Roland Green - Great King_s war

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 priests 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.

After Brother Mytron left, Kalvan knocked the heel out of his pipe, re-loaded it with tobacco and used his tinderbox to light it. He sat back and stared into the dying fire. He could see all sorts of church-and-state complications bearing down upon him like a runaway truck on an icy mountain road. They would have been likely enough in the best of worlds; with Xentos they were certain. In spite of his unworldly air, the highpriest was as tough as a slab of granite and as shrewd a bargainer as an Armenian rug dealer. Anything Kalvan got out of him-particularly the permanent reassignment of his right-hand man (and probably handpicked successor) as Rector of the University-was going to cost.

But Dralm-damnit, he had to begin somewhere to make sure that he wasn't the only man in the world who knew half of what would be needed to bring down Styphon's House. Until he'd at least made that start, everything could fall apart if his horse put a foot in a gopher hole! Kalvan thought of King Alexander III of Scotland, who'd started three centuries of Anglo-Scots wars by riding his horse off a cliff in the dark…

Being the Indispensable Man sounded like fun until you were actually handed the job. Then you realized the best thing to do with it was to get rid of it as fast as humanly possible.

The job of digging Dalla out of the Archives lasted another round of drinks. When they finally reached her, she told them to go on to the Constellation House; she would change at the Archives and meet them there.

Constellation House was perched on top of a mountain a good half hour's air-taxi ride outside Dhergabar City. That gave Verkan plenty of time to bring his old Chief up to date on everything of mutual interest, starting with Kalvan's Time-Line, Styphon's House Subsector, Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific.

"Everything was going about as well as anyone could hope until winter came. Kalvan had no more internal enemies, Nostor was a shambles and Sask and Beshta were beaten into submission. Even the Harphaxi Princes who didn't want to join Hos-Hostigos weren't about to make trouble."

"No," Tortha said. "I imagine a lot of them are thinking along the lines of 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' and anybody who's as heavy-handed a creditor as Styphon's House is bound to have more than its share of enemies. What about the big council Styphon's House was going to hold in Harphax City?"

"They moved it to Balph. We think it's because of the bad weather; it's been the worst winter in living memory, and the roads have been completely impassable most of the time. We haven't infiltrated the Inner Circle yet, and they're not talking. I suspect Styphon's House may be waiting to see what happens during the rest of the winter. Not that enough hasn't happened already, of course."

Tortha recognized the signs of coming bad news in Verkan's voice. He wasn't surprised, either. "I can imagine," he said. "My first independent assignment was shepherding a party of tourists fleeing from a sacked city to the nearest operating conveyer-head. It was five days' journey downriver, through country that had been fought over two years running. If we hadn't been able to use boats and travel mostly by night I don't think we'd have made it. I stopped having any arguments from the tourists after the first village where we found human bones in the soup pots."

"It hasn't been quite that bad in Hos-Hostigos, except in parts of Nostor. The Hostigi are calling it the Winter of the Wolves, though. Between the wolf packs and the snowdrifts, nobody's going anywhere unless they absolutely have to.