by Robert Adams
"Too," added Tomos, "in a suite so capacious, a large retinue can mostly stay hard by their lord, rather than being lodged here and there, wherever they can be squeezed into the palace complex. I tell you, my lord, sometimes when I'm walking those endless, twisting and turning corridors of the palace, I would not be at all surprised to round a corner and find myself face to face with a snorting, man-eating minotaur."
Thoheeks Grahvos smiled. "Yes, I too know that feeling, my friend, and I freely admit that the additions to the onetime ducal palace were done in a rather slipshod manner, but it was at the time a crashing necessity to provide more room yesterday, if not sooner. Apropos that, are you aware that for some time Mahvros and I have been looking over architectural and layout plans for a new capital city, a roomy city with acreage allotted for eventual expansion at every hand?"
Tomos shook his head, and Grahvos went on, "Well, we have, down there on the plain, just the other side of the river."
Tomos wrinkled up his brows, visualizing the announced location, then commented dubiously, "Even if you moat it, my lord, you'll play hell and pay high to make a city there in any way really defensible. And, if moat it you choose to do, it will end as the centerpiece of a lake or a bog during flood season, you know. That is, unless you build so far from the present rivercourse as to make it easy for a besieger to interdict the canal that will have to supply your moat."
Grahvos smiled again, nodding. "There speaks the trained military mind. Man, have faith in the beautiful world that your own new High Lord envisions: a world wherein cities need not be built primarily with defense in mind, all cramped into too-small areas and basically unhealthy places in which to live. A world wherein country nobility may exchange their strong but cold and draughty and devilishly uncomfortable holds for spacious, luxurious halls set amongst their croplands and pastures. Have faith that your children and theirs will live happily in a sunny, productive land of peace and law and order, with no single bandit lurking along the roads and no armed bands riding about to trample crops and steal livestock and burn villages.
"Have faith in this glorious dream, man; I do. I know that I will scarce live to see it, but you most likely will, and Mahvros, too. This is the dream, included in the High Lord's first letter to me, that has sustained me through all the vicissitudes of the last few years, that when I am only a handful of ashes and no living man can even recall what I looked like, I still will be remembered for being one of the men who helped to finally bring peace and prosperity to the land wherein I was born, a land that I saw suffer so much and for so long."
To Thoheeks Sitheeros—who, save for the rare hunt or hell-ride or the rarer mountain interlude to visit with Chief Ritchud or others of his barbarian friends, had been virtually deskbound for years—it was akin in many ways to his early years as a young thoheeks, riding out with his picked guards or warband, this riding along sun-dappled roadways beside Captain Vahrohnos Bralos, trailed by their two bannermen, bodyguards and the twenty-four lancers, these led by a young lieutenant, one Pülos of Aptahpolis, with the small pack-train and spare horses and single cart trailing behind in charge of the handful of military and civilian servants and a brace of muleskinners.
As they usually camped near villages or holds, they made scant inroads on their supplies, instead buying fresh foods and grain from farmers and petty nobles along the way, folk who were overjoyed to see and accept and who gave good value for hard silver thrahkmehee and bright copper pehnahee with their sheaves of barley on their one side and the stylized head of a ram which the Council of these new Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee had adopted as its symbol on the other.
As almost all of the once extensive olive orchards had been destroyed by the roving combatants during the long years of revolt and counterrevolt and minor skirmishings and settlements of personal vendettas by the nobility, the bread they bought—fresh and hot from village ovens—was perforce topped with slathers of new-churned butter or savory, oniony goose grease. Most vineyards had met the same sad fates as the olive groves, so they bought and drank barley beer, ciders of apple and pear, fermented juices of peach and apricot, honey meads or ales flavored with wild herbs.
The land was good and under the hands of caring man was once more producing the riches it had for all of the centuries that had preceded the awful two decades so recently past. Herds and flocks once more grazed upon the meadows and leas and uplands. Fields of green, immature grains rippled to soft breezes that also set rows of tall maize arustle.
Small boys came running to roadsides to watch the lines of riders all ajingle on their tall chargers, the pennons fluttering at the sparkling steel tips of the long, polished lances of ashwood, sunbeams flashing from plumed helmets, cuirasses and hilts of sabers and dirks. Their elders might still feel the urge to hurriedly gather up small valuables and then run to hide in the woods, but these children had not in their short lifetimes learned to equate soldiers and riders of Council's army with death and destruction, with lootings, rapine and burnings. The passage of the small column of lancers was, to the young, simply a welcome break in their own, endless, wearisome war fought with sticks and stones against the vermin—insect, animal and avian—that haunted the fields of melons, squashes, aubergines and cabbages.
In one domain that did not yet have a full-time resident lord to hunt out the larger, more dangerous beasts, Sitheeros, Bralos, Lieutenant Pülos and a few carefully picked lancers exchanged their troop horses for hunters and spent the best part of two days in the destruction of a sounder of feral swine which had been despoiling the country around and about, then spent another two days at helping the farm-villagers butcher and cook and eat the rich, fresh pork, it being a very rare treat in summer for their hosts.
In another domain, Thoheeks Sitheeros earned great and universal admiration when he rode his blooded hunter in at the gallop and, with his long, heavy Pitzburk sword, hamstrung a ferocious wild bull, so that lancers could finish it off in far less danger to man or horse. Everyone gorged that night on fresh, spicy, spit-broiled beef, a bit tough and stringy, but still satisfying with black bread, brown ale, sweet maize and boiled cabbage.
When he had wiped the grease and sauce from his lips and beard, then swallowed a good half-leetrah of the fine country ale, Bralos remarked to his noble dining companion, "My lord, that was indeed a beautiful piece of work you did out there today, and I will for long remember it and tell of it. But, please, my lord, you must think of me if not yourself and not so risk your life. Has my lord any idea just how much trouble it would cause me if I had to deliver back his ashes to Council at Mehseepolis?"
Sitheeros chuckled. "Not half the trouble you're going to be in with me, here and now, if you don't cut out that disgustingly formal military manner of speaking and address me as I have advised you to address me, Bralos.
"As regards the bull, well, chances are that had it been any one of a hundred or so other bulls, I'd've just sat back with the rest of the party and tried to hold him where he was until someone had got back with that crossbow, or at least some dogs. But, hell, man, you know how hunting is. I just knew that I could do it with that particular beast, for all that it's been a good twenty years or more since last I did anything similar on a hunt. I just knew that I could cripple him without serious injury to either me or my horse.
"Don't you worry about me taking insane risks, Bralos, for I mean to make old bones. My days of active warring are over and done. I intend to die at the age of one hundred years or more, in a soft bed of overexertions with a young and willing doxie, not with a gutful of sharp steel or on the horns of some wild bull, thank you."
On the next day's march, Sitheeros remarked, "You know, Bralos, this ride has been a tonic for me in more than one way, but I also think that it has given me an idea for killing several birds with but a single stone. No army can be allowed to just sit in camp, drilling ceaselessly and doing make-work chores, without suffering for it; any man who has commanded knows that. But neither
is the army or Council or our people to be properly served by marching that army hither and yon to no real purpose or with the announced purpose of picking fights along the borders, as old Pahvlos did and tried to do.
"Yes, light and medium cavalry can be put to good use chasing stray bands of outlaw bandit raiders, but what of infantry, eh? Due to their survival necessity to move fast, bandits are always mounted, and even our light foot would play merry hell trying to catch them were any featherbrained senior officer to order them to it. So, must it be the fate of all our foot to sit and vegetate between drilling and endlessly repolishing unused weapons? No, there is better work for them and for the good folk of our Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee, I think.
"As of the time that we two left Mehseepolis, all save one of the thoheekseeahnee had thoheeksee and all of the border marches had an opokomees, but as we have seen on this march, right many of these interior lands are totally lacking minor nobility—komeesee and vahrohnoee—and the common people are working the land without the help or the supervision of any resident lord, given what little aid or advice as they do receive by agents of the thoheeks when they ride through each year to collect taxes or to gather men for seasonal work on river levees and other civic projects of a local nature.
"Moreover, many of these lands are quite likely to stay devoid of petty lords until such a time as there is more hard money about for purchase of the titles and holdings of extinct houses, for no one can expect a thoheeks who is himself often living on gruel and wild herbs and spring water between harvests to just give valuable assets away to the first promising landless nobleman-born who chances down the road; our world just does not work that way nor will it ever.
"Therefore, we have the current problem: willing, striving folk who could produce far more from lands that even now are showing traces of their old fruitful-ness did they but have steady, intelligent guidance and set goals toward which to labor, did they but have access to extra hands during those, seasons when they most are needful, did they but have men armed and trained to arms to keep large, baneful wild beasts in check, until these lands each have again their own resident lord with his family and retainers to do all these needful things for them. And this is where our idle soldiery comes into the scenario, Bralos. This is the plan that I mean to put to the High Lord of the Confederation on our ride back with him."
"And what, my lor ... ahh, Sitheeros," said Bralos uneasily, "if this great ruler has other plans for our and now his army?"
Thoheeks Sitheeros just smiled. "My boy, we will just have to see how best to cross that stream when we are up on its banks."
"From all that I have been told and the little that I have seen," said the High Lord, "you have done a stupendous job in so short an amount of time, Thoheeksee."
Despite the best efforts of Grahvos, Mahvros, Bahos, Vikos and several others, they had been able to assemble only twenty-two of the thirty-three in Mehseepolis by the time Sitheeros and the escort came riding in from the east with the notable visitor and the new squadron of Horseclansmen.
"We sincerely thank our High Lord Milos of Morai," said Thoheeks Grahvos with grave solemnity. "We regret that many of those who have strived so hard for and contributed so much to the rebirth of what was, and not too long since, a smitten, blighted land of chaos and disorder could not be on hand to welcome our overlord and to hear his generous words of praise; but few of the lands are even as yet on a firm, paying basis—be they thoheekseeahnee, komeeseeahnee, vahrohnohseeahnee or opokomeeseeahnee—and some of our peers simply could not absent themselves from their lands and still be assured that all their folk will be able to eat through the winter coming."
Which was, thought Grahvos to himself, as good a way as any other of which he could think of putting the powerful man on notice that affairs within these Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee were just not as yet to a point at which any meaningful amounts of reparations could be paid to the sometime Kingdom of Karaleenos or to anyone else.
He had, of course, heard that Milo was telepathic, as too were a good many Horseclansmen, but even so he was shocked when the tall man nodded his head of black hair stippled with grey and said, "Thoheeks Grahvos, gentlemen, I fully realize that that which you all have so valiantly set out to do will assuredly take time, much more time than has thus far passed. My reasons for making this initial visit to your land has nothing to do with the collection of any monies. I am come to offer help rather than hindrance, you see.
"That which I have learned from the regular reports of Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos, added to the information freely imparted me by your own Thoheeks Sitheeros and Vahrohnos Bralos of Yohyültönpolis, has confirmed my earlier thoughts of just where I and the might of our Confederation of Eastern Peoples can best be of aid to you, our newest member-state.
"Your northern marches are, I am assured by all, secure and at peace. Your southern marches are as secure as ever they will be with the Witch Kingdom abutting them—and I'll be speaking more of them at a later date.
"Your eastern marches, too, are about as safe and as peaceful as anyone who knows the fen-men could expect them to be. These fen-men are treacherous killers, all seemingly at a never-ending war with all the world and all peoples. They make precious few treaties and they keep or abide by the terms of even fewer. If human vermin truly exist, they are of the race of the fen-men. The one good thing that I can say about them is that, at least in Kehnooryohs Ehlahs and northern Karaleenos, they appear to be a gradually dying race. It is to be hoped—and I sincerely do so hope!—that these scum dwelling on the periphery of your lands will register similar declines in numbers, for only thus can you, will you, ever be free of their unsavory ilk.
"In the west, however, you have a very real problem confronting fledgling naval forces. Considering the degree of destruction that the available seaborne effectives of the late High King Zastros suffered at the hands of Lord Alexandras and his fleet, some years back, it is indubitably to your credit that you have managed to raise any naval force at all within so short a space of time, and that they have proven ineffective in dealing successfully with the existing menace of these marauders is perhaps to be expected.
"Nonetheless, herein is a place and time that the Confederation can prove its worth to you and your people. Even as I speak to you all here, elements of Lord Alexandras' fleet are assembling in and around one of the rivermouth ports of southern Karaleenos, awaiting only the word from one of my gallopers to set sail for Neos Kolpos. If he and his pack of recently reformed pirates cannot catch and put paid to these sea-raiders afflicting your western thoheekseeahnee, then be certain that no mortal man can do so, gentlemen.
"During this first part of my stay in your land, I would prefer to bide in your army camp, for I must quickly learn of that army's best and worst features, that I may choose wisely those who will set out with me for the west, those who will make up the landward jaw of the nutcracker with which we will strive to crush and crumble those who now so sorely plague this land of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee.
"Considering the pressing need, I think that the civil side of affairs here must await the outcome of the military—the naval, to speak with more exactitude. But never you fear, any of you gentlemen; before I depart again for the north, I will appoint a surrogate, a satrapos whose title will be priehkips or, in the Merikan tongue, prince. This man will have four subordinates immediately under him and their title will be ahrkeethoheeks. My surrogate may or may not be one of you gathered here today, but all four of the ahrkeethoheeksee will, I solemnly assure you, be one of your own."
Milo's first private meeting with Tomos Gonsalos was conducted in the spacious, comfortably furnished and tastefully appointed parlor of those quarters that had been Pahvlos the Warlike's. Immediately Tomos had spoken his latest and highly candid report to the High Lord, he arose and said, "Lord Milo, please come with me to the other side of this suite's foyer. We found while inventorying the contents of this suite that one of the storer
ooms had a false rear wall, and behind it was found something I think will interest your High Lordship."
When the section of wall shelving had swung aside and a lamp had been positioned properly, Milo hissed between his teeth at sight of what lay revealed within the secret recess. But he kept a blank face nonetheless and asked Tomos calmly, "What made you suppose that these artifacts would be of interest to me, in particular?"
"Because, Lord Milo," was the reply, "they so resemble those somewhat larger and more ornate ones that were in the compartment of High King Zastros' great mobile yurt, using which, you spoke to the king of the Witchmen."
Milo smiled. "Yes, I had clean forgotten, you were there that day up on the Lumbuh, weren't you, Tomos? All right, who lived in this suite besides the now-dead Grand Strahteegos? Never mind, just see that every one of them on whom you can lay hands is put under lock and key until I can get around to examining and questioning them. For now, let's see if this devilish device is working."
When he had connected the male plugs of a thick insulated cable to the matching female receptacles on the two metal boxes, he raised the lid of the smaller of them, then searched vainly for something, before noticing that on this particular model, something was built into one front corner. Slowly, various things in the metal chest started to glow and a humming sound— first very low-pitched, but gradually getting louder— emanated from it.
After he had fingered a switch to a different position from that in which he had found it, he located a large silvery knob and began to turn it slowly and carefully, at the same time saying what sounded to Tomos vaguely like Merikan words, but in an incomprehensible dialect of that tongue that he only had heard once before—up on the Lumbuh River in southern Karaleenos, years ago, when this same lord had used that larger but similar device to talk with the Witch King, who had spoken that same obscure dialect, too.