Via rayvoice Teenae had given Joesai an analysis of Bendaein’s main kolgame strategy. He relied heavily on the sacrifice. I’ll kill him! And now Noe’s message that the Mnankrei were ready with a new biological terror to which he had to respond… except that he was under sacred contract to Hoemei to sit and do nothing. Just what I need. He clomped down the attic ladder so furiously that one boot shot through a rung, dropping him with a bone-shaking jolt.
The contract with Hoemei exasperated him and though he might honor it first with his wits and finally with his life he was also willing to break that contract — and allow negative assessments to enter Hoemei’s Archive files — if the success of the Gathering was at stake. His personal goal was to make his family transcendent above all others, but the clan goal was to take Soebo and place it under Kaiel rule, the means of victory to be governed only by the Over Strategy of Tae ran-Kaiel. To honor at the same time, Hoemei maran-Kaiel, his brother, and Tae ran-Kaiel, his father, and yet to face a situation which neither had predicted, that was Joesai’s dilemma.
His training taught him first to review his Over Strategy when confronted with the unpredictable lest he find himself detoured by an undergoal. All power to the Kaiel through bargaining! That was the Over Strategy. Bargain with whom?
Grumbling, he left the farmhouse to examine his trap on foot. While he paced impatiently in meditation along the ramparts his men had raised upon the farmer’s field, wisdom sang to him a thousand cautionary verses. A strong man must move lightly. Each verse he listened to — unconvinced. Another, sweeter, melody rose from his inner soul in counterpoint to the warning dirge. Throw everything into a devastating thrust straight at Soebo and damn the consequences!
Drums marched over the counterpoint. “Power is not safely abused,” boomed Tae in Joesai’s memory, his scarred face grinning at his young children, “any more than a sharp knife is safely abused, or fire abused, or a sailplane abused. Misapplied power turns on you and consumes you and leaves your ashes floating in the wind. Abuse it and it may kill you instantly or it may play with you first, torturing you slowly while it decides what death to inflict upon your children’s children.”
Returning, the melody of temptation sneaked through the feet of Tae’s mighty drumming. As a child listening to Tae he had wondered just how far you could push your power before it turned on you — how fast the knife? how big the fire? how steep the climb?
The Tae from Joesai’s memory had gifts for his children and he distributed them, still speaking resonantly. “You are Kaiel. Our job is power. Expect to be hurt. Power does not forgive those who are ignorant of its limits, yet who has kalothi enough to know well that maze of limits? But, as Kaiel, also expect to do great things with the sharp knife you have cared to learn to control.”
Each of Tae’s gifts had been a tool. Joesai was given an axe which his father whimsically named “Four Toes” as he put it into Joesai’s hands. In that one rare moment of contact, Joesai had asked him who set the limits. “The ones who die,” smiled Tae.
In another of Joesai’s ears, an ironic song replied to temptation, reciting vast French victories on the way to Moscow. The power wielded by Napoleon was absolute, so absolute that it forever deprived France of Glory. Until the very edge of the last impossible page of The Forge of War, Frenchmen were to be seen in hell pursuing a buxom Glory who flirted with taller lovers.
A battle song told of Greek destroying Trojan — but who among the blazing stars could still pronounce the names of those jealous warriors whose power had brought them only death?
Joesai’s eyes raked the horizon, a band of haze that blended into the blue sky. He was restless to move on Soebo and yet restrained. Victory was essential but could one bargain with the rubble his forces would create? Power was not to be had through transient victory.
Tae had endlessly reminded his clan that the Gathering of Ache achieved dominion over the Arant by terror, then created the Kaiel to oversee the terror but, that strong as terror gripped, it was a transient glue. Had not the Arant, decimated and scattered — cowed — nevertheless subdued the Kaiel through the backdoor of remorse, so that the Kaiel body now walked with a double soul?
Joesai knew that he could strike immediately while his group was still alive. A small band could take Soebo. Who else but he — and perhaps his crazy two-wife — understood the uses of the madness in The Forge of War? The Mnankrei would be able to defend themselves but they would not be able to comprehend the battle tactics in time. The victory would be stunning, complete, even awesome, its reward a cowering populace who anticipated every need of the conquering Kaiel.
The victors would be bathed, fed, carried, served, charmed. Every order would be obeyed. Yet the children would be hidden, and who would ever know the thoughts behind the smiling faces trying so anxiously to please? His Arant mind told him how cities responded to fear, and his Kaiel mind showed him the future: a Kaiel body thrown to the stones of a Soebian back alley, stomped, its throat slit, blood flowing between the stones to the gutter; a Kaiel body floating in a canal; a Kaiel body hastily butchered and roasted, its skin destroyed; his body; Teenae’s body; his grandson’s body. He shrugged, dismissing his main battle plan. There could be no victory unless the children came to greet you. No children cheered the German troops across the steppes of Russia. No children cheered the Russian butchers in Afghanistan. No children cheered the Amerikan troops at My Lai.
Whenever Joesai was perplexed he chose direct confrontation. He knew he did not know enough to make a decision that would honor the Over Strategy. Find out. He took ten youths he had observed all the way from Kaiei-hontokae. They melted through the Mnankrei watch stations unnoticed, first invisibly by night, then later in full view. Forethought had long ago provided safe houses in Soebo.
Cautiously Joesai contacted Hoemei’s spies. He did not know who they were, or where their rayvoice tower was located — such was the way Hoemei operated — but communication channels were open. Puzzlement met his requests. They knew nothing of sacred micro-life that could kill a host and then move to a new body. Joesai pondered his next move.
He set up an escape route over rooftops and into a canal barge, stationed men, and in broad orange daylight entered the Soebo hive of the Liethe. He waited in a room of tapestries, idle, amused. A startled girl found him. They were not used to receiving men. “I am Joesai maran-Kaiel, High Face of the Advance Court of the Gathering of Outrage.” He took a breath. The girl became even more surprised. She fled and was replaced by an old woman.
He was alert for signs of deceit, for the small flicker of wrinkled face that would tell him these women were holding him until they could inform the Mnankrei. “I am the se-Tufi Who Rings the Soul’s Bell. You must tell me the purpose of your visit.” This one had an iron calmness which could hold either fidelity or treachery.
“Bell of Supreme Excellence, from Kaiel-hontokae we once contacted you regarding those Kaiel captured at sea by the Mnankrei. We were informed that they languished in the Temple of Raging Seas.”
“Ah, and you are here to free them. A difficult task.”
Such was not his task. He was using the suggestion of an escape attempt as a probe of Liethe intentions. Joesai noted that he was being offered no help. “I realize you are allied with the Mnankrei and that makes your position delicate. Should the Mnankrei win this game and determine that the Liethe helped us in our failure, then it would go badly for your presence here.”