David Drake - Tyrant

Odd, though. Prelotta was close enough now for Helga to be able to see his expression clearly. The open, flanged helmets the Southrons favored did not obscure faces much. It was always hard for her to tell, because of the grotesque scars and tattoos, but she thought the Reedbottom chief looked rather satisfied with himself.

And so he proved.

"They refused, of course," he announced, as soon as he drew up his mount. "Even heaped the most scurrilous insults upon my head!"

Grinning while he said it. True, with the cheek scars, Prelotta's grin never seemed especially humorous to Helga. But she'd come to know the Reedbottom chief fairly well in the time since she'd arrived in Marange, and he was clearly not in a foul mood.

Adrian, as always — and in a way which continued to amaze Helga — managed exactly the right response. Her lover's innate scholarly absentmindedness, which sometimes exasperated her but of which she was basically rather fond, was something Adrian could suspend when he needed to. Those weird "spirits" of his made him just as superb a diplomat as a slinger.

"No doubt you told them you'd rape every matron in the city, by way of revenge," he drawled. "I'll warn you though, Prelotta, a good half of them will be withered crones. And the ones who are plump enough to suit you will have nasty dispositions."

Still grinning, Prelotta glanced at Helga. The glance was one of assessment, not admiration. Southron standards of female beauty, Reedbottoms even more than most, leaned very heavily toward heft. Every single one of Prelotta's three wives and eight concubines sported the rolls of neck fat which were so highly esteemed among Southron females.

"Well, yes, I did. Told them I'd rape all their daughters too." He waved his hand idly. "I might even carry out the last threat, if I can find any good-looking enough. But I think the revenge I'll take will actually horrify them even more. I'll have those precious matrons of theirs — and we'll see just how far that 'Vanbert virtue' goes! — bathe me and my chieftains in the city's baths."

Helga couldn't prevent herself from wincing — while choking down a giggle at the same time. The image of dozens of wealthy Confederate matrons, all middle-aged or older, trying to scrub the oil and grease and filth from scarred and tattooed tribesmen — all of them, savages and matrons alike, naked as the day they were born — the women even more aghast at the stench than they were at the prospect of being ravaged—

She did giggle. She couldn't help it, even though she knew that Prelotta's half threat to rape the notables' daughters was only half made in jest. The Reedbottoms weren't quite as bestial as the other Southrons, but that wasn't really saying much. If they did manage to survive Tomsien and sack Franness, there would be horrors aplenty in the city.

"But," continued Prelotta, shrugging, "the negotiation served its purpose. They know what I want now, in detail. So when I come back after we crush Tomsien, I expect there'll be no difficulty. They'll probably have all the booty stacked outside the city gates. Which will be open, of course. I will make Franness the capital of my new northern province, whether they like it or not."

Helga's little choked giggle had registered on Prelotta. He gave her that unsettling shark's grin.

"The truth is, I'd enjoy a bath. I've even gotten Otta and Glami here" — a quick nod toward two of his top chieftains—"to agree to join me. The rest say they'll do the same, if we survive the experience."

All eight of the Reedbottom chieftains who had accompanied Prelotta to Franness were grinning now. Helga was a bit startled. More than a bit, actually. Prelotta's sense of humor was rather good, but it was almost always of the "only half in jest" sort.

He's not kidding. He will get those savages of his into a bath.

Not for the first time, Helga found herself admitting that Adrian had been right, and she wrong. Her lover had told her that the Reedbottoms — alone of the Southron tribes — were ready to make what he called "the leap to feudalism." Which, he said, always entailed the ruling elite taking on at least the trappings of civilization.

Those "spirits" of his again. The one called "Center," more specifically. Helga knew the details, now, of Adrian's strange three-way mentality. He'd spent hours explaining it to her. Even if she didn't really understand much of it, she knew that it would be that one who would have given Adrian these notions. The other, the Raj Whitehall "person," was a strategist and a tactician. It was the "computer" who looked at human affairs the way a weaver examines a tapestry in the making. Seeing the loom itself, and not just the fabric.

Right again, damn it. Between him and my father — assuming I survive all this — I'm going to get sick and tired of hearing I told you so. Glumly: Years and years of it, probably. Assuming, of course, they survive the next year.

Which was still something she had her doubts about. Tomsien was said to be bringing no less than six brigades. Helga wasn't certain, but she couldn't think of any campaign in Confederate history which had ever brought more than five to bear on a single enemy.

Prelotta was now turning to that subject. "There's a valley not more than five miles ahead," he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb, "that should suit you. Can't get much sense out of these scampering Grayhills and other Jotties" — that with a sneer; "Jotties" was the slang term Reedbottoms used for other Southron tribes—"but I think Tomsien's not more than two days' march away. So we'd better move fast, if you want to make sure the laager's in place before he arrives."

One of the Reedbottom chieftains interjected: "Tomsien broke Norrys himself two days ago, in a battle somewhere to the north. The Chief of Chiefs survived, from what we heard, but he's badly wounded."

Helga was struck by the excellence of the man's diction in the Emerald tongue, even if his accent was so thick you could cut it with a knife. That was another thing Prelotta had insisted on — and forced down the throats of his underlings. He and his top subordinates continued to use their own language whenever they were discussing immediate tactics, especially under pressure. But whenever they were in Adrian's presence, Prelotta had mandated Emerald as the language of choice.

That wasn't because Adrian didn't understand their own. He was quite fluent in it, as a matter of fact. That was the doing of his "spirits" again — just as they had been the ones who explained Prelotta's thinking.

"Trappings of civilization," indeed.

Prelotta was ambitious. And perhaps — it remained to be seen — had the intelligence to pull it off. He certainly had the willpower. One thing was certain: the chief of the Reedbottoms was determined to transform the balance of power within the Southrons themselves. Within a generation, no more, he intended to displace the Grayhills from their long period of predominance.

Doing so, however, required giving his own tribe a new basis for wielding power. That much of Adrian's transmission of his spirits' thinking Helga had no difficulty at all in understanding. So long as the Reedbottoms remained simply populous — their numbers were at least as great as the Grayhills — they would never become anything more than the "nephews of Assan." No other tribe tried to challenge the Reedbottoms seriously on their own terrain, true enough. But past attempts by the Reedbottoms to muscle their way out of the lowlands had been repulsed just as decisively.

The hardscrabble pig farmers of Vanbert had levered their way to power by using one of the tools of civilization: disciplined organization— government. That was beyond the still half-savage Reedbottoms. But a powerful military based on Adrian's new gunpowder weapons wasn't. Helga had understood another of Adrian's "historical dictums" quite well, from her experience with her brother's use of firearms: Guns spell the doom of nomad military strength. Always have; always will. Because barbarians can use guns, but they can't make them.