Great Kings' War Page 8

  "We need a sharper sword. Why not that of Great King Cleitharses of Hos-Ktemnos? Let him lance the boil of Hos-Hostigos that corrupts the body of the Five Kingdoms. I say we must issue a proclamation, calling for the Sacred Squares of Hos-Ktemnos to come to the aid of the God of Gods."

  That was the prearranged signal to Archpriest Theomenes, spiritual guardian to King Cleitharses, to touch his first two fingers to his mouth. Anaxthenes touched his fingers to his forehead, by way of reply, granting Theomenes permission to address the Council.

  "Great King Cleitharses has found his faith disturbed over the misfortunes brought down upon Styphon's House by the Daemon Kalvan. Thus, he will no longer willingly and of his own free will grant that which is ours to ask, but he will listen to our united voice. As we all know, the wise and fair King Cleitharses has little love for the clamor of battle or the open air."

  That pronouncement brought snickers from the assembled Archpriests. Cleitharses' last campaign was over ten winters ago against King Leophon, one of three petty kings who claimed suzerainty over the Upper Sastragath. The war had quickly turned into a nightmare of lost skirmishes and misdirected supplies. Only the fighting ability of the steadfast Sacred Squares had saved the Hos-Ktemnoi Army from complete disaster. Since then Cleitharses' idea of military glory was reading about ancient deeds of valor or adding another such scroll to the Royal Library.

  "However," Archpriest Theomenes continued, "It is true that Great King Cleitharses is worried about a new Great Kingdom so close to the borders of Hos-Ktemnos, especially one who adds Princedoms as a lodestone pulls iron fillings."

  "Who will the Great King choose as his Captain-General?" one of the Archpriests asked.

  "Duke Mnesklos, Lord High Marshal of Hos-Ktemnos."

  "He has seen over seventy winters! Isn't it time he hung up his spurs?"

  There was a loud harrumph from Supreme Priest Sesklos.

  Another Archpriest hastily added, "Duke Mnesklos still sits tall in his saddle. It is true that he is good at fighting barbarians in the Sastragath, but will he be able to stop the Daemon?"

  A dozen voices attempted to answer that question at once, but Roxthar's voice cut through them like a saw. "The Daemon Kalvan must be stopped. We need a warlord that can be the Fist of Styphon."

  Styphon's Own Voice raised his hand for silence. "Archpriest Roxthar is right. We need a soldier of the Temple. Someone we can trust to sow the fields of Hos-Hostigos with the blood and corpses of her sons. I move we call upon Grand Master Soton of the Holy Order of Zarthani Knights to lead our Holy Army."

  The Grand Master rose from his seat and bowed. He was the shortest man in the room and also the broadest. Seated he appeared a normal man, but when standing his short legs robbed him of full stature. Still, his presence was undeniable and Soton was known as a terrible foe; few in this room had the temerity to beard him to his face.

  There was more shouting, although this time the voices were raised in protest. Soton was known to be as much a servant of Galzar Wolfhead as he was an Archpriest of Styphon's House. The lands he governed west of Hos-Ktemnos and Hos-Bletha as Grand Master of the Zarthani Knights were greater than any two Great Kingdoms combined. His Order Knights were the finest cavalry in the known world.

  "Silence!" Sesklos shouted. Anaxthenes jerked back in surprise; he'd not thought old Sesklos had that much strength left in his worn body. After the news of Zothnes' and Krastokles' defection to Hos-Hostigos had reached his ears Sesklos had thrown a fit, fallen to the floor and knocked his head on the flagstones. He had lain paralyzed for a moon quarter; when he had awoken, it was if he'd aged ten winters—and for a moon his right side was paralyzed. Even now he drooled when speaking and his words were often slurred.

  "Grand Master Soton is a man of the battlefield," Sesklos continued, "not some lickspittle underpriest currying favor with his superiors."

  Anaxthenes smiled. Things were going even better than he'd planned.

  "All this weighs in Soton's favor in this endeavor. I shall ask him to bring as many Lances of Knights as he can spare from the outer marches and offer him an additional three thousand Temple Guardsmen. That should stiffen the Army of Hos-Ktemnos enough for our purposes. We shall put the Grand Master in command of the Holy Host, the Army of Styphon and his allies. Let Duke Mnesklos parade before the troops, but it will be Soton who gives the orders."

  Suddenly Sesklos appeared to flag and Anaxthenes stood up and spoke. "You have heard Styphon's Own Voice. The time for talk is finished. This Assembly is hereby dismissed. Grand Master Soton, will you attend His Divinity?"

  "It will be my pleasure, First Speaker."

  Sesklos stiffened. "First Speaker, you and Archpriest Soton will attend me in my chambers. And bring a scribe, too. I have letters to draft."

  "Yes, Your Divinity."

  II

  King Kalvan reined in his horse and held up a gloved hand as a signal to the riders of his escort. "Hold up there!" he added, in case someone hadn't seen the signal. This visit wasn't a public relations hunt for wolves but an opportunity for Kalvan to get away from Tarr-Hostigos. He had a bad case of cabin fever and it helped when he took time to visit his here-and-now touchstone, the spot where he had landed after jumping off that cross-time flying saucer—or whatever the hell it was.

  During the last month, the hunting parties had taken their toll of wolves, but not all of the hunters came back. A man who didn't kill his wolf with the first shot might find its teeth in his throat before he could reload. Some parties came back short half their strength; tales began to go around that the wolves were Styphon's demons in animal form. He was here to put those rumors to sleep.

  Other parties marched off into storms and didn't come back at all. In Nostor, Kalvan had to stop the hunting parties completely; they were being ambushed by bandits and starving peasants for their horses and weapons.

  Kalvan remembered Duke Chartiphon's speech at the banquet celebrating the beginning of fireseed production in Hostigos. He'd predicted they'd make a howling wilderness of Nostor. They had too, with help from the weather, wolves and the civil war that broke out after Prince Gormoth had attacked the Nostor Town Temple and a nearby temple farm. The unrest had continued, with mercenary armies roaming the countryside, until Prince Pheblon, Gormoth's cousin, had restored token order.

  Not that anyone but his cronies missed Gormoth, to be sure. He'd been a bad enemy and would never have been a friend worth having. But as long as a nominally friendly Prince ruled Nostor, the Great King of Hos-Hostigos couldn't simply march in and take charge—even if the place was falling apart! That would make it look as if Great King Kalvan was more concerned with his own power than with the overthrow of Styphon's House, and that reputation would be a political headache. Not as big a one as a live Gormoth would have been, but a live Gormoth could have been turned into a dead one. Prince Pheblon, on the other hand, would have to be supported as much as possible, in the hope that he would repay that support by his contribution to the spring campaign against Hos-Harphax.

  It was the coming campaign that concerned Kalvan as the riders on the road disappeared behind a copse of trees. This latest inspection tour made it clear the hunters were finally getting the better of the wolves. Woodcutting parties were going out again so people weren't freezing to death quite so often, and winter had to be two-thirds gone unless another Ice Age was making its appearance. However, when spring arrived so would the next round against Styphon's House and their puppets in Harphax City.

  By the time Kalvan's thoughts had gone that far, the snow was up to his horse's knees and it looked as if it would be even deeper farther on. Kalvan guided the horse to the left, down into the bed of the little stream, and then stopped as he felt his mount's hooves begin to slide on the ice.

  The clouds were thicker and darker, and while it wasn't snowing—thank Dralm for small mercies! —the wind was blowing the snow already on the ground.

  "Your Majesty, should we be stopping here?" Count Phrames'
voice came from behind. "We are too strong to tempt wolves or bandits if we keep moving, but if we stop we may look like easy prey."

  "In that case, they're gong to get a nasty surprise," Kalvan said, as he pulled a pistol out of his boot and checked the load, the flint, the priming. Then he pulled his horse's head around with one hand, holding the pistol cocked and ready with the other.

  As he left the road, he heard Phrames calling out that the Great King wished to ride apart with his scouts and pray to the gods of this homeland for guidance. If he'd thought there was anyone home, Kalvan would have done exactly that. However, neither the late Rev. Morrison's determination that his only son follow him into the ministry nor the here-and-now baker's dozen of gods and goddesses had altered his basic agnosticism.

  What he was doing probably wasn't any more rational than praying, but it worked better for him. He intended to ride up to the four-foot thick hemlock standing below a little cliff that marked the place where Kalvan had left otherwhen Pennsylvania on May 19, 1964 and wound up here in the Five—now Six Kingdoms. The hemlock marked the site of the farmhouse where an escaped murderer had been holed up. A murderer who'd escaped jail, come home to this ramshackle farmhouse and beat on his wife until she'd escaped and told a neighbor. According to his wife, Bill Kirby had a rifle and a grudge against the State Police.

  Kalvan had been skulking toward the yellow farmhouse, his hand close to the butt of his .38 Colt, with fellow Pennsylvania State Policemen Steve Kovac, Larry Stacey and Jack French, when he was scooped up by the cross-time flying saucer. He wondered what they thought about his disappearance...probably thought he'd turned tail and ran, Dralm-blast it!

  Kalvan didn't like that at all; he'd never run from a fight in his life. One thing was true: no one back home had seen hide nor hair of him since he'd been picked up by that a cross-time saucer. Other than Aunt Harriet, there was no one to miss him back home; he'd broken up with Kate over six months before he disappeared. Last he'd heard, she was engaged to a dentist... She'd always fretted over the danger of police work; he'd never known how right she was!

  Of course, Kate had imagined dangers closer to home than here-and-now, where medicine was of the barber and leech variety and one was as likely to get run over by a runaway Conestoga wagon as die peacefully in bed. Not a lot of old folks here-and-now...

  Still, climbing the cliff and visiting the tree calmed him down when he needed calming, and sometimes gave him an idea for the solution of some particularly knotty problem. Call it his touchstone to the past. Kalvan had visited this spot three times since his arrival here-and-now; on this, his fourth visit, he needed a relaxing place to ponder events more than ever. Next year's battles would determine whether or not the fledgling Great Kingdom he'd created would endure or end in an orgy of blood-letting and burning...

  This spot was also where Kalvan had started to write his Journal—maybe a foolish conceit, but it helped keep his perspective on who he had been, a little over a year ago—Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Policeman—and who he was now: Great King Kalvan I of Hos-Hostigos.

  "Over here, Your Majesty!" Hectides the old wolf-hunter and scout cried out.

  He pushed past a low hanging chestnut tree and there before him was the little cliff and the big hemlock with the deep three-foot wide X Kalvan had carved into the trunk with his knife on his first return visit; he had wanted to mark it so that he would recognize it twenty years from now. Already Hectides had two of his hunters clearing the snow out of the fire pit that they'd built on their last visit. When the pit was just bare stone, they brought straw, twigs and some firewood. Within minutes the old wolf hunter was using his tinderbox to light a fire at the base of the cliff and soon had a roaring fire. The scouts fanned out to keep watch and, as soon as his fingers thawed over the fire, Kalvan took out his quill pen and lambskin parchment and began to write.

  Journal – Corporal Calvin Morrison

  Winter – 1965 – January 29th, plus or minus a day or two.

  I'm glad I decided to write this diary now while my memories of 'former life' are still vivid; I'm afraid, after a decade or two here-and-now, my experiences of the earth I grew up on will begin to fade and recede much like a long dream. Someday when I'm an old man—should I be so lucky!—these entries will help convince me that I am not the Dralm-sent Kalvan that everyone believes me to be. Or that my previous life was not some fever dream...

  Thus, this permanent record in English so no one else can 'accidentally' read it and have me sent to the local equivalent of a loony bin, which far exceeds the horror of those state institutions in far away Pennsylvania.

  The journal entries I've been making during the past few months have helped me reconstruct my childhood and early life. As much as I despise the current double-speak and gobbledygook that passes for 'psycho-therapy' back home, these diary entries about my childhood, my college years at Princeton, my military service in Korea and my time as a Pennsylvania State Policeman have improved my morale. They have also helped to clear my mind of the doubts that were plaguing me at the onset of winter, when the day-to-day crises of kingship were no longer keeping me preoccupied, and I once again began to try to 'analyze' the event that catapulted me here-and-now.

  No matter how unlikely it seems, the truth is I was 'picked up' by some kind of cross-time flying saucer and dropped off on a world far different than my own, both in history and technological development. I can still see in my mind's eye the flicker of other worlds passing overhead through the iridescent dome of the saucer, which means there must be millions of 'alternate' earths. My friend, Steve Kovac, who used to read 'Analog Science Fiction Magazine,' would loan me the magazines after he finished reading them, and during long nights in the barracks, when I had trouble sleeping, I would read them.

  So I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of alternate worlds; however, it's a long road from Altoona to Piccadilly Circus! Especially, when the saucer pilot—some kind of military officer in a green uniform—tries to shoot you with a long-barreled soldering iron!

  It was a combination of quick reflexes and luck that got me out of that saucer alive; still, I hope that pilot took a good one from my Colt Official Police. I don't know what the Sideways Police Service does about unauthorized 'pickups,' but I suspect it isn't preferential treatment with kid gloves. No, I must have killed him or there would have been someone from that outfit snooping around Hostigos, trying to pick me up. The probabilities of what might happen to me, should they 'pick me up' are not thoughts to aid in either good digestion or a good night's rest.

  If that sounds paranoid, well, living in an era where paranoia is a survival tool will do that to one.

  The day started out as an ordinary duty day at the barracks, when we got a call from old man Gustav that Bill Kirby had come back to his wife's place and shot it up pretty good—

  "Your Majesty, sorry to interrupt," Hectides said, pointing up at the fast-moving and darkening clouds. "A storm could be upon us in half a candle, and there's still wolves about."

  Kalvan's horse snorted as if to punctuate the wolf hunter's words.

  "You're right, Hectides, we should be getting back to the main party." Whatever ideas might come here couldn't be worth risking his neck, or even his horse. Good mounts weren't easy to replace in Hostigos, and wouldn't be for quite some time.

  Kalvan mounted his horse, then rode back downstream followed by Hectides and his scouts. He returned faster than he'd come, because as he turned off the stream the howl of a wolf floated down from a nearby hill. The horse whinnied nervously; Kalvan had to tug on the reins to keep him from breaking into a trot.

  Count Phrames met Kalvan by the road with an I-told-you-so expression on his face. "Your Majesty, I beg you not to ride out like this again while we are in wolf country. So much depends upon your safety—"

  Kalvan cut in saying, "Phrames, Queen Rylla has appointed six nursemaids for our child. I'll recommend you as the seventh, if you so wish."

  Phrames wi
nced as if slapped. Kalvan immediately felt guilty for taking out his frustration with the weather and the state of the world on him. He felt even guiltier for throwing the fact of Rylla's pregnancy in Phrames' face. One of the many little details about the Princedom of Hostigos Kalvan had learned, after the campaigning season ended and there was time to think and ask questions, was that Count Phrames had been Rylla's betrothed since childhood. To see her married to a total stranger, even if sent by the gods, couldn't have been pleasant for him—even if the stranger gave her a throne and a crown.

  "I am truly sorry, Phrames. I spoke in anger and in haste; my words were unworthy of a king."

  Phrames grinned, white teeth showing above a frost-tinted brown beard. "I spoke without proper respect to you, I admit. But I did speak with proper respect for Queen Rylla, who's the one I'll have to reckon with if I'd let you come to harm, be it by wolves, bandits or an ill-fated fall from your horse."

  "Then by all means let's both show her respect and turn for home. There appears to be nothing more out here worth seeing or doing today than a helmet full of snow. Also, the envoy of Prince Araxes is coming tomorrow, and I want to show him at least the respect of being awake and unfrozen."

  Kalvan pounded his gloved right hand against his saddlehorn to see if there was any feeling left in the fingers. It was a good thing he hadn't done any more writing in the Journal; he'd had one bout of frostbite in Korea that had made him more susceptible to a second.

  Phrames snorted. "What his Reluctance Prince Araxes needs is a swift kick where he sits down from the Great King's army and everybody else who wants to help. We may have to sell tickets."