Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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As if it matters now. All that was left was to do what a good Irefas man did before he died: remove
himself from where the enemy could get knowledge out of him while he was helpless. He'd go to the old
fart, throw himself on flatulent mercy.He can stretch my neck; fine, I'll have done my duty . Strangely,
there was an intoxicating sense of liberation in being doomed.
Failed. He quickly packed his merchant's papers and seals, a change of clothing—he didn't even have a
pair of gloves—to cross to the Arkan camp.How am I going to word this letter to Patappas and
Frenandias? "You risked everything for nothing, my old friends …" He could kiss his elevation
good-bye, his triumph good-bye… but that was nothing, really, that was justhis problem.Because I've
failed , he thought,the whole fikken great lumbering elephant of an Empire's fikked .
Liberation brought clarity, and revelation; in a lightning burst, Matthas's vision extended for a moment
across the whole known world, and he understood why Arko would fall. He'd lived with the answer all
his career.
Arko's fall was inAitzas spy-runners who got assassinated because they hadn't bothered to learn the
ways of a place. In mud-slow bureaucracies that kept back funds needed to maintain a spy office for six
months. In blockhead Mahid who didn't believe two women could exist who took ten strong-arms to
bring down, then blamed Matthas-types for the result and sent them off on desperation missions with no
support. InAitzas who cared more about throwing gold and oysters around at their parties than the health
of their country, and… the last thought came, brutal, laughable.An Imperator whose head is so far up
his butt he isn't even fikken weaned . Of course it all came from the top; it always did. The seeds of
Arko's fall were in Kurkas's birth, or his father's, or his grandfather's. It wasn'tquite all the fault of
Matthas Bennas,fessas .
Who presently threw himself backwards across his pallet, and did what he felt like: laughed, until he
cried.
Book III: Fulfillment
XXIV
Headline on the front page of thePages,Machine-Scribed News-Chronicle of the City of Arko,
20th Day of the First Month Autumnal, 55th to the Last Year of the Present Age :
STRATEGY OF ATTRITION SUCCEEDING:
BRILLIANT GENERALSHIP LURES
BARBARIANS DEEP INTO TRAP
In the plains of Finpollendias, just above and east of Arko the City Itself, the corn had turned gold; the
wood-lots around wore the deep but faintly tattered green of late summer. On a slope a little way above,
the alliance army rested.
The next battle would be the last; though the Empire had fielded an army not much smaller, it was made
up of the dregs of Arkan manpower, and no one much doubted what the result would be. Poised over
Arko like a sword for the grace-stroke, the Alliance waited for the hand that held it to bring it down.
Across the fire, Megan watched its light on the planes of his face, as he spoke.