Obliteration by Robert Asprin & Eric Del Carlo

Author:Robert Asprin & Eric Del Carlo [Asprin, Robert & Carlo, Eric Del]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy - General, Magicians, Magic, Fantasy fiction, Fiction - Fantasy, General, Fantasy, Wizards, Imaginary wars and battles, Fiction
ISBN: 9780441013470
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2006-01-31T06:00:00+00:00

***

She was breathless and restless. Her and Xink's rooms were only a short distance away, but she turned in a random direction, following a wide street beneath the clouded night sky. It was cooler than when she'd arrived in Petgrad. It was coming into the heart of autumn, the season of fading, of dwindling. But this was her time of renewal. So it very much seemed.

Praulth hadn't dreamt of glories, not during her childhood in Dral Blidst. Her ambitions had involved only a deepening of her education, and those had led her directly to the University. Febretree was her refuge, a staunch fortress of learning, where intellect was celebrated above all else, where she could achieve and succeed and surpass. Where the very inclinations that had made her life so uncomfortable among her timber trade family here made her a fourth-phase student of first ranking, one with a very promising future.

She would have been content. She would have kept to her course and climbed from Thinker to Attache. She would have striven, and one day she would have taken her rightful place as head of the University's historical war studies.

If Master Honnis hadn't chosen her to study the Felk war, if Xink had never appeared in her life, if Cultat hadn't brought her here to Petgrad...

How different her life would have been, how normal, how predictable. And what a waste if she had never achieved this new, more exciting identity.

General Praulth, chief strategist of the Alliance. It was a worthy title. Now she had to make certain that the Alliance defeated the Felk. History remembered the victors.

She had examined the recent reports of the conquest of Trael. The Felk had initially surrounded the city, like water in a rising river encircling a stone. But there was a delay before the actual invasion commenced. It was a curiosity. Cultat's scouts, however, attested to the lag, and Praulth trusted them for their accuracy.

She had puzzled over the anomaly. It vexed her. She could deduce no military advantage in the postponement, not unless General Weisel meant to provoke a surrender.

But it wasn't Weisel, she reminded herself unnecessarily. It was Dardas. And Dardas wouldn't have wasted time in this manner, wouldn't have allowed the people of Trael the courtesy of deliberating their surrender. Sook had successfully surrendered to the Felk, but only because they had done so preemptively, before the great enemy horde was at their borders.

Something else must have been afoot at Trael, Praulth had concluded. Some other military operation... perhaps some smaller action. And Dardas/Weisel had been awaiting the results before committing his forces to overrunning the city.

It barely made sense. At least, as far as it fit with Dardas's historical tactics. And there, of course, was the thought that was most disturbing. Perhaps it wasn't Dardas any longer. Maybe Cultat's godsdamned nephew had succeeded in assassinating Weisel, and thereby had killed off the brilliant war commander who was living a resurrected life within that body.

What that would mean, most catastrophically, was that Praulth's ingenious plan to reenact the Battle of Torran Flats would prove useless.

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