The Conqueror (18 page)

His mind became a bit
rattled—the thought of one of Eleanora’s fine young maidens with
one of his farmers, one of his troopers, marrying one of
them,
was a bit
far-fetched on second examination. Not that some of them didn’t
have extensive holdings in land and horses and such. It was a
question of expectations of the one side and a distinct lack of
social sophistication on the other.

On the other hand, a fine lady had been
the making of a good man on more than one occasion.

“
Well—”

He waited.

“
Well...”

He grinned a wry grin.

He stared into those guilty
eyes.

This was getting
interesting.

“
Well,
who
then?”

She looked at Sylphie.

Sylphie shrugged. Sooner or later, it
must come out.

“
Well, I sort of liked that
Kann character. You know—the serjeant, the one that was with you in
Ellie’s apartments.”

He stared and stared, mouth open, and
then it was time to shut it.

He sank backwards in his
chair.

His hands slowly came up to his
face.

Now it was his turn to
say,
‘well.’

“
Well.” He took a deep
breath.

He began again.

“
Well. I cannot order him
to marry—but, ah...if he is, ah, amenable, well then...”

The look on Theodelinda’s face
convinced him that all of this was useless for some unknown reason.
His mother’s face was red with repressed mirth.

A question hit him right out of
nowhere.

“
So, uh. How did you get in
here? I mean
here,
sort of. When did you arrive?”

“
She’s been here for a few
days, dear. They arrived while you were out on your
hunt.”

“
Ah...right.”

He clamped his mouth shut and then
decided. He gave a quick little sigh. He sat up, hands on the arms
of his chair. But this was negotiating, and not just a quick little
present and please-leave-us-alone, which he had run into once or
twice before.

He had many questions, none of which he
cared to ask right then.

“
If that’s what you, ah,
both want, then so be it.”

There wasn’t much more to be said, was
there? And if so, then let them say it.

He was getting a bit tired of making a
fool of himself all the time.

Chapter
Thirteen

It was just one more in a series of
conferences at senior level.

The Khan himself presided. They were
deep in the bowels of his sprawling complex of palaces, pavilions,
porticoes, and audience halls, which covered thousands of acres
along the northern part of the Bay of Artesphihan.

“
When the enemy begins
moving their ships and their men around, then it means war.”
Jumalak turned away from the thirty-cubit map table and found
himself a chair on the elevated platform behind him. “But this—this
wedding-match between the Royal House of Windermere and—and—this
Lowren, or his vassal Kann rather. He must be an interesting
fellow, and yet we know virtually nothing about him. Quite frankly,
I don’t know what to make of it.”

Verescens, the most senior of his
generals, and the best planner of campaigns Jumalak had ever seen,
cleared his throat deferentially. While the Great Khan took his
soldiers and his officers, his talent where he found it and had a
score of races represented in this room, Verescens was unusual in
that he was a barbarian, and had come to him illiterate and
untutored in the military arts.

It was the sheer physical endurance of
the fellow that had first attracted the notice of his officers, and
once given military command, a body of light horse at first,
Verescens had quickly proven his worth.

And he had learned much over the
intervening thirty years.

Verescens was tactful and reserved
where others were ingratiating, fawning and drooling over the Great
One like fools. It was bad enough when they wanted something but
absolutely intolerable when making something as simple as a
report.

It was said he had taught himself to
read, and then set himself the task of reading every treatise on
the art of war ever written. Slowly but surely he had risen to the
top of his profession.

There was more than one reason Jumalak
didn’t just tolerate Verescens, he valued him and even thought of
him as a friend. Jumalak had taken a hand in his career at an early
stage, and provided dowries for his daughters. He’d found places
for his sons in the army, navy, any service they wanted. The oldest
son governed a small but turbulent province for Jumalak, in the
mountains to the south and east of his more agriculturally
productive provinces. There were some small mines producing gold
and silver and the son administered the area about as well as
anyone might expect. Any small indiscretions could be ignored or
covered up, a small price to pay for the loyalty of one such as
Verescens. The territory was unsettled at best, and the boy ruled
the natives with a strong hand.

“
It means something, oh,
Great One. Alliances are forming up. Yet
we
know war is inevitable, and some of
them possibly don’t. They cannot really be sure, can they? And so
their efforts will be half-hearted. We shall let them fool
themselves as long as possible. Queen Eleanora gains a few thousand
auxiliary troops, but assuming that is her only reason may be
inaccurate. She now has a buffer state on her northern flank, but
that is not a big change. The Lemni were already there. Yet,
according to all sources, she does not plan offensive warfare,
claiming strict neutrality as she does. This implies in the most
manifest way, that she would not—or at least one would hope she
would not—send troops, arms or ships, or any other form of
assistance, to enemy combatants...” In a sense, he was talking for
the sake of hearing himself talk, thought Verescens.

They always said that, of course. It so
very often failed to happen, as neutral states would still try to
maintain their commerce in the face of war. Not to take sides was
contrary to human nature.

There were many different forms of
aid.

“
Or us.” This was no
trivial matter, for if peaceful trade with Windermere was both
lucrative and desirable in terms of the raw economics of the state
he was building, in war secure supplies of grain, meat and other
products were vital.

“
Or us, oh, Great
One.”

He not only had to feed the troops, but
the populace of a great city, many of them in fact.

Simply to deny those resources to the
enemy was a consideration as well. The Great Khan was prepared to
expend considerable resources in order to do just that.

“
So. They are arming and
combining against us, then.” With their friendly relations with the
Empire of the South, and their relative geographical nearness to
it, this was a reasonable conclusion.

The period of great expansion of the
Empire had virtually ceased over a century ago. Since then they had
lost one or two small vassal states, with only half-hearted efforts
made to recover them. Those efforts had failed at great cost in men
and money by all reports, in no small part due to military
incompetence and official corruption.

The Khan believed such corruption
stemmed from the top and worked its way down. Otherwise it would
hardly be tolerated—not in any honest and frugal, proper and
honorable sort of bureaucracy. It had to be winked at by the more
powerful members or it would never get off the ground.

He, and all of his ministers in fact,
had worked very hard to eliminate such practices.

“
So it would appear.”
Verescens wandered around the perimeter of the table, stepping in
close to examine various details, upside-down admittedly from that
side of the table. He looked at the northern coast between Sinopus
and the lands of the barbarians in between there and Windermere.
The Heloi, another barbarian tribe, were slotted in below
Windermere and then there was a sort of lawless buffer zone where
the Empire held nominal sovereignty along a strip of coast. The
sun-baked interior was dominated by the unlettered and possibly
even unwashed peoples of the desert. As agreed, this thin veneer
along the coast would be a desirable place to land troops, in the
event of a two-pronged attack on the Empire. Their western outpost
of Kthmarra, with a considerable garrison, would be cut off. The
only problem was the neutrals and combatants left on your right
flank and in your rear. The attack
would
split any alliance in two, and
bring in much booty as the region produced dates, figs, and olives.
There were small but well-garrisoned trading towns about every
forty or fifty miles along the coastal strip. In the interior, for
about a day’s journey inwards, there were small forts. After that,
nothing but desert and somewhere over on the other side of that,
reportedly lay the Zagyges, a tall, slender black race who spoke a
language known to no civilized man.

He eyed the scale of
distance.

The massive red shape of the Empire of
the South encompassed something like a million square miles, with
small seas and vast freshwater lakes encapsulated within its
borders. The Khan’s rather more recently-established empire was
only half the size in terms of area, but had a population almost
comparable. Both had iron and copper mines, gold, fish, and grain
in abundance. On paper, they were almost evenly matched, with a
slight preponderance, at least in numbers, in favor of the Empire
of the South. This preponderance would be negated by concentration
of forces at the point of attack. This attack would consist of
soldiers with superior training, superior tactics, superior
strategy—especially naval strategy, which would come as a surprise
to the enemy. As much as anything, the campaign was to be
fast-paced, and relying on the shock and awe rendered by a
combined-arms assault coming from many points of the
compass.

He practically had it memorized by this
time. The map’s view of the Empire came to him at odd times. It was
difficult to shake all the endless details, not even in his leisure
hours. The campaign had come to dominate his life. The map was
showing up in his dreams. He suspected it ever would, that he could
never escape it, and that was something that few could ever really
understand.

His master’s voice came.

“
I see now that the capture
of Sinopus was a mistake in the larger and longer-term strategic
picture.”

Well, I did try to tell
you.

He could never really come out and say
that, of course. Deference was an adaptation he had made second
nature long ago, for Verescens had originally been just another
barbarian mercenary. Such skills had made his career meteoric while
less subtle men had been disposed-of or forgotten and never called
upon again.

What a long way we have come, he
thought.

“
In what way, oh, Great
Khan?”

“
It was too much, too soon.
Unfortunately I never could pass up any real opportunity.” It had
probably been just enough to set the others thinking.

The taking of Sinopus had revealed some
part of his intentions before it was really necessary. As to what
the enemy might make of it, that varied from place to place—which
was an assumption fraught with imponderables.

He saw that now.

Sinopus could have been taken later, in
early spring, using the exact same strategy of bribing the nobles,
fomenting riot and unrest, and then offering a protectorate that
quickly turned into political and economic dominance—all for the
good of the people of Sinopus. Their fleet might have been waiting,
poised to strike at the first signs of break-up. They had chosen to
do it another way.

A ferret of a man, the bastard son of
the former khan now kept the throne warm for them, in spite of the
obvious risks. Such fools were everywhere, thought Verescens with
contempt. His time would come all too soon.

There were other considerations, but
then there were always other considerations.

Having taken the place, the bulk of the
troops had been withdrawn, leaving a substantial garrison. The rest
could now be used elsewhere when spring rolled around. They would
be in place, ready and waiting just a few miles from their
start-lines.

The small city state, situated at the
northeastern corner of the Great Sea, had been taken by bluff as
much as by subterfuge.

Verescens nodded, grinning slightly,
reassuring his master that was all a bit of a joke,
really.

“
Yes, they’ve really got
the wind up now, haven’t they?”

Their information, and there was an
awful lot of it, was a multi-year compilation from many different
sources, diplomatic, covert and public. Sometimes it came right
from the mouths of the foreign kings and queens themselves. The
number and types of forces that might be arrayed against the Khan,
in certain cases as Verescens was fond of calling them—a word that
simply did not exist in his native tongue, was known with a fair
degree of accuracy.