Great Kings' War Read online

  "Father, they are true. Yet, there is more to be said than you have heard."

  Sesklos winced at the First Speaker's use of the term "Father" now, although it was surely true that he was Anaxthenes' spiritual father. Sesklos had been Father Superior of the Temple Academy when the young Anaxthenes, the youngest son of a destitute noble, had been brought to the Academy to be raised as one of Styphon's Own. There was little to recall now of that tow-headed adolescent in the broad shouldered, shaven-headed Archpriest who faced him now; only the piercing, startlingly blue eyes were the same.

  Like that outcast of thirty years ago, Sesklos too had come a long way. After twenty-five years as Father Superior, few had considered him as a candidate for the Inner Circle, much less Styphon's Own Voice. But he had been given the authority to mold the minds and hearts of young priests-to-be, and mold them he did. When he had at last entered the Archpriesthood, his rise had been meteoric. Even now half the Archpriests of the Inner Circle were his former charges. Anaxthenes had been his best and brightest pupil, as well as his most willful. His body had grown straight and tall, but his ambition had grown even greater.

  Anaxthenes don't fail me now! he thought. He was too old, too burdened with past sorrows to see the son of his heart burned at the stake or buried alive in the catacombs beneath Old Balph. Styphon's House needed all her strongest sons now more than ever. For a moment he could see all the young priests he had raised over the years march through his chamber, starting out young and growing into to old age as they passed through the room.

  "Father, are you all right?"

  Sesklos shook his head to clear if of ghosts from the past. Old age was like a thief, at first stealing those things rarely used, then growing bolder and more daring, until nothing was left but oblivion.

  "Why, my son, in our hour of need have you helped rend the very fabric of the Temple?"

  "That cloth has already been rent asunder, first by the Usurper Kalvan who violated the secret of the Fireseed Trinity, then by the traitors Archpriests Zothnes and Krastokles. The old ways are doomed; our House must rebuild itself, or die."

  "These are strong words, my son. Yet, true. There is a new wind in the air, one so strong it shakes Styphon's Own Throne. Are you so certain the blocks of Roxthar and Cimon are strong enough to build a new foundation for his Temple?"

  "I believe so. They are the only clay of this House that does not crumble at Kalvan's words. There is far too much sand in the clay of Dracar and Timothanes."

  "And what of the clay of Sesklos?"

  "Like rock, but deeply etched by the winds of time."

  Sesklos had to fight to keep a smile from his lips. Anaxthenes always had a way with his old teacher, like a favorite concubine with an old king. "I fear you are right. But the One God worshippers are like a flame in the breeze. Only the Weather Goddess knows which wind will fan them or willy-nilly blow the fire into your face."

  "Yes, Father, but is also true that only they have roots that dig deep into the soil itself. The others but live on the surface and are buffeted by every zephyr. And it is a strong and ill wind blowing our way."

  "What if I agree? What can I do?" he asked.

  "My Father, place your hand upon mine in the Council."

  "Dracar will denounce us both. His lust for my chair blinds him even to the weather."

  "Then promise him that which is his innermost desire."

  Sesklos felt an invisible hand clench his heart. "But I have saved that gift for the son who is not of my loins but of my heart. Does he value it so little?"

  "Father, as a sign of your love, I value it above all things. But of what value is the chair when the body lies prostrate and unmoving?"

  Sesklos sighed, and rubbed the sudden goose bumps on his arms. He was too tired and cold to resist. "I will do as you ask, my son. It is all I have left to give. I only hope the Temple you build will be stronger than the ruins I fear I will be leaving behind."

  THREE

  I

  Grunting with effort, two workmen and an underpriest of Dralm pulled the heavy door of the pulping room shut. The noise from the pulping room faded from an ear-battering din to a distant rumble, although Kalvan could still hear the vibration of the horse-powered pulper through the stone floor. The other sounds—the thump of the horses' hooves, the squeal of un-oiled chains and green-wood bearings, and the shouts of the foremen as they drove the ex-Temple slaves of the work crew to keep things going—were no longer clearly distinguishable.

  Kalvan turned to Brother Mytron. "How are the horses bearing up under this work?

  "Better than men would," Mytron replied. His tone hinted of problems best not discussed here in the open hallway. Had Mytron been listening too long to Duke Skranga, who saw Styphon's spies everywhere? Or was he just been naturally cautious about speaking within the hearing of men he didn't know? Kalvan hoped it was the latter; Skranga's zeal to prove his loyalty to the Great Kingdom (and therefore his innocence of any part of Prince Gormoth's murder) was leading him to see Styphoni lurking under every bed and urge others to do likewise.

  Meanwhile, Kalvan decided against mentioning his plans to make most of the paper mill equipment water-powered. Apart from the matter of security, it would involve either moving the mill or a lot of digging of millponds and building of dams and spillways. There was no guarantee the men and money would be available when spring came and the ice melted, and it would be pointless to even make the effort if the winter's work hadn't discovered how to produce usable paper. So far all the mill had produced was mush that smelled like the Altoona drunk tank on the Sunday morning after a particularly lively Saturday night.

  "How goes the rag room?"

  "Well enough, Sire, but no one is working there now. We've chopped all the rags as fine as necessary and no more have come in the last moon-quarter."

  This was no surprise. There wasn't too much difference between the rags the mill was cutting up for paper and the clothes the poor of Hostigos were wearing this winter.

  "I'll see what the quartermasters can do about providing you with something." The quartermasters would probably say they couldn't do anything, but Kalvan's experience of supply sergeants led him to expect they would be holding back more than they'd admit to anyone. A platoon sergeant was "just anyone," the Great King of Hos-Hostigos was somebody more.

  Brother Mytron led the way down the hall and through a freshly-painted wooden door into another hall, with log walls and a roughly-planked roof. It was cold enough to make Kalvan wrap his cloak more tightly. Wind blew through chinks between the logs and planks, and dead leaves crunched underfoot. About all that could be said for these hastily-carpentered passageways between the buildings of the mill was that they were better than wading through knee-deep snow in a wind that made five layers of wool seem as inadequate as a stripper's G-string.

  Warmth and foul-smelling steam greeted Kalvan and Mytron at the end of the passageway: also, flickering torchlight and heartfelt curses in an accent that Kalvan could only tell was from somewhere other than Hos-Hostigos. Beyond a row of shelves holding a fine collection of blackened clay pots, Kalvan saw a muscular man with a blond beard standing stripped to the waist beside a row of posts on a stone-walled bed of hot coals. The smoke from the coals mixed with the steam to make Kalvan swallow a harsh cough. The man wouldn't have heard it in any case; he was too busy thundering at a small boy who was cowering in one corner of the room.

  "—and next time you let the goat fat burn, I'll try to find a coating that calls for boy's fat. Your fat, you lazy Dralm-forsaken whore's son—oh, I beg your pardon, Brother Myt—Your Majesty!" The man bowed and started to kneel, but Kalvan waved him to his feet.

  "Don't stop your work for me. Just tell me what you have here. It smells like a glue works."

  "Well, maybe that's not so far from what it is," said the bearded man. "You see, Sire, you said that sometimes animal fat was used to coat the—pulp—to make paper. You didn't say what kind or how much, which was a good test
, by Dralm, of our wisdom."

  It was really a sign that Kalvan didn't know himself; there were times when he would have given a couple of fingers for one college-level chemistry textbook. Not that anybody here would know the scientific names of the essential chemicals for treating wood pulp, but at least the book would help him to recognize them. Right now, he wouldn't have known aluminum chloride if he fell into a vat of it. So they were going to have to make do with clay and animal-fat sizings on the paper, if they ever made those work.

  "You're trying to find out what kind of animal fat works best?"

  "Yes. I've got all these pots lined up and I try a different mix in each one. This first one's goat and sheep, the next is sheep and horse, the third one's pure horse fat..."

  The man listed the ingredients of all eight pots, with the pride of a father listing his children, but Kalvan only remembered the first three. After that he realized he was listening to a description of the experimental method: rule of thumb—crude no doubt—but a foundation by which a lot of things this world desperately needed could be built."

  "Master—?"

  "Ermut, Your Majesty."

  "Master Ermut, I'd say you passed Dralm's test very well. Your wisdom will be rewarded."

  Ermut bowed. "Thanks be to the Allfather Dralm and Your Majesty. I'll say this much, though. Being a freed man here has been a boon. Still, I'd not cry at being still a slave as long as I was free of Styphon's collar."

  Ermut didn't dare turn his back on his Great King, but Kalvan got a look at it on the way out. He'd always wondered what the scars left by those iron-tipped whips they'd found at the Sask Town temple-farm looked like—now he knew.

  II

  Kalvan sipped at his freshly refilled cup of mulled wine and contemplated the logs crackling in the hearth of what had once been the lord's bedchamber. Now Mytron had his bed in one corner of it and used the rest of it for an office and for entertaining junketing Great Kings.

  When young Baron Nicomoth rode back from the Battle of Fyk, where he'd fought gallantly, he found his mother dead, his outbuildings burned, most of his hands run off to the Hostigi army or even farther, the crops rotting in the fields and not two brass coins to rub together to remedy any of it. So he buried his mother, swallowed his pride, sold the family lands to the Great King, then took a commission in the Royal Horseguards.

  Since the qualities of intelligence and adaptability were in as short supply here-and-now as they were back home, Kalvan quickly noted the young man's usefulness and made him his aide-de-camp. In the way some junior officers will favor a respected senior, Nicomoth had his beard trimmed into a Van-dyke similar to Kalvan's. He was even said to walk like the Great King. Nicomoth was on the slim side, but other than that their builds were quite similar, particularly when they were both in armor. Kalvan was sure that one of these days he'd be able to take advantage of having a double.

  Nicomoth had left behind a rather good if small wine cellar, which Kalvan and Mytron were now busily depleting. Kalvan emptied his cup, set it down and decided against another if he wanted to be fit to ride back to Tarr-Hostigos tonight.

  "Mytron, I've said I'll see what I can do about more rags. Is there anything else you need?"

  Mytron looked into his wine cup, wrapped his ink-stained fingers around it and then shook his head. "The Potters Guild has promised to deliver what they call 'all the clay they have found fit for the Great King's service.' I will be charitable until I have seen how much or how little that is. It is said that the clay pits have frozen harder than ever before in living memory."

  That was probably true, but for the sake of the Potters Guild Kalvan hoped "all the clay" was "much" rather than "little." Brother Mytron's placid and even-tempered manner was deceptive, and Kalvan himself couldn't endlessly bow to the guilds.

  "We have enough old swords to cut all the rags we are likely to see this winter. I have had to be harsh with some of the workers who would take such swords or sell them, in either case to defend against wolves and bandits. Have I done well?"

  "Yes." Another of those painful decisions. Respect for the Great Kings' property had to be enforced—by the headsman, if necessary—no matter how many wolves and bandits were roaming the countryside. Besides, a sword given out for wolf hunting today could be in a bandit's hands by moon's end.

  "As to wire—we shall need much more when we know how to make the paper. For now, what the Foundry is sending is enough."

  The brass wire for the screens on which the rags and wood pulp were supposed to drain into paper was produced by an ancient practice that Kalvan had needed to see with his own eyes to believe. One apprentice fed bar stock through a hole of the right gauge cut in an iron or stone plate, while another sat in a suspended chair underneath. The apprentice sitting in the chair gripped the end of the wire with pliers and swung back and forth, so that his weight and movement dragged the bar through the hole and forced it into wire.

  Like so many of the here-and-now metalworking techniques, it was fine for high-quality, small-scale production—the beautiful steel springs of the gunlocks, for example. It was hopeless for really large-scale production work. For that they'd need horse- or water-powered wire-drawing equipment, something else he'd needed a month ago at the latest but would be lucky to see before their unborn child was old enough to walk.

  Kalvan wondered if the primitive state of large-scale metallurgy was the result of economics, military tactics, deliberate interference by Styphon's House or a combination of the three. Certainly the good small arms and poor artillery made for a lot of small political units instead of a few large ones. The large ones could have generated enough revenue to make their rulers independent of Styphon's House, particularly if the economic surplus also supported an educated class—something like the medieval monastic orders. Of course, such a class would be an intolerable threat to the fireseed secret.

  If that series of guesses was anywhere near the truth, Kalvan now understood why Styphon's House was rumored to be preaching the next thing to a war of extermination against the temple of Dralm. The priests of Dralm would be more than ready to be such an educated class—with a little help from Kalvan I of Hos-Hostigos.

  Kalvan decided he really didn't want to ride home tonight and poured himself some more wine. "Mytron, I meant what I said about rewarding Ermut. I'm going to charter a Royal Guild of Papermakers as soon as there's any paper to make, and he'll be one of the first masters."

  "He deserves the honor, Your Majesty. He's done the same as he did with the animal fats on other work here."

  "Then he has the makings of a Scientist."

  "A what?"

  "A kind of priest in my own land, one who was sworn to seek new knowledge. Ermut has stumbled upon one of their methods. It was called 'Experimenting.'"

  "Experimenting." Mytron rolled the word around on his tongue several times. "And these Scientists—priests—what gods did they worship?"

  "Seldom the gods of my own land. They were not good gods, and did not help a man to know much. Although some of the Scientists served in the temples of Atombomb the Destroyer. They were free to choose to worship any god or none at all. Their oaths concerned how they were to do their work and not hide it from others or tell lies about what they had learned.

  "Most of them did work in temples called Universities. Some of these were as large as Hostigos Town before the war with Styphon's House." Now Hostigos Town was the thriving capital of a new Great Kingdom and fast on its way to becoming a city.

  "The Scientists must have been very rich. Or did your Great King pay them?"

  "All were rich by Hostigos standards. Some were in the pay of Great King LBJ, but most worked for the Universities. If Dralm and Galzar give us victory in the coming War of the Great Kings, I mean to found such a University in Hos-Hostigos. There men such as Ermut will teach Experimentation, Deduction, Invention and the other arts of the Scientific Method. Had there been such a place anywhere in the Great Kingdoms long ago, when the lying pri
ests of Styphon proclaimed their Fireseed Mystery, its Scientists could have flung that lie in their teeth.

  "Mytron, your work in the paper mill will end when you have taught all you know and chosen someone fit to replace you. When do you think that will be?"

  Mytron frowned. ""No less than five moons, Your Majesty. But not much more than that either. Why?"

  Kalvan smiled. "Good, Mytron. The time has come to found a University of Hostigos. I want you to be head of the new University—Rector would be your title."

  Mytron frowned even more deeply. "My first duty is to Allfather Dralm. I cannot forsake him."

  With equal care, Kalvan explained to Mytron what some of his duties as University Rector would be and how they would not be antithetical to his duties to Allfather Dralm. He finished with, "I do not know the duties imposed on you by that oath. This is shameful in a Great king, but it is the truth. So I do not know for certain if I am asking you to forsake your service to Dralm. Yet I can say certainly that you will not have to swear any oaths against Dralm, or do anything I know to be unlawful, or to cease to perform the rites of Allfather Dralm."

  "Then I will not refuse now." Mytron's frown faded a bit. "I cannot accept without the permission from Highpriest Xentos, of course. He is judge of the oaths of the priests of Dralm in Hos-Hostigos. Also, he would find me hard to replace at the Temple."

  In truth, Chancellor of the Realm Xentos had already bent Kalvan's ear several times about how he and Brother Mytron were being forced to neglect their duties to Dralm to serve their Great King.

  "I will speak to Highpriest Xentos, and learn more about the duties of the priests of Dralm. It is my hope that he will permit you to become Rector of the new University."

  "If it is proper that I serve Allfather Dralm by serving Your Majesty in this, I shall do it with all my heart." This seemed to call for a toast, so Mytron poured out the last of the mulled wine, and they both drank to the University finding favor in the eyes of Dralm.