Jumping to his feet, leaning across the table, red-faced, Thoheeks Sitheeros shouted, “You half-wit ninny! Your lands lie far from the barbarian states, mine are tooth by jowl with them, and our realm has at long last hammered out a reasonably secure peace with them. Now you want to start a border war. What’s in your head, boy? No brains, clearly. Horse biscuits, perhaps?”
Involuntarily, Pennendos flinched back from the big, powerful man. In a tightly controlled voice, he said, “My friends will call on you shortly, Lord Sitheeros, and …”
“And nothing!” snapped Thoheeks and Acting Strahteegos Grahvos, in a tone of utter exasperation. “Sitheeros, sit down and shut up! Pennendos, you’re still a young man, but if you’re going to call out every man who ever names you a shithead, you will never make old bones; Sitheeros could make a bloodpudding of you with one hand only, and if you aren’t aware of that fact, you truly are a shithead. You and your overly hot head often make me wonder if perhaps Council did not err in confirming you to your lands and titles; the confirmation is not irreversible, you know, so beware.” The older man maintained a hard, cold stare until the younger dropped his gaze.
From Sitheeros’ side of the table, Thoheeks Vikos spoke up. “I’m as committed to the common weal as any man here, God knows, but really productive farming is a year-round job and a hard and time-consuming one, at that. Are all of the workers to be taken from off the land for even a couple of weeks, an entire crop could be lost.”
Mahvros nodded. “We are all as aware of the facts as are you, Vikos, and we have taken all facts into consideration in plotting out our contingency courses. In the event it becomes necessary to draft land-workers for road crews, we will expect those thoheeksee called upon to send us one able man in every three for forty days of work. When they return, the thoheeksee will replace them in equal number from those still on the land, and so on. At no time will more than a third of the land-workers be absent from the fields. This will be a sacrifice, true, but far from a ruinous one, you must admit.”
Vikos nodded. “Those remaining will just have to work harder and longer every day. And I suppose you’ll maintain a constant labor force by dint of staggering the arrival and departure dates of the levies due from the various thoheekseeahnee, eh?”
“Just so,” said Mahvros, then, sighing, he pled, “Now, please, may we get back to consideration of our overlord and his entourage?
“Lest he be further delayed on that onetime trade road, I suggest that we send out an honor guard commanded by one of us to bring him and his immediate staff on more quickly to Mahseepolis. Do I hear any volunteers to head up that guard of honor, gentlemen?”
Thoheeks Sitheeros nodded, saying, “I could use the exercise, Mahvros, I’ll lead them. Hell, I’ll even use some of my own lancers, if you wish, and we can just leave the army horsemen in camp.”
But old Grahvos shook his head. “No, Sitheeros, thank you, but it were better that the honor guard be of our common army, not of a great magnate’s personal following, for, if you’ll recall, private armies are just what caused our homeland so much grief within recent memory. We’ll have Tomos to pick us out a score of lancers, a sergeant or two and a young officer to actually command; you’ll be a noble supernumerary, Sitheeros, officially commanding only your personal bodyguards.”
“Only twenty measly lancers?” yelped Thoheeks Pennendos. “No, I think we should send out at the least a squadron each of heavy horse and lancers, my lord, possibly some war-elephants, too. Twenty lancers smacks to me as but the pitiful effort of some small, weak, utterly impoverished foothill principality of uncultured near-barbarians, and I doubt not but that any Ehleen gentleman would share and echo my sentiments.”
Grahvos sighed, while Mahvros snorted and opened his mouth to make reply, but the older man caught his eye and shook his head, then addressed Thoheeks Pennendos in a patient tone. “My young lord, this matter is but another example of one of the more important reasons why this Council exists: that the older and wiser heads may give guidance to the younger and less experienced of our number, lead them in the proper path and hope that they will afterward remember the way.
“My lord, one sends forth large and impressive forces either to make war or to impress and intimidate and thus prevent warfare from occurring. Neither is to be contemplated in this instance. The man, the personage, approaching Mehseepolis is our own, dear, very much respected overlord, Milos Morai. Compared to the lands and peoples and wealth and forces he could raise and command, ours is but little better than that poor, weak hill-principality you envisioned in your ill-conceived argument.
“Also, do not forget that we all still owe this man recompense, reparations for the damages wrought by the host of Zastros in its progress through the southerly provinces of Karaleenos; no doubt, while with us, our overlord will be of a mind to set the rates of payment on these old debts, so we do not wish to render a first impression to his mind of a fluid wealth that we do not, in fact, own.”
Thoheeks Pennendos shook his head. “I still don’t see why we should supinely allow this strange foreigner to easily set his foot down upon our collective neck, rule us as subjects, put an outlander prince over us and milk us of our remaining riches for who knows bow long to pay off debts incurred by a dead man.”
Mahvros stared down the length of the table, raised an eyebrow and asked, “My lord Pennendos, were you ever dropped on your head as a babe? If so, that might be the reason for your lack of wit, so often demonstrated to us all in this chamber.”
Thoheeks Bahos stirred his massive frame and rumbled, “Now, Mahvros, let us cease to sink to the level of personal insult. Our Pennendos, here, is bright enough, he’s but young and has not seen so much of life as have we. Remember, he was not on that ill-fated debacle of Zastros’ devising, he was then too young.
“My lord Pennendos,” the huge man continued, “you must know that the mighty host of the late and unlamented King Zastros did not suffer so much defeat as utter dissolution up there on the Lumbuh River, years back. Then and there, there was, there existed, nothing that might’ve prevented High Lord Milos from leading his own mighty host—which was nearly as large as Zastros’ had been at its strongest—down here to burn, pillage, rape, enslave and thoroughly wreak havoc upon the length and the breadth of the then kingless Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee. Had Zastros or full many another of us seen a former foreman so prostrate before us, you know that that is precisely what we would have done.
“But this High Lord Milos Morai of Kehnooryos Ehlahs did not. He acted with an unbelievable degree of humanity, restraint, magnanimity, Christian charity. He asked only that we deliver up to him the king and the queen, leaving us specifically free to bear away with us all that we could carry—weapons, gear, tents, animals, wheeled transport, everything—moreover, he had friendly guides come down from out the western mountains and show us to sources of un-poisoned water all along the way.
“Also, he freely offered us the loan of troops to secure and maintain order in this homeland while we reorganized a government and rendered ourselves once more a peaceful, productive land. In the early talks, he never mentioned the subject of reparations; Grahvos and I it was brought it up and had Mahvros—who did the actual negotiating—promise payment when once more the lands were reset on an earning basis, for right is right, young sir, and an honest man is owned by his just debts until he has repaid them to the last jot and tittle.