Terra's World by Mitch Benn

Author:Mitch Benn [Benn, Mitch]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2014-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

2.18

Grand Marshal Zst’kh felt his blue blood pumping. At last. At last, something to do.

From birth, he’d been trained by his grandfather, the wise and mighty K’zsht, in the arts of leadership, of strategy, of battle. Preparing him for the day he would grasp the sacred lance of office and take his grandfather’s place.

There had always been a tension between ambition and loyalty within G’grk culture, between the ruthlessness necessary to achieve victory, and the fealty necessary to maintain order. But not for Zst’kh, not as far as his grandfather was concerned. His devotion to the old warrior had been absolute.

When Zst’kh had learned that his father, the Grand Marshal’s eldest son, had grown impatient waiting for his own turn as leader, and had been plotting against K’zsht, he’d had no hesitation in exposing the subterfuge. And when sentence had been passed, Zst’kh had volunteered to carry it out himself.

He remembered that cold morning, on the plains outside T’krr – his father’s pleading voice, the weight of the ks’trg in his hand, the dawning sun glinting off the blade, the hissing cheer of the assembled Drone Lords as the blade fell . . . He had never lost a moment’s sleep over it. His father had been weak, devious, duplicitous. An unworthy successor to the Grand Marshal. He would be better.

Zst’kh had been in Dskt that morning, establishing his prefecture over the city of Bssq-Fmm, when the order had arrived to withdraw back to the Central Plains. His grandfather’s order. He had been confused, surprised, he might even have experienced a moment’s doubt, but he had not hesitated. He marshalled his drones and the retreat began. Doubtless he would hear his grandfather’s explanation in due course.

The explanation had not pleased him.

The war had been neither won nor lost, but abandoned. His grandfather had ordered the withdrawal and then, also, announced his intention to retire. Alive.

He’d even decreed clemency for his deputy, Sk’shk, even though he’d tried to kill the Grand Marshal with his own sacred lance. G’grk justice demanded Sk’shk’s head, but this was not to be. Another punishment would have to be found for him. Meanwhile, the lance itself, the eras-old emblem of office, broken. Unthinkable.

Zst’kh was inaugurated Grand Marshal in a subdued ceremony in the First Temple of the Occluded Ones in T’krr. He had been the first Grand Marshal NOT to be handed the sacred lance at the end of the ceremony. Once broken, its symbolic power was destroyed for ever, and to forge a replacement would have been a pointless sham. Even now, Zst’kh would sometimes catch himself flexing the fingers of his right hand; it felt curiously empty, sorely lacking a thing it had never held. It was not how he’d anticipated coming to power, nor, he now pondered, was this the sort of power he’d hoped to come to.

That’s not to say that he wasn’t in a position of considerable authority. In many respects, as commander-in-chief of extra-planetary defences for the whole planet Fnrr

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