“Therefore, I think we should abandon the hold, strip it of all usable or valuable and move into the city. With my men and the folk already resident, plus those from the countryside who’re sure to seek shelter with us, we should be able to hold those walls against most any force we’re likely to see away out here in the far provinces. We can start collecting supplies of all sorts, weapons, armor, horses and mules, kine of all kinds. . . .” He noted his twin’s frown and asked, “What’s wrong with the plan?”
“With the plan, nothing,” sighed Hohrhos. “It’s the city. We don’t own the City of Pahtahtahspolis anymore, my lord brother.”
“Have you gone mad of siege fever, Hohrhos?” demanded the new komees, “What the hell are you talking about? Of course we own the City of Pahtahtahspolis, it’s part of my patrimony, it’s been a part of this komeeseeahn since the very beginning of our house, time out of mind!”
“Well, maybe so, but it’s not ours anymore, my lord brother,” said his crippled twin brother flatly. “The Church owns it now, it and its plowlands and pastures.”
Stehrgiahnos had never known his brother to lie about anything of importance, and he just then felt as if an iron mace swung by a giant had crashed against his battle-helm. “But . . . but, how . . . ?”
There was a bare trace of bitterness in the cripple’s voice then as he said, “Your damned promotion after Ahrbahkootchee, my lord brother, that’s how! Our sire didn’t have that kind of money, not the amount you needed, but he was hungry for the honor for you, for him and for the House of Papandraios, so he rode up to the thoheeks and tried to borrow it, but the thoheeks didn’t have it either, and it was he suggested that our sire seek out the kooreeos, and he did, ending by mortgaging the city and its lands to the Church for enough to buy you that blasted promotion and outfit you properly for your new rank and status. Even 1 approved of what he did . . . then.
“But after that, ill luck dogged us. One year, a drought made the crop yields skimpy. The next year, the rains came too soon and too heavy. Then there was trouble on the land, with rebels and bandits—I can’t see much difference between the two stripes, if there is any—trampling grain fields and driving off livestock and raping and looting in the villages.
“What it boils down to, my lord brother, is that our sire could not manage to pay the enormous interest on time, much less touch upon the principal, so six months or so back a sub-kooreeos and a detachment of hired pikemen marched into the komeeseeahn, served our sire with a document signed by the a hrkeekooreeos in Thrahkohnpolis, the kooreeos of this duchy and our own dear thoheeks, then entered the city and occupied it, claiming everything of ours in it.”
The three hundred heavy horse of the Royal Army wound down the dusty road to the City of Pahtahtahspolis with the Leopard Banner unfurled and snapping smartly in the wind, the men all erect in their saddles, with polished leather and burnished weapons and armor, the horses all well groomed in the aligned ranks.
At the barbican that guarded access to the lowered bridge across the broad, muddy ditch that the moat became in the dry season, one of the flashy, bejeweled officers rode up to the barred gate and roared in a voice dripping with hauteur, “Open up the gate of your pigsty! We’re on king’s business, you baseborn swine!”
“Uhhh . . . but we-alls heared the king was dead, my lord,” said one of the pikemen.
“Oh, a king died, right enough.” Scorn dripped from the officer’s voice. “But whenever a king dies, you thick-witted bumpkin, a new king is crowned. He’s king of us all, and we ride on his royal writ. Now open this gate and signal the inner gate to be opened for us or I’ll have you fed a supper of your ears, eyes and nose, you yapping dog!”
The barriers were raised, the gates swung inward, and the column clattered and boomed across the bridge, then through the inner gates and onto the main street, thence in the direction of the palace of the komeesee. The sub-kooreeos was very easily intimidated, and at his squeaked command, his mercenary pikemen obediently laid down their arms before the bared swords of the Leopard Squadron regulars.
With the sub-kooreeos reflecting on the state of his soul in a cell far below, Captain Komees Stehrgiahnos found himself to be in possession of the city, two hundred mercenary pikemen and their officers who had been paid for six more months only a week previously and did not seem to care to whom they rendered that service so long as they could bide on in the safety and comfort of the city, his own troops, some pipes of a passable wine that had been the sub-kooreeos’ and a goodly quantity of silver and gold that he had found after he had smashed open a locked chest found under the great bed in which the cleric had been sleeping since seizing the city.
With shrewd use of the treasure, Stehrgiahnos had been able to add to the static defenses of the city and to provide and equip it well with provender and weapons, so it had ridden out the bad years before the death of King Fahrkos. He had lost his twin during the only attack that came anywhere near to succeeding, the bad leg having failed at a time and place that had caused him to stumble into two men, be suddenly drenched by the contents of the pot of boiling oil they were bearing and then to fall, screaming, from off the wall to the cobblestones forty feet below. By the time Stehrgiahnos had time to see to his only brother, Hohrhos’ terribly burned body had already been cold and stiff, his helm deeply dented and filled with blood and brains that had leaked from the cracked-open skull.
Then, after long years of absence, the outlawed rebel, Thoheeks Zastros, had returned to the Kingdom of the Southern Ehleenohee and had marched around much of the kingdom for months, fighting here and there, his following burgeoning to intimidating size as he went and fought. He had not come near to the lands of Komees Stehrgiahnos, of course, but word of him, his return with a Witch Kingdom wife and his recent exploits traveled far and wide, along with the measure of order that he had brought to the troubled realm.
When he had marched, finally, against the usurper, Fahrkos, he had triumphed, Fahrkos had suicided, and Zastros had been coronated High King of the Southern Ehleenohee . After announcing his firm intention to invade and conquer the lands to his north, to make himself High King of all Ehleenohee and every barbarian people from the borders of the Witch Kingdom to Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya and possibly beyond, he had sent out military units to scour the lands for troops to make up his great, formidable host, to be of a size not seen on the face of the continent since the time of Those Who Lived Before—more than a half million fighting men.
At length, a force of royal officers and lancers had arrived under the battered but still sound walls of the City of Pahtahtahspolis . Upon being admitted, the officers had proclaimed the new High King’s announcement of a general amnesty to all who had deserted the army of his usurping predecessor if they now would return to his service and join him on his path of conquest. Despite the fact that many of them now had wives and families and friends in Pahtahtahspolis, the surviving men of what once had been the Leopard Squadron of the Royal Heavy Horse were stirred like old warhorses on hearing the trumpet calls of war, even Komees Stehrgiahnos himself.
Planning to delay only long enough to set his city and lands in good order under a noble deputy, he sent his remnant of a squadron and as many of the onetime mercenary pikemen off with the troops of the new, powerful king, promising to report to Thrahkohnpolis himself within the space of a couple of months.