“Stehrgiahnos, he’s right, you know, Mainahkos. From whatall my scouts done told me, that army a-coming against us ain’t one like I’d of cared to face three, four years ago, when we was at full stren’th. And they got them elephants, too. My boys see’d three of the critters, and you know fucking good and well it’s gotta be more of them.
“Look, why don’t we send out Stehrgiahnos here and a couple more fellers of his stripe and let them palaver with the strahteegos of that army some, huh? Ain’tno fucking thing to be lost by that, is it?”
Pausing briefly to lift a bulging buttock and again break wind, he then continued, “Look, Mainahkos, old Thoheeks Grahvos and them over there in Mehseepolis is making new thoheeksee andkomeesee and vahrohnosee andopokomeesee right and left and up and down all over the place, I hear tell, and like Stehrgiahnos just done said, you got you about as good a claim as anybody’s got to thishere city and duchy. Hell, yourclaim’s a fucking lot better nor most, you’re sitting in it, holding it, and you been doing it for three fucking years, too.
“So it could be, when you look hard at ever’thing, if you allow as how you’ll stand ahind Thoheeks Grahvos and his Council and all them, won’t be no battle or war at all and you’ll wind up as the real, legal thoheeks. And if ever’thingdon’t work out, we can always fight after we done talking.”
Mainahkos sat picking between his discolored teeth with a cracked and very filthy thumbnail for a while, his gaze fixed on a blue fly that had wandered into a dollop of hot-pepper sauce and looked to be in its death throes. Taking a mouthful of wine from the heavy gilded-silver goblet, he swished it about briefly, then spat it out onto the once-fine carpet beside his chair, guzzled down the rest of the wine, and sat rolling the stem between his greasy hands as he announced his decision.
“Hell, you right, Ahreekos, and you too, Stehrgiahnos, ain’t no fucking thing gonna be lost by talking with them bastids, maybe a whole damn lot to be gained, if things comes to go right with that talking. But I still want the levy raised and marched out at the same time, too. And I want word sent over there to old Ratface Billisos and Horsecock Kawlos to bring in ever’ swinging dick what they can lay claws to from the western and northernkomeeseeahnee. And tell them to bring all the mounts and supplies and beeves they can beg, borrer or steal, too. If it works out that we have to fight, I wants ever’thing I can get on our side.”
It was a long, slow, very frustrating march for the army led by Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos Feelohpohlehmos. Only three days out, the captain of pioneers died of heart failure after being bitten by a watersnake while supervising the strenghtening of a bridge; the headeeahtros reported to Pahvlos that fright or heart failure must have killed the officer, for an examination of the front half of the dead serpent had determined it to not be a poisonous one at all, though a rather large specimen of its kind.
At the next wide river, several very long, massivekrokothehliohsee were observed by the scouts, and Pahvlos insisted that the dangerous, armored horrors be caught on land or in the shallows and speared to death before he would allow men or beasts to use the deep, difficult ford. One of the scaly monsters was found to be more than seven and a quartermehtrahee long, its tooth-studded jaws and head being every bit as long as the strahteegos was tall. Officers and not a few others pried and cut out huge, pointed teeth for souvenirs, and the white meat from the thick, muscular tails became a part of the evening’s rations—a welcome change from bread and beans and stringy beef for those lucky enough to get some of it.
A week farther along the abdominable roadway, the scouts sent back a galloper to report that at some time in the recent years, a colony of beavers had built a long, high, thick dam that had turned a small vale that the road had crossed into a spreading lake. A study of the map showed Pahvlos that if he backtracked for three or four days, he would be able to cut another road that would eventually lead him to a place from which he could reach his objective by way of a cross-country march of seven or eight additional days.
Rather than waste so much more time, he marched on and went into camp on the marshy shore of the lake, then set his pioneers, artificiers and as many common soldiers as were needed to break apart and tear out the beaver dam. When the most of the water had drained away, the hard-worked pioneers probed what had been the bottom muck and marked the roadway so that sweating, cursing companies of pikemen could scoop up and shovel away the stuff to reveal the fitted stones beneath it. This way, the delay was only two days, not twelve.
Farther on, the van had just passed yet another in the seemingly endless succession of overgrown, burned-out village ruins when, from the direction of a slighted hold atop a small, steep hill, a head-sized stone was hurled in a high arc that brought it down squarely atop a trooper, smashing in the helmet and the skull beneath it. The van prudently retired out of supposed range and sent a galloper back to alert the main column. Even as they sat their horses with a small copse blocking sight of the vine-grown, damaged walls, they could clearly hear the rhythmic creaking as the engine which had thrown the heavy stone was rewound.
Then, up the road, preceded by the furious clash and jingle of metal on metal, the pounding of many hooves and the squeaking of leather, came Grand Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, his staff, his bodyguards and a hundred heavyhorse . The lancer officer rode out to meet his commander and rendered a terse report of the incident and his response to it.
Pahvlos nodded once. “Good man. I’ll remember you. You’re certain your trooper is dead, then, up there?” He pointed with his chin at the twisted form that lay on the road ahead.
“He’s not moved a muscle since we withdrew, my lord,” was the sad reply. “And no man could have survived such a buffet, not even for a minute.”
The Grand Strahteegos nodded once more, then turned to those behind him.” Galloper, my regards to Lord Sub-strahteegos Tomos Gonsalos. Tell him that I want his Number One and Number Two regiments up here at the run.” As that rider saluted and reined about, the old man was already snapping out instructions to another galloper, this one being sent to order up several of the lighter engines of the siege train. An officer of the heavy horse was ordered to take a strong patrol in a wide swing completely around the partially wrecked hold and determine if there might be bodies of troops hidden where they could not be seen from there on the roadway. The new-made captain of pioneers was ordered to seek a nearby site for a night camp and begin to pace off and mark the lines of a defensive ditch and mound for it.
Within an hour’s time, the two regiments of pikemen were beginning to regain their breath where they knelt or squatted in formation at the side of the road, the snaps of whips and the shouted obscenities and curses of the teamsters could be heard approaching with the wagons which contained the pieces of the dismantled engines, and the patrol of heavy horse had just returned, all red-faced and dusty-sweaty.
Their captain lifted off his helm and peeled back the mail-sewn padded coif as he approached. Drawing rein before the Grand Strahteegos, he saluted and said tiredly, “My lord Strahteegos, yon’s wilderness around here, all of it, not a field’s been worked in years, and the only life to be seen the whole ride was deer, wild turkeys and the like.”
“What does that pile up there look like from the other side?” demanded Pahvlos. “More damaged or less?”
“Less, my lord,” was the answer. “Although vines have engulfed it too, it looks to be sound beneath them, but although I had two men dismount and creep quite close through some dense brush, they could neither see nor hear anything from within the ruined hold.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Pahvlos in dismissal. “You’ve done well.”