Wartorn: Resurrection by Robert Asprin, Eric Del Carlo Read Free Book Online

the facts she absorbed that some of her fellow students couldn't start to grasp. It wasn't always easy to see how the minor political machinations in some bygone ancient city-state could impact major war campaigns a hundredwinter later.
    Through her exhaustive studies she had accrued a solid knowledge of battle strategies and methods. How engrossing it was, comparing those tactics, seeing how maneuvers and ploys were invented, then adopted by an enemy, forgotten, and resurrected years later.
    Yes, it was quite interesting how dead things returned to life.
    She found Master Honnis among the statuary and manicured shrubs of an atrium. Overhead the sky was black, pierced by stars and hung with the moon.
    Praulth hurried out into the open-air area, sandals slapping stones, nose wrinkling at the scents of flowers and rich earth. She preferred the mustiness of paper. Seeing where Master Honnis was just now wandering out of sight behind a row of carefully pruned greenery, she scurried around to intercept him.
    She didn't find him where he should be. She stood confused, the map in hand, until something small and hard glanced off her right temple. She yelped, spun, and saw the old man standing in the center of the court.
    She rubbed her temple as she hurried over, not even bothering to complain that he'd thrown the pebble too hard. Such things didn't matter to her. Certainly not now, not with the incredible news she had.
    Brandishing the map, she babbled breathlessly, "Here! This! The Felk attack on Callah, the positional maneuvers, see,
see,
the companies grouped here, here, and
here,
and the second assault, on Windal,
    see how the cavalry and archers—"
    "Stop."
    She did. She couldn't have gone on at such a frantic pace much longer anyway. Running up and down corridors had already rather winded her. She realized she was acting foolishly, sputtering like a child; very unlike her, she who was always so mentally organized and able to concisely express her ideas.
    "State your findings first. Support them with particulars later." Honnis's dark face, set into its habitual glower, was tilted up toward hers. Though she was substantially taller than the small gaunt man, she naturally felt dwarfed in her mentor's presence. She also had the odd feeling that the elder was easily her physical match.
    He was waiting. No one in all the generations that had agonized under Master Honnis's stern tutelage had ever profited from making him wait for anything.
    Avidly, with all the nervous energy of a roaring river backing up behind a dam of dead wood, she stated her findings. In a single word. In a great overwrought blast that echoed in the atrium, frightening a small yellow bird into flight and flecking her instructor's bald pate with spittle.
    The one word was this:
"Dardas!"
    Honnis stared up at her an inscrutable, excruciating moment. Then with an odd tone of fatalism he said, "Yes." He lifted a skeletal hand. "No, I don't want to hear your supporting facts. I don't need to. I've recognized the same patterns. His stamp ... his character ... it's on this." He nodded to the map in her hand.
    Praulth felt a frenzied rush of pride. She'd gotten it right! Not that she had doubted her own findings, but to hear Master Honnis himself say it was hugely gratifying. She tried to keep her excitement from showing.
    The small robed man started pacing, indicating with a blunt gesture that she should come along. Flagstoned paths wound through the ornamental shrubbery. He was deep in thought, though most students wouldn't be able to tell this grave contemplative state from his normal, equally austere one.
    After a moment he said, "You haven't considered."
    "Considered?"
    "Think,
Thinker Praulth. Yes, the tactics are those of General Dardas, the Northland war commander. Unmistakably. We who have studied wars fought throughout the ages, who've devoted ourselves to anatomizing strategies, to knowing the very temperament and taste and minutiae of war leaders from all