The Redemption of Althalus (72 page)

“You’ve done this sort of thing yourself, haven’t you, Lord Althalus?” Olkar suggested.

“I’ve pulled off a few fairly elaborate flimflams on occasion, your Grace, yes,” Althalus admitted, “and there’s not really much difference between what
you
do and what I
used
to do, now is there?”

Olkar suddenly grinned at him. “That’s supposed to be a secret, Lord Althalus,” he chided.

He’ll do just fine, Andine,
Althalus assured the Arya of Osthos. Then he looked back at Olkar. “You might want to keep the negotiations sort of tenuous, your Grace,” he suggested. “After we take Kanthon, I’ll have a quick look at their granaries, and then I’ll join you in Maghu. Let’s find out where we
really
stand before we start throwing money away.”

“My thought exactly, Lord Althalus,” Olkar agreed.

When they reached the palace of Duke Olkar, they found Captains Gelun and Wendan waiting for them. “It grieves us to report that the Chieftains of our mighty clans fell heroically in the recent war,” the tall Captain Wendan announced with no hint whatsoever of a smile.

“All of Arum grieves with you, noble Captain,” Albron intoned.

“Does that more or less cover the formalities?” Captain Gelun asked.

“I’d say so,” Twengor advised. “We wouldn’t want our grief to overwhelm us, would we?”

“I’m bearing up fairly well,” Gelun replied.

“Who’s going to replace them?” Koleika Iron Jaw demanded abruptly.

“That’s just a bit murky right now, I’m afraid,” Wendan reported. “There’s no clear and direct line of succession—some second cousins and a few nephews is about all.”

“Is anybody any good at making speeches?” Koleika asked, looking around at the other Clan Chiefs.

“Albron’s about the best,” Laiwon suggested. “At least he knows how to read, so maybe he could quote some poetry.”

“Am I missing something here?” Andine asked with a puzzled expression. “Here in Treborea, succession’s determined by bloodline—consanguinity, I think it’s called.”

“We’re a bit more relaxed in Arum, little mother,” Twengor said with a faint smile. “In situations like this one, the other Clan Chiefs can serve in an advisory capacity.
We
have to be able to get along with the new Chiefs, so our ‘suggestions’ carry quite bit of weight.” He looked at his fellow Chiefs. “Would I be overstepping any rules to suggest Gelun and Wendan as the best candidates?” he asked.

“I think
I
could live with them,” Laiwon agreed.

“I thought we’d already made that decision,” Koleika said. “Are we all agreed, then?”

The other Chiefs nodded.

“I’ll start working on my speech,” Albron said. He looked at Captain Wendan. “Just exactly how did Smeugor and Tauri die?” he asked. “Maybe I should work that into my oration.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Wendan replied. “It wasn’t particularly pleasant. There was fire involved, and some long iron skewers.” The Captain glanced at Andine, Leitha, and Astarell. “I don’t think the ladies would want to hear the details,” he added.

“Ah . . . no,” Albron agreed, “probably not. I’ll gloss over what happened and let it go as ‘heroic.’ ”

“That might be best,” Captain Gelun agreed.

“Where are your clansmen currently?” Twengor asked.

“Up near the frontier,” Wendan replied. “I
doubt
the Kanthons are going to try anything, but it doesn’t hurt to be on the safe side.”

“Good thinking,” Twengor said approvingly. “Why don’t we go up there and take care of the formalities? Then we can march on Kanthon so that we can get the coronation out of the way before we all go home.”

“Which coronation was that, Chief Twengor?” Andine asked with a puzzled frown.

“Yours, little mother,” he said with a fond smile. “I thought it might be sort of nice to crown you Empress of Treborea—right after we’ve sacked and burned the city of Kanthon.”

“Empress?”
Andine’s eyes went very wide.

“It has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say?” Twengor suggested with a sly look.

“All hail her Imperial Majesty, Andine of Treborea,” Leitha intoned.

“Well, now,” Andine said. “Isn’t
that
an interesting idea?”

“Don’t bite your nails, dear,” Leitha told her. “It makes them look terrible.”

Chief Albron’s funeral oration was suitably sad and flowery, and it glossed over the character defects of the departed Smeugor and Tauri. Then each Clan Chief and Sergeant of the armies of Arum rose to recommend Gelun and Wendan as interim Chiefs—until after things settled down a bit.

“Interim?” Leitha murmured to Althalus.

“A few centuries or so,” Althalus explained. “It’s a fairly common sort of thing in Arum. Distant relatives usually don’t take offense when a new Chief has ‘interim’ tacked onto his title. It tends to be dropped after a few generations.”

“Do men
ever
grow up?” she asked.

“Not if we can avoid it, no.”

There were some conferences among the now-leaderless clansmen of south Arum, and some heated arguments about terminology. “Interim” ultimately won out over “temporary,” and the entire matter was settled with hardly any bloodshed.

Then Chief Albron once again rose to address the assembled clans. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “our gracious employer has a few thoughts she’d like to share with us.”

“What’s this?” Althalus demanded of Leitha.

“Andine’s going to make a speech, Daddy,” Leitha replied. “Doesn’t that just thrill you all to pieces?”

“Do you
have
to do that, Leitha?”

“Every now and then, yes. It’s one of those things I just can’t seem to keep bottled up.”

Tiny Andine climbed up into an abandoned farm cart so that the towering men of Arum could see her. “My dear friends,” she said in her soaring voice, “the warriors of the fair mountains of Arum are without peers in the known world, and I am quite overwhelmed by the magnificent victory you have presented to me. My enemies have been crushed, and now we march on Kanthon. I had thought to lay waste that city, but your demonstration of sweet reason here today has caused me to reconsider that course. My enemy, the Aryo of Kanthon, now lies dead. The stones of Kanthon did nothing to offend me, and spanking stones wouldn’t really accomplish very much, now would it?”

They laughed at that.

“With all of Arum at my back, I could ride roughshod over Kanthon and impose my will upon her citizens, but what would that accomplish—except to arouse eternal enmity? I watched with astonishment this day when the most warlike people on earth bowed to reason and averted a return to the clan wars of antiquity. I am but a foolish girl, but the lesson you have presented this day has impressed itself upon me indelibly. Therefore, I go to Kanthon not as a conqueror, but as a liberator. We will
not
burn Kanthon, nor will we slaughter the citizens, nor loot the city. Sweet reason shall be our guide—even as it was
your
guide in your discussions this day. I
will
follow your example, my brave warriors—braver still in that you chose
not
to fight this day.”

The laughter had faded by now, and there was a stony silence as Andine left her impromptu platform.

Then Chief Twengor rose. “She’s the one who’s paying us,” he announced bluntly, “so we’ll all do things her way, won’t we? If anybody has any problems with that, come and see me. I’ll explain it—in detail, if that’s the way you want it.”

“Nice speech,” Leitha murmured.

“Which one?” Althalus asked her.

“Take your pick, Daddy dear,” she suggested. “If I know Andine—and I
do—
she wrote both of them. Twengor’s epilogue fit onto the end of
her
speech just a little too neatly to be a pure accident, don’t you think?”

Late that evening Althalus reached out to Dweia.
We need to talk, Em,
he sent.

Problems?
her voice responded.

I’m starting to lose my grip on Leitha. She’s getting more erratic every day.
She’s trying to hide it, but she’s desperately concerned about Bheid. How’s he
doing?

About the same. I’ve been letting him sleep—well, forcing him, actually.
Every time I bring him back, he starts off again.

How long has it been there?

A month at least.

And he
still
hasn’t come around?

Not noticeably. He’s overwhelmed with guilt, Althalus. He’s blaming him
self for Salkan’s death, and he’s horrified by what he did to Yakhag. I’m having
trouble getting around his early training.

He
has
to be able to function, Em. Perquaine’s right on the verge of boil
ing over, and we’ll be going there before very long, won’t we?

Probably, yes.

The Perquaines are getting involved in a religious controversy, and some
thing like that has “Argan” written all over it. Bheid’s the one who’s supposed
to deal with Argan, isn’t he?

Probably so, yes.

Then he has to get over this—soon. If we lose Bheid, we’ll lose Leitha as
well. She’s the most fragile one in the group, and without Bheid, she’ll come
apart.

You’re more perceptive than I’d thought, love.

It’s no big thing, Em. I used to make my living by reading people, remem
ber? Give it a few more days, and a loud noise will shatter Leitha like a pane of
glass.

I’m working on it, pet. Bheid may be quite a bit older the next time you see
him, but that won’t matter as long as he’s here. If he needs years to get over
this, I’ll see to it that he
has
those years.

The gates of Kanthon stood open and unguarded, and the streets were deserted as Andine rode at the head of her escort to the palace. Sergeant Gebhel ran his hand over his bald head with a regretful sigh. “We could have picked up a fortune here,” he lamented.

“And continued a war we’re sick of fighting in the process,” Khalor reminded him.

“Chief Gweti isn’t going to be
too
happy when peace breaks out here in Treborea.”

“Into each life some rain must fall, Sergeant,” Leitha told him solemnly.

“I’ve noticed that,” Gebhel replied, “and Gweti’s likely to cloud up and rain all over me when I tell him that the Treborean wars have ended.”

Sergeant Khalor dispatched several platoons of soldiers to search the palace thoroughly for any hidden pockets of armed men and to summon any remaining officials to the throne room, “to confer with the Liberatress.”

“Ah, Lord Aidhru.” Dhakan greeted an elderly official who was standing rather apprehensively off to one side as Imperial Andine entered the throne room with her entourage. “I see you managed to survive the recent unpleasantness.”

“Barely,” the old man replied. “What are
you
doing here, Dhakan? I’d have thought you’d be in your dotage by now.”

“You’re at least as old as I am, Aidhru,” Dhakan reminded him. “Why on earth did you let Pelghat push this stupid war as far as he did?”

The old Kanthonese statesman spread his hands helplessly. “I lost control of him, Dhakan. He wriggled out from under my thumb.” Aidhru blinked suddenly. “Is that you, Sergeant Khalor?” he asked with some astonishment. “I thought you’d gotten yourself killed in the last war down here.”

“I’m fairly hard to kill, Lord Aidhru.”

“You’ve changed sides, I see.”

“Better pay, my Lord,” Khalor explained.

“You’ve not met our divine Arya, have you, Aidhru?” Dhakan said.

Aidhru looked at Andine. “She’s only a child,” he observed. “I’d heard that she was thirty feet tall.”

“That’s her voice, my friend,” Dhakan said. “Andine herself is quite tiny, but she
does
manage to make herself heard on occasion.”

“Be nice,” Andine chided gently.

“Yes, Mother,” Dhakan replied with a slight bow.

“I
do
wish you’d all stop that,” Andine complained

“Sorry, your Majesty,” Dhakan apologized. “It’s Leitha’s doing, you know.” Then his tone turned formal. “Lord Aidhru, I have the honor to present my Arya, her Majesty, Andine of Osthos.”

Aidhru bowed deeply.

“And this, my Arya, is Chamberlain Aidhru of Kanthon, who was chief advisor to Aryo Pelghat until that ruler’s recent demise.”

“You might want to add ‘ignored’ in there someplace, Dhakan,” Aidhru suggested. “Toward the end there, Pelghat refused even to see me. There were some foreigners who’d set up camp here in the throne room, and Pelghat only listened to them.”

“We were more or less aware of that,” Althalus stepped in. “When you get down to the meat of things, this recent war didn’t really involve the Kanthons at all. It was one of the end results of a very old disagreement between me and a man named Ghend.”

“Ah,” Aidhru said. “
That
one. It chilled my blood just being in the same room with him.” Then the Kanthonese statesman indicated the throne. “Would you care to try your new seat, Arya Andine?” he asked politely.

“No, Lord Aidhru,” she replied, “I don’t really think so. It
is
just a bit massive for my tastes, and I haven’t really come here to Kanthon as a conqueror. As Lord Althalus just explained, the
real
war was the one between him and the man named Ghend.” She smiled winsomely. “In reality, Lord Aidhru, Kanthon and Osthos were little more than innocent bystanders. Right now, we have more important things to do than sitting around chewing old soup. The major battleground of the recent unpleasantness was central Treborea, and we’ve pretty much lost this year’s wheat crop. We’re staring in the face of a long, hungry winter, my Lord, and even if it bankrupts both Kanthon and Osthos, I will
not
let the people starve.”

“We’re in total agreement on that issue, Arya Andine.”

“Is there some conference room nearby?” Dhakan asked. “My feet are starting to hurt, and I rather believe we’ll be at this for quite some time, so we might as well get comfortable.”