Robert Adams - Madman's Army

As always, these days, in time of trouble or anger or distress of any nature, he went to Ilios—sultry, dark-eyed Ilios, always seductive, willing and pleasing, the most satisfying lover, male or female, he ever had enjoyed. But after he had poured it all out, Ilios had not seemed at all displeased or disappointed; rather had the nearly beardless boy nodded his small head of blue-black curls.

“Don’t consider these things a loss, love, rather have you done a winnowing of your army—yours, not theirs, the army of Pahvlos, not the army of those silly, deluded creatures who make up the Council— you have driven out the alien barbarians who would have aided the Council in submission of all these lands to rule and domination by that devil-spawn thing Milo Morai. You have beaten the chaff from off the pure grain so that your army, though now smaller, is become all yours and still is big enough, more than strong enough, to allow you to take over this land whenever you feel ready to so do.

“So be not so glum, my own. I’ll tell you, let us order honey wine and cheese and biscuits, then go out and watch that personal guardsman of yours who tried to desert punished. He is to be executed anyway, so indulge me … please? I always have wondered how long it would take a man to die after boiling pitch had been poured down his throat.

“After that, we can come back here and make love, love. It’s always so very much more exciting after we’ve watched punishments … at least, it is for me.”

Old Pahvlos indulged his Ilios, of course; he could not but indulge the dear, sweet boy.

Mostly through Sub- strahteegos Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos and Captain-of-brigade Thoheeks Portos, Thoheeks Grahvos was able to keep his clique of the Council of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee up to date on the sad state into which their painfully acquired army had sunk and was continuing to sink under the baleful aegis of their once-revered Grand Strahteegos.

“Let us all hope … and pray, too,” said Portos during the course of another clandestine and tightly guarded meeting at Tomos’ headquarters, of a night, “that there is no large-scale disturbance at any time soon, out in the thoheekseeahnee or, worse, on the borders, for to all intents and purposes our army might as well be chained in place here, unable to move any meaningful numbers of troops anywhere for any purpose.”

“Is it so bad, then, Portos?” Thoheeks Bahos had rumbled in a worried tone.

The tall horseman nodded. “That bad and far worse than that, my friend. Cavalry Brigade is become a distinct misnomer, a very sick and very grim joke. My own heavy horse is down by over a third of its former full-strength numbers, and in addition to them, there are only three understrength troops of lancers and the elephants. Captain-of-squadron Opokomees Ehrrikos flatly refuses to lead his light horse out of garrison for any reason until he is in receipt of a full, formal and public apology for the many wrongs done him by the Grand Strahteegos , and he and we, here, and the rest of the army all know that hell will have frozen over solidly before old Pahvlos so humbles himself.”

“What of the other squadron of lancers, the Wolf Squadron, Vahrohnos Bralos’ men?” asked Thoheeks Pahlios, who had but recently returned to Mehseepolis from his distant lands.

Portos shrugged. “He and they are gone, gone south to his holdings, I presume. He was treated far worse by Pahvlos than was Opokomees Ehrrikos and for far longer a time; immediately the old man was constrained to drop all his pending charges against those two officers and thus release them from arrest, Bralos packed up and mounted up and left with his men, their families and anything movable that any of them owned. His vahrohneeseeahn lies many leagues away, close to two weeks of marching time, I’d say.”

Thoheeks Bahos knew better than that, but he kept silent and just listened, even in this gathering of noblemen who all were, they averred, of like mindsets. Young Bralos and his effectives were actually camped in a seldom-visited area of Bahos’ thoheekseeahn , much closer to the capital than anyone else thought, and they there constituted Bahos’ ace in the hole. Should the drastically changed old man who once had been loved and deeply respected by them all try anything like forcing Council out of Mehseepolis with his shrunken army, Portos and his heavy horse would know what to do and the elephants and remaining lancers most likely would back them. They, combined with Tomos’ training brigade and Captain Guhsz Hehluh’s mercenaries, the Council Guardsmen, the city garrison and Bahos’ ace should be more than enough to put down any coup dreamed up by Pahvlos, thought the big, silent nobleman to himself.

“What of the foot and the specialists, my lord Portos?” Thoheeks Pahlios inquired further. “And Lord Pawl of Vawn and his beautiful, fearsome-toothed panthers?”

But it was Tomos Gonsalos who answered this time. “Captain Guhsz Hehluh’s mercenary Keebai pikemen are camped just south of the perimeter of my enclave, officially because Grahvos ordered them to be transferred to duties with the city garrison, unofficially because it was either something of that sort or see them march north, out of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee entirely, probably looting along their way in revenge for getting only half-pay for six months by old Pahvlos’ harebrained order. That was just the way that Chief Pawl and almost all of his squadron left, and for the same basic reasons: half-pay or none at all and always very late at that, being stringently forbidden such soldierly solaces as strong drink, hemp, tobacco and the company of females within the camp, while at the same time being most strongly forbidden to leave the camp to seek out such pleasure under enforced penalties of flogging, hideous torture, maiming, mutilation, even death.”

“But … but why, my lord Sub- strahteegos Thoheeks ?” demanded the newly rearrived thoheeks in stunned astonishment. “I’ve spent more of my own life than I would’ve preferred in armor in armies and I’ve never before even heard of such stupidities; why, every commander worth his salt knows that withholding of a common soldier’s simple pleasures for reasons other than announced punishment is the surest way to breed discontent and desertions. Why was the Grand Strahteegos punishing our mercenaries and underpaying them? Is Council so low on fluid funds, then?”

Portos took over the sorry recountal at that point. “Lord Pahlios, it is not and was not, then, only the mercenaries who were being so cruelly and stupidly abused by Pahvlos. No, his strictures apply and applied to the entire army, officers excluded, of course. He claimed that in the old royal armies, it had been determined that congress with females decreased the vitality of common soldiers, and I suppose that he hoped that if he kept them all pent up for long enough, they would end up taking pooeesosee as he did some two years ago, just before all of this insanity commenced.”

“ Rubbish !” snapped Thoheeks Pahlios scornfully. “A man is a man, common or noble; I’ve futtered more females in my lifetime than I can begin to count, but never a single man or boy, and I’ve fought and won some damned hard battles, too.”

“That Pahvlos, even at his rather advanced years, has taken a young man to camp-wife is not at all surprising or outside his nature, you know,” remarked Thoheeks Bahos, speaking to them all. “If you’ll recall, I was in the royal army for a stretch myself. Even then, Pahvlos kept his wife and children at his hold, far away, and a handsome young ensign or three in the army enclave, hard by the capital. Everyone knew him as a carrot-grabber, back then, not that he was the only one of exalted rank in the royal army, of course; I think that that practice, especially amongst noble officers, was much more common in the days before the rebellions and civil wars than it has been since.”