David Drake - The Tyrant

It hardly mattered. Truth or legend, this much was certain: that small tribe of shepherds had been annihilated shortly thereafter. Even in the semi-mythical ancient days, the folk who would become Vanbert had been ruthless with their enemies. Ruthless, yet, in an odd sort of way, not given to holding grudges once their purpose was accomplished. The male shepherds would have been massacred, the women turned into concubines. But the offspring born of those women thereafter would have been, within not more than two generations, accepted without thought as part of the growing Confederacy. Just as would any bastards born of ravished Vanbert women less "virtuous" than the matrons of myth.

Demansk chewed on that thought as he threaded his way toward the Council Hall. Even as he destroyed the Vanbert that was, he realized, he would be bringing back to life some of its ancient ways. Become an empire, Vanbert had begun to hold grudges. Say better, had justified greed with the name of "grudge." Conquered folk now were enslaved, and remained in slavery-generation succeeding generation. A nation born of pig farmers copulating in huts, with little care for the origins of their offspring, had become an empire whose aristocracy was obsessed with "good blood."

His grandfather, he remembered, had not been much impressed with the newer strains of purebred pigs. Dogs, either. "Mongrels are always best," he could remember the old man telling him. "They may not be as fat or as pretty, but they'll last. And there's nothing wrong with chewing tough meat, anyway. Good for your jaws."

A whisper from Barrett broke his train of thought. "Won't be any trouble today, I don't think. Everybody's still wondering which way things will shake down."

There was an edge of excessive eagerness in his voice that irritated Demansk. But he let no sign of it show on his face.

Barrett was too ambitious. He had been so from at least the age of twelve. And it was an ambition unleavened by any kind of deeper thought. Where solemn Olver had carefully studied the writings of Jasprem and the speeches of Acclide and Lurth-if not the Emerald philosophers whom young Trae cherished-Barrett had never seen any need to add wisdom to intelligence.

Just as Helga had predicted, Barrett had already sent away his wife and prepared divorce proceedings. He was, as the Emerald sage Howark would have put it, entirely a "man of the senses."

So be it. That, too, Demansk would use ruthlessly.

They'd finally reached the short flight of wide marble stairs that led up to the Council Hall. A squad of soldiers kept the people thronging in the Forum from spilling onto the stairs. The stair and the hall itself were reserved for Councillors and their invited guests. The squad leader recognized Demansk at a glance and gave him a tiny nod.

Now that he was through the mob, Demansk felt he could let the pose of august dignity slip a bit. So he took the stairs in his accustomed vigorous stride instead of the leisurely amble which he'd been restricting himself to.

A moment later, he and his sons had passed under the great pillared archway leading into the antechamber of the hall. It was cooler inside, if a bit stuffy. The antechamber, lacking any of the large windows which allowed light into the great central room where the Council met for its deliberations, was rather dark. The faces of the ponderous statues of mythic heroes from Vanbert's past which lined the walls of the antechamber seemed even gloomier than usual.

But Demansk paid the statues little attention. He strode across the antechamber to the wide doorway leading into the chamber. The bronze doors had been flung open, as always when the Council was in official session. The two Council members who held the office of Watchmen stood on either side of the doorway, full-sized battle-axes held in their hands.

Demansk suppressed a smile. The post of "Watchman" was a matter of ritual honor. By a tradition now at least two centuries old, it was given to the most elderly of the Councillors. Neither of these men, nor both put together-potbellied little Kirn and cadaverous Undreth-could have prevented a determined and energetic ten-year-old boy from entering the hall.

The two Watchmen shuffled aside as he came to the doorway. Undreth wheezed a welcome; Kirn, a longtime partisan of Albrecht, satisfied himself with a moue of distaste. To the first, Demansk responded with a polite nod; to the other, not so much as a glance of appraisal. Kirn was a meaningless enemy. His vote was a given, and, for the rest Once he was past, where Kirn could not see his face, Demansk's lip curled. There was an old saying, very popular among Vanbert's lower classes: a nobleman's trough is his grave. Kirn, in particular, was notorious for his gluttony. He would be dead anyway, soon enough, from natural causes.

The floor of the chamber was marble, inlaid with large copper and silver medallions. Each of the medallions recorded the name of a victorious battle or siege. A good two thirds of the floor was spackled with the things. Pausing for a moment to scan the Councillors assembling on the tiered stone benches which encircled the floor everywhere except the entrance, Demansk reminded himself of those medallions. Whatever else could be said of today's Vanbert, there was nothing false or illusory about those victories.

Workmen had already prepared a spot for the next. Quite some time ago, now. Demansk's lip curled further, into a gesture of open derision rather than simple humor. Preble, that medallion would read-whenever Albrecht finally managed to reduce it.

His open sneer, and the source of it, had already been noticed by at least a dozen other Councillors. However dull-witted they might be in many respects, Councillors were hypersensitive to political nuances. A number of them grinned; several scowled; several more looked away, feigning indifference.

Albrecht, as the old saying went, had truly hoisted himself on his own assegai. The year before, he had taken advantage of the stunning defeats which Adrian Gellert had inflicted on the Vanbert besiegers of the rebel island to have Jeschonyk and Demansk removed from command-heaping a mass of contumely on the first and a fair portion on the other. And he had also taken the occasion to get himself appointed the new commander of the besieging forces.

A necessity, that, if Albrecht's ambitions were to go any further. The Confederacy might be corrupt, but the rot still only went so far. No Councillor, even in modern times, could hope to attain the Speakership without a modicum of martial glory to his name. Albrecht had been famous for his political maneuvering, not his skills on the field of war. He'd seized the opportunity to have himself elected the commander of the siege precisely in order to remedy that flaw.

Demansk's sneer was now a thing of pure histrionics. He allowed the assembling Councillors to get a full taste of it, while he himself kept his eyes visibly on the spot long-since prepared for the missing medallion of triumph.

Albrecht had discovered, the hard way, that it was much easier to deride besiegers than to surpass them. A year had gone by, and Preble was still in rebel hands. Even after Adrian Gellert and his brother Esmond left the service of the King of the Isles to go to the southern half of the continent, the islanders had been able to keep fending off the Confederate forces.

Albrecht had been handicapped, of course. Needless to say, both Jeschonyk and Demansk himself had used their influence to keep Albrecht from getting the massive resources he needed to end the siege quickly. Jeschonyk simply out of political revenge, Demansk because-even then-he had begun seeing that he might someday need to overthrow the existing order.

The chamber was almost full, now. Only a handful of Councillors were scurrying to take their seats. Demansk left off his sneer and strode to his own accustomed place, on the lowest tier of benches reserved for the Confederacy's ten Justiciars.