Harry Turtledove - Every Inch a King

Then the Powers gave Shqiperi a king whether Essad Pasha-and the Shqipetari-liked it or not. Wilhelm the Weed, I think they called him: a Schlepsigian prince with time on his hands. He went down there, but he couldn’t make Essad Pasha or anyone else pay any attention to him. I had better luck than that, by Eliphalet’s strong right hand.

And then…And then…Well, how do you talk about the start of the War of the Kingdoms without breaking down and sobbing? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who tore out the throat of the Dual Monarch’s heir-and the poor prince’s wife’s, too-before a silver crossbow quarrel killed him? How do you talk about the Vlach werewolf who had friends at the court of the King of Vlachia?

Once upon a time, I said the Vlachs might huff and puff and blow the Nekemte Peninsula down. The Vlachs huffed and they puffed and they almost-almost-blew the world down.

When they didn’t do enough to show the Dual Monarchy they were sorry (if they were sorry instead of laughing behind their hands, which is more likely), the King-Emperor declared war on Vlachia. Then Tver declared war on the Dual Monarchy, because Tver was Vlachia’s ally. Then Schlepsig, my Schlepsig, declared war on Tver, because Schlepsig was the Dual Monarchy’s ally. Then Narbonensis declared war on Schlepsig, because Narbonensis was Tver’s ally.

Narbonensis had fortified its border with Schlepsig, clearly with evil intent. To get at the Narbonese, my kingdom had to march its soldiers north of Narbonensis through the little kingdom of Bruges. Yes, years ago an earlier King of Schlepsig signed a treaty promising not to do any such thing. But what’s a treaty? Only a scrap of paper! Because of a scrap of paper, Albion, perfidious Albion, declared war on Schlepsig.

All the same, everybody thought we’d beat Narbonensis in a hurry, turn around and give the Tverskis a couple of good ones in the slats, and go home again before the leaves fell. Only…it didn’t quite work out that way. With help from Albion, and with the Brugeoisie fighting like fiends, the Narbonese held us in front of Lutetia. And we did give the Tverskis a couple of good ones, but so what? Tver is so big, she can take more than anybody else can dish out.

The war dragged on…and on. The Hassockian Empire came in on our side. So did Plovdiv. Torino was supposed to, but decided to jump on the Dual Monarchy’s back instead. Dacia tried to do the same thing, and promptly got squashed for her trouble.

For a while, the Circus of Dr. Ola toured behind the lines, entertaining troops on leave. So did other troupes. Then more and more of the men started putting on pike-gray uniforms themselves. My own call came when the war was about a year old, just after Kдthe had our first.

I speak good Narbonese. They could have sent me east. I speak fluent Hassocki-do I ever! They could have sent me southwest. I speak pretty fair Torinan. They could have sent me south when Schlepsig gave the Dual Monarchy a hand down there. I would have been truly useful in any of those places.

They shipped me west to fight Tver. I have little bits of Vlachian, which is sort of like Tverski. In other words, in that fight I was no more useful than any other soldier, and less useful than quite a few. Did they care? Ha! I was a body. I could shoot a crossbow. That, they cared about.

We could beat the Tverskis whenever we set our minds to it. It did us less good than we hoped it would. I shot a few of the poor bastards. Some of them only had hunting bows. It hardly seemed fair. Then one of the lousy Zibeonites shot me in the arm, and I stopped caring whether it was fair or not.

Max? Max never never did get into pike-gray. Turns out they didn’t make uniforms-and especially boots-large enough to fit him. He went on swallowing his own sword all through the war, and never had to worry about anybody else’s. Just as well, I suppose. He would have been a demon of a big target.

Thanks to some good medical magecraft, the arm healed fine. I went back to the line-and got shot in the leg. I was evidently a demon of a big target myself.

We managed to knock Tver out of the war while I was laid up the second time, and no, I don’t call that cause and effect. But Vespucciland came in about then. The cursed Vesps were getting rich selling Albion and Narbonensis everything under the sun. They wanted to protect their investment, Eliphalet afflict them with carbuncles.

We fought for four years all told, till we couldn’t fight any more. Then we threw in the sponge. The king abdicated. There was a short civil war till we got a new one, who’s only distantly connected to the old royal house. We lost land. Worse, we lost face.

And at that, we were lucky. Tver had a peasants’ revolt, and councils of peasants and artisans are trying to run the place till someone steels himself to put a crown on his head. The Dual Monarchy fell to pieces. All the pieces declared themselves kingdoms of their own or else joined neighboring kingdoms-Great Vlachia got too big for its own britches in a hurry, but it’s still not big enough to be a Power. The old dynasty still hangs on in the Eastmarch, which isn’t much to hang on to. And the Hassockian Empire also fell apart. Their old imperial family had to run for its life. They’ve got a tough new Atabeg named Kemal (no, I don’t think he’s the one I jugged) who’s trying to whip what’s left of them into shape. We’ll see what comes of that, if anything ever does.

Shqiperi? Shqiperi’s a bloody mess, but then Shqiperi’s always been a bloody mess, so it hasn’t changed as much as most of the world has. Wilhelm the Weed didn’t last-he ran away during the war. Essad Pasha didn’t last, either-somebody murdered him right after the war. I wonder how many suspects there were. The whole population of Shqiperi minus about twelve, I suppose.

Last I heard, someone named Zogu claimed to be running things there. That Zogu? My Zogu? I don’t know. If it is, they could do worse. And they probably will.

After the War of the Kingdoms, I half hoped the Shqipetari would call me back to take over again. No doubt Wilhelm the Weed hoped the same thing. We’re both still waiting, I’m afraid. I don’t know about Wilhelm, but I’ve given up holding my breath.

“Just as well,” Kдthe said when I told her that. “Haven’t you got enough going on right here?” This was just after we had our third, so no denying she had a point.

Once I came home for good, I needed a while before I started performing again. That isn’t just, or even mainly, because I got wounded twice while I wore the pike-gray. Part of it’s because, like a lot of soldiers coming home from the war, I was too gloomy and disappointed to care about anything. We’d done so much, we’d suffered so much, and what did we have to show for it? Nothing. Nothing at all. I needed a while to get over that who gives a damn? feeling.

And part of it’s simply because I’d got out of practice. You don’t practice for a day or two and you notice you’re off when you go back to it. You don’t practice for a month or two and the audience notices you’re off. At the front, I didn’t practice for much longer than a month or two. If a lot of your performance involves going up there on a tightrope, the audience is like to notice because you fall off and go splat. Not good.

Little by little, I eased myself into it again. I wasn’t the only veteran coming back to the Circus of Dr. Ola, and I wasn’t the only one who had trouble picking up where he’d left off.

The circus wasn’t the same, either. The circuit was smaller, and so was the pay. After the war, they didn’t want to watch performing Schlepsigians in Narbonensis or Torino or Albion or Gdansk (yes, Gdansk has risen from the dead-till the next time her neighbors pound a stake into her heart). So we played in Schlepsig and the Eastmarch, with an occasional foray into Yagmaria (whose new king is an old admiral from the Dual Monarchy, which would make more sense if Yagmaria had a coastline).