David Drake - Tyrant

The loyalties of the Lightning Band had never been in doubt, given a rupture between Adrian and Esmond. Adrian's brother had been quite willing to use the Band's special skills in battle. But he'd never shown any particular fondness or interest in their newfangled gunpowder gadgetry, other than for the effects they could produce. They were Adrian's men, pure and simple.

With the Strikers, the situation was more complicated. They were lightly armored infantrymen, using traditional weapons — basically, javelins and slings for missiles and short swords for close-in work. Once Esmond had established his authority among them, the Strikers had taken to him quite warmly. Esmond really was a superb battlefield commander, even leaving aside his charismatic personality. Under his command, the Strikers had won much booty and suffered relatively few casualties in the doing.

Under normal circumstances, they would surely have sided with Esmond against Adrian. But Esmond's increasing madness had driven them away. Not his cruelties, so much as his rapid adoption of Southron manners. Mercenaries or not, most of the Strikers were Emeralds — and Emeralds, in their own way, were the world's most notorious cultural conservatives. Whether or not any individual Emerald mercenary soldier had ever read any of the Emerald philosophers, he respected those who had. The fact that Esmond was a cultured man from a good Emerald family had counted for much with them. As much, truth to tell, as the fact that Esmond had been a winner in the Pan-Emerald Games.

After the duel, however, Esmond's break from Emerald customs had been rapid and extreme. As soon as he had recovered sufficiently from his wounds, Esmond had even insisted on undergoing the scarification ritual in order to become officially adopted into the Grayhills, the largest tribe of the barbarians and the one whose chief, Norrys, had just been elected as Chief of Chiefs of the loose Southron confederation. He had begun growing his hair to the length needed for the elaborate hairstyles favored by Southron warriors, and had stopped coming to the public baths altogether. Those who had spoken with him in recent weeks said he was beginning to smell as ripe as any barbarian.

That had been too much for the Strikers. Some of the Strikers were themselves Southron in origin — the Strikers, like all mercenary outfits, had people from all over the world. But even most of them had decided to give their allegiance to Adrian. Having spent some years in a largely Emerald cultural environment, most of the former barbarians had no desire to go back to a Southron lifestyle. As one of them put it to Adrian: "It's hard to give up the habit of being clean, once you've learned the trick. Dirt and grease itch, dammit."

So, in the end, not more than thirty Strikers had broken ranks with the others and gone with Esmond. And then all of them except Southrons came scampering back the next day, after discovering that Esmond expected them to undergo the same bloody rituals. The rest of the unit, at a formal vote, had decided to give their allegiance to Adrian.

Adrian had promptly appointed Esmond's former lieutenant Donnuld Grayn as the new commander of the Strikers. Grayn was a capable man, and Adrian wanted to be able to give his full attention to expanding the Lightning Band and trying to get the Southrons to adopt at least some of his new weapons and tactics.

The end result was that Adrian had almost seven hundred men under his command, and Esmond was left with nothing more than the status he could achieve for himself as a war leader among the Grayhills. It was as good a result from the rupture as could have been hoped for.

* * *

Adrian forced his mind away from Esmond. What was done was done. Or, as the famous phrase from Jopha's Observations on Fate put it: "The past is the one path which cannot be retraced." And before this latest little digression, he had been on the verge of reaching agreement with Prelotta.

He leaned forward on his stool, planting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. For a moment, as he collected his thoughts, he studied the rug on which both his stool and Prelotta's were resting.

It was an interesting object, as well as a decorative one. As could be expected in the quarters of a major chief, the rugs which covered the floor were very finely made. As were the tapestries which were hung on the walls of Prelotta's private tent within the pavilion.

They had been made by local weavers — Reedbottom ones, rather. Southrons had no need to import rugs. In fact, their own rugs and tapestries were one of the few manufactured items for which there was a ready market in the civilized lands to the north. That was especially true for Reedbottom products. The vivid colors which the northeastern weavers were able to obtain from various of their marsh plants were quite striking.

But what Adrian found more interesting about the rug he was studying was the design itself. Most Southron weavers favored the depiction of scenes from legend on their rugs and tapestries. Usually a scene from one of the exploits of the Southrons' mythical hero Kladdo, although often a scene depicting one or another of their multitude of gods and goddesses.

Reedbottom rugs were often different, in this even more than in their vivid coloring. As was the rug he was staring at.

A new cult had arisen among the Reedbottoms about a century earlier, founded by a man known only as Young Word. The odd name was appropriate, perhaps. The man had not lived much beyond his mid-twenties, before an irate sub-tribe had murdered him in a fit of outrage at Young Word's heretical mouthings. The execution had had the usual Southron flourish — the heretic had been disemboweled and his entrails spread across the large bush to which he'd been tied.

But his cult had grown, nevertheless — explosively so, over the past generation. His followers had seized upon the manner of his death, added it to Young Word's own remembered sermons, and created out of the mix an elaborate framework of beliefs and rituals which had proven too popular to be subjected to much in the way of persecution after the first generation. By now, from what Adrian could determine, at least a third of the Reedbottoms were adherents to the "Young Word" faith.

In fact, the cult had begun spreading beyond the Reedbottoms themselves. Although the northeastern tribe was still the center of the new creed, there were Young Word devotees scattered throughout the southern half of the continent.

The rug, placed as it was in the most prestigious place in Prelotta's tent — right under the Stool of Chieftainship — indicated that Prelotta himself was a supporter of the creed. Or, at least, did not hesitate in making his partiality to it publicly known.

not surprising,interjected Center . prelotta's ambitions, as we have already ascertained, extend beyond the usual barbarian limits. there are great advantages to monotheism for such a one.

It was an odd thought, but Adrian found himself agreeing. The rug's intricate and abstract design contained a subtle message, if one considered it carefully. The Young Word cult had incorporated the image of entrails spread across branches into all their artwork. There were no "scenes," as such. Simply an intertwining of red and green strands, coiling about in a complex manner.

Complex — but not chaotic. Always, one's eyes were drawn to the center. Always, one's mind was given a reinforcement of the principal tenet of the Young Word: that all reality, all men and gods, were but manifestations of the one Fixed God. "Assan," the prophet had named that deity, using the term for the mystical ancestral spirit which was common to all Southrons.

True enough, came Raj's thought. In the crude material world as in the spiritual one: all things must have a center. That's the best justification for monarchy you could ask for. Way better than "I've got you by the throat today," which is about as sophisticated as political theory has ever gotten here on Hafardine. In the north as much as the south or the Islands.