“That doesn’t matter. In the end, the Kazan shall be reunited. We will destroy them with ease.”
“Who is ‘we’? I suspect that this order of yours is far more concerned with its own advancement than any unity of the Kazan Empire or who is upon the throne at the moment. For all I know, you represent only your order and serve this distant emperor only with the left hand.” Velamak shook his head and laughed. “Very adroit.”
“Don’t patronize me. I might be the ruler of a fallen clan, but I am the Qar Qarth, who can still field thirty umens of the finest cavalry in the world.”
“We know that. It is one of the reasons we sought you out.”
“And, oh, how we shall pay if war does come. There are forty million humans in the Republic. A million of them can be mobilized in a week. And we shall be the first target.”
“The emperor never asked for you to sacrifice yourself.”
“Nor would I. The emperor is how far away? Two hundred or more leagues by land to the sea. Then how far, a thousand leagues? Two thousand?”
“Something like that. Remember, we knew of your defeat within months of its happening. If we had known your danger earlier, we would have sent aid. We have had twenty years to ponder this question and to prepare.”
“And to fight amongst yourselves, thereby diverting your strength. Velamak, you have been here for months. Over the last week you have seen one of their leaders from a distance, their finest general.”
“Small even for them.”
“Call him that when he is leading a charge, as I once saw him do.”
“I think you almost like him.”
“I do, damn it,” he growled, and he poured another drink. “He has the ka, the warrior soul. It’s told among us how he alone killed more than thirty thousand Tugars in one night, breaking a dam that flooded their camp, sweeping away their elite umens. Some of us believe as well that he has the tu, the ability to read the souls of others.”
“And that is why you forbid me to ride escort and reduced me to watching from a distance?”
“Precisely.”
Velamak nodded. “We know the tu and the ka. But I doubt if the humans have mastered it, at least their humans.”
“Their humans?”
“Ah, so I have piqued your interest.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that there is much of the Kazan I have still not told you.”
“We’ve talked endlessly of this before, and it always seems that I learn precious little of you and your empire in reply.”
“The less you know, the less you will reveal to the humans.”
“Oh, yes, such as your foolishness in giving a revolver as a present to Ogadi of the White Taie clan.”
Velamak stiffened. “I noticed it was missing shortly after I arrived in your camp. Ogadi was the one who escorted me here from the coast. He demanded a present for his efforts. I gave him a few gold trinkets, nothing that could be identified as not being of your Horde. I had hoped the revolver had been lost when fording a stream. Now I know different. He stole it.”
He had never trusted Ogadi. Then again, he rarely trusted any of his Qarths. The damn fool.
“They know of you, Velamak.”
“Only a rumor.”
“I think they know more. I could sense it from Hawthorne. The revolver was enough to cause concern, but he has seemed pressed these last few days, anxious, as if bearing more information than he would ever share with me. Perhaps one of their ships has finally located where you are.”
“As I have already told you, we’ve met three of their ships. Primitive things, actually. They were defeated with ease, their crews annihilated.”
“The humans are incessant, Velamak. You can’t stop every leak, every hole in that invisible wall you try to maintain while settling your own differences.”
Velamak shook his head. “Only rumors. Remember, the ocean is as vast as your steppe, dotted with a thousand islands, archipelagos, and then our homelands. Yes, there are humans out there, some we have never located. They spread widely across the last twelve thousand years since the Portal to their world mysteriously opened up after being asleep since the Downfall. We have set them to our purpose when necessary, slain them when they didn’t fit, but never did we allow ourselves to become enslaved to our slaves as you did.”
“Not I, those who came before me,” Jurak replied coldly. “Whatever. What I am saying is that in the years since we have learned of the rise of this human nation, we have maintained a zone of destruction on the islands where they might venture, leaving no trace.”
“And again, why did you not just attack?”
“To what gain at that moment? When the blow is to be struck, it must be annihilating, not a half measure. We knew we had gained a small edge on machines thanks to those from your world who had come through the portal nearly a hundred years back.
“Our ships outgun them, our flyers are larger, our artillery is superior in all respects, as are our explosives. Still, what I have learned from you is so damn tantalizing. You speak of wireless telegraphs, these engines you call internal, the creation of light through wires, chemicals that kill, gases that kill, the making of diseases. By all the gods, what we would give for such knowledge.”
“And yet I know of it but not how to make it happen,” Jurak said.
“Precisely. Ten years of working on such things and no threat of the humans could ever matter to us.”
“You have the edge you have, and that is it.”
“Damn.”
It was a curse not directed at him, but nevertheless he stiffened, sensing an insult. After twenty years as a Qar Qarth, his pride would brook no insult, either real or imagined.
“No, you misunderstand,” Velamak said hurriedly. “I understand why. I know that our ship designers are working on this mechanism called firing control, being able to judge a target from a great distance and aim correctly. The advice you gave us years ago on that still bears fruit. Our guns can shoot three leagues or more, yet at sea they are useless beyond two thousand paces. I understand that such a thing is being studied, but ask me to explain and I am useless. I understand that it is the same with you.”
“I was but twenty years old when I became a soldier. Prior to that, I was a scholar interested in the writings of the ancients and their philosophies,” Jurak replied. “I knew to turn a knob and the light would come on so that I could read, but ask me to explain why the light came on and I had no idea.”
“Still, what you have said we shall try to work upon.”
“You arouse my curiosity about something.”
““And that is?”
“Your humans. I know you feel disdain for the moon feast. I watched you closely this evening.”
Velamak waved his hands indifferently. “Primitive, but interesting. I suspect you were far more disturbed than I would ever be.”
Again Jurak bristled slightly, but then let it pass. “There is something different about your humans. I have heard rumors of it.”
Velamak smiled. “Yes, they are different.”
“And what is that difference?”
“They are on our side.”
“But you said you slaughtered those on the islands.”
“Inferior ones. No, we are talking about those who have lived inside the empire, some of them for a hundred generations or more.”
“And are they slaves? Do you feed upon them?”
“At times, but that is inconsequential, and of no concern to them.”
“Then what is this difference?”
Velamak smiled. “The Shiv. We breed them. We breed them to match what it is we desire of them.”
“And that is?”
“A race of warriors. Bred the way you breed your horses. Those we do not select we slaughter or geld. Only the best continue on, generation after generation.”
“By the gods. They could be the seeds of your own destruction.”
Velamak smiled. “No. For it is the Order that controls them, and they have something you never gave your humans.”
“Which is?”
“Faith. A faith in a god of our creation. They are the Shiv, the elite of the elite, and when the Republic faces their Shiv legions, they will die.”