Empire of Avarice

by Tony Roberts

  “Lord, this is not true! We only wish for peace!”

  “Now listen to me and listen good. Your revolt is at an end. You will pay taxes and stop your life of theft and banditry. If you are unable to do so then pack up your belongings and leave the empire, or I shall burn you and your homes to the ground. I am Astiras Landwaster. Remember my name and fear me!”

  The villagers paled. They knew the name all too well. Astiras had become a name to fear in Bragal, until he had been recalled when on the point of bringing the Bragal revolt to its knees. “Lord, we did not know it was you!”

  “Then know this also; I am now Emperor of Kastania, and I will not rest until Bragal accepts my rule. If Bragal resists, I shall destroy every last one of you.”

  “Lord, we shall do as you command,” and the five knelt in the snow and bowed their heads. The other villagers watching did likewise, and Astiras ranged his eyes over them all, looking for any sign of dissent or refusal. There didn’t seem to be any. He gestured and the villagers stood up.

  “My army will remain here for the winter. You shall provide for my men. Our camp will be here. Go spread the word to the surrounding villages – we are to be obeyed or I shall burn every settlement to the ground. All shall perish. I trust you understand.”

  “Lord, we understand,” the village leader replied, and backed away, bowing extravagantly.

  Teduskis came alongside. “That was easy, sire.”

  “Too easy,” Astiras muttered. “They’ll try to kill us all before long.”

  “Then sire, why did you ask them to tell the other villages in the area?”

  Astiras smiled hungrily. “So they could group together and try to take us on in one go. Giving them one huge whack should bring them to heel – and eliminate their fighting men in one fell swoop. Set the camp up at the base of the hill and surround it with a ditch and stakes. We don’t want to make it too easy for them, do we?”

  Teduskis sniggered. “It shall be done, sire.”

  Word went out to the surrounding villages that the Kastanian army was back and was encamped in the valley of three hills, and so men from leagues around began converging, trampling through the snow, hatred in their hearts, weapons at the ready, all prepared to kill and kill and kill.

  Astiras wasn’t going to allow himself to be caught napping; he was too experienced at this type of warfare. He sent out foraging groups of ten, all armed to the teeth with orders to see what raw materials they could find but also to spy on the countryside. The moment they saw anyone, they were to return as fast as they could and not get involved in any skirmish.

  The spear militiamen were used to build the camp. They were not expected to be able to scout and to know how to deal with the problems of finding their way back to camp in the snow. Nor were they expected to tackle the Bragalese should they fall upon them outside the camp. No, the militiamen had their role to play but it would be strictly in camp and under orders. Instead, those that went out were the mercenaries, men of the mountains and of Bragal, who knew how to track, scout and stay hidden, even in snow.

  The villagers next to the camp stayed away. They were intimidated by the numbers and stayed indoors as much as they could. But their men folk began collecting every weapon they had, ready for the attack. When it came, there would be no mercy shown, no quarter. They would drive the hated Kastanians out and inflict such a defeat on them that they would never return.

  Astiras put together all the reports from his scouts and sketched them roughly on a sheet of parchment, showing it to Teduskis and his company captains. “We appear to be facing around two hundred villagers who are gathering at three locations close by. The first,” he pointed at a black blob he’d drawn, “here where the brook curves round the hill beyond the village here. The second is over the ridge to our right, and the last behind us. We have nobody out there now that the wagons are in safely, so we have no worries that if anyone appears they may be hostile. Anyone who approaches the camp is to be regarded as an enemy, and on my command are to be cut down.”

  “What if they are women – or children?” one of the militia captains, Sepan, pointed out.

  “Kill them.” Astiras was curt and in no doubt.

  “But, sire, children?”

  “Kill them, Sepan. Bragal children are just as adept at slitting throats as their fathers are. And the women, too. I’ve lost count of the men I’ve lost to Bragal women, thinking they were being hospitable. A drink offered is followed by a knife to the guts or heart. A kiss is followed by a stab, or in the middle of making love the poor victim is strangled, stabbed, garrotted or disembowelled.”

  Sepan looked aghast. Teduskis agreed with the Emperor. “I lost two men to children the first year we faced the uprising; they were playing a game of tag and ran round the legs of my two men, who laughed at their game. Next moment both men had been stabbed through the groins because the bastards had been hiding daggers in their jackets. Both men took three days to die.”

  “But – but..”

  “Sepan, if you’re incapable of following my orders I’ll have you replaced and you can take your position in the lines of the men,” Astiras said. “Let me make things completely clear to you all. This is a war to the death. Bragal thinks it has a chance of independence. If we look weak they will take full advantage. But I learned that they respect strength, and I had half of Bragal under my heel when my predecessor lost his nerve – and his head – and pulled us out. I have no intention now of coming here just to lose.”

  The officers nodded. They knew what they must do.

  The evening came and torches were lit at the perimeter of the camp, and guards patrolled inside the line of the ditch and stakes, watching the darkness. The wagons had been arranged in a large circle inside the perimeter, and inside these stood the tents. All the snow had either been trampled down into flat ice or shovelled out to form a perimeter inside the ditch. Some men were detailed to look after the chargers and they stood in the centre of the camp. In strategic locations braziers flickered, giving light and heat to the men nearby, and also to provide the secret weapon to the imperial force that Astiras had up his sleeve.

  The emperor and Teduskis stood at the corner of one wagon, looking into the darkness beyond the line of torches flickering in the wind. The village lights had all been extinguished a short while back. “It won’t be long now,” Teduskis said softly. “Just like old days, sire, isn’t it?”

  Astiras clapped his right hand man on the shoulder. “The men know what to do; I’m just concerned at the militia companies. This is not their sort of thing.”

  “They’ll be fine as long as they stay where they are, sire.”

  Beyond the limit of the light, dark shapes were slowly closing in on the camp. Each of them was armed with a sword or bladed weapon, and many had bows across their backs, brought out of habit. But this night archery would not be used; they wanted to close in and surprise their enemy. A volley of arrows would alert the Kastanians and the one chance the Bragalese had was to overwhelm them in one sudden rush and kill them before they knew what was happening. It had worked on other enemy forces in the past, but they had never faced Astiras Landwaster. There was nobody to tell them how he fought; all who had fought him were dead.

  Astiras passed another order around softly, and lengths of fencing the height of a tall man were raised up and held in place by ropes, the men holding them up remaining still, waiting for the order to release them. These lengths of fencing were in between the gaps left by the wagons, so that there now stood a solid wall of wood twenty paces inside the perimeter. The guards left outside this nervously paced back and forth, maintaining an air of normalcy, straining their ears and eyes for any sound or sight of an approach.

  Gradually, the sounds came. Soft crunching of footsteps in the snow, whispers of noise above the softly blowing icy wind. The guards withdrew slowly, passing through quickly opened gaps that closed again the moment they had done so.

  Astiras nodded to Teduskis who slipped
away to command the rear of the camp. His other captains looked to the emperor, waiting for his signal. The emperor looked through a gap in the fencing, peering at the edge of camp, and slowly but surely dark figures came into view, all holding weapons in their hands. Astrias smiled and pulled back from the fence. He nodded once to the captain of the imperial archers who signalled to his men. As one, they dipped their strung arrows into small buckets of a dark, thick liquid at their feet, then stuck the wet ends in one of the braziers close by. Flames sprung up from each and Astiras plunged down his arm. “Now!”

  The fences were dropped and the gathering Bragalese were astonished to see gaps suddenly appear, all brimmed with archers aiming arrows burning with flames at them. Even as they registered the fact, the arrows were streaking through the night air to strike into soft targets.

  The screams began, for even if those hit were not struck a mortal blow, the burning missile caused clothing to burst into flame or wounds to be made worse by the heat, fire and flammable oil. Men twisted in agony, frantically trying to beat out the flames, or fell to the ground, dead or dying, or not even knowing what had happened.

  The night lit up with fire. Now nobody could hide. The imperial archers reloaded and this time loosed without having to use fire. Figures scattered in all directions but the arrows flew after them and cut down scores. Curses, screams and cries for help echoed through the night.

  “Let loose the mercenaries!” Astiras shouted.

  With a roar the Bakran and Bragal mercenaries broke into a run, an odd assortment of weapons to hand, straight past the archers who stepped back, their work complete. The attackers, or those that remained, took one look at what was coming towards them and broke. The chaos of the last few moments died away and the Kastanians slowly walked over the dropped fencing and surveyed the night’s work. Bodies lay everywhere, cut down in swathes. Not one had managed to get closer than ten paces. Some were still burning and the smell of burned flesh filled the air, making many wrinkle their noses in distaste. Astiras waved men to the perimeter to make sure nobody was out there, then stepped over a couple of corpses and took a good look around.

  It hadn’t been a battle; it had been a massacre. But then, he’d perfected the art of fighting these irregulars over the past five years. The mercenaries would do their butcher’s work and finish off what the archers had begun. “Throw these bodies into a pile and burn them all,” he ordered tonelessly.

  “Sire,” the men answered and bent to their task. The spear militiamen came out, gaping in horror. Apart from holding the fencing, they had done nothing. They were quickly ordered into gangs to drag off the dead, and Astiras accepted a hot drink from one of his bodyguard. He would await the return of the mercenaries and assess their report. “Teduskis!” he called.

  His faithful retainer came loping over. “Sire?”

  “Count the dead.”

  “Sire!”

  A short engagement, but one that showed he and his men hadn’t lost their edge. It was a good omen.

  The next morning the final tally was presented to him over breakfast; a hundred and eighty two dead. The mercenaries had pursued for some time, killing as they went, but even they had to give up and return to camp. They reckoned some forty or so had got away, but the terror they had endured would be told and retold, getting more and more horrible with each telling, so that soon it would assume the proportions of a monstrous slaughter. Astiras wasn’t worried; it helped promote an image of mercilessness and this would help cow the rebellion. A few more such incidents and his name would be used to frighten children into obedience by their mothers.

  The village was deserted; many of those who had fled the massacre at the camp had gone into the village, pursued by the mercenaries, and the slaughter there had been particularly brutal. The spear militiamen were deliberately kept away from it as the corpses of all the villagers were pulled out of their homes and piled into one big group before being set alight. Another village destroyed. The mercs were pleased; they had looted and were much better off as a result.

  Astiras got the men to fortify the village and to move in. Now they had a base for the rest of the winter. From here he would ride out and spread terror to the rest of the district. By the end of the winter and the melting of the snows his army should have a free passage to Zofela.

  In contrast Prince Jorqel was becoming frustrated. The interrogating of the farm hands had revealed nothing new. The woman had been hired at short notice in Slenna and had been accepted by a desperate farmer, knowing he needed replacements for those who had refused to leave the perceived safety of the town walls. The winter was well established and the besieging army settled uncomfortably in the farmsteads outside the town. There was nothing much that they could do except wait. Wait for the town to surrender, or for the food to run out for themselves which wasn’t likely. They were receiving constant supplies from the port of Efsia and words of encouragement kept on coming from Kastan.

  The two things that worried him were that his father had returned to Bragal and that Amne had undertaken a journey through Bragal despite knowing that someone was seeking her out, very much in the same way that he had been. He had been fortunate; he hoped to all the gods his sister would be. As for his father, he had seen him at work in Bragal and the slaughter had sickened even him. No doubt the emperor would resume where he left off, reducing the Bragalese to whimpering terror before long.

  He had no intention of doing the same here. Besides, these were Kastanian people. Only those responsible for the revolt would be punished.

  He was interested in the council workings. He should be on it, but the revolt in Lodria had called him away. He would, however, write and address the council personally. Perhaps they would consider his recommendations and act accordingly. He sighed. Everything seemed chaotic. The depths to which the empire had sunk were seemingly limitless. No sooner had one problem been solved then another reared its head. No matter, once he was governor here he would work hard to put the province back on its feet.

  He knew that there were no trade goods created in Lodria. Other provinces had mines – Makenia was blessed with both sulphur and marble, for example – but here there was little. Half of Lodria was a coastal plain criss-crossed with rivers, and the rest a series of rising mountains that got higher the further into the interior one went, until the border with the province of Kaprenia. Kaprenia was now under the heel of the Tybar, and Lodria would need to be ready if and when the Tybar decided to push east once more.

  His mother had put an intriguing proposition to him in her latest letter. She had suggested that he ought to consider raising troops of mounted archers, similar to those that the Tybar used. Jorqel sat and rubbed his bristly chin. Ah, he needed a shave! He thought over the problems of setting up a training centre. One would need archers, obviously, but also equine beasts suitable for the type of warfare mounted archers practiced. Not chargers, no. Chargers were big and powerful, whereas mounted archers used the breeding equines as they were more nimble and manoeuvrable. He thought some more on the matter. Someone would need to be adept at two skills; riding and archery. That would take years to perfect. Shooting a bow at full gallop required guiding a mount with the legs and not hanging onto the reins. Oh, what a task! He would turn Slenna into a centre of training for mounted archers, yes. He would sponsor it himself. He would write to his mother and tell her he would take up her suggestion here in Lodria. The empire needed something with which to fight the perfidious Tybar with, and why not use their own tactics against them?

  He needed to put his energies into some project, if only to get rid of some of the frustration he was feeling. Once the snows melted he would send men out to find herds of equines and capture them, bringing them to the outskirts of Slenna and set up a training school. In fact he would get the men started on building one now. He had to occupy them and it would also keep them warm.

  He stood up suddenly and made his way out of the farm, followed by his surprised personal guard, who had bee
n caught napping. Jorqel sought out Gavan who was busy supervising the building of more shelters for the men. “Gavan, I’ve got a project I want you to take charge of.”

  He explained what he wanted. Gavan looked bemused. “Sire, this would take up much raw material, material we don’t have here.”

  “I’ll order some, don’t worry. It’ll arrive by ship. But I want you to find men amongst us who can design and build stables, a corral, an archery range, barracks and support facilities all in one. Here, somewhere,” he looked about. There was an open space beyond the farms. “There. Get it sketched out and the dimensions dug by hand so we know what we have to do. Once the materials arrive the men can get to putting the walls and buildings up.”

  Gavan scratched his head. This was insane. “It will take these men an awfully long time to complete, sire.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We start it, Gavan, and the town completes it once we take it.”

  “May I ask, sire, what you have in mind for this – school?”

  Jorqel explained, and Gavan looked thoughtful. He pointed out that it would take a long time to train people up to the standard needed, and Jorqel told him not to worry as time was no object. This was a school for the future.

  “The army will look down on these new units, sire,” Gavan pointed out.

  “Gavan, just think of the advantages; greater distances could be travelled; the army would be much more mobile. And we could take out an enemy before they closed in on us. We suffer because we’re slow moving and not all that mobile. We also do not have that many decent infantry units any more. How are we to defend ourselves when we can only stand and wait for the enemy to choose when and where to strike?” The prince tapped Gavan on the chest. “It is my wish to get this school started and by the gods it shall be done. Find the men with the skills – the army always has such men within their ranks, and come to me with sketch plans. We will plan for the future of the empire here.”