There were several polite ways to dodge the invitation, but Sego didn’t try any of them. He simply swallowed hard and nodded. “I’d be honored.”
Darius smiled and picked up the bread basket between Bohme’s tray and his, doling out a small handroll to each of them before passing the bread down the table toward Sego. He pretended not to notice how carefully Sego eased down to the cushion. The man’s leg apparently didn’t bend well and he had to arrange it to where it lay flat out and off to the side.
When bread was broken between friends, especially the first time, it was not polite to discuss business. Sego didn’t even put the scrolls on the table, but set them aside on the floor. Darius nodded in approval and offered soft butter and cheese as well.
They ate bread in companionable silence for a few moments. Darius stole a look from the corner of his eye at Sego. The man looked thoughtful. He kept staring at the bread in his hands as if it held the answers to all of the world’s mysteries.
“You….” the word seemed loud in the silence of the morning and Darius’s head jerked up to stare at his aide. Sego met his eyes as he spoke. “You really intend to live here, then?”
He makes it sound like I have another choice. Darius’s head canted to the side in confusion. “Of course. I swore to Tresea herself. Where else can I be?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’ve watched you for days now go from one end of the palace to the other and every word out of your mouth has been about war. You didn’t seem to think of anything else. Even your clothes were just a necessity, and not something you invested in.” Sego seemed to struggle for a moment to find the right words. “I did not think that you wanted to really live here.”
Ahhh. He understood now. “I have every intention of living out the rest of my days in this country.” Scratching his cheek he admitted ruefully, “I just don’t know where to start making friends. I’m a former enemy, after all. It’s hard to win you people over.”
“Understandable,” Sego responded. He looked satisfied as he finally bit into the bread.
“Good plashe to shtart would be Raja’sh gift,” Bohme reminded him.
Darius snapped his fingers. “I forgot. My thanks. Sego, I think it best that I send a gift to Raja Tailli to thank her for giving me Bohme. What do you think would be a good thing to send?”
“I will help you choose something appropriate this afternoon,” Sego promised. “It cannot be jewelry or clothing, as those are courting gifts.”
He nearly choked on the bread. Phew, that was close. In Arape, the correct gift would have been a bolt of beautiful fabric or a chain of silver, depending on the gender of the receiver. Good thing he’d asked.
“You are aware that I am the steward of your household as well?” Sego asked this as if he already knew the answer.
Darius blinked at him quite stupidly for a moment. It had escaped his immediate notice that he now had a household. But of course he would, with his appointment of lead general. Usually the position came with lands as well, but he couldn’t imagine that would be the case here. If Tresea gave a former enemy-converted-ally actual land, she’d have a riot on her hands from the court. And rightly so, too.
But that now explained why Sego had already gone ahead and seen to his wardrobe. As steward, it would be expected of him. Still, that begged another question. “What were you doing before being assigned to me?”
“Military intelligence.”
Darius perked up at this answer. “That’s why you can put your hands on information so quickly.”
Sego flashed him a smug look. “That’s why.”
No wonder the queen had assigned him, then.
“Your household does not have much to it at the moment,” Sego continued, reaching for another piece of bread. “But now that I know you want to make a good life here, I will help you build a worthy house.”
Darius rubbed at the back of his head and wondered how to respond to that. “Sego…you do know that I’m a merchant’s son, right?”
Both men froze and looked at him carefully, as if suspecting that he was pulling their legs.
“You’re very well spoken for a merchant’s son,” Sego responded slowly, still not quite believing him.
“My father traded information more than he did goods, some seasons,” Darius admitted with a laugh. “We all grew up learning three or four languages, so I’m more educated than most.” That had been particularly handy when he was commanding the Brindisi forces, as he could usually give the orders directly instead of relying on translators. “But my point is this: I have no idea how to set up a prestigious household. I’m not sure I want to really bother doing it, either. It seems like a hassle.”
Sego lifted his eyes to the heavens, no doubt praying for patience. “Queen Tresea gave me very firm orders. She wants you to build a proper household here.”
“Why?” Darius asked, and then felt like smacking himself for asking an obvious question. “Wait, let me guess. She’s afraid that I’ll run off and return home after we defeat Brindisi, is that it?”
Sego nodded wryly. “You cannot blame her. You have nothing to tie you here.”
Not yet, anyway, except that oath of loyalty he gave her. But he didn’t have any spare head space to think about playing house. “Do whatever you want to make her happy.” He shrugged, finishing off the last of the fruit on his plate. “I need to focus on other things.”
This answer didn’t surprise his aide/steward one bit. “Of course.” With a sidelong glance he added blandly, “I’ll save the bride searching for later, after you’re more established.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Darius nearly choked. “B-bride?!”
“You’re a man of status if not of wealth,” Sego pointed out in a rational tone that belied the twinkle in his eyes. “There will be prospective brides being offered to you. Some families especially don’t care if the groom has green skin and missing limbs, if it means political power, they’ll give one of their daughters away.”
A truly scary thought. In fact, the scariest part of that was that if Queen Tresea heard of any of these potential matches, she’d likely endorse them as it would be yet another way to tie him permanently to Niotan.
“No brides,” Darius ordered firmly, a little panicked.
“It’ll likely take time before anyone approaches, as no one is quite sure how influential you are yet,” Sego soothed, although he still had that thrice-cursed twinkle in his eyes. “We have time to think of a counter strategy for any offers.”
If Shaa were smiling on him, he wouldn’t get any offers. No, that might be too much to ask. Darius knew full well after five years in a formal court that marriages were political bargaining tools and only the politically naïve thought otherwise.
A knock at the door saved him. Bohme instantly climbed to his feet and strode over to answer it. Darius had a feeling that his staff had arrived, which was confirmed when Bohme opened the door fully and stepped aside, letting the visitors inside.
Darius got to his feet and smiled in welcome. After spending the past couple of days together, he was starting to get a better feel for them. None of them had said a great deal unless he’d asked direct questions, but he hoped that their reticence had been simply because they were still feeling out how to react to him.
Today, they needed to start talking. Darius thought aloud (a bad habit he’d picked up from his mother) and he needed to sound things out with the people around him. If they didn’t talk back, he didn’t know if the idea was good or bad. Today, they would talk, or he’d start twisting arms.
“Come in,” he invited, ushering them to the war room next door. “Your timing is good. Sego has brought more information for us.” He paused to scoop the scrolls off the floor. Part of him really wanted to offer Sego a hand up as well, but his aide looked a little miffed that he’d even dared to pick up the scrolls. Any more help than this would not be accepted.
Darius bit back a sigh at the man’s pride and simply continued
. “Bohme, go nap.”
His bodyguard gave a short bow of acceptance and ducked into the bedroom.
Kaveh, Navid and Ramin went straight through without a backwards glance. Darius did look back to make sure that Sego could get up but apparently the man had figured out how to rise gracefully from the floor and he did it without any real effort. Satisfied, he followed his staff into the room.
After the first day, and with Bohme and Sego’s help, Darius had managed to gather most of what he needed to really work here. A large terrain map now lay across the desk, covering practically the entire space. All of the information that Sego gathered filled one shelf, with paper, quills and ink on the shelf above it. Darius’s seal as lead general took up a shelf all by itself, even though it wasn’t any larger than a child’s hand. In time, stacks of reports would no doubt take over every corner of the room, but for now, this would do.
Sego had ordered for more chairs to be brought in, so every man had a place to sit around the different sides of the table. Darius sat at the head and reached for the paper he’d hastily written his battle plans on. With everyone settled, he said without preamble, “The queen approved our plan which means it’s time to get to work.”
Ramin seemed to find this funny as he had to strangle a laugh. “And, ah, what do you call everything we did the past three days, sir?”
“Prep work,” Darius deadpanned. “But let’s start with the prep work. Commander Ramin, you spoke to the blacksmiths about modifying the shields?”
“Yes, sir.” Ramin reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out a rolled scroll, which he set on the table and rolled out. Several sketches of shields were on it, with different modifications, and measurements written off to the side.
Darius rose from his seat and came around the table to stand at Ramin’s side, as he wasn’t quite good enough at reading Niotanese to be able to do it sideways.
“I actually called together a hasty conference with the top blacksmiths in the Army,” Ramin said, angling the parchment a little so Darius could see it better. “We threw ideas back and forth, and here’s the top three. The first option is just to cut the shield shorter, so that you have free range of motion over the top.”
Actually, he didn’t agree, but Darius wanted one of the others to speak up this time. They needed to start voicing their opinions. Especially Navid, as he didn’t talk at all unless someone prodded him into it. “Navid? What’s your opinion?”
As he had yesterday, the rough-looking Commander hesitated strongly and took a long moment before he spoke. “Would give soldier more room to attack, but also less protection,” he finally said in that deep, rumbling bass. “Not sure if worth it.”
Kaveh nodded in agreement, eyes studying the parchment intently, even though from his angle it was upside down. “It’s true, shortening the shield might not be the best option. But this second option you have sketched out, the one with the narrow hole near the top—I like the look of that.”
Darius took a better look at it, trying to mentally picture himself as a soldier behind that shield. The hole extended only a hand’s length from the top of the shield and had enough width to it that a spear could easily go through and attack an opponent. As an added benefit, most of the shield could still be used to protect the man holding it. He looked at the final option, but it was very similar to the second, only it had a round, scooped opening instead of a rectangular one.
Navid, after darting a look at Darius, reached out and tapped the third option. “More room to wield spear.”
Hmmm, true. And it still left a lot of protection for the soldier. “Third one,” Darius agreed. “Ramin, see to it. And make sure that you have at least some holes on the left side instead of the right, just for anyone that’s left handed.”
From the blank look on Ramin’s face, that option hadn’t even occurred to him. “Of course, sir.”
“Good.” Darius returned to his seat, catching Navid’s eye as he did so. “How long will it take to assemble a special hit-and-run team to deal with the wagon manufacturers?”
“Assembled already,” Navid assured him, seeming to form each word before saying it. “Ready to leave on your command.”
Darius carefully kept a frown from forming on his face. Why was this man so cautious in speaking to him? “Can they do both the supply trains and the manufacturers?”
“Yes, sir.”
A little more detail would have been appreciated rather than that curt assurance. Darius heaved a mental sigh and let it go. “Good. Give them the order to go as soon as we’re done here.”
Navid inclined his head in acceptance.
I’m going to make that man talk to me even if I have to get a steel bar and pry his mouth open, Darius promised himself in frustration. “Kaveh, you and I are going to deal with the defenses. Have you come up with a layout for the wooden barriers?”
Kaveh handed him a rolled scroll, which Darius accepted and rolled out. The eastern front of Niotan stretched out for five miles before the flat desert landscape changed. On the northern end, it turned into low foothills and mountains. On the southern side, it went into craggy land that would break an unwary traveler’s ankle before it went into rolling sand dunes. Five miles of barriers would be difficult to construct, but Darius actually wanted some space in between them to encourage soldiers to come through, and that would take up quite a bit of space by itself. Difficult, but not impossible: or at least, that was the conclusion he had reached.
As far as he knew, Kaveh had as much experience on the eastern plains as Darius himself did—at least, that’s where he’d run into the man the most often. The few times he’d tried a more northern invasion was when he’d ran into Ramin and Navid. He’d divided up their duties based more on their experience than anything else. So he expected that Kaveh would come up with a decent layout for barriers. And it would be effectual, but… “Kaveh, why did you only plan on two layers?”
Kaveh had too much political upbringing for him to show any hint of nervousness, but he did blink before his expression became impassive. “It was my understanding that you wanted the barriers simply to break up any possible formations. Is this not to your satisfaction?”
Well, it would certainly do that, but…wait a moment. Darius sat there and thought about it. Had he ever run into artificial barriers in this country? They certainly used the natural formations in the mountains to their advantage, but he’d never run into them on the plains. “Kaveh, when was the last time that someone tried to put up barriers on the eastern front?”
“Not in living memory,” Kaveh admitted and for some reason looked at Sego for a moment, who was standing at Darius’s shoulder. “I had to research it before I could make any plans.”
Great sands. Research?!
Sego cleared his throat slightly. “In fact, General, we did research this before when you first came to attack us. But your attacks were so ferocious and unusual that we could not find any time to construct the barriers.”
So, in other words, he had three novices when it came to barrier tactics at this table. Darius resisted the urge to bang his head against the desk. Later. He’d teach them the specifics later. Right now, he had to cover the basics.
“This,” he tapped the plans with one finger, “would work to break up formations. But only two layers do not do the job, not really. Especially with this wide expanse of plains behind the barrier, with no natural formations to help, you have to do more than two. Otherwise the first wave of men through the formations will quickly form back into the ranks on the other side, and you’ll have to fight on both sides. What you need to do is something more like this.” He grabbed a nearby quill and started to roughly—very roughly, as his artistic skills left much to be desired—sketch it out.
“Don’t do a straight line like this. Construct it more in a curve, that way each side can see the enemies of the other and can aim at them. You were right in staggering them, leaving them spaces to go in between the first line. If you try to stop
them dead at the very beginning, you usually just have a pileup and it becomes a complete standstill. But continued this staggered line like this—” the quill scratch against the parchment more rapidly “—all the way back at least until this point. It’s alright to have a little space in between. Just don’t give them enough to perform maneuvers on.”
Kaveh followed this closely and then picked up a quill himself and started sketching in the other side. “Like this?”
Darius beamed at him. “Exactly like that. Now, the last two lines shouldn’t be lines at all. Just puddles of oil that we can light ablaze anytime we wish. It makes it impossible to pass through for a whole day, and that’s plenty of time to rout them out and send them running.”
“But where are you going to find the time to build all of this?” Ramin asked, not really in objection, but more out of curiosity.
To Darius’s complete surprise, Navid gave the answer. “Supply trains.”
Ramin stared at the other commander for a moment before he smacked his forehead with his palm. “Of course. That’s why you want the supply trains hit first! They’ll have to draw back temporarily just to secure whatever supplies they have left.”
“That and scrounge for any food and water in the nearby area,” Darius admitted. It had been another tactic that had given him nightmares, when he’d been on the Brindisi side. In fact, he’d taken a lot of measures to prevent it from happening, but from what he’d seen and heard on the way to Niotan, the current general was sloppy about things like this. He was trying to rashly bull his way through and capture the capital. Darius couldn’t tell if this choice in tactic was because of impatience or idiocy. Likely both. “Which reminds me: do we have any civilians still living in this area?”
“There are not many there to begin with,” Sego informed him while leaning forward slightly to draw an invisible line on the map with one finger. “This whole area is not suited for agriculture or livestock so there are few towns. Ever since Brindisi’s attack, most have left and retreated further into the country’s heart.”
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