Great King_s war k-2 Page 6

  During the last month, the hunting parties had taken their toll of wolves, but not all of the hunters came back. A man who didn't kill his wolf with the first shot might find its teeth in his throat before he could reload. Some parties came back short half their strength; tales began to go around that the wolves were Styphon's demons in animal form. He was here to put those rumors to sleep.

  Other parties marched off into storms and didn't come back at all. In Nostor, Kalvan had to stop the hunting parties completely; they were being ambushed by bandits and starving peasants for their horses and weapons.

  Kalvan remembered Duke Chartiphon's speech at the banquet celebrating the beginning of fireseed production in Hostigos. He'd predicted they'd make a howling wilderness of Nostor. They had too, with help from the weather, wolves and the civil war that broke out after Prince Gormoth had attacked the Nostor Town Temple and a nearby temple farm. The unrest had continued, with mercenary armies roaming the countryside, until Prince Pheblon, Gormoth's cousin, had restored token order.

  Not that anyone but his cronies missed Gormoth, to be sure. He'd been a bad enemy and would never have been a friend worth having. But as long as a nominally friendly Prince ruled Nostor, the Great King of Hos-Hostigos couldn't simply march in and take charge-even if the place was falling apart! That would make it look as if Great King Kalvan was more concerned with his own power than with the overthrow of Styphon's House, and that reputation would be a political headache. Not as big a one as a live Gormoth would have been, but a live Gormoth could have been turned into a dead one. Prince Pheblon, on the other hand, would have to be supported as much as possible, in the hope that he would repay that support by his contribution to the spring campaign against Hos-Harphax.

  It was the coming campaign that concerned Kalvan as the riders on the road disappeared behind a copse of trees. This latest inspection tour made it clear the hunters were finally getting the better of the wolves. Woodcutting parties were going out again so people weren't freezing to death quite so often, and winter had to be two-thirds gone unless another Ice Age was making its appearance. However, when spring arrived so would the next round against Styphon's House and their puppets in Harphax City.

  By the time Kalvan's thoughts had gone that far, the snow was up to his horse's knees and it looked as if it would be even deeper farther on. Kalvan guided the horse to the left, down into the bed of the little stream, and then stopped as he felt his mount's hooves begin to slide on the ice.

  The clouds were thicker and darker, and while it wasn't snowing-thank Dralm for small mercies! -the wind was blowing the snow already on the ground.

  "Your Majesty, should we be stopping here?" Count Phrames' voice came from behind. "We are too strong to tempt wolves or bandits if we keep moving, but if we stop we may look like easy prey."

  "In that case, they're gong to get a nasty surprise," Kalvan said, as he pulled a pistol out of his boot and checked the load, the flint, the priming. Then he pulled his horse's head around with one hand, holding the pistol cocked and ready with the other.

  As he left the road, he heard Phrames calling out that the Great King wished to ride apart with his scouts and pray to the gods of this homeland for guidance. If he'd thought there was anyone home, Kalvan would have done exactly that. However, neither the late Rev. Morrison's determination that his only son follow him into the ministry nor the here-and-now baker's dozen of gods and goddesses had altered his basic agnosticism.

  What he was doing probably wasn't any more rational than praying, but it worked better for him. He intended to ride up to the four-foot thick hemlock standing below a little cliff that marked the place where Kalvan had left otherwhen Pennsylvania on May 19, 1964 and wound up here in the Five-now Six Kingdoms. The hemlock marked the site of the farmhouse where an escaped murderer had been holed up. A murderer who'd escaped jail, come home to this ramshackle farmhouse and beat on his wife until she'd escaped and told a neighbor. According to his wife, Bill Kirby had a rifle and a grudge against the State Police.

  Kalvan had been skulking toward the yellow farmhouse, his hand close to the butt of his.38 Colt, with fellow Pennsylvania State Policemen Steve Kovac, Larry Stacey and Jack French, when he was scooped up by the cross-time flying saucer. He wondered what they thought about his disappearance…probably thought he'd turned tail and ran, Dralm-blast it!

  Kalvan didn't like that at all; he'd never run from a fight in his life. One thing was true: no one back home had seen hide nor hair of him since he'd been picked up by that a cross-time saucer. Other than Aunt Harriet, there was no one to miss him back home; he'd broken up with Kate over six months before he disappeared. Last he'd heard, she was engaged to a dentist… She'd always fretted over the danger of police work; he'd never known how right she was!

  Of course, Kate had imagined dangers closer to home than here-and-now, where medicine was of the barber and leech variety and one was as likely to get run over by a runaway Conestoga wagon as die peacefully in bed. Not a lot of old folks here-and-now…

  Still, climbing the cliff and visiting the tree calmed him down when he needed calming, and sometimes gave him an idea for the solution of some particularly knotty problem. Call it his touchstone to the past. Kalvan had visited this spot three times since his arrival here-and-now; on this, his fourth visit, he needed a relaxing place to ponder events more than ever. Next year's battles would determine whether or not the fledgling Great Kingdom he'd created would endure or end in an orgy of blood-letting and burning…

  This spot was also where Kalvan had started to write his Journal-maybe a foolish conceit, but it helped keep his perspective on who he had been, a little over a year ago-Corporal Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Policeman-and who he was now: Great King Kalvan I of Hos-Hostigos.

  "Over here, Your Majesty!" Hectides the old wolf-hunter and scout cried out.

  He pushed past a low hanging chestnut tree and there before him was the little cliff and the big hemlock with the deep three-foot wide X Kalvan had carved into the trunk with his knife on his first return visit; he had wanted to mark it so that he would recognize it twenty years from now. Already Hectides had two of his hunters clearing the snow out of the fire pit that they'd built on their last visit. When the pit was just bare stone, they brought straw, twigs and some firewood. Within minutes the old wolf hunter was using his tinderbox to light a fire at the base of the cliff and soon had a roaring fire. The scouts fanned out to keep watch and, as soon as his fingers thawed over the fire, Kalvan took out his quill pen and lambskin parchment and began to write. Journal – Corporal Calvin Morrison Winter – 1965 – January 29th, plus or minus a day or two. I'm glad I decided to write this diary now while my memories of 'former life' are still vivid; I'm afraid, after a decade or two here-and-now, my experiences of the earth I grew up on will begin to fade and recede much like a long dream. Someday when I'm an old man-should I be so lucky!-these entries will help convince me that I am not the Dralm-sent Kalvan that everyone believes me to be. Or that my previous life was not some fever dream… Thus, this permanent record in English so no one else can 'accidentally' read it and have me sent to the local equivalent of a loony bin, which far exceeds the horror of those state institutions in far away Pennsylvania. The journal entries I've been making during the past few months have helped me reconstruct my childhood and early life. As much as I despise the current double-speak and gobbledygook that passes for 'psycho-therapy' back home, these diary entries about my childhood, my college years at Princeton, my military service in Korea and my time as a Pennsylvania State Policeman have improved my morale. They have also helped to clear my mind of the doubts that were plaguing me at the onset of winter, when the day-to-day crises of kingship were no longer keeping me preoccupied, and I once again began to try to 'analyze' the event that catapulted me here-and-now. No matter how unlikely it seems, the truth is I was 'picked up' by some kind of cross-time flying saucer and dropped off on a world far different than my own, both in history and technol
ogical development. I can still see in my mind's eye the flicker of other worlds passing overhead through the iridescent dome of the saucer, which means there must be millions of 'alternate' earths. My friend, Steve Kovac, who used to read 'Analog Science Fiction Magazine,' would loan me the magazines after he finished reading them, and during long nights in the barracks, when I had trouble sleeping, I would read them. So I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of alternate worlds; however, it's a long road from Altoona to Piccadilly Circus! Especially, when the saucer pilot-some kind of military officer in a green uniform-tries to shoot you with a long-barreled soldering iron! It was a combination of quick reflexes and luck that got me out of that saucer alive; still, I hope that pilot took a good one from my Colt Official Police. I don't know what the Sideways Police Service does about unauthorized 'pickups,' but I suspect it isn't preferential treatment with kid gloves. No, I must have killed him or there would have been someone from that outfit snooping around Hostigos, trying to pick me up. The probabilities of what might happen to me, should they 'pick me up' are not thoughts to aid in either good digestion or a good night's rest. If that sounds paranoid, well, living in an era where paranoia is a survival tool will do that to one. The day started out as an ordinary duty day at the barracks, when we got a call from old man Gustav that Bill Kirby had come back to his wife's place and shot it up pretty good-

  "Your Majesty, sorry to interrupt," Hectides said, pointing up at the fast-moving and darkening clouds. "A storm could be upon us in half a candle, and there's still wolves about."

  Kalvan's horse snorted as if to punctuate the wolf hunter's words.

  "You're right, Hectides, we should be getting back to the main party." Whatever ideas might come here couldn't be worth risking his neck, or even his horse. Good mounts weren't easy to replace in Hostigos, and wouldn't be for quite some time.

  Kalvan mounted his horse, then rode back downstream followed by Hectides and his scouts. He returned faster than he'd come, because as he turned off the stream the howl of a wolf floated down from a nearby hill. The horse whinnied nervously; Kalvan had to tug on the reins to keep him from breaking into a trot.

  Count Phrames met Kalvan by the road with an I-told-you-so expression on his face. "Your Majesty, I beg you not to ride out like this again while we are in wolf country. So much depends upon your safety-"

  Kalvan cut in saying, "Phrames, Queen Rylla has appointed six nursemaids for our child. I'll recommend you as the seventh, if you so wish."

  Phrames winced as if slapped. Kalvan immediately felt guilty for taking out his frustration with the weather and the state of the world on him. He felt even guiltier for throwing the fact of Rylla's pregnancy in Phrames' face. One of the many little details about the Princedom of Hostigos Kalvan had learned, after the campaigning season ended and there was time to think and ask questions, was that Count Phrames had been Rylla's betrothed since childhood. To see her married to a total stranger, even if sent by the gods, couldn't have been pleasant for him-even if the stranger gave her a throne and a crown.

  "I am truly sorry, Phrames. I spoke in anger and in haste; my words were unworthy of a king."

  Phrames grinned, white teeth showing above a frost-tinted brown beard. "I spoke without proper respect to you, I admit. But I did speak with proper respect for Queen Rylla, who's the one I'll have to reckon with if I'd let you come to harm, be it by wolves, bandits or an ill-fated fall from your horse."

  "Then by all means let's both show her respect and turn for home. There appears to be nothing more out here worth seeing or doing today than a helmet full of snow. Also, the envoy of Prince Araxes is coming tomorrow, and I want to show him at least the respect of being awake and unfrozen."

  Kalvan pounded his gloved right hand against his saddlehorn to see if there was any feeling left in the fingers. It was a good thing he hadn't done any more writing in the Journal; he'd had one bout of frostbite in Korea that had made him more susceptible to a second.

  Phrames snorted. "What his Reluctance Prince Araxes needs is a swift kick where he sits down from the Great King's army and everybody else who wants to help. We may have to sell tickets."

  Kalvan didn't entirely disagree, after three months of hearing Araxes' excuses for not swearing fealty to Hos-Hostigos and another of total silence. He wondered if the Prince of Phaxos was deep into Styphon's pocket. However, if he was going to the trouble of sending an envoy over wolf-ridden, snowbound roads, common courtesy required listening to him.

  They rode across the little bridge built over the stream last autumn, one of a score or so that Kalvan had ordered built by peasants and prisoners of war to make it easier to move guns and wagons around Hostigos. The beams and planking seemed to be holding up, but one railing was sagging ominously. Kalvan called out to his scribe to make a note. He pretended not to hear a petty-captain adding that if the Great King could notice something like that, he would certainly notice a man riding a horse like a sack of cabbages, "-so remember that you're on a horse, Nicos, and not on the ridgepole of your father's barn, thank you, you'll wish to Dralm you'd never been born!"

  Two hundred yards up the road, the head of Kalvan's escort overtook a woodcutting party-twenty men and a dozen oxen, with horns the size of Texas longhorns, and horses laden with branches and logs-that completely filled the road. Phrames swore like a trooper, several of the woodcutters swore back, and finally Kalvan had to urge his horse through the drifts to restore order. Voices stilled as he approached.

  The leader of the woodcutters was the yeoman farmer, Vurth, who'd been Kalvan's first host here-and-now. Kalvan had amply repaid the farmer for taking in a stranger, who didn't know when or where he was, by helping fight off a band of Nostori raiders threatening Vurth's homestead. Kalvan didn't believe in omens, but he had to admit that seeing Vurth's homely bearded face grinning up at him made him feel better-despite the rising chill wind and lightly falling snow.

  "The wolves aren't what they were a moon ago, Your Majesty," Vurth explained. "It's worth it, to not sit by a cold hearth. So we went out, and what with the frost breaking off the branches, we didn't even have to do much cutting."

  "Good work, Vurth. We'll buy three mule-loads for the shelter at Hostigos Town. Pick men to take it and they can ride along with us." Kalvan looked past Vurth to a pair of oxen halfway up the train. "I'll pay the bounty on those wolf skins, too. How many are there?"

  "Five and a half-grown cub, Your Majesty."

  "I hope you didn't use any of the royal fireseed on them?"

  "No, no. Styphon's owl dung is good enough for those, and we didn't even have to shoot two of them. My oldest daughter's husband, Xykos-he's as big as a bear and found himself a suit of armor at Fyk-just stands there and lets the wolf bite his armor. Then while the beast's trying to reckon why the man doesn't taste right, Xykos swings his axe. Wolves don't take to being hit on the head with axes, let me tell you!"

  Kalvan and Hectides laughed. "Your son-in-law sounds like a good man. Would he care to join the hunting parties, or take a post with my Guard?"

  "I don't think he'd say no if you asked him come spring, Sire. Right now, though, my daughter's half a moon from her first. So he'd as soon not be away from home for a spell. I know you understand we mean no disrespect."

  "None taken, Vurth. I know a little of what he's going through, and by summer I'll know more. I'll send a gift for the child and speak of this again some other time."

  "Dralm bless, Your Majesty, and give you and Queen Rylla a son to go on ruling over us as well as you've done." Kalvan heard murmurs of agreement from the other woodcutters. He backed his horse away, thanking Somebody or Other it was too dark for anyone to see his face turning color.

  It helped to hear things like that whenever he had the feeling that maybe he was on the wrong course and should have simply ridden on instead of starting the biggest war this world had known in half a century. If his subjects, the people who had to pay the price in burned houses and ruined farms, stolen livestock and pois
oned wells, dead sons and raped daughters, thought he was ruling well-maybe he was doing something right.

  "God helps those who help themselves," had been one of his father's favorite aphorisms. He wasn't going to place any bets on the source of whatever help he received, with all due respect to the late Reverend Morrison, R.I.P. It was also true that Kalvan had never heard of any good coming from just lying down and letting events roll over you like a steamroller.

  FIVE

  Kalvan sighed happily as Rylla wrapped the freshly heated cloths around his feet. He wasn't worried about frostbite any more, but the warmth seeping through him still felt delicious. The temperature must have been dropping toward zero when he rode into Hostigos Town, and the wind had been blowing half a gale.

  "There," Rylla said decisively. "Your toes don't feel quite so much like dried peas." She stood up and took his hands. "Your fingers still feel cold, though." She sat down on the bench beside him and tucked both of his hands inside her chamber robe.

  Between the warm fur lining of the robe and the warm Rylla inside it, Kalvan's fingers quickly finished thawing. In a few minutes, he could feel how Rylla's waist was beginning to swell with the child she was carrying.

  "Has it moved yet?" he asked.

  Rylla's blue eyes clouded for a moment. "No. Amasphalya, the chief midwife and Brother Mytron both said it would not be a good sign if the child moved so soon. When the snow turns to rain is when it should start moving."

  "If the snow ever stops! If the winter is at all like this in Grefftscharr, they must be watching for the coming of the Frost Giants and the last battle of the gods."