John Carr - Siege of Tarr-Hostigos

"It's good to know that Kalvan and I aren't the only ones with this kind of trouble. I'm glad we had this talk, Dalla. I feel much better about things. For a long while, I've been feeling that everything that went wrong was all my fault."

"No, no, Rylla. This is no dream castle you have in Hostigos. These Styphoni are really bad people, and they're after you and Kalvan, and nothing either of you do is going to change that. Hostigos earned their unending hate the day Kalvan announced to the world the Fireseed Mystery. Styphon's House will never forgive him for breaking up their monopoly."

"You're right." Rylla shivered.

"What's the matter, Rylla?"

"I was just thinking of what would have happened if Kalvan hadn't come along when he did and saved us all. It would have been bad, wouldn't it?"

"Here, have another drink. You don't want to think about that!" No indeed, thought Dalla, I've seen some of those time-lines and it wasn't pretty- not one little bit!

Danar Sirna took a deep drink of Kalvan's brandy in the hopes that the spirits would, at the very least, warm some part of her anatomy. Despite a fur shawl and thermal underwear, she was still chilled to the bone. She shivered as the wind blew through the rafters of the Foundry common hall.

There was a roaring fire in the hearth, but Sirna was seated far enough away that its heat was little more than a warm kiss. Like almost everything else connected with University life, seating distance to the fire was a matter of title and seniority-she had neither. Seated closest to the fire were the Study-Team's Director Talgan Dreth, his assistant Gorath Tran and visiting Professor Shalgro, the paratemporal probability theorist. The next circle included the senior faculty, Varnath Lala, Professor Lathor Karv, Doctor Sankar Trav and her friend Aranth Sain, the pre-industrial military expert, who looked as out of place among this crowd as a tomcat in a turkey coop.

Sirna wondered what had convinced the former professor of military science to leave his classes for outtime research. On second thought, Sain was probably more at home here on Kalvan's Time-Line than he ever was back at the University of Dhergabar. The thought of the bald professor with his waxed mustache sitting at a University tea brought a smile to her lips. He was probably as glad to be here, away from University politics and sanctions, as she was.

She was beginning to really like it here on Kalvan's Time-Line; it would be a sad day when she had to return to First Level again. She'd have to face herself, her old life, her parents.

Unfortunately, if some of the things she'd just heard about the Grand Host of Styphon were true, home might be a great deal closer than she or anyone else had expected! Grand Master Soton and Great King Lysandros were putting together an army so massive that even King Kalvan would be hard-pressed to stop it, much less defeat it as he had done before. Kalvan's problems were legion: the Grand Host; the League of Dralm, which had just rejected his plea for economic and military aid and those of his allies; the Princes of Ulthor and Nyklos, who were beginning to worry more about their own necks than the Great Kingdom of Hostigos.

It would take all of Kalvan's military expertise as well as Appalon's Own Luck to survive this spring's invasion; yet, for the Kalvan Study-Team members, Kalvan's success or failure had as much relevance as an academic feud.

"Kalvan is in serious trouble now," Professor Lathor Karv pontificated. "He has severely strained the social and political infra-structure of the Five Kingdoms. The idea of Hos-Rathon being a Great Kingdom is ludicrous. Now they are about to revert to their previous forms."

"In other words," Aranth Sain interjected, pausing to drain his tankard, "Kalvan is between a rock and a hard place, as they say on Europo-American."

"If I correctly infer the meaning of your colorful Fourth Level phraseology, yes, Kalvan will be lucky to survive the coming upheavals as the natural social order re-forms to its pre-Kalvan boundaries."

"I disagree," old Professor Shalgro interrupted. "Kalvan has done more than disrupt local social and political relations; he has permanently fractured them. Whether or not Kalvan survives the outcome of next year's invasion, his ideas will live beyond his own corporeal existence."

"I beg to disagree, Professor Shalgro, but when Archpriest Roxthar's Investigators get through with Hostigos, there won't be anyone who remembers who Kalvan was, much less his so-called innovations."

"That is not true, Lathor," Aranth Sain stated with conviction. "Kalvan's enemies are now using his own tactics and strategies to defeat him-it is still too soon to tell whether or not they will be successful. The reason the Grand Host looks as strong as it does is because the army was put together by the two men, Grand Master Soton and Captain-General Phidestros, who have learned Kalvan-style tactics the best. Not even Roxthar is mad enough to destroy his best generals. And that is to say nothing of the Middle Kingdoms, who now have the fireseed secret and owe no allegiance to Styphon or Styphon's priests."

"Then the Middle Kingdoms will be next to fall under Styphon's Grand Host," Lathor Karv said.

"It's quite apparent," Sain said, "that you know next to nothing of military history. The Grand Host is a fragile amalgamation of not-so-grand allies, who are only united in their opposition to Kalvan. The minute Kalvan is defeated or killed, the Grand Host will begin to fall apart. The idea of Captain-General Phidestros leading them into the Middle Kingdoms is a romantic fantasy engendered by too much dependence upon computer programs rather than experience in the field or study of historical analogs. For example, on Fourth Level Europo-American, there was Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general, whose misfortune was that far and away his best student was a Roman named Scipio Africanus the Elder."

"Ha! I see that progress has passed by the Military Science Department as well as any coherent theoretical framework. I have personally run over fifty simulations where Kalvan's army is defeated; in every one of them the Grand Host remains united to not only scourge all of Hostigos of Kalvanites, but to invade the Middle Kingdoms-thereby removing all taint of Kalvan's heresies."

"In case you hadn't noticed, there is a difference between computer simulations and real life, which is neither sanitary or predictable-"

Sirna tuned out the argument, which would probably continue for most of the evening. It was far easier to be concerned about academic debating points when your feet were dry and your nose wasn't tingling from the cold. Besides, it appeared all of them-even her friend Aranth Sain-had missed the human connection. Kalvan was not a number or equation in the University database; he was a living breathing human with a will and aspirations of his own. That's something her friend, Baltrov Eldra, would have brought up were she not headed to Hos-Bletha. Not for the first time, she missed Eldra's good sense and humor.

Sirna wanted Kalvan to win. To Styphon with Lathor Karv's theories or Lala's view of Kalvan as the symbol of unbridled male aggression gone berserk! No, Kalvan was a good man trying his best against almost impossible odds. As far as she was concerned, they ought to be trying to think of ways to help Kalvan rather than dissecting his still warm corpse!

As Kalvan and Rylla rode their horses down the Great King's Highway, Kalvan explained his plans for the Hostigos Royal Academy of Military Studies: how he was attempting to create the core of tomorrow's army- today.

"Kalvan, I believe we have enough orphans in Hos-Hostigos for three Great Kingdoms! Use our unwanted children for your new army. We don't need to take these Ruthani cast-offs from your friend Ranjar Sargos."