“The confusion of weapon with strategy,“ commented Kaesim.
Kathein told of the next wave of weapons: long daggers of cheap iron, wielded like staffs, that made the individual soldier supreme again. An untrained man with an iron sword was a match for a highly trained and wealthy aristocrat in his chariot. So aristocracies died.
Then came the light Horse mounted by an archer. The foot soldier with iron sword and spear and shield was no longer effective. The only defense was an armored Horse and an armored rider who took years to train and the wealth of a village to support. Central governments collapsed. The man whose sword no longer defended his family lost power to the armored warrior of his village who became a hereditary priest.
But exploding powder of char and sulfur and nitrate was invented. A man with no training and a musket became the equal of the armored lord. The lords were swept away in revolutions that gave power to the common man.
Weapons grew more sophisticated. Machine rifles, aircraft, tanks, artillery, seagoing battlegods. Clans with industrial power learned to sweep away the riflemen. ICBMs that held ransom over cities were manned by an elite corps trained at great expense. The common man ceased to be a soldier. He refused to be drafted. Professional armies rose to power. Democracies crumbled. Socialist aristocracies took their place, exploiting the now impotent common man.
Then in the everlasting search for more sophisticated weapons the insect-sized machine-mind came as cheap iron had come at the end of the bronze age. With a basket of wheat any man could buy a demon missile that would fell a huge airplane or roast a tank or peel open an armored car. Industrial peoples could no longer control poor peoples. The new socialist aristocracies, no longer able to frighten the common man, withered away.
And the message was always the same. When the priest clans of Riethe dominated with their expensive weapons, their world was ruled by massacre, and when the underclans dominated with their cheap weapons, Riethe turned red with blood.
Kathein finished her analysis with an accusing glance at Aesoe as if to say: you would inflict that on us?
“The military lords of the Riethe would nourish us at our Dispersion Feast,” boasted Kaesim, unimpressed.
“The Riethe pose no absolute threat,” mused Suesar. “They have no sense of strategy. But we will need the weapons. Even a genius is flattened by the mindless boulder rolling down the mountain.”
She was furious at them for the casual way they had taken her stories. “You would want the responsibility of holding in your hands a machine that would make sunfire to devour a whole city?”
“We would welcome it.”
Aesoe called for entertainment. His Liethe women entered. Honey played her instrument while Cairnem and Sieen danced. The dark guests shouted their encouragement and pleasure, and clapped their hands for it was that type of fast light dance. Then the priests begged to demonstrate their own skill.
They stripped so that they were only wearing their brass belts and genital protectors. Cries erupted from their lips as they began to circle each other on the dance floor, hissing. Suesar snarled and attacked and through the magic of swiftness and leverage was thrown high where it appeared he would crash into the floor. But he pulled and twisted in midair and landed on his feet.
Of the three Liethe only the Queen of Life-before-Death stayed to watch the combat, rapt with fascination, wearing the persona of Cairnem.
The play of kembri wills continued, where a gesture might rescue one from a smashed skull, or an attack might seem to pass right through an opponent. They bowed to Aesoe’s foot stamping. Caimem grinned.
Before they had finished their bows, she was hissing a challenge. The priests turned in astonishment because she had used the kembri form of major insult. While they stared, she repeated her insult and stripped to her belt, a tiny belt with a wooden buckle that matched her tiny size. The priests burst out laughing.
A flash of flesh moved at them and they had to react quickly to stop her. They made kembri noises and she hissed back. There was a rapid exchange of words and then she attacked again, first one, then the other. Kathein gripped her chair. She expected the girl to be killed, for she was often thrown, once with a cracking thud, but she always rolled and flipped to a standing position. Finally she stopped, exhausted, the sweat rolling off her unscarred body, still grinning happily. The men were grinning, too.
“Cairnem uses the kembri form ‘otaimi’,” Suesar explained, “which can be executed by small women but not by men as large as us. She is good.”
“But I lost three to one. And they gave me handicaps.”
“Two against one is hardly fair,” bowed Kaesim, “but your form of insult gave us no choice.” His grin had not left his face.
“My dance teacher was trained in the kembri arts by Niel of the kembri-Itraiel.”
“Ah, yes? Niel!”
Cairnem was all Liethe grace now and she had an arm for each of them. “I’m part of the hospitality. You may have me this evening.” She turned to Aesoe. “I lost to them after insulting their genitals and it is obligatory that I pleasure their egos. So give me permission.” She looked Aesoe straight in the eyes.
“And if they had been defeated?” Aesoe queried.
“Why, then they would have had to pleasure me.”
“I see that I have lost my warriors for the evening. The bargaining will continue tomorrow.”
Tonight I will tell him, thought Kathein.
But when they were alone in his bedchamber, she hesitated and found other things to talk about. He was light and witty, having chosen to forget her tardiness, and she found it easier to joke than to confront him. I’ll undress him — like she had seen Sieen do so many times — and when he is warmed by my fingers, then I will tell him. But she couldn’t go near him.
“I’ve made a major decision,” she said. She was huddled by the window.
“Yes, you want to start building that proton accelerator, or is it something less grandiose?”
“The maran-Kaiel are all in Sorrow.” She stopped. She couldn’t go on.
“I gave them the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves. Sorrow is where they should be.”
“I’m going to Sorrow.” She took a deep breath.
“I know you are fond of them. Is it necessary to keep telling me?”
“I’m going there to… marry them.”
He didn’t even react. It drove her crazy, the calmness of that man, except when it was something trivial. Then he would rage.
He pulled out a hair from his nose. “You are already married.”
“I intend to divorce.”
“Ah, so. Divorce,” he repeated. He flicked the hair onto the floor. “You are sure that the maran even like you anymore?”
The tears were running down her cheeks because she wasn’t sure.
“You’re leaving for Sorrow?”
“Yes.”
“I will stop you.”
“You can’t.”
“But I can.” His voice told her that he would say no more. He switched off the electric torch.
She began to imagine the things he could do because he wasn’t going to tell her what he would do. He could have them all killed and she would be to blame. “Aesoe,” she pleaded to the darkness with its phantoms.
“Come to the pillows,” he said.
He could cut off the money. He could destroy her fledgling clan. She went to the bed, ran a finger down his chest, played with the hairs there, gently. “I want you to love me,” she said.
He pulled her to him, misunderstanding what she meant. She let him. What was the use. He took her. Such drive for an old man! Hoemei. She saw Hoemei with his throat cut, lying there, his arm flopped lifelessly, dripping blood from the fingers. The thrusting began. She let it happen. Joesai. Joesai had gone to Soebo. Aesoe had intended for him to die. And the Mnankrei had reached out to kill him, and when they touched him, the electron river flowed back from him and lit all of Soebo by the spit fires of roasting Mnankrei. If Aesoe tried to kill Joesai, would it be the same? would the electrons flow back from the touch and crisp Aesoe? She rode his thrusts. He was alive. She was dreaming. Life did not have happy endings. She saw Joesai with a lead pebble in his skull sinking to the floor. Teenae. Teenae’s glazed eyes stared at a pool of her own blood. Gaet and Noe. Gaet was dead where he had tried to shield Noe and failed. Would these knifelike thrusts never stop? She moaned and her tears came in little sobs. How I hate you, she thought and clung to him.