Warlock

spotted the mouth of this cave system where they were now spending the night. It was not exactly warm in the caves, but at least the cutting whip of the wind was killed and a man could finally draw his breath in some fashion close to normal. Richter, on the other hand, was morose. He was so dejected and defeated that his face had taken on more deep lines and his flesh had lost most of its color, so that he seemed ten years older than when he had begun this journey but a few days ago.
        
        For an hour, ever since they had settled into this cold-walled place, the Shaker had been trying to tip the heavy urn of the commander's emotions, to spill the sorrow there and get him to talk, to break his dumb silence. He thought it very likely that they might not survive this trip without the leadership of this tough and wizened officer. Thus far, the men had followed him, despite rumors of hideous dimensions, and despite reality of some hideousness itself. They had shrugged off disaster and assassins to follow. No one else in the party had that quality: not Crowler nor Mace nor, gods knew, the Shaker. But talking to Richter now was like speaking to stone rather than to flesh and blood.
        
        He had one more tact. He tried it.
        
        “Commander,” Sandow said with more than a trace of loathing and more than a bit of brutality, “I'm sorry that you've deserted your men and that you care so little for them that you would see them die. I'm sorry I took you for a good officer when you were not. But I can't waste more time with you, for I have to help Crowler pull some things together.” It was blunt, certainly cruel, but it worked. The Shaker was well aware that the commander looked upon his men with a special fondness and that the old man respected the calling of duty to the enlisted men more, perhaps, than the powers of any god.
        
        “Stay!” Richter said, grasping the Shaker's arm as the magician rose to leave him there in the corner of the second cavern, in shadows and disgrace.
        
        “I have no time to humor old women,” Shaker Sandow said, hating himself for his attitude, even while he realized it was the only attitude he had left to use.
        
        “I'm all right now,” he said. “I'll take command again. But first, sit with me. Understand me. I must have your trust and confidence in this awful trek, or all will be lost.”
        
        The Shaker sat again, though he kept his face an expressionless mask.
        
        “Before I left the capital, back in the Darklands, some three months before this venture, I was given a special duty by General Dark-whom I've known ever since the wars to liberate the southern regions of Oragonia some forty years ago. He entrusted me with his only son; the General has four wives, and but one of them has borne him other than healthy, lovely girls. The General told me I was the only man he could entrust with the job of making his son into a man. I accepted, for more reasons than to please my friend and General.”
        
        “I fail to see your point yet, unless…”
        
        “Exactly,” Commander Richter said. “Jan Belmondo was not his name. Our dead Captain was Jamie Dark, son of the General we both owe our freedom and our limited democracy to.”
        
        The Shaker shook his head sadly. Candles flamed up in various drafts in the caverns, sending skittering shadows across the walls. “But he was such a cowardly boy,” the Shaker said.
        
        “The General did not wish to admit that to himself,” Richter said, “though he knew it deep inside. He thought, perhaps, I could succeed in giving the boy courage where others had failed. And so Jamie came under my auspices under a false name. He would have come as an enlisted man, except he refused that and forced his father into giving him rank.”
        
        “And now you will be in trouble for his death?” the Shaker asked.
        
        “No,” Richter said. “The General and I are too close for that. He will know it was inevitable. I will be saddened terribly in reporting this news to the General, for it may mean that he will have no successor to his title. Surely, he cannot live long enough to foster another son and have him grown in time to take the reins of state. It is a bad sign for all of the Darklands, not just for the General.”
        
        “It is a great sadness, yes,” the Shaker said. “But