“Suesar of the kembri-Itraiel,” said the other.
Aesoe brought his mistress a bowl of rinse water. “Our honored friends travelled with the Gathering to Soebo and served as administrators there and are now returning home. They offer us a proposition we must take seriously. I wish you to discuss with them the weapons of The Forge of War.”
Kathein wiped the foaming suds from her hair with several backstrokes of her hands. The weapons of the Riethe madmen were not her favorite subject. “Why?”
“Kaesim and Suesar have been observing our rule in Soebo and have decided that there are advantages to ceding their land to the Kaiel. This is, of course, a bargain, and our end of the bargain must have substance.”
Kathein poured the warm rinse water over her head. Her reply was sarcastic. “In exchange we give them weapons to fry whole towns, cities even, and machine rifles to murder more women and children than can be eaten before they rot?”
Suesar bowed. He was not insulted. “You impugn our morality,” he said formally.
Kathein laughed. “No. I was questioning the sanity of my bed-mate.”
“Sanity!” Aesoe snorted. “Even Hoemei believes that the Sky is full of enemies and that we survive only because we have not been found. God’s Sky is also full of other gods, and where one god has gone, so can another bring himself. And what is our defense? Shall we sit and beat these Sky Demons at kol? Shall we take them through the desert and covertly scratch their legs so that they sicken and pass away? Shall we pompously declare them of low kalothi and offer them the knife and a pretty courtesan in some temple tower? Who is to defend us, Kathein? The Race is not alone!”
“The fire that burns the son, burns the daughter!” Water cascaded from Kathein as she stood and stepped into the towel held by Aesoe’s daughter-servant.
“Geta needs a ‘military’ clan.” Aesoe used the word from The Forge of War for there was no such word in the Getan language. “They must know the game of the enemy so that when we meet him we can define the play. Such a role I propose for the Itraiel. We rule; they defend. It is a role that requires study, foresight, dedication, bravery, great game minds and great kalothi. I think the Itraiel are worthy of this trust and will be challenged by it.”
“Perhaps.” She considered.
“We think we are well suited to the role,” said Kaesim.
Kathein cut him short. “I know the Itraiel.”
They were fierce desert rovers, rulers of a nomadic domain. They had no knowledge of genetic manipulation and she doubted that they had a single genetics workroom. Their temples were tents. They were known for their strange gentleness. What clan made less fuss over physical handicaps? It was said of the Itraiel that they would hold up a legless man with their right hand while lopping off the legs of an enemy with their left. It was said that no man could attack a kembri-Itraiel with a dagger and live. It was said that none played games like the Itraiel. Their kalothi rituals were almost purely game-determined. At their annual competitions the big losers were expected to organize the joyful Dispersion Feast and by their Ritual Suicide provide sustenance for the long journey home. They demanded no less of the underclans who used their land.
Aesoe brought out several gowns he had ordered for Kathein, some in dubious taste. Politeness demanded that he offer the privilege of dressing her to his guests who were requested, after much bowing between the three men, to adorn her in such a way as to most please themselves. Kathein was amused. Suesar wanted no part of the ritual and stepped back a pace — a pace long enough to put Kaesim in command but short enough not to insult Kathein.
Kaesim examined the robes, absorbing yet another strange Kaiel custom with complete ease. Each perusal was accompanied by an unobtrusive glance at Kathein. Thus he was able to dress her in the attire which most pleased her. Kathein was willing to bet a gold piece that Kaesim was the finest diplomat of the kembri-Itraiel.
For one heartbeat she saw an image of him riding turret on a Second World War tank through the North African night with five Gurkhas hitching a ride behind him. Her soul was chilled.
She took this desert priest by the hand and led him through the Palace maze toward the aroma of Aesoe’s private dining quarters. Suesar and Aesoe followed to the feast which she knew had been kept waiting and warm past its time. She seated them and served Kaesim first in repayment for his service to her. Last she carved the tiny carcass and heaped their plates with meat and gravy. The foreign priests made some sign over their food and began to eat heartily while Kathein began her stories of war, emphasizing atrocity so that she might make these men so loathe the horror of it that they would reconsider the role of warrior clan.
She told of the total extermination of the Jews in Britain on orders of the Pope so that the British people never thereafter had a Jewish problem. She told of the massacre of the Persians at Thermopylae. She told of the mountain of skulls in India. She told the story of the Turks forever cursed with the blood of the Armenians. She told of the inefficiencies of Belsen and the efficiencies of Hiroshima. She told of the post First World War invasion of Poland by Russia, and the retaliatory invasion of Russia by Poland, and of the final solution to the Polish problem when the Russians, a generation later and allied with the Nazis, overran Poland and executed 15,000 members of the Polish military clan and buried them in a mass grave at Katyn.
She told of the great Amerikan Peace Movement whose theory of justice was that the brutal Amerikan Army should move out of Southeast Asia so that the Cambodians could fertilize their fields with the bodies of Cambodians so that the Vietnamese could prey on the corpse of a decimated nation so that the Chinese could punish the Vietnamese so that the Vietnamese could drown their own Chinese in the sea. She told of the sack of Rome.
The priests of Itraiel listened to her as one listens to an Ivieth chew the leg of a traveller with tales of distant places. They began to ask her questions about strategy, purpose, gain. She answered the difficult problems they posed as best she could. They tried to make sense of Hitler at Stalingrad and the perplexities so gripped them that, for a moment, they forgot their meat. They came to the tentative conclusion that the Riethe were not mad, just stupid.
“They understood weapons,” said Kaesim.
“But they did not understand strategy,” said Suesar.
Both began to question Kathein about weapons. She told them of axe and sword and crossbow and rifle and cannon and tank and fighter aircraft and helicopter gungods and long-range bombers and ICBMs and spy satellites.
Kaesim grinned through the fei flower scars upon his face. “Maybe God is a spy satellite for the Riethe.” He laughed. They all laughed the great laugh till tears came to their eyes, for that was too terrifying a joke to take seriously.
Kathein told of the weapons cycles that passed through Riethe history. First the bows and arrows and the staffs and slings made the individual supreme. Then the invention of the two-wheeled cart was taken over by nomads who lightened and perfected the design for rapid control of their herds. (Herds, Kathein explained, were small clans of people kept for their meat and hides and milk.) The chariot was pulled by a Horse.
“The Horse piece of chess?”
“The Horse is historical? Not mythical?”
“The Horse of The Forge of War,” explained Aesoe, “is a very large humanoid creature with a long face and four legs and no arms.”
The Itraiel priests grinned hugely and clinked shot glasses of whisky to this image of a four-footed Ivieth trying to pull a wagon.
“Horses were expensive and hard to train. Chariots were costly, so a select military clan grew up around them and swept down over Mesopotamia and India and as far east as China, killing all the priests who were not afraid of them.” She smiled at Aesoe.