"Then don't fight them together," Harmakros said. "We can smash either of them alone. Let's do that, Sask first."
"Must we always fight?" Xentos implored. "Can we never have peace?" Xentos was a priest of Dralm, and Dralm was a god of peace, and in his secular capacity as Chancellor Xentos regarded war as an evidence of bad statesmanship. Maybe so, but statesmanship was operating on credit, and sooner or later your credit ran out and you had to pay off in hard money or get sold out.
Ptosphes saw it that way, too. "Not with neighbors like Sarrask of Sask and Balthar of Beshta we can't," he told Xentos. "And we'll have Gormoth of Nostor to fight again in the Spring, you know that. If we haven't knocked Sask and Beshta out by then, it'll be the end of us."
The other heathen priest, alias Uncle Wolf, concurred. As usual, he had put his wolfskin vestments aside; and as usual, he was nursing a goblet, and playing with one of the kittens who made Rylla's room their headquarters.
"You have three enemies," he said. You, not we; priests of Galzar advised, but they never took sides. "Alone, you can destroy each of them; together, they will destroy you."
And after they had beaten all three, what then? Hostigos was too small to stand alone. Hostigos, dominating Sask and Beshta, with Nostor beaten and Nyklos allied, could, but then there would be Great King Kaiphranos, and back of him, back of everything, Styphon's House.
So it would have to be an empire. He'd reached that conclusion long ago. Klestreus cleared his throat. "If we fight Balthar first, Sarrask of Sask will hold to his alliance and deem it an attack on him," he pronounced. "He wants war with Hostigos anyhow. But if we attack Sask, Balthar will vacillate, and take counsel of his doubts and fears, and consult his soothsayers, whom we are bribing, and do nothing until it is too late. I know them both." He drained his goblet, refilled it, and continued:
"Balthar of Beshta is the most cowardly, and the most miserly, and the most suspicious, and the most treacherous Prince in the world. I served him, once, and Galzar keep me from another like service. He goes about in an old black gown that wouldn't make a good dust-clout, all hung over with wizards' amulets. His palace looks like a pawnshop, and you can't go three lance-lengths anywhere in it without having to shove some impudent charlatan of a soothsayer out of your way. He sees murderers in every shadow, and a plot against him whenever three gentlemen stop to give each other good day."
He drank some more, as though to wash the taste out of his mouth.
"And Sarrask of Sask's a vanity-swollen fool who thinks with his fists and his belly. By Galzar, I've known Great Kings who hadn't half his arrogance. He's in debt to Styphon's House beyond belief, and the money all gone for pageants and feasts and silvered armor for his guards and jewels for his light-o'-loves, and the only way he can get quittance is by conquering Hostigos for them."
"And his daughter's marrying Balthar's brother," Rylla added. "They're both getting what they deserve. The Princess Amnita likes cavalry troopers, and Duke Balthames likes boys."
And he, and all of them, knew what was back of that marriage-this new Princedom of Sashta that there was talk of, to be the springboard for conquest and partition of Hostigos, and when that was out of the way, a concerted attack on Nostor. Since Gormoth had started making his own fireseed, Styphon's House wanted him destroyed, too.
It all came back to Styphon's House.
"If we smash Sask now, and take over some of these mercenaries Sarrask's been hiring on Styphon's expense-account, we might frighten Balthar into good behavior without having to fight him." He didn't really believe that, but Xentos brightened a little.
Ptosphes puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. "If we could get our hands on young Balthames," he said, "we could depose Balthar and put Balthames on the throne. I think we could control him."
Xentos was delighted. He realized that they'd have to fight Sask, but this looked like a bloodless-well, almost-way of conquering Beshta.
"Balthames would be willing," he said eagerly. "We could make a secret compact with him, and loan him, say, two thousand mercenaries, and all the Beshtan army and all the better nobles would join him."
"No, Xentos. We do not want to help Balthames take his brother's throne," Kalvan said. "We want to depose Balthar ourselves, and then make Balthames do homage to Ptosphes for it. And if we beat Sarrask badly enough, we might depose him and make him do homage for Sask."
That was something Xentos seemed not to have thought of. Before he could speak, Ptosphes was saying, decisively
"Whatever we do, we fight Sarrask now; beat him before that old throttle-purse of a Balthar can send him aid."
Ptosphes, too, wanted war now, before Rylla could mount a horse again. Kalvan wondered how many decisions of state, back through the history he had studied, had been made for reasons like that.
"I'll make sure of that," Chartiphon promised. "He won't send any troops up the Besh."
That was why Hostigos now had two armies: the Army of the Listra, which would make the main attack on Sask, and the Army of the Besh, commanded by Chartiphon in person, to drive through southern Sask and hold the Beshtan border.
"How about Tarr-Esdreth?" Harmakros asked. "You mean Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask? Alkides can probably shoot rings around anybody they have there. Chartiphon can send a small force to hold the lower end of the gap, and you can do the same from the Listra side."
"Well, how soon can we get started?" Chartiphon wanted to know. "How much sending back and forth will there have to be first?"
Uncle Wolf put down his goblet, and then lifted the kitten from his lap and set her on the floor. She mewed softly, looked around, and then ran over to the bed and jumped up with her mother and brothers and sisters who were keeping Rylla company.
"Well, strictly speaking," he said, "you're at peace with Prince Sarrask, now. You can't attack him until you've sent him letters of defiance, setting forth your causes of enmity."
Galzar didn't approve of undeclared wars, it seemed. Harmakros laughed. "Now, what would they be, I wonder?" he asked. "Send them Kalvan's breastplate."
"That's a just reason," Uncle Wolf nodded. "You have many others. I will carry the letter myself." Among other things, priests of Galzar acted as heralds. "Put it in the form of a set of demands, to be met on pain of instant war-that would be the quickest way."
"Insulting demands," Klestreus specified. "Well, give me a slate and a soapstone, somebody," Rylla said. "Let's see how we're going to insult him."
"A letter to Balthar, too," Xentos said thoughtfully. "Not of defiance, but of friendly warning against the plots and treacheries of Sarrask and Balthames. They're scheming to involve him in war with Hostigos, let him bear the brunt of it, and then fall on him and divide his Princedom between them. He'll believe that-it's what he'd do in their place."
"Your job, Klestreus," Kalvan said. A diplomatic assignment would be just right for him, and would keep him from combat command without hurting his feelings. "Leave with it for Beshta Town tomorrow. You know what Balthar will believe and what he won't; use your own judgment."
"We'll get the letters written tonight," Ptosphes said. "In the morning, we'll hold a meeting of the Full Council of Hostigos. The nobles and people should have a voice in the decision for war."
As though the decision hadn't been made already, here in Princess Rylla's smoke-filled boudoir. Real democracy, this was. Just like Pennsylvania.
THE Full Council of Hostigos met in a long room, with tapestries on one wall and windows opening onto the inner citadel garden on the other. The speaker for the peasants, a work-gnarled graybeard named Phosg, sat at the foot of the table, flanked by the speaker for the shepherds and herdsmen on one side, and for the woodcutters and charcoal burners on the other. They graded up from there, through the artisans, the master-craftsmen, the merchants, the yeomen farmers, the professions, the priests, the landholding gentry and nobility, to Prince Ptosphes, at the head of the table, in a magnificent fur robe, with a heavy gold chain on his shoulders. He was flanked, on the left, by the Lord Kalvan, in a no less magnificent robe and an only slightly less impressive gold chain. The place on his right was vacant, and everybody was looking at it.