Mara fought a quaver from her voice. “You are then called ‘Lekos’?”
He shrugged. “My late father called me that; some of my older captains still do. But Mara, why stare you so oddly at me?’
She did not answer, but rather asked, “Lekos, how long have you been Sea Lord?”
“Five years, my la … Mara, since the death of my father.”
“And your father reigned how long?” “Almost twenty-five years, Mara.” “And it’s been a good thirty years since any of your ships raided our coasts. Why? Aren’t our people wealthy enough? Aren’t our women sufficiently fair for the taste of your reavers?”
“So wealthy and fair, Mara, that my father was hard put to enforce his edict that this realm not be subject to raid. For a while it was touch and go, but as the older captains died or retired, he made it stick. Today, it is custom that High-Lord Demetrios’ coasts are sacrosanct.” “But,” Mara pried, still far from satisfied, “Lord Par-dos’ men played merry hell on the coasts and rivers of Kehnooryos Ehlahs for two-score years, and his fathers before him. How came your father to order so radical a reversal of his ancestors’ policies?”
Alexandros shook his head. “Mara, my father was not related to Lord Pardos by blood—not in direct lines of kinship, anyway. Pardos adopted him and compelled the Council of Captains to name him successor and support him. But years before he came to the Sea Isles, my father swore a lifelong oath of service to High-Lord Demetrios. And my father was an honorable man. He kept to that oath all his life to the best of his ability, despite the fact that he served a cowardly swine.” Then, he related the story.
Prior to the fall of Kehnooryos Atheenahs and the subsequent establishment of the Confederation, Demetrios of Treeah-Pohtahmos had been sole and hereditary High-Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, which had since become the nucleus of the Confederation.
As Milo’s tribe and their allies, the swelling army of the outlawed Strahteegos, Alexandros of Pahpahspolis, slowly moved eastward, unopposed, the High-Lord found himself in an unenviable position, although his father had been a warrior-high-lord and had left him not only a well-filled treasury and thirty rich provinces ruled over by loyal nobles, but a large, tough, and formidable army.
Demetrios had been and could be and would be called many things in his seventy-odd years of life, but not, in the beginning, a militarist—that came later. His grasping, grafting, hedonistic clique replaced the administrators of his late father’s honest and efficient civil service; within less than a year, Demetrios and his coterie had emptied the treasury.
Some of his army he frittered away in senseless wars that all ended in the loss of lands as well as men. The better condottas of Freefighters commenced to trickle away to seek the employ of lords who paid in hard coin rather than empty promises.
When he started to sell hard-won border provinces to foreigners to raise the cash to keep his sybartic court supplied with necessary luxuries, the Strahteegoee and certain nobles who had been his father’s closest friends and advisors decided that the young High-Lord would destroy the realm, if not soon stopped. They carefully devised plans to topple their inept sovran and replace him with a council of military commanders until a new High-Lord should be chosen.
Someone, nobody ever knew for certain whom, betrayed the projected coup to Demetrios, along with the names of nearly every man involved. The conspirators and their families—men, women, children, even babes-in-arms—were nearly all netted by the High-Lord’s men, although a few managed to flee into exile and some others fought their would-be captors to the death … these were the fortunate ones. The majority, regardless of age, sex, or known degree of involvement, were put to savage tortures. Many died under torture; many slew themselves to escape further torment. Demetrios saw that most suffered slow, degrading deaths, with their remains thrown into cesspools or the river. He kept some few maimed, broken men and women in his dungeons, having them occasionally brought up for the amusement of his depraved court.
When first the High-Lord heard that nomads were coming from the west, he dispatched a good two-thirds of what army he had left. That army’s gentle mission was to massacre the nomad warriors and take their women and children for sale as slaves. The nomads, warned by a deserter, trapped the army while it marched through a narrow mountain pass and virtually extirpated it.
The first of Demetrios’ cities in their path, Theesispolis, fell to a sudden attack and most of its inhabitants were massacred. One of the High-Lord’s three remaining squadrons of Freefighters rode in pursuit of nomad raiders and had the misfortune to encounter a sizable war party; Demetrios had most of the survivors beheaded for having the effrontery to return alive.
That piece of barbarity, plus long-overdue wages, prompted the best of his two remaining squadrons to desert to the enemy. The Freefighters slew their Ehleenoee officers, took their arms, horses, and gear and rode out of the city after stopping long enough to loot a wing of the palace and to smash their way into the prison and free all prisoners who were in condition to travel.
Frantic with fear and lacking the money to hire more troops, he appealed to Hieh-Lord Hamos of Kehnooryos Makahdonyah, who replied only with condolences and an offer of sanctuary. An appeal to Ohdessios, king of the fabulously wealthy Southern Kingdom, elicited a plea of poverty. When he appealed to his southern neighbor, King Zenos IX of Karaleenos, his messenger failed to return and Zenos’ troops inaugurated a full-scale invasion of the southernmost provinces.
There was but one more source of possible aid, his distant kinsman, Pardos, Lord of the Sea Isles, and an infamous pirate. Since Demetrios had treated his navy as cavalierly as his land forces, he had to commandeer a merchant vessel to bear his messenger. The messenger returned with good tidings—or so he thought, since it was the first positive answer to the High-Lord’s desperate importunings. It seemed that while Lord Pardos was willing to-discuss the rendering of aid to Kehnooryos Ehlahs in her extremity, he felt it proper that Demetrios, as supplicant, come to the court of the Sea Lord.
Demetrios raged! He screamed, swore, blasphemed, foamed, and tore at his beard and hair. He slew three slaveboys and gravely injured a member of his court. He had the unfortunate messenger brutally tortured, emasculated, and blinded, then crucified with an iron pot filled with starving mice bound to his abdomen. He laid foul curses upon Pardos and all of his ancestors, gradually broadening his sphere of malediction to include the whole of the world and every living thing in it. Toward the end of his tantrum, he tore at his flesh with teeth and nails, slammed his head repeatedly against walls and columns, and rolled upon the floors, kicking his legs and sobbing like a spoiled, frustrated child.
Lastly, moaning piteously of the undeserved indignities being heaped upon him, he began to make grudging preparations for the voyage. He well knew—and so did everyone around him—that he had no option.
Lord Sergios, Komees of Pahpahspolis and High Admiral of the Navies of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, had never been upon the open ocean in all his young life; consequently, he was every bit as ill as Demetrios for most of the nearly two weeks that the wallowing merchantman took to reach the Sea Isles. The High-Lord and the Admiral were the only nobles aboard, for it was a small ship and they, Demetrios’ ten bodyguards, and two slave-boys were all that could be accommodated.
At last, they were laid to, off the rocky, spray-shiny cliffs that were the northern side of the Sea Isles. Titos, sailing master and captain, had his crew put out a sea anchor, ran up signal flags, and then awaited the sign to proceed into the entry channel. They were allowed to wait for almost twenty-four hours before the clifftop fort puffed up a few blossoms of smoke. Then, propelled by slow strokes of the sweeps and depending for their very lives upon the leadsman straddling the bowsprit, Titos gingerly edged his ship into the narrow, treacherous channel.