The Conqueror (11 page)

“
Lowren.” She had been
standing in front of the hall mirror, just at the top of the stairs
and a prized household possession.

“
Mirror, mirror, on the
wall, who is the fairest of them all.” He stood there
grinning.

Her eyes lit up and she turned her
face. Lowren bent in close and gave her a kiss on each cheek. She
pushed him back and took a long look. He could call upon ten
thousand warriors and yet he would always be her little boy. There
was just no shaking her.

He was surprised by how thin she was
becoming. They’d been gone a little over two weeks and perhaps that
was the difference. She was all new to him, after the jumbled
impressions of the sea, and lands far and wide. He hadn’t seen her
this clearly in a while.

“
So. Is it true that
Vaeomon will come in with us?” Vaeomon was King of the Sicurri, who
roamed the far distant steppes to the north and the east of the
great sea.

The Sicurri consisted of fifty thousand
households, according to their King.

“
Yes, that’s what he said,
Mother.” Lowren had conducted several secret embassies, leading
them in person in order to demonstrate the seriousness of his
intentions.

It would also speed up
negotiations, which were always necessarily slow, with important
documents going back and forth by
dispatch
for scrutiny and
counter-suggestions.

With his fellow barbarians becoming
rather wary of written treaties signed by people who seemed to be
remarkably well-equipped with the forked tongues of serpents, a
face-to-face meeting was always better. They had cut their thumbs
and mingled their blood, and performed other ceremonies of a rather
unsettling nature.

“
Speaking of which, where’s
the mail?”

“
I put it in your chamber,
on the desk.” Sylphie looked at her very tall son, the
eldest.

Her second-born had died courageously,
as she had always expected he would, at the battle of Salamandria.
In order to win his spurs and to set himself off from his older and
more illustrious brother, Normanric had taken a band of men at
arms, The Company as he called it, and gone off to serve the King
of the Jungthurgi, a kin-tribe related to their own. Normanric was
swept away by plague on distant campaign against one of the Great
Khan’s possessions to the distant east. It was the beginning of the
end, and after Salamandria, the Jungthurgi had ceased to exist as
an independent nation. Her second son had died trying to prevent
that. It was something she told herself often, and now the future
looked grim indeed. And yet Lowren—Lowren was different.

Lowren was special, in that men loved
him and looked up to him, and yet he seemed so unaware of his great
gift.

A mother couldn’t say such things to
her children. They might learn it on their own, or perhaps never.
But you could never really tell them.

Grief always came with such thoughts.
For the sake of others she always hid it as best she
could.

“
Thank you. Was there
anything that looked particularly important?”

“
Just the usual posts,
dear.”

He grinned on hearing it. She was the
only one in the kingdom who could get away with calling him that.
He had never thought to try to get her to call him anything else,
although sire or King would be nice once in a while. The truth was
that he always called her Mother and wouldn’t think of calling her
Sylphie in that informal and very sophisticated way that he had
heard some people’s children had.

Lowren, his own belly rumbling
somewhat, as thirsty as any other man, went off to grab the letters
and see if there was anything particularly urgent.

A day or two of rest, and then they
must be off again.

Time was short and there was much to
do.

Chapter Eight

The safest place for the more
confidential dispatches was right at his side. Lowren had a man
detailed to carry his official pouch, which he took pretty much
everywhere on business. The hunt, taking place on a weekend, was
state business of a kind, mostly because he was a king.

This was a slightly-rueful, slightly
humorous thought.

Otherwise, they were just a bunch of
people on the move.

Any other important landowner or
merchant probably had similar arrangements. Gem merchants, as he
well knew, kept their stock chained to their wrists much of the
time, certainly when away from home. Lowren had taken a small party
of a dozen men, mostly green troops and one or two more seasoned
junior men, and ridden north. For one thing, nothing was likely to
happen quickly. The Khan would almost certainly have a major
campaign planned for the spring. Eleanora would need time to think
about it. She had allies of her own. According to her, and
according to his own sources as well, Windermere had relatively
friendly trading relations with the Empire of the South, its
capital Nephrosis asleep on the baking shores of the Great Sea. His
Imperial Majesty, Kullin, could probably see which way the wind was
blowing as well as anyone. In the past, his policy had been to
divide and conquer. In some cases, it had been sufficient simply to
divide. In the face of the Khan’s potential threat he was now
preaching the benefits of peace and security. His ambassadors were
actively seeking allies on all flanks, and in some instances,
finding it a bit of a hard sell.

There was always haggling, and the
Emperor would pay dearly for whatever alliances he could scrape
up.

So it seemed that it was coming. Lowren
had been seeking out the rulers of neighboring kingdoms, trying to
get a feel for what they might do in any conflict involving the
Great Khan.

While most vowed they would fight any
incursion, none of them were strong enough to repel even a fraction
of the Khan’s forces if he should come against them. Some of the
more mobile—often the most recent arrivals, or the newest kingdoms,
having arisen by the sword and arm of an ambitious leader, would
simply depart. The consensus so far was that the more sedentary
farming tribes would probably stand and fall beside their neighbors
in spite of some long-standing disputes. It didn’t always pay to
admit to your true intentions, either—alliances, bought and
paid-for, had been betrayed before, often on the morning of
battle.

The Khan had gold in abundance. This
was always a factor when money was tight and the people were
hungry. On the west side of the Great Sea, times had been
relatively good. On the eastern steppes, they had an ongoing
drought, going back three or four years now. Those peoples were a
lot closer to the threat.

The Khan would have two major
options—assuming he couldn’t buy off enough neighbors. The first
option was the two-pronged method. He could attack his neighbors to
the northwest and eventually, once success had been achieved, those
further west of the Great Sea; while the bulk of his forces
followed a more logical route to the south. There was something to
be said for a campaign of encirclement, using the Khan’s far
superior forces. Or, he could concentrate all efforts and strike
due south from the western provinces of his Empire, along the
eastern shores and promontories of the Great Sea. There were a
couple of small buffer states along the route. These small nations
had been tolerated by both empires for any number of sound
political, economic and defensive reasons. Supported by a massive
fleet, the Khan would march through the bulk of them in about a
week. Whoever didn’t grab them first would have a strategic
disadvantage. For one thing, it brought the attacker a few hundred
miles closer to the frontier. The Emperor was most likely itching
to grab them first, but as yet restrained by public opinion. This
was surprisingly important when one went coalition-building. The
small, commercial city-states, scattered up and down the coast of
the Great Sea, and their hinterlands, were rich in ships, wine,
wool and other manufactures. They had everything that an army on
the march could use. They were also populous, which offered more
manpower for the Khan’s galleys. This looked like the most
attractive prospect to Lowren’s mind, but then the Great Khan knew
things he obviously did not—one also couldn’t rule out a dual
campaign, once the lightness of the opposition of the more nomadic
northern tribes was taken into account.

The Khan had lavished much time, gold
and attention on those galleys.

After being at sea for three days, and
a couple of days of rest, one would have thought the saddle more
comfortable, but it wasn’t necessarily so. For the younger ones, of
course it was a pleasing adventure, taken in the company of men
they admired.

The foothills were to their left, off
in the west, and they rode across a savannah-like grassland,
interspersed with oaks, sumac, and meandering lines of brush that
followed watercourses or sloughs. The plains wouldn’t be much of a
barrier to an army as well-prepared and well equipped as the Great
Khan’s. There were two or three big rivers along the northern
coast, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of smaller ones. Even these
could be crossed given time and a little military engineering. This
was especially true in the case of light or non-existent
opposition. Lowren’s lands were extensive, with some lands, the
northern marches, held by others in fief to him. In a sense, he was
making a reconnaissance of his own territory. He might like to get
to know it a little better. He was wondering just how accurate some
of his official maps might actually be. The farther from home one
got, the worse the maps seemed to get. They were mostly compiled
from travelers, merchants and the local authorities’
research.

An official survey had never been made.
He’d only recently attempted a census, the results which seemed to
bring more questions than answers. Ten thousand families, with an
average of one warrior per household, bearing in mind men of
non-military age and households headed by women.

A small stream of wagons followed
behind, bringing provisions and servants, even a few of the
household dogs, who couldn’t be expected to walk the entire
distance. The riders had quickly pulled ahead once they got out of
the forest and onto the hard, dry turf of the prairie. The
occasional faint bark from behind indicated they couldn’t be all
that far behind.

“
Sire.”

“
Hmn.”

“
Sire.”

“
Ah, yes,
Bibbs?”

Riding along at his side, Bibbs lowered
his brow and made significant facial gestures, and Lowren pulled
his bemused gaze away and looked properly out in front for the
first time in what seemed like ages.

“
Ahem.” Bibbs cleared his
throat softly, making a cautious hand gesture with the right hand,
and holding the rest of the party up.

A herd of the small, red-bristled wild
pigs was just on a small rise ahead of them. They were perhaps
three or four hundred yards away. Bibbs had thought he heard
something up there. It was only when he caught distant sight of two
or three of the distinctive hump backs moving through the tops of
the long grass that he knew they were onto something. There was a
light breeze and that was probably helping to mask the riders’
approach as the ripe stalks swayed in the wind.

With a glance and a quick nod, Lowren
had the bow off of his shoulder and an arrow notched to the
string.

He looked around at Trooper Noam, who
was waiting for a signal. Lowren nodded and pointed at a hummock a
hundred yards to the right of were the animals had last been seen.
Noam hastily unlimbered the bow. Normally the King had first right,
but this was no time to contradict. Lowren was probably hoping to
bag a few of them. Another straight look into a man’s eyes, a
simple hand signal, and Garvin was walking his horse quietly off to
the left, taking Bibbs with him. Lowren had brought a few of the
younger men along to get some experience. It gave him a chance to
get to know them and see how they were shaping up, at least in
terms of what were some pretty raw recruits.

As a general, you generally had to know
everything insofar as that was possible. They were sitting very
quietly, horses alert but under proper control. That part of their
training seemed to be coming along well, although they weren’t
quite ready for field maneuvers. He’d always thought hunting
excellent training for light mounted troops. It taught a kind of
natural measurement, including the coordination of several parties,
and involved the judgment of time, speed and distance over
different types of ground.

“
Spread out and walk your
horses.” The troopers had their bows at the ready. “Slowly. You
will stay line abreast, about fifty yards apart. They’re probably
grubbing up roots, or they may have a berry patch up
there.”

There were maybe more than just two or
three.

Lowren signaled that they
were to draw to almost full extent, right up to the cheekbone. This
necessarily involved dropping the reins, something the
mounts
were at least
trained for. The horses would be guided by knee pressure only.
Hopefully the men could handle it, but they should now be able to
shoot powerfully, well-aimed, and on the instant.