Trumpets of War

V

The Mehseepolis to which Thoheeks Grahvos returned from his brief campaign was a crowded, bustling swirl of activity. More than merely adequate in size to have for long and long been the capital and the principal city of a double duchy, the ancient city was proving to be simply too small to house and to office the needs of a Council of noblemen ruling a vast, sprawling land which was becoming known as the Consolidated Duchies of Southern Ehleenoee. Everything and every place within the grim circuit of walls was become or becoming overcrowded, packed to the bursting seams, with the heterogeneous host necessary to administrate and to serve.

So heavy was the traffic wending up into and down out of the city become that the tall, thick gates seldom were closed anymore and the repairs and restrengthenings of the drawbridge that spanned the deep gorge that had for so long so protected the principal approach to the ancient city had rendered it too weighty to anymore be raised by the chains and windlasses, so it was now permanently lowered.

That gorge, which had received the drainage of the hilly city’s sewers and drains since first the present city had been built where once, in ancient times, had stood only a stronghold, had with the present overpopulation been metamorphosed into a stinking mess, an ever-constant affront to eyes and nose, wherein vermin of every sort fed and bred among the faeces, garbage and slimy pools of wastewater and above which clouds of noxious insects as thick as the nauseating miasma rose up to greet everyone who crossed the bridge or walked the walltops. Grahvos longed for the spring cloudbursts that would flush the foetid cesspit down into the plain and river.

The hordes of workmen—carpenters, joiners, stonemasons and the like—added to the overcrowding but were every bit as necessary as the thoheeksee themselves. The palace complex had been quickly outgrown, and now the workmen were hard at work converting and connecting onetime private homes and other nearby buildings into a spreading, mazelike complex. In order to render the space of the old citadel free of other pressing uses, all activities and offices of a military nature had been transferred out onto the lower plain and into tents and thrown-together temporary buildings making up an enclave between the spreading camps of the army and the foot of the steep road that led up to the city.

Of a day when the plants and shrubs of the palace garden were showing off their first green leaf and flower buds, in Nature’s eons-old announcement of the new growing season, called by men the spring, two men sought an audience with the Council of Thoheeksee. There was a vast disparity between these two—one being a graybeard and the other a far younger man, almost a stripling—but at one and the same time, it was obvious to any who saw them that they were very closely related by blood. The old man was the tallest of the pair—about six feet from soles to pate; his physique was big-boned and still looked very powerful, with the scars indicative of a proven, veteran warrior. A few of these scars looked to be fairly new.

Lord Eraldos of Elsahpolis, one of the assistant chamberlains and harried to distraction that day, knew that he had seen the old man or someone very much like him before, but he could not just then place the who or the where or the when, and the petitioner flatly refused to state his name or his rank, only stating that he was a nobleman who had been most unjustly treated and he was, therefore, seeking redress of this new government, the Council of Thoheeksee. The only other words he deigned to send in to Council were exceedingly cryptic, to Eraldos’ way of thinking.

“Ask the present lord of Hwailehpolis if he now recalls aught of a stallion, a dead man’s sword and a bag of gold.”

But then code words and phrases were fairly common (though less so at this than at certain other courts Lord Eraldos had served in his lifetime, he was happy to say), so he dutifully jotted it down on the prompting pad he kept in his mind and then continued with seemingly endless routines. With one occurrence and another, however, it was not for some two hours that he remembered to pad around the table to the mentioned thoheeks and diffidently put to him this singularly odd question, to then be scared nearly out of his wits.

Thoheeks Vikos of Hwailehpolis sent his heavy chair crashing over as he leaped to his feet and clamped his big, hard hands on both the startled assistant chamberlain’s shoulders with crushing force.

“Where is this man, Eraldos?” he demanded. “What would you estimate his age? Did he come alone of his own will or did others bring him?”

When he did not get an immediate answer, Thoheeks Vikos’ eyes flashed fire and he shook the chamberlain as a terrier shakes a rat. “Well? Well, man, will you answer me?”

Lord Eraldos’ lips moved but no sounds emerged. As Vikos set himself to another round of shaking, Thoheeks Portos gripped his forearm, admonishing, “Have done, Vikos, have done! Between shaking and terror, you’ve rendered the poor man dumb with fright.”

When the trembling functionary had scuttled out of the chamber to fetch back the petitioner, Vikos made to explain his atypical actions to his peers at the council table. “It was after that gory debacle at Ahrbahkootchee, in the early days of the war against Hyamos’ son, Prince Rahndos. I had fought through all of that black day as an ensign in my late elder brother’s troop of heavy horse, and in the wake of the main army’s rout by the war-elephants, I and full many another poor nobleman found myself unhorsed, disarmed and hunted like some wild and desperate beast through the swamps of the bottomlands.

“Near to dusk, I was wading across a broad pool when I heard yet again the crashing of brush and the shouts of horsemen. They sounded almost atop me, so I broke off a long, hollow reed and went under the water, as I had had to do right many times that terrifying day. But this time I knew that if they came at all close, I was done for; unlike all the other pools that had hidden me, the water of this one was clear to the sandy bottom, nor was its deepest part very deep, perhaps three feet, perhaps less.

“All at once, as I fought to hold myself underwater, I became aware that a man had ridden into that pool; the legs of his horse loomed close to my body, and, not liking the idea of a lance pinning me to the bottom to gasp out my life there, I resignedly surfaced, that I might at least die with air in my lungs. I looked up into the eyes of none other than Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos himself!

“In a voice pitched so low that even I could but barely hear, he growled, ‘Keep down, damn fool boy! Keep down, Isay, else I’ll have to slay you.’

“Then he shouted to his troopers who were riding nearer, ‘You men search that thick brush up there where the creek is narrow and murky. This pool here is clear as fine crystal; nothing to be seen in it save fish and crayfish. I’ll give my stallion a drink of it, then ride up and join you.’

“Then thekomees deliberately set his horse to roiling the bed of that pool with its hooves, while he did the same with the butt of his lance, stirring up sediments and clouding the water. He dropped upon me a sheathed, bejeweled sword, and when I once more brought my face up to where I could see, he dropped a small, heavy bag with a crest embossed in the soft leather.

“He said then, ‘Your late father was my battle companion of yore, young Vikos, and after this sad day, you may well be the last living man of his loins. So there is a bit of gold and a good sword taken off the body of a dead man. Stop moving about blindly and go to ground untilit’s full dark, then head northwest. What’s left of Zastros’ rebel army is withdrawing southeast, and we’ll be pursuing them. If you can make it up to Iron Mountain, you’ll be safe with your cousins there. And the next time you choose a warleader, try to choose one who owns at least a fighting chance to win, eh? God keep you now, my boy.’ Then he rode through the pool and led his men away through the swamp.”

Thoheeks Grahvos nodded. “Yes, Vikos, it sounds exactly of a piece with all else I know of the man. For all of his personal ferocity and his expertise in the leading of armies and the waging of wars for the three kings he served during his lengthy career, still was he ever noted to be just and, when it was possible, merciful to his defeated enemies.

“Strange, I’d just assumed him to be dead, legally murdered by Fahrkos or Zastros, as were the most of his peers. It is indeed good to know that at least one of the better sort survived the long bloodletting. Who was his overlord, anyway? Does anyone here recall? If he’ll take the oaths, I can’t think of anybody who would make us a better thoheeks then Strahteegos Pahvlos the Warlike.”

“And so,” concluded old Komees Pahvlos, “when it was become clear to me that these usurping scum, these bareborn squatters, were all determined to not only deny young Ahramos here his lawful patrimony, but to take his very life as well, were they granted the opportunity, I knew that far stronger measures were required, my lords.”

He sighed and shook his show-white head. “Could but a single man do it alone, it were done already. Old I assuredly am—close on to seventy years old—but still am I a warrior fit for the battleline, and my good sword is yet to become a stranger to my hand. But only a strong, disciplined, well-led force will be able to dislodge that foul kakistocracy that presently holds Ahramos’ principal city and controls his rightful lands, and due to reverses, I no longer own the wherewithal to hire on men, to equip and mount and supply them with even the bare necessities of warfare.

“The two of us, Ahramos and I, were able to fight our way out of both the palace and the city, but far more than a mere two swordsmen will be required to hack a way back in and see justice done the now-dispossessed son and heir of the late thoheeks. This is why I come.”

“I would wager pure gold, Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos,” said Thoheeks Grahvos thoughtfully, pinching his chin between his thumb and forefinger, “that nothing—neither adversity nor your venerable age—has robbed you of a whit of your old and rare abilities to lead armies, plan winning battles and improvise stunning tactics on the spur of the moment any more than those same forces have taken away your skills of swinging sharp steel hard and true.

“I’ll be candid: I had meant to hear you out, then ask you to take oaths to the Council and the Confederation and then confirm you the lord of one of the still-vacant thoheekseeahnee, for I trow you’d make a better thoheeks than many another candidate for that rank. I still mean to see you so installed, too.

“But now, fully aware of how vital you still are and how great is our need, I have in mind a better, far more useful task for you, at present.”

Pawl Vawn, Chief of Vawn, sat at a table in the camp quarters of Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos; with them around the scraps of the just-eaten meal sat Captain Guhsz Hehluh and Captain Thoheeks Portos.

As he filled his cup with the honey wine and passed the decanter on to Portos, the Horseclans commander demanded, “If this Pahvlos is such a slambang strahteegos and all, Portos, how come he didn’t tromp you all proper for his king and end it all before it got started?”

“Oh, he did, he assuredly did, my good Pawl,” replied Portos in his grave voice, “in the beginning, years ago. I was there, I was a part of that rebel army then, I and my first squadron of horse, and I am here to tell you that he thoroughly trounced us. He nibbled off all the cavalry and the light troops, then smashed the main force with a charge of his war-elephants and his heavy horse, crushed it like a beetle, virtually extirpated a force that had begun the day a third again larger than his own and had drawn itself up on the best stretch of ground with the most natural assets available in that part of the country.

“It required years of effort, after that, and the then-unknown help of the Witchmen to reassemble an army for Zastros to lead against Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos. That, in the end, we did not have to face him again was an inestimable relief to many a one of us, believe me, my friend.”

“Well, why didn’t you?” asked Pawl Vawn.

Portos shrugged, toying with his winecup. “By that time, all of the ancient royal line was become extinct and Thoheeks Fahrkos, who seized the crown and the capital, had dismissed the strahteegohee, as they all were hostile toward him. Most of the royal army as then remained had chosen that point to march away with their officers, so that all Fahrkos had when we brought him to bay was his own skimpy personal warband.”

“Well, even so,” put in Freefighter Captain Guhsz Hehluh, as he doodled with the tip of a calloused forefinger in and around a pool of spilled wine, “before I’m going to put me and my Keebai boys under the orders of some white-bearded doddard, I’ll know a bit more about him, if you please . . . and even if you don’t, comes to that.

“You Kindred and Ehleenee, you can do what you wants, but if I mislike the sound or the smell of thishere Count Pahvlos, why me and mine, we’ll just shoulder our pikes and hike back up north to Kehnooryos Atheenahs and I’ll tell High Lord Milo to find us some other fights or sell us our contract back.”

But within the space of bare days, Captain Guhsz Hehluh was trumpeting the praises of the newly appointed Grand Strahteegos of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee of Southern Ehleenohee. Komees Pahvlos and his entourage had ridden out and found the Freefighter pikemen at drill. For almost an hour, he sat his stamping, tail-swishing horse beside Hehluh’s in the hot sun, swatting at flies and knowledgeably discussing the inherent strengths and weaknesses of pike formations and the proper marshaling of infantry. At length, Pahvlos had actually dismounted and hunkered down in the dust of the drill field to sketch with a horny finger the initial positions and movements of an intricate maneuver.

“I’d been led to believe he was lots older than he actually is,” Hehluh declared to his officers. “He’s really not that much older than me, and he’s not one of these hidebound bastards that so many Ehleenees are, either. He flat knows the art of war, by damn! Hell, after only the one meeting, I’ve already learned things from that man.”

The Freefighter captain drained off the dregs of his mug and said, “Frahnzwah, you go find us some more beer or cider or wine to drink. The rest of you, clear off the top of this table and I’ll show you some of the things our new Grand Strahteegos showed me. Never can tell when I might not be around and one of you may have to take over in the middle of a battle.”

After he had watched and evaluated the heterogeneous units which Council had assembled and called its army, Pahvlos closeted himself with Tomos Gonsalos. To begin, he said, “It’s basically a^good unit you command here, Lord Tomos, these northern troops. I’d take you on with them just as they are now were you not a mite shy of infantry and a mite oversupplied with cavalry for good balance. In order to rectify the deficiency, I’ll be brigading your pikemen—Captain Hehluh’s unit—with two more regiments of equal size—all veterans, too, no grass-green peasants and gutter-scrapings more accustomed to pushing plows and brooms than pikes.

“I’m of the opinion that both you and Hehluh will get along well with Lord Captain Bizahros, who commands the reorganized Eighth Foot, from the outset; however, Captain Ahzprinos, leader of the Fifth Foot, also reorganized, is another dish of beans entirely.

“Please understand me, Lord Tomos, Captain Vahrohnos Ahzprinos is a superlative warrior and a fine commander in all ways, else he would not be serving under me in any capacity. But he also is loud, brash, bragadacious and sometimes overbearing to the point of real arrogance. Nonetheless, I can get along with him and I expect my subordinates to do so too.”

And so, in the ensuing weeks that stretched into months, the Confederation troops and the two regiments of once-royal foot of the Kingdomof Southern Ehleenohee drilled and marched, drilled and marched, shouldered pikes, grounded pikes, presented pikes at various heights and angles, sloped pikes. They drilled by squad, by file, by platoon, by company. The regiments formed column, they formed lines of battle of all descriptions, from schiltron to porcupine, propelled always by the roll of the drum and the hoarse, savage shouts of their officers and sergeants. When felt to be ready, they were assembled as brigade in battalion-front line-of-battle and put through even more and more intricate drills under the critical eye of Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos the Warlike himself.

Old Pahvlos had sent, early on, messengers to old friends in the far western lands, requesting that they send fully war-trained elephants, feelahksee and elephant-wise officers, but as yet none of the messengers had returned and no elephants had arrived; therefore, he still was perforce employing the three cows that had been there when he first arrived and took over the army.

Of course, these three were not those huge, looming bull elephants to which he was accustomed and which now were—hopefully—on the march from their western breeding and training grounds, but rather the smaller, usually tuskless beasts that his previous armies always had used only for draught purposes. That the old man had consented to their use in battle at all was a testament to the truly extraordinary control of them exercised by their Horseclansfeelahksee, Captain of Elephants Gil Djohnz and the other two northern barbarians.

The old officer had been astounded at his witnessing of the first drill he ordered for the elephants, that he might judge their degrees of capability. Before his wondering eyes, the three cows rendered performances such as he never before had seen in all his many years of serving with and commanding elephant-equipped armies. Certain of his staff, indeed, had been set to mumbling darkly of sorcery and barbarian witchcraft until he dressed them down in disgust at their unsophisticated superstition.

Still not quite certain that he actually believed that this lot come from off the Sea of Grass by way of Kehnooryos Ehlahs really were capable of mind-reading and telepathy with animals, nonetheless, the komees would freely admit that he was greatly impressed with the Horseclansmen in general, for it had never before been his pleasure to own the services of so splendid and versatile a mounted force as the small squadron of armored horse-archers commanded by Captain Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn.

Traditionally, Southern Kingdom horse had come in three varieties only—the heavy horsemen who were fully armored, usually noblemen or gentlemen and their personal retainers, and fought with sword or axe or similar edge weapons; light horsemen or lancers, who wore half-armor, carried lances and sabers, and rode smaller, lighter, faster and more nimble horses; and irregular cavalry, who were mostly hired barbarians from the borderlands, who equipped, armed and mounted themselves and had often proven far from effective and dependable, save as horse-archers operating from a distance only.

But he was assured by Tomos Gonsalos and by his own instinctual judgments that these Horseclansmen had been, were and would be both dependable and murderously efficient. True, their horses were notso striking of build as those of the traditional heavy horse, but neither were they as modest of proportions as those of the light horse, either. Both Gonsalos and Hehluh—who had served both with and against these Horseclans cavalry—averred that the short, slight men were noted for both their uncanny accuracy with their short, powerful bows and their ferocity in breast-to-breast encounters with their broad, heavy sabers, their axes and their spears.

Due to the horse sizes and the amount of armor that the Horseclansmen wore, Pahvlos classed them in his mind as medium-heavy horse. And it comforted his mind no little that he now possessed a reliable mounted force that could both lay down a dense and accurate loosing of arrows, then case their bows, draw their steel and deliver a hard, effective charge against whatever unit their arrow-rain had weakened.

After talking withvarious of the older Horseclans warriors and observing them for some weeks, Pahvlos thought he could understand much of how these men and their forefathers had so readily rolled over the armies of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, the Kingdomof Karaleenos, assorted barbarian principalities of the farther north and numerous tribes of mountain barbarians.

As he thought on his mounted troops, Pahvlos could not consider the reinforced squadron of Captain Thoheeks Portos just a normal unit of lancers, either. Equipped and mounted as they all were, they were become, to the old strahteegos’ way of thinking, true heavy horse, and he utilized them as such, requesting and eventually receiving of the Council a squadron of old-fashioned Ehleen light-horse lancers to assume the scouting, flank-guarding and messenger functions of the traditional light-horse usage.

To Portos’ questions regarding the reassignment of functions of his squadron, Pahvlos replied, “My lord Thoheeks, in my mind, if you dress man up in steel helmet, thigh-length hauberk, mail gauntlets and steel-splinted boots, arm him with lance, saber, light axe and a long shield, then put him up on a sixteen- or seven-teen-hand courser all armored with steel and boiled leather, then that man is no longer a mere lancer. He is become at the very least a medium-heavy horseman. That force you continue to call lancers differ from Lord Pawl Vawn’s force only in that his are equipped with bows rather than lances and carry round targes instead of horseman’s shields.”

Although inordinately pleased with all of his cavalry, both the native and the barbarian, Komees Pahvlos found himself to be not quite certain just what to make of or do with the most singular pikemen of Captain Guhsz Hehluh.

Unless they chanced to be the picked foot-guards of a king or of some other high, powerful, wealthy nobleman, Southern Kingdom pikemen simply were not and had never ever been armored, save for a light cap of stiffened leather and narrow strips of iron, a thick jack of studded leather and a pair of leather gauntlets that in some rare instances had been sewn with metal rings, and only the steadier, more experienced and more dependable front ranks were provided with a body-shield to be erected before them where they knelt or crouched to angle their pikes. And, also traditionally, they had always died in droves in almost all battles whenever push came to shove, and this had always been expected.

But such was not so in the cases of the big, fair-skinned, thick-thewed barbarians commanded by Captain Hehluh. Only the cheek-guards and chin-slings of their helmets were of leather; all of the rest—the crown-bowls, the segmented nape-guards, the adjustable bar-nasals—were of good-quality steel. Their burly bodies were protected to the waist and their bulging arms to a bit below the elbow by padded jacks of canvas to which had been riveted overlapping scales of steel. Both their high-cuffed leather gauntlets and their canvas kilts were thickly sewn with metal rings, and, below steel-plate knee-cops, their shins were protected by splint armor riveted to the legs of their boots.

Moreover, each and every one of these singular pikemen bore a slightly outbowed rectangular shield near two feet wide and about twice that length. On command, each man could quickly unsling that shield, fit it to his arm and raise it above his head in such a way as to over- and underlap those about him and thus provide a covering that would turn an arrowstorm as easily as a roof of baked-clay tiles turned a rainstorm.

Nor were these the only differences in the arming and equipage of the barbarian foot and those of the onetime Southern Kingdom. Aside from his fifteen-foot pike, your traditional pikeman bore no weapons other than a single-edged knife that was, in practice, used mostly for eating purposes. In contrast to this, not a one of Captain Hehluh’s pikemen but also bore a heavy double-edged sword that was almost two feet in its sharp-pointed steel blade. Other weapons and the numbers of them seemed to be a matter of personal choice; knives, dirks and daggers of various lengths and sizes were carried, sometimes even short-hafted axes or cleavers, such as could be utilized as tools, hand weapons or missiles.

Even their pikes were different. Ehleen pikes ran thirteen to fifteen feet in the haft, the steel point usually being six to eight inches long, narrow and of a triangular or a square cross-section; ferrules were never of iron or steel, rarely of brass, usually of horn. The pikes of Hehluh’s men, however, were much longer to begin—some eighteen feet in the ashwood haft—with a reinforced blade point that was single-edged (so being capable of being used to cut the bridles of riders, for one thing) and a foot or more long, with iron-strip barding that was riveted along the haft from the base of the point for a good two feet to prevent swords and axes lopping off pikepoints. Ferrules were of wrought iron and nearly as long as the points; however, the overall weight thus added to the weapon was compensated for somewhat by the added balance imparted and by the availability of a last-ditch weapon to be afforded the pikeman by reversing his haft and making use of the blunt iron point.

Burdened as they thus were, Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos had at the outset entertained fully understandable doubts that these overprotected, overequipped, overarmed pikemen would be capable of maintaining the needful pace on the march or in a broad-front pike charge; but those doubts had evaporated after he had put them to it. Those doubts had evaporated to be replaced in his open mind with an intensely troubling set of other doubts.

These new doubts began to breed in him changes of his formerly rock-hard opinions. He began to wonder just why so many generations of his forebears had carelessly, needlessly sacrificed so many other generations of common pikemen with the excuse—now proven patently false—that proper armor and secondary weapons would significantly decrease mobility. Moreover, Captain Bizahros agreed with him and had initiated formal requests for at least basic pieces of armor, real helmets and shortswords for his reorganized Fifth Foot. On the other hand, Captain Ahzprinos did not agree with Pahvlos—flatly, loudly, unequivocally and at very great length citing all of the old, traditional arguments as well as some new-thought ones of his own.

Slowly, the force began to become a true, almost complete, field army as certain specialist units were assembled, trained or hired on. One of Council’s traveling recruiters found and sent marching back to Mehseepolis two battalions of light infantry—one of dartmen, one of expert slingers equipped with powerful pole slings. Eeahtrohsee came with their ambulance wagons, bandages, little sharp knives, bone saws and ointments. Artificier and pioneer units were organized and assigned and fully equipped. An experienced quartermaster officer was found and—miracle of miracles for his breed—proved out to be a relatively honest man! They all trickled in—the cooks, the butchers, the smiths, the farriers, the wagoneers and muleskinners, the herders, the bakers and all of them with their assistants and /or apprentices and/or servants and /or slaves. And still no war-elephants arrived.

Under the overall supervision of the Grand Strahteegos and his new quartermaster, vast mountains of supplies began to be amassed and needed to be placed under guard in such manner as to prevent or retard possible spoilage or damage or pilferage. But there was no trace or word regarding elephants from the west.

A vast herd of cattle—rations on the hoof—now grazed around and about the forming army of the permanent camp, along with steadily increasing numbers of horses and mules. When the treasury ran low, Thoheeks Sitheeros and Thoheeks Grahvos contributed more ounces of gold for the common weal. But not even then did more elephants arrive, nor would Sitheeros part with any more of his own small herd.

The army drilled, drilled and drilled some more. Long, hot, sweaty route marches shook down the units and accustomed them to reforming at a moment’s notice from the column to a whole plethora of line-of-battle formations. Under the Grand Strahteegos’ critical eye and patient dedication, the infantry—the three regiments of pikemen and the two of light foot—and the cavalry—the reinforced squadron of heavy horse, the medium-heavy horse-archers and the half-squadron of light horse lancers—began to coalesce and behave and appear to be a whole rather than several parts. But even still, the three elephant cows, astounding as their performances of intricate maneuvers were, were the only probiscideans available for the army’s use.

At last, feeling that he had waited and had kept his army waiting quite long enough for the pachyderms, Pahvlos sought audience with the Council of Thoheeksee and announced that he intended to start the campaign immediately, with only the three cow elephants.

“Look you, my lords,” he had said, “the city that is our objective does not lie any short distance away from Mehseepolis, so the army is going to be on the march for some weeks, and I would much prefer a march in dust to a march in rain and mud. The weather at this time of year has always been rather dry, but if we delay for much longer, the autumn rains will commence. In all other ways than war-elephants, our army is ready, honed to a fine edge, as it sits. We possess enough supplies, weapons, transport and mounts for about three months of campaigning, which should be enough, in my considered judgment.”

“Not if you get tied down besieging the place, it won’t!” growled Thoheeks Bahos, in his contrabass rumble. “What will you do then? Forage, live off the land and despoil young Ahramos’ heritage? Or send back to us for more supplies to be bought with money we don’t have?”

“I have very strong doubts that it will ever come to a siege, my lord Thoheeks,” replied Pahvlos. “That precious pack aresquatting on the lands and in the city, at best, holding them by brute force, with little popular support, if any; they would not dare to shut themselves up within a city filled with citizens who all hate and fear them. No, they’ll come to battle, most likely, quite soon after I arrive with the army, of that I am certain.”

Thoheeks Penendos of Makopolis, barely twenty years of age, spoke up. “In your considered judgment you believe,” he said in a cold, mocking tone. “In other words, Strahteegos, what you are saying is that you want us to approvingly seal your traipsing off with the bulk of our effectives and thousands of thrahkmehee worth of supplies and equipment on your unsupported, unsubstantiatedword, isn’t that it?”

Before Pahvlos could frame an answer, Thoheeks Vikos burst out, “Wipe the mother’s milk off your mouth before you so bespeak and question a man who was marshaling armies and leading them to victories while your father still was shitting his swaddlings! What manner of supercilious young puppy has Councilraised up in you, Lord Penendos?”

“Puppy, am I? Dog, am I?” shouted the offended man, pulling a hideaway dagger from someplace in his clothing and lunging across the breadth of the table at Lord Vikos. “I’ll make worm meat of you, you pooeesos of turd-eating boar hogs!”

It did not go far, of course, for the most of Council were warriors, first and foremost. Vikos tumbled back from the slender, winking blade, regained his feet and secured a good grip on the younger man’s wrist with one hand, applying painful pressure to force him to drop the weapon. Meanwhile, Thoheeks Bahos hurled his

massivebulk atop the would-be killer’s lighter and more slender body, effectively pinning him in place to the tabletop. Gasping foul curses, Penendos used his free hand to draw out another hidden dagger, only to have that wrist secured by Thoheeks Sitheeros well before he could bring it into any dangerous proximity to either Vikos or Bahos.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, GENTLEMEN!” roared Thoheeks Grahvos with a volume that rattled the goblets and crystal decanters on the sideboard. “Stop it this instant! Stop it, I say, else I’ll call for the guards and give you all pause to cool off and reflect the error of your ways in a dank, dark cell down belowstairs.

“Bahos, get off that fool’s back before you collapse the table. You and Sitheeros search him thoroughly and take any more sharp toys you find on his person, then put him back in his chair. And if he makes to rise again, you’ll both know just what to do, eh?”

“My lords,” he said finally in a harsh voice, “are we all herean aggregation of civilized, orderly inheritors of our ancient Ehleen culture? After the last few minutes, a non-Ehleen would doubt such, deeming us but another lot of brawling, blood-mad barbarians or overgrown and ill-reared children, which is the same thing, really.”

Turning to Pahvlos, who still was seated, he bowed low and said, “My lord Strahteegos Komees, please accept my apology and that of the Council of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee. Please believe me when I say that such regrettable behavior as that to which you have just, unfortunately, been witness is not the usual way in which Council meets and conducts business.”

Sensing that an answer might be embarrassing to Grahvos and certain of the others and was not expected, anyway, Pahvlos gravely and slowly nodded his head, once, in acknowledgment of Grahvos’ formal courtesy.

Then, addressed again the men ranged along the sides of the table, Grahvos’ voice lost any hint of warmth. “Lord Penendos, you are come of good stock, out of loins of decent, honorable noblemen. You’ve dishonored both yourself and the memory of your forebears, this day, here. One might think from your disregard of Council’s rule that all weapons must be deposited upon that table there by the door before business commences and from your willful weaponed attack upon the person of a peer you knew to be unarmed that you were bred in the mountain hut of some barbarian or in a tent out on the Sea of Grass.

“You owe apologies both to the lord strahteegos and to Thoheeks Vikos. Since all your misdeeds were said and done before Council, then these apologies must be delivered before Council, also. Let us see if you can speak more like a gentleman than you act.”

He maintained his fixed stare until Thoheeks Penendos dropped his gaze to his shaking hands held in his lap. Then the elder man turned to stare just as hard at Vikos. “Lord Vikos, you owe an apology to Lord Penendos. You should not have named him dog or spoken so harshly to him. Remember, he is too young to personally recall much of the exploits of Strahteegos Komees Pahvios. And although his manner was most assuredly and needlessly insulting, his question was quite proper from one whose memories hold no knowledge of the reputation, the many victories of Lord Pahvios. We will expect that apology to be delivered before Council, too.

“But before we get to those matters, I think that we should vote on the quite reasonable request of the lord strahteegos. I vote yes.”