The Crown of blood tcob-1

by Gav Thorpe

  "Ever felt like going for a governorship?"

  "What?" said Noran, whose thoughts had strayed back to Neerita's bedroom talents.

  "A governorship — ever been interested?"

  There was an intent look in the general's eyes; the question wasn't out of idle interest.

  "Why? Have you heard something?"

  "No, no!" Ullsaard warded away Noran's intrigued look with a wave of his hands. "I mean, I don't see any of the current governors shifting any time soon. What I meant was, if we settle northern Mekha, for instance, or somewhere else, would you want the king to bear you in mind?"

  Noran considered this for a while, lips pursed.

  "Not really. Well, maybe. Well, of course I would, but it'd have to be somewhere nicer than Mekha. Though, I suppose if I was to station myself in that new town you'll be building, with some proper irrigation in and everything, it wouldn't be too bad. I think my father was once offered Maasra, but didn't like the idea of living on the Nemurians' doorstep. And that he said being a governor wasn't as great as it seems — more a case of getting the blame if things go wrong and none of the credit if things trickle along nicely. It's like having an ailur — impressive until someone has to clean up all the shit."

  "What about a piece of Salphoria?"

  Noran's eyes widened with surprise and then narrowed.

  "Is that likely? I mean, that would be a bit of a jewel, wouldn't it? Yes, Magilnada would make a fine seat." A look of consternation clouded Noran's face. "Magilnada would either be fantastic or terrible, no middle ground. What with all our damned gold and ore going to the city, it's pretty rich already, but it's hanging its arse out in the wind, right on the edge of the wilds. You'd be dealing with bandits, rebels and who knows what other vagabonds and idiots, not to mention probably a whole army of pissed-off Salphors plotting to get their lands back. They're not like Okharans, or Maasrites, or Ersuans. They wouldn't piss on their king if he was on fire, so how do you conquer that lot? The more I think about it, the more it seems like it'd be more trouble than it's worth. Anyway, that's not going to happen any time soon, is it…? Is it?"

  Ullsaard shrugged.

  "Who knows? I think I could persuade the king that Salphoria is achievable, if we decide to really go for it. It's definitely worth it. Gold and silver. Gems. Copper, timber and coal. As much grain as Okhar and Nalanor put together. More of everything than Askhor has already, just over the mountains, being wasted on a bunch of long-haired barbarians. More than that, it's the route duskwards. Nobody knows what lies past Salphoria, not even the Salphors!"

  Noran was doubtful and his look expressed as much.

  "Even if we assume that the king was to go for it, it's a tricky proposition to become governor. I mean, there's Prince Aalun to consider first, surely he'd want a piece of the action. Younger son, no governship yet, he'd be the first in line without a doubt. Even if he wasn't interested, which is unlikely, I'm not sure my family has enough clout to make any realistic stake. There's better-placed families than ours that have been sticking their tongues right up the king's arse for generations for just such an appointment, while my father's been blinkered by his trade interests. We've got plenty of lands, plenty of produce and even some ore, but how's that any use? The king gets a damned good share in levy anyway, it's not like you can bribe him."

  "Maybe you're right," sighed Ullsaard.

  "It's not like you to give up on something so easily," said Noran. "What is it? Come on, something's been gnawing your cock for a while now, why don't you tell me?"

  Ullsaard glanced at the crewman at the tiller, who appeared to be dozing fitfully. The general stood up and joined Noran at the rail, keeping his voice low.

  "I really want to have a go at Salphoria. Right now. It's like we're a legionnaire standing at the door of the whorehouse tugging himself rather than going in…" Ullsaard sighed and frowned. "Cosuas and the princes won't argue against the king, the governors are more concerned with keeping their posts than expanding, even that old warrior Nemtun, so the king sits on his hands. I figured…" He shrugged, helpless. "I thought that maybe I could use a bit of greed to fire the ambitions of a few of the big families. You know, start them jostling for the spoils, putting some pressure on the king."

  He sighed again heavily and spat over the rail. Noran said nothing. It was the most talkative Ullsaard had been in years and he didn't want to interrupt.

  "Problem is," Ullsaard continued, "I'm just no good at the politics. All I've done in my life is kill people, either with a sword or a spear or an army. I'm bloody good at it too, but it seems that after all these years, what has it got me? Askhos knows, I love the legions, I really do, and I've got a damned big house, three wives, three sons and plenty of askharins to show for it. But nobody listens to me. I'm just a general, I just do what the king wants me to do, kill the people the king wants me to kill.

  "Ah shit, I don't know what I want."

  Ullsaard started to turn away, disgusted with himself, but Noran grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him back.

  "While I'm no politician, I've picked up a thing or two from my father over the years," Noran said. "If you're going to dabble in politics you have to take two views: the short and the long. In the short view, you have to be ready to exploit any opportunity that might arise and then deal with the consequences later. For the long view, you have to manipulate the situation for the present so that opportunities you are looking for come about in the future."

  Ullsaard's nod was uncertain and his frown deep.

  "But how do you do that?" he asked.

  Noran chewed his lip, formulating an answer that would make it clearer for the straight-thinking Ullsaard.

  "Right," said Noran with a smile. "Think of a battle. You go into it with a plan, right? In your mind you have everything set, the way things should turn out. That's the long view."

  "Yes, I see that. And when things go wrong, or really well, you react and adapt the plan. If the enemy makes a mistake, you exploit it, if they do something unexpected, you move to counter it. That's the short view."

  "That's right! But if you spend too much time reacting, you end up going nowhere, and the same is true with politics. At some point even the most equivocating politician has to make his opinion known, even if he later changes it. The good thing about a battle is that you know what you want to do and who your enemies and allies are. That's not true of politics. Sometimes you're not sure what it is you want to achieve, but you know what it is that you don't want; usually something somebody else wants to happen. People change sides according to self-interest, and often the battlefield itself changes."

  "Sounds complicated."

  "To one of the family heads or a governor, mustering an army, marching it for fifty days to a battle, organising your troops and then laying out a battle plan is complicated. It's just a matter of how you think about things."

  "Maybe I shouldn't get involved, maybe Cosuas is right."

  Noran slapped a hand to Ullsaard's shoulder and grinned.

  "You would make a lousy politician, friend. For a start, you actually have some loyalty to those around you. You're generally honest, which is a definite drawback in politics. The biggest problem I see, and some would say this is a good thing, is that you actually care more about the empire than you do your own circumstances. No matter what they say in public, those nobles are only thinking about one thing: how does this benefit me?"

  "Surely the king and the princes aren't like that. After all, the empire's interests and the fortunes of the Blood are the same. Aren't they?"

  "At the basic level, of course their fortunes are the same. But when you think about it, what does the king want for? He's the king! Everything in Greater Askhor is his, one way or another. You are, I am, my house, your soldiers, it's all his. The king allows us certain freedoms to make sure we continue to do the things he wants us to do. On the other hand he is nothing without us. If everybody in the empire decided tomorrow that we didn't like Lutaar
, what could he really do about it? He can't physically take everything from us."

  "He could send a legion to kick you off your estate and put you to the spear," laughed Ullsaard.

  "Only if the general and the soldiers agree to do so."

  "Why wouldn't they?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps because they've met me and realise what a wonderful person I am and they think Lutaar is being mean to take my estates from me. It doesn't matter. The reason you obey the king is out of loyalty to his position, and the threat of reprisal. If you turn against the king, whoever he is, then you are inviting anarchy. If you ignore the king, your captains can ignore you, and their legionnaires can ignore them. The whole thing breaks down. Suddenly you find out that you're not living in Greater Askhor, you've become a Salphor!"

  "I see where this is going. For the empire to work, it needs everything in agreement. The armies have to fight, the farmers have to provide the armies with food, buildings have to be kept, roads maintained, all of that. The king has to keep everyone happy so that they do their bit."

  "No…"

  "What? If the farmers stop farming, we'd all be starving. Surely he has to keep them happy, and those that own the estates?"

  "Only if he wants to be nice. This is where we come back to you, the general, and the threat of reprisal. If the farmer decides not to grow food, he gets his door kicked down by your booted foot and told to grow food at spearpoint. Well, that's the implicit punishment for disobeying the king; he doesn't actually have to do it to everyone. By the same measure, you have to go and kick down the farmer's door unless you want Cosuas or Nemtun or some other sword-swinging bastard paying you a visit."

  Ullsaard shook his head and scowled.

  "But if legions start fighting other legions, the whole thing becomes a mess. The king doesn't achieve anything by letting that happen."

  "Which is why it's the threat of force that is his most powerful weapon, and your loyalty to the empire your greatest weakness. You can't act out of place, because the long-term consequences could be disastrous for the empire and your future prosperity. Enlightened self-interest keeps everybody and everything working, with the occasional reminder from the king to make sure nobody starts getting ideas that would cause trouble.

  "The only real threat to the empire is a person who doesn't care about the empire because they don't care about their future prosperity and well-being. Nobody sane would want to destroy the thing that guarantees their future, so we all go along with the whole enterprise. It doesn't matter what we really think about the empire, as long as it's there, because it's better to have it than not."

  "That's… terrible. You're saying that people are only loyal to the empire because they're scared of not having it?"

  Noran shrugged. He pointed to a fishing boat passing a spear's cast away from the galley, two men hauling at their net.

  "Do you think they care about any of what I've just said?"

  "Probably not."

  "They want to know that they'll get a good price for their fish and nobody is going to turn up and burn down their home in the night. Before the Askhans came, that could never be guaranteed, and now it is. That's what the empire means to them. They don't have to see the huge interacting interests that drive Greater Askhor to appreciate what it's brought them. Before Askhos, we would have been rivals, sending our little warbands to raid each other's villages for a few abada and maybe a comely wench.

  "Askhos did away with all of that, showing that if we took a step back and looked at the wider world, we could do so much more. I may not have read his book, and I don't have much time for the Brotherhood, but Askhos was a very clever man. He didn't have to conquer the whole world to get what he wanted; he just had to show people that it was possible. Their ambitions did the rest; whether that ambition was to rule over Enair or just to have a stretch of river that could be fished without risking an arrow in the eye."

  Ullsaard absorbed this in silence, fingers tapping the rail. He nodded gently to himself, but then his brow furrowed again.

  "I think I understand what you've been telling me. But what does any of it actually mean?"

  Noran leaned back against the rail and gave an expansive shrug.

  "Probably nothing at all. Greater Askhor is what it is. You're frustrated at the moment, but you can't fight the whole empire. People are happy with the way things are, from the farmer to the king. Unless you can prove to them that you're offering something better, why would they want to change?"

  "You're right," Ullsaard said with a grimace. "Cosuas said the same thing, but in a different way. I'm putting my desire for war above the needs of the empire. If Greater Askhor doesn't need a new war now, who am I to demand one? That's just being selfish."

  The general patted Noran on the arm and smiled. "Thanks."

  "That's not really what I meant…" Noran muttered to himself as Ullsaard set off across the deck towards the ship's captain. "Ah, bollocks to it."

  The king's herald headed in the opposite direction, seeking the comfort of the Okharan wine stashed amongst his belongings.

  Okhar

  Midsummer, 208th Year of Askh

  I

  Ullsaard ducked under the deck beams and moved to the front of the hold where the ailurs were being kept. Bred from cavedwelling cats, reared by the Brotherhood beneath their precinct buildings, the war beasts didn't mind the dark. The three of them — Blackfang, Render and Noran's ailur, Thunderbolt — stirred restlessly at Ullsaard's approach, rolling to their bellies. Blackfang raised her blinkered head, catching the scent of her master. He reached through the wooden bars and patted her shoulder.

  "Perhaps I need one of those hoods," Ullsaard whispered to her. "Stop me looking at things I shouldn't look at."

  He stroked her mane, checking the fastenings on the armoured hood as he did so. He did the same for the other two. Assured that all three cats were secure, he reached into the bucket of bloody meat beside the door and proffered a chunk through the bars. Blackfang took it gently, lifting it from his fingers with her teeth with the delicate touch of a mother lifting a newborn. A few chews and a long gulp and it was gone. Ullsaard allowed her to lick the blood from his fingers, her thick tongue rasping at the flesh.

  "Your turn," he said, grabbing another hunk and offering it to Thunderbolt. She was a bit snappier, snatching the meat from his grasp and retreating to the far corner of the cage. Ullsaard tossed a third hunk of meat to Render.

  The meat was laced with special drugs made by the Brotherhood and Ullsaard waited for the cats to show the signs of their effects. Ullsaard felt mean every time he had to drug an ailur, it didn't seem fair or honest. On the other hand, it was a wise precaution. Though they were mature and trained, it was best not to take chances. He had never seen an unmasked ailur, but apparently it was not good for anyone that had.

  The ailurs settled down, heads swaying. Ullsaard waited a while longer before opening the door. He took a chain hanging from the bars and attached it to Blackfang's collar, gently tugging at the rein so that she rose groggily to her feet. He whispered encouragement as he led her out of the cage, closing the gate with his heel.

  The ailur's paws thudded heavily on the boards as Ullsaard led her to the ramp placed at the hatch. She followed passively up onto the deck, stupefied by the Brotherhood's concoction. With gentle coaxing, Ullsaard took her to the gangplank while Noran headed below to fetch Thunderbolt.

  The sailors shrank back from the plodding beast as Ullsaard took her down to the quayside. They had their dumb superstitions about women on board ship and seemed to think that a female ailur was just as bad. Ullsaard ignored them. All trained ailurs were female, so there wasn't any way to avoid having them on board ship. As far as he knew, the males were kept in the Brotherhood's Grand Precincts as studs.

  The docks at Geria were well-established, stretching along both sides of the Greenwater for some distance. The river had been widened and deepened here in the reign of the previous king, to provide a b
etter anchorage for ships moving up and down the empire's greatest river. Most of the ships were singledeck galleys; trading vessels that kept the lifeblood of Greater Askhor moving along the arteries of its waterways. A couple of warships stood out in the centre of the river, patrolling back and forth with sweeps of their oars. An impressive trireme stood proud at the next dock, whitened hull gleaming, obviously newly commissioned. The banks of oars were stowed and her twin sails furled, but the rows of torsion-armed spear throwers on her upper deck leant her an air of ready menace.

  Beyond the grey stone wharfs rose the low warehouses of Geria, made of thick wood planks, roofed with tiles of naked fired clay. Cloth banners hung over the doors, displaying the colourful emblems of their owners — more ship captains were illiterate than could read so it was a simple system of identification to make sure goods ended up where they were supposed to. Wood was in much evidence elsewhere, in the chests and barrels, crates and pallets stacked along the dockside.

  Further coldwards were the dockyards, where the skeletal beams of two new galleys were being laid down, towered over by complex cranes of wood and rope. Ullsaard watched the construction as he sat down at the quayside, pulling Blackfang down next to him while he waited for her to recover enough to continue.

  Shouts echoed from the shipyard as teams of tanned, loincloth-clad dockworkers pulled at ropes, swinging a long deck timber down onto the struts holding the ship carcass beneath it. The workers made fast their cables and returned to lounging along the riverbank while carpenters milled over the ship with mallets and wooden wedges. There seemed to be little sense of urgency or discipline.

  A shadow crossed Ullsaard and he glanced over his shoulder to see Noran leading Thunderbolt. The pair sat down next to him.