“The Aschire does not change,” Krell told me.
“All things change because death is change,” Two Spears answered him. “All things die. That is the way of things.”
“The Aschire will not die,” Evokain told him, looking warily at Two Spears. There was no love lost between the Andarans and the Aschire, either. The Andoran plains had no trees.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I told them all.
We talked into the night.
The next day the call of the town crier notified me that the royal personage would be visiting Thera. The buzz was that Klem had not only paid his taxes for once, he had paid them on time, and that had drawn royal interest. The Earl showed up at my doorstep before noon, with a look on him that somehow reminded me of Bobby the Service Writer.
I faced a pudgy, balding Man with a nasal voice and the look of a bunny, without the long ears. Supposedly he had been a great friend of Glennen’s once, and Thera had been a great gift that had gone to seed. I couldn’t see this man with a sword in his hand, and he didn’t have the bearing of a wizard or the stealth of a rogue like Drekk. He didn’t run his city like some kind of genius accountant, so I couldn’t imagine any vital service he performed for anyone.
“Glennen, Alekanna and the royal court will be here on the morrow,” he informed me. If he had been good at his job he would have known earlier, but I saw no point in exploring that now. Two Spears and Evokain were on the plains with my Wolf Soldiers, drilling them mercilessly and trying to catch a few wild horses. Krell and Shela had taken off to discuss Nina’s tutelage and how to grow things in a garden. Kuruul, her five Dwarven artisans and another twenty Men and Uman laborers were setting the foundation for Casa de Mordetur, and if not for the crier I would have been setting off to do some recruiting for the Free Legion.
And for myself, of course.
“So?” I asked Klem. I still hadn’t forgotten the tone of his letter. We stood in the middle of the coliseum, surrounded by tents. The sun beat down on us and I could see him sweating, probably not from the heat.
“So?” he parroted me, wringing his hands. “So? So how shall I feed them? Where shall they stay? Who will entertain them with plays and fine food until finally they leave Thera?”
“If you just want them to leave then don’t do any of that,” I told him with a straight face. Klem, Earl or not, wore on my nerves.
He took me by my shoulders, then saw the look in my eyes and released me. I stood a foot taller than him and hadn’t made a reputation for my good temper, but as the guy who had punched through the gates of Katarran.
Not really, but he didn’t know that.
“Mordetur, I am in duress,” he pleaded. “I paid my whole tax burden. I have nothing to spend, and it will be no less than a thousand Tabaars to properly entertain the royal host!”
That’s when I realized that he wanted money. Until then, I honestly thought that he’d come here just to complain and wondered why he chose me. I guess I was the richest guy in town, much as the next richest guy owned two boats.
He wanted a loan. Life can be sweet sometimes.
“Why don’t I just put them up?” I asked him.
He looked at me shrewdly for a moment, much as a weasel might look at… a bigger, meaner weasel? I didn’t know for sure, but I finally decided that his skill as some sort of scammer had gotten Klem where he was today. Anyone who knifes his way to the top spends most of his time wondering who is knifing his way up behind him once he gets there. The idea that I might out-perform him didn’t sit well with the Earl of Thera.
But then he remained out of debt, and I know what a good feeling that is. How much damage could be done in one visit, after all? He pointed me toward the best hotel in town and I rented every room in it, as well as the entire staff, indefinitely.
I had to put up the entire bill and entertain them, but the unique opportunity made it worth the gold. Klem should have gone back into debt, but he’d been willing to hand this to me and I’d been smart enough to take it. They hadn’t come to Thera to see him, anyway.
Lucky for me that I had the track income from Steel City, because that is where I drew the money until I could be replenished by the gold in Outpost X. Of course I couldn’t just take anything I wanted from there any time I needed, but Ancenon would have a choking fit if I told him that I turned the King of Eldador away. The problem with going to Outpost X being that I had to go to Chatoos first, and that took a long time that I didn’t have. So I sent a message instead to Ancenon that the collective owed me the gold I spent, and then spent the money from my own account.
Eventually we would build a teleportal here. Chatoos had never been intended to be the only one.
When Glennen and Alekanna arrived we had the usual hugging and drinking and smacking of backs. Glennen acted impressed with our success and our strategy, and wanted every detail no less than five times. He nodded sagely when we spoke of the tactics we used and he roared with laughter over giving back the city’s treasury. He remarked that he had been asked about the Free Legion as a viable source of men and confided in me that he had given us his highest recommendations.
He toured the city in a carriage drawn by six black horses. Alekanna, who refused to let Shela out of her sight even for a moment, held a hanky to her nose for most of the journey. Klem found one million discrepancies to apologize for and another million ways to say he was sorry, saving his last million mentions of how Thera now, for once, had paid its tax burden.
We dined together at the hotel where they were staying. Musicians played to one side and the bay window by our round table gave a beautiful view of Tren Bay. Two Spears and the Aschire abstained from the royal personage and were keeping track of the men. Glennen had seen the Aschire but waited for the after-dinner drinks to comment on them.
That dinner could be considered elegant by any standards – a variety of beef unique to Thera, where the cows were raised on whole corn. The meat had been basted in a mix of wines with domestic and wild herbs, bringing out its own flavor rather than disguising it with something else. There were peas and beets and potatoes, wild onion and something that tasted like carrots, except that it was green. Rather than bringing it out in courses, they piled the food high before us, and we all dug in and feasted.
With his usual bowl of honey mead, and a hand on his over-full stomach, Glennen said, “I see the purple hairs are hanging ‘round your army.”
I smiled a wry smile. Glennen wouldn’t even soil his tongue with their name. “The Aschire have more to offer than even they know,” I told him.
Alekanna looked sideways at Glennen then at Shela. Something had been confided somewhere but I knew right then that Glennen himself was the reason why relations with the Aschire were so bad. No wonder all of the nobility shunned them.
“You know what squirrels are?” Glennen asked me, wagging a finger at me.
“Rats with a marketing campaign?” I answered him. He looked at me owlishly, the mead already affecting him. He thought about that, then he shook his head and held out his bowl to be refilled.
“They are treacherous and they are low,” he told me. “They think they are trees and bushes, and they run around bare-arsed in their stupid forest.”
“Did they wrong you somehow, then, your Majesty?” I asked him.
That marked the first time that Shela ever kicked me under the table. She wore, of course, the red dress that I had gotten her in Eldador, her hair loose around her shoulders. I wore my leather pants and white shirt. No armor to protect my shins.
Glennen glared at me. “You tell me, you don’t know?” he asked.
“I do not, your Majesty,” I said, looking him right in the eyes. “Forgive me, it is none of my concern.”
He slammed his hand down on the table and all of the silverware, and all of the hotel staff, jumped. “By Adriam’s beard, it is your concern if you are in my kingdom,” he bellowed. He looked around and his eyes found Klem, and Klem actually seemed to
become ten pounds lighter under that gaze.
“Tell him, Earl,” he commanded.
Klem cleared his throat. “Well, Master Mordetur, it has always been the destiny of Eldador to touch the Andaran plains,” he said.
“Touch the plains!” Glennen agreed, slurping from his bowl. With his eyes off her, Alekanna touched Shela’s forearm for support.
“And so we sent them an emissary, and they were offered the citizenship of this Kingdom – by me, if I might add,” he continued.
“By him, by his very Earl self!” Glennen added.
Klem looked for support and found none. “Well, they sent me back a finger – “
“A finger – and I can tell you which one!” Glennen said.
“A finger, and a note, that said we would receive the pieces of our messenger until we acknowledged that they were a free nation.”
“As if that would sway me!” Glennen drained his bowl and held it out for more.
Mental note – refuse any messenger jobs for the Eldadorian nation.
“So we received back the messenger, a piece at a time, for a year.”
Glennen looked me in the eyes. “And now you know, so don’t say you don’t,” he told me.
So now I knew. There had to be more to the story, but I wouldn’t get it today. I felt sure right then that the gaffe that Klem hoped I’d make had been made right then.
As quickly as it had arisen, we dropped the topic of the Aschire and Alekanna redirected the conversation.
“Oh, do tell me that you plan to stay in Thera,” she said.
Shela patted the queen’s hand. “Indefinitely,” she assured her. Shela had even started to talk like the queen, I thought. Would I miss my rough-and-tumble plains girl if she became too educated?
“That was a lot of stone I saw men hauling here?” Glennen commented.
I nodded. “I’m making a lot of estate,” I told him, grinning. He chuckled and he slapped me on the shoulder.
“Too bad you couldn’t have a couple Dwarves shipped down from the Great Northern Mountain Range to help you piece all of those stones together,” he commented.
So he had seen them, too. Glennen was no fool. A shrewd politician in charge of his nation replaced the drunken brawler of a moment before.
These were lessons I needed to learn.
“I have five,” I told him. “And one of their engineers.”
Glennen slapped the table with an open hand again, making us all jump.
“Damn your bones, Rancor,” he said, “they refused me when I asked them to help build the palace in Eldador.”
“You are not considered a Dwarf, though, your Majesty,” I said, smiling. Shela hid her lips behind her handkerchief and Alekanna batted her eyes. That came as close as anyone dared to making fun at the King’s expense.
“Six Dwarves,” Glennen answered me. Obviously, he hadn’t been offended or hadn’t caught it at all. Mead is like that.
“Six Dwarves,” he repeated. “Two squirrels, an Andaran warlord by the look of him, Dorkan soldiers, Dorkan Wizards – I have been watching you, Mordetur. You want to live in Eldador – what is Eldadorian about you?”
I smiled and took a sip of mead before I answered him. He wanted something, but I didn’t know what. I guessed it had to be big.
Earl Klem of Thera just watched me from across the table with big, bunny eyes in his balding head. He had told his story and now I got to be grilled. I felt sure that he was just glad it wasn’t him.
“My land?” I answered the King. “And my children, should your Majesties allow them to be born here.”
“Land and children,” Glennen threw the terms right back at me. “Land and children. Land and children are things that a man fights for, Mordetur, but I have seen what you can do and I want you fighting for me.”
“The Free Legion is at your disposal, your Majesty,” I began, but he waved me off and took another long drink of his mead.
“The Free Legion is mercenaries,” he said, dismissing my friends entirely. “Bought men are for sale to the highest bidder. What I want, Lupus, Rancor Mordetur, Black Hook-Mark and White Wolf, is you. How do I bring you into the Eldadorian realm?”
Just like Glennen to go right to the source like that. He had made himself a King from a commoner on the point of his sword, and I could feel its sharp edge at my breastbone now.
“I apologize, King Glennen,” I informed him formally. “But without knowing your resources I honestly do not know.”
“My resources are the vastness of Eldador. Eldador needs strong men to reunite her. Men seem to unite around you Lupus.
“I think you need to be an Earl.”
Hit me in the face with a brick. An offer like that, and all I could think was, “Move already?” The look on Shela’s face showed utter despair.
Right from the King’s mouth, though, how could I refuse him? Not to mention the power that came with the title.
“An Earl, your Majesty?” I asked him, stalling for time while my brain tried to catch up. “The Earl of what?”
Alekanna chimed in, “Husband, you wouldn’t deprive me of Shela once again?” she asked him.
“What do you mean,” he asked her, raising an eyebrow. I wondered now if what we’d seen had all been an act leading up to this moment. The transition seemed too smooth – Glennen usually just ignored his wife.
“It is such an easy boat ride into Thera from Eldador,” Alekanna said, “and I do love the water. Not so dusty, like the land.”
“You would deny her her nobility for the sake of a carriage, Alekki?” Glennen asked her. I saw some hope on Shela’s face now. I don’t think that the nobility part had sunken in yet.
“No...” she said, looking down demurely.
Glennen sat silent for a moment, then he slammed the table again. I felt reasonably sure that the hotel staff didn’t have an unchewed fingernail tonight. The King was in a rowdy mood and that drunk didn’t get pitched into the alley.
“It’s settled, then,” he said finally, and extended his hand to me, to take my wrist and call me Earl.
I couldn’t pass up an offer that good. Shela would just have to understand.
“Rancor Mordetur, you will come to Eldador with me, and be dubbed Earl of Thera.”
Klem fell right out of his chair. Actually spilled wine in his lap – whether he’d done it to cover a more serious accident was anyone’s guess.
“Klem is the Earl of Thera,” I said mildly.
“Klem is a fool,” the King told me, and loudly. The former Earl just stayed on the floor. “You have done more with this city in a month than he has in 10 years, and I would do well to have you on my side, with your armed cities and your gate-slapping tactics and your followers from all over Fovea. I will make you Earl of Thera and give Klem an ambassadorship to the Aschire.”
Klem whimpered from beneath the table. That constituted a death sentence and he knew it. I doubted that there would be any sign of him and his family in the morning.
“In all fairness,” I said, Shela squeezing my hand excitedly, “I only dumped a lot of gold in the economy. The growth you see is from that, and it isn’t actually real, just a shot in the arm to the base…”
Glennen’s eyes were glazed over, his wife fidgeting politely. Let’s face it – I talk too much.
That the government had a role to play in economics was a new idea on Earth. So was the study of economics, for that matter. Actually controlling the economy still involved a lot of guesswork on my sophisticated planet. Foveans weren’t stupid; they were merely not as economically or politically evolved as people from Earth. I spent a lot of time telling them about something that they were hundreds of years from understanding.
Sometimes, it is better to just do things.
“I’ll take it, and thank you, your Majesty,” I said. Glennen smiled and Alekanna hugged Shela. “I don’t have to wear a silly hat or anything, do I?”
Glennen thumped my shoulder. “Not unless you want to. Just s
wear fealty to the throne and don’t tax the lifeblood out of my subjects.”
I didn’t see a problem with that.
Chapter Twenty-Five:
The Rise and Fall of the Free Legion
My position with the Free Legion didn’t change, even if my socio-economic status had.
Klem had never run things in Thera and had never intended to. He had created a somewhat efficient bureaucracy of tax collectors, managers and lawgivers, who split running things between them. A true Republican, the first thing I did was cut taxes. No one had a problem with that – as a feudal system, Eldador took roughly half of what any farmer made, close to that for merchants and journeymen. I cut that down to a straight fifteen percent, and let word spread far and wide that I had done it. Next I took a little more Free Legion gold and bought every decent bit of wharf space I could lay my hands on, mostly from merchants and lesser nobility who were only too happy to unload it. Imagine their surprise when six major shipping interests came clamoring for that space. Why not? Keeping an extra thirty-five percent of their own companies’ profits far outweighed the expense of moving. Thera’s economy boomed in no time.
Shela had no head for politics and didn’t want to develop one. She saw what I did with Thera as confusing and wanted no part of it. She liked being in court at my side, but I just didn’t have the time for it. Thera came third to my interests right then and if I wanted to make headway on anything, the city and the region had to run themselves.
Next I needed something similar to Glennen’s Oligarchs who could run things in my name. I advertised and spoke with local elders and with the help of my two Dorkan Wizards I found two reliable men and a woman who could be trusted to do the job, and I offered it to them. Their salaries were a commission based on the overall profitability of the city and they were told what would happen if they disappointed me. It took a month but Thera got herself on autopilot.
After this I addressed my continued position as a recruiter for the Free Legion army. With my newfound nobility came the ability to travel more freely between nations, especially Trenbon and Sental. The latter proved to be a boon to us; we saw a never-ending supply of farmers who were looking for something better. The Romans had recruited almost exclusively from their own agrarian class – in fact, they considered city folk too puny to make it in the legions. I did the same, once I had secured the right to enter Sental for the purpose of recruiting. Some gold placed in the hands of the Sentalan Bureau of Trade made that entirely possible.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 40
