Free Veiled Empire by Nathan Garrison Page B

mines and tunnels, or made playthings of the mierothi and their bastard-spawn daeloth, or those who had become virtual slaves to the great merchant families that squeeze human flesh dry to line their own pockets, all without a breath of regulation.
    No, what they needed was a cause to call their own.
    “I have traveled the length and breadth of this continent for years, observing life among its people. Wherever I went, the story was the same. Every man, woman, and child feels utterly powerless.
    “That is why you put on the empire’s uniform, take up your swords and shields, and stand your walls. It is the only way, even as small and empty as it is, for you to reclaim some sense of power, some notion that you are not being constantly ground underfoot by forces so much greater than yourselves.”
    Gilshamed shook his head, sighing. “For this, I do not blame you.”
    Drooped heads shot back up again. Bodies leaned forward, ears straining to catch his words. The small rustling and whispers that accompanied any crowd ceased, blanketing the clearing in utter silence.
    Gilshamed drew a breath. “BUT WHAT DOES IT MATTER!”
    The crowd rocked back on their heels.
    “Surely,” he continued, beginning to pace back and forth along the edge of the outcropping, “our cause is doomed. What chance do a few thousand have against a million-man army that can descend on us like an avalanche? What chance against the sorcery of the mierothi themselves, which makes that avalanche seem but a snowflake?”
    He stopped, turned to the crowd, and lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Then again, what good are a million men if they are in the wrong place? What good a measured response, when our hidden allies strike from the shadows? What good the mierothi’s potent sorcery, when we will have means of negating it?”
    Excited chatter erupted from his audience’s former silence. Such a promise had never before been delivered, never dared to be dreamed. Gilshamed knew that he had them now. He raised his hands, silencing them once more.
    “So I offer you this. If any of you wish to leave, to go back to your empty life of servitude to an empire that cares for you naught, I will not stop you.
    “But if you wish for the remainder of your days upon this world to have meaning, if you wish to fight for a worthy cause, if you wish to feel truly powerless no more, then pledge yourself to this revolution.” He cast one last, long glance over the crowd. “You have until the end of the day to decide.”
    Gilshamed pivoted away, descending the back side of the rock outcropping. He kept a smile on his face as he treaded down the short path to the waiting command tent.
    Even before he pushed aside the flap to enter, the thick aroma of alcohol hit his nose. Yandumar was sunken into a chair, his feet propped on another. A pewter mug filled with ale was in his hand. Half of its contents seemed to be dripping down the man’s beard.
    Gilshamed raised an eyebrow. “Celebrating something, Yan?”
    Yandumar’s glossy-green eyes eventually managed to settle on Gilshamed’s face. He chuckled but did not smile, and raised his mug. “To our new recruits!”
    “And how exactly do you know that my speech achieved the desired effect?”
    Yandumar drained the rest of his ale in one long gulp, then belched. “It’s the great Gilshamed we’re talkin’ ’bout here. You could convince a pig to eat bacon, even after ’splaining what it was.”
    A freshly tapped cask rested on a table near the entrance. Gilshamed nudged it gently, easily determining that it was over half-empty. He frowned over at his friend. “Yan, do you remember where we met?”
    “You mean that dusty tavern in the middle of nowhere? What about it?”
    “You were well into your cups that day, and have been many a day since. But I have never once seen you this drunk before. What is going on?”
    Yandumar sighed. “Today is the thirty-third of Sepuris.”
    Gilshamed’s eyes flared.