The Invisible Chains - Part 3: Bonds of Blood (62 page)

“It's an outrage,” he roared, “an infamous insult, an insolent, defiant piece of scoundrelly disrespect. How dare he? How dare he?”

“What does our little brother write, father?” the younger Tenaxos asked calmly.

Both he and his brother Portonas looked at the high king expectantly. The three of them were the only ones there.

“It's not only what he writes, is it? It is the whole document. How it is put together. It's not only what he writes, but how he writes it. Here, look for yourself.”

He dropped the parchment in the lap of his oldest son.

“Read out loud,” he commanded harshly.

Tenaxos the younger scraped his throat.

“Lets see.../p>

“I haven't heard anything wrong until now,” Portonas shrugged.

The high king glared at his second son.

“Shut up, Portonas, you blockhead,” he shouted.

He loved saying that, even if it was but a small consolation.

“No, no, brother, that is not how you write to the king,” the oldest brother said. “Not even, most certainly not, when you're his son. You write something like, ‘To His Glorious Majesty, Tenaxos, High King, and so on, and so forth, from his dutiful son and humble subject.’ See?”

“Indeed, you do,” the older Tenaxos raged. “It is pure and undiluted insolence. And look at his seal. Look at his motto.”

He pointed with a finger, shaking with anger, at the big, red seal.

“Ha, wait,” Portonas said, frowning, “wasn't his motto something like ‘Loyalty binds me?’ Something wimpy like that?”

“That might have been the motto of Anaxantis the bookworm,” Tenaxos scoffed. “Tenax?”

“What I can make out is something like ‘Venre Dal Terundar.’ Hm.”

“Which means? Portonas?” The high king leaned on the arms of the chairs the younger prince was sitting in, looming over him. “Don't tell me I wasted a small fortune on teachers in ancient Baltoc, and you can't translate this.”

He righted himself and turned to his oldest son who meanwhile had been scanning the rest of the document with great interest.

“Tenax?”

Slightly annoyed at being interrupted in his reading, the prince looked up.

“Hm... venre... around me... in my vicinity... terundar... stand before... I stand before... no, I defend that which... I protect who stands near, with me. It could also mean, I defend what is around me, my possessions.

You would have to know the context.”

“Good. There is no context. It means both. He's saying ‘Don't touch what I've come to consider as mine, for I will defend it, and don't doubt for a second that I will use force. Don't touch my friends either.’ Nothing wimpy about this motto. Now look again at the opening sentence.”

“We've gone over that,” the younger Tenaxos said, arching his eyebrows.

“We've gone over what he has written, not over what he has not written.”

The prince looked over the parchment again.

“Ha. I think I see. He styles himself warlord—”

“Yes. Yes. Yes,” the high king shouted, almost choking on his words. “Warlord. And not Lord Governor.

Nor Prince of Ximerion. Don't you see what he's throwing in my face with that? ‘Take away my title of Lord Governor, if you must. I don't care. I have no use for it anymore. My title of Prince of Ximerion you can't take away since it's mine by birth. Even so, I don't use that one either anymore. My title of Warlord is mine, you didn't give it to me, nor was I born with it. I earned it myself, and you can't take it from me because I uphold it by the point of my can'tinto m sword. By the Right of Arms.’ Damn him. By the Right of Arms.”

“And the Grace of the Gods,” Tenaxos the younger whispered pensively.

“Of course not,” the high king roared. “He's far too smart to believe in any Gods. He just uses them. Just as he uses everything and everybody. Have you noticed that he robbed his grandfather's title to the crown, but omitted ‘by the Law of the Land?’ He cares even less about the law.”

Out of breath, Tenaxos sank in his chair. His two sons remained silent, waiting for their father to say something, while he sat there, brooding.

“He's addressing me as an equal. As one monarch to another, barely recognizing that I am his father,” he finally said, suddenly morose.

“Yet, he asks you to confirm his ennoblements and elevations,” the younger Tenaxos replied.

“Actually he just about informs me of them and expects me to attach my seal to them. He's ennobling people left and right. And not a few of them either. And look what he did with the lords of Ramaldah. He made them into dukes. They're barely nobility. They're glorified, arms-bearing farmers, at most.”

His oldest son looked at him impassively.

“Maybe that is not such a bad thing, father,” he said. “Our dynasty has ennobled or promoted preciously few families up until now. Maybe he is right and we should create a Tanahkos nobility.”

“I agree, we left it far too long,” the high king sighed. “But what do you want? It has taken us decades upon decades to muzzle the old nobility. Who would ever...”

He made a gesture of frustration and disgust.

“Even so, Father,” his eldest son mused, “this new fangled nobles will proudly state ‘My House dates from the Zinchara’ and look down upon the old aristocracy. Maybe we can use that.”

“Except, this new nobility, where do you think their allegiance will lie? With him. With him, of course.”

Portonas was fuming.

“But can you hear yourselves talk, you two? I can't believe my ears. This is little Anaxantis we're talking about. Anaxantis the bookworm. The little boy who can't stay upright on a horse for more than fifteen minutes. Just give me twenty thousand soldiers and I'll sort him out for you,” he sneered.

Faster than lightning the high king had jumped out of his chair and gone over to Portonas's, again looming over him, his face but inches away from that of his son.

“Who are you calling a boy, boy?” he spat. “What have
you
done for the realm up until now? Have you stamped an army out of the ground? Have you trained it and led it in the field? Personally? What victory shall we attribute to
you
? Which enemy have you crushed. Have you crushed anything, anything at all, except a cushion under your fat butt? Do they sing ballads about you in the streets of Ormidon? Do they call you anything else but Portonas the Blockhead, Portonas the Retard or Portonas the Buffoon? Because it certainly isn't you they are calling the Mukthar Slayer. For that matter did you even fuck — or let yourself be fucked by, we're not certain which — an enemy just to gain some strategical information? If not, stop calling the man who defeated an army of barbarians twice as big as his a boy. Understood? Boy.”

Portonas had recoiled as far as his chair permitted him uny">Pored oodder the verbal lashing.

“Hm, yes, Portonas,” his older brother asked calmly, “and besides all that, just where do you think we will get twenty thousand men? We dare not move a single soldier away from the southern border.”

“We'll raise new troops. In the midlands,” Portonas said, unsurely.

“With what money, you dullard?” the high king retorted in a disgusted voice. “The treasury is hemorrhaging money as it is. We would have to raise taxes or beg the noble Houses for funds. Both options would have disastrous consequences for the crown. We could even have a rebellion on our hands. It could mean the fall of the dynasty. Are you too stupid to see that?”

“Besides,” the younger Tenaxos added, “would you face our little brother with an army of fresh recruits against his battle hardened troops?”

“How many can he have left of them?” Portonas, having regained some of his confidence, bit back. “Maybe ten thousand?”

His brother laughed out loud. The high king raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“Oh,” the younger Tenaxos sighed, “don't you two see that we're in much bigger trouble than just that?”

“What do you mean?” his father asked curtly.

“Look at the map. What is there between Ormidon and the Northern Marches?”

Portonas shrugged.

“The midlands, of course.”

“I mean, what army? None. And what makes you think, once you start recruiting a new one, the warlord will quietly wait in the Marches until you're good and ready to confront him? What is to keep him from descending from his hills at the head of his troops? His troops who revere him, I might add. Oh, and don't forget the pages.”

“The pages? Whatever do you mean?” Portonas said perplexed. “What can—”

“Have you never wondered,” the older brother continued unperturbed, “what use a lord governor, even a royal prince of Ximerion, has for that many pages? I'm informed that not only the quasi totality of the Amirathan high nobility has sent him their sons, but that they now come from demesnes south of Ormidon.

He accepts them all. No conditions. I'm told one of his collaborators once offered to rid him of all the applicants. He refused—”

“How do you know that?” Portonas interrupted him.

“Let's just say I do,” his older brother replied, not in the least perturbed. “So, why does a princely court need that many pages? Over a hundred and ten by now. He hardly has any use for them. He has to invent all kinds of things, like exercises and fake duties, to occupy them. Lately he also started schooling them. Military tactics and history mainly. Writing. Simple mathematics. I wonder what gave him that idea. But their main importance will maybe become more clear if I call them for what they really are. They're not so much pages as they are hostages.”

Both his brother and his father looked at him with open mouth.

“Can't you just see it before you? Our little brother descending his safe hill regions, paying visits here and there? ‘Greetings, your grace, how kind of you to provide for my lodgings on my leisurely trip down to Ormidon. Speaking of which, why don't you join me? Please, do. It will be so much fun. And, please, do bring e? Pledo dothose five, six hundred soldiers of yours and your treasury. Ah, did I mention your only son and heir is doing just fine in Lorseth? He sends his regards.’ He will have a lot more than ten thousand troops when he reaches the capital.”

The high king, pale and for the first time with drooping shoulders, nodded.

“
He is right. He is right, of course. And Ormidon, like a whore spreading her legs, will open its gates, all its
gates, widely and invitingly, a week before he is even within ten miles of her, ready to be taken by him.

Willing to let him ravish her. They will strew the streets with flowers to receive the Mukthar Slayer. Just like
they did for my father after the Battle of the Karmenian Hill.”

He clenched his fists in impotence and frustration. He looked askance at the Devil's Crown, gleaming dully and sinisterly on its stand.

“Is he coming after you? Already?”

His thoughts were interrupted by his oldest.

“So, father, what will the high king do?”

The king looked at his namesake.

“The high king will graciously grant the requests of the warlord and ignore the slights and insults. What else?”

“
And hope, hope that he will be satisfied that I give him what is already his.”

“Yes, I see,” the prince replied. “He told us, in passing, he is colonizing the Renuvian Plains, didn't he? That means his dominions will stretch up to the Zyntrean border. Zyntrea is his for the asking, I understand, since Kurtigaill is only a reluctant king. In fact, he will be lord and master of a territory, roughly equal in size to Ximerion. What we have left of Ximerion, that is. He might decide to consolidate his territories and there is not much we could do about it. Nothing, actually.”

The high king looked up with burning eyes.

“Don't you think I realize that,” he groaned through clenched teeth.

“
By the Gods, I have created a monster and any moment now it can decide to go on the prowl. And there is
not a single thing that I can do to stop it.”

“Yes, Father, I thought you might see that he has us royally by the balls. Let's just hope he doesn't start squeezing them.”

“
And what if he does?”
the older Tenaxos thought. “
That as well would be something I can't do anything
about. I could send a new lord governor to replace him. Send another autarch. He will just kill them, before
they even reach the Northern Marches, like he killed my first autarch, like he killed Dem, without even
batting an eye. As his grandfather would have.”

“
They're mad,”
Portonas seethed silently. “
Are they giving up? Are they letting that little adder have his

way? Well, not I, for one. To kill a snake it's enough to cut off its head. The rest dies of its own accord. I'll
send an embassy to our little brother, secretly, asking him for a covert meeting. I'll offer him half the
kingdom. When he comes... an ambush. Quick and dirty. And that will be the end of him.”

Tenaxos the younger meanwhile was thinking about his mistress.

“
Ah, Little Dove,”
he mused, “
the time has come for you to pay a discreet visit to your aunt Renda. We need
far more information than we have for the moment. We could use the Mukthar Slayer in our struggler the st
au with Lorsanthia. Maybe, just maybe he has enough family loyalty left for that. Father is losing his grip,
Portonas is a non entity, and Ehandar, the Gods may know what he did to him. It's a warning I will heed and
I will watch my steps accordingly. Anyway, that leaves just you and me, little brother. Let's see what we can
come up with. Surely, we can work out something.”