Lord of Janissaries

by Jerry Pournelle

  “And speak more softly,” the man continued. “We cannot trust the tavernkeeper if he thinks he has anything worth selling.” Dughuilas put a hand on his dagger but the other shook his head. “In time, perhaps, but not now on the mere chance that he might have heard something useful. If we kill too many rats, the wolves will escape.”

  “If the Lord Rick is a wolf, what harm to oppose him in Council?” Corgarff demanded. “And he will send our sons to die in Roman wars for Roman causes. Rome, whose slavemasters have tormented us these centuries—”

  Dughuilas held up his hands to gesture for silence. “Spare me. I can make the speech better than you.”

  “The Lord Rick will be strong as long as he and the Lady Tylara keep their wits,” said the second man. “We can do nothing to change this. Indeed, we should not. Your friend who thinks so well of the Lady Tylara would not have any injury done to her or her blood. Without your friend, much we hope can not be done.”

  “You should not have said that,” said Dughuilas sourly. “You have given this rattle-jaw knowledge I had not intended he should have.”

  “If you have plans for Corgarff which you are not telling, expect little from me,” said the second man. His voice was so even it was impossible to tell if he was angry or not. “I think you need my friendship as much as we both need—our friend’s.”

  Who could he be, that he could speak to the chieftain in that manner? But if he was not angry, Corgarff was. He almost forgot to lower his voice. “Lord Dughuilas, I have perhaps spoken unwisely. Yet you speak as though I were a traitor. Were you not my sworn chief, I would have your blood for this.”

  “I did not wish to call you traitor, for indeed you are no such,” said Dughuilas smoothly. “Forgive me those words, and I will forgive you for yours.”

  Corgarff took his hand from the knife hilt.

  “Sit. Sit and join us.” Dughuilas poured wine and lifted his own glass in salute. “Drink, clansman.”

  “Aye. Thank you, my chieftain.” Two mysteries here. This man, this conspirator; and beyond him a mysterious ally. Hah! thought Corgarff. That one I can guess. Probably the Lady Tylara’s brother, Balquhain. A hothead, the darling of old Drumold’s age, bound to become Mac Clallan Muir in time . . . Certainly no other noble of Tamaerthon was as likely to wish to uphold the old rights of the warriors without injuring the Lady Tylara.

  “The Lord Rick has brought victories,” Dughuilas’ companion said. “Victory over Rome—”

  “A mockery,” Dughuilas said. “What matters victory at the price of all we hold dear? Lord Rick makes knights of crofters and peasants. They obey their chiefs not at all.”

  “It will become worse,” the second man said. “It is this ‘University’ that spawns your troubles. It is from there that these dangerous ideas come. This place is important to Lord Rick. Harm that, and he will know of the anger of the knights.”

  “If we wish to injure the University, I can give some aid,” said Corgarff. “A smith’s boy from my land works there. I have heard that his father has not long to live, and he fears his mother and sister will want. Only a little gold could buy him, I think.”

  “Is he fit for any work we might give him?”

  “As fit as anyone of such blood can be.”

  “The Lord Rick would not have said that,” said the second man.

  “Hang the Lord Rick!” snarled Dughuilas.

  “As Yatar wills,” said the second man quietly. “But I think he is more likely to hang us, if we cannot use whatever tools come our way.”

  Dughuilas nodded sourly. “Och, aye. But a man of the old blood must keep watch on this peasant lad. You, Corgarff.”

  “Aye, Chieftain.” He paused a moment. “Perhaps there is a way. One hears that the University prepares a new machine. They say it will fly through the air! That men may fly as gulls!”

  “Och!” Dughuilas stared in wonder. “Can this be true? Then woe to our enemies, when warriors can fly—”

  “And when they do, your order is finished. What need of knights then?” Dughuilas’ companion asked.

  “Och. Aye, it is so,” Dughuilas said. “The Lord Rick will raise up peasants, while the men of blood fall. This must not be.”

  Corgarff nodded grimly. “I had not thought—but it is true enough. Already the University is guarded by the sons of crofters. Even freedmen. Freedmen with arms! But hear. In the past, when a new machine is prepared, the University is open to all who wish to come and watch. The Lord Rick does not seem to care who learns his secrets.”

  “He is a fool,” said Dughuilas.

  “One wonders,” said the second man. “Perhaps he plays a game too deep for our understanding. Surely we would be fools if we did not reckon on that.”

  “Fools we are not,” Dughuilas said. “And our cause is just. Lord Rick would destroy all we ever lived for. It is our right to oppose him. Let us destroy this University, and all its arts, forever and aye. Swear it!”

  The three stood. “We swear,” they said in unison. Then they raised their glasses, drained them, and dashed them to the floor.

  * * *

  The University was located in a town at the northwestern border of Tamaerthon. The place had been noted for its medicinal springs, and had long boasted a small temple of Yatar where acolytes came for training; a natural place for a center of learning, but open and vulnerable.

  Rick had the town’s defenses repaired, and now a proper city wall was under construction. There were also a mortar and a light machine gun. It wasn’t likely that the University would fall to an enemy.

  Larry Warner locked the armory door and returned the salutes of the archers who stood outside it. He was going to his quarters when he heard a call for the proctor on duty. Warner immediately changed his plans and headed for the gate area. He arrived to see a small caravan ride up.

  “Who comes?” a local guardsman called.

  “Sergeant Major Elliot.”

  Holy shit, that’s who it was all right. With a pretty big crew, too. Damn, Warner thought. With Gwen Tremaine gone off on embassy duty, Warner had been senior man present. He rather liked being in charge. Now here was Elliot. Crap.

  “Let the Sergeant Major in,” Warner commanded. Maybe I ought to keep him out—that’s too silly to think about. What do I do, set up as some kind of king here? Stupid. “And ask him to join me in my quarters after he has been shown to the Visiting Officers’ Quarters.”

  * * *

  “Ho, Sarge, what brings you here?”

  “Cap’n sent me down south,” Elliot said. “Buyin’ some of that garta cloth you like. Brought you a whole mess of it.”

  “Hey. That’s all right.” Rick Galloway had been pleased with the balloon idea when Warner described it back at Castle Edron. The problem had been the cloth, which could only come from the south, and Warner had been afraid he would be sent there to buy some. Instead, Rick sent Warner and the two new troopers back to the University, where for two ten-days Warner had enjoyed being in charge . . .“Have to get to work on the balloon, then.”

  Elliot nodded in agreement. “I brought orders on that. Cap’n wants a test model in a ten-day.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “You can try!”

  “Sarge, I’ll do my goddamn best, but nobody is going to sew up that thing in a ten-day! You got any idea how big that sucker is?”

  “No—”

  “It’s big. Take that from me. Uh—Sarge, why are you here?”

  “Captain’s orders. I’m the new Provost for the University.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. Show you the written orders tomorrow.”

  “Shit. And where do I fit in?”

  “Hell, Professor, I treat you like a civilian. You’re my boss—so long as it’s not a military situation. Comes a military situation, you’re back in uniform. Like a weekend warrior. It’s all in the orders.”

  “Oh.” That’s not bad. Not bad at all. Makes good sense. Elliot was Parsons’ man. Killed a
lot of Drantos soldiers while he was working for Parsons. Must be a ton of nobles who’d like to even the score for their relatives. Blood-feuds and all that. Makes sense to get Sergeant Major Elliot out of Drantos, and God knows the University’s important enough.

  “I’m also supposed to help you with the bookkeeping,” Elliot said. “For the travellin’ medicine shows.” He frowned heavily. “Do those things do any good, Professor?”

  “Sure. Look, we send out a merc and couple of local warriors and some junior priests of Yatar. They go out and make maps and get a resource survey. That’s worth it all alone—Sarge, the maps here are really something else! Most of ’em have their own country bigger’n the Roman Empire, for crissake!

  “But there’s more to it. They go to the towns and teach hygiene. Germ theory of disease. Antiseptic practices.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” Warner said. “And sometimes not, I guess. Sometimes we get the old ‘what was good enough for Granny’ routine—”

  “So you convert Granny,” Elliot said.

  “Right-o. Or we try to.” He drank another glass of wine. “Sarge, I had a thought. The captain likes you around him. Is he going to base his Roman expedition out of here?”

  “He may have to.”

  “Crap.”

  “You don’t like that?”

  “Don’t like this place mixed up with war,” Warner said. “Yeah, I know how that sounds, coming from me, but it’s true.”

  “Funny, I agree with you,” Elliot said. “More to the point, I think the captain does too. But what else has he got? Anyplace else is controlled by the local lords—Larry, why do the lords hate Captain Galloway so much?”

  “I would too,” Warner said. “Lord Rick comes in and makes his pikemen and archers more effective than the knights, pretty soon the troops are going to wonder what it is the heavy cavalrymen do that makes them so important. It’s a good question, too.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad enough that Captain Galloway had better wear armor any time he’s got Tamaerthan lords around,” Warner said. “Bad enough that you and I ought to keep lookin’ over our shoulders, too.”

  “Yeah. All right, I’ll do just that. Hey, have you got a drink? It’s hot work, riding up those hill paths.”

  “Sure.” Warner clapped his hands and a girl about eighteen years old came in. “Sara. Cold beer, please. Thank you—”

  “She’s a looker.”

  “Want to borrow her?”

  “Hooker?”

  “Naw, slave,” Warner said. “Yeah, I know, the captain doesn’t approve of slavery. I liberated her, Sarge, but she won’t leave. Where would she go? One day a freedman will marry her, I expect, but meanwhile she works here and she likes working for starmen—”

  “Well, Larry, I don’t have anybody to clean up for me—”

  “I’ll send her over to help until you get something permanent set up. One thing, be polite to her. I always am—ah. Thank you, Sara.”

  She set down two large tankards and curtsied. They drank. “Good beer,” Elliot said. “Soft duty up here.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me today,” Warner said. “Working on fuels for the balloon. Hot air’s all right, but I think I can figure a way to make hydrogen for the next one. If I can make a good sizing for the cloth to seal it so it’ll hold hydrogen.”

  “Hydrogen. What’s the matter, Professor, afraid you’ll run out of hot air after the first one?”

  “Ho-ho. Anyway, now that the cloth’s here I can really get to work. Have any trouble?”

  “I don’t ever have trouble, Professor.”

  “Yeah.” Actually, Warner thought, that must have been a hell of an expedition. Mercs, locals, Tamaerthan archers, pack animals for the trade goods, more pack animals for the fodder—taking a zoo like that over muddy roads and through the hills couldn’t have been much of a picnic.

  “Usual market for this stuff is Rome,” Elliot said. “So we got it at a good price.”

  “Where? Rustengo?”

  “Found a whole warehouse full about a hundred klicks north of there. With the roads to Rome closed off they were grateful for the chance to sell.”

  “Hmm. And the Romans really like the stuff—”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Maybe a good bargaining point for Miss Gwen. I think we’ll send a messenger tomorrow to tell her.”

  “All right by me. I got a few other items of interest.”

  “Good. Seriously, did you run into any trouble?”

  Elliot grinned. “Nothing I can’t handle, Professor. Some bandits in the hills outside Viys. About two hundred.”

  “That’s damned near an army, around here.”

  “We unlimbered the H&Ks,” Elliot said. “No sweat.” He seemed pleased at the memory. “Didn’t have to use too many rounds, either. After that, nobody wanted to give us any gas. Word spread pretty fast.”

  “Yeah. No sign of Gengrich?”

  “No. He could have been trouble.”

  Larry Warner nodded. “I hear he’s set up as a pirate king. One of these days we may have to deal with him. More beer?”

  “Sure. And don’t forget to tell that girl I want to borrow her. You’re right about Gengrich, they’re scared of him down there. But they’re scared of everything. The whole south’s talking about the Roman situation. Half of ’em want the Romans to keep on fighting each other. Long as that war goes, the Roman frontier posts aren’t manned, and the southerners have a place to send the refugees that keep streaming in.

  “Then there’s the others, who mutter about the lost trade, and how things are going to hell. And all the priests of Yatar are out soapboxin’ about The Time, and how they better store up food against the years of famine—”

  “They’re right there,” Warner said. “One reason for this University. We’re as much an agricultural research station as anything else. And there’s our traveling road shows—”

  “Right. Captain said I was to help you get those organized.” Elliot stretched elaborately. “Larry, things look pretty good, considerin’ where the Cubans had us.”

  “Sure,” Warner said.

  “Relax. Captain Galloway knows what he’s doing.”

  “I hope so,” Warner said. “Damn, I hope so.”

  * * *

  Rick put down the report from Sergeant Elliot and nodded in satisfaction. Tylara came and took it from the table. She puzzled over each word.

  “I’ll read it to you if you like,” Rick said.

  “I’ll ask you to do so. Later,” she said. She went on reading.

  “Your English is getting very good,” Rick said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you.” She went on poring over the parchment, her finger resting at each word. Finally she looked up. “You have promised mediation in the Roman Wars,” she said. “You had Elliot make that promise in our names.”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not consult me about this, yet the promise is as Eqeta of Chelm—”

  “Dammit, I don’t have to consult you! I am the Eqeta of Chelm!”

  “So much for your fine promises,” she said. “We rule as equals. But you are perhaps more equal than I.”

  “I am also Captain-General of Drantos, War Chief of Tamaerthon, and Colonel of Mercenaries,” Rick said. “Posts I had before I married you. Do you tell me everything you do?”

  “The important things. Must we quarrel?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask.”

  “Then let us not. I was going to say that I approve of your stratagem in the south. It brought us the cloth at a lower price, and there is no way for them to know if you keep the promise. Soon no one on Tran will be teaching you anything about bargaining.”

  In spite of Tylara’s heart-stopping smile, Rick wasn’t entirely sure those words were a compliment. He frowned. “I intend to keep the promise and try to negotiate a peace, if we can’t give Marselius a victory.”<
br />
  She stared at him. “That is impossible. How can there be peace in Rome after three seasons of war?”

  “Not easily, I admit,” said Rick. “But if Marselius issues the proclamation I’m about to suggest, the chances will be better. He should announce that he will punish no man for any act done in obedience to a proclaimed Caesar. I’ve already proposed to the ambassador that Flaminius do the same. A mutual pardon for everything done during the war.” They did that during the Wars of the Roses, when the English Parliament formally legislated that no man could commit treason by obeying a crowned king. If they hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been a Yorkist or Lancastrian left.

  “Marselius might agree. He might even keep such an agreement. Not Flaminius. The man is a fool. Otherwise he wouldn’t have pushed Marselius into rebellion at all.”

  “Perhaps Flaminius wouldn’t agree, by himself. But can he go against all of his commanders? They’re losing soldiers, sons, estates. Some of them must be wiser than he is about what needs to be done to prepare for The Time. If they no longer need fear for their lives, who knows what advice they might give? I don’t.”

  “It is still a pardon for treason. Do we want anyone to make the lot of the rebel so much easier?”

  “There are different kinds of rebels, it seems to me. Marselius with his legions is not the same as a mountain bandit with a dozen ragged followers.”

  “Not in your eyes, at least. I hope that this does not mean that all starmen take their oaths as lightly as Colonel Parsons did.”

  Rick sighed. When she got this sharp-tongued, he could either change the subject or be sure of a fight. It wasn’t worth having a fight now. He would have to lead her gradually if at all toward his own position on how to treat rebels. There were going to be many of them, as The Time approached. The Time itself would kill enough people on Tran. If being generous with pardons could reduce the toll of life and property from the rebellions, wasn’t it at least worth trying?

  It wouldn’t be Tylara’s way, of course. For her or any other Tran dynast, the rule for rebels had been, whenever possible, “Hang first and ask questions afterward.” One more thing to be changed. If possible.

  * * *

  The charts on his office wall grew more detailed, and he collected chests of papers.