The Ultimate Stonemage: A Modest Autobiography (36 page)

Tary was angry at the result, of course, but I had won fair and square, and he let me pocket my winnings without a fight. Then he rose from his seat and said, “I have had enough chess for this day, I think.”

I said, “Wait, will you not have a second game for double stakes, for I sense my luck is now on the wane, and I am sure you will come out the better for it.”

He said, “I think I will not.” Then he walked for the door and took his cloak from the hook.

I could see he would talk carelessly now, so I shouted after him, “I surely hope you have more luck with your myrmidons than you do with your chess pieces.”

He said, “I will. You shall see that for yourself soon enough, for I have a fine attack planned against the Cypriots.”

I said, “Ah, that will be a hard battle. There must be four hundred myrmidons in the Cypriot encampment, whereas they say you have only one hundred.”

He was walking through the doorway right then, but my words made him indignant. He turned and said, “One hundred? I will have you know I command nearly five hundred. I am a man of importance, and as such I must go now. Goodbye.”

He left then, and I made a note of this valuable information. Then, after I had played a few more games of chess—and won every game!—I went back to Raella’s camp by the same circuitous route I had taken to get to Chonia in the first place.

That evening, I presented
Raella with the information I had gathered: not just how many myrmidons Tary commanded, but also what manner of man he was, and the way he approached the game of chess, which is very telling of a commander’s style in war. Raella was envious of my bravery, though, and, instead of thanking me from the bottom of his heart, he tried to belittle my accomplishment, saying, “I already knew the number of his myrmidons. My scouts have counted them from a hill overlooking the town.”

I said, “What are the vague reports of scouts compared to my information, which comes directly from the enemy commander. And besides, if it were not for me, how would you have gained the detailed insights into Tary’s character which I have given you.”

He said, “As for that information, it is as solid as vapour.”

“Ho, these are your words now,” I said, “but I will warrant you use the facts well enough when you plan your attacks. Mark my words, this man Tary is fierce in battle, but he is reckless. Take my advice: present an obstinate defence which is like the shell of the leathery turtle, and then, when his forces are rebuffed, deliver a swift counterattack with the speed and fury of the blacksnake.”

Well, as I have said, Raella pretended to dismiss my words. Since his good opinion meant little to me, I left the place without further comment.

Now, mark this. A few days later the two armies met in battle outside Chonia. I watched from the hills above, together with many of the citizens of that city. As we sat with our drinks and pies, we saw Tary’s army deliver a furious attack, exactly as I had predicted. Raella’s troops resisted these attacks, then delivered a counterattack, driving straight through the heart of the Indian force to divide it, then soundly defeating each half.

All around me, folk were saying, “Oh, see how they fight! He is a great strategist, that Raella.” Of course, I smiled at these words, for I knew this great strategist was merely following, to the letter, the precise instructions I had given him. I rebuked my companions then, saying, “If credit is to be apportioned fairly, it must go to me. Why, the battle we are watching conforms so closely to my own plans that I might as well be directing our troops myself.” They did not believe me at first, but when I explained my story to them, they were awestruck to think that the real general in charge of their forces had been sitting with them on the hillside all along.

A Fourteenth Section of the Eleventh Part

In Which I Reveal At Last How It Was I Who Won The War

After the fight was done
and Chonia was saved, I decided to stay there for a time, so I might bask in the warmth of victory. Raella stayed there too, and was considered a hero by the townsfolk; but after I spread the word of my involvement in the battle, they thought me a much greater hero, for he had merely pointed to myrmidons and barked commands, whereas I had ventured alone into the heart of the enemy’s camp. This turnabout in public opinion irked Raella bitterly, compounding my satisfaction.

While I was there, the news started to come in that the Indian armies occupying certain other towns and cities in
Veoth and Syria were also on the run. I explained to everyone that I had carefully chosen Chonia as my arena, and my victory there had inevitably led to other victories for us, because Chonia was located near the centre of the Indian vanguard, and to weaken the centre is to pierce the heart.

As the months passed, it became clear that Indian forces everywhere were withdrawing, and victory was at hand. The townsfolk bought me gifts of food and fine wine, saying, “Ah, Yreth, how right you were. See, the wave of despair you predicted surges through the Indian forces, driving their armies from all our empire’s lands.”

Well, I took the gifts and thanked them, but I was sorely puzzled. The battle in Chonia was important, to be sure, but was it truly possible that this single action had led to the winning of the war? No, it seemed to me there were even more significant events at work, and I had a strange feeling that, whatever those events were, I had been their cause.

I asked many of the commanders for their opinions, for by now they were returning from the wars. “What events,” I said, “precipitated the sudden retreat of our enemies?”

One of them, a ship’s captain, said, “It was the work of our navies, who launched a deadly attack on
Maybo, the capital of India, and also upon other towns and cities on the Indian coast. After these attacks, the Indians knew they were no match for us.”

I said, “What is your evidence for this claim?”

He said, “Before my return, I talked to some Indian men. They told me what a grievous and demoralizing blow it was to them to discover their greatest cities had been laid waste.”

Another captain explained to me that, yes, it was the navies that were responsible, but the key victory was the sinking of a certain sacred ship which, according to Indian superstition, brought them good fortune in battle.

Later, a commander, a shrewd man named
Demeth, said to me, “I will tell you the truth of the matter, although it is a great secret. This victory of ours had less to do with our work upon the battlefield, and more with events in the Indian court.”

I said, “Your words intrigue me. Explain yourself.”

He said, “No, for this is a great secret, and if I told you, you would think me a traitor.”

I said, “Perhaps your words would be disagreeable to some, but I for one would rather hear the honest truth than a patriotic lie.”

He said, “Ah, you are a rare and perceptive fellow, I can see that. Well, then, I will tell you. The truth is that the king of India had already lost much of his will to fight, for many of his commanders had died in the battlefield, and some were very dear to him. The final blow, according to my sources, who are spies working in India, came one night when a dark and sinister figure crept into the palace and took the lives of his two brave sons.”

I asked, “Who was this assassin?”

He said, “Oh, some enemy of his, I am sure. Their country is racked from within by such murderous hatreds. The king was so dismayed by the loss that he put an end to his warlike ways.”

One thing at least was clear to me: all these explanations were typical of the simple-minded gossip one hears upon battlefields everywhere. And yet, phrases spoken by these commanders lit fiery beacons in my mind:
a great naval attack upon Indian cities
, and
dark and sinister figures killing the Indian princes
, and the
sinking of a sacred ship.
I knew there was a nugget of truth within these stories, but each was only part of the story—and it was a story only I might understand fully.

Let me then share with you my own hypothesis, which, when you consider it fairly, does a more perfect job than these soldiers’ tales of explaining why the Indians so abruptly removed their myrmidons from our lands and made peace with us once again.

You remember, while I was sailing the Pacific, I had sent a fleet of great ships to lay waste to the barbaric peoples of
Poagh. Well, later on I thought about this, and I asked myself, what would have happened if those ships had, through some error in navigation, sailed past Poagh? It would be an easy mistake to make, certainly, for Poagh is a very small island, and could be easily missed. If this happened, where would those powerful ships have sailed?

The answer to this question is obvious: they would finally arrive at
Dranseet, just as I did. Moreover, if they followed the coast west, they would come, after a month or two, to the coastal cities of India, and they would lay waste to those cities believing them to be the islands that had so offended their ruler.

When I thought it through, I knew this was precisely what had happened, for the logic of it made so much sense. The great ships had sailed all that distance and attacked. They launched ten thousand rockets upon those Indian cities, then they let their thousands of myrmidons loose, killing every man, woman and child in those places.

Of course, the cities of India called upon their own puny warships to fight these invading giants. Their best efforts, however, were useless against such powerful craft, and, very soon, all those Indian warships lay on the bottom of the harbour, with rocket holes through their hulls.

Wave upon wave of the giant ships made their attacks, for there were two hundred of them in the whole fleet, you remember, until at last the people of India cried out for mercy.

“Who is it that unleashes such destruction upon our towns and cities?” they said.

Then others replied, “Why, who else but our enemies in Cyprus! How strong they are, and how foolish we were to declare war upon them.”

But it does not end there. If you cast your mind back, you will also remember how, many years earlier, in America, I had given a final order to my Behemoths, telling them to strike at the princes and kings who commanded the enemy armies. The Behemoths, mistaking my instructions, ran from the battlefield and away into the distance.

In their brutish minds, they reasoned thus: “Yreth is a Cypriot and has asked us to attack the kings and princes of his enemies. By this, he surely means not these armies before us now, but the enemies of his people, the Cypriots. Let us travel hence to
Cyprus and see who those enemies might be.” So they fled the battlefield, seeking Cyprus. The journey surely took them many long years, for I fancy no ship would have those brutes as passengers and probably they were obliged to swim across the vast ocean.

At last, though, the Behemoths completed their great journey, arriving in Cypriot lands. Once there, they quickly understood who were the enemies to our people and they travelled far and wide, seeking out the tents of Indian commanders, nobles and princes all, and killing them without mercy. Then they travelled to India itself, and slew the princes in their royal palace, much to the king’s dismay.

The description of the “dark and sinister” assassins perfectly matches a Behemoth, for they were exceedingly sinister to behind, and their hides were black, which is certainly a dark colour. Moreover, who but the
Behemoths could creep into a heavily guarded palace and murder princes with such ease?

It is easy to guess what must have happened next. The king of India, beside himself with grief, said, “Enough! I will call back all my myrmidons who are so wrongfully occupying the cities of the
Cypriot Empire. Perhaps then these terrible fleets and fearsome black assassin myrmidons, which I believe to be from Cyprus, will cease their attacks upon my lands and my family.”

But his counsellors, many of whom were surely naval men, just as they are here, said, “No, king. Let us fight on. Our sacred ship will yet bring us victory at sea, and a great naval victory would be a fitting revenge against the Cypriots and their powerful forces.”

The king agreed, and, in order that the sacred ship should not be sunk, he commanded that it should be sent away from Indian waters and instead travel to the Mediterranean, there to sink a few of the weaker Cypriot craft.

“The Cypriots will not think to look for it there,” he said, “and besides, all their warships are busy attacking India.”

I think you will now guess the thrust of my argument. That sacred ship was none other than the
Flame
, the craft I defeated with my proud
Moray
. This explained the small size of the Indian ship, for it was an ancient vessel, and warships are built larger today. Also, it is why there were no slaves or myrmidons aboard, for the Indians would not suffer such folk to step upon their holiest ship. Finally, it explained the name of the craft, which, I must confess, had puzzled me from the first, for what does a flame have to do with the sea? Why, nothing, to be sure, but it bears an intimate connection with temples and holiness and all manner of sacred things.

Well, once the king of India heard his sacred ship was gone, the rope had frayed its final strand. Despairing utterly, he gave the orders for his armies to retreat, and they quickly obeyed. However, when our commanders saw the movement, they did not stop to wonder at what miracle might have brought it about. No, they merely quaffed their ale, saying, “Ho! We are clever fellows indeed! We have outsmarted the Indian armies, and they are retreating in terror before our troops.”

Now, you may say all this hypothesis is groundless, a mere flight of fancy. However, a few years ago, I overheard a man talking of his travels, and I heard him mention that he had been to the rocky island of
Poagh. Excited, I quickly interrupted his conversation and asked him whether the people of Poagh still lived.

He said, “They live, yes. But it is a barbaric, simple life.”

I said, “In your time among them, did you hear tales of a terrible attack upon their island, laying waste to their towns and killing most of their number.”

He said, “No, I heard of
no such attack.
”

There you have it, then. It is the proof of my hypothesis, and now you can see why the war came to such a rapid end. It was not the strength of the Cypriot armies which drove off the invaders, but rather the results of my own actions, guided by the hand of God.