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carried on the Army List as a regiment, so you'll be a colonel. We have a
hundred and twenty rifles, now."
Dalia wouldn't approve. Well, that was too bad, but people who didn't help
their friends fight weren't well thought of around here. Dalla would just have
to adjust to it, the way she had to his beard.
Ptosphes finished his wine. "Shall we go up to Rylla's room?" he asked. "I'm
glad you brought your wife with you, Verkan. Charming girl, and Rylla likes
her. They made friends at once. She'll be company for Rylla while we're
away.@l
"Rylla's sore at us," Kalvan said. "She thinks we're keeping that bundle of
splints on her leg to keep her from going to war with us." He grinned. "She's
right; we are. Maybe Dalla'll help keep her amused."
Vall didn't doubt that. Rylla and Dalla would get along together, all right;
what he was worried about was what they'd get into together. Those two girls
were just two cute little sticks of the same brand of dynamite; what one
wouldn't think of, the other would.
THE common-room of the village inn was hot and stuffy in spite of the open
door; it smelled of woolens drying, of oil and sheep-tallow smeared on armor
against the rain, of wood smoke and tobacco and wine, unwashed humanity and
ancient cooking-odors. The village outside was jammed with the Army of the
Listra; the inn with officers, steaming and stinking and smoking, drinking
mugs of mulled wine or strong sassafras tea, crowding around the fire at the
long table where the map was unrolled, spooning stew from bowls or gnawing
meat impaled on dagger-points. Harmakros was saying, again and again, "Dralm
damn you, hold that dagger back; don't drip grease on this!" And the priest of
Galzar, who had carried the ultimatum to Sask Town and gotten this far on his
return, and who had lately been out among the troops, sat in his shirt with
his back to the fire, his wolfskin hood and cape spread to dry and a couple of
village children wiping and oiling his mail. He had a mug in one hand, and
with the other stroked the head of a dog that squatted beside him. He was
laughing jovially.
"So I read them your demands, and you should have heard them! When I came to
the part about dismissing the newly hired mercenaries, the captaingeneral of
free companies bawled like a branded calfI took it on myself to tell him you'd
hire all of them with no loss of pay. Did I do right, Prince?"
"You did just right, Uncle Wolf," Ptosphes told him. "When we come to battle,
along with 'Down Styphon' we'll shout, 'Quarter for mercenaries.' How about
the demands touching on Styphon's House?"
"Ha! The Archpriest Zothnes was there, sitting next to Sarrask, with the
Chancellor of Sask shoved down one place to make room for him, which shows you
who rules in Sask now. He didn't bawl like a calf; he screamed like a panther.
Wanted Sarrask to have me seized and my head off right in the throne-room.
Sarrask told him his own soldiers would shoot him dead on the throne if he
ordered it, which they would have. The mercenary captaingeneral wanted
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Zothnes's head off, and half drew his sword for it. There's one with small
stomach to fight for Styphon's House. And this Zothnes was screaming that
there was no god at all but Styphon; now what do you think of that?"
Gasps of horror, and exclamations of shocked piety. One officer was charitable
enough to say that the fellow must be mad.
"No. He's ust a--2'A monotheist, Kalvan wanted to say, but there was no word
in the language for it. "One who respects no gods but his own. We had that in
my own country." He caught himself just before saying, "in my own time"; of
those present, only Ptosphes was security-cleared for that version of his
story. "They are people who believe in only one god, and then they believe
that the god they worship is the only true one, and all others are false, and
finally they believe that the only true god must be worshiped in only one way,
and that those who worship otherwise are vile monsters who should be killed."
The Inquisition; the wicked and bloody Albigensian Crusade; Saint
Bartholomew's; Haarlem; Magdeburg. "We want none of that here."
"Lord Prince," the priest of Galzar said, "you know how we who serve the war
god stand. The war god is the Judge of Princes, his courtroom the battlefield.
We take no sides. We minister to the wounded without looking at their colors;
our temples are havens for the war-maimed. We preach only Galzar's Way: be
brave, be loyal, be comradely; obey your officers; respect yourselves and your
weapons and all other good soldiers; be true to your company and to him who
pays you.
"But Lord Prince, this is no common war, of Hostigos against Sask and Ptosphes
against Sarrask. This is a war for all the true gods against false Styphon and
Styphon's foul brood. Maybe there is some devil called Styphon, I don't know,
but if there is, may the true gods trample him under their holy feet as we
must those who serve him."
A shout of "Down Styphon!" rose. So this was what he had said they must have
none of, and an old man in a dirty shirt, a mug of wine in his hand and a
black and brown mongrel thumping his tail on the floor beside him, had spelled
it out. A religious war, the vilest form an essentially vile business can
take. Priests of Dralm and Galzar preaching fire and sword against Styphon's
House. Priests of Styphon rousing mobs against the infidel devil-makers.
Styphon wills it! Atrocities. Massacres. Holy Dralm and no quarter!
And that was what he'd brought to here-and-now. Well, maybe for the best; give
Styphon's House another century or so in power and there'd be no gods, here-
and-now, but Styphon.
"And then?" "Well, Sarrask was in a fine rage, of course. By Styphon, he'd
meet Prince Ptosphes's demands where they should be met, on the battlefield,
and the war'd start as soon as I took my back out of sight across the border. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]