Ullsaard's nod was uncertain and his frown deep.
"But how do you do that?" he asked.
Noran chewed his lip, formulating an answer that would make it clearer for the straight-thinking Ullsaard.
"Right," said Noran with a smile. "Think of a battle. You go into it with a plan, right? In your mind you have everything set, the way things should turn out. That's the long view."
"Yes, I see that. And when things go wrong, or really well, you react and adapt the plan. If the enemy makes a mistake, you exploit it, if they do something unexpected, you move to counter it. That's the short view."
"That's right! But if you spend too much time reacting, you end up going nowhere, and the same is true with politics. At some point even the most equivocating politician has to make his opinion known, even if he later changes it. The good thing about a battle is that you know what you want to do and who your enemies and allies are. That's not true of politics. Sometimes you're not sure what it is you want to achieve, but you know what it is that you don't want; usually something somebody else wants to happen. People change sides according to self-interest, and often the battlefield itself changes."
"Sounds complicated."
"To one of the family heads or a governor, mustering an army, marching it for fifty days to a battle, organising your troops and then laying out a battle plan is complicated. It's just a matter of how you think about things."
"Maybe I shouldn't get involved, maybe Cosuas is right."
Noran slapped a hand to Ullsaard's shoulder and grinned.
"You would make a lousy politician, friend. For a start, you actually have some loyalty to those around you. You're generally honest, which is a definite drawback in politics. The biggest problem I see, and some would say this is a good thing, is that you actually care more about the empire than you do your own circumstances. No matter what they say in public, those nobles are only thinking about one thing: how does this benefit me?"
"Surely the king and the princes aren't like that. After all, the empire's interests and the fortunes of the Blood are the same. Aren't they?"
"At the basic level, of course their fortunes are the same. But when you think about it, what does the king want for? He's the king! Everything in Greater Askhor is his, one way or another. You are, I am, my house, your soldiers, it's all his. The king allows us certain freedoms to make sure we continue to do the things he wants us to do. On the other hand he is nothing without us. If everybody in the empire decided tomorrow that we didn't like Lutaar, what could he really do about it? He can't physically take everything from us."
"He could send a legion to kick you off your estate and put you to the spear," laughed Ullsaard.
"Only if the general and the soldiers agree to do so."
"Why wouldn't they?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because they've met me and realise what a wonderful person I am and they think Lutaar is being mean to take my estates from me. It doesn't matter. The reason you obey the king is out of loyalty to his position, and the threat of reprisal. If you turn against the king, whoever he is, then you are inviting anarchy. If you ignore the king, your captains can ignore you, and their legionnaires can ignore them. The whole thing breaks down. Suddenly you find out that you're not living in Greater Askhor, you've become a Salphor!"
"I see where this is going. For the empire to work, it needs everything in agreement. The armies have to fight, the farmers have to provide the armies with food, buildings have to be kept, roads maintained, all of that. The king has to keep everyone happy so that they do their bit."
"No…"
"What? If the farmers stop farming, we'd all be starving. Surely he has to keep them happy, and those that own the estates?"
"Only if he wants to be nice. This is where we come back to you, the general, and the threat of reprisal. If the farmer decides not to grow food, he gets his door kicked down by your booted foot and told to grow food at spearpoint. Well, that's the implicit punishment for disobeying the king; he doesn't actually have to do it to everyone. By the same measure, you have to go and kick down the farmer's door unless you want Cosuas or Nemtun or some other sword-swinging bastard paying you a visit."
Ullsaard shook his head and scowled.
"But if legions start fighting other legions, the whole thing becomes a mess. The king doesn't achieve anything by letting that happen."
"Which is why it's the threat of force that is his most powerful weapon, and your loyalty to the empire your greatest weakness. You can't act out of place, because the long-term consequences could be disastrous for the empire and your future prosperity. Enlightened self-interest keeps everybody and everything working, with the occasional reminder from the king to make sure nobody starts getting ideas that would cause trouble.
"The only real threat to the empire is a person who doesn't care about the empire because they don't care about their future prosperity and well-being. Nobody sane would want to destroy the thing that guarantees their future, so we all go along with the whole enterprise. It doesn't matter what we really think about the empire, as long as it's there, because it's better to have it than not."
"That's… terrible. You're saying that people are only loyal to the empire because they're scared of not having it?"
Noran shrugged. He pointed to a fishing boat passing a spear's cast away from the galley, two men hauling at their net.
"Do you think they care about any of what I've just said?"
"Probably not."
"They want to know that they'll get a good price for their fish and nobody is going to turn up and burn down their home in the night. Before the Askhans came, that could never be guaranteed, and now it is. That's what the empire means to them. They don't have to see the huge interacting interests that drive Greater Askhor to appreciate what it's brought them. Before Askhos, we would have been rivals, sending our little warbands to raid each other's villages for a few abada and maybe a comely wench.
"Askhos did away with all of that, showing that if we took a step back and looked at the wider world, we could do so much more. I may not have read his book, and I don't have much time for the Brotherhood, but Askhos was a very clever man. He didn't have to conquer the whole world to get what he wanted; he just had to show people that it was possible. Their ambitions did the rest; whether that ambition was to rule over Enair or just to have a stretch of river that could be fished without risking an arrow in the eye."
Ullsaard absorbed this in silence, fingers tapping the rail. He nodded gently to himself, but then his brow furrowed again.
"I think I understand what you've been telling me. But what does any of it actually mean?"
Noran leaned back against the rail and gave an expansive shrug.
"Probably nothing at all. Greater Askhor is what it is. You're frustrated at the moment, but you can't fight the whole empire. People are happy with the way things are, from the farmer to the king. Unless you can prove to them that you're offering something better, why would they want to change?"
"You're right," Ullsaard said with a grimace. "Cosuas said the same thing, but in a different way. I'm putting my desire for war above the needs of the empire. If Greater Askhor doesn't need a new war now, who am I to demand one? That's just being selfish."
The general patted Noran on the arm and smiled. "Thanks."