“Yes.”
“Of our forces: one hundred ninety-six dead, three hundred forty wounded, twelve of those critical. Of Delmond’s: two thousand fourteen dead, a hundred and sixty-odd wounded, forty critical.”
Shel whistled softly. The news of this spectacular success would spread. It might keep some of the more land-hungry or fight-hungry denizens of Sarxos’s South Continent out of his hair for a while. Many would think superior strategy had been involved. Even more would think it had been magic…which suited Shel. “Other captives?”
“Thirty unwounded infantry captives. Not a lot of unhurt nobles, maybe ten. Almost all the rest of them are wounded, or went down fighting. Everybody else not accounted for seems to have run away, southward mostly.”
“Back to his cities. What’s the matter with these people? Do they like being cavalry fodder?”
Alla shrugged. She was not overly political. Her preferences ran to fighting and eating, though what she did with the calories was an eternal mystery to Shel, and a cause for some envy. If he even looked sideways at a meatpie or a haunch of roast boar, he gained weight. “Anything else?” Shel said.
“You might want to look at the contents of their baggage train,” Alla said, pulling a piece of parchment out of her tunic and handing it to him.
Shel scanned down it, and as he read, his mouth dropped open. “What the…What did he need all this stuff for?”
“Seems there was going to be a big victory party in Minsar tonight,” Alla said, stretching lazily, though her face was wearing that feral look. “Fancy clothes and fancy food and an exhibition of rich booty for the victors: ritual humiliation for the losers…the usual thing. Nooses around our necks, people pelting us with beef bones and pig knuckles.”
Shel snorted. “As if they were likely to find any. This is sheep country.”
“Yeah, well. Instead of his big victory dinner and massive boozefest, and instead of all the other local rulers getting very nervous, now Delmond gets the scraps, and we get his baggage train.”
Shel nodded, though he was still incredulously reading the baggage manifest. “The absolute stupidity of bringing all this stuff along…I can’t believe he’s this naive…he must be up to something. I wonder. Who has Delmond been dealing with lately that it would be to his advantage to make them think he’s stupid, or mad?”
Alla raised her eyebrows. “Us?”
Shel glanced at her. “You suggesting that he threw us this battle on purpose? Walked into the trap despite expecting it to be there?”
“He doesn’t care much about his people’s lives, if that’s the case,” Alla said. “But that wouldn’t be news.”
“Hmm.” Shel sat there for a moment, thinking about it. “Well, we’ll see. If it wasn’t us he was trying to fool…” He sat back, thinking which of his recent opponents might have been behind Delmond’s actions somehow. Who would it benefit? Argath maybe? Not him…he’s usually a little more straightforward than this. Elblai? No, she’s getting ready to square off with Argath, last I heard…some attempt to undermine the Tripartite Alliance.
Shel thought about that, letting his mind range briefly among the possibilities, and his eyes strayed to something else on his map table, a rolled-up piece of parchment that had been lying there quietly smoking. Alliances were shifting all over Sarxos at the moment, as the Dark Lord began his nine-yearly movement out of his mountain-bordered land, seeking the final conquest of all the lands of the Dominion. Every time he tried this, the Sarxonian lords united to throw him back, but the last union had been a little less organized than usual, the alliance taking almost too long to come together…and the Dark Lord had begun his next round of “diplomatic initiatives” much sooner than usual after his defeat. Almost as if he thought this time he might actually win….
It was complicated, but then most things in Sarxos were. That was what made playing the game worthwhile. Meanwhile, Shel would have to handle Delmond in such a manner as not to bring the man’s enemies down on his back right away — especially his mother, who was a power in the Dominion in her own right, with many potentially troublesome connections. He had to handle Delmond in some way that would seem fair, possibly even make him look good.
“I think you should kill him,” Alla said.
Shel gave her a slight, sidelong smile. “Not enough points in it,” he said, but that was not the real reason, and he knew Alla knew it. She rolled her eyes again.
“He’s a waste of your time,” Alla said.
“If one would be Lord of All the Wide Dominion someday,” Shel said, “one has to behave properly at the start of the game, as well as the finish. Let’s just call this practice, shall we? Anything else I need to know about the cleanup?”
Alla shook her head. “Quartermaster wants to know when we’ll be converting all this junk into money. The troops are getting a little, well, restive at being so close to so much gold.”
“I just bet. We’ll take care of disbursement in Minsar in the morning. Tomorrow’s market day; the jewelers and platemongers from Vellathil will be there, and they’ll be glad to take the stuff off our hands. Tell the troops it’ll be a straight percentage disbursement, and I’m turning over my share to be divided up as a contribution to their funeral funds.”
Alla raised her eyebrows. “You get hit on the head today, Boss?”
“Nope, just want to make sure I’ll have a volunteer force I can depend on in a few weeks. Meanwhile, broach a few barrels of that wine from our provident adversary’s baggage train and distribute it among the troops. And let loose the dancing girls. Assuming they want to be loose.”
“Most of them are ‘loose’ already.”
“Ouch. Just make sure they know they’re free to go where they want.” Shel sighed. “Anything else?”
Alla shook her head. “All right,” Shel said. “Talch?”
Talch put his head into the tent. “Lord?”
“Lord” meant that Delmond was right outside. “Bring in the prisoner,” said Shel.
A moment later, between two guards, Delmond swaggered into Shel’s tent. They had taken away his trademark black armor, but even left only in hose and his quilted haqueton, he was still an imposing figure: broad-shouldered, muscular and stocky, his face presently twisted out of shape with anger. The only item of dress not usual for him was the iron collar locked around his neck, the infallible method for keeping a potential shapeshifter stuck firmly in the shape he was presently wearing.
Following him was a tall, fair, slender man dressed in a herald’s tabard emblazoned with a large blue dog, seated toward the dexter. Both man and tabard were scrupulously clean, Shel noted, as the herald bustled forward to officiously dust off the remaining seat before the map table.
Delmond sat down with a grunt. The herald drew himself up and said, much more loudly than necessary, “I proclaim to your graces the presence of My Lord Delmond t’Lavirh of the Black Habiliment, Prince of Elster and Lord Paramount of Chax.”
Both these titles were accurate enough, but neither was worth bragging that loudly about. Elster was so hereditarily subdivided a country that it had princes by the dozen, and Chax was a small but population-heavy area of Sarxos best known for its ironwood forests, its light red wines, its strategically important position at the confluence of two large rivers, and its habit of being passed from hand to hand among the major gameplayers about once every two weeks. Delmond, however, had come to rule Chax by accident…a fact that seriously amused some of Sarxos’s more established and experienced players. Since he’d won it (by his adversary badly mismanaging a battle), he had been swanning around among the Kingdoms as if he were much more important than he really was.