by Robert Adams
Moreover, possibly in earnest of the alliance, he had brought back to the Sea Isles upon his own return one of the rulers, who was the recent widow of him who had been the fourth of the original two men and two women who had ruled over Kehnooryos Ehlahs for nearly fifty years.
Sea Isle folk who heard the news thought that his ship would bear some withered, wrinkled crone. They were wrong. The young woman who leaped lightly from rail to wharf looked, despite her actual sixty-odd years, to be no more than twenty-two or twenty-three and a true kath'ahrohs—with a dense mass of blue-black hair, eyes so dark as to appear black and an olive complexion beneath her tan.
The High Lady Aldora Linsee Treeah-Potohmahs had quickly proven herself a singular lady in a host of ways. Very well coordinated, she had on the voyage to the Isles learned to scamper up and down the rigging of the sailing ship as rapidly and surefootedly as any of the able-bodied seamen. She was a master of many weapons, making up for the bulk and bulging muscles she lacked with a flexibility and speed that had to be seen to be believed; the wearing of heavy armor did not seem to ever tire her and slowed her but minimally. She could swim as fast and with as little apparent effort as any Sea Islesman, and her telepathic ability was stronger and farther-ranging than that of any man or woman of the Sea Isles folk.
She also proved herself stubborn and willful, stalking unsummoned into a meeting of the Council of Captains to demand that she be aboard one of the ships being sent to coastal waters to interdict High King Zastros' fleet, prevent it from entering the Lumbuh River and giving aid and supplies to the land forces. She shouted them all down in the course of that stormy meeting, even Lord Alexandras and the Senior Captain, Yahnekos, his stepfather. When a Captain Mohmahros had had enough female impertinence and made to put her out of the chamber by force, she dislocated his shoulder and his elbow and cracked three of his ribs so speedily and with so little apparent effort that many of the others did not immediately realize just why the man had come to lie, white-faced and groaning, on the carpet before the wisp of a grim-faced girl.
Eventually, having worn down most of the opposition, she got her way, of course, shipping out aboard Lord Alexandras' personal bireme, pulling her part of an oar on the benches with the rest of the ship's complement and, in the course of the protracted, destructive, very bloody battle against the Southern Ehleen battle fleet, distinguishing herself as a paladin-par-excellence.
So respected was she become for her warlike traits and skills that she faced no argument when she elected to be one of the volunteers who went upriver in the smallest, most shallow-draft vessels to mount night attacks against the camps of the High King sprawled along the southern banks across from the sections defended by the High Lord Milo and his allies.
After the deaths of Zastros and his queen, after the abrupt cessation of hostilities on the mainland, the Lady Aldora took part in some practical voyages, even tried coastal raiding for a while. Then, however, having driven home her point, gotten her way, she put off her armor and weapons and sea-boots, taking up the attire and ways of a Sea Isles woman, living in the palace with Lord Alexandros—first as his mistress, then, after a while, as his legal wife. She was not his only wife, of course, for he wanted and needed heirs, sons, while she was barren and knew it for fact, fifty years' worth of lusty lovers having all failed to ever quicken her. When first she began to enjoy regular sex with Alexandros, she hoped against hope . . . but she was of too practical and realistic a basic nature to pin the succession of his house and title on such vain hopes, so she insisted that he seek out and wed other women, even presenting some of them to him; one of the girls she had personally kidnapped from Kehnooryos Mahkehdonya and another from a seaside city in Ehspahneeah, far and far to the east across the great Ocean.
Aldora found herself to be naturally attuned to and very comfortable with the free and easy sexual mores of the Sea Isle womenfolk, mores so like to those of the Horseclans with whom she had matured. She never took another legal husband, as did most of the polyandrous women of the Isle, but she felt free and was, indeed, completely free to enjoy many lovers from among the captains, pirates and raiders while her husband busied himself with the necessary functions of procreation on his other wives. But when they were at sea together, Lord Alexandros was hers alone for the length of the voyage and she took full advantage of him and his rare ability to fully fulfill her, as lover, as matelot, as caring friend, as knowledgeable teacher in the ways of the sea.
She found that she did not miss the mainland or its people at all, after a while; what she did miss was horses and the great prairiecats. The only felines on any of the Isles were domestic or feral housecats, kept to check the depredations of rats and mice, and there was not one horse to be found. There was a small herd of runty, wild ponies on the largest of the low isles, but all of her attempts to mindspeak them had proven them possessed of little ability to none at all, with but dim intelligence. The folk of the Isles used them mostly for meat and hides, like the feral swine that shared the isle, these latter being far and away the intellectual superiors of the ponies, capable of mindspeaking with humans, but not much inclined to so do, rather assiduously avoiding close proximity to their two-legged predators.
But with the great orks, Aldora found herself at home. The mindspeak of the massive marine mammals was almost as powerful as her own rare talents, and the creatures seemed to take to her as they did and had to no other human, living or dead. A pod of varying strengths always was resident in the clear waters of the sandy-bottomed central lagoon, for sharks seldom entered from the sea beyond the circling isles and, consequently, the lagoon was a safe place for calving.
In company with her newfound friends, Aldora explored the most distant reaches of the lagoon, fearful of no other living thing while she swam among the sleek black-and-white beasts. Not even the long, scaly krohkohthehlishsee that crawled and swam in the salt swamp on the southernmost side of the Isles dared to venture into the lagoon when orks were nearby, for their armor-plated hides were no match for the crushing strength of an ork's jaws, and fast as their flattened sculling tails could propel them, the orks could effortlessly swim rings around them; also, orks could seldom bring themselves to pass up a tasty snack of reptile meat.
When once she suggested to Lord Alexandros the extirpation of the crocodilians—which numbered among them some true giants of fifteen and twenty feet in length and took ponies and pigs on occasion, as well as a human swimmer, now and then, or a sentinel careless or foolhardy enough to leave one of the three fen-watchtowers alone and afoot—he had demurred.
"No, love, like the orks, those dragons are allies in our defense, fearsome and treacherous allies, sometimes, but still allies."
"Allies?" she demanded. "What the hell are you talking about, Lekos? The orks are intelligent, can reason; those damned things are mindless, just toothy eating-machines, and about as picky about their fare as a damned shark."
"Well, for one thing," he replied patiently, "they provide efficient burial service for corpses and quick disposal of such garbage as the swine find unappetizing. But the most important thing is that they make of that fen a deathtrap to any would-be invaders.
"Fourscore or so years back, a party of mainlanders made to dig out and deepen the water courses through those fens in order to get some of their ships through it and into the lagoon. They began at dusk, one night, while others of them kept the attention of our men near the entry-channel, away to the north. A few justly terrified warriors and seamen were found in the tops of a few trees or squatting within one of the two whaleboats left behind, and they swore that over a full thousand men had entered that benighted fen, perhaps a tenth of their numbers had won back to the sea, a few dozens had found safe places and the rest had all died horribly, done to death by the dragons.
"Until that occurrence, our folk had actively hunted the beasts for their fine leather and the flesh of their tails, but the then Lord of the Isles forbade any furthe
r incursions against them, and it has been so ever since. They are only killed when they are caught in or near to the harbor, too close to this isle or otherwise threatening one of us. As I say, they are considered to be allies in defense of the Sea Isles, my dear."
Chapter II
It not being a military operation, the party led by sometime Captain-of-elephants Gil Djohnz left on time, with the dawning of the Monday morning. Passing through the various unit camps, they noted them all to be abustle, but this was not in any way remarkable, for drills and training marches, practice alarms and parades were commonplace occurrences in the permanent garrison of the army of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee.
In the years since the twenty-five-year-old Horse-clansman had been forced—at barely twenty—to accept a captaincy in that army, he had grudgingly, and then only for the sake of army discipline, given lip service to the seemingly endless lists of rules and regulations and general orders and special orders and service customs by and under which that army lived and trained, marched and fought, but in his heart of hearts he had never ceased to thank them all—well, at least the most of them—every bit as silly and senseless as he had when he had first arrived here with Sunshine, Tulip and a handful of his kinsmen.
As he rode along on Sunshine, at the head of his column of elephants, horses, humans and carts, out of the camp and its environs and out onto the road to the west, he did feel a little hurt that his old friends Thoheeks Sitheeros and Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos had neither of them taken the time to come the night before and bid him a last farewell, share a mug of wine, at least; he had kept half each of an eye and an ear cocked for sounds of them throughout the preceding day and night . . . vainly, as it turned out. True, they three had enjoyed a feast and well-lubricated revel the weekend before at the quarters Sitheeros maintained in Mehseepolis, but even so ... He sighed and shook his head.
Taking a look behind, he beamed, "Slow down, Sunshine, the pace you're setting will tire the horses too quickly. It's a very long journey, you know; we'll not be there tonight, or tomorrow night, or for many and many a tomorrow night, my dear, so there is no need to race or rush."
The elephant's return beaming bore with it a tinge of exasperation. "Sunshine cannot understand why her brother felt it necessary to bring along those delicate, easily tiring little creatures anyway. They and their rabbit-eared cousins that draw those carts, they are superfluous, really. Do you and your two-leg brothers not have three powerful and very intelligent creatures of my sort to bear you along and draw your carts?"
Gil thought fast. "Sister-mine," he beamed, "we two-legs were of a mind that it would not be dignified for our brave, brainy sisters, whom we so love and respect, to enter back into the Land of Elephants appearing as mere beasts of draught and burden; this is why the mules and horses accompanied us, that should fighting become necessary, my sister and her sisters will not be hitched up or burdened down and thus will be immediately able to put their awesome power into full use against such foes as we might face."
At this, Sunshine beamed a warm, all-encompassing tide of pure affection into Gil's mind, simultaneously renewing her vows of love and endless loyalty to him. She shortened her walking stride, and as she did, so too did the other, following elephants.
While beaming in return his own love for and loyalty to his massive mount, Gil thought deep within a carefully shielded recess of his mind that he was become over the years most, adept at elephantine psychology. Before many days had passed, he was to ruefully recall this smug expression of hubris.
Thoheeks Mahvros read the just-delivered message and turned back to the councillors—nineteen of them, this day—saying, "The party of our High Lord lies camped about the Monastery of Ayeeos Antohnios of the Stones, while the brothers ferry them as fast as human flesh may endeavor across the River Lithothios. Brothers and soldiers together are rigging cables to float the wheeled transport across, the ferry vessels being apparently too small or lightweight for such task."
Thoheeks Bahos cracked the prominent knuckles of his big hands and shook his head. "Dammit, Mahvros, we're going to have to get around to replacing that damned bridge . . . and soon, man! That used to be the main trade road, but of late years, the traders have been compelled to swing way north and west and make use of that damned treacherous ford up by the ruins of Castle Lambdos, and naturally they jack up their prices for the extra effort and risks."
Mahvros nodded. "Yes, all true, but that's just one bridge, and there are others placed in spots of more strategic importance that must still take priority. Moreover, now that our lands are settling down—the outlaws, the brigand bands, the renegades and all similar dangerous scum eradicated—the road crews are running short of state-slaves and we may soon start having to institute regular levies of farmers and townsmen to fill out the labor groups, are we to maintain the repair schedules originally decided upon."
To the chorus of groans and incensed mutterings that this last evoked around the council table, he raised an open hand and said, placatingly, "I know, I know, gentlemen, such would play pure hob with activities of an agricultural nature. But please consider: What good to us, to our people, is an army that cannot move quickly from a place it is not needed to a place where it is needed? We all must begin to think of the best things for the realm, not merely of petty, personal concerns. Each and every one of you is fully aware just how much tribute-grain and other foodstuffs goes to our army, not to even mention other supplies, and in order to justify such sacrifices, we must be able to make full use of the army, which means decent roads, strong bridges, well-paved fords and safe passes in the mountainous areas."
"The damned army and nobody else is going to eat regularly do we go about taking the workers out of the fields to sweat over roads," said Thoheeks Pennendos bluntly. "Why not use part of the army to raid the northern barbarians for slaves . . . ?"
Jumping to his feet, leaning across the table, red-faced, Thoheeks Sitheeros shouted, "You half-wit ninny! Your lands lie far from the barbarian states, mine are tooth by jowl with them, and our realm has at long last hammered out a reasonably secure peace with them. Now you want to start a border war. What's in your head, boy? No brains, clearly. Horse biscuits, perhaps?"
Involuntarily, Pennendos flinched back from the big, powerful man. In a tightly controlled voice, he said, "My friends will call on you shortly, Lord Sitheeros, and . . ."
"And nothing!" snapped Thoheeks and Acting Strahteegos Grahvos, in a tone of utter exasperation. "Sitheeros, sit down and shut up! Pennendos, you're still a young man, but if you're going to call out every man who ever names you a shithead, you will never make old bones; Sitheeros could make a bloodpudding of you with one hand only, and if you aren't aware of that fact, you truly are a shithead. You and your overly hot head often make me wonder if perhaps Council did not err in confirming you to your lands and titles; the confirmation is not irreversible, you know, so beware." The older man maintained a hard, cold stare until the younger dropped his gaze.
From Sitheeros' side of the table, Thoheeks Vikos spoke up. "I'm as committed to the common weal as any man here, God knows, but really productive farming is a year-round job and a hard and time-consuming one, at that. Are all of the workers to be taken from off the land for even a couple of weeks, an entire crop could be lost."
Mahvros nodded. "We are all as aware of the facts as are you, Vikos, and we have taken all facts into consideration in plotting out our contingency courses. In the event it becomes necessary to draft land-workers for road crews, we will expect those thoheeksee called upon to send us one able man in every three for forty days of work. When they return, the thoheeksee will replace them in equal number from those still on the land, and so on. At no time will more than a third of the land-workers be absent from the fields. This will be a sacrifice, true, but far from a ruinous one, you must admit."
Vikos nodded. "Those remaining will just have to work harder and longer every day. And I suppose yo
u'll maintain a constant labor force by dint of staggering the arrival and departure dates of the levies due from the various thoheekseeahnee, eh?"
"Just so," said Mahvros, then, sighing, he pled, "Now, please, may we get back to consideration of our overlord and his entourage?
"Lest he be further delayed on that onetime trade road, I suggest that we send out an honor guard commanded by one of us to bring him and his immediate staff on more quickly to Mahseepolis. Do I hear any volunteers to head up that guard of honor, gentlemen?"
Thoheeks Sitheeros nodded, saying, "I could use the exercise, Mahvros, I'll lead them. Hell, I'll even use some of my own lancers, if you wish, and we can just leave the army horsemen in camp."
But old Grahvos shook his head. "No, Sitheeros, thank you, but it were better that the honor guard be of our common army, not of a great magnate's personal following, for, if you'll recall, private armies are just what caused our homeland so much grief within recent memory. We'll have Tomos to pick us out a score of lancers, a sergeant or two and a young officer to actually command; you'll be a noble supernumerary, Sitheeros, officially commanding only your personal bodyguards."
"Only twenty measly lancers?" yelped Thoheeks Pennendos. "No, I think we should send out at the least a squadron each of heavy horse and lancers, my lord, possibly some war-elephants, too. Twenty lancers smacks to me as but the pitiful effort of some small, weak, utterly impoverished foothill principality of uncultured near-barbarians, and I doubt not but that any Ehleen gentleman would share and echo my sentiments."
Grahvos sighed, while Mahvros snorted and opened his mouth to make reply, but the older man caught his eye and shook his head, then addressed Thoheeks Pennendos in a patient tone. "My young lord, this matter is but another example of one of the more important reasons why this Council exists: that the older and wiser heads may give guidance to the younger and less experienced of our number, lead them in the proper path and hope that they will afterward remember the way.