Great Kings' War

by John F. Carr

  Sirna noticed that Aranth Saln's body language showed the only sign of disagreement among the knowing smiles and nodding heads of the Team. Eldra acted as if she hadn't heard Lathor's comment. Sirna wonder how Eldra viewed the Paratime cops and Home Time Line politics in general; probably only as it affected her opportunities to travel outtime. Like so many Home Timeliners, Eldra rarely returned to First Level, using it primarily as a supply base for her outtime forays.

  The professor certainly appeared too much the maverick to be a Management Party supporter, with their devotion to the status quo and their complete support of Paratime Police policy. For the same reason one wouldn't expect her to be a member of the Opposition Party, who were just as predictable and rigid in their resistance to the Paratime Police as Management was in its support. At a guess, she probably leaned toward the Right Moderates with their theme of "the appeal to reason."

  By the time the two conveyor operators had taken their seats at the controls, Sirna and her teammates were seated on the passenger couches. Sirna looked up at the metal mesh dome which would soon disappear into the indescribable flicker of a paratemporal transposition field. Then she looked at Eldra; the professor's long fingers were twined around the stem of the pipe she didn't dare smoke during the transposition, twisting and untwisting themselves into knots like a nest of snakes.

  Sirna rubbed her right leg where the top of her riding boot chafed it and grinned. It was nice to know that she wasn't the only nervous member of this team.

  II

  Kalvan decided to call a halt for a meal in another half hour. Without a watch it was difficult to tell time here-and-now. Most people here-and-now used burning candles to measure time, but they weren't of much use on horseback. Note: find some way to reinvent the clockwork mechanism. He'd already introduced sundials, but he needed a more reliable clock. Next time he was at the University he would talk to Ermut who was probably the first scientist here-and-now.

  His detachment was getting close to home, but not so close that he felt like riding all the way on an empty stomach even if it would save time. They could eat—what to call it? As the first meal of the day, it should be breakfast; measured by how long they'd been on the road it should be lunch, even if it wasn't yet midmorning. Anyway, they could eat and rest the horses before pushing on to Tarr-Hostigos, and Kalvan could close his ears to the well-bred grumbling about Great Kings who insisted on rising before dawn.

  Kalvan was no longer afraid of what he might finally see when he rode into view of the heartland of Hostigos. Even before the Mobile Force arrived, Soton's cavalry hadn't pushed more than a few raids and a lot of patrols into Hostigos, and now that Harmakros and Phrames had reinforced Ptosphes, they weren't even doing that. The Holy Host of Styphon was camped in Sashta, laying it to waste as they foraged for the supplies they would need before they could fight another pitched battle.

  That was hard on Prince Balthames and his subjects, but it was an undisguised blessing for Kalvan and the Princedom of Hostigos. The way Soton and Mnephilos drove their men after Ptosphes had been a little frightening even for Kalvan, reading it second-hand in Ptosphes' letters. If Ptosphes hadn't fought the Battle of Tenabra within reach of his supply magazines—so that for the first week he could retreat fast enough to break contact with the Holy Host—he might have been brought to battle and smashed before he could regroup.

  Kalvan would not have been prepared to believe that here-and-now heavy cavalry could fight that well or infantry march that fast, but when you were dealing with the Zarthani Knights and the Sacred Squares, you had to be prepared to believe quite a lot that didn't apply elsewhere.

  As it was, Ptosphes had done damned well to bring ten thousand men in fighting condition out of Sashta! The Styphoni had been on his heels all the way, scouting and raiding far into his rear, snapping up stragglers and every so often sending a weak van into an apparently vulnerable position to tempt him to turn and attack.

  That was a trick that couldn't work twice—not with Prince Ptosphes. He had kept retreating, ignoring the curses and occasional desertions by men who thought more of vengeance or an honorable death than of the best way to win this war. Kalvan suspected that those curses hurt Ptosphes more than the careful phrases of his letters would ever show, but he knew his father-in-law would have sacrificed even his honor to bring his army back, a loss that would hurt more than merely losing his life.

  The Styphoni paid the price for a swift advance across the Sashtan countryside whose major fortresses and walled towns were held against them. By the time they'd reached Hostigos they'd marched the shoes off their horses' hooves and the soles out of their soldiers' boots, and left behind most of their artillery because their half-starved teams couldn't haul it. They still might have won a battle against Ptosphes alone by sheer weight of numbers but for the arrival of Harmakros and the Mobile Force.

  There was nothing for the Holy Host to do after that but forage in Sashta and hope the Sashtan garrisons wouldn't send out too many raiding parties against the convoys coming across from Beshta to the east and the Ktemnoi wagon trains coming through Syriphlon from the south.

  It was a race between Hostigi reinforcement and Styphoni supplies, and at the moment the race was in a dead heat. Anything that gave one side or the other a major lead during the next week or two was likely to be political rather than military.

  Politics was Kalvan's main reason for riding on ahead of his army. There were too many things he needed to know that couldn't safely be put in letters even by the people who could tell them. What was this new League of Dralm that Xentos had mentioned in his latest letter from Agrys City? From the name, it sounded as though the League would be a natural ally against Styphon's House, but would the League be willing to commit gold, arms and soldiers to the fight? Or was it another pointless debating society like the Council of Dralm?

  What had Phrames heard or seen in Phaxos that might tell Kalvan which way Prince Araxes was likely to jump—and when?

  What about the Beshtan situation: What did the people in Beshta think of their Prince's treachery, and could any of them be persuaded to rebel against him so that Balthar would have to worry about his back while the Army of Hos-Hostigos fought him in front? How was the loyalty of Sarrask's garrisons going to be guaranteed, assuming it could be, with their Prince off to war? And a dozen other questions, each defining a potential Great King's headache, none of them likely to be answered until Kalvan rode up to Tarr-Hostigos.

  They were cantering up a slight rise when the Horseguards who'd already reached the crest shouted warning of a party of horsemen on the road ahead, coming fast. Kalvan reined in and drew his sword. The Holy Host wasn't supposed to be raiding this far north any more, but it if was—

  The leading horseman, wearing a welcome red sash, was Prince Ptosphes. Kalvan sheathed his sword and rode to meet his father-in-law, not quite wishing he had a Styphoni patrol to fight instead but very much aware that too many eyes and ears would be taking in everything he said—or left unsaid. It was part of the job of being a Great King, he told himself firmly as he reined in and waited for Ptosphes to ride within conversational distance.

  Ptosphes wore his well-battered combat armor and the expression of a man who's mortally ill but trying to hide it from the family. The dead eyes and all the new gray in the bushy beard spoiled the act for Kalvan.

  "Your Majesty," Ptosphes began. "I have failed you and the Realm of Hos-Hostigos. It is within your right—"

  Kalvan's determination to choose his words carefully vanished, and he said the first thing that came to mind. "I have the right to tell you not to talk nonsense, Father. You didn't fail me or anybody or anything. You just had the bad luck to be up against Styphon's varsity."

  Ptosphes looked blankly at him, and Kalvan realized that he must have been more shaken by Ptosphes' appearance than he'd realized: for the first time in months, he'd spoken in English. "The varsity—it's a word in the language of my homeland. It means men who have sold themselve
s to evil demons in return for great skill in war or athletic games."

  "Ah. Well, that is certainly one way of—explaining—the Zarthani Knights. We have all heard tales of their battle prowess, but facing them..." His voice trailed off, but some of the deadness was gone from his gray eyes.

  Kalvan gripped Ptosphes by both shoulders. "We'll talk of this later. Thank you for coming out to meet me." He didn't know what Ptosphes had been about to offer, although he could guess. He hoped the matter would never be brought up again.

  Ptosphes managed a thin smile and turned his horse.

  Kalvan was about to do the same thing when he heard a familiar a voice saying cheerfully, "Welcome home, Your Majesty. Now we can start kicking those Styphoni dogs back to their kennels in earnest!"

  The voice was Prince Sarrask of Sask's, except that it seemed to be coming out of thin air, because there was nobody in sight who looked like Sarrask except—

  "Great Galzar's Ghost!"

  The gilded armor was scraped and hacked almost down to bare steel, the ruddy face was tanned and lined and the jowls were barely respectable shades of their former selves. Kalvan tried not to stare, then gave up. A world in which Sarrask of Sask had grown thin was one in which all the laws of nature had been suspended.

  No, not quite thin—there was still a lot of Sarrask. Still, he looked like a real warrior Prince instead of an overweight and overage character actor playing one.

  "I hear you've been doing good work yourself, Sarrask."

  Sarrask veritably beamed, a sight Kalvan had never thought he'd see.

  Then more formally, he said, "You have Our gratitude, and you will have a lot more as soon as We are in a position to give it."

  Sarrask grinned. "Thank you, Your Majesty. One thing you can do is come to a banquet I'm holding tonight. It's for the wives and children of my castellans, who sent them to Hostigos Town for their safety. They'd be greatly honored if you could attend."

  And so will you, thought Kalvan. The idea of a banquet right now seemed like fiddling while Rome burned, but after some thought Kalvan decided to attend. He couldn't expect all of his loyal followers to have the moral fiber of old Chartiphon or noble Phrames. Besides, the castellans' families were hostages for their loyalty to Sarrask, and therefore to him. Knowing Sarrask, it couldn't be any other way. They probably knew it too, and they were far from home after being dragged up hill and down dale at the tail of a beaten army. At the very least, the families deserved a visit from their Great King.

  "I'll be happy to attend, Prince."

  "Wonderful, Your Majesty! My subjects will be most pleased."

  "How's Rylla?" he asked, to change the subject to what he was really concerned with.

  "As well as any woman who's the shape of a melon can be," Sarrask answered. "Despite her condition, she wants to go out and strangle Styphoni with her bare hands." Despite his customary rough speech, there was a note of fatherly pride in Sarrask's voice. Kalvan wondered how Rylla viewed her former hereditary enemy's new solicitude.

  With great sufferance, undoubtedly. Kalvan forced back a laugh.

  He also couldn't help thinking that Rylla might have to do exactly that if they lost another battle, and it must have showed on his face.

  The next words out of Sarrask's mouth were: "You look as if you need a banquet."

  Sarrask lowered his gravelly voice to avoid being overheard by Ptosphes, some twenty yards in front. "Try to get Ptosphes to come, too. He needs it even worse. The first thing he heard when we crossed the border into Hostigos was some woman crying, 'Ptosphes, Ptosphes, give me back my man,' and he looked as if he were dying from a gut wound for the next three days. I hope he hasn't taken a fever on this campaign."

  No, Sarrask, he's just a better man than you'll ever be, was what Kalvan wanted to say, but he knew it wouldn't make any sense to the Prince—and maybe wouldn't even be just. Sarrask would never be very likable, but by here-and-now standards he wasn't a particularly bad man—not a bad one at all, if you considered his loyalty to Hostigos had already cost him a good deal of treasure and men. And might yet cost him his crown.

  Mental memo number three thousand, six hundred and two (give or take fifty): Put Sarrask of Sask on the next Honors List. Think about something appropriate like the Order of the Garter or the Order of the Golden Fleece to reward subjects who already have lands, titles and wealth—something useless but flattering to their sense of whatever they call honor.

  TWENTY

  I

  "Urig, one silver, two phenigs."

  The workman wiped his hand on a tunic that was even dirtier, then put it out for the money Sirna was holding in her hand. "One silver, two phenigs," he repeated, then took his knife out to scratch into the silver coin to make sure it wasn't counterfeit.

  Sirna smiled at his surprised look when he discovered he hadn't been cheated by the new pay mistress. The Royal Foundry couldn't pay more than prevailing wages; over-paying would make even more trouble with the local guildmasters, to say nothing of contributing to an inflation problem that was already going from bad to worse. They could at least use their outtime resources to make sure their workers were paid in good coin that gave them a fighting chance of not starving when winter came.

  In her role as pay clerk, she paid off the other eight workers from the Foundry warehouse and was going over the scribe's soapstone tally when she heard Eldra calling her.

  "I'll be back in a little while," she told the scribe. "Don't put it on the parchment until then."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Sirna hoped the scribe wouldn't disobey her orders by way of trying to see how much he could get away with under the nose of a new clerk. She didn't feel like punishing him or any other Hostigi when they might all be dead in a week, or arguing with the senior members of the University Study Team over her "weakness." Professor Lathor Karv would be leading the pack; to hear him talk, you'd think he'd invented the concept of wages.

  As Sirna approached Eldra, she noticed that several other members of the Study Team were standing with her, and that a band of horsemen was cantering toward the Foundry from the direction of Hostigos Town—or Bellefonte as it was called on Kalvan's Time-Line. As she recalled, there was a university town just about where the Foundry was—it was some completely unoriginal name, State College, Pennsylvania—that was it!

  She moved behind her teammates to keep them between her and the horses. She'd have to get used to those big beasts before too much longer, but right now the memory of the spill she'd taken when her barely controlled mount shied at a fast-moving field gun was much too vivid.

  Eldra had remarkably little sympathy over her distaste for horses, but then Eldra loved the perverse beasts and had an outtime Fifth Level ranch where she raised the big devils in equine form. There was even a tale about how on one Fourth Level Franco-Byzantine time-line, Eldra had disguised herself as a man to win a famous cross-country horse race—the tale ending, naturally, with how the man who came in second found himself getting an unexpected but agreeable consolation prize.

  The leading rider in the group was the Great King himself. Verkan Vall—Colonel Verkan—was just behind him, and on Kalvan's right! Her scream was strangled into a squeak, but it was still loud enough to make Eldra turn.

  "What the Styphon?"

  Sirna pointed with a hand she was proud to see wasn't shaking. "That—it's the Prince Sarrask of Sask! The Sarrask who sacked Hostigos Town—"

  Eldra used First Level hand signals to signal her to silence, then stared hard at the big man in well-hacked armor that must have once been gilded. "It can't be—well, I'll be Dralm-damned! It's our Sarrask all right, the one who belongs here, but he's trimmed down to the twin of the one you saw on the Control Time-Line. Oh well, stranger things have happened outtime... And they'll happen to you, so get used to them and don't be so jumpy."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Eldra ran her eyes over Sarrask again. "Definitely trimmed down. If he lost another twenty pounds, he'd be almo
st handsome. Not like Kalvan, of course, but not bad... And this Sarrask is exuding a definite masculine vitality."

  The two rulers, unaware they were being discussed like a couple of prize bulls, sat on their horses while Kalvan's dismounted bodyguards took positions all around him. Half stayed mounted, but all looked very alert; some quietly drew their pistols without aiming them at anybody.

  The two rulers, Verkan, and a man who seemed to be Verkan's bodyguard remained mounted and conducted a long discussion that seemed to involve lot of hand waving. The few words she overheard were all military technicalities, so she concentrated on studying the Great King Kalvan without appearing too disrespectful. "A cat can look at a king," was a saying that she'd encountered, but she wasn't so sure about the rights of free-traders' daughters.

  Kalvan appeared tired but still in fine shape physically; he obviously wasn't hiding any wounds or sickness from the campaign in Hos-Harphax. The face was certainly handsome, although it looked better when he smiled, which wasn't very often, but then why should he be smiling at all, with everything he had to worry about? It was hard to tell much about his body, as he was wearing a back-and-breast, an open faced, high-combed helmet—a morion if she remember the term correctly—and bulky riding boots with pistols in them. A light cavalry trooper's outfit, from what she recalled, and probably the best combination of comfort and protection he could manage.

  At last the Great King signaled, and guards came to hold horses as the four men dismounted. Kalvan turned to the Foundry people.

  "I'm sorry to have kept you from your work so long," he began. As if a Great King needed to apologize for anything—but then Sirna recalled that Kalvan had lived most of his life on a time-line with all sorts of myths about equality. Maybe he thought he was being gracious—although Sirna had to admit that if he thought so, he was right.

  "The Royal Foundry is going to be part of a second line of defense we're building to meet the Holy Host, as the Styphoni are calling themselves. We're also fortifying Hostigos Town itself, of course, and this side of the Tigos Gap. Tarr-Hostigos will keep anyone from getting through the Gap from the other side.