“And you, Lord Drehkos?” inquired Milo in a voice smooth as warm honey, guileless as the coo of a dove.
The rebel lord rolled his goblet slowly between his big, scarred, weather-browned hands for a moment, then raised his eyes, grinning. “For most of my mispent life, my lord, I thought that I totally lacked that ability … along with many another. But last spring, when we were battling our way through the mountains, I discovered that either I had acquired it almost overnight or I’d had it all along. Yes, I do mindspeak.”
“You were in the western mountains, man? Where”! Were! Why!” demanded Milo, leaning across the table, his fists clenched, his voice and manner now intense.
Despite his obvious puzzlement, Drehkos freely answered. “Yes, my lord, I—rather, those of us who escaped from Morguhnpolis after the rout under the walls of Morguhn Hall along with a contingent of Vawnee cavalry—circled through the mountains to get to Vawnpolis. As to where, we crossed the river into the Duchy of Skaht at Bloody Ford, rested for a few days at the old, deserted border fort, then rode west, through Raider Gap, and angled south. Or tried to.”
He shuddered strongly. “If I never again hear another Ahrmehnee war-screech, it will be centuries too soon, my lord. It was a running battle every day, and nights as well, sometimes. They reverence the moon, you know, and won’t fight on nights when it is in the sky. Fortunately, almost the entire hellish journey was made in clear, cloudless weather. Even so, I left nearly a third of my poor, brave fellows dead in those damned mountains!”
The High Lord’s brows rose sharply and he regarded the vahrohneeskos with a new measure of respect. “And you won through to Vawn then. You’re to be congratulated on that feat, Lord Drehkos. You apparently don’t recognize just how lucky you were. Why, man, in the long-ago campaign which won Vawn and Skaht and Baikuh lands for the Confederation, whole battalions of professional soldiers were wiped out to the last man by those Ahrmehnee. The fact that you took a mounted column through the very heart of their territory and got out at all is remarkable; that you lost so few men is near miraculous.
“And your brother insisted you’d never soldiered. So, where did you learn cavalry tactics?” He gave another tight smile. “Or siegecraft?”
Drehkos shrugged tiredly. “In the mountains, I but did what seemed right to me, what seemed the best way of extricating my command from our various difficulties and predicaments. Hari was being candid with you, my lord; I never had soldiered prior to my involvement in this … this insanity.”
He sat back and met the High Lord’s gaze squarely. “I won through the mountains only because the men who accompanied me were the best and the bravest these lands have ever known. Both Pehtros and Djaimz, here, were among them. Of the rest, alas, far too many are since slain in this beastly, senseless prolongation of what was a lost cause before its inception.
“As regards my defense of the city, I discovered some ancient books within the Citadel and applied certain of their contents to the problems confronting me when the overall command of Vawnpolis was thrust onto my shoulders.”
All at once, he dropped his gaze to the brilliant carpet. “I still do not know why I ever agreed to take part in this stupid foolishness. I can but ascribe it to a temporary insanity engendered by the loss of my dear wife and the ensuing loneliness, for ever have I considered warfare a monumental stupidity. Nor did I truly crave to possess my brother’s lands and title.”
He straightened then and once more met the High Lord’s eyes. “My lords, my lady, I offer those words not as excuse, only as explanation … as best I, myself, can understand. Lord Sahndros, my officers and I, all of us admit our crimes and are ready and willing to submit to appropriate dooms, but only on the ironclad condition that our soldiers and the noncombatants within Vawnpolis be spared their lives, and their few meager possessions and be quickly furnished food. As for poor, sick Myros, I cannot answer, but I think my lord must agree that it were pointless to slay a madman for his actions, no matter how heinous.”
Drehkos arose and the two officers quickly followed suit. “I am prepared to surrender my person to you now, my lords, if you agree to my stipulations.”
Milo shook his head curtly. “But I do not agree, vahrohneeskos. Sit down.”
Slowly, Drehkos sank back into his chair. Of course, he bad known from the beginning that his position was not sufficiently strong to allow him to dictate the terms of the capitulation … but he had had his hopes, now dashed. His face and bearing mirrored his disappointment.
The High Lord once more leaned across the table. “Are any of you three Initiates of the Inner Mysteries of the Faith?”
The two officers just shook their heads, and Drehkos replied, “No, my lord, there never were very many of them, and only the kooreeoee who initiated them and their fellow initiates ever knew them. For some reason, I was never approached, nor, I think, was Lord Kahzos.”
“Then,” said the High Lord, “you may thank whatever gods may be for your good fortune. My offer for the capitulation of Vawnpolis is full pardon and amnesty to all within its walls, saving only priests, monks and those laymen who are Initiates of the Inner Mysteries. Think you my offer fair and acceptable, Lord Drehkos?”
Drehkos could not speak, could not move, could hardly even think or breathe. At the very best he had expected for himself and his immediate subordinates a lengthy period of suffering and humiliation followed by a painful death; at worst, he had seen a continuation of the agonies of the siege until the city eventually fell by storm and/or starvation, with all the horrors of a sack to be visited upon the survivors of that last battle.
Pardons and amnesties had never even entered his suppositions, not for himself and the surviving layman—leaders of the rebellion, anyway. And a hope leaped wildly into his thoughts, to see good old Brother Hari again, to try to, in some unknown way, make up for all the ills he had wrought and attempted on both Hari and Nephew Vaskos. First, he would…
“Well?” the High Lord prodded. “Can you accept my offer, Lord Drehkos? Or will you need to return to Vawnpolis to confer with your staff?”
By great force of will, Drehkos managed to stop the dizzy spinning of his brain and to frame a reply of sorts. “In many respects, my lord, your offer is most generous. But why must you persecute the priests and monks? I know of no one of them who ever has lifted steel against the established order, either here or in Morguhn.”
Milo looked grim. “No, Lord Drehkos, they but set others to do their dirty work for them; consciously aiding and abetting the evil designs of their devilish kooreeoee, they worked upon the minds of their followers, inflamed them with fiery oratory, and cleverly administered drugs when the time was ripe, and set them on a course of murder and destruction which was completely against the best interests of those poor, deluded followers.
“No, Lord Drehkos, I’ll not suffer such conscienceless, merciless cowards to roam at large in my domains. As for the Initiates, I … Tell me, what know you of their rites?”
Drehkos shrugged. “Very little, I fear, my lord. After all, had the rites not been kept secret, there would have been no Mysteries, would there?”
“Quite true,” smiled the High Lord, then became once more serious of mien, deadly serious. “Know you then, Lord Drehkos, that these Mysteries were a debauched, depraved, hideously perverted distortion of true Christianity. In the foul rites of the Inner Mysteries, men and women were tortured and mutilated, innocent little children—babes, even—were hacked apart and the hot blood of their living, screaming bodies mixed with wine and other substances to be greedily guzzled by these same Initiates.”
Captain Pehtros had paled visibly. Captain Djaimz looked greenish and ill; Drehkos sat, rigid, in his chair, his big hands clenched together so that the scarred knuckles shone white as new snow. He had, secretly, long suspected that some awful practices were part and parcel of the Inner Mysteries, but it had been simply a gut feeling with no real grounds for its existence. Nonetheless, he found the High Lord’s words, terrible as they were, easy to believe.