“Also, should you ever forget who owns you and allow yourself to become disloyal to my interests or those of Council, if it is for it that I then have you working, I will consider that disloyalty to be your prelude to an escape attempt and deal with you appropriately, as earlier detailed. Do I make myself quite clear to you, Stehrgiahnos?”
The old man assuredly had made himself and his terrifying intentions clear to his newest slave. Even sunk deep in his fever, he still could remember hearing the sobbing pleas and then the hideous screams as his two companions had been thrown, pinned down by strong, laughing men, then gelded, cauterized with one red-hot iron, branded with another, and dragged, sobbing and gasping, from out the slave pens.
At the command of Thoheeks Grahvos, he had related all that had befallen him in his life, the good and the bad, the honorable and the dishonorable, telling the full, unadorned truth for the first time in full many a year, omitting nothing.
Stehrgiahnos Papandraios had been born heir to a city and lands, eldest son of the late Komees Zeelos Papandraios of Pahtahtahskeera. With the sole exception of his twin, Hohrhos, he was the only male offspring of his sire to live past childhood; all their other siblings were females, so the two boys were brought up like the precious jewels that their family considered them, and when the time came to ride off to serve a stint with the Royal Heavy Horse of King Hyamos, the two had forked fine riding horses, while their arming-men and servants had led splendid fully war-trained chargers and pack beasts laden with the very best of armor, weapons, clothing and equipment. Both of these new ensigns had ridden, shortly, into their first battle, a brief war against the mountain barbarians; during the short campaign, Hohrhos had suffered a crippling wound and Stehrgiahnos had distinguished himself in fighting bravely against odds to protect his twin brother and another wounded officer until a squad had reached him and driven off the savages. Praise and promotion had been his reward, while poor crippled Hohrhos, borne back to his natal hold in a horse litter, had slowly recovered, his army days now done forever.
By the time that King Hyamos’ senile despotism had sparked a full-scale rebellion led by Thoheeks Zastros, Stehrgiahnos was become a troop captain of the Leopard Squadron of the Royal Heavy Horse and had led his men in numerous smaller engagements prior to the great, crashing battle at Ahrbahkootchee, where the rebel army was crushed and scattered. In that battle, he had personally seized the Green Dragon banner of the rebel leader, and although it had been his commander’s commander who had presented the prize to Strahteegos Komees Pahvlos, that same man had been so impressed with his subordinate’s rare feat that he had, on the spot and before witnesses, offered the still-young man command of a squadron at a dirt-cheap price.
Stehrgiahnos, not of course having that kind of money himself, at once fired off a letter to his sire, not needing to point out the signal honor of the offer for an officer so young and lowly in civil rank; almost all commanders of squadrons were at least heirs of some thoheeks or other, if not already thoheeksee themselves. Some length of time passed, which Stehrgiahnos then attributed to the unsettled conditions in the intervening territory, but then the gold was duly delivered and paid, and he became one of the youngest squadron captains in King Hyamos’ army.
And that army was kept constantly busy, riding and marching hither and yon, usually in small units, for years, trying to put down a rebellion that never really died, despite the loss of the flower of its army at Ahrbahkootchee and the flight into exile of many of the rest, including its charismatic leader, Thoheeks Zastros. But it then seemed that as fast as one head of the rebellion was severed, two or three more sprang up into full life in as many distantly separated spots around the far-flung thoheekseeahnee that made up the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee .
Not only were the soldiers, troopers and their officers all overworked throughout these difficult years, but with conditions in the capital at Thrahkohnpolis in utter turmoil following the death of the old king and the contested accession of his son, the troops were no longer in any manner well cared for, often having to forage the areas through which they marched, even pillage, in order to keep themselves and their animals fed and clothed and equipped, having to strip dead or wounded rebels for arms and armor to replace their own battered or broken gear, taking remounts at swordpoint, war-trained or no, whenever and wherever they could find them in the suffering lands. And naturally in such an army in such condition, desertions were common, with scant hope of replacements.
Then, in a manner often afterward questioned but never yet explained, the new king, Hyamos’ son, and his entire family had suicided for no apparent reason, some of them doing so before unimpeachable witnesses, all in
a single day and night, leaving no direct-line heirs to take the now-vacant throne and grasp the loose, dangling reins of the kingdom now virtually reeling about in a state of near-anarchy. That had been when a former-rebel thoheeks, who had managed to purchase a full pardon of King Hyamos after the debacle at Ahrbahkootchee, one Fahrkos Kenehdos of Bahltoskeera, which triple duchy abutted the royal lands, marched in with an overwhelming force scraped up who knew where and first seized Thrahkohnpolis, then had himself crowned king.
King Fahrkos had summoned all units of the widely dispersed Royal Army back to Thrahkohnpolis and then had set about purging it of any and all officers who had remained loyal to their king and their oaths during Thoheeks Zastros’ disastrous rebellion, replacing them with a host of rebels. Because of his intemperate, vengeful actions, a large proportion of the Royal Army simply rode or marched away, some in whole units, some piecemeal. Nor did those troops who stayed make any move to stop their old comrades, though they did prevent King Fahrkos’ rebel forces from interfering with or interdicting the departures.
Of course, not one thrahkmeh of the long-overdue back pay had been proffered or collected by any officer, soldier or trooper, so by the time that Squadron Captain Stehrgiahnos and his few hundred officers and troopers finally rode onto his ancestral lands, they were become a force of de facto bandits, simply in order to survive the course of the long, hard journey.
Their arrival was timely, to say the least. A relatively small band of rebels were besieging the hold of the komees, which hold had been fighting off attacks and slowly starving for some weeks. However, although possessed of slightly larger numbers, most of these rebels were at best amateurs at real warfare, and the tough, professional warriors of Stehrgiahnos went through them like a hot knife through butter, killing or wounding more than half of them, capturing their camp and baggage and loot, and chasing the survivors of the fight like so many hunted deer, coldly butchering those they managed to catch and so horrifying the rest that many of them ran their horses to death or near it, then staggered on until they fell of utter exhaustion miles from the hold they had sought to take, having along the way discarded anything and everything that might weigh them down or retard their flight. Many a man of these wished to have kept at least a spear or a sword when found by the farmers and villagers he and his band had been robbing and abusing during recent weeks.
Stehrgiahnos had entered the hold to find that he now was komees, his sire having died of a wound taken in one of the earlier attacks, his crippled brother, Hohrhos, and the elderly castellan, Behrtos, having ordered the defense masterfully, despite the many things they had lacked and the few ill-trained effectives they had commanded.
As soon as affairs permitted, he had closeted himself with his twin. “Hohrhos, this was bad enough, but I think it to be only the bare beginning, and it will assuredly get worse as it progresses. That rebel bastard Fahrkos has had himself crowned king, and the army is deserting him in droves for good and sufficient cause. Soon there will be no army worthy of the name in all of the kingdom; then all hell is certain to break loose on us, and this hold is indefensible for long and against any really strong force, especially against one whose commander might know what he is about.