Fourth Vector

Chapter 13: Surrender

Author's Note: There's a scene of intimacy in the following chapter between two women. If that's not your thing, please skip over it. Enjoy.

*****

The envoy was tired of running.

Swabians did

not

run yet here he was fleeing the camp of the

Muthada

in a desperate bid to put distance between himself and their new clan chief. Berimund resisted the urge to grind his teeth. Whoever this Jack Easterbrook character was, he'd put a significant dent in Lord Avila's plans. Now that one of their major sources of slave revenue had dried up, it was time to seek greener pastures. Or at very least, come up with a contingency plan.

It was for that reason that he made all possible haste out of the camp during the attack by the Javans, hiding under the bodies of two dead men until long after the new clan chief had departed the scene. The smell was horrific, and the vacant expression on the dead Andalucian faces seemed to burn its way into his brain.

He suffered that treatment no longer than he needed to. After the

Muthada

had departed with Easterbrook, Berimund returned to the camp to scope out the scene. Of course the old clan chief Adulis would be dead; it was the only way Easterbrook could have taken over as the new leader. However, even the members of his inner circle were dead too, chief among them his cousin Bathal who had been Berimund's primary liaison. Without any of the old leadership, his mission was in serious jeopardy, and he needed guidance on his next move.

It was for that reason that he had made his way back to the slaver city of Methusa, the site of the largest slave market in all of Andalucia. It was also the scene of where the majority of the slaves brought into the country landed, before being sold out to the various clans—a vital link in the plan of his overlord. There he could expect to find Adalbert, Lord Avila's younger cousin, and the mastermind behind the two-way slave trade that they'd orchestrated to fill the Swabian coffers for war.

Upon reaching the city, Berimund had begun to relax. His first meeting with Easterbrook had gone far from well, and he wouldn't put it past the man to seek retribution should Berimund fall into his hands. Now the reports from the central highlands were coming in that Easterbrook had not one but two clans in his possession, a dangerous combination for not only himself but his enemies. Berimund wouldn't breathe easily until he was far enough away not to worry about it.

Or he had a stronger host.

He made his way through the city in the midmorning hours, looking for one house in particular, the residence of Adalbert. Grander than the houses in its immediate surroundings, it still wasn't saying much when compared to the relative poverty and shabbiness of the entire city. Such a residence would barely be fit for the steward of a poor lord in Swabia, yet Andalucia was the land of backwardness. Such quarters would have to do to fit the circumstances.

Finding the door, Berimund rapped on it four times in quick succession and then three more in long, drawn out knocks. It was a code that the listener on the other side would readily recognize, a form of secret greeting that could only mean another Swabian was on the other side. Predictably enough, a small slot opened in the door, and a familiar pair of eyes greeted him.

"Berimund," said the sentry. "What are you doing back here so soon?"

"The situation has changed. Give me entry so I can update our lord's cousin," said Berimund quickly, watching to see if anyone nearby was paying them too much attention.

The eyes on the other side of the door blinked at him several times before the peep hole was slammed shut. After a few more tinkers of the door, it opened up hesitantly without Berimund being able to see who was behind it. He quickly shuffled in like he'd done a hundred times before and locked it behind him. Only then could he see the sentry fully who then proceeded to direct him to the office of Adalbert just down the hall.

Berimund rushed to the office, immediately finding the younger cousin of Lord Avila sitting behind his own desk. He was not much more than a year older than Berimund and it showed. His hair didn't have any signs of silver, and his face was unwrinkled even if it did carry a few scars. He was dressed similarly to Berimund, wearing a dark gray tunic, so much that dark gray seemed to be the national color of Swabia. Adalbert was reclined in his chair, a cigar resting against a tray on his desk, smoking.

"Berimund, what are you doing back?" questioned Adalbert with a raised eyebrow. "I hadn't expected to see you any time soon."

"The situation has changed, sir," said Berimund with a deep bow. "The

Muthada

have a new clan chief. Adulis is dead."

Adalbert pursed his lips. "What of it? Make the same deal with the new clan chief."

"That won't work," said Berimund while shaking his head. "I've met the new man. He's a foreigner to these lands. Not even from this side of the world. We got off to a bad start."

"Define 'bad start' Berimund."

"It seems someone has been feeding him misinformation about our people and our country. Our meeting was quite tense and nearly came to a fight."

"You almost started a fight in the tent of the clan chief?" asked Adalbert. "My cousin would be most displeased to hear that."

Berimund's eyes went wide. Displeasure on the part of Lord Avila was a chief cause of death back in Swabia. Many didn't disappoint the lord twice, since you usually lost your head after the first time.

"My apologies, sir. Nothing came from it but the sentiment was left lacking. I don't believe this man to be someone we could work with."

"That would be most unfortunate for you then, Berimund. It was your job to secure the

Muthada

for our part of the agreement. Their money for the purchase of slaves is crucial to our plan," said Adalbert.

Berimund gulped heavily. "It gets worse, sir."

"How could it possibly get any worse than this report?"

"This new clan chief, this foreigner Jack Easterbrook, has the leadership of another clan. I've gotten reliable reports that he's now in charge of the

Numratha

as well. As you know, Yusef of the

Numratha

had a blood alliance with Adulis."

"And yet, he still was not part of our plan. The

Numratha

weren't purchasing our slaves as part of the deal so who their clan chief is makes no matter to us. Why is this bad for us?"

Berimund pursed his lips. "This Easterbrook is causing a disturbance over a good portion of the country. I have information that he's been pursued by many clans now that he has the leadership of two. As you know, the Andalucians are fickle about having one man leading multiple clans."

"Do you think these disturbances could upset the rest of our markets? Could they disturb the money coming in from the rest of the clans?"

"I believe so. Two other clans that we have deals with, the

Cethusa

and the

Turvada

, are becoming involved in the pursuit. I've heard that the high clan king has issued a declaration against this man and his clans so that the entire might of Andalucia will unite to destroy him. Supposedly his fate is to be enslaved."

"All the better for us then," said Adalbert. "He'll be a temporary disruption until all the clans remove him and then things will go back to normal."

"It gives me concern, sir," said Berimund. "There was something off about this man. Something about him. He's not an ordinary man. I couldn't put my finger on it. He travels with Galicians though."

"Blonde assholes," snarled Adalbert.

"Truly, but to me this is a mark of something bigger going on. I don't think this is limited to just Andalucia. Despite the odds being against him, he has managed to unite two clans, something that is forbidden by Andalucian law. It would be unwise to treat him lightly."

"So you believe this man to be guided by the fates, hmm?" said Adalbert. "If that's the case, what do you suggest?"

"This man is too dangerous to be left alive. With your permission, and the permission of our lord, I'd like to travel to the court of the high clan king and make a motion for him to kill this man as soon as possible, by my own hand if necessary," said Berimund. "I believe him to be too dangerous to be left alive."

Adalbert rubbed his chin while he contemplated that motion. "It sounds like they are already doing that. Are they not liable to kill him when they catch up to him?"

"I don't think they'll kill him. They'll enslave him, in which case he'd still be alive and still dangerous. This man needs a knife between the ribs. Vertulis has been good for our part of the arrangement. If he knows that Lord Avila wishes this man dead, it will help give us leverage."

Adalbert tapped a finger against his desk. His face studied Berimund's while he thought about his decision. "Very well, Berimund. If you think this man is enough of a threat to what we're doing here, you may go seek your audience with the king. Normally, I'd run this up the chain of command with my cousin but seeing as you have no clan to be an envoy with, I'm sure he'd approve."

"Thank you, sir," said Berimund with a deep bow. "I will get moving right away."

"One thing before you leave though, Berimund. Get this done quickly. The loss of one clan to this arrangement is unfortunate. To lose all the clans is a calamity. We might

all

lose our heads if that's the case. You've been granted something that usually doesn't happen in our country—a second chance. Use it wisely."

"Yes, sir. I will not stop until I've personally seen to it that Jack Easterbrook has drawn his last breath."

*****

There was endless darkness long before there was any hope for light. The feeling of being crushed consumed him, the cold hardness of the heavy stone treating his body like a plaything. Time meant nothing in the void, and consciousness fled only to return in brief waves of lucidity. It was his own form of purgatory.

But he was alive. That was one thing they couldn't take from him. While he still drew breath, there was hope for retribution. For terror.

Bancroft had no idea how long he persisted under the rubble of the Admiralty. Nor did he have any idea on the number of dead and wounded. He barely clung to life, a persistent knocker on death's door. Thankfully for him, no one answered.

At one point, he remembered being pulled from the rubble. Of a multitude of hands pressed against his now charcoal-gray, stained uniform. He had a brief notion of being carried until he passed out again, the flash of pain too violent for his senses to comprehend.

The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital. Sounds of organized chaos around him. A small, feminine face looking down upon his, blue eyes unblinking as she shined a light to ward away the darkness. He wondered for a brief moment what she would see looking back into his. Would she see the shadows? Would she see the tentative link that kept his heart beating?

"Give him more morphine. He's still with us," said the woman as she stepped away from the bed.

Yes. It's not so easy to kill Percival Bancroft,

he thought to himself. In the next moment, a rough hand grabbed his wrist, injecting the soothing liquid into his veins. A brief euphoria hit and then he was out again.

"Admiral Bancroft? Admiral Bancroft, can you hear me, sir?"

The admiral pushed away the darkness briefly as his eyes flicked open with heavy precaution. He squinted as soon as the first ray of light entering his vision, finding it blinding, painful to his long sedated eyes. Bancroft squirmed while he was able to, trying to get away from that awful source of pain, yet the bed wasn't nearly as yielding as he'd hoped. There was nowhere to go.

"Admiral Bancroft?"

"I'm here. I'm alive," he murmured as he hazarded a look once more. He didn't recognize the face that greeted him, a man's face in his early forties he suspected. A typical Javan face for that matter with his dark curls and eyes. At least he hadn't woken in an Occitanian prison.

"You gave us all quite the scare, Admiral," said the relieved orderly. "There were a few times there we thought we'd lost you."

"Where am I?" he asked weakly.

"You're in Belfort Military Hospital, sir. You've been here for over a week. Mostly out but in some moments, you were able to speak to us."

Bancroft blinked several more times. "I'm not dead." It was more a statement than a question.

The orderly smiled. "Thankfully so. The people are very grateful that their admiral is still with them. Even the emperor has detailed his best doctors to attend to you."

"The emperor. Is he safe? What happened?" Bancroft attempted to sit up in bed, an uncoordinated move that sent pain up his spine.

The orderly motioned for him to remain prone. "All in due time, sir. There is much to catch you up on but now is not the time. We need you to rest. More importantly, we need you to heal."

"Just tell me, have the Occitanians invaded? I need to know that to be able to rest," begged Bancroft, grabbing the orderly's sleeve before he could go.

The man shook his head gently. "Just a raid, sir. Thanks be to God, there are no Occitanian forces on our soil."

Bancroft reclined into the bed and nodded his head glumly. Everything else could wait at that point. As long as there weren't enemy forces nearby, he'd have time to catch up.

"I'm going to get you some water. We want to try to get you to drink something, okay, Admiral?"

Bancroft nodded weakly. "Am I going to get out of this bed someday? I'm not paralyzed, am I?"

The orderly shook his head. "Just a broken arm, some broken ribs, and a mighty concussion. All in all, you're lucky to be alive. The entire Admiralty collapsed on itself. We're guessing you shielded the rest of your body with your broken arm, but the fall and the weight of the stonework above you is what caused the concussion and the damage to your ribs."

"What about Clark? Is Clark still alive?" asked Bancroft. "He's my deputy, and he would have been in the same room as me when it came down."

"Rear Admiral Jason Clark? Yes, sir, he's still alive. In a similar shape as you are, but he's been awake for days now," said the orderly. "I'm sure he'll be relieved to see that you pulled through as well."

"Good," answered Bancroft before he relaxed into the bed. "At least Clark made it out in one piece too."

"You were some of the lucky ones, sir. There's a whole host of the dead, and that's just from the Admiralty alone. That wasn't the only building hit either. They got several houses, a school, and our main polonium refinery. I'm afraid prices on that last item have already skyrocketed, but it was a costly raid for all of us. Anyway, I'm sure you'll be wanting some rest. I'll arrange for you to have some privacy for now. Let me just bring you that water, and then you can continue with your rest."

"All right," said Bancroft weakly as the orderly soon disappeared from the room. He looked around, taking in his surroundings for the first time. It was a small room but at least it was all his. The walls were painted a dull, mustard yellow, and the main table with all of the supplies was made entirely of metal. It was a sterile environment that smelled like death. At least it wasn't his own that he was smelling.

Bancroft never saw the orderly come back in with the water. Sleep overtook him soon after, his eyelids heavy with stress. All too soon, he was back in the land of dreams.

*****

The days that followed his awakening weren't nearly as bad as that first week where he spent most of it in darkness. By the third day, Bancroft was sitting upright, nursing his broken arm and using a generous amount of pillows under his back to take the pressure off his ribs. Yet, he was conscious and able to get a grip on the nature of the attack.

It appeared the raid on the Javan capital was

quid pro quo

for their earlier raid on Montauban, the Occitanian center of government. Luckily for them, the Javans had only lost a handful of buildings and people in the retribution. Their own raid on the Occitanians at least had them lose a handful of warships. He could count it as a victory, no matter how small in comparison.

That particular afternoon, Bancroft was already back to work getting a series of dispatches from the makeshift Admiralty that had been relocated to an underutilized wing of the imperial palace. He hoped such arrangements would only be temporary, not entirely liking the fact that he was now closer to being under the emperor's thumb, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

At least Clark was up and running again. Bancroft had a very real moment of fear at the thought of his loyal deputy not surviving the attack. Yet Clark's easy grin couldn't be tempered by a few tons of stonework falling around him. The man was able to hobble his way into Bancroft's room, taking up his prior duties like nothing had happened. You couldn't easily replace a man like Clark. Loyalty that deep couldn't be bought.

As Bancroft set another dispatch to the side, he saw Clark appear near the door, except that easy grin was missing from his face. Quite the opposite, he appeared ashen-faced, a sweat already noticeable on his brow.

"What is it, Clark?" asked Bancroft. "What's the problem?"

"Sir, you have a visitor. The Crown Prince is here to see you," said Clark in a near whisper.

Bancroft gulped heavily. What in the world would the crown prince want to see him for? Crown Prince George was nearly identical to his father, Charles. Cut from the same cloth, the early-thirties crown prince was just as corpulent and just as slovenly. However, there was one distinction between the two that Bancroft had detected over the years—George wasn't nearly as stupid as his father. While Charles relied upon the authority of his throne to force his will, George didn't have the same power. For that reason, when he engaged in intrigue, he was forced to use his mind to get the results he wanted. The end result was that George was a much more formidable adversary than his father.

The other matter that gave Bancroft pause was why would George want to talk with him? They almost never ran in the same circles, and the interest of the crown prince was always heavily rooted in the army. There were no councils on which they shared a seat together, and for the longest time, Bancroft only saw George at royal functions. Why he would be calling on him was still a mystery that he couldn't decipher.

"Send him in," Bancroft said finally. Clark nodded and disappeared behind the door while Bancroft pushed several of his notes aside. He wanted to give George his full attention, without the distraction of the dispatches on the nearby table.

Usually for royal presentations and parades, the crown prince's arrival was marked by the sounds of trumpets or streams of ribbons being tossed into the air. In the military hospital, it was much less pronounced, and George waddled his way into the suite without any fanfare. He was dressed in a deep blue doublet, marked with a sash that ran diagonally from one shoulder to the waist on the opposite side of the body. Bancroft didn't recognize the host of medals adorned to the man's chest, a sure sign that they were army medals, not navy.

The thing that worried Bancroft most about seeing George was the look in the man's eyes. A quiet confidence, a feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. It was disconcerting to see such a look right from the start, and it made Bancroft's nerves flutter.

"Admiral Bancroft, you gave us all quite a scare," said George as he rested his hand on the railing of the bed. "We thought we lost you for a moment there."

"Thankfully for our people, God didn't see fit to bring me home to his kingdom just yet, Your Imperial Highness," said Bancroft with a false sense of piety.