than even

the speculations of the ancient Wisdom Lovers, the ones who'd spent their time trying to measure the sun

or the shape of the earth, before modern philosophy turned to questions of language and virtue. The scale

of time involved staggered him; the vision of men coming to this world of Hafardine in great ships of the

aether, falling out among themselves, tumbling down into savagery after wars fought with weapons that

had eerie parallels to the most ancient legends.

"Why?" he went on. "Why me?"

Because, lad, you're a man who wants to find out the truth of things,Raj's voice said.This world

has gotten itself on a wrong road, and we need a man to set it right. So that, in due time,

Hafardine may take its place within the Federation of Man.

Adrian gave a shaky laugh. "Me, a world-bestrider like Nethan the Great?" he said. "You should have

picked my brother Esmond; he's the warrior in our family, the one who burns to bring back the days of

the Emerald League."

not a conqueror,the slow, heavy voice of the . . . machine? continued:a teacher. although elements

of collective violence may well be necessary to disturb the established order on this world.

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"What's wrong with the established order?" he said, curiously. "Apart from those vulgarian bumpkins

from the south ruling the Emerald lands, that is."

observe:

The world vanished, as it had in the High City by the temple of the Maiden. Again he saw Hafardine as it

had been just after the fall of the Federation's machine civilization. Little villages of farmers scattered

through the valleys and plains of the figure-eight-shaped main continent and along the coasts of the

islands; bands of hunters in the vast forests of the mountains and the southlands. Some of the villages

grew. He gasped as he recognized the great cities of the Emeralds in their earliest days, their rise to

greatness, the long struggle with the Lords of the Isles and the founding of the Emerald League. His heart

beat faster as he saw Solinga in the days of her glory, as the deathless beauty of the High City rose from

the dreams and hands of men. Then the long, terrible civil wars, city against city, the League against the

Alliance. Solinga's defeat that solved nothing, and then the Confederation's armies moving in from the

south.

observe. the world as it now exists.

A view from above, first. The Confederacy's wall across the narrow waist of the continent, separating

the barbarian southlands from the land of cities and law to the north. The estates of the Confederacy's

nobles expanding across valley and plain; Vanbert growing from a straggling shepherd's camp to a city

far vaster than any in the Emerald lands. He could sense years passing.

the maximum-probability result of a continuation of present trends.

Images . . .

. . . armies clashed, both sides in the armor and equipment of the Confederacy. Behind them a city

burned . . .

. . . a view down a street. It was the buzzing heat of noon, and nothing moved; a fine broad paved street,

arrow-straight, obviously in the Confederacy's heartlands. A body lay in one gutter, the exposed skin

purple and swollen. Flies buzzed around it. A handcart came slowly down the pavement, drawn by men

with cloth masks around their faces and more of the swollen bodies piled high behind them.

"Bring out your dead!" one of the men called. "Bring out your dead!"

. . . men in shabby tunics and women in drab gowns gathering as a proclamation was read from a plinth

in some anonymous farm town. The plump official droned on, and on, some sort of edict setting prices

and wages: "And the price of leather harness for a carriage velipad shall be no more than one

hundred twenty-five New Arnkets, of which one in four shall be paid to meet the needs of the

State, in cash or kind. Sandals shall be no more than. . ."

. . . slaves worked on a hillside, dragging boxes of earth on ropes looped over their shoulders; he could

see the cheap sleazy fabric of their tunics, hear them grunt as they tipped the earth into a deep gully that

slashed across a sloping wheatfield. It began to rain, and muddy water torrented down the cut in the field,

washing away the earth a hundred times faster than the slaves could hope to haul it back.

. . . Vanbert itself, capital of the Confederacy and the known world. But it was on fire, greasy black

smoke rising to hide the outlines of temple and palace and tenement block. Down one street a

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noblewoman ran, the silks of her gown trailing behind her. Behind her rode a Southron, a barbarian in

greasy furs, his long yellow braids swaying with the gallop of his velipad. He leaned sideways in the

saddle, one arm out to scoop the fleeing woman up and a gap-toothed grin on his face. A priestess'

necklace of amber and gold bounced on his bare, painted chest.

. . . Vanbert again, but it took a moment for his eyes to recognize it. Trees covered the ruins,old trees. A

few small fields stood, among log longhouses. A woman scattered grain to chickens, and a lean bristly pig

rooted along the outskirts of a fly-buzzing midden.

Adrian gasped as the vision released him. Raj's voice spoke in his mind:Your world is trapped in a

cycle of war, empire, decline and war, he said.It could repeat itself indefinitely, the only

difference that each cycle falls further and climbs less as the land itself becomes less fertile.

this is what you must prevent,Center's passionless tones went on.we have waited seven hundred

years for a man such as you.

"Me?" Adrian squeaked. "Why not my brother Esmond?"

this world does not require a warrior,Center said.it needs . . . wisdom.

"Philosophy?" Adrian asked, bewildered. "Rhetoric? Yes, they're the arts of civilization, but our thinkers

and speakers are the finest that have ever lived. How canI —"

Raj cut him off.I'll explain; the concept wasn't very easy for me, either, back on Bellevue—back

on the world where I was born, he said.It's called "technological progress."

Adrian felt a familiar excitement; it was like the first time he grasped that this syllogism thing the lecturer

was talking aboutmeant something, or understood justwhy the angles of a right-angled triangle had to

add up in a certain way—the feeling of real knowledge, like a conduit to the mind of God.

"Tell me," he whispered.

* * *

"Way!" the soldier's voice rang harsh and loud. "Make way!"

Adrian and Esmond reined their velipads to the side of the highway. It was a Confederation road, built a

century ago to nail down the Confederacy's control of the coastal river valleys to the north. Twenty paces

broad, ditched, and paved with hexagonal blocks of volcanic rock, built to last for the ages—Adrian had

seen one undercut by a flash flood once, and it was five feet thick. A layer of fist-sized stones in lime

mortar, a layer of sand, another of mortar with smaller rocks, then a layer of mortar and gravel, and then

the paving blocks . . .

Hobnailed sandals crashed down in unison as the battalion came down the center of the roadway in a

column of fours, legs moving like a single centipede.There goes the thing that ended the glory of the

Emerald cities, Adrian thought.Out of the corner of his eye Adrian could see Esmond's hands tightening

on the reins, then relaxing with an effort of will, one going forward to stroke the feathery bronze-colored

scales of his mount's neck. Their ancestors had fought in dense-packed squares, each man locking

shields with his neighbor and thrusting with the long spear. The Confederates . . . Adrian focused on one

soldier, conscious of a very slight feeling of pressure behind his eyes, more mental than physical. Raj was

taking an interest.

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David Drake - General 07 - The Reformer

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