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  “Exactly.” Sahrdohr’s smile was even thinner than before. “And if Sir Dahlnar starts giving the same advice?”

  “Especially if he comes slowly and gradually to share Thorandas’ concerns, yes.” Varnaythus nodded. “Not too quickly, though. Borandas may not be the very smartest man in the entire Kingdom, but he’s not exactly a fool, either. He’s going to think twice-more likely three or four times-before he steps into any sort of arrangement with Cassan. For that matter, Thorandas isn’t going to be in any hurry to forget how badly Cassan burned his fingers last time he and Tellian squared off.”

  “No, but I’ve had a thought about that.”

  “What sort of thought?” Varnaythus’ tone was a bit cautious, and Sahrdohr chuckled.

  “It’s not that inventive,” the magister assured his superior. “But that’s the second interesting tidbit I got from our good Chancellor. According to Shaftmaster, Thorandas is in the market for a wife. In fact, Sir Whalandys approves of that; he thinks it’s past time Thorandas settled down and started breeding heirs of his own. Unfortunately-from my esteemed superior’s perspective, at any rate-Sir Thorandas seems rather taken with Shairnayith Axehammer.”

  “He does?” Varnaythus’ eyes narrowed, and Sahrdohr leaned back and raised both hands.

  “That’s what Shaftmaster seems to believe, at any rate, and he’s not very happy about the notion.”

  “I can see why he might not be, given how enthusiastically he’s been supporting Tellian at Court,” Varnaythus observed in a tone of considerable understatement. Then he frowned. “I can see why he might not be,” he repeated, “but I didn’t pick up a hint of anything of the sort from Cassan the last time I was in Toramos.”

  “Maybe he isn’t aware of Thorandas’ thinking,” Sahrdohr suggested.

  “ Cassan? ” Varnaythus barked a laugh. “Trust me, if Shaftmaster’s right and Thorandas really is looking in Shairnayith’s direction, Cassan knows about it, all right. He’d never miss something like that, especially where Shairnayith is concerned! In fact,” his eyes narrowed again, “that could be the problem. He dotes on the girl, after all, and it could be that he’s perfectly aware of the opportunity and simply chooses to ignore it. If he’d been in any rush to marry her off, they could have managed it long ago, I’m sure. There have to have been plenty of other offers for her by now, at any rate. She’s-what, twenty-two? — for Carnadosa’s sake! Do you seriously think nobody’s even so much as tested the water where a prize like her is concerned?”

  “Maybe there’ve been quite a few offers and he simply hasn’t thought any of them were worth accepting,” Sahrdohr pointed out. “She’s his older daughter, after all. As you say, that makes her the kind of prize that doesn’t come along often. That’s a political token a man like Cassan isn’t going to be in a hurry to use too soon!”

  “That’s true enough,” Varnaythus acknowledged. “But she’s a deep one herself, and the Lady knows she worships the ground her father walks on. The possibility of a direct marriage alliance between the Axehammers and the Daggeraxes?” The wizard snorted. “She’d have to recognize the potential advantages Cassan could wring out of that! And short of Yurokhas himself-and Fiendark knows Yurokhas would never marry an Axehammer-where’s she going to find a better marriage than to the North Riding’s heir?”

  “Agreed. On the other hand, the consequences would be fairly obvious to just about everyone,” Sahrdohr pointed out, “and the Great Council would have to approve the marriage.”

  “If Borandas approved it, he, Cassan, and Yeraghor between them would have a clear majority.”

  “And would Markhos be foolish enough to let it go through, anyway?” Sahrdohr challenged. “ He’d have to assent, too.”

  “If he were around to do the assenting,” Varnaythus pointed out in turn, his voice soft. “If he wasn’t-if the Great Council happened to be acting as regent to a minor heir-then that wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  “No,” the magister said slowly.

  “So if Cassan and Yeraghor were to decide this marriage would be a good idea, and if Thorandas is as receptive to the notion as your good friend the Chancellor seems to be suggesting, then we might just have found another argument to help sway Cassan to our thinking about the best way to deal with the Crown’s unfortunate support for Tellian’s little project, mightn’t we?”

  The two wizards gazed at each other through their linked gramerhains and slowly, slowly smiled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The membership of the council of war no longer struck its participants as bizarre, although there were moments when any one of them was likely to feel as if he’d fallen into some sort of fever dream. On the other hand, those moments were no longer as common as they had been, and they were becoming steadily less frequent.

  Not that anyone expected they were ever going to disappear entirely.

  “Well, I suppose we should get started,” Sir Vaijon Almerhas said, looking around the spacious wooden table.

  That table sat in one of the stout stone buildings which had blossomed along the new, Axeman-style high road between the Escarpment and the equally new Lake Hurgrum over the past few years. They were obviously of dwarvish design and construction, their stones laid without mortar yet cut so precisely it would have required a sledgehammer to drive a knife blade into any single joint. One of the by-products of enjoying the services of Silver Cavern’s strongest sarthnasiks, Vaijon reflected, was that Chanharsa could turn (and had turned) several thousand cubic yards of rock into perfectly uniform, impossibly precisely “cut” stone blocks without so much as turning a hair. Driving the tunnel clear up through the Escarpment had provided them with what was literally a small mountain of building material, and hradani and dwarvish work crews had made good use of it.

  These buildings had been constructed specifically to serve as the central military base for the Ghoul Moor campaigns, however, which meant they had very lofty ceilings for any dwarvish designed structure. Sothoii tended to be tall, and Vaijon was taller even than most of them, but even he tended to feel a bit undersized when he looked up at the meeting chamber’s twelve-foot ceilings and nine-foot doorframes. Rooms sized for Horse Stealer hradani had that effect on most people. Of course, heating them could be a tad difficult, especially in a north Norfressan winter, as Vaijon had discovered over the past several years. Fortunately, the dwarves who’d designed these buildings had pronounced opinions on things like comfortable winter temperatures and they’d built heating ducts into the concrete foundations when they poured them. In fact, they’d gone even further and used some of the water power tapped from the lake to drive fans that circulated heated air through ceiling ducts, as well.

  Which was one reason he had Sermandahknarthas building the Order of Tomanak its own properly spacious-and comfortably heated-hall back in Hurgrum, as well. With luck, they’d have it finished before first snowfall and he’d finally spend a winter in Hurgrum without icicles hanging from the tip of his nose.

  At the moment, however, brilliant sunlight spilled down from a sky like polished lapis lazuli, dancing on the enormous lake’s sapphire water, and the chamber’s windows were open to admit a cooling breeze. Distant shouts drifted in with the breeze as construction crews continued their unending labors, and he could hear a leather-lunged hradani sergeant counting cadence from the drill square beside the nearest block of barracks. Bhanak Karathson’s Hurgrumese had learned the value of discipline, training, and drill and used it well. Now they were teaching it to the rest of the Northern Hradani, and if the new Confederate Army remained short of the smooth, polished perfection of the Royal and Imperial Army’s demonstration drill teams, Vaijon would have been perfectly willing to match its battalions against any regular Axeman field force. They were certainly better than any non — Axeman infantry he’d ever seen, and he found that a very comforting thought just at the moment.

  Although he was the second youngest person present, Vaijon was, by common consent, the council’s mo
derator. In no small part, that was because his background was probably the closest of that of any of its members’ to something approaching true neutrality. An Axeman by birth, he came from outside the millennium-long hatred and mutual bloodletting of Sothoii and hradani, and as a champion of Tomanak by training and choice, he served the Judge of Princes. As such, he and the members of his chapter of the Order of Tomanak were sworn to strict neutrality in any confrontation between princes or kingdoms so long as the God of War’s code was not transgressed.

  More than that, he commanded the one force which could tell any of the proposed expedition’s other commanders they had no authority over it. And while the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order was going to provide the smallest single component of the campaign’s field force, it was also the most disciplined and highly trained. For the last couple of campaigns, it had been used as often as not as what Prince Bahnak had referred to as the expeditionary forces’ “fire brigade,” and no one in his right mind would care to get on its bad side. That reflection brought Vaijon a sense of satisfaction he occasionally found a bit difficult to prevent from sliding over into complacent pride, and as he considered the other senior officers gathered about the table, he reminded himself (in a mental voice which sounded remarkably like Bahzell Bahnakson’s) to not get too full of himself. All of those other officers were at least as experienced as he was, at least where campaigns and battlefield maneuvers were concerned, and there were some dauntingly powerful personalities seated around that table. Some fairly prickly ones, for that matter…which was one reason he had no intention of mentioning that another reason Prince Bahnak and Baron Tellian had selected him for this particular assignment was that he’d developed something of a talent for herding cats over the last few years.

  Hurthang Marahgson, Bahzell’s fourth cousin and the senior member of the Hurgrum Chapter, sat directly across from Vaijon. Hurthang stood “only” two inches over seven feet, but he was quite possibly even stronger than Bahzell. And while the symbols of Tomanak might be a crossed mace and sword, Hurthang disdained such puny weapons in favor of the great, two-handed daggered axe from which Clan Iron Axe took its name. Of course, he normally wielded it one — handed, which Vaijon found just a bit flamboyant even for a Horse Stealer. At the moment, however, Hurthang looked a little uncomfortable (although only someone who knew him as well as Vaijon did was likely to notice it) in his resplendently embroidered, finely woven green surcoat. By choice, Hurthang preferred attire as practical and plain as his cousin Bahzell’s, but his wife Farmah had spent much of the winter working on that surcoat for this very meeting, and a warrior who could have-and had-glared unawed into the very teeth of death had been powerless to resist the calm insistence of the mother of his child.

  General Yurgazh Charkson sat to Hurthang’s right, and his expression and body language were a bit on the stiff side, Vaijon judged. Hopefully, that stiffness was only temporary, and Vaijon suspected it had more to do with the unanticipated nature of his elevation than to anything else. Yurgazh had worked well as one of Prince Barodahn’s subordinate commanders the previous year, and he was a known quantity to everyone else seated around the table. Still, of all those present he was the closest to a “self-made man,” a former free sword mercenary who’d fought his way to his present rank and position through sheer guts, ability, determination, and-even in Churnazh of Navahk’s service-integrity. The remarkable thing, really, wasn’t that he’d won the trust of his former adversaries following Navahk’s surrender, but that he’d survived under Churnazh.

  Prince Arsham Churnazhson, seated beside Yurgazh, looked like a man who wasn’t entirely happy to be there. On the other hand, he didn’t look like someone who was un happy to be there, either. There were greater depths to Arsham than Vaijon had anticipated before Navahk’s defeat, and while it seemed evident that defeat still stung, Navahk’s new prince was a practical man. And a prudent one, which was the only reason he’d survived Prince Churnazh’s reign. Certainly his paternity didn’t explain that survival, at any rate!

  Arsham was still referred to by his own people as “the Bastard,” but however odd it might have seemed to an Axeman, the appellation had always been a title of respect in Navahk. A title, indeed, which specifically separated him from his father’s reputation for tyranny…and one which could only have made Churnazh even more suspicious of him.

  Among hradani, more than any of the other Races of Man, rape was an unforgivable crime. Hradani women, with their immunity to the Rage, had provided most of what little stability and order hradani society had managed to cling to for too many centuries for that particular outrage to be tolerated. Those in a position of power might get away with it-for a time-but no known rapist could ever hope to command the true loyalty of any hradani city-state or clan. Yet also among hradani, unlike too few of the other Races of Man, rape imposed no stigma upon its victim…or upon any child born of it. For that matter, children in general were unspeakably precious to hradani, with their low fertility rates, and they were often too busy rejoicing in any child’s birth to worry over minor details like establishing its precise paternity. So while there was enormous shame in Churnazh’s rape of Arsham’s mother, there was no shame in Arsham’s birth, and the fact that his mother descended in a collateral branch from the previous ruling family of Navahk gave him a claim to the throne in the eyes of his subjects which neither his late, unlamented father nor his fortunately deceased half-brothers could ever have enjoyed.

  Of course, that same claim had been one of the reasons Arsham had been very, very careful never to dabble in politics during his father’s lifetime. He’d spent his time with the army, instead, which had posed potential problems of its own, given how Churnazh himself had used the army to slaughter his way to power. That was one reason Arsham had always preferred field commands which kept him well away from Navahk, and his father had been perfectly happy to keep him there. He’d still managed to become dangerously popular with his troops, yet he’d also made it abundantly clear-to his father, at least; his half-brothers had been less inclined to believe it-that he had absolutely no interest in the throne of Navahk. The fact that he’d been Churnazh’s best field commander had probably helped his father’s willingness to let him keep his head, Vaijon thought. And then there’d been the minor fact that his mother and his legitimately born older sister had been comfortably housed in Navahk…where they stood hostage for his good conduct, not to mention dissuading him from seeking vengeance upon his mother’s rapist. That was something Churnazh had carefully never discussed with him openly, but Arsham had never been a fool and it wasn’t as if Churnazh hadn’t made examples of far too many of his enemies’ families in the course of his reign.

  Now Arsham found himself upon that throne he’d never sought, after all, with his mother restored to a place of honor in Navahk, and that could never have happened without Navahk’s defeat. More, he sat upon the throne of a Navahk more prosperous than it had ever dreamed of being, as a member of the Council of Princes Bahnak of Hurgrum had created as what was effectively the Royal Council of the Northern Confederation. He was far too intelligent to believe for a moment that he could ever have risen to such a position under other circumstances. Besides, unlike his father, Arsham’s word meant something, and he’d sworn fealty to Bahnak and the great charter Bahnak had drawn up for the Confederation. Whether it rankled or not, that was the end of the matter as far as his loyalty was concerned; if anyone could be confident of that, a champion of Tomanak was that anyone.

  Sir Trianal Bowmaster sat to Hurthang’s left. Trianal was the only person at that table younger than Vaijon, yet he sat back comfortably, his expression and his body language equally relaxed among the presence of those who had once been his sworn enemies. He still hadn’t overcome quite all the attitudes his conservative mother had instilled in him as a child, but Tellian had been stretching his heir’s thought processes for the better part of ten years now, and it was starting to show. The thought amused Vaijon, particularly give
n the way his own thought processes had required a little “stretching” once upon a time. And how much more…vigorously that stretching had been achieved, for that matter.

  Sir Yarran Battlecrow sat at Trianal’s elbow. A grizzled, competent warrior who was now well into middle age (or possibly even a little further than that, although Vaijon wasn’t going to be foolish enough to suggest anything of the sort where he might hear of it), Yarran had been “loaned” to the expedition at Trianal’s request by Sir Festian Wrathson, Lord Warden of Glanharrow. The commander of Lord Festian’s scouts, Sir Yarran would perform the same function for Trianal, and the comfortable, confident relationship between him and his youthful overlord was easy to see.

  Gorsandahknarthas zoi’Felahkandarnas sat beside Sir Yarran, in a chair which was considerably higher than that of anyone else seated around the table. Gorsan wasn’t there as a member of the war council per se, but as the supervisor of the entire Derm Canal project, his interest in the summer campaign was obvious, and he had a better grasp than anyone else present of how well-and how readily-their troops could be kept in supply. The tall (for an Axeman, at any rate), black-haired human in well-worn mail seated beside Gorsan, on the other hand, was a member of the war council in good standing. Rianthus of Sindor was normally the commander of Kilthandahknarthas’ personal security force, but this summer the ex-major in the Royal and Imperial Mounted Infantry had been detailed to command the relatively small force of Dwarvenhame infantry which would provide close security for the dwarvish combat engineers who’d been attached to the field force.

  And then, finally, between Rianthus and Vaijon, there was the fellow who most definitely was not a member of the council of war, although no one was likely to mention that to him. Exactly how Tellian-or, for that matter, King Markhos-expected even a champion of Tomanak to keep Prince Yurokhas out of the inevitable fighting was more than Vaijon was prepared to guess. He intended to do his best, but it wasn’t going to be a simple little task like, oh, slaying a demon or two.