Fall of a Kingdom (The Farsala Trilogy) (14 page)

Rain pattered on the canvas roof. It had been a fine job of selling, no question, Kavi acknowledged, staring into the darkness. But try as he might, he hadn’t caught Patrius in any contradiction or in any statement that went counter to what little Kavi knew of the empire from the traders’ tales.

And Patrius had freely confirmed the worst thing Kavi had heard of the empire: The Hrum kept slaves. But according to Patrius, they treated them far better than the Kadeshi did.

Did that matter? Even the deghans didn’t keep slaves. But sometimes they treated their own peasants almost as badly.

Kavi could still escape. For all Garren’s threats—and the bastard had meant them, no doubt of that—Kavi could escape. The villagers knew and trusted him. They’d hide him from the Hrum without hesitation.

But did he want to escape? The Hrum kept slaves, but they would only enslave the people who fought them—the deghans. Was it worth risking his life just to prevent a change of masters? specially when the Hrum might be better masters?

Garren wouldn’t be a good master.

Kavi turned onto his side, trying to get comfortable on the hard earth beneath the canvas floor, though he’d slept soundly on harder ground than this.

In the deep silence that comes before dawn, Kavi faced the truth: Whether the Hrum would make better masters or not, they would take down the deghans. Those haughty, ruthless bastards would be humbled. They would pay, for once, for all the wrongs they’d done—and not only to Kavi himself. He had dreamed of vengeance for years but had pushed the thought aside, knowing that vengeance would destroy him long before he could really harm the deghans. The thought that he could actually bring them down made him dizzy with desire.

He had to be careful, he knew. He’d seen Garren’s like before—Kavi’s life meant less to him than the rugs beneath his feet. He came cheaper than the rugs, Kavi realized with a rueful grin. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get what
he
wanted out of the bargain.

AFTER JUST A FEW MARKS of sleep Kavi was wakened by a soldier and went to give Substrategus Garren his answer.

“Aye, I’ll spy for you. Do you want me going for information now? It’d be less suspicious if I go on my regular rounds and make contact with the high commander when I’m supposed to.”

“As long as we get the information we need before spring, that should be adequate,” said Garren. He’d showed neither surprise nor pleasure at Kavi’s choice. He’d be Strategus Garren soon. A chilling thought. “You may work out the details with my aides.” There were several in the tent today. Garren’s gaze fixed on Patrius. “Take him out and mark him as ours, Tactimian. Then send him on his way. You may go.”

Patrius led him from the tent.

“Mark me?” Kavi asked.

“A tattoo,” said Patrius. “Here, on your shoulder. Show it to any Hrum, and you’ll be identified as our agent. It will also gain you instant access to an officer, if you say your news is urgent.”

“Aye, and identify me as a traitor in every bathhouse.”

“So avoid public baths,” said Patrius. “No, seriously, it’s not a mark that many associate with the empire. No one in your land should recognize it for anything but decoration. And later on, you’ll be proud of it. It’s similar to the mark we award any civilian who performs a special service for the Empire. Like our rank marks in the army, only for people who aren’t sodiers.”

He pulled up his sleeve to show his own shoulder. He bore the same slashing bars that had marked the Hrum who captured Kavi, but there were other marks above them, squares and diamonds, in increasingly elaborte patterns that no doubt proclaimed “tactimian,” if you knew how to read them.

“We decorate our houses and furniture,” said Kavi, “not our skin.”

“So…?” Patrius prompted.

His first test as a spy. Kavi sighed. “So I must have met a trader from a distant land who talked me into trying it.”

He would be lying a lot in the future. But he’d always been a good liar and never for a better purpose. Time’s Wheel would tip the deghans down into the Flame, and as for his folk…In the long run his folk would have laws that protected them from their rulers, instead of the other way around. In the short run…In the short run Kavi would lie for all he was worth, and when they paid him, maybe he’d give the money away to some poor family who’d been harmed by the war. Maybe. Some of it.

R
AIN DANCED ON THE ROOF
and dripped off the eaves, but the smith had kindled the forge for his morning’s work before the high commander had commandeered the smithy for this meeting, so inside it was warm and dry. The smith had been resigned to giving up his workplace for the afternoon, even before Jiaan had paid him; afterward he’d gone home whistling.

Most of the villagers of Alberz had responded that way when the Farsalan army descended and took over their homes for an unknown number of weeks. Yes, it was awkward living in the barn, but the high commander had not only ordered compensation for all whose houses were occupied, he had set the payment high enough that most of the villagers were philosophical about it. The poorer folk were delighted.

Even when Jiaan encountered those who resented the army’s presence, he couldn’t feel too sorry about the situation. The winter rains had been falling for about two months now, and the thought of living in pavilions in this weather made him cringe. A brazier could only do so much.

And Jiaan should know. The commander’s household had spent most of the last several months living in pavilions as the commander went through the land slowly gathering his forces—drilling them when he could but mostly bringing them together in this out-of-the-way village near the border so that this first meeting could take place.

“Attend to me, deghans.” The words were formal, but the high commander’s voice was relaxed, for all its firmness. He had once told Jiaan that controlling a tactical conference among deghans was like trying to herd sheep who had a bull’s temper and a leopard’s armament. “Get them upset, they’ll do nothing but mill in circles and snort. Get them angry, and they’ll claw you to ribbons. The trick,” he’d said, “is to make them want to follow.”

They’re following now, more or less,
Jiaan thought as they came slowly from the warmth of the forge over to the long worktable that the smith and his apprentices had cleared under Jiaan’s direction. He took his place behind the commander, with his pen and parchment, and prepared to take notes. The deghans had all been told to bring only one aide to this conference, so, of course, some of them had brought two.

At least the rest of the commander’s aides were absent. Jiaan had hoped that the success of his mission might win him…well, not their liking. And their respect was far too much to hope for. But perhaps some tolerance? Some acknowledgment that he was, if not their equal, at least competent in the rank to which his father had promoted him. If anything, his success had intensified their dislike. If it hadn’t been so absurd, Jiaan would have thought they were jealous.

Most of the aides at this meeting were the oldest sons of the deghans they served—near strangers to Jiaan, which was good. But it did make Jiaan’s resemblance to his father a bit embarrassing.

If the commander noticed, he didn’t care.

“As you all know by now,” the commander began, “the Hrum have taken Sendan.”

“I heard the fighting’s still going on,” put in Gafrid, his deep voice rumbling over the words. “It’ll be a long time, surely, before they actually hold the country, even if they’re said to be winning now.”

At least with Gafrid, it was an honest objection, not a challenge.

“In part, that’s true,” said the commander. “But in part, it’s not. My information is that the Hrum have taken all the major cities. There’s some resistance in the countryside, but not enough to stop them from leaving occupying troops behind and moving on Farsala when they choose.

“And that brings up the most critical point of all: our need for accurate information about when the Hrum plan to come into Farsala and where they’ll go once they’ve done so. The first battle between us is absolutely critical, because—”

“What do you mean, where they go once they come into Farsala?” It was Barmayon, stubby and truculent. But he wasn’t part of Garshab’s faction either, Jiaan knew. Perhaps that was because he was so dense that even Garshab wouldn’t have him. “If we stop them at the wall, we don’t have to worry about where they want to go next.”

“Barmayon,” said the commander, “do I have to explain to you that it’s not our wall?”

Everyone chuckled, even Barmayon. “Well, of course we can’t stop them from coming through it. Gate opens from their side. But we could stop them from going one step farther. They can only send, what, twenty through those gates at a time? So let them face forty of us. Or, better yet, let our archers pile them up till they can’t climb over the bodies anymore.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” said the commander politely. “If they come through the wall, we’ll certainly do as you suggest. But that may occur to them as well, so instead of coming through the gate, they’ll probably make their way through the foothills beyond the wall, where they can maneuver for their own tactical advantage. In those hills their infantry will have the advantage over our chargers.”

Faces all around the table scowled, but no one could deny it. The Sendar had built the wall to tax wagons on the Great Trade Road, not to stop armies.

“But that brings up another point, Commander Merahb.” Hormaz’s voice was smooth in the sullen silence. Jiaan’s neck prickled. Hormaz was one of Garshab’s most loyal followers. “If the Hrum can bring an army through the foothills, so can we. If the Kadeshi hadn’t kept us busy, we could have taken Sendan ourselves anytime in the last hundred years.”

“The Kadeshi—and the fact that every gahn who has taken up the simarj banner has bound himself to truce with Sendan,” said the commander dryly. “A truce they have never broken either.”

“Yes, but that can hardly be said of the Hrum,” Hormaz objected. “Surely the warrior’s way is to keep them from ever setting foot in Farsala. We circle around through the hills and ambush their camp on Sendar soil. Or, even better, split the army in two—send one half through the hills and the other around by sea to hit them from both sides! We could smash them beyond recovery and send their weeping survivors home to their emperor, to beg him not to send anyone else to die at our hands.”

Enthusiasm rumbled through the room like distant thunder.
So that’s Garshab’s plan,
Jiaan thought with a shudder. It was like him. Flashy, complex, and impractical. Thank Azura the commander was still in charge.

“That’s an interesting idea, Hormaz,” said the commander. “Except for two things.”

“The only requirements I can see are the mighty arms of Farsala’s deghans, and a commander with the steel for it,” said Hormaz. “Which of those do you think we lack?”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about might or steel.” How could he sound so calm, so assured? “But judging by the last few weeks’ maneuvers, this army couldn’t coordinate a two-pronged attack on this forge. What will you do if your half an army comes thundering down out of the hills and finds that the other half’s ships hit a contrary wind and are two days late? Or you’re bringing your men up the coast and suddenly realize that the horsemen had to go around one too many canyons and that they’re still a day’s ride away?”

Hormaz opened his mouth, but the commander lifted a hand to cut him off. “Yes, I know you can send out scouts and messengers to try to keep your forces coordinated, but do you think the Hrum have no scouts or messengers or spies? They’d march out to meet the army, the half army, nearest to them, defeat it, and then defeat the other half. And in Sendan they could bring us to battle at a time of their choosing, on ground that favors them. Not to mention that their supply lines would be close and solid, and ours wouldn’t.”

“A good commander, with the heart for a bold plan, could deal with all these things,” Hormaz insisted. But this time only Barmayon looked enthusiastic, and all around the table gazes lowered.

In the maneuvers the commander had run over the last few months, the deghans had shown themselves to be skilled and courageous fighters. As individuals, Jiaan thought dryly, he’d be terrified to face any of them. As a group, they had little more discipline than a herd of stampeding cattle.

Most of the warriors didn’t see that, Jiaan knew. To them, a battle was simply to charge the enemy, wound or slay him, and move on to the next. But the high nobles in this room, who were trying to make the proposed battle plans work, were beginning to see the weakness that sprang from the Farsalan inability to fight as a unit.

“Our deghans,” said the commander gently, “are the best and bravest fighters the world has ever seen. On our chargers we are invincible…as warriors. But none of us is Sorahb reborn, and we’ve been fighting Kadeshi raiders for too long. To fight an army like the Hrum’s, we have to fight together, to share the battle between us instead of snatching for glory like greedy children.

“But there’s an even more pressing reason than that to let the Hrum pass the wall. Because only after they’ve attacked us, on our soil, does their time limit begin. After the first battle in Farsala the Hrum commander has one year to conquer this country; if he fails, they will never attack us again.”

“What?” Jiaan wasn’t certain how many voices chimed in. His might have been one of them.

The commander smiled. “This is the advantage of good intelligence, my friends. The Hrum try not to let it be known among the lands in their path, but their commanders are given a time limit—one year from the day of the first battle. If at the end of that year they do not control all cities, large towns, and most of the countryside, their army is withdrawn, and negotiations begin for the country they attacked to become an independent, allied state.”

“An allied state? What in the name of all djinn is that?” It was Garshab himself, startled out of his appearance of neutrality.

“It’s just what it sounds like,” Commander Merahb replied. “The Hrum are a straightforward people in some ways. As an independent, allied state, we would retain our own rulers, levy our own taxes, and our laws would prevail, just as they do now. That’s the independent part. Alliance means that we allow the Hrum to move their armies through our borders, in order to extend their reach beyond us.”

“But if we allow them—”

A single lifted hand imposed silence on the babble of questions. “No, they will not attempt to attack us again. When the Hrum pass through the lands of an allied state, that’s all they do—pass through. And in exchange for passage of their troops, they offer marvels of engineering and increased trade. And the right to levy taxes on the Trade Road would still be ours, though whether goods that went on to their army would be taxed is something the gahn would have to negotiate.

“On the other hand, if we choose not to admit their forces, they’d take ship along the coast, land on Kadeshi soil, and not trouble us with their passage. I’ve been told several of their allied states chose that alternative for the first few decades after they defeated the Hrum, and the Hrum abided by their decree…until they saw the advantages the alliance brought to those who trusted the Hrum and agreed to allow passage through their lands.”

“This has to be a trick,” Hormaz snarled. “A lie fed you by some paid informant, to get us to relax our guard so they can…can…”

“If it’s a lie, it’s an ill-designed one. It assures that we’ll fight like lions for at least a year.” Jandal had been silent till now, at the commander’s request, Jiaan suspected. But it was hard to silence a man whose troops comprised almost one tenth of the army—the best-trained tenth. Jandal’s lands were on the Kadeshi border.

“Where did you get this…this farrago?” Hormaz demanded.

“From merchants on the Trade Road,” said the commander. “Men who had traveled through the empire, both conquered states and allied states, for many years, and who—”

“Merchants? Lying peasants! Bribed by the Hrum, beyond doubt.”

“I asked every merchant I could seek out.” The commander’s voice grated with irritation. “For six years I’ve been asking. There were hundreds of merchants, and they all told the same tale. I don’t think they were all in the Hrum’s pay. And as Jandal says, why devise a lie that forces them to fight us for a year? Why not something that would persuade us to surrender at once?”

“But why quit after a year?” It was Gafrid’s deep voice. “Why not just keep on till they conquer us?”

“I asked the merchants that question,” said the commander. “They didn’t know. A few had heard that one of the first states the Hrum conquered resisted so long, and so fiercely, that though the Hrum prevailed, their army was all but destroyed, and it took the land decades to recover. They said that long ago the emperor decided that it wasn’t worth it and to…well, to pick only the fights they could win.”

A ripple of contemptuous laughter swept the crowd.

“Don’t underestimate them!” said Merahb sharply. “The Hrum have conquered twenty-eight countries over the last few centuries, and there are only
four
allied states. Only four in thirty-two have managed to resist them for just one year. The commander they send against us, whoever he is, will be very aware of his time limit. My friends, we are in for a year of the most bitter fighting imaginable. The Hrum can draw on the resources, the manpower, of twenty-eight lands. They are vastly experienced in conquering others, and all we’ve had to fight off were the forays of Kadeshi warlords. The traders even say that the Hrum have swords made of steel that is far stronger than ours.”

His eyes swept the silent crowd.

“But I say a sword is only as strong as the arm that wields it. I say that no man afoot can stand against the might of our chargers. I say that other lands build walls of stone, but Farsala has a wall of warriors—warriors who will shatter any who come against them like surf on rock. We are Farsala’s wall!”