Trumpets of War

Epilogue

Despite his ever constant press of affairs, Thoheeks Mahvros was quick to grant an appointment—over the strident, almost carping arguments of his staff—to the signatory of a properly drafted letter. However, when the man actually stood before him, smiling, he was much amazed. Save only for certain racial differences—lack of height, a flat-muscled, wiry build, hair and skin barbarian-light—had he not known the rp-n, he would have taken him for an Ehleen gentleman from his dress, his manners, his cultured dialect.

“My, you have changed, my old friend,” he commented, shaking his head slowly. “Please be seated, there. You will have wine?” He signaled the hovering servant to pour, then waved him from out the chamber.

Once the forms, the polite, meaningless words, had been exchanged, the healths to each other and to Council and to the High Lord had been announced and dutifully sipped from the gilded silver goblets of much-watered wine, Mahvros said, “Now, all of that time-consuming foolishness completed, what can I do for you, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz?”

“My lord, I want to leave the army,” said Gil flatly.

“Well, surely, Gil, this would be a military matter, it would fall under the jurisdiction of Tomos Gonsalos or Thoheeks Pahvlos, not under mine,” Mahvros replied.

Gil sighed. “I spoke with Tomos; he agreed, though with regret. But when he sent me on to Pahvlos, the old bastard flatly refused. It would seem that he considers me to be some variety of military slave, thinks that I and my elephants are owned entirely by him and his army. Tomos went over and tried to reason with the hard-headed old fucker, but even he could get no more of a concession than that as the army is actually the property of Council and the thoheekseeahnee, then Council must make any decision that would serve to override his.”

Steepling his fingers and nodding, Mahvros commented, “He’s shrewd, but then we’ve all known that for years. He knows full well that so heavy is Council’s schedule of business, so petty a matter might not come up for years. Besides, Council can seldom agree on any point, it would seem; I’ve seen smaller bones of contention than this one would be promote personal verbal attacks, physical assaults in the very Council Chamber, duels and the hiring of assassins, on more than one occasion. We refer to ourselves as ‘noblemen’ and ‘gentlemen,’ but I have seen more of nobility and gentility in certain mountain barbarians than in the persons of certain Councillors. But, nonetheless, there are ways to circumvent the sure delays and chaos of Council.

“Who suggested that you come to me? Tomos?”

“No, my lord.” Gil shook his head. “Lord Sitheeros was the first to say that I should, but Tomos agreed when I mentioned what Lord Sitheeros had said. Tomos dictated the letter to his secretary and I signed it.”

“Heheh,” chuckled Mahvros, grinning. “You have good advisers, Gil, among the best, really. The Wolf of Iron Mountain and the Karaleen Fox are two fine men to have guarding your flanks. Of course, they know what many men do not know: right many matters never even go to the full Council, for many and varied reasons. Really earth-shaking decisions, of course, must be decided by the ayes of at least two thirds of Council; that’s the way that Thoheeks Grahvos and the early Council set it up.

“But matters of lesser importance, and your case would surely fall into this category, can be approved by half the Council plus one more vote, nor do said votes have to be cast before the rest of Council, nor even in the Council Chamber. Of course, the full Council is almost never here and assembled together, you know that—many are just too busy on their lands, some are infirm, Thoheeksee Pahvios and Portos are away on campaign for at least two thirds of any given year—therefore, in order to give full votes on important matters, most of the thoheeksee have given their proxies to men of like mind who are likely to be here, in Mehseepolis, more often than are they.

“As chairman of Council, I vote five—my own vote and four proxies. Thoheeks Bahos votes for himself and for a cousin, Thoheeks Gahlos; Thoheeks Grahvos has two votes that are his because his is a double thoheekseeahn; and Thoheeks Sitheeros, as I’m sure you know, owns three votes due to his triple thoheekseeahn. But in addition, Grahvos holds and votes two proxies and Sitheeros has three from as many border thoheekseeahnee. So the grand total is seventeen Council votes, exactly the number needed to approve your request that you be allowed to leave the army, so you may consider it done and the matter settled, my friend, and if Grand Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvios doesn’t like it, he can go somewhere alone and cry.

“But, as a matter of purely personal curiosity, I’d like to know why. Are you getting homesick, then, Gil?”

“No, not me, my lord.” The Ehleenicized Horseclansman replied. “It’s Sunshine and Tulip, my two elephant cows. They want to go back to the land where they were born, want to know once more their own dear kindred and browse again the forests that fed them in youth, wade and swim the rivers, be dried and warmed by the sun of home. They have both served me and this army well and long, so I think they deserve to be served equally well by me, and that’s why 1 wish to take leave of the army. I want to go with them to their distant homeland. Do you, can you, understand, my lord?”

Mahvros had always owned a deeply emotional streak that he had had to work hard to hide, over the years, and the plain, simple sincerity of the words of Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz had brought a painful lump to his throat and a misting to his black eyes, so that he had to swallow hard before he could reply.

“Yes, my dear friend, I do understand. Your motives are selfless and distinctly laudable. How else may I help you and your elephants on your way?”

The Grand Strahteegos Thoheeks Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos, newly confirmed Lord of Kahproskeera, had sent an officer of his personal horse guards to summon and escort Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos back to his headquarters complex on the other side of the sprawling camp under the walls of Mehseepolis. The gaze he had fixed upon Gonsalos when he had been ushered into the audience chamber had been as glittering and cold as the edge of a headsman’s axe.

Tomos had known damned good and well just what it was all about; therefore he had simply saluted his superior and then stood stiffly and in silence, returning the cold rage blazing from the old man’s eyes with bland calmness.

Finally, his rage getting higher than the dike of his control, Pahvlos had smashed the side of a clenched fist against the top of his desk and snarled, “You arrogant, insufferable, insubordinate son of a Karaleen sow! You knew that I wanted to, meant to, keep that cur of a barbarian bitch’s whelping for the good of my army. I imparted to you my reasons, good, sound reasons; I can now see that I should not have so wasted my breath on such as you, my lord foreigner. My decision has been overridden by a Council fiat, but I doubt not that you knew of that well before they chose to inform me of the outrage. Am I not right, you traitorous bastard, you betrayer of trusts?”

Tomos chose his words most carefully, not allowing a scintilla of his own rage—fully justified, in face of the personal insults that the old man had hurled at him, heaped upon him—to show in face or voice or actions. “My lord Thoheeks did, if he will but recall, say that the case of Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz’s request that he be allowed to take his elephants and leave the army be adjudicated by the Council of Thoheeksee and—”

“Shut your mouth!” growled the Grand Strahteegos. “Try throwing my words back at me and I’ll see you stripped and well striped in a trice, noble officer or not; it would just now do me good to see your thin blood and your alien backbone.

“I meant for the case to go to the Council, right enough, but before the full Council, and you knew what I meant, too. It might’ve been as much as a year and a half before the Council got around to the matter, and my army would’ve had the full use of the barbarian and his beasts in the interim. At that Council sitting, I would’ve had the right to put forth the reasons why he will be needed indefinitely, and, finally, I would’ve been able to cast my vote and that of Thoheeks Ahramos of Kahlkopolis against the barbarian’s foolish request. In a civilized land such as this, the only use or place for barbarians of his ilk is my army ... or wearing a slave collar.

“But no, you and that brawling, boozing, woman-crazy, meddling, overindulged fool of a Thoheeks Sitheeros had to disregard my sound decision on the matter and send that barbarian ape to Thoheeks Mahvros, who’s thick as thieves with Thoheeks Grahvos and his crooked clique. Now I just have to sit here and let that damned barbarian go and let him take the rest of the barbarians and four of my army’s elephants with him! And I lay the full blame for it on you, you turncoat, you renegade, you half-barbarian scapegrace.

“I think the time has come for you to leave my army, take your skinny, barbarian whore and go back to your savage homeland and leave decent, civilized kath’ahrohsee to rule themselves without having to bear the unwashed stenches of your foul breed. Go on, you pig, get out of my presence before I lose complete control and run my sword through your putrescent body!”

Blankfaced, though with great effort, Tomos saluted, faced about and strode out of the audience chamber. But as he was fitting foot to stirrup, the officer who had escorted him to the place stepped out of the building and signaled him to wait. When they had ridden, side by side, in silence for enough distance to be out of sight and hearing of the headquarters buildings, the officer reined up close and said in hushed tones, “My lord Sub-strahteegos must know that he has full cause to issue challenge to the Grand Strahteegos, to meet him in a session of arms to the death. My lord is a thoheeks and so too is he, so he can have no slightest acceptable reason to decline a challenge from my lord. I heard all of his insults and I will so swear before the chosen seconds.”

Thinking he might be scenting some trace of a trap of some obscure nature, Tomos said in a equally low voice, “Man, you’re an officer in his personal bodyguard! Will he not consider such an action to be a betrayal?”

“Was what my lord did in advising the captain of Elephants truly a betrayal of the Grand Strahteegos and the army, as he so stated?” asked the officer.

“Of course not!” snapped Tomos. “I’m only attached to his army; my loyalty is to my men, my king, his overlord and to your Council, in that order; I try to cooperate with the Grand Strahteegos, but I never have considered myself to really be his subordinate officer in the command structure of this army.”

The officer nodded once, then said, “My lord, my own loyalty is to my men and my comrade officers, the rulers of my land—the Council of Thoheeksee—and their army. This senile old man is ill serving Council and is weakening the army through mistreating and abusing and alienating the officers and men under his command.

It is my understanding that he refuses to step down and retire to his thoheekseeahn, so it would seem that the only way to remove him is to kill him, nor am I the only man who so feels in this army. So, should my lord decide to issue challenge, please remember Captain Vahrohnos Djaimos of Pleenopolis.”

Deeply troubled by all the captain had said, Tomos did not return to his own headquarters, but rode directly up into Mehseepolis and to the onetime ducal palace. He was afforded the opportunity to release some measure of his pent-up anger on two bureaucratic types who would have—completely aware of just who and what he was—prevented him from seeing Thoheeks Mahvros without an appointment. When he thought them sufficiently terrified, he stalked past a quartet of grinning guards and sought out the chairman of Council without a guide.

He found Thoheeks Mahvros conferring with a couple of men he did not know, but clearly both civilians. “My lord,” he said curtly, in a no-nonsense tone, “I’d advise you to get these two out of here and hear what I have to say privately. You’ll probably regret it if you don’t.”

At a look from the thoheeks, the two civilians rolled up and gathered up a number of what could have been drawings or maps and bustled from the room, giving hard, hostile stares from beneath their eyebrows.

With the doors firmly shut and latched, Tomos led his friend to the corner farthest from those doors and quietly related all that had happened at the army headquarters and after.

After a few moments of digestion of the hard words, Mahvros asked quietly, “Are you going to call him out, Tomos?”

“Would you?” was the response.

Mahvros sighed and shook his head slowly. “I’m not at all certain just what I’d do under the same circumstances, my old friend. He’s completely in the wrong, of course, any fool could tell that, and I wonder if the word used by that guard officer doesn’t tell us much about the entire kettle of vipers—‘senile,’ Senility could well be the reason for much of Pahvlos’ recent, hardly explainable behavior.

“The captain is right, you know—no, maybe you wouldn’t, you don’t have all that much contact with the field army anymore. Pahvlos has recently been far more demanding than he has needed to be, stayed almost constantly on the march and insisted on rates of march that were completely unnecessary, considering the circumstances. The best officers, many of them, have resigned and gone home; among the common soldiers, the rates of desertion and rank insubordination have climbed to fantastic figures, and Pahvlos’ punishments have been no less than savage—men who deserved no more than perhaps a dozen stripes have been whipped to death on his orders, that or crippled for life; he has had tongues pegged or torn out, fingers and hands and toes and feet lopped off, leg tendons severed, joints sprung loose—he is become a monster to the men of this army he chooses to call his.”

Tomos shook his head slowly. “No, I’ve only known that the army has been going through with remounts almost as fast as we can train them, pack animals, draught mules, supplies by the mountainload, and is always crying for men from the training units, but I was unaware just how bad it was. Why in hell hasn’t Council relieved the man?”

Mahvros snorted. “He’s too powerful, that’s why, with far too many supporters on Council, men who remember the Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos-of-old and will not believe the enormities he now commits and orders, or who swallow his bland excuses hook, line and sinker. His relief of command is a matter of sufficient importance as to require a two-thirds favorable vote of the entire Council, and the last time that the matter was broached to them, there was a real brawl in the Council Chamber, guards had to be called to finally break it up, two duels grew out of it all, and shortly thereafter there was an attempt to assassinate Grahvos.

“Did I think that it would do anyone any good, I’d say go ahead and call the old bastard out, for that captain is right: he’ll never step down and retire, and with matters as they are on Council, there’s no way he can be forced out, so the only alternative is going to be his sudden demise, however done or by whom.

“And, were it up to Pahvlos alone, I believe he’d meet you, he was never known to harbor one cowardly bone in his body, and of course then that would be that, you’d cut him down. But naturally, so simple and straightforward a solution to the problem he presents will never be allowed to come to pass. His seconds are certain to cite his great age and insist that you meet and fight a surrogate, no doubt the biggest, fastest, strongest, meanest heavy horse or guards officer they can find. So, no, don’t bother challenging him. Have you thought of an assassin? Satisfaction privately enjoyed would be preferable to none at all, perhaps.”

“No,” said Tomos, “no assassins.”

“If it’s simply a matter of money, Tomos . . .” began Mahvros.

“Thank you, but no,” was the quick response. “If I can’t do it myself, I’ll not hire another to do it for me; it’s simply not my way, Mahvros.”

“So then what will you do, Tomos? Just do as he ordered you, take your wife and household and go back to Karaleenos?”

Tomos sighed. “No, I was ordered here by far higher authority than a doddering, sadistic old man. No, I now will do something that I had hoped I never would have to do.

“You will immediately send someone to fetch Grahvos; that someone will tell him to bring with him the sealed red leather tube sent to him by High Lord Milo, years back. Call an immediate meeting of as many of Council as you can lay hands upon, including Thoheeks Pahvlos, by all means.”

Thoheeks Grahvos worked a thumbnail under the thick seals and thus loosened them enough to snap off the leather tube, its bright-red dye having faded somewhat in its years of dusty storage. “High Lord Milos’ letter, that accompanied this, mentioned that one other here would know of its existence and contents, but that person was not named. It was you, eh, Tomos?”

When he had removed the lid, he used a finger to fish out the roll of vellum and opened it. After reading it, he hissed softly between his teeth, passed it to Grahvos, then lifted the tube and upended it over his opened palm; then he extended his hand that both of the others might clearly see the half of an old, worn silver coin, cut in an odd zigzag along its middle.

Wordlessly, Tomos took from about his neck a silver chain from which depended another halved coin and fitted it to that piece on the thoheeks’ palm to show a whole ten-thrahkmeh piece of some archaic High Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, its worn-down date showing him to have reigned nearly a century before the great earthquakes of three hundred years now past.

The dozen and a half thoheeksee of Council filed into the wide chamber, dutifully racked their swords and other weapons, then took their accustomed places at the long table. Last to make appearance were Grahvos and Mahvros, accompanied by Tomos Gonsalos. At sight of the nonmember, Thoheeks Pahvlos’ thick white eyebrows went up and he frowned and began to loudly crack his big knuckles, growling under his breath.

When Mahvros took his place, Pahvlos immediately demanded, “Were we all summoned here simply to hear the yappings of that half-breed puppy out of Karaleenos?” He looked around the Council and added, “He’s living with some mountain slut to whom he claims to be married, has the unmitigated gall to refer to the baggage before civilized men as ‘his lady wife’! All that I can say is that he never asked or got my permission to marry.”

“Why, pray tell, my lord, would he need your precious permission to wed?” asked Thoheeks Sitheeros, adding, “And, as that girl’s sire is an old and very dear friend of mine, you’d best balk up your prize insults when I’m around.”

“Yes,” Pahvlos said, smiling coldly, “everyone here knows your perverse love for barbarians, female and male, no rare your peculiar tastes admired, only tolerated because of your wealth and power. But in reply to your question, my lord, this Karaleen was an officer of my army—”

“It is not your army,” snapped Mahvros. “It is Council’s army and, through Council, a part of the army of the High Lord Milo, who now rules over us, Karaleenos, Kehnooryos Ehlahs, the Isles of the Ehleen Pirates, the Arhkee thoheekseeahn of Kuhmbuhluhn, the Komeeseeahn of York and the Komeeseeahn of Getzburk. You overstep yourself, my lord, but then you have been so doing for some little time.”

The old man grinned mockingly. “Going to make motion to take my army away from me again, you young shoat? Remember what happened the last time, don’t you?”

“My lord, please, I beg you,” said Thoheeks Portos, “it is our Council’s chairman you are addressing.”

“Oh, shut up, Portos!” snarled Pahvlos. “When I want shit out of you, I’ll squeeze your malformed head.”

“No, Pahvlos, you shut your sewer mouth!” ordered Grahvos. “Keep it shut or I’ll summon guards, see you roped into that chair and gagged. If you don’t believe me, try me and learn to your sorrow.”

He stood up, holding the red leather tube prominently in his hand. “My lords, some years after we had moved the capital from its old location to Mehseepolis, I was recipient of certain dispatches from High Lord Milos. If those who were then members of Council will recall, we then were not at all certain sure that we would be able to rebind the lands together under us and ever take our place in the Confederation ruled over by the High Lord, and I had communicated this to him in a letter.

“His replies were several, but one of them was a letter in a tube that also contained this tube—then firmly sealed. The letter that was within the outer tube recognized the enormity of the task we few then were undertaking and praised our bravery for trying to do it at all in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, so much opposition from so many quarters. The High Lord went on to say that I should keep this tube sealed and keep it always near to hand, and should all appear lost, the situation either hopeless or completely out of hand for whatever reasons, I was to break the seals and open this red tube, seek out the man who had the other half of the coin therein contained, and follow his instructions to the letter, recognizing him to be the full surrogate of the High Lord.

“It did not work out quite that way, of course, my lords. We have succeeded . . . after a fashion. But now crass politics and a controversy centering around a stubborn, petulant old man in his second childhood through senility is threatening the stability that we have but recently achieved at great cost of effort and time, sweat and gold, blood and worry.

“Although we each of us swore and attested powerful oaths to ever lend our full and unqualified support to the aims and aspirations of our Confederation of Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee, its governing body—the Council of Thoheeksee—and the larger entity which it serves and to which it owes pledged fealty—the Confederation of Eastern Peoples—many a one of this present council has proved himself to be completely unwilling to sacrifice even a single one of his purely personal interests to the common weal; indeed, members of Council have time and again fought like cur-dogs over a rotting bone within the precincts of this very room, have later drawn each other’s blood in senseless duels and have, I am dead certain, hired common assassins to dispose of peers and brothers of Council.

“This can in no way be construed or considered an orderly government, for all that the strenuous efforts of a very few of us have kept most of the outward appearances of one with little help, no help at all or outright and childish opposition from the remainder of Council. I have right often of recent months thought me of that red letter tube tucked away in my files and wondered and pondered.

“All of you know Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos, here. He is Karaleen-born and truly owes us nothing, yet he accepted the High Lord’s commission to march down here following the Zastros disaster and, with a small nucleus of troops loaned by the High Lord for a core, rebuild from the broken, scattered elements of warbands and survivors of the royal armies of the various kings a fine, strong, well-balanced and proven-effective army, so that when the present Grand Strahteegos took command, years back, he had only to shape and mold a preexisting army to his personal taste, not organize one from scratch, as might otherwise have been the case.

“After the Grand Strahteegos took command of the field army, no one would have thought it at all out of place had this selfless nobleman, his job well done, left and returned back north to his own lands and kin. But he did not, rather he stayed on here, and has since then done the hard, detailed and exacting duties of managing the many-faceted support system without which the field army could not exist and keep functioning.

“The army taken over by the Grand Strahteegos was strong, disciplined and well organized, owning many fine units raised and commanded by effective and sometimes brilliant noble officers. The skill and valor and blood of that army won victory atop victory for Council and was of significant help in finally reuniting these lands, clearing them of the scum that had accumulated here and there in the bad old days and seating us and our noble vassals all securely in our places. This army of ours remained that way for a while . . . but no more, my lords, no more.”

“Now, dammit, Grahvos,” snapped Pahvlos, looking and sounding thoroughly exasperated, “do you intend to get to a point or not? I am a very busyman, I have many important matters awaiting me back at the headquarters of my army. I think that this session can get along just as well rehashing recent history without me.” He shoved back his chair and looked to be in the act of arising.

“I would strongly advise that you stay, my lord Grand Strahteegos,” said Mahvros quietly and coolly, but with force. “I say this both as chairman and as one privy to knowledge not yet generally shared by the other members of Council.”

The spare, white-haired officer sank back into his chair, saying, “Oh, very well. But please, please, get to a point, Grahvos. I left it that the punishment and executions of certain military miscreants on tap for today not commence without me there to witness them, and the troops all are drawn up in formations by now, that they may be warned by those examples how I maintain discipline and loyalty in my army.”

“As I was saying, my lords,” Thoheeks Grahvos went on, “our army, Council’s army, was still a strong, a terribly effective, a high-spirited force as lately as two years ago, but no more. Many of the best noble officers have taken their units and left the camp; many noble officers who yet remain are much disaffected and have made that disaffection known to certain of us.”

“Really?” said Pahvlos, raising his eyebrows. “They haven’t said as much to me, their commander, their Grand Strahteegos, the man to whom they would logically speak. A wise man would’ve put no trust in the babblings of a few troublemakers. But are you wise, Grahvos?”

“Wiser than you think!” snapped Grahvos. “Wise enough to know that you don’t hold command of a good army by the harsh, brutal, savage and barbaric ways you have taken to using within the last two years, old man.

“Wise enough am I to realize that you cannot keep an army almost constantly on campaign, year-round, and then not allow them to unwind with wine and brandy and carousing in garrison. You don’t have men lashed to death or cripplement for being found drunk in their barracks after a three-month campaign in the mountains, yet you did just that. You don’t have a good sergeant’s ears cropped and burn his scalp bone-deep with boiling pitch simply because he was a day late in returning to camp from a carouse, either, yet you did, my lord. You don’t have the hands of an artificer mangled simply because he somehow smuggled a town strumpet into his barracks, but that is just what you did, Thoheeks Pahvlos, whereupon the entire unit of artificiers—officers and men alike—deserted the army, and now Tomos Gonsalos is scratching about trying to organize another artificer corps for the field army.”

“The only thing that settles the insubordination of malcontents is the force of example,” said Pahvlos coldly.

“Is that so?” Grahvos said. “So what happened when you sent a full battalion of pikemen out to chase down the artificiers and bring them back to star in another of your gory spectacles? They didn’t come back either, only a few of their officers, whom you promptly had hung for malfeasance. Man, one would think that you are deliberately set to utterly destroy our army.”

“I’ve heard enough and more than enough!” Pahvlos snarled and came to his feet.

“Sit down!” ordered Grahvos.

“Make me ... if you can,” sneered Pahvlos, striding toward the rack of weapons near the door.

Grahvos nodded at Mahvros, who pulled the bell-rope, and abruptly the doorway was filled with guardsmen in half-armor, one of them bearing a coil of thick rope and a handful of leather straps.

Mahvros waved at Pahvlos, saying, “Captain, please escort the Grand Strahteegos back to his place; there seat him and bind him securely into his chair.”

Some others of the Councillors muttered, but most seemed too stunned to do even that. The old officer struggled briefly, but there were just too many hands ready to restrain him, so he gave over, allowed himself to be pushed into the chair, with his arms, legs and torso bound and strapped to its frame. He glared rage at Grahvos and Mahvros, but spoke not a word.

“My lords,” said Grahvos, “it has been a painful torment to me to watch the dissolution of our army, the strong right arm of Council, but those of you stubbornly set upon allowing the monster that Pahvlos is become with age to continue his misdeeds because he once was a great and good and entirely different man have tied my hands on the deadly serious matter.

“Today, this once-great senior officer had Tomos Gonsalos brought to his headquarters by a fully armed member of his personal guards and there proceeded to curse him, slander him, insult him on many lines, call his wife a whore and his mother a sow, then order him to leave the camp and our lands and go back to Karaleenos, threatening to sword him otherwise.”

“Rubbish!” Pahvlos burst out. “Sewer sweepings, all of it! Yes, I ordered him out of the camp of my army; I did so because he had shown clear disloyalty to me and my authority, he and Grahvos’ clique having arranged the legal desertion of a unit of my army. If he says any other, he lies . . . but then he is after all half a barbarian, and to barbarians, as we all know, lying is a native attribute.”

Grahvos shook his head. “No, my lord Grand Strahteegos, it is you who lie, in this instance. Members of your headquarters staff easily overheard your shouted insults and slanders and threats against Sub-strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos and they quickly offered witness and full support to him, strongly suggesting that he call you out, meet you at swords’ points and kill you, as he easily could. If anything else is disturbing to you, that should be, my lord, for these are the very men who daily and nightly guard your back, watch over you when you sleep, yet they clearly want you dead, if that is the only way that the army can be finally shut of you.”

The eyes of the old soldier filled, then spilled over to send salt tears coursing down his lined, scarred, weathered cheeks and into his snow-white beard. He sobbed twice, then shook his head and said in a whining voice, “I am an old man. I’ve devoted almost all of my life to my armies and my kings and their kingdom. So why am I used so cruelly by you I have tried so hard to serve well? You choose to believe a whoreson barbarian Karaleen rather than me.” He snuffled loudly. “It’s not fair, it’s just not fair, none of it is fair.” He then began to sob rackingly, and to moan, his head sunk onto his chest and his hands visibly straining against his bonds.

With looks of pity, the two thoheeksee flanking him, Portos and Vahsilios, set to work on the restraints, freeing first the arms, then the rest of the straps and knotted ropes. With the freed hands, Pahvlos covered his face. But immediately he was completely free and his two benefactors had reseated themselves, he leaped up and ran to the weapons rack. Armed with his sword and a stout dirk, he turned and crowed in triumph.

“Now I’ve got the edge on you bastards, and a sharp-honed edge it is, too. Those of you who are mine or favor my cause, come down here and arm yourselves, that we may get to the butchering of the swine who sold our kingdom out to the northern aliens. Let’s have done with this silly governing of ourselves for some foreign lord and crown a real king to rule over us, say I.”

Grahvos could only stand and stare when tall, saturnine Thoheeks Portos arose, smiling and nodding agreement to the ravings of the old strahteegos. Striding down the room, he plucked his saber from where it hung and fitted its case to his belt-hook before drawing the cursive blade with a sibilant hiss from its sheath. He plucked a dagger at random from the smaller weapons on the table and shook off its scabbard, one-handed, then took his place to the left of Pahvlos and slightly behind him.

Others, following Portos’ lead, had begun to push back their chairs now, and things were looking rather tight and sticky for the unarmed Grahvos, Mahvros and Tomos Gonsalos. Mahvros thought it high time to pull the bell-rope, but his hand hardly had touched it when Pahvlos’ hard-flung dirk sank deeply into his shoulder.

It was while the old strahteegos was fumbling on the table behind him for another weapon that he suddenly stiffened, rising onto his toes, his eyes wide and bulging, his mouth wide as well, but no sound other than an odd gurgle emerging. Then, abruptly, he collapsed all in a heap, with the hilt of a dagger jutting up from just under his left shoulderblade.

Thoheeks Portos picked up the saber he had quietly laid aside and sheathed it, saying to the room at large, “It had to be done—you all know that for fact if you’ll just think on it. He was no longer the man we all once loved and respected. I know that he would have chosen this sort of quick death by steel. It’s the only way for any warrior to die. We must give him a really fine funeral; the Pahvlos of old earned at least that much many times over.”