War Maid's choice wg-4

by David Weber

  Yeraghor Stonecastle, Baron Ersok and Lord Warden of the East Riding, was of little more than average height for a Sothoii-two inches shorter than Cassan himself-and as dark and swarthy as Cassan was blond. He had very long arms, and his powerful wrists accurately reflected the rigorous traditional training regimen he maintained, despite his high rank. He and Cassan were kinsmen and close political allies, but there were times Yeraghor’s ability to belabor the obvious grated on Cassan’s nerves. In fact, it bothered him more because he knew how intelligent Yeraghor actually was, which only made his tendency to ask obviously rhetorical questions even more irritating.

  “I don’t know whether they’re accurate or not,” Cassan said once he was sure his voice would come out the way he wanted it to.

  He sipped expensive Dwarvenhame whiskey, then set the crystal glass down very precisely in front of him and leaned back. His comfortable rattan chair creaked under his weight, and he gazed out across the rolling green fields of the Barony of Frahmahn. He could see literally for miles from the roofed balcony set on the west side of his castle’s central keep, and everything he saw was his. But somewhere out there, beyond what he could see, beyond the borders of his own South Riding, lay Tellian of Balthar’s West Riding, and he felt his jaw muscles clench as he considered the reason-the real reason-for this meeting with Yeraghor.

  “I don’t know whether they’re accurate, but I think it’s obvious Shaftmaster thinks they are-or will be, when all’s said and done. And given that he’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’m not prepared to say he’s wrong.”

  “And you’re sure they’re genuine?” Yeraghor asked, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Master Talthar’s a resourceful soul, but we both know he has irons of his own in this fire.”

  “I’m sure,” Cassan replied grimly. “And I’ve spent some time looking at the reports his estimates are based on, too.” His expression wasn’t getting any happier. “I’m not sure I agree with all of his analyses, but he can’t be too far off.”

  “Shit,” Yeraghor said flatly. Unlike Cassan, Yeraghor preferred beer to whiskey, and he buried his nose briefly in his silver chased tankard. Then he slapped it back on the table and glowered at Cassan.

  “And this business about Macebearer signing on? It all looks genuine enough… I doubt he’d hesitate to offer us false information or even outright forgeries if it would serve his purposes. And capable or not, actually getting his hands on Macebearer’s records-or even just getting access to them-couldn’t have been easy. I know.” He smiled thinly. “I’ve tried myself on more than one occasion!”

  “They’re not forgeries,” Cassan said with a grimace. “I haven’t managed to get anyone inside Macebearer’s staff yet, either-not high enough to get his hands on this sort of documentation, at least-but I do have my sources in the Palace. Which is how I know someone broke into his office a few weeks ago. They’ve all done their best to hush it up, of course, but the investigation was as thorough as it was quiet. Talthar hasn’t mentioned it to me specifically, but I’m pretty sure the ‘servant’ who disappeared the same night Macebearer got himself burglarized was his man.” He shrugged. “I recognized Macebearer’s handwriting, too. I don’t think there’s any question the documents are exactly what Talthar told me they are, and that means those estimates are about as accurate-or official, at least-as they get.”

  “Wonderful,” Yeraghor said bitterly. “Things are bad enough the way they are. The last thing we need is Tellian getting Crown approval for that kind of boost to his revenues!”

  It was nice that Yeraghor agreed with him, Cassan thought acidly, but it would have been even nicer if he could have foregone-just this once-his compulsion to restate the obvious. But then Cassan made himself stop and draw a deep breath. His temper, he reminded himself, remained closer to the surface and faster to flare than he would have liked, and however irritating Yeraghor might be, Cassan had no business taking out his ire on his kinsman. Nor was it reasonable to expect any other initial response out of him, given the circumstances. Yes, Yeraghor’s conclusion was blindingly obvious, but Cassan had had the advantage of two additional weeks to study the documents the other baron had seen only in the last hour or so.

  And obvious or not, he had a point, Cassan conceded sourly.

  One of the unfortunate realities of life was that the water transport of trade goods was far and away safer, faster, and much, much cheaper than trying to ship the same goods overland. That was true even in the Empire of the Axe, with its superb highways; here on the Wind Plain, or in the Empire of the Spear-where even the best of roads were dirt and the worst were…well, pretty terrible-moving anything remotely bulky by land over any really extended distance was far too expensive for anyone to show a profit on it.

  As a consequence, it had always been difficult for Axeman merchants to ship their goods into the Kingdom of the Sothoii. It was possible to move at least some of them (mostly low-bulk luxury goods) overland from Dwarvenhame through the West Riding, but the Ordan Mountains and their foothills were a formidable barrier even over dwarf-designed high roads, and roads in the Duchy of Ordanfalas and the Duchy of Barondir, between Dwarvenhame and the West Riding, were no better than those of the Kingdom itself. For that matter, Barondir had a perennial problem with brigands and raiders, and the duke himself had been known to charge unexpected and sometimes extortionate “tolls” with very little warning.

  Most of the Axeman goods that did reach the Sothoii made their way up the long, majestic stretch of the mighty Spear River, and even that was barely a tithe of what it might have been. Bortalik Bay, at the mouth of the Spear, lay well over twenty-five hundred leagues south of the Wind Plain. That was an enormous voyage, and Axeman goods coming up the river first had to sail clear down around Norfressa’s western coast just to reach Bortalik. Yet distance was only the first hurdle they faced, for the half-elven Purple Lords who ruled Bortalik were deeply resentful of the Empire of the Axe’s economic dominance, and they regarded the entire basin of the Spear as their own private preserve. The tolls they charged to permit Axeman goods to pass through Bortalik and up the river were damned close to confiscatory, and they also used their strategic position to fasten a stranglehold on the foreign trade of the Empire of the Spear-one that frequently drifted over into outright control of Spearman politics. Any Spearman noble who angered the Purple Lords was apt to find all access to foreign goods embargoed by them, with consequences ranging from the merely painful to the ruinous.

  Neither Cassan nor Yeraghor had any particular problem with that arrangement. What happened in the Empire of the Spear was no concern of theirs, and if Axeman goods found it difficult to make the voyage from Bortalik to Nachfalas, Cassan’s clifftop port above the Escarpment, Purple Lord goods made the trip just fine. True, it made the Kingdom’s economy almost as vulnerable to Purple Lord manipulation as the Empire of the Spear’s in some ways, but that was actually advantageous in many respects, especially from Cassan’s viewpoint. That “unavoidable Purple Lord pressure” gave the Kingdom another card to play when it came to managing its relationship with its Axeman allies, who could be counted upon to cough up occasional concessions to sweeten the alliance as a counterbalance. And, on a more personal level, Cassan showed a pretty profit on all of the trade, Purple Lord or not, that passed through his lands on its way to Sothofalas and other points north. As for Yeraghor, the East Riding was the site of most of the Kingdom’s iron mines and smithies, and Yeraghor’s smiths and craftsmen had absolutely no desire to find themselves competing with the smithies and forges of Dwarvenhame.

  But that, unfortunately, was exactly what was going to happen if Tellian succeeded in his latest intolerable scheme. The so-called Derm Canal was going to make it possible for Axeman merchant barges to sail up the Morvan River to Derm, the highest navigable point on that river, and then across to the Hangnysti River at Bahnak’s capital of Hurgrum and up the Balthar River to the very foot of the Escarpment and their accursed “Gullet Tunnel.” Once
their goods reached the top of the Escarpment, the Balthar would be available again to ferry them all the way to Tellian’s capital, or they could be delivered directly to Sothofalas by way of Glanharrow in less than a third of the time it took for them to reach the capital from Nachfalas…all without paying a single kormak in tolls to the South Riding. And worst of all, it would break the Purple Lords’ monopoly on the Spear River. Those same barges could sail down the Hangnysti to the Spear and as far south as they pleased with cargos of Axeman goods and return the same way with cargoes from Spearman merchants without ever going near Bortalik Bay. The Purple Lords were about to lose a disastrous portion of their wealth and power, and while Cassan would have lost no sleep over that, the thought that largish chunks of that same wealth and power would be pouring into Bahnak’s accursed Northern Confederation and the West Riding, instead, was another matter entirely. While it was likely his own income would actually increase, given the Nachfalas location and the greater volume of trade which would be passing up and down the upper Spear, that increase would be only a shadow-and a very thin, dim shadow, at that-of the revenue increase Tellian was about to see.

  Cassan’s nostrils flared as he contemplated that grim future and a dull tide of resentment burned through him yet again as he remembered how close he’d come to defeating Tellian for good.

  The two of them had been locked in combat for dominance on the Great Council for over twenty years now, and their respective houses had fought that same battle still longer-all the way back to the Kingdom’s very first Time of Troubles-with the struggle seesawing back and forth with the shifting of political tides. Under King Sandahl, the present King’s father, the House of Axehammer had enjoyed a pronounced advantage, but Cassan’s position had slipped under King Markhos…thanks, in no small part, to the advice the King had received from his younger brother, Yurokhas. Prince Yurokhas had been fostered at Balthar under Tellian’s father at the insistence of the Great Council, which had feared the South Riding’s influence with King Sandahl. He’d known the present baron since boyhood, and to make bad worse, he too was a wind rider, like Tellian. Besides, Cassan was forced to admit that he’d overplayed his own hand during Markhos’ brief regency.

  Markhos had been fostered at Toramos, the seat of the Barons of Frahmahn, under Cassan’s father, and Cassan had expected to capitalize on that relationship. It had been a mistake. He admitted that freely, if not happily. He’d put the boy’s hackles up, and he’d probably been just a bit too open-well, heavy-handed, if he was going to be honest-about using the advantages of his riding’s position on the Spear. He’d been younger then, himself, barely a dozen years Markhos’ senior, and he’d come to his own dignities only a few years before, but that was no excuse for his clumsiness, and he knew it.

  Still, he’d been confident of regaining all the ground he’d lost, and then some, when Tellian “surrendered” over four thousand of his men to less than eighty hradani. The hatred between the Sothoii and their hradani “neighbors” was deep as the sea and bitter as brine, and Tellian had passed up the perfect opportunity to ride down into the Horse Stealers’ lands and burn their cities behind them while their own warriors were off battling their Bloody Sword enemies. He’d been right there, poised to carry through the attack, with plenty of reinforcements available to follow his original spearhead down The Gullet. He could have destroyed “Prince” Bahnak’s alliance, prevented the Phrobus-damned abortion of a unified hradani “Confederation” on the Wind Plain’s very flank before it even began, and he’d let eighty of the barbarians stop him! And, even worse in some ways, he’d actually accepted the blasphemous claim that Tomanak Orfro could conceivably have chosen a hradani as one of His champions! For that matter, he’d accepted Wencit of Rum’s preposterous lie that it was the Sothoii who’d begun the millennium and more of bitter, brutal warfare between themselves and the hradani.

  The court faction which had been most concerned about the possibility of a unified hradani realm had been furious, nor had they been alone in that. Even some of those who’d been prepared to take a wait-and-see attitude had been shocked-and more than a little frightened, whether they’d wanted to admit it or not-by the idea that Tellian had actually connived to create the “Northern Confederation.” And the notion that he should recognize the champion status of a Horse Stealer hradani, the most hated and reviled of all the hradani clans, had triggered an upsurge of bitter anger. Cassan would never be able to be certain, but he strongly suspected that only Prince Yurokhas’ support for Tellian-and his acceptance that Tomanak might actually have been so insane as to take a hradani as His champion-had motivated Markhos to resist the furious demands that Tellian be stripped of his membership on the Great Council. Indeed, there’d been demands that he be stripped of his barony and lord wardenship, as well.

  Yet even though Markhos had stopped short of accepting those demands, Cassan had known how thin the ice had become under Tellian’s feet, and he’d been confident that this time he could finish off his rival’s influence in Sothofalas once and for all.

  Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. That his strategy to undermine Tellian’s rule with a series of safely deniable attacks on Festian of Glanharrow had collapsed would have been bad enough, but then that bastard Bahzell had been given credit for saving the tattered remnants of the Warm Springs courser herd and actually going on to defeat a pack of demons set upon the coursers by none other than Krahana herself! Cassan still found that tale too ridiculous to accept. He was willing to admit Bahzell might have had something to do with rescuing the surviving coursers-certainly something had inspired them to accept him as a wind rider, which was almost as blasphemous as the idea that he might actually be a champion-but Cassan Axehammer would believe Tomanak had accepted Bahzell Bahnakson as one of His champions when Tomanak turned up in person in his own great hall to tell him so!

  And then, as if that hadn’t been enough, that meddlesome, common-born bitch Kaeritha Seldansdaughter had seen fit to interfere in the Kingdom’s internal affairs, as well. Of course Cassan wouldn’t have wanted someone like Shigu to succeed in destroying an entire temple of any God of Light, but Lillinara was scarcely his favorite deity, either. If it had had to happen to someone’s temple, he would have managed to bear up under the knowledge that it had been Hers. And as for the war maids-! Anything that got rid of those unnatural bitches once and for all couldn’t be all bad.

  King Markhos appeared to see things differently, however. Worse, he’d sent his accursed magi to investigate Tellian’s and Kaeritha’s claims.

  Personally, Cassan had never trusted the magi, anyway. Oh, he knew all about their precious Oath of Semkirk and how it bound all of them to use their powers only within the law…and as far as he was concerned, that and a silver kormak would get him a cup of hot chocolate. No one with the unnatural powers the magi claimed could be trusted. If for no other reason, how could anyone but the magi themselves verify that they were telling the truth about what they did-or didn’t-do with those powers of theirs? And the last thing he wanted was anyone peering around inside his head, which was why he always wore the amulet that blocked any mage from doing just that. Fortunately, at least some people had naturally strong blocks which made them all but impossible to read without a major-and obvious-effort (assuming the magi were telling the truth about their abilities, at least), and since his amulet simply duplicated that natural block, its protection hadn’t triggered any alarms in and of itself.

  That had prevented the magi from denouncing him as part of the “plot” against Tellian. But it hadn’t prevented them from uncovering almost all of the minor lords warden who’d been involved, and one of them-Saratic Redhelm of Golden Vale-had been Cassan’s own vassal and distant kinsman. That had almost proved disastrous, but Cassan had installed enough layers of insulation between him and Saratic to at least confuse the issue. The danger that Saratic might have chosen to trade his testimony against Cassan for some sort of clemency, or even outright immunity, from
the Crown had presented itself…but only until Darnas Warshoe, that useful armsman, saw to it that Saratic suffered an accident.

  And given what Saratic had been up to, at least a sizable minority of the Kingdom’s nobles strongly suspected Tellian had been behind that “accident,” not Cassan. It wasn’t the sort of thing Tellian normally did, but mercenaries hired by another Sothoii noble didn’t normally try to kill Tellian’s nephew and heir-adoptive, either. There were some provocations no one could allow to pass unanswered.

  Cassan doubted anyone in the entire Kingdom believed he hadn’t been behind the raids, yet with Saratic’s death, there’d been no proof, and not even an irate monarch proceeded against one of the four most powerful nobles of his realm without incontrovertible proof. Not openly, at any rate. Still, whatever anyone else might think, King Markhos obviously knew who’d instigated it all, and he’d made his displeasure clear by stripping Golden Vale from the South Riding and incorporating it into Tellian’s West Riding…officially as a form of reparations for Saratic’s actions, although everyone knew whose wrist he’d actually been smacking. Nor had he stopped there.

  He’d summarily dismissed Garthmahn Ironhelm, Lord Warden of Chersa, who’d been his Prime Councilor-and Cassan’s firm ally-for over ten years. And he’d also informed Cassan in a cold, painful personal interview that he himself would be unwelcome in Sothofalas for the next year or two. The King had stopped short of expelling Cassan formally from the Great Council, yet Ironhelm’s dismissal and his own banishment from Sothofalas, however temporary it might be, had reduced his web of alliances and influence to tatters. He’d only recently begun putting those alliances back together, and they remained a ghost of what they had been.

  Which was, after all, one of the reasons Yeraghor had become even more vital to all of his future plans.

  “You’re right, of course, Yeraghor,” he said finally. “And it’s not just the revenues Tellian’s looking at, either. There’s the correspondence from Macebearer, as well. This isn’t just about money. Tellian’s climbing deeper and deeper into bed with the Axemen and that bastard Bahnak. He’s not only going to drag the entire Kingdom into actually endorsing Bahnak’s rule, but he’s going to get our foreign policy tied directly to Dwarvenhame! And when the dust settles, he’s going to be the real power broker here on the Wind Plain. Don’t think for a minute that that isn’t exactly what he has in mind in the long run, and when he gets it, don’t think he’s going to forget anyone who’s ever done him an injury, either.”