Roland Green - Great King_s war

Phrames looked toward the keep and realized that the downpour had passed almost as quickly as it had come. He could see the whole castle and the trench-carved ground beyond it. The courtyard swarmed with Sarrask's men, and the walls were crowded with the Sastragathi irregulars who'd followed the Saski up the ladders. True to their habits, the Sastragathi were busily stripping what Phrames hoped were the corpses of the defenders and tossing them into the moat or onto the courtyard.

On top of one of the gate towers a little knot of defenders was still holding out, but below a gang of Saski with sledges was already trying to free the portcullis and lower the drawbridge, to let Alkides bring in his artillery and finish off the keep.

"Hope those poor bastards in the keep have the sense to yield before Alkides brings in a bombard," Sarrask said, waving the flask at Phrames again. This time the Count took it. "Otherwise you'll be a Prince with no place to sleep. I could knock that (guilty of fornication with a barnyard fowl) pile down with my mace! Drink up, Count!"

Yes, all this was going to be his soon! Phrames didn't know quite what to think of all that; he did know he owed Kalvan more than he could ever repay. How was he going to turn this princedom into a loyal cornerstone of Hos-Hostigos? He took a deep drink of what turned out to be a most potent winter wine and sputtered, with wine dripping it down his beard.

When he'd caught his breath, he took a more cautious swallow. It was extraordinarily good wine. "Thank you, Prince. Your own stock?"

Sarrask shook his head. "Made in Hos-Agrys. Those Beshtans nobles and are taking everything with them but the cobblestones. This one was on his way to Syriphlon with a cartload of wine in a wagon train that passed too close to one of my foraging parties. Captain Strathos was out raiding that day and bagged the lot. He presented it to King Kalvan, who sent over a barrel last night. Come around tonight; there's plenty left."

Phrames drank again, considering that Sarrask of Sask accusing another nobleman of being too comfortable in the field was the pot calling the kettle black-as Kalvan liked to say-but hardly inclined to say it out loud.

Then a Saski captain was coming over to tell his Prince that the portcullis was hopelessly jammed; did he and Phrames think the gate should be blown up or did Alkides want to drag his guns through the breach?

"Galzar strike me dead if I know" Sarrask said. "I'm no damned gunner! Phrames, do you mind a few more holes in the wall of your new seat? I'll hand over a few ransoms to you and see that Balthames does the same, since the gods didn't finish the little bugger off at Tenabra or Phyrax! If you need to rebuild-"

Phrames wasn't listening. He was instead looking at the top of the keep, where a helmet was being raised over the battlements. A moment later a second joined it, then a third.

"Never mind, Prince. I don't think we're going to need any artillery in here at all. Just someone to parley with the men in the keep. Would you care to join me?"

"My pleasure, Count Phrames."

The screams and groans of the dying were fading behind Kalvan as he descended the winding stone staircase in the northwest tower of Tarr-Beshta. They weren't fading fast enough to suit him, but he couldn't move any faster. The stairs were crumbling and treacherous-more of Balthar's cheese-paring! Besides, Captain Xykos was just ahead and determined to slow his Great King to what he considered a proper pace. Since Xykos filled the stairs from top to bottom and nearly from side to side, his determination counted for a great deal.

After what seemed like enough time to reach the bottom of a mineshaft, they reached the tower cellar. Here, so it was said, lay the door to Prince Balthar's treasure rooms, whose riches had grown in soldiers' imaginations until they rivaled Styphon's Own Treasury in the Holy City of Balph-the here-and-now equivalent of King Midas' hoard. With all the tales of debauchery and poisoning and double-dealing and such goings on in Balph, it most resembled the Papal City sometime in the late Sixteenth Century.

Kalvan hoped the rumors were true; from first to last Balthar had cost Hos-Hostigos too Dralm-damned much to be paid for with nothing but his head and those of his kin who hadn't been able to cross into Hos-Harphax before the Army of Observation swept into Beshta.

The cellar was already crowded, with Phrames and half a dozen of the King's Lifeguards. They held either drawn swords or torches, except for one who was bending over a dying woman, trying to work a dagger out from between her ribs. Two men and another woman lay sprawled in a corner, already dead.

"Your Majesty," Phrames said. "One of the men seems to have been the keeper of the-of whatever lies beyond that door." He pointed to an oak door bound in tarnished brass to the left of the stairs. "He had a key to it. We unlocked the door but thought you should have the honor of being first to enter."

It was on the tip of Kalvan's tongue to remind them that men who'd seen Leonnestros' cavalry massacred by the explosion of the artillery redoubt at Phyrax should be aware of booby traps. The words died there; they were doing him an honor and besides, he'd be drowned in mare's milk if he'd abandon "Follow Me" leadership, even here in the bowels of Tarr-Beshta. Kalvan drew his sword, thrust hard against the door, and when it squealed open on rusty hinges stepped through the gap.

It took a moment for Kalvan's eyes to adjust to the thick darkness inside. It took several more moments to believe that what they were showing him was actually there.

Several tunnels ran off in different directions from a stone-walled circular room. On either side of each tunnel sacks, boxes, barrels and kegs were piled as high as a man, except where cloth or wood had rotted and let the piles collapse. There the tunnels were completely impassable, knee-or even waist-deep in fragments of rotting cloth or wood and gold and silver!

Kalvan heard blasphemous mutterings behind him as the Guardsmen pushed in through the door and stared around them. He also saw more gold and silver gleaming in the chinks and rents in the many boxes and canvas bags. The torches now lit one tunnel; he saw that not all the piled gold and silver were coins. Most of the silver was, but a lot of the gold was rings, cups, bowls, plates-even ingots; not to mention swords and daggers and armor plated with precious metals, bags of pearls, ornamental boxes inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, what looked like uncut emeralds Kalvan's head spun, and not just because so many torches were burning in an unventilated room. Now he understood how Cortez felt when he first saw the golden treasures of Tenochtitlan. The Treasure of Beshta was no soldier's tall tale. It was real; and enough specie to buy a Kingdom-or save the one he already had. Three generations of miserliness…

Kalvan took another step, to see if what looked like pearls really were, then saw for the first time the man sitting in the tunnel just beyond the emeralds.

Prince Balthar, his gray hair tousled and sticking up in clumps, sat cross-legged, with his back braced against a barrel. He was running gold coins through his fingers like a child playing at the beach with the pretty shells he had collected.

"Yes, yes, my pretties," Balthar said, in a cackling voices that made Kalvan's flesh crawl. "Dada will see that the evil Daemon won't hurt you."

Balthar wore nothing but one of his threadbare trademark black gowns, and even from a distance Kalvan could tell that both the gown and its wearer stank as if they'd been fished out of a midden pit. The only ornamentation he wore was the Princely gold circlet around his neck. Kalvan stepped forward to peer into Balthar's face, then turned away, very much wishing he hadn't or that at least his stomach would stop twisting ominously.