The Lion of Farside tlof-1

by John Dalmas

  Then, when when the time came to name and dedicate the triplets Idri was pregnant with, he'd proclaim and supply a day and night of festivities throughout Tekalos. He already had the brewing underway. Idri was to provide a poison with which to decimate the Kullvordi during the feasting, a delayed action poison undetectable in ale. The night of death would be followed by quickly hunting down any rebel officers surviving.

  Meanwhile, as negotiations proceeded, he found an opportunity to have his existing sons and daughter meet with an unfortunate boating accident in which all three died, along with their mother. Whom Gurtho had divorced and set aside but not allowed to leave, because she was also his boughten property, his slave. This quadruple murder, he considered, removed all complications to the succession.

  On the day after the cremation of his children and ex-wife, however, Gurtho was found dead, poisoned. And because his queen-widow was away negotiating, there'd be problems in blaming her. She hurried home the next day, took the throne as regent, and turned management over to the Chief Minister, whom she'd earlier seduced. Then, before returning to the negotiations, she had Gurtho's valet poisoned. With his body was what seemed to be a suicide letter, in which he confessed to having poisoned his master out of love for the drowned ex-queen.

  The Council had intended to appoint their own regent. Their legal basis was weak, but that wasn't why they held back. They'd gotten to the palace before Idri, only to find her guard and Tiger companies in command. They then called on the commander of the royal cohort to take action, but he declined to act. And not simply out of caution; the queen had already seduced him thoroughly.

  The Council had little choice but to accept her regency. Perhaps things would turn out all right.

  The formal agreement with the rebels, signed by Idri as Queen Regent of Tekalos, and by Generals Wollerda and Macurdy for the eastern and western Kullvordi, had five main parts: (1) The hostilities were declared over. (2) The Kullvordi were granted tribal autonomy within the kingdom of Tekalos-with Pavo Wollerda as King. (3) Four Estates were now recognized, with their rights and property guaranteed. They were: the nobility; the yeomanry; the merchants and artisans; and the free laborers. (4) The Royal Council, known now as the Royal Assembly, was enlarged to include delegates from the new Estates. And (5), formulas and limits were established for taxation, with the exception of special war taxes.

  The nobility wasn't thrilled with it, nor were the merchants, as previously theirs had been the only Estates with legal standing. But on the other hand, the rebellion and domestic uprisings were ended, and the future offered possible prosperity.

  At the signing ceremony, in the Great Square of Teklapori, the honor guard consisted of a company of the royal cohort, and one from Wollerda's 1st Cohort, while in the saddle nearby sat a company of the Kullvordi 2nd Light Cavalry, known previously as Macurdy's Rebels. The Queen Regent's guard and Tiger companies were discreetly absent.

  Macurdy wore well-fitting hillsmen's clothes of the best quality wadmal. They were much the same as flatland peasants wore, with the addition of leather sewn on the seat and the inside of thighs and knees to protect the breeches from wear while riding. Wore them as the openly stated symbol of the victory of both peoples.

  That same afternoon, in a more elaborate and ornate ceremony, Queen Idri gracefully placed the crown of Tekalos on the head of Pavo Wollerda, who then spoke about a prosperous future. Afterward the newly enfranchised yeomen, artisans, and free laborers paraded cheering through the streets.

  That evening the people drank the new king's beer, ate his beef and corn, and danced and caroused through the night. This time cheering the king himself, though no doubt some felt skeptical. The last Macurdy saw of Melody and Jeremid, about midnight, they were headed together for the palace where each had a room. He had no doubt they'd share one of them, and allowed himself to wish wistfully that it was he who was hurrying off with her. He ended up drinking whiskey, and caught himself very nearly going to bed with a merchant's pretty and ambitious daughter.

  He awoke next morning with his first hangover, mild but unpleasant, which along with his near seduction, he considered a lesson on drinking.

  The next day, Sarkia left for the Cloister with her Tigers and guardsmen, taking Idri with her. And a copy of a previously drafted treaty of alliance that had been signed by King Pavo that morning as his first official act. Liiset stayed at Teklapori as Sarkia's ambassadrix. Macurdy had no doubt she'd been ordered to seduce Wollerda and become his bride, and said as much to the new king. Who grinned as if that was all right with him.

  Macurdy was scheduled to leave Teklapori on a special mission for the Alliance, but earlier he'd had several evenings to work on activating his friend's latent psionic talent. The question, he told himself, was what, if anything, he'd accomplished.

  ***

  Meanwhile, he, Wollerda and Liiset had sat down together one evening and designed new uniforms for the army. It would take time of course, to provide them. Officers would have theirs first, from the top down, and the uniforms of noncoms and men were already relatively simple and practical. The officers' looked rather like that of the commander of Sarkia's guard company, with the addition of the "Teklan Bear" on shoulder patches, the bear being the symbol of Teklan royalty and the kingdom. Also, for generals, the new dress uniform included a silver-plated cuirass and helmet, decorated and polished.

  A week after Wollerda's crowning, a company of the 2nd Light Cavalry, wearing new uniforms, rode off westward down the Valley Highway, with General Macurdy and Majors Jeremid and Melody. Macurdy bore credentials from both Wollerda and the Dynast, as their joint envoy to the courts of Miskmehr and Kormehr, and to the Chief of Oz, authorizing him to negotiate an agreement of alliance with each of them.

  It was the first mission in what would be the busiest fall, winter, and spring of Macurdy's life.

  33: An Introspective Morning at the Zoo

  " ^ "

  The Emperor's Animal Park had a foot of wet granular snow on the ground, but the morning was calm and sunny, and before noon already somewhat above freezing. A trickle of citizens strolled through the gate, many of them couples with one or more children hopping ahead.

  One couple entered the park hand in hand. The woman was more warmly dressed than most, to humor her husband; with her talent, she'd have been comfortable with no coat at all. But she was pregnant, and he'd never been a father before.

  Besides, she'd reasoned, it's best not to draw attention. Her husband had serious enemies, and among all of Duinarog's nearly sixty thousand people, there'd hardly be a hundred redheads other than herself. So she wore a fur cap well down over her ears.

  There was no map on display, nor any directional signs. One simply walked the path until the large loop was completed; then you'd seen it all. But Cyncaidh had been there before, and knew what he wanted to show her first, so he turned left; that would take them first past animals of other regions. Briefly they stood watching the small herd of pronghorn, Cyncaidh telling her briefly about them, for he'd read the Animal Park booklet years earlier, and as a boy, other books on animals, and had excellent recall. Varia found the pronghorns uninteresting. It seemed to her that running, they'd be beautiful, but here they simply stood in the sun chewing their cuds, their auras reflecting placid contentment.

  Beyond the pronghorns were wapiti. The bulls had shed their antlers, but a cast-off pair had been mounted on a post, their spread approaching five feet. She thought she'd like to see wapiti in the wild someday, but didn't expect to. Next they came to the plains bison, with Cyncaidh describing the hunting tactics of the nomads. They sounded to Varia rather like descriptions she'd read of the Plains Indians on Farside. How marvelous it would be, she thought, to ride with them.

  Next were the much larger long-horned bison. This was an animal of the near-arctic, with its broad mosaic of tundra, stunted forest, and bogs. These animals truly impressed her. One old bull had horns as wide as a man's outspread arms, and at the hump it st
ood as tall as Raien. She guessed its weight at two tons-more than Will's team of big Belgians, the gelding and mare combined. According to Raien, these animals didn't form great herds, but wandered in bands of two or three dozen, grazing on grasses and sedges, browsing the low shrubs. She wondered how they'd been brought here. As calves, she decided.

  She also wondered what could possibly prey on them-and then found out, for they came next to the lions. She'd seen lions before, the African Panthera leo, when she and Will visited the zoo in Indianapolis. And clearly these were lions, though their winter fur-white tinged faintly with pink-was thicker than the African, and the males wore ruffs instead of manes. She hadn't imagined lions existing on this continent. And what lions!, the males much larger than the African. The Cloister school hadn't mentioned lions of any sort, while on Farside, the long-extinct American lion, Panthera atrox, she'd never heard of.

  Probably the Cloister's teachers hadn't known of lions, she told herself. But surely someone there had known of Duinarog, and the Northern, Middle, and Imperial Seas, yet they hadn't been mentioned either. At the Cloister, the world virtually ended at the Big River. The Marches, and the Western and Eastern Empires which lay north of them, were spoken of only in political terms. It occurred to her that Sarkia didn't want her people to know wonder or feel curiosity, and certainly not to be honestly informed. Everything was seen in terms of her own explanations, ambitions, and hatreds.

  The dire wolves were next, conspicuously larger than timber wolves, and more strongly built. They hunted the plains bison, Raien told her. After the dire wolves they saw tundra caribou, and shaggy musk oxen no larger than ponies. Next were animals from nearer climes. Moose: tall, gangling, and nearly black. She'd seen them wild near Aaerodh Manor; they'd looked better there. In the next enclosure were timber wolves, looking lazy and bored, which was hardly surprising. She liked them better than she had the dire wolves; they seemed less-less dire.

  And ah! Northern jaguars, particularly beautiful in their winter coats. Physically they were much less impressive than the lions-two hundred pounds she guessed, three at most-but regal, even here in the zoo. It was partly their auras. She smiled at Raien, whom she knew had a special love for these cats. And wished they were still at Aaerodh Manor, where she would have learned to run on skis, and they'd have gone stalking together. How fulfilling it would be to see these wonderful ice-blue creatures crossing a frozen lake, or padding along some moose trail in a cedar swamp. Now the odds seemed poor that she ever would. They planned to go back for a few weeks each summer, circumstances permitting, but she didn't expect to live there year-round, ever. For being the Emperor's Chief Counselor meant he'd probably be chosen Emperor when Paedrigh declined.

  Raien didn't covet the throne for itself, but for what he could do as Emperor: Continue and perhaps even complete the reforms and other projects he and Paedrigh had plotted and planned, back when Paedrigh had been Chief Counselor, and Raien his military adviser. Notably the end of ducal armies large enough to threaten the imperial peace; the end of slavery; and the beginnings of peace with the rest of the continent.

  All to be accomplished in the face of factionalized and discordant politics, as reflected in the Imperial Council.

  Braighn IV had reformed the slave laws, and Paedrigh had modified them further, but slaves were still subject to abuses, particularly the girls and women. Abuses that degraded the abusers as well, Raien had told her-nobles and gentry who took advantage of their position, and justified it by insisting that slaves had no souls.

  There was a faction, an important political party, based on the concept that the ylver had a natural right to rule and dominate "humans," whom they looked at as an only quasi-sapient species. The same party upheld fiercely the rights of slaveholders, though many slaves were descended from ylvin prisoners of ducal wars long past. Almost always they were conspicuously only part ylvin. It had become awkward to justify ylvin slaves, thus they'd been deliberately crossbred with human slaves. The more they looked like ordinary humans, the easier it was to rationalize their slavery.

  Raien had pointed out what the books she'd read had slighted-that there were few if any ylver without some non-ylvin ancestry. To speak of half-ylver was a simplification. A half-ylf was someone who had enough human ancestry-especially recent human ancestry-that it showed plainly. The race of ylver, he said, was a blend, with a preponderance of ylvin ancestry.

  Legend had it there'd been mixing even before the ylver came here across the Eastern Ocean. For example, red hair among ylver was supposed to be a sign of ancient mixing with the mythical Voitusotar, who were said to live in a land of fog and ice and sorcery. Mothers and nurses still sometimes told children the Voitusotar would get them if they weren't good, though such threats were frowned on these days. Interestingly, red hair tended generally to be admired, perhaps because the Voitusotar had been feared. Though that admiration didn't extend to those of the Sisterhood.

  While Varia had let her mind wander, they'd passed the lesser cats-bobcat and lynx-the foxes, and the gracefully tireless mustelines. Raien, aware of her preoccupation, had discontinued his monologues on wildlife. Finally the loop took them past paddocks with farm animals, which after twenty years of farm life, hardly excited Varia. At the end they each put a gold piece in the donations box, and she squeezed her husband's hand affectionately. He was more than just an idealist with intelligence, talent, will and political power. He was a good and decent person.

  And he'd be an excellent father, as he was a husband and lover.

  PART 5: War 34: Invasion

  " ^ "

  There was still enough twilight that Melody could see the camps spread around her, the armies of five kingdoms and one tribe, their cookfires dying, their tents low shadowed humps. No doubt some of their men were already asleep.

  They'd get little enough of it this night.

  Late Five-Month had advantages and disadvantages for invasion. Grazing was good, and they had the whole summer ahead of them, if need be. On the other hand, the season was subject to thunderstorms, and the nights were short. And tonight they had much to do between nightfall and dawn, especially between nightfall and moonrise.

  She recognized the Indrossan command tent by the torches lashed to spears thrust in the ground beside its entrance. And as she approached, by its being guarded. She dismounted in front of it, handed the reins to her orderly, and loud and clear, identified herself to the guards as Marshal Macurdy's aide, then told them to take her to their commander.

  And waited. Despite her position, and her bright new colonel's insignia, they stared back insolently, showing no sign of obeying. So she drew her saber, and before either man realized what she had in mind, held its point to the belly of the nearest.

  "You son of a bitch! Did you hear what I said? How do you want it? Quick and bloody, here and now? Or at a rope's end tomorrow, pulled up to strangle from a branch after a drumhead court?"

  The man backed away into the entrance, and she followed, keeping her blade at his belly while her aide, a Kullvordi, followed with his own saber, covering her back. When she was inside, she shouted the Indrossan general's name. "Eldersov! I have orders for you from Marshal Macurdy!"

  It wasn't entirely dark inside. She could see a short corridor through the tent, with rooms on each side set off by curtains. Lamplight filtered through two of them, and a hand brushed one aside. "General!" the guard squawked. "She drew her sword on me and forced her way in!"

  "You miserable get of a troll and a sow!" Melody snapped, "An insult to me is an insult to the marshal!" Her glance shifted to the general. "I'm Marshal Macurdy's aide. I stopped at the entrance, showed them my baton of authority, and told them I had orders to deliver to you from the marshal. They stood there and sneered."

  His grunt dripped scorn. "You're a woman. We don't take orders from women here."

  "They're not my orders, they're Marshal Macurdy's. Do you refuse them? When I carry a message from the marshal, I speak with his voice."
>
  "We take no one's orders from a woman."

  Abruptly her sword tip moved from the guard to the general. "You just signed your death warrant, general. Unless you reconsider." Even while she said it, she knew he wouldn't, which it seemed to her was just as well. Otherwise he'd be a source of trouble and danger throughout the campaign. "No? Where's your second in command?"

  Another curtain had been pushed aside; now a man stepped out. "I'm Colonel Lidsok."

  "Colonel, you are now in command of the Indrossan Army. General Eldersov is under arrest. I'm taking him to the marshal's headquarters for trial."

  With his curtain open, enough light shone into the corridor that the colonel could see the woman's teeth. Lidsok hesitated, unsure. Her wrist twitched and the sword tip bit, not deeply, slicing Eldersov's skin. "Sergeant at arms!" he shrieked, "arrest these intruders!"

  Shit! she thought, and thrust hard with her sword, her wrist half turning. What lousy timing. For just a moment, Eldersov stared down at his belly while his life's blood poured from his severed aorta into his abdominal cavity. Then his knees buckled, and he pitched forward dead, Melody stepping aside. While she'd talked, another man had emerged from a room toward the rear, saber in fist. The sergeant at arms, she decided, and ignored him. "Colonel," she said, "do you reject Marshal Macurdy's orders?"

  Again Lidsok hesitated, more from not knowing how to address this bloody madwoman than anything else. Ma'am? Sir? He settled on rank. "No, Colonel," he said. "I do not reject them."

  "Did you hear Eldersov refuse Marshal Macurdy's orders? And order the marshal's aide arrested?"