Harmakros was still up and more or less awake. He took the announcement quite calmly; by this time he was beyond surprise at—anything. They had to waken Rylla; she’d had a little too much, for her first day up. She merely nodded drowsily. Then her eyes widened. “Hey, doesn’t this make me Great Queen, or something?” Then she went back to sleep.
Chartiphon, arriving from the Beshtan border, was informed. He asked, “Why not Ptosphes?” then nodded agreement when the reasons were explained. About the necessity for establishing a Great Kingdom he had no doubt. “What else are we now? We’ll have Beshta next.”
A score of others, Hostigi nobles and top army brass, were gathered in the presence chamber. Among them was Sthentros; maybe he hadn’t been at Fitra, but nobody could say he hadn’t been at Fyk. He might have envied Lord Kalvan, but Great King Kalvan was completely beyond envy. They were all half out on their feet—they’d only marched all day yesterday, tried to sleep in a wet cow pasture with cannon firing over them, fought a “great murthering battle” in the morning, marched fifteen more miles, and taken Sask Town and Tarr-Sask—but they wanted to throw a party to celebrate. They were persuaded to have one drink to their new sovereign and then go to bed.
The rank-and-file weren’t in any better shape; half a den of Cub Scouts could have taken Tarr-Sask and run the lot of them out.
THE next morning Kalvan’s orderly, who didn’t seem to have gotten much sleep, wakened him at nine-thirty. Should have done it earlier, but he’d probably just gotten awake himself. He bathed, put on clothes he’d never seen before—have things brought from Tarr-Hostigos, soonest—and breakfasted with Ptosphes, who had also been outfitted from some Saski nobleman’s wardrobe. There were more messages: from Klestreus, in Beshta Town, who had bullied Balthar into agreeing to a truce and pulling his troops back to the line agreed on the treaty with Sarrask; and from Xentos, at Tarr-Hostigos. Xentos was disturbed about reports of troop mobilization in Nostor; Gormoth, he knew, had recently hired five hundred mercenary cavalry. Immediately, Ptosphes became equally disturbed. He wanted to march at once down the Listra Valley.
“No, for Dralm’s sake!” Kalvan protested. “We have a panther by the tail, here. In a day or so, when we’re in control, we can march a lot of these new mercenaries to Listra-Mouth, but right now we mustn’t let anybody know we’re frightened or they’ll all jump us.”
“But if Gormoth’s invading Hostigos—”
“I don’t think he is. Just to make sure, we’ll send Phrames off with half the Mobile Force and four four-pounders; they can hold anything Gormoth’s moving against us for a few days.”
He gave the necessary orders, saw to it that the troops left Sask Town quietly, and tried to ignore the subject. He was glad, though, that Rylla had gotten out of her splints and come to Sask Town; she might be safer here.
So they had Sarrask and Balthames brought in.
Both seemed to be expecting to be handed over to the headsman, and were trying to be nonchalant about it. Ptosphes informed them abruptly that they were now subjects of the Great King of Hos-Hostigos.
“Who’s he?” Sarrask demanded, with a truculence the circumstances didn’t quite justify. “You?”
“Oh, no. I am Prince of Old Hostigos. His Majesty, Kalvan the First, is Great King.”
They were both relieved. Ptosphes had been right; the sovereignty of the mysterious and possibly supernatural Kalvan would be acceptable; that of a self-elevated equal would not. When the conditions under which they would reign as Princes, respectively, of Sashta and Sask were explained, Balthames was delighted. He’d come out of this as well as if Sask had won the war. Sarrask was somewhat less so, until informed that he was now free of all his debts to Styphon’s House and would share in the loot of the temple and be given the fireseed mill.
“Well, Dralm save your Majesty!” he cried, and then loosed a torrent of invective against Styphon’s House and all in it. “You’ll let me put these thieving priests to death, won’t you, your Majesty?”
“They are offenders against the Great King; his justice will deal with them,” Ptosphes informed him.
Then they had in the foreign envoys, representatives of Prince Kestophes of Ulthor, on Lake Erie, and Armanes of Nyklos, and Tythanes of Kyblos, and Balthar of Beshta, and other neighboring Princes. There had been no such diplomatic corps at Tarr-Hostigos, because of the ban of Styphon’s House. The Ulthori minister immediately wanted to know what the new Great Kingdom included.
“Well, at the moment, the Princedom of Old Hostigos, the Princedom of Sask, and the new Princedom of Sashta. Any other Princes who may elect to join us will be made welcome under our rule and protection; those which do not will be respected in their sovereignty as long as they respect us in ours. Or what they may conceive to be their sovereignty as subjects of this Great King of Hos-Harphax, Kaiphranos.”
He shrugged Kaiphranos off as too trivial for consideration. Several of them laughed. The Beshtan minister began to bristle:
“This Princedom of Sashta, now; does that include territory ruled by my master, Prince Balthar of Beshta?”
“It includes territory your master ceded to our subject, Prince Balthames, in a treaty with our subject Prince Sarrask, which we recognized and confirm, and which we are prepared to enforce. As to how we are prepared to enforce it, I trust I don’t have to remind you of what happened at Fyk yesterday moming.”
He turned to the others. “Now, if your respective Princes don’t wish to acknowledge our sovereignty, we hope they will accept our friendship and extend their own,” he said. “We also hope that mutually satisfactory arrangements for trade can be made. For example, before long we expect to be producing fireseed in sufficient quantities for export, of better quality and at lower price—than Styphon’s House.”
“We know that,” the Nyklosi envoy said. “I can’t, of course, commit my Prince to accepting the sovereignty of Hos-Hostigos, though I will strongly advise it. We’ve been paying tribute to King Kaiphranos and getting absolutely nothing in return for it. But in any case, we’ll be glad to get all the fireseed you can send us.”
“Well, look here,” the Beshtan began. “What’s all this about devils? The priests of Styphon make the devils in fireseed die when it bums, and yours lets them loose.”
The Ulthori nodded. “We’ve heard about that, too,” he said. “We have no use for King Kaiphranos; for all he does, we might as well not have a Great King. But we don’t want Ulthor being filled with evil spirits.”
“We’ve been using Hostigos fireseed in Nyklos, and we haven’t had any trouble with devils,” the Nyklosi said.
“There are no devils in fireseed,” Kalvan declared. “It’s nothing but saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur, mixed without any prayers or rites or magic whatever. You know how much of it we burned at Fitra and Listra-Mouth. Nobody’s seen any devils there, since.”
“Well, but you can’t see the devils,” the envoy from Kyblos said. “They fill the air, and make bad weather, and make the seed rot in the ground. You wait till spring, and see what kind of crops you have around Fitra. And around Fyk.”
The Beshtan was frankly hostile, the Ulthori unconvinced. That devil story was going to have to be answered, and how could you prove the nonexistence of something, especially an invisible something, that didn’t exist? That was why he was an agnostic instead of an atheist.
They got rid of the diplomatic corps, and had in the priests and priestesses of all the regular, non-Styphon, pantheon. The one good thing about monotheism, he thought, was that it reduced the priesthood problem. Hadn’t the Romans handled that through a government-appointed pontifex maximus? Think over, seriously. The good thing about polytheism was that the gods operated in non-competitive fields, and their priests had a common basis of belief, and mutual respect for each other’s deities. The high priest of Dralm seemed to be the acknowledged dean of the sacred college. Assisted by all his colleagues, he would make the invocation and proclaim Kalvan Great King in the n
ame of all the gods. Then they had in a lot of Sarrask’s court functionaries, who bickered endlessly about protocol and precedence. And they made sure that each of the mercenary captains swore a new oath of service to the Great King.
After noon-meal, they assembled everybody in Prince Sarrask’s throne room.
In Korea, another sergeant in Calvin Morrison’s company had seen the throne-room of Napoleon at Fontainebleau.
“You know,” his comrade had said, “I never really understood Napoleon till I saw that place. If Al Capone had ever seen it, he’d have gone straight back to Chicago and ordered one for himself, twice as big, because he couldn’t possibly have gotten one twice as flashy or in twice as bad taste.”
That described Sarrask’s throne-room exactly.
The high priest of Dralm proclaimed him Great King, chosen by all the true gods; the other priests and priestesses ratified that on behalf of their deities. Divine right of kings was another innovation, here-and-now. He then seated Rylla on the throne beside him, and then invested her father with the throne of Old Hostigos, emphasizing that he was First Prince of the Great Kingdom. Then he accepted the homage of Sarrask and Balthames, and invested them with their Princedoms. The rest of the afternoon was consumed in oaths of fealty from the more prominent nobles.
When he left the throne, he was handed messages from Klestreus, in Beshta Town, and Xentos. Klestreus reported that Prince Balthar had surrounded the temple of Styphon with troops, to protect it from mobs incited by priests of Dralm and Galzar. Xentos reported confused stories of internal fighting in Nostor, and no incidents on the border, where Phrames was on watch.
That evening, they had a feast.
THE next morning, after assembling the court, the priests and priestesses of all the regular deities, and all the merchants, itinerant traders and other travelers in Sask Town, the priests of Styphon, from Zothnes down, were hustled in. They were a sorry-looking lot, dungeon-soiled, captivity-scuffed, and loaded with chains. Prodded with pike-butts, they were formed into a line facing the throne, and booed enthusiastically by all.
“Look at them!” Balthames jeered. “See how Styphon cares for his priests!”
“Throw their heads in Styphon’s face!” Sarrask shouted. Other suggestions were forthcoming, most of which would have horrified the Mau-Mau. A few, black-robe priests and white-robe under-priests, were defiant. He remembered what Harmakros had said about some on the lower echelons really believing in Styphon. Most of them didn’t, and were in no mood for martyrdom. Zothnes, who should have been setting an example, was in a pitiable funk.
Finally, he commanded silence. “These people,” he said, “are criminals against all men and against all the true gods. They must be put to death in a special manner, reserved for them and those like them. Let them be blown from the muzzles of cannon!”
Well, the British had done that during the Sepoy Mutiny, in the reign of her enlightened Majesty, Victoria, and could you get any more respectable than that? He was making a bad pun about cannonized martyrs. There was a general shout of approval—original, effective, uncomplicated, and highly appropriate. A yellow-robe upper priest fainted.
Kalvan addressed his mercenary Chief of Artillery: “Alkides, say we use the three eighteens and three twelve; how long would it take your men to finish off this lot?”
“Six at a time.” Alkides looked the job-lot over. “Why, if we started right after noon-meal, we could be through in time for dinner.” He thought for a moment. “Look, Lord Kal—pardon, your Majesty. Suppose we use the big bombards, here. We could load the skinny ones all the way in, and the fat ones up to the hips.” He pointed at Zothnes. “I think that one would go all the way in a fifty-pounder, almost.”
Kalvan frowned. “But I’d wanted to do it in the town square. The people ought to watch it.”
“But it would make an awful mess in the square,” Rylla objected. “The people could come out from town to watch,” Sarrask suggested helpfully. “More than could see it in the square. And vendors could come out and sell honey-cakes and meat-pies.”
Another priest fainted. Kalvan didn’t want too many of them doing that, and nodded unobtrusively to Ptosphes.
“Your Majesty,” the First Prince of the Great Kingdom said, “I understand this is a fate reserved only for the priests of the false god Styphon. Now, suppose, before they can be executed, some of these criminals abjure their false god, recant their errors, and profess faith in the true gods. What then?”
“Oh, in that case we’d have no right to put them to death at all. If they make public abjuration of Styphon, renounce their priesthood, profess faith in Dralm and Galzar and Yirtta Allmother and the other true gods, and recant all their false teachings, we would have to set them free. To those willing to enter our service, honorable employment, appropriate to their condition, would be given. If Zothnes, say, were to do so, I’d think something around five hundred ounces of gold a year—”
A white-robe under-priest shouted that he would never deny his god. A yellow-robe upper priest said, “Shut your fool’s mouth!” and hit him across the face with the slack of his fetter-chain. Zothnes was giggling in half-hysterical relief.
“Dralm bless your Majesty; of course we will, all of us!” he babbled. “Why, I spit in the face of Styphon! You think any true god would suffer his priests to be treated as we’ve been?”
XENTOS reached Sask Town that evening. The news from Nostor was a little more definite: according to his sources there, Gormoth had started mobilizing for a blitz attack on Hostigos on hearing the first, false, news of a Hostigi disaster at Fyk. As soon as he had learned better, he had used his troops to seize the Nostor Town temple of Styphon and the temple-farm up Lycoming Creek. Now there was savage fighting all over Nostor, between Gormoth’s new mercenaries and supporters of Styphon’s House, and the Nostori regular army was split by mutiny and counter-mutiny. There had been an unsuccessful attack on Tarr-Nostor. Gormoth still seemed to be in control.
The Sask Town priestcraft all deferred to Xentos; it was evident that he was Primate of the Great Kingdom, Archbishop of Canterbury or something of the sort. Established Church of Hos-Hostigos; think over carefully. He immediately called an ecclesiastical council and began working out a program for the auto-da-fe.
Held the next day, it was a great success. Procession of the penitents from Tarr-Sask to the Sask Town temple of Dralm, in sackcloth and ashes, guarded by enough pikemen to keep the mob from pelting them with anything more lethal than rotten cabbage and dead cats. Token flagellation. Recantation of all heresies, special emphasis on fireseed, supernatural nature and devil content of. He was pleased to observe the reactions of the diplomatic corps to this. Sermon of the Faith, preached by the Hostigos Uncle Wolf; as a professional performance, at least, the Rev. Alexander Morrison would have approved. And, finally, after profession of faith in the true gods and absolution, a triumphant march through the streets, the new converts robed in white and crowned with garlands. And free wine for everybody. This was even more fun than shooting them out of cannons would have been. The public was delighted.
They had another feast that evening. The next day, Klestreus reported that Balthar had seized the temple of Styphon and massacred the priests; the mob was parading their heads on pike-points. He refused, however, to renounce his sovereignty and accept the rule of Great King Kalvan. Evidently he never considered his vassalage to Great King Kaiphranos, which wasn’t surprising. Late in the afternoon, a troop of cavalry from Nyklos Town arrived, escorting one of Prince Armanes’s chief nobles with a petition that Nyklos be annexed to the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos, and also a pack-horse loaded with severed heads. Prince Armanes was more interested in liquidating his debts by liquidating the creditors than he was in winning converts for the true gods. Prince Kestophes of Ulthor blew his priests of Styphon off the guns of his lakeside fort; along with his allegiance he gave Hos-Hostigos a port on the Great Lakes. By that time the demolition of the Sask Town temple of Styphon had b
egun, starting with the gold dome. It was real gold, twelve thousand ounces, of which Sarrask, after his ransom was paid, received three thousand.
When he returned to Tarr-Hostigos, Klestreus was there, seeking instructions. Prince Balthar was now ready to accept the sovereignty of King Kalvan. It seemed that, after seizing the temple, massacring the priests, and incurring the ban of Styphon’s House, he discovered that there was no fireseed mill at all in Beshta; all the fireseed the priests had furnished him had been made in Sask. He was, in spite of the Sask Town auto-da-fe, still worried about the possible devil content of Kalvan’s Unconsecrated. The ex-Archpriest Zothnes, now with the Ministry of State at six thousand ounces, gold, a year, was sent to reassure him.
It took more reassurance to induce him to come to Tarr-Hostigos to do homage; outside Tarr-Beshta, Balthar was violently agoraphobic. He came, however, in a mail-curtained wagon, guarded by two hundred of Harmakros’s cavalry.
The news from Nostor was still confused. A civil war was raging, that was definite, but exactly who against whom was less clear. It sounded a little like France at the time of the War of the Three Henries. Netzigon, the former chief-captain, and Krastokles, who had escaped the massacre when Gormoth had taken the temple, were in open revolt, though relations between them were said to be strained. Fighting continued in the streets of Nostor Town after the abortive attack on the castle. Count Pheblon, Gormoth’s cousin and Netzigon’s successor, commanded about half the army; the other half adhered to their former commander. The nobles, each with a formidable following, were split about evenly. Then there were minor factions: anti-Gormoth-and-anti-Styphon, pro-Styphon-and-pro-Gormoth, anti-Gormoth-and-pro-Pheblon. In addition, several large mercenary companies had invaded Nostor on their own and were pillaging indiscriminately, committing all the usual atrocities, while trying to auction their services.
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen Page 19