Swords of the Horseclans

14

Early in that month called Thekembrios, Milo and Mara lay reclined upon a mound of cushions, sipping cordials and gazing into the heart of a crackling, popping wood fire. The evening had been one of those rare occasions on which they had been able to dine alone, in their suite, and the remains of the meal littered a table nearby.

He tried to enter her mind, failed, and said aloud, “What are you thinking of that you must shield your thoughts?”

She smiled ruefully. “Sorry, Milo. We must shield our thoughts so much of our days, you know. But I didn’t mean to shut you out.

“No, I was thinking of you … in a way. I was thinking of the first winter I spent with you in that damned drafty tent at Ehlai. God, it was horrible: that arctic wind knifing in off the ocean, fleas hopping on every living creature in the camp, and the smells, ugh—the atmosphere inside those tents was enough to sicken a hog or a goat, smoke and sour milk and wet wool and filthy, unwashed human bodies. You should have warned me beforehand what a winter camp was going to be like. Nothing even resembling a real bath for months; Milo, I thought I’d never be able to get the stink off and be clean again!”

Milo took a sip of his cordial. “I don’t recall any complaints from you then, Mara.”

She laughed throatily. “Of course not, silly. I was in love with you—violently, passionately in love with you. Then, the cold and the stink and the fleas and the filth still added up to paradise … just so long as you were there. We women are like that in the first flush of love.”

“And now, Mara?” He rolled onto his side to face her.

“That was forty years ago. How much do you love me now?”

“Not that much, Milo. That kind of love can never last very long; it’s too intense, too demanding, too abrasive on the emotions of both parties. But I do love you still, Milo. Ours has become a … a comfortable relationship for me. And what of you, my lord?”

Before he answered, he drained the cordial and tossed the silver goblet in the general direction of the table, then rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his crossed arms, but with his face still toward his wife.

“I didn’t love you, Mara, not then, and I think you knew.”

She nodded her head slowly, and the fire threw highlights from the blue-black tresses that rippled about her shoulders.

“I knew. But it didn’t matter, not then.”

“For a long while, Mara, I didn’t know if I could ever love you. Not that you were hard to love, that wasn’t it. But I feared that my ability to love might have atrophied. I’d been afraid to love any woman for so long, you see.

“It’s bad enough with a woman you simply like and respect—watching her, day by day, year by year, grow old and infirm and finally die. When you love that woman, it’s the crudest of tortures. After having suffered that torment a couple of times, Mara, I willed myself not to love.

“But, over the years, I have come to love you, my lady. Not a fiery, passionate love, but a love that has come slowly into being. It is nurtured by my respect for you and my admiration of you, by my faith in your honesty and by the pleasure that your dear companionship has given me. Our relationship is, as you said, a most comfortable one. I am comfortable, Mara, and I am very happy. You made me happy, darling, and I love you.”

Resting her hand on his cheek, she whispered, “I’m glad you remembered how to love, my Milo, and now that the southern Ehleenoee are all reunited and there will be peace …”

“Hah!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Peace, is it, my lady? Such peace as we have now will last until spring, possibly. Let us hope it’s not an early spring, for Greemos and I have much to do.” _

Mara arched her brows. “Greemos? But he is King Zenos’ Strahteegos.”

“So he is,” agreed Milo, “but only until the first day of Martios. On that day, I will take his formal oath as the Confederation’s new Strahteegos of Strahteegoee. Then he and I will ride north and look over the ground on which the army will probably be campaigning.”

“But Gabos …” she began. “He has served us well, and when he hears …”

“Gabos was among the first to know, Mara, and he heartily endorses the move. He’d never admit openly to the fact, of course, but he, of all men, is fully aware that he’s getting too old for long campaigns. I’m kicking him upstairs. Week after next, at the Feast of the Sun, I’m investing the old war horse with his new title—Thoheeks of the Great Valley.

“That’s the only way that well ever really secure it, you know. It must be settled and cultivated. I plan one large city and two smaller ones and the majority of their citizens will be, like Gabos, retired soldiers. If they’re unmarried, they’ll be encouraged to take wives from among the mountain tribes. It worked for the Romans; it should work for me.”

“Romans?” repeated Mara puzzledly. “A very warlike people who flourished roughly twenty-four centuries ago, Mara. When they had a difficult frontier to defend, they settled it with old soldiera wed to barbarian girls, which proved quite an effective means of gradually amalgamating their enemies into their empire, as well as providing a certain source of tax revenues rather than expenditures and, at the same time, a virtual breeding ground for the next generation of soldiers.”

Suddenly, Mara gurgled with laughter. “Oh, Milo, I just pictured the Lady loanna as a country thoheekeesa, milking goats instead of coupling with them! Why, she can’t even ride; she’ll be lost outside a city.”

“Which is probably why,” announced Milo, “she has been begging Gabos to divorce her, offering him fantastic sums to do so. I advised him to hold out for the highest figure he can get from her, and then to grant her wish. I’ve already arranged for Gabos to marry Grand Chief Shoomait’s youngest daughter. I’m reliably informed that the girl is a nubile fourteen, attractive, intelligent, and personable, and Gabos is not of such an age that he can’t beget a few heirs. It’s said the girl is the apple of old Shoomait’s eye—and God knows she cost the Confederation a high enough bride price. So I think’ the old bastard will keep his own brigands and the other tribes in check; he’s not going to raid his own daughter’s lands or try to destroy the inheritance of his grandchildren.”

“My, my, husband,” teased Mara, “you were certainly a busy little High-Lord during those six weeks I spent in the country—creating a new duchy, planning new cities, abetting in the blackmail of an heiress, raiding the Confederation treasury to buy a fourteen-year-old bride for a fifty-year-old man, and arranging to get a Hew Strahteegos just in time for your new war. Tell me, dear heart, who are we fighting this time?”

Frowning, Milo toyed with his signet. “Probably Harzburk, before it’s done.”

“Harzburk?” she exclaimed. “But the king is your friend, your ally. He sent the second largest body of troops that came from the Middle Kingdoms.”

“The King of Harzburk was never my ally, Mara, and I don’t think he has ever had a friend,” stated Milo. “The only reason he sent me troops was because of his overweening pride and his hereditary enmity toward the Kingdom of Pitzburk, by whom he could not bear to be publicly outdone!

“His goddamned nobles are the reason for it all. They outnumbered the band of Pitzburk nobles and I had to place them at opposite ends of the camp to prevent trouble, even before Zastros’ host arrived. Then, when the Southern Council and I had arranged for the withdrawal of their army, those damned fool Middle Kingdoms’ fire-eaters rode a little way out of camp and commenced a goddamned pitched battle! If I’d let them, they’d have merrily chopped each other into blood pudding.”

“But that’s childish,” Mara observed. “Why would hundreds of grown men fight for no reason?”

Milo’s shoulders rose and fell. “Their kingdoms are hereditary enemies, Mara. I suppose it’s in their blood. Why do dogs and cats always fight?”

“Because they’re both predators,” answered Mara. “Well, you’ll search long and hard to find two more predatory principalities than those two, Mara. I brought their melee to a stop by surrounding them with ten thousand mounted and fully armed dragoons, mostly Freefighters with some Kuhmbuhluhners mixed in, arrowing a few of them to get their attention, then threatening to slaughter every manjack of them if they didn’t put up their steel.

“The next morning, I set the Pitzburkers on the march, wounded and all. I sent along Captain Mai and three thousand Freefighter dragoons to ‘guide’ them and see to it that they switched over to the western trade road at Klahkspolis.

“Hardly were they out of camp than those damned Harzburkers had provoked a skirmish with the Eeree nobility. I was out of the castra at the time, riding a few miles with Mai and the Pitzburkers, so Greemos and Duke Djefree did the same thing I’d done the day before, except they weren’t as careful. They didn’t just put arrows into legs and targets and horses—they shot to kill. One of the men they killed was one of King Kahl’s many bastards.”

Mara groaned. “So now you feel Harzburk will declare war on the Confederation?”

Milo shook his head. “Oh, no, not that sly old buzzard. He’s called The Fox King’ for good reason, though he doesn’t quite understand how our Confederation works.

“As you know, Kuhmbuhluhn and Tchaimbuhsburk have boundary disputes that go back decades, but Kuhmbuhluhn’s had very little trouble with Getzburk and no one can remember any with Yorkburk; yet all three principalities—well-known satellites of Harzburk—have sent heralds to the Duke at Haiguhsburk declaring war, to commence in the spring, as do most Middle Kingdoms’ wars.

“Both the Duke and I are convinced that Harzburk is behind these declarations.”

Mara tilted her head. “But why doesn’t King Kahl just attack Kuhmbuhluhn himself if his people are so fond of fighting?”

“Well, for one thing,” said Milo, “because he’s not so honest and uncomplicated as you, love. For another, because if he were openly to attack a smaller state, his rival—Pitzburk—would attack him.”

“Oh, so Pitzburk is our ally?” she asked, then answered, “Yes, that’s right, they were the first to send us troops.”

“No,” Milo explained patiently. “Pitzburk sent us troops because we’re good customers; the Pitzburkers are no more allies than are the Harzburkers.”

Frowning with concentration, she finally shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Milo, I simply don’t understand it all. If Pitzburk isn’t our ally, then why would they attack Harzburk if Harzburk were to attack Kuhnbuhluhn?”

Milo drew himself up. “All right, children, tonight’s lesson will concern the Middle Kingdoms. These lands are bounded on the south by the river that we call Vohre-heeos, on the west by the Sea of Eeree, on the north by the Black Kingdoms and …”

“Oh, stop it, Milo!” she burst out. “Stop teasing me and tell me the answer to my question.”

He grinned. “I’m trying to, woman, just stop interrupting. Up until the disruptions of the Great Earthquake, three-hundred fifty-odd years ago, the Middle Kingdoms were just that—three big kingdoms: Harzburk in the east; Pitzburk in the west; and Eeree in the north. Subsequent to the disasters of the quake and the subsidence of large chunks of Harzburk and Eeree, these kingdoms fragmented into the beginning of the jumbled patchwork of domains we see today.

“Not having suffered damages equal to those of the other kingdoms, Pitzburk reorganized faster and not only reconquered its breakaway areas, but marched on to subjugate a good half of Harzburk, as well. Frightened by the growing size and strength of Pitzburk, Eeree joined with the unconquered Harzburkers, after about ten years, and the combined armies drove the Pitzburk forces all the way back to their own capital and besieged it there.

“That siege lasted nearly two years and might have finally succeeded, had not several things happened almost simultaneously. Having stripped the surrounding countryside bare, the besiegers ran out of food and began to fight each other, but the Pitzburkers were in such bad shape that they were unable to take advantage of the situation and break the siege. Then an army from north of the Sea of Eeree laid siege to Eereeburk at the same time that large-scale rebellions erupted in Harzburk; so both armies hurried home.

“The King of Pitzburk had died -during the siege and only the common enemy had held the nobles together; with the enemy gone, all hell broke loose in the western kingdom.

“So, what do we have today? There are only two actual kingdoms, Eeree having become a republic; but, though much shrunken in area, Harzburk, Eeree, and Pitzburk are still the major powers in the Middle Kingdoms. Then there are the great duchies. There were sixteen of them before Kuhmbuhluhn joined our Confederation, but all of the remaining ones are in some ways connected to one or the other of the Big Three. Next come the small fries, and some of them are really small, Mara, tiny; but all are more or less independent states and most are ruled by a hereditary nobility—peacock-proud and boasting a veritable catalogue of grandiose titles.”

Mara breathed a long, long sigh, saying tiredly, resignedly, “Husband, when are you going to tell me why Pitzburk will attack Harzburk if Harzburk attacks Kuhmbuhluhn?”

Pointedly ignoring this, Milo simply continued. “You and most of the Ehleenoee were horrified that the civil war that racked and wrecked the Southern Kingdom lasted for five years, yet almost the same thing has been going on in the Middle Kingdoms for over three hundred years.”

“But that’s different, Milo,” Mara interjected. “After all, the Southern Kingdom is an Ehleen kingdom, a civilized realm, while the Middle Kingdoms are only an aggregation of brawling barbarians, little higher culturally than the mountain tribes.”

“Wrong!” Milo asserted. “Wrong on several counts, Mara. First of all, although the peoples of the Middle Kingdoms and the peoples of the mountain tribes are of the same race, there is a vast cultural gap between them; in fact, it is you Ehleenoee whose culture bears the closest similarity to the mountaineers.”

Mara sat up quickly, bristling, her black eyes flashing. “I’ll take just so much, Milo, even from you!”

He raised his hand in the gesture of peace. “Hold on, dear, let me explain. What I just said is not completely true, not now, anyway, but it was true as little as thirty-odd years ago. Why do you think I directed the tribe here, rather than to the Middle Kingdoms or the Black Kingdoms or Kehnooryos Mahkehdohnya? Because in warfare, as in too many other aspects, the culture of all the southern Ehleenoee was a static culture, as the culture of the mountain peoples is a static culture.”

He, too, sat up. “Mara, many of our people feel that I am unjustly persecuting the Ehleen Church in the Confederation. This is an exaggeration. I’m not persecuting it at all; I’m only trying to weaken the stranglehold it has had on the Ehleenoee and their culture for far too long. An organized religion of any description is, by its very nature, best served by conservatism. This is why, when I gave the ancestors of the Horseclans their laws and religion, I did it in such a manner that it would be very difficult for a priestly caste to develop.

“Your cultural apogee was reached two hundred years ago and you were still squatting there, until the coming of the Horseclans. Your average Ehleen is born a conservative—‘What was good enough for great great grandpa is good enough for me!’ Between that basic attitude and the tendency of the Eeyehrefsee to brand as Satan-spawned any person or thing they don’t understand, the creativity has been all but ground out of your people, Mara.”

She slapped her thigh angrily. “Now, that is a lie, and you know it! If our people … my people … lack creativity, then from whence comes our art, our music, our literature, our architecture? Why, the very palace in which you sit slandering us is new. Demetrios had most of it built just before you barbarians invaded. Don’t misunderstand me, I bear little love for Church or Eeyehrefsee—the black-robed vultures! Do you know how they ‘test’ a suspected Undying? They lop off a hand or a foot and plunge the stump into boiling pitch. Then they throw the unfortunate wretch into a dungeon for a couple of months to see if it grows back. No, I wouldn’t care if you had every Eeyehrefs in the Confederation roasted alive, but I won’t have my people defamed!”

“Mara,” he went on doggedly, “your anger is unworthy of the fine woman I know you are. Stop thinking like an Ehleen and open your mind. Think, Mara, thinfcl Your artistics are all nobles, which class is infamously irreligious. No, it is the poor and the oppressed who are your most religious; your peasants, the khpreekoee, they are the actual strength of the Church. When did one of them ever come up with something new and different—a labor-saving device, for instance, something great grandpa didn’t have?”

He paused, awaiting her answer, but she only sat in sullen silence.

“What would happen if a khoreefcos devised and fabricated a simple, mule-drawn apparatus that could reap a field of rye in less time than twenty scythe-men? Well, Mara,” he prodded, “what would be the fate of that agrarian genius? Would he be lauded for his innovative ability? Would his peers beat a path to his door, that he might show them how to build and use his invention? Answer me, wife!”

“Oh, you know damned well what would happen to the poor dumb bastard, Milo!” snapped Mara. “The Eeyehrefsee would see him tortured until he admitted to transactions with Satan … or died; then they’d see him and his invention burned together.”

“Precisely.” He nodded. “Which certainly rather discourages any original thought on the part of the land slaves, doesn’t it? But the priests don’t intimidate me. I have devised and am going to introduce just such a machine at the next harvest time.”

“Oh, Milo, Milo!” Mara pled. “Please don’t stir up any more trouble with the Church. You know what they did to that water-powered mill you had built while yon were gone last summer. And they’d have seen the millers all slain, too, had my guards not gotten there in time.”

“So they sought my millers out in their homes and butchered them before their families,” stated Milo grimly. “You didn’t know of it because the widows were too terrified to speak until I returned, since the damned Ehpohteesee had borne their husbands’ mutilated bodies away and promised to come back and do the same to them and their children if they said aught of the murders.”

Mara had paled. “The Knights of the Saints?” she breathed.

He nodded, tight-lipped. “Yes, the Church’s secret terror squads. But the bastards aren’t secret any longer; they’re all either dead or incarcerated in the old fortress at Goohm.”

“But …” she stammered, “but how did you find out who they are?”

Milo showed his teeth in a wolf-like grin. “As you said earlier, it’s been a busy six weeks for me. I had old Hreesos, the Metropolitan, arrested on a trumped-up charge and immured in the deepest tier of the City Prison, naked, to contemplate upon his sins. After a week, he was brought up, washed, shorn, shaved, and garbed in a death-robe. Then he was left alone for a few minutes, long enough for him to look out the window and see the Chief Executioner sitting on the block and thumbing the edge of his great sword. Mara, you have never heard such moaning and praying,” Milo chuckled.

“The old scoundrel went to his knees, wet his red robe down the front, and started going over his life and his more questionable activities in his mind. Of course, he has no mindshield, and I was behind a false wall with two of the prairie cats; Mara, some of the things that swine has done or had done in the name of religion would curl your hair. I’d originally intended fining him and freeing him after I’d picked his mind, but after I found out just what a merciless monster he is, I had him heaved back in his cell. He’s far too dangerous to be out of a cage!”

“And I hadn’t been back in the palace for an hour when a delegation presented a petition for me to intercede with you on Hreesos’ behalf,” said Mara. “The delegates also apprised me of the fact that barbarian kahtahfraktoee were riding through the streets and sabering every priest they saw—on your order.”

“You’ve never spoken of any of this before tonight, Mara. Why not?” asked Milo.

She matched his predatory grin, tooth for tooth. “I told you, you could roast them all without upsetting me. Besides, I knew you’d tell me all about it in your own time.” Her brow wrinkled. “But why that elaborate charade, darling, why didn’t you just have him tortured?”

“Torturing a man like that would have accomplished nothing, Mara. The man, for all his misdeeds, is a religious fanatic. He is dead certain that every evil he has wrought has been holy, in that his acts helped perpetuate and strengthen his Church. He would have bitten off his own tongue, ere he imparted to me the information I wanted!”

“So,” Mara inquired, “he unknowingly gave you the names of all the Ekpohteeseel”

He barked a short laugh. “Hardly! There were over three hundred of the ruffians. But he did think of the Grand Master, his illegitimate son, Marios. Him, I had the pleasure of introducing to the artful Master Fyuhstohn, only a couple of hours later. Marios became a real fountain of information. It was all the scribes could do to keep up with him. Then I gave him a cell next door to his father.”

“It’s all up to you,” put in Mara. “But wouldn’t it be safer to kill them?”

“That precious pair,” snarled her husband, “is undeserving of a quick death. The only man who’s allowed to slop those swine is a deaf mute; the guards on the level above have orders to immediately slay anyone, even the prison-governor who tries to go below—I issued their orders, in person!”

“What,” she asked, “are you going to do with the rest of the Ehpohteesee?”

“When the Church has been weakened and discredited to the point that witnesses are no longer afraid to come forward, I’m going to try them for their crimes. Until then, I’ve a number of schemes to keep them busy. Shortly, they’ll start repairs on the east trade road. Next spring and summer will come the cleaning and repair of Goohm—at the end of the campaign, I mean Goohm to become Freefighter headquarters. Next winter, they can go back on the roads.”

“How in God’s name do you propose to finance road work and fortress repairs, Milo?” Mara demanded. “You had to take Lek … Lord Alexandras’ kind offer of a loan to finish paying off your Freefighters.”

“Since your so-called delegation told you so much, they couldn’t have failed” to mention my ‘desecration’ of the cathederal.” At her nod, he went on. “Inside and under the main altar, we found more than two hundred thousand ounces of gold, mostly in coins, as’ well as over a million ounces of silver! When we tore apart the Metropolitan’s quarters, we found even more gold and enough cut gemstones to cover the top of that table—mostly fine diamonds, with a few rubies and opals and one pouch of very nice emeralds.”

Stunned, she could only say, “But … but where? How … ?”

“Many ways, Mara. Perhaps a twentieth was out of free-will offerings and contributions. As for the~rest … well, The Holy and Apostolic Church of Kehnooryos Ehlahs owns farms, Socks, herds, ships, warehouses, orchards, vineyards, extensive properties in the various cities, at least two quarries … and more than half the brothels in the realm! They don’t own the brothels openly, of course, but through dummies—willing confederates amongst the laity.

“But there’s more. You wouldn’t believe the quantities of wine and brandies and cordials we found in Hreesos’ cellars, and never a single tax brand on any of them; so, he’s obviously been smuggling. But it’s his other little side line that really infuriates me.”

She had seen that look in his eyes before, but only in battle, and seeing it as they lazed before a fire in their own palace frightened her.

“For most of the twenty years of his primacy, Hreesos and his priests have been offering to take one or two children from large peasant families into the monastic orders; usually, the peasants jumped at the chance, since it promised the children a secure and comparatively easy life, and gave the parents one or two less mouths to feed. From all over the realm, the children so collected would be brought here, the boys to St. Paulos’ and the girls to St Sohfeeah’s.

“When they totaled twenty to thirty head, they’d be marched down to the docks and loaded onto one of the Church’s ships, which would promptly set sail for Yeespahneeah or Gkahleeah or Yeetahleeah or even PahTyos Ehlahs. The prettier ones would be sold to brothels, the others to disreputable types who would either conceal the children’s origin or else swear that they were war captives.

“You see, my dear, the Holy Hreesos was also a slaver. Several of his ship captains have made the acquaintance of Master Fyuhstohn, subsequent to which they told me a good deal about their activities. One of them had been at it for over twelve years, averaging a hundred children each year, for whom he got high prices, since the priests were careful to choose only attractive, strong, and healthy children. Those captains and their crews will also be improving the trade road and helping the Ehpohteesee at Goohm.”

“But what about those damned Eeyehrefsee?” exploded Mara. “They chose the poor children. Surely they knew?”

“Oh, I’m certain that they did know, Mara, but the time is not yet ripe for me to strike directly at the Church,” he replied, adding, “with a war declared for the spring, I don’t need a peasant uprising this winter. No, I’m playing this business a different way, Mara.

“When I sent Lord Alexandros the principal and interest of his loan, I sent, as well, a request. Since then, I’ve dispatched seven ships to some of the ports mentioned by Hreesos’ captains. My captains know those ports well; they are shrewd, hard men and in possession of adequate funds to buy back as many children as they can locate.”

“Oh, yes,” she said coldly, “I’m beginning to understand, I think. You mean to return them home and let them tell their parents and neighbors all about their ‘religious training’? Sun and Wind, my lord, that’s fiendish. Why, those peasants will tear the Eeyehrefsee into gobbets, with no Ehpohteesee on hand to protect them!”

Milo nodded, grinning broadly. “Precisely, my dear. And don’t you think their fierce faith in the Holy and Apostolic Church and her clergy might be just a wee bit undermined, eh?”

“Husband-mine, please constantly remind your wife to never incur the enmity of High-Lord Milo of the Confederation.” She answered his grin with one of her own. “Sweetheart, it’s a master stroke; the Church won’t recover for decades … if ever. But tell me, what was the total value of Hreesos’ hoard?”

“After” he emphasized the word, “I repaid the loan and financed the captains, and discounting the smuggled potables that are now in the palace cellars, the Confederation Treasury shows a balance of some forty million thrahkmehs.”

“But, Milo!” Mara cried. “He couldn’t, simply could not, have amassed so much in only twenty years! Forty million thrahkmehs, eight million tahluhzl”

“Oh, the current Metropolitan didn’t collect it all, Mara,” Milo assured her. “Sun knows how long his predecessors had been squirreling it away in that altar. Remind me to show you some of those coins that came from bags so old they fell to dust when we touched them. There was one bag of mist-sharp thrahkmehs of Lukos The First”

“They must have been saving a long time!” she exclaimed wonderingly. “Why, Lukos has been dead over three hundred years!”

He laughed harshly. “Yes, hut Hreesos’ successors will never have the opportunity to lay away lucre on that scale. From now on, the Church is going to be taxed, heavily taxed, on all the sundry holdings. We are slowly unraveling the Black Robes’ financial empire, and we’re nibbling bits and pieces of it away. I’ve already confiscated the Church’s fleet on the basis of evidence of smuggling, and all the harbor warehouses, too. I didn’t include the value of those in the treasure balance, but it will up the balance a tad.

“Every ehkleeseeah, every monastery, every farm or pasturage or orchard or vineyard or quarry, every rural building or urban property is being cataloged. My agents are going over them with a louse comb, and wherever they uncover evidence of illegal activities, they are empowered to slap the ehkleeseeahee and monasteries with a stiff fine, while any of the other categories are to simply be confiscated to the Confederation … all except the brothels, that is.”

“Why not the brothels?” Mara queried impishly. “Just think, if the Confederation owned the brothels, the High-Lord could use them free.”

He refused to rise to the jest. “No, I had a better idea. I’m having the Church’s ownerships publicized!”

“Oh … ohhhh … oh, Milo, ohhhhh!” Clutching her sides and roaring with laughter, she rolled back on the cushions. Finally, she sat up, gasping for breath, her eyes streaming. “Oh, Milo, you’re really a terrible man, you know? Of course the Eeyehrefsee will all deny it, but, people being what they are, no one will believe them.” Then she lapsed into another laughing fit.

Arising to his feet, Milo retrieved his goblet and brought the decanter from the table. After refilling for them both, he said, “Laughing Girl, if you can control yourself long enough, I’ll tell you why Harzburk will be attacked by Pitzburk if Harzburk attacks Kuhmbuhluhn … unless you’re no longer interested….”

On a cold, wet, blustery night in mid-March, three men met in a stone-and-timber hunting lodge near the walled city of Haiguhzburk, capital of the Duchy of Kuhmbuhluhn. On the wide, deep hearth, behind a man-high screen of brass wire, the fire was crackling its way into a huge pinelog and the bright light of the blaze illumined the large-scale map spread on the floor before it. Two-score Horseclansmen ringed the old, two-story building, while ten-score of their kindred patrolled the surrounding forest on their tough, shaggy little horses. And farther out, among the dripping trees and soggy underbrush, ranged a dozen of the great prairie cats.

During the months Milo’s heterogeneous army awaited Zastros, Thoheeks Greemos and Duke Djefree of Kuhmbuhluhn had become fast friends. Now, the new Confederation Strahteegos traced the twisting course of the river that bisected the eastern half of the duchy.

“I could wish, Djef, that the army could headquarter at Mahrtuhnzburk and force the enemy to come to us, rather than trying to hold the damned border north of here. You’re sure the invasion will come through that area we rode over, are you?”

Duke Djefree was as broad and as muscular as the Thoheeks, though nearly two hands shorter and twenty years older. Like most men who often wore both helm and beaver, his cheeks and chin were clean-shaven and his snow-white hair had been clipped within an inch of his scalp. Taking his pipe from between his strong, yellow teeth, he used its mouthpiece as a pointer.

“Oh, yes, Big Brother, if the allies follow the strategy that my spies at all three courts assure me will be followed, this is the only feasible route. They know that they must have all three of their armies combined to defeat mine and the troops they’re sure my overlord will loan me.”

Greemos’ saturnine face mirrored puzzlement “But how do they know your army will be there to meet them?”

The Duke shrugged his wide shoulders. “Because they know I know they’re coming in there; they have as many spies in my court as do I in theirs. That’s why we are met here alone tonight with My Lord Milo’s men for guards, rather than mine own.”

“But, good God, man!” Greemos expostulated explosively. “Think on it! They coulo! be deliberately misleading your agents in the hope that you will mass your forces there. Then they could cross the border directly north of either of your principal cities.”

Duke Djefree just shook his scarred head calmly. “Oh, no, Brother, they can only attack the old capital from the east. In order to get north of it, they would have to go through Tuhseemark, and Marquis Hwahruhn would never permit their passage, of course.”

“He’s a friend of yours, then, Djef?” probed Greemos. “Does he have enough troops to menace the enemy’s Bank?”

The Duke rocked back on his heels, laughing. “A friend? Hardly! He’d be overjoyed to hear of my demise, especially were it a slow and painful one.” Another laugh bubbled up, and he went on. “As for troops, the last I heard, he boasts all of five hundred pikemen, including his city and frontier guards; he retains a force of all of twenty dragoons, and his family and noble retainers probably number five-and-twenty more. Even were I willing to hire Jhim and his fifth-rate warband, I doubt me they could turn the flank of a muletrain.”

“Hell and damnation!” thundered Greemos. “Then what’s to prevent Duke Djai from walking right over them and attacking Kuhmbuhluhnburk from the north? A tenth of those three warbands could stamp less than six hundred men into the dust, by God!”

“Because he wouldn’t dare attack Tuhseemark, not unless the Marquis led troops out and attacked him first.” Duke Djefree smiled blandly. “Don’t you see, Greemos?”

“No, I do not!” snapped the Thoheeks. “God’s balls, Djef, you make less sense than my wife! Were I marching twenty thousand men against you, I’d come any damned way I pleased. I’d send five thousand men and my siege train through Tuhseemark, whether the Marquis liked it or not, and invest Kuhmbuhluhnburk. Then your army would have a grim choice: either meet my main army and take a chance of losing Kuhmbuhluhnburk, and then being taken in the rear by my detached force; or detach part of your smaller army to succor the city, thereby ensuring the defeat of your main force; or withdrawing your entire army toward Kuhmbuhluhnburk, with my army either snapping at your heels or marching on Haiguhsburk.”

“Your strategy is good, Big Brother, and I am certain that you would defeat an enemy you so opposed.” Duke Djefree spoke slowly, as if to a backward child. “But we may be assured that Duke Djai will not follow such a course. He cannot without the Marquis’ leave, and the Marquis will never grant it.”

A vein was quivering in Greemos’ forehead and his big fists were clenched. But when he would have spoken, Milo laid a hand on his arm.

“Greemos, you Ehleenoee just don’t understand these northerners. I’ll try to explain and Djef can correct me or bring up any fine points I miss.

“Greemos, within the last seven years you’ve proved yourself a genius of military strategy and tactics; but, your inborn abilities notwithstanding, you strongly dislike war and your aim is to get it over with as quickly as possible.”

“Well, doesn’t everyone want peace?” asked the new strahteegos.

Milo shook his heath “No, Greemos, not the Middle Kingdoms’ nobility. War and fighting have replaced both sport and religion in their lives.”

“In fact, Big Brother,” interjected the Duke, “war has become religion. The Cult of the Sword has displaced all of the older beliefs, save only worship of The Blue Lady, but she’s only worshipped by women, anyway.”

“Just so,” agreed Milo. “And, like any religion, it has innumerable rules and customs and usages, many of which appear idiotic to the uninitiated. But, Greemos, if you stand back and look deeper than the facade of mere custom, you’ll see that there are very good reasons for these rules and usages.”

“Your pardon, my lord,” said Greemos, “but what am I to look into?”

“Bear with me, Lord Strahteegos, bear with me,” Milo smilingly enjoined him. “Toward the end of their existence, the original three Middle Kingdoms were ruled by tyrannic despots, hated and feared by people and nobility alike. When the Great Earthquake and the chaos it and the floods engendered gave the lords and cities an opportunity for independence, they grasped it, lost it back briefly, then secured it for good and all. They …”

Milo paused, then turned to the Duke. “Djef, you’re an initiate of the Cult. Perhaps you can explain it somewhat better than can I. What I know is but hearsay.”

The Duke nodded brusquely. “As you wish, my lord. Look you, Greemos, what it boils down to is this: a smaller state may attack a larger, but a larger state may not attack a smaller except in retaliation for overt attack. D’you ken? A smaller state may enter into compact with one or more others of comparable size to attack a larger, which is just what is being done to me, but if they lose, then all of them are open to attack by the state they attacked. But should a larger state attack a smaller, unprovoked—and such hasn’t happened in Sword knows when—things will get rather sticky for him in rather short order. It may start even before he attacks, for when his intent is obvious all Sword Initiates are bound by Sword oath to desert him, which means most if not all of his Freefighters. If this fails to deter him, if his force contains enough non-initiates and oath-breakers for him to actually launch an attack against the smaller state, then he is certainly dead and his dynasty as well, probably. All surrounding states, large and small, will march against him and his lands and titles will be forfeited to the ruler he attacked. If he fails to die in battle, then he will be hauled before a tribunal of the Cult, who will decide the manner of his execution. Likewise, all other oath-breakers in his service. Non-initiates are not subject to Cult discipline.

“So, you see, Big Brother, Kuhmbuhluhnburk is quite safe, unless our army should be defeated, for Duke Djai is an Initiate and no fool.”