“And behind me—” Nutatharis indicated the tall, slender man in the robe, who now advanced “—is Eromedeus. He has only recently joined me; he came here—when? Half a year ago?” the king asked him.
Eromedeus, keeping his eyes on Cyrodian, said, “Yes. Half a year.”
This one disturbed Cyrodian. Largely the eyes, he decided. Cyrodian thought him sinister and wondered what that meant in regard to the man’s relationship with Nutatharis. Eromedeus was…untrustworthy? Cyrodian could not decide. But he was not the sort whom Cyrodian would ever choose to keep close by him.
“Now,” Nutatharis said, “as to the matters of mutual benefit that you and I should discuss.…”
* * * *
In the course of that afternoon, Prince Cyrodian came to realize that King Nutatharis was indeed a man he could understand and with whom he could accomplish things. To a large degree, their feelings toward the world were similar, and their temperaments complementary. Practical, straightforward, appreciative of intellect—of craft, of stealth—in the service of action, Nutatharis, although still a relatively young man, was the inheritor of a state defiantly begun by his great-great-grandfather, a nation that had been held together, generation after generation, in the face of great odds.
Emaria was not a large country, and it was landlocked. Its economy rested to a great degree upon exports of produce and grain and, especially, of ores and metals. Sprawling to the west was Athadia, for which Nutatharis had no love, and which he regarded even in the best of times as a cold neighbor. To the south sat those loose confederations of sea-bordering regions, all nominally under the direction of Athadia’s lion, to which they paid tribute. To his east, Nutatharis looked upon the Low Provinces: ostensibly existing unto themselves, small backward territories of farmers and metal workers with no centralized authority or common unity other than a historical tradition of poverty, low productivity, and economic stasis. However, the Low Provinces bordered upon the Salukadian Empire, and the Salukadian Empire was immense—and hegemonic.
All around him Nutatharis saw many locked rooms beneath a single roof, and it had been his policy, as it had been his father’s and grandfather’s, to keep the doors of those rooms securely locked and barred. Yet it had also been the policy of Emaria to maintain its sovereignty and independence at the expense of any distemper or confusion in surrounding lands. The Low Provinces had so far provided a buffer between Emaria and Salukadia. Still, under proper guidance, the population there might manage to serve Emaria more usefully, both with labor and with good crops. The present threat of disunity in Athadia might create an opportunity for a ruler who could take advantage of it to move the world in directions he preferred.
Nutatharis spoke frankly of these things to Cyrodian, and he found that the exile—no true lover of an Athadia ruled by his “weak pup of a sibling”—was amenable to suggestions of fostering disorder and coalescing strengths for the furtherance of Emarian expansion. Victory, Nutatharis claimed, goes to that one who moves first. Thought is a stronger weapon than steel, strategy a surer device than muscle. An enemy divided is an enemy conquered.
“This city,” Nutatharis told Cyrodian, “used to be nothing but a field. In my grandfather’s youth, you still saw furrowed fields beyond that temple. In my father’s day, half the buildings in this capital did not exist. We are a small nation, but we have the strengths of the small—resilience, intelligence, tenacity—and none of the weaknesses. And we will grow, Cyrodian. I intend to grow. I intend that the nations around me, as they die, will fall to me. It is my frequent dream that one day a son of mine shall own the lands all along the River Hiso, and that his son shall own Gaegosh, and his son—all of Athadia.”
Cyrodian laughed pleasantly at the prospect. “And what of the lowlands?” he inquired. For they had been discussing the Low Provinces all afternoon.
“The lowlands,” replied Nutatharis, “shall fall to me. Within the coming year. I have relied upon them as a buffer, but now I have men and treasure to turn that buffer into a wall.”
He meant it literally, which surprised Cyrodian; but it was a measure of the difference between the two men, both of them leaders, yet the one strong in his authority over others, the other profound in his ambitions to own, control, and never yield.
“A wall,” repeated Nutatharis, showing Cyrodian the map on the table.
The afternoon had grown late; the other three in the room, although still in attendance, had quite obviously grown weary and hungry. (Although Eromedeus, as still as the wall against which he leaned, seemed as grim and silent as some guardian sentinel.) Yet Nutatharis, as he expounded his idea to Cyrodian, became enthusiastic and freshly invigorated. It was apparent that the plan had long fascinated him and that he was wholly committed to seeing it accomplished.
The king traced on the map with a finger, following a bold line in red ink, a line that stretched, sometimes straight and sometimes curving, from the Emarian border, just north of Omeria, east to the roughly indicated boundary of Salukadia, then northeast to enclose Tsalvia, then west again to embrace all of Emaria as well as the provinces of Bithira north of it.
Cyrodian had a grim expression. He was undecided whether to offend his host with a frank appraisal of the plan or to admit simply that the design was ambitious. He sipped wine and allowed as to its ambitiousness.
“True!” Nutatharis agreed, “but the building of a nation from swampland was ambitious, was it not? And my forebears did it. Now I extend that empire. And I do not mean to waste my own men in doing it. I do not intend to make my plan obvious, even. Winter comes down soon, but in the Low Provinces, the winter is damp and chill, the land is seldom frozen deep. But it’s marshy, and floods can pour down from the mountains with the force of a god’s vengeance. So we build breaker walls. It’s as simple as that. We enter the territory in friendship, asking only food for our men, to construct breakers, dams, and canals, or to repair any that were once there and require strengthening. We do this simply to help the farmers realize greater productivity; in return, we’ll expect them to favor us with their exports.” Nutatharis smiled. “That, of course, may very well happen, too. And within a year, what do we have? Half the lowlands enclosed and fortified. And in another year? We have our new boundary.”
Cyrodian made some comment on dispensing with the fabrication of helping the farmers.
“But we will turn their swamps into a breadbasket,” Nutatharis assured the exile. “To feed soldiers and women, and to feed a new generation of soldiers. And with the soldiers—” he traced along the route of the Fasu River, which emptied into the Ursalion Sea “—we begin to erect fortifications on the river, and we take control.”
“You risk intrusion into my brother’s empire,” Cyrodian reminded him.
“By that time, my friend, Athadia will be in no condition to respond to any provocation. Nor will Omeria or any of the surrounding regions. By that time, we will have begun to deprive those areas economically with our own increased trade and harvests.”
It was a bold plan, and apparent behind it were Nutatharis’s many years of training at his father’s knee—not only in matters of the military but also in the matters of politics, geography, even philosophy and human nature.…
A slow plan, but one measured by foresight.
“What do you think of my plan?” Nutatharis asked Cyrodian. “Tell me—frankly.”
Cyrodian smiled. “When you began to talk of a wall,” he confessed, “I thought you stupid. But now that I see the larger design—”
Nutatharis laughed. “Yes?” he insisted.
“It is the destiny of the continent that you propose. The empire of the future, King Nutatharis.”
“Yes,” Nutatharis replied, warming to the phrase. “You’re right, Cyrodian. I am indeed building the empire of the future.…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Celebration of Perpetual Grace was observed throughout the Athadian Empire two days after the Feast of the Ascension. To commemorate
the Light that had been given to humanity upon the prophet’s rise into the afterworld, the holiday was ostensibly a solemn occasion, during which gestures of self-sacrifice were to be made, devotions shared, candles and lamps lit, and prayers whispered, with the day spent in private, restorative silence. Thoughts were to be given over to the contemplation of the prophet’s words and the signal gift he had given humanity through his courageous sermons on doing good as well as by his life-delivering death.
In practice, the Celebration of Perpetual Grace—like the Feast—had become something less than a heart-deep exercise in personal reflection and selfless devotion. Other than some few temple priests who were obliged by their contracts with the Church to behave with ritualistic pride, few in the empire passed the day in silence. Merchants, in fact, did very well on the afternoon of the Celebration, selling gifts and trinkets memorializing the Light of the World, while the morning typically was given over by most households to restful sleep or visits with friends.
Still, while the original meaning of the Celebration been lost or degraded, it remained a day during which, habitually, people at least tried to act with dignity or restraint (feeling that the prophet might be looking down or peering over their shoulders) and sought to remind themselves that they were, after all, civilized persons living in a civilized world. It was a day to drop extra coins into the temple donation box, a day to trade pleasantries with neighbors and speak politely to strangers. To have done otherwise on the one day of the year commemorating the prophet’s love for an imperfect world would have been a gross rejection of accepted behavior and wholly unacceptable on the Day of Grace.
* * * *
Shortly after lunch, Orain was on the balcony of her chamber in Mantho’s apartment. The afternoon was chilly, yet because the stuffiness of her room was giving her a headache, she had moved outside to enjoy the fresh air. She leaned on the balcony wall and looked out over the city. Below her ran an avenue and, bisecting it, to her right, one of Sulos’s major boulevards, off which she could see the outermost portions of the Abu Square, a merchandising center. Only a few persons were on the street, no crowds, because it was still early in the afternoon on the holy day.
When she heard the first of the disturbances, then, Orain was surprised. The commotion sounded very near; she wondered what, if anything, it had to do with the Day of Grace.
As the sounds became louder, she leaned over the wall to see what was happening. The screams were close by—loud and many throated. Now a wave of running people came into the avenue from the direction of the square. There were hundreds of them, most dressed in rags or worn clothes, and armed with sticks, bricks, hand tools, knives. They were a mob. Coming down the street, they yelled in a chant, “Death to the banks! Death to the merchants! Kill them all!” They carried placards and banners with pictures painted on them of working people being stepped on by boots filled with gold coins and of screaming faces with their throats being cut by crude images of politicians and businessmen.
Rocks and bricks lifted into the air and cracked against buildings across the avenue from Orain. As the crowd passed beneath her, she drew back. A large stone hurled by a strong hand jumped toward her and clattered against the outside wall of Mantho’s apartment building, nearly striking her. A brick followed the stone, shattering into powder as it hit the wall.
Orain moved backward into her room. The voices and noises outside diminished as the mob continued down the avenue. As it did, Orain, feeling her breath, her heart beating quickly, returned to the balcony, wanting to see more but also aware of how perplexed and frightened she was.
Now another mob came down the avenue, following the first, again from the direction of the Abu Square. The voices of these people were as loud and angry as those of the first wave, and they also brandished weapons and tools and rocks, bricks, anything threatening they might have found. Hundreds of ragged, howling people, men and women and even their children, pushed and shoved their way under Orain’s balcony, filling the avenue completely.
Then came the sounds of shattered glass, the crashes of thrown rocks and bricks, and the noise of fists pounding on doors to alarm those inside. Again Orain stepped back from the balcony. And as the second wave of rioters hurried on—“Death to them! Kill them! Kill them!”—she heard more noise coming behind them—horses’ hoofs and harsh-sounding trumpets. Thirty mounted soldiers were in the boulevard, their armor dull beneath the clouds, pennants slapping on the wind, and with their weapons out—swords and pikes. They came on four abreast, turning onto the avenue as the last stragglers of the second crowd pushed forward, still howling and throwing rocks.
The horsemen ran them down. In perfect formation, the soldiers charged their horses into the crowd. Children and women screamed. Horses reared, but their riders held the reins tightly and urged the animals on. Men and boys turned to protect themselves with lifted weapons—metal bars, wooden poles, slings filled with stones—but they were kicked down by the horses or, thrown off balance, were cut and stabbed with sword and pike.
One man, held tightly against a brick wall as the mob pushed by him, was unable to move. A mounted soldier reached him, lifted a sword, and cut through the man’s head, just above the eyebrows. Brains landed on the wall and hung there like paste. An old man raised an arm to guard his own head, but a weapon met his gesture, and his arm flew away like a branch briefly severed from a tree. A woman called someone’s name, then choked, suddenly breathless, as a large man, dressed in bloody clothes, was shoved into her. Both fell—and the pointed end of a pike was pushed into them, the sharp metal of it entering the large man’s lower back, pinning them together where they were, there in the street.
Orain groaned and looked away. The crack of weapons against stone and brick—blood spinning in the air, swimming there—flesh being cut, human limbs being sliced the way meat is freed in the open market—and babies crying, and women—
The heavy sounds of metal weapons and of murder lessened. Orain looked again, a witness. Half of the mounted troop had turned around and headed back down the avenue in the opposite direction, removing to the Abu Square. Screams came from there, from around the corner and blocks away.
Orain saw in the avenue below her almost twenty bodies, including those of children, some of them in pieces. Blood ran all along the stones. Across the avenue, against a building, she saw a headless man crouched on his knees; he pulled at something with his fingers. Then he slumped.
Now a further loose group of people ran down the boulevard to her right, crossing the avenue and waving tools and sticks, howling. As they went out of view, two soldiers on horses followed them, swinging their weapons.
Orain said a prayer to Mother Hea.
Behind her, a door was pushed open; it loudly hit the wall behind it. She turned, breathless, and fell forward, nearly dropping to her knees.
“They’ve broken in!” Galvus yelled to her. “They’re inside the house! Mantho’s trying to bolt the—”
“What?” Orain yelled at him.
“They’re inside!” Galvus hurried to one wall of her room, where weapons had been hung as decorations. “It’s a riot of some kind. They’re rebelling. They’re doing real damage and, Mother, people are being killed.” He surveyed the assortment of weapons on the wall.
Loud screams, directly beneath the balcony. The knocking of horses’ hoofs on stone. Howling voices, loud with rage. And children crying. More people in the avenue.…
Galvus took down a long knife. It was something wholly foreign to his hand. “I—I can’t kill anyone,” he assured his mother. “But we’ve got to get out of here. Only I don’t know where to go. I have to think.”
Orain was incapable of thought. She found a chair and sat in it and looked out the open doors leading to the balcony, not completely understanding that the avenue now was the way it was. She and Mantho had gone for a walk there just this morning, right there on those stones—
“Kill them!” came more yells.
Galvus walke
d to her, holding the knife.
“Oh, Hea.”
“Mother, please.”
Through the open door of her chamber they heard the sounds of many feet hurrying up the stairs, coming to them.
* * * *
The rebellion was unexpected.
Governor Jakovas had ignored the protests that had increased in his city the year long. Incidents that occurred were trivialized in reports submitted to the king. The ranks of the indigent seemed to consist largely of the homeless, the impoverished, the chronically ill, and the unemployed and unemployable. That the number of dispossessed was much larger than was generally credited would have astonished the well-to-do and propertied of Sulos, who in any event were unused to considering the existence of persons other than themselves, as was their privilege.
In fact, the demonstrations in Sulos were but the most obvious and visible sign of a swollen underground of resentment against the governorship specifically and the government’s financial mismanagement generally. The gross imbalance between wealth and poverty, between the advantaged and the disadvantaged, had, through official negligence, become a gulf no longer able to be bridged by any constructive means. Encouraged by intelligent voices—intellectuals, teachers, students, merchants who had been ruined by the large, well-connected business concerns, and dissident aristocrats who understood that the world could not long continue as it was—the angry and the hungry formed more than a mob; they were the population of a rebellion. Shopkeepers, taxed to the brink of poverty, had been listening to speakers in the streets; young men and women who saw their older siblings educated but without jobs joined in the excoriations of a system that mocked the ambitions of ordinary persons; servants and householders, long held in debilitating stations, now answered the call of reformers who promised them their human rights in a world of prejudice and duplicity.
To the wealthy and the successful, who had for so long imbibed the poison of their own entitlement, these words sounded like a trumpet call of unreason and anarchy. That the society that had allowed them to prosper was built on thievery, they would not admit; that the system that had rewarded their rapaciousness was rotting outward from its core, these people could not acknowledge. That the government that encouraged their felonies was in fact malicious, they denied.
The West Is Dying Page 23
