Thoheeks Penendos of Makopolis, barely twenty years of age, spoke up. “In your considered judgment you believe,” he said in a cold, mocking tone. “In other words, Strahteegos, what you are saying is that you want us to approvingly seal your traipsing off with the bulk of our effectives and thousands of thrahkmehee worth of supplies and equipment on your unsupported, unsubstantiatedword, isn’t that it?”
Before Pahvlos could frame an answer, Thoheeks Vikos burst out, “Wipe the mother’s milk off your mouth before you so bespeak and question a man who was marshaling armies and leading them to victories while your father still was shitting his swaddlings! What manner of supercilious young puppy has Councilraised up in you, Lord Penendos?”
“Puppy, am I? Dog, am I?” shouted the offended man, pulling a hideaway dagger from someplace in his clothing and lunging across the breadth of the table at Lord Vikos. “I’ll make worm meat of you, you pooeesos of turd-eating boar hogs!”
It did not go far, of course, for the most of Council were warriors, first and foremost. Vikos tumbled back from the slender, winking blade, regained his feet and secured a good grip on the younger man’s wrist with one hand, applying painful pressure to force him to drop the weapon. Meanwhile, Thoheeks Bahos hurled his
massivebulk atop the would-be killer’s lighter and more slender body, effectively pinning him in place to the tabletop. Gasping foul curses, Penendos used his free hand to draw out another hidden dagger, only to have that wrist secured by Thoheeks Sitheeros well before he could bring it into any dangerous proximity to either Vikos or Bahos.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, GENTLEMEN!” roared Thoheeks Grahvos with a volume that rattled the goblets and crystal decanters on the sideboard. “Stop it this instant! Stop it, I say, else I’ll call for the guards and give you all pause to cool off and reflect the error of your ways in a dank, dark cell down belowstairs.
“Bahos, get off that fool’s back before you collapse the table. You and Sitheeros search him thoroughly and take any more sharp toys you find on his person, then put him back in his chair. And if he makes to rise again, you’ll both know just what to do, eh?”
“My lords,” he said finally in a harsh voice, “are we all herean aggregation of civilized, orderly inheritors of our ancient Ehleen culture? After the last few minutes, a non-Ehleen would doubt such, deeming us but another lot of brawling, blood-mad barbarians or overgrown and ill-reared children, which is the same thing, really.”
Turning to Pahvlos, who still was seated, he bowed low and said, “My lord Strahteegos Komees, please accept my apology and that of the Council of the Confederated Thoheekseeahnee. Please believe me when I say that such regrettable behavior as that to which you have just, unfortunately, been witness is not the usual way in which Council meets and conducts business.”
Sensing that an answer might be embarrassing to Grahvos and certain of the others and was not expected, anyway, Pahvlos gravely and slowly nodded his head, once, in acknowledgment of Grahvos’ formal courtesy.
Then, addressed again the men ranged along the sides of the table, Grahvos’ voice lost any hint of warmth. “Lord Penendos, you are come of good stock, out of loins of decent, honorable noblemen. You’ve dishonored both yourself and the memory of your forebears, this day, here. One might think from your disregard of Council’s rule that all weapons must be deposited upon that table there by the door before business commences and from your willful weaponed attack upon the person of a peer you knew to be unarmed that you were bred in the mountain hut of some barbarian or in a tent out on the Sea of Grass.
“You owe apologies both to the lord strahteegos and to Thoheeks Vikos. Since all your misdeeds were said and done before Council, then these apologies must be delivered before Council, also. Let us see if you can speak more like a gentleman than you act.”
He maintained his fixed stare until Thoheeks Penendos dropped his gaze to his shaking hands held in his lap. Then the elder man turned to stare just as hard at Vikos. “Lord Vikos, you owe an apology to Lord Penendos. You should not have named him dog or spoken so harshly to him. Remember, he is too young to personally recall much of the exploits of Strahteegos Komees Pahvios. And although his manner was most assuredly and needlessly insulting, his question was quite proper from one whose memories hold no knowledge of the reputation, the many victories of Lord Pahvios. We will expect that apology to be delivered before Council, too.
“But before we get to those matters, I think that we should vote on the quite reasonable request of the lord strahteegos. I vote yes.”
VI
Mainahkos Klehpteekos and Ahreekos Krehohpoleeos had risen fast and high from their origin as common irregular troopers in the first, almost extirpated army ofthen-Thoheeks Zastros. That both men were incredibly savage and completely unprincipled had helped them to so rise, that they owned an ability to organize and lead men like themselves and were often inordinately lucky had helped even more.
During the long years of howling chaos in the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee, they and their heterogeneous packs of deserters, banditti, unhung criminals, shanghaied peasants, city gutter scum and stray psychopaths had signed on as mercenary forces to quite a few warbands of the battling lords. Occasionally, they had actually given the services for which they had been paid, but more often they either had deserted en masse or had turned their coats at a crucial point of a battle, especially so if such ongoing conflict showed signs of being a close contest.
At length, so odious had their well-earned reputation become that no lord or city—no matter how desperate—throughout the length and breadth of the sundered realm would even consider hiring them on in any capacity. At that point, they proceeded to follow their natural inclinations, becoming out-and-out predatory ruffians, the leaders and their lawless followers at war against all the world.
Then, at long last, Thoheeks Zastros returned from his lengthy period of exile in the demon-haunted depths of the deadly swamps that surrounded and guarded the sinister Witch Kingdom . He brought with him a witch-wife from that land of dragons, magicians and sorcerers and marched back and forth across the lands, raising as he went an army much larger than the one he had led to defeat, years before, on the bloodsoaked field of Ahrbahkootchee.
With King Fahrkos and all his family dead in their gore in his blazing palace, the returned Zastros had had himself declared High King—a new title for the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee—and crowned, then his forces had begun to scour the lands for warriors and men of the proper ages and degrees of soundness to serve in the huge army he was forming for the invasion of the Kingdom of Karaleenos and points farther north. At length, he led out his half-million and more on a path of supposed glory that would lead finally to a muddy, unmarked grave on the banks of the Lumbuh River for him and no grave at all for the bodies of the untold thousands of men and animals the bones of which would litter his line of march.
With the new High King, all of the nobility of warring age and a large percentage of both city and rural commoners on the road of conquest behind the Green Dragon Banner, Captains Mainahkos and Ahreekos had found themselves in a pigs’ paradise. Now they were able to prey not only on travelers and villages, unwalled towns and isolated holds, but on walled towns and smaller cities, as well.
They descended upon these now all but defenseless smaller cities like a pack of starving winter wolves upon so many sheepfolds; they behaved in their usual fashion—conduct that might have been called bestial, save that it would have shamed any wild beast. With all the onetime garrisons gone north with High King Zastros, the old men, women, boys and assorted cripples seldom held out behind their walls and gates for long, and when scaled by the forces of the bandit warlords, those walls shortly enclosed a slice of veriest hell on earth for all who had dwelt therein.