Before he answered, he drained the cordial and tossed the silver goblet in the general direction of the table, then rolled onto his back, pillowing his head on his crossed arms, but with his face still toward his wife.
“I didn’t love you, Mara, not then, and I think you knew.”
She nodded her head slowly, and the fire threw highlights from the blue-black tresses that rippled about her shoulders.
“I knew. But it didn’t matter, not then.”
“For a long while, Mara, I didn’t know if I could ever love you. Not that you were hard to love, that wasn’t it. But I feared that my ability to love might have atrophied. I’d been afraid to love any woman for so long, you see.
“It’s bad enough with a woman you simply like and respect—watching her, day by day, year by year, grow old and infirm and finally die. When you love that woman, it’s the crudest of tortures. After having suffered that torment a couple of times, Mara, I willed myself not to love.
“But, over the years, I have come to love you, my lady. Not a fiery, passionate love, but a love that has come slowly into being. It is nurtured by my respect for you and my admiration of you, by my faith in your honesty and by the pleasure that your dear companionship has given me. Our relationship is, as you said, a most comfortable one. I am comfortable, Mara, and I am very happy. You made me happy, darling, and I love you.”
Resting her hand on his cheek, she whispered, “I’m glad you remembered how to love, my Milo, and now that the southern Ehleenoee are all reunited and there will be peace …”
“Hah!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Peace, is it, my lady? Such peace as we have now will last until spring, possibly. Let us hope it’s not an early spring, for Greemos and I have much to do.” _
Mara arched her brows. “Greemos? But he is King Zenos’ Strahteegos.”
“So he is,” agreed Milo, “but only until the first day of Martios. On that day, I will take his formal oath as the Confederation’s new Strahteegos of Strahteegoee. Then he and I will ride north and look over the ground on which the army will probably be campaigning.”
“But Gabos …” she began. “He has served us well, and when he hears …”
“Gabos was among the first to know, Mara, and he heartily endorses the move. He’d never admit openly to the fact, of course, but he, of all men, is fully aware that he’s getting too old for long campaigns. I’m kicking him upstairs. Week after next, at the Feast of the Sun, I’m investing the old war horse with his new title—Thoheeks of the Great Valley.
“That’s the only way that well ever really secure it, you know. It must be settled and cultivated. I plan one large city and two smaller ones and the majority of their citizens will be, like Gabos, retired soldiers. If they’re unmarried, they’ll be encouraged to take wives from among the mountain tribes. It worked for the Romans; it should work for me.”
“Romans?” repeated Mara puzzledly. “A very warlike people who flourished roughly twenty-four centuries ago, Mara. When they had a difficult frontier to defend, they settled it with old soldiera wed to barbarian girls, which proved quite an effective means of gradually amalgamating their enemies into their empire, as well as providing a certain source of tax revenues rather than expenditures and, at the same time, a virtual breeding ground for the next generation of soldiers.”
Suddenly, Mara gurgled with laughter. “Oh, Milo, I just pictured the Lady loanna as a country thoheekeesa, milking goats instead of coupling with them! Why, she can’t even ride; she’ll be lost outside a city.”
“Which is probably why,” announced Milo, “she has been begging Gabos to divorce her, offering him fantastic sums to do so. I advised him to hold out for the highest figure he can get from her, and then to grant her wish. I’ve already arranged for Gabos to marry Grand Chief Shoomait’s youngest daughter. I’m reliably informed that the girl is a nubile fourteen, attractive, intelligent, and personable, and Gabos is not of such an age that he can’t beget a few heirs. It’s said the girl is the apple of old Shoomait’s eye—and God knows she cost the Confederation a high enough bride price. So I think’ the old bastard will keep his own brigands and the other tribes in check; he’s not going to raid his own daughter’s lands or try to destroy the inheritance of his grandchildren.”
“My, my, husband,” teased Mara, “you were certainly a busy little High-Lord during those six weeks I spent in the country—creating a new duchy, planning new cities, abetting in the blackmail of an heiress, raiding the Confederation treasury to buy a fourteen-year-old bride for a fifty-year-old man, and arranging to get a Hew Strahteegos just in time for your new war. Tell me, dear heart, who are we fighting this time?”
Frowning, Milo toyed with his signet. “Probably Harzburk, before it’s done.”
“Harzburk?” she exclaimed. “But the king is your friend, your ally. He sent the second largest body of troops that came from the Middle Kingdoms.”
“The King of Harzburk was never my ally, Mara, and I don’t think he has ever had a friend,” stated Milo. “The only reason he sent me troops was because of his overweening pride and his hereditary enmity toward the Kingdom of Pitzburk, by whom he could not bear to be publicly outdone!
“His goddamned nobles are the reason for it all. They outnumbered the band of Pitzburk nobles and I had to place them at opposite ends of the camp to prevent trouble, even before Zastros’ host arrived. Then, when the Southern Council and I had arranged for the withdrawal of their army, those damned fool Middle Kingdoms’ fire-eaters rode a little way out of camp and commenced a goddamned pitched battle! If I’d let them, they’d have merrily chopped each other into blood pudding.”
“But that’s childish,” Mara observed. “Why would hundreds of grown men fight for no reason?”
Milo’s shoulders rose and fell. “Their kingdoms are hereditary enemies, Mara. I suppose it’s in their blood. Why do dogs and cats always fight?”
“Because they’re both predators,” answered Mara. “Well, you’ll search long and hard to find two more predatory principalities than those two, Mara. I brought their melee to a stop by surrounding them with ten thousand mounted and fully armed dragoons, mostly Freefighters with some Kuhmbuhluhners mixed in, arrowing a few of them to get their attention, then threatening to slaughter every manjack of them if they didn’t put up their steel.
“The next morning, I set the Pitzburkers on the march, wounded and all. I sent along Captain Mai and three thousand Freefighter dragoons to ‘guide’ them and see to it that they switched over to the western trade road at Klahkspolis.
“Hardly were they out of camp than those damned Harzburkers had provoked a skirmish with the Eeree nobility. I was out of the castra at the time, riding a few miles with Mai and the Pitzburkers, so Greemos and Duke Djefree did the same thing I’d done the day before, except they weren’t as careful. They didn’t just put arrows into legs and targets and horses—they shot to kill. One of the men they killed was one of King Kahl’s many bastards.”
Mara groaned. “So now you feel Harzburk will declare war on the Confederation?”
Milo shook his head. “Oh, no, not that sly old buzzard. He’s called The Fox King’ for good reason, though he doesn’t quite understand how our Confederation works.
“As you know, Kuhmbuhluhn and Tchaimbuhsburk have boundary disputes that go back decades, but Kuhmbuhluhn’s had very little trouble with Getzburk and no one can remember any with Yorkburk; yet all three principalities—well-known satellites of Harzburk—have sent heralds to the Duke at Haiguhsburk declaring war, to commence in the spring, as do most Middle Kingdoms’ wars.
“Both the Duke and I are convinced that Harzburk is behind these declarations.”