"Two thousand years?" answered Hadrastus, "I don't know much of history that far back. In Jotun, they say the Summer Kings were restless, and sometimes wandered during winter. It is also said that they ruled for many centuries, but not since the beginning of time. As they left for the south, so they originally came from it, and for all their wives of Jotun blood, they were not in their origins men of Jotun at all."
Maxano, who'd been listening to all of it, surveyed Talaos with something close to disbelief. Talaos thought it the look of a practical man who has suddenly found fantastical things to be real. And so they were.
As if in reply, Maxano added, "All of this reminds me, what do you think the Hand meant when he said you were both spirit and man?"
"I have been told that by another besides the Hand," answered Talaos, "and though I know it is significant, and believe it to be true, I don't know what it means. What I do know is that we have business to attend to."
The three generals nodded.
"I have asked all men here to swear an oath in the old way to fight the living Prophet before they are allowed into the city. Beyond that, your choices are your own."
The three generals saluted, and he returned it. Then he rode on and went back to the work of organizing their men. As he neared the gate, however, he saw another familiar face. It was Captain Iadro, of Ipesca, and it was a very great surprise to see him.
"Captain Iadro!" shouted Talaos.
"Borras?" replied the hard-faced captain, with stunned surprise in his voice.
Talaos laughed, "Sorry, I'm afraid there was a limit to my honor as a blackguard, and though everything else was true, my name is actually Talaos."
"Talaos? Ha! So you're… this storm dictator or whatever they're talking about?"
"So it seems," smiled Talaos. "What news from Ipesca?"
The captain's hard face turned harder, and dark. "Things got strange. I didn't like it. All of a sudden Rocani was taking orders from the Prophet's people. When he got tired of it, somebody assassinated him, and then we had some bloody fighting. The Prophet's people came out on top, and decided it was time to go to war."
"What made you change your mind?"
"I never liked it, but orders are orders. That business in the camp tonight though was enough for me. A few lads and I decided to make a run for it."
"Welcome then!" said Talaos, gripping the man's arm, "Follow me, and be ready to make an oath to fight the Prophet."
"Oh, I'm ready," said Iadro, blackly.
Even so, Iadro was shocked when Talaos reached the gates, and the assembled glittering generals and officers all saluted Talaos.
"How in all the hells did you pull all this off…" whispered Iadro to him.
"Long story," replied Talaos, "longer than we have time for now."
Iadro nodded, and then boggled again as Talaos greeted the commanders. "Gentlemen, this is Captain Iadro of Ipesca. Have him give the oath. I think he'll have a lot of useful news, and let's see if we can assemble him a company to command."
Nods and salutes followed in reply. Then, Adriko took Iadro aside and started asking questions. Talaos noted with approval that as he had ordered, Aro and the others had stationed a great many more officers to take oaths, and the pace of admission to the city had vastly increased.
However, that brought something else to mind. He addressed the assembled commanders, "Since it is now clear that not all followers of the Prophet willingly left Avrosa, all soldiers in the army are to take the same oath as the newcomers."
The officers looked at him in some surprise.
He addressed them in commanding tones, "We are in a new stage of the war, not its end. There is still a great army outside these gates, ready for battle, and now united in purpose. When we face them, we need to be so as well."
Now there were interested expressions. Kurvan regained his bearlike grin.
Talaos continued, "We will next discuss how to organize the men to take the oath, and in the process, how to organize for a counterattack on the plain." He then turned aside to a messenger nearby, "Find Patrician Akaros and convey my order to summon the Council of Avrosa in the hour before dawn."
The messenger saluted and sped away.
Talaos planned to formulate a similar oath, one vowing rejection of the Living Prophet rather than vowing war, to be required of the civilians of Avrosa. In a single day, both in his army and his city, he intended to carry out a sorting, and cull the remaining enemies from his midst. Then there was more to do.
He thought Ilirios had been optimistic about a third of the enemy army defecting. Yet still he estimated, when all was counted among the original allied army, the Avrosans, and the newcomers, he would have at least twenty-one thousand men under his command against perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five thousand enemy.
If they could break the enemy out on that plain, break the forces that, whether through intent, caution, or ignorance, had stayed in the service of the Prophet, it would open a whole new stage of the war. His war. He had once thought of the sides as him and the Living Prophet, but he now thought of his side as far more. He had accepted Avrosa, and with it Hunyos, as his home, and tens of thousands of men and women here had given him their loyalty.
He had accepted that loyalty, and with it duty. Now he would see this through.
There was much, very much, to do. He began the discussion with his commanders.
~
Liriel smiled up from a blanket at Talaos, as he stood next to the bed in his room at The Waverider. She looked much better than she had the night before. He held her hand and had another hand on her cheek. The physician Demistas, nearby, smiled and left them alone in the room, closing the door behind him. Sunlight filtered in through the slatted, curtained window.
She sighed, and said in a tired voice, "I'll admit that was a reckless thing of me to try."
"Very. That might be my influence at work," he smiled, "but don't give in to it."
"I gave in to you the moment I started to know you."
And so she had, he thought. She'd nearly died, helping him. He kissed her forehead, then sat on edge of the bed and took her in his arms, cradling her safely and protectively.
"Thank you, for what you did, and risked," he said at last.
She sighed again, and lay there for a time until she dozed off. After a little while she woke up, as if remembering something, and spoke.
"Talaos, one of the spirits, a strange one, an old one, said something to me. When they speak to me, it is almost like mind to mind, and usually language doesn't matter, but this one was difficult. If I understood rightly, he said to me that in helping you, he was at last fulfilling an oath made to someone called the Storm Father five thousand years ago."
"The Storm Father?"
"I don't know. They never explain themselves, and you know I'm no historian."
"Still, that gives us something," he replied, though fearing it might have to wait.
She shifted and rested her head on his lap, looking up at him with her black hair all around, and spoke again. "I must have missed some things. What's happening out there?"
"Close to five thousand troops from the enemy army have defected to our side. I made them swear an oath to fight the Living Prophet to be allowed to join us."
"I swear on the honor of my soul to fight the Living Prophet, now and forever," she said.
Her oath, with mention of forever, was sweeping enough to worry him. But it was done.
He tilted her head up, kissed her lips, and went on.
"This morning before dawn, I assembled the commanders from all factions and made them swear the same oath, then sent them out to take oaths from the allied and Avrosan troops. After that I did the same with the Council of Avrosa, and they are going to administer an oath to reject the Prophet to every citizen of the city."
She smiled, "I suspect that will draw out a bit more trouble."
"I hope so," he replied. "Next, I'm reorganizing the army for an attack out on the plain. If
everyone does their part, we can be ready by first light tomorrow."
"You've never been one to waste time," she sighed, pressing herself closer to him.
He smiled.
Liriel wrapped her uninjured arm around his leg and looked into his eyes with a new glint in her own. Then she whispered, "I know you'll be busy into the night. Would it be presumptuous of me to say I'd love it if you took me before you left?
Talaos doubtfully eyed her still-pale face and her salved and bandaged arm.
She seemed to understand, and said, "I've never minded pain that much, and you… your touch reminds me to love life. I missed it last night. I missed you. I… I'll beg…"
He put a finger to her lips, and replied, smiling, "No need."
Gently, he removed her sleeping gown, then his clothes. He ran his hands along her bare, slender body, and gazed at her fair face, with its high cheekbones, slender chin, and big dark eyes with their long lashes and arched brows. All was framed in her shadowy hair, and he was reminded of the shadowed spirits of the night before.
Talaos looked into her dark eyes. There was surrender there, and mystery. She had seen strange things with those eyes and the mind behind them. He ran a hand gently down her side, from her breast to her knee, then up the inside of her thigh. She shivered, parted her legs, and spread her arms aside.
He thought about the meaning of something that neither of them had discussed. She was a woman who had an inborn gift of understanding, of speaking with the spirits. And she had said, as had the Hand of the Prophet, that he was both a man and a spirit. She looked up at him with intense eagerness, hunger even. Her lips parted.
She thrilled as he slid his hand along her neck, her cheek, and back into the shadows of her hair. He slipped the fingers of his other hand between her parted legs, and she moaned.
He curled his fingers within her, and whispered. "If I am spirit and man, united in one, then there is another kind of union of them both, when I am with you and inside you,"
"Yes," she moaned, "I wish I understood… but it's natural and right, to us."
He smiled as he teased inside her, "We are each true to our natures."
"We are…" she whispered.
Talaos slid his fingers out. He moved with between her legs, strong yet with gentle care for her hurts, and entered her. She gasped and thrilled with a sudden, breathtaking intensity of passion. He took her, bodies in union, and minds intertwined with the mystery of each other.
~
The hour was late. Before him, in the council hall of Avrosa, were assembled all the key commanders in his now sprawling allied army. For all their differences, Talaos thought it had been a productive gathering. The commanders were now talking among themselves, itself a good thing after hours of discussion driven from the top, but now it would be his task to set them in a common direction. He took a few moments to survey and consider them.
There was Adriko, his friend and old commander, now a sworn retainer under the old laws that guided so much of the lives of fighting men in Hunyos. The catlike mercenary, adaptable, opportunistic, yet honorable and relentlessly competent, was a living testament to both the seriousness with which the soldiers of Hunyos took their oaths and laws, and the flexibility with which they applied themselves to situations as they emerged.
In the Republic, thought Talaos, where there had been no serious war in forty years, a new one would likely lead to a great many things being sorted out the hard way. Here in Hunyos, that kind of sorting, of what worked and what didn't, of the weak from the capable, had been happening relentlessly for two generations. There were many implications to that.
The other officers, before him, were examples of that sorting in progress.
Kurvan; his first friend and supporter among the original leadership of the army, had adapted himself to answering to a man who'd been a new recruit at the bottom ranks of his army not so long ago. The freewheeling and practical-minded hillman warlord fought with reckless courage, and led with canny skill. He'd be in the forefront of any battle.
Aro; the sharp-mannered general of his league of towns, in his segmented armor and red cloak. He'd been the first to understand what was wrong with the behavior and beliefs of the Prophet's followers. He was a skilled and clear-eyed organizer, with a keen tactical mind.
Tescani; the hard-eyed mercenary warlord was, as always, bristling with weapons in his heavy armor. It had taken Talaos a long time to realize that Tescani had been supporting him from the beginning. The warlord had said he saw Talaos as the main chance, but how far that went was, even now, a mystery. Tescani's troops were as disciplined and dangerous as he was.
Lurios; the polished, coolly arrogant officer had proven his capability at the pass, and his loyalty during the fighting in the streets after Sanctari's death, yet in many ways he remained an enigma to Talaos. The Aledri troops were iron-disciplined, and growing more so under Lurios.
Mordvan; the tall, lean tribune in the red-brown of Teroia had come to his position as the last man standing, with his general dead and his senior tribune still bedridden and unconscious after nearly dying during the assault on Avrosa. The soldiers of Teroia were disciplined and capable. Talaos hoped Mordvan's loyalty was matched by capability as a commander.
Drevan; Talaos's friend since the battle of the pass, the short, energetic cavalryman was leader of Megasi's forces here only due to the disgrace of every officer above him. On the other hand, he had proven himself at the pass, and he and most of the black and purple uniformed Megasi men were eager to wash away the shame of their former general's cowardice.
Ordias; the best thing that could really be said for the stout, brown-clad and suddenly risen captain from the League of Padra was that he was definitively untainted by Dromno's treason. Talaos thought the troops of that league, after so much dissension, were probably the weakest of all his forces. But, time would tell.
Megaras; the trim, intense, black-haired man was, at thirty-two apparently the youngest ever to wear the silver breastplate and gray uniform of the General of Avrosa. He'd been a junior tribune prior to being purged for opposition to the Prophet's ascendancy in Avrosa. He would likely have been marked for death had not Talaos overturned everything, and in turn was now intensely loyal. Thus far, he'd proven competent and eager to do whatever he could for the cause. With an army that Talaos was building as fast as possible, he hoped he'd promoted the right man.
Maxano; the aristocratic General of Kyras, in his white, black, and gold, was probably the most surprising of all the commanders here. He'd switched sides and given up his post as senior commander of the enemy army, risking all on the rightness of Talaos's cause. Word was that Maxano was a very experienced, capable general, and his discontent at answering to inexperienced philosophical zealots had greatly contributed to his defection. Talaos intended to try to avoid the mistakes of the Prophet's emissaries.
Ilirios; the stout, older, general of the city of Mileno, in his silver segmented armor and purple-red uniform, seemed an unlikely defector as well. He certainly showed no fanaticism for Talaos's cause, but it had been the very fanaticism of the Prophet's emissaries that repelled him to begin with. By all accounts, he was a competent officer.
Gavro; at the battle of the pass, in his then blood-stained green cloak and battle-scarred armor, the tough General of Imperi had ordered Talaos's death at all costs. Now, they were together fighting against a greater foe. It was strange that many of the cavalry who’d fought with such grim mercilessness on both sides, including men who'd stabbed him atop the pile of their fellows’ corpses, were here now ready to chance their lives with him. Talaos felt honored to have such fearless men of war at his side.
Hadrastus; the towering, fair-skinned, bronze-armored General of the League of Five was half Jotunheimer. He might well be, through some long-ago foremother, his distant kin. Of all the men in the army, he had the most unusual reason for loyalty, and Talaos wondered what might come of the tale of the Summer Kings. If he was the heir of such
, he intended to live up to it. Talaos thought Hadrastus had certainly proven his fearsomeness in battle.
Beyond the senior leaders were massed rows of tribunes, chieftains, and captains. Together, they made a large and unwieldy group, assembled by happenstance. It would be his job to forge them into a cohesive leadership. Talaos was thankful that some of them had decades of experience to draw on. His powers and decisiveness had carried things a long way, but tomorrow would be a large scale battle, and these commanders' depth of experience would be key to victory.
In total, the army had twenty-one thousand men ready to take the field tomorrow. There were four thousand light cavalry and nearly a thousand heavy, five thousand irregulars and hillmen, and fully eleven thousand heavy foot. He had built a large force of Avrosan militia centered on his old Hounds. They were at the ready, but most of them had other duties tonight.
Talaos considered the strategic situation. There was a great deal more he'd learned from Maxano and the others. The alliance of Idrona and Kyras had taken a chance in concentrating their forces here in the far south so quickly after their victory at Drenic. They'd intended to catch Sanctari between a still untaken Avrosa and their own forces. To do so, they'd left Teroia and other hostile cities and towns threatened, but not besieged, in between.
That said, they still had forces further north, besieging Drenic and several smaller towns allied to Teroia. One of the Teroian-allied cities up there, Kossos, was apparently a major center of the Prophet's faith. That would present problems. With Avrosa cleared, the enemy cities of Idrona, Etosca, and Savaric were the remaining others where the Prophet was strongest.
After Drenic, the enemy fleet had been unable to follow up with any decisive victory at sea, and the two fleets had continued their ongoing stalemate until the great storm had thrown them both into chaos. Maxano hadn't word on events after that.
He thought as well of the larger means of war available to him, and the goals. Hunyos, much like the Republic, had wealth founded on crafts, manufactories, and trade. In the Republic that wealth had been turned to many ends, including art, literature, philosophy, and science. Here, such things had, to an increasing degree, been neglected in favor of the study of war.
The Storm's Own Son (Book 3) Page 4
