by John F. Carr
"Or Lysandros will use it to convince the Regency Council it's time to get off their collective hindquarters!" Soton paused, and drew deeply from his pipe. "Each and every one of the Regents is more interested in feathering his own nest than in solving the Succession Crisis. Now Lysandros will have a credible threat-Rylla's invading army-to hold over their heads."
"And that," Aristocles finished, "is truly a crisis hot enough to light a fire under their hind parts!"
"Good news on an auspicious day," Soton said. "Our friend Lysandros ought to be on his knees thanking Styphon that Queen Rylla didn't take her army to Harphax City, or there might be a Hostigi usurper sitting on the Iron Thrown of Hos-Harphax at this moment!"
"Very true, Soton. And, now that all this political wrangling is over, we can get back to our real work; rebuilding the Order's military strength."
Soton sighed heavily. "Maybe it's over for you, Aristocles. For me it's just beginning. I'm afraid you'll have to begin rebuilding and repairing the damage Kalvan's forces inflicted without me. I must go to Balph and take council with the Inner Circle. It is time to make further preparations for the war against the Usurper Kalvan. I will need the Archpriests' help to convince Great King Cleitharses to mobilize the Ktemnoi Squares for next spring. Also, the Inner Circle has been balking at Captain-General Phidestros' demands for more gold and victuals. I need to remind them that any credible invasion army against Hostigos will need many depots, well fed and well paid soldiers and more weapons and fireseed than have been assembled in living memory. Fortunately the Archpriests of the Inner Circle fear Kalvan almost as much as they do Archpriest Roxthar so that chore will not be too difficult."
"For this, they do indeed show wisdom."
"Call Sergeant Sarmoth, we have a trunk to pack. And a debt to settle with Kalvan-on a bill that is long overdue."
FALL
FORTY THREE
I
The shutters of the royal bedchamber banged in the rising wind. Rylla heard the first few drops of rain splatter against them and rose up from her chair at the table, after first setting the inkwell on top of the letter she was writing to Kalvan.
As she pulled the shutters closed, the wisdom of her husband struck her again. Had she chosen to summon a servant, she would have had to conceal the letter. As it was, doing the work herself meant that no one but herself and Allfather Dralm would see the words until her husband broke the seal.
Of course, the idea of doing the work yourself could go too far. There was such a thing as royal dignity. Likewise, one did not honorably turn faithful servants out to starve.
With the sound of the wind and rain shut out, the room was silent and appeared even emptier than usual. Rylla hoped that the rain would not fall too heavily. The crops were standing tall and promised a fine harvest. The rains that had plagued Kalvan in the west had fallen only moderately here in Hostigos.
Rylla forced her eyes away from the bed unshared for far too long, and back to the parchment. Her quill marched busily across it, and the words followed:
– none suitable for the rank or duty of Prince of Phaxos. It seems that even the lesson we taught them has only made the nobles of Phaxos cease opposing us; they have not ceased to quarrel with one another.
So I had the choice of leaving Phaxos in chaos, as you left Nostor during the Winter of the Wolves, to be a fearful lesson. Or else I could end its existence as a Princedom and join it to Hos-Hostigos as a Royal Province. The proposed Proclamation of Union I have enclosed will set forth the reasons why I chose the latter.
The Proclamation of Union was being drafted as she wrote under the oversight of her father, who had returned with the sick and wounded several days ago. Ptosphes knew better than she, how to couch the Proclamation in words that would not offend those Phaxosi with whom there was no quarrel, and tell the rest exactly what the Hostigi thought of them.
The door flew open. Rylla started up, ready to blaze at whoever had entered without knocking or even asking permission. She saw Lady Eutare, the only one of her attendants who had permission to enter without asking permission. It had made for some jealousy among the other ladies-in-waiting, but the Beshtan noblewoman had done better service to the Realm than any of the others.
First, Lady Eutare had foiled a plot to betray an important castle to the Harphaxi and spirited away a considerable sum in gold and silver. Second she had caught Prince Phrames' eye so that he now considered himself all but betrothed to her. That made things easier between him and Rylla; they had been feuding ever since her decision to invade Phaxos. Lady Eutare was someone they both cared about.
It was high time that Phrames started begetting a family of his own. Demia would need playmates of a suitable rank before long. In time, she would need a husband from a stock worthy of her, and what better stock than Phrames?
"Yes, Eutare?"
"The King has returned!"
Rylla sat down again, because her legs would no longer support her. Her stomach felt uneasy and her mind was unsettled. Please, Allfather Dralm, make this homecoming a joy, not like the battlefields I left in Phaxos. Kalvan had never been truly mad at her before, but the absence of letters from him since her return from Phaxos did not bode well.
After a moment, she saw something in Eutare's eyes that made her uneasy. "Is he wounded or sick?"
"No. No. But-Your Majesty, he rode in with barely the escort of a messenger, on horses that looked ready to drop in their tracks. Those who saw him dismount say he wore a visage fit to frighten Styphon's demons."
Rylla frowned. "He is probably half-witted with fatigue. Well, he can sleep soundly tonight. We can celebrate his victory tomorrow."
"But, Your Majesty-"
"Would I be welcome when you sat down with Prince Phrames?"
Lady Eutare flushed. "As you wish, Your Majesty." She appeared to want to say more, or at least delay her departure, but Rylla's tone brooked no argument.
As Rylla turned back to the letter, footsteps sounded on the stairs and a familiar voice made her heart leap in her chest. "Is the Queen at home?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Then the footsteps coming up the stairs faster, grew louder as Rylla sprang up and ran to the door-
– to stop as though she'd run into a quickset hedge, as Kalvan stalked into the room. He was muddy and saddle worn, wet and stinking, but none of these would have mattered under other circumstances.
With that look on his face, Rylla could no more embrace her husband than she could have an Archpriest of Styphon.
"Kalvan, what's wrong?" He slammed the door closed behind him.
"What the Styphon did you think you were doing, with that butchery in Phaxos?"
"BUTCHERY!" She hadn't intended to shout, but his tone pricked her like spurs into a horse's flanks. "I call it burning out a nest of enemies and guarding your back!"
"Dralm damnit! Stabbing me in the back, is more what you've done! You've just given every prince in Hos-Agrys and Hos-Harphax good reason to distrust us. Do you know what the League of Dralm-"
"I don't know anything about the League of Dralm, and I don't care either. If Allfather Dralm really favors them, let Him give them the sense to see that we're on his side. If Dralm won't do that, who the Styphon cares about the League?"
Kalvan threw his gloves down on the table. "We'd better care about what they think, whether Dralm does or not! Do you want the Harphaxi Electors withdrawing their opposition to Prince Lysandros for Great King of Hos-Harphax?"
For the first time Rylla felt a twinge of fear for something else than her husband's ravings. "They wouldn't-"
"They would. One rumor I just heard along the road says they're meeting right now. There were always plenty of Harphaxi princes and priests who said the League shouldn't intervene in the affairs of a Great Kingdom, even if it was about to elect a Styphon-worshipper."
"I suppose they wouldn't want to set a-precedent," she said using a word from Kalvan's native tongue. She would have uttered a Sastragathi sn
ake-spell if it would have changed the look on her husband's face!
"No. It would be a gift to the Styphoni. Now you've gone and handed the Council of Dralm an even better reason for staying out of the Harphaxi election. Half of them will now be thinking: We need a strong Great King on the Iron Throne, to balance Kalvan's empire-building."
"Empire-building? I only defended what any respectable Prince or Great King would call his honor-"
Kalvan went off like a barrel of fireseed with a short fuse. "Defended? Is that what you call it? If my 'honor' needs defending, in the future, let me do it! What you've really done is tarnished my good name. Your invasion of Phaxos, behind my back-"
"How could I do anything behind your back! You were not here to answer Araxes' latest insult."
"Did I tell you specifically, not to leave Hos-Hostigos?"
Rylla shrugged her shoulders. Maybe she had acted against her husbands' words, but she was no horse to be led around in circles and given commands-not even by her beloved.
"Yet, you insisted upon invading Phaxos, which very likely undid everything I did in the west. I've half a mind to call Harmakros straight back and-"
"Isn't he with you?"
"I left him to command our army in the west with our allies to finish wasting the land around Tarr-Ceros. With luck, that should keep the Knights out of the field this year and next in spite of what you've done. When Harmakros returns, though, he's going to help me select the next Prince of Phaxos-"
"Who says so?" Rylla replied indignantly.
"The Great King of Hos-Hostigos says so. Or-" Kalvan's eyes wandered to the table and the paper letter setting upon it. Before Rylla could do more than pray for her patience, he'd crossed the distance to the table, snatched up the letter and read it.
Rylla had thought his visage was frightful before. Now she would have run from the room if that would not have been regarded as cowardice. For the first time in their marriage, she stepped back from her husband, to give herself room and time to draw her dagger if all else failed.
Kalvan said nothing and took only a single step, and that was to lean backward. But he picked up the letter in both hands, and tore it down the middle, then tore each piece in two. The four fragments of paper fluttered to the rug.
"Harmakros will rule Phaxos, until I find a Phaxosi nobleman we can trust to make Prince. There's little for him to do in the Sastragath and he will be returning soon."
"And how will they do under Harmakros in the meantime?" Rylla snapped off the question like a pistol shot. "Do you remember the Captain-General's wasting of Nostor and the massacre at the Sevenhills temple-farm? Do you think he will be gentle in wasting the Knights' lands? What does he have that will make his rule better than ours?"
She nearly flung an unforgivable accusation at her husband, concerning him and Harmakros. She stopped short of that folly, first because she knew it was nonsense and second because she feared driving him to say something equally unforgivable.
Having rejected vile insults, she still found no gentler words. She was standing, shaking like a tree in a high wind and hissing like an angry cat, when footsteps sounded once more on the stairs.
Prince Ptosphes entered, with an air of noticing nothing so carefully wrought that it defeated his own purpose. "I heard that Kalvan had returned. The Proclamation of Union has been drafted. I have here the-"
"There won't be any Union," Rylla stated.
"Oh?" The Prince looked like a man who was trying to navigate his horse through caltrops that were strewn before him.
Rylla wanted to scream at her father not to play the witling when she wanted an ally. Instead she managed to say without stammering, "The Great King thinks that Duke Harmakros would serve well as ruler of Phaxos, until We find a suitable candidate for Prince."
"The Great King thinks that Harmakros can be trusted to wipe his backside without being told how!" Kalvan bellowed.
Rylla was quite sure they heard him outside the chambers, probably outside the keep, possibly on the Harphaxi frontier!
The bellow won Kalvan the undivided attention of both wife and father-in-law. "May Dralm be my witness, I'm just sorry I didn't leave your father here to watch over you and that moron Sarrask. Prince Ptosphes might have done something to prevent this idiocy!"
Ptosphes turned bright red, while he turned his head right and left as though seeking a place to hide.
"Are you calling me a fool as well as Sarrask, since he only did my bidding!" Rylla screamed. She knew she had been as loud as Kalvan but didn't care.
"Well, you Dralm-damned behaved like one, kicking a stone because you've stubbed your toe on it! Butchering the Phaxosi nobility like a herd of sheep. And what about Araxes family-what did they do?"
"Did you want his sons to slink about the Six Kingdoms," Rylla yelled, "seeking vengeance and trying to raise armies that someday our children will have to fight?"
"Of course, not. But to kill them in cold blood-How could you?" The vein in his forehead was throbbing.
"I did what I had to do, for Us, for Hos-Hostigos. And if you don't understand that, you don't understand anything."
"You didn't do it for Hos-Hostigos, you did it for Rylla. And your appearance to others. It wasn't my pride you were avenging, it was your own!"
She brushed the tears of anger out of her eyes.
"And now having thrown away half our friends in the League of Dralm-"
"Friends, like Primate Xentos! I couldn't take away half of something that never existed." Rylla was relieved to discover that she could speak instead of scream, even if her throat was suddenly raw.
Her father took hold of her arm. "Your Majesty, with all due respect I think there is a chance that the Great Queen has spoken truly. I think we should consider this at another time, after you have rested from your travels and taken refreshment."
Ptosphes' tone could not have been courtlier, or his grip on her arm gentler, as he maneuvered her to the door. Yet, Rylla knew that if Kalvan had made a move toward them he would have faced the Prince's drawn sword, and that if she had resisted her father would have dragged her bodily out of the room.
So, she let him lead the way, and they were halfway down the spiral stairs when they heard the door slam behind them. It echoed up and down the stairway like a cannon shot.
Rylla swallowed, and then slammed her clenched fist so hard into the wall that it was bloody when she drew it back. Ptosphes gently uncurled her fingers, as he had when she was a child with a minor cut she had brought to him for healing.
"We'd best see Lady Eutare and have her bandage this. Otherwise, Dralm-only-knows, what tales will run through the castle about how you gained this injury!"
II
Verkan Vail walked through the entryway into the great room of Tortha Karf's palatial Hostigos townhouse. "Very nice, Tortha."
"My home away from home," Tortha responded. "No rabbits, either! And all the comforts of my former quarters in Xyphlon, I hope?"
"We had a team in Xyphlon City for five ten-days establishing your cover, creating the Trading House of Tortha, implanting pseudo-memories on your last living relative-a sister named Horthvarga, no less-and generally casing the place. The Mexicotal siege, though doomed to fail, has everyone upset. It hasn't helped that the Mexicotal have built their own local Pyramid to the Sun outside the City, where every day their human-skin accoutered priests are taking human sacrifices and hearts from local captives and prisoners-of-war. It's enough to make you want to drop a thermo-nuclear on their capital city."
"I hate to admit it, but that bunch has this Styphon's House racket beat all to Regwarn and back."
"Ahhh, good to see you picking up the local references, Tortha. As well as losing all First Level objectivity. I remember how you used to lecture me on the subject."
Tortha harrumphed. "I'm not the only one. Besides, these Hostigi folks grow on you. What brings you to Hostigos Town."
"I had promised Kalvan to bring him some guns from Greffa in exchange for
all that fireseed I took with me. I did too, but the trading party's about five days down the road. I took my prerogative as chief trader to ride on ahead. I thought I'd meet with my old trader friend before stopping into the palace and seeing Kalvan."
Tortha nodded as he removed his tobacco pouch and a new carved ivory pipe. "I like the way you stay in character."
"Where'd you get the pipe? Isn't that Kalvan's face carved on it?"
"Bought it off a Zygrosi trader. Some whaler carved it out of a walrus tusk-scrimshaw. I've ordered a bunch more, when he returns from his last trading mission before winter sets in. I intend to give them out as presents at Year-End Day. Don't mention them to Dalla-I've got a pipe with Rylla's face carved on it for her."
"Word. By the way, Dalla came along this trip. She'll be here in a few hours. She wanted to air out our townhouse."
"I guess you won't have time to visit the baronial mansion in Beshta this trip?"
Verkan laughed. "You mean my drafty, falling-down castle. Tarr-Verkan, Dalla's taken to calling it. I think it formerly belonged to one of Prince Balthar's cousins, from the cheap side of the family!"
Tortha joined in the laughter. Balthar had been legendary as a miser long before his well-deserved death at Tarr-Beshta at the hands of Rylla's giant bodyguard, Xykos.
Verkan sobered up. "I've got more bad news."
"What now?" Tortha asked. "Living in Hos-Hostigos is like being at Paratime Headquarters under Code Yellow all the time. Or is this Code Red?"
"No, Code Yellow, it seems that Captain-General Phidestros has besieged and taken an important Beshtan castle, Tarr-Veblos."
"The Harphaxi strike back!"
"Well, Captain-General Phidestros had to do something before he lost his job. After last years drubbing at Chothros Heights and Rylla's successful invasion of Phaxos, in the heart of Hos-Harphax, the Harphaxi princes and people were losing morale. The top command knew Phidestros really wasn't in a position to stop Rylla, but Lysandros was going to have to do something or risk the Election of someone else as Great King. Phidestros was smart enough to realize that he had to make a face-saving move before returning to Harphax City, or face a further erosion of morale in the Royal Army as well as a loss of confidence in his leadership.