Crowned in Black: Ch. 15

Before Istvan left, I ordered the lords and ladies of Myszno to assemble in the War Room in three hours’ time. That was long enough to get another drink, and put some serious thought into my proposal for the army.

Before I’d been conscripted, I knew dick about the military. I’d watched documentaries now and then, and stayed vaguely in the loop about the Total Wars, but the wars had been going on since before I was born, and they were mostly an exhausting background drone through the course of my life. I knew when food was being rationed and when it wasn’t, pitched in for war effort donations when it was needed, and otherwise tried to tune out the slow collapse of the world around me. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it, so was the point of paying attention? I had to work, and my rent wasn’t gonna pay itself.

That all changed when I got called up for the draft. I’d never expected it – my family had North Korean relatives on my mother’s side, so we were blacklisted into a weird ‘citizen alien’ status. But then the UNAC grew so desperate for soldiers that my status didn’t mean shit, and suddenly the war wasn’t just ‘over there’ any more.

It seemed like common sense to understand how the military worked once I was no longer just a boot. I met and spoke with guys who served in other countries, chatted with them to learn how their armies worked and why they had better rations. The ones who interested me the most were the Swiss. They’d quit their position of neutrality in the First Total War, and they now fielded some of the best soldiers in Europe. There were a lot of Swiss soldiers in the field for such a small country. A guy named Jaeger - his surname, I couldn’t remember his first – explained to me how they had a universal draft. Every able-bodied person was conscripted into their military at 18, trained to the gills, then given ordnance and infantry equipment they were expected to maintain at home, or in a village armory if their house was too small for a gun safe and tac room. The support for it among the Swiss had blown my mind at the time – but I understood it better now.

Myszno had a lot in common with Switzerland, in terms of its geography and history. When I’d first arrived here, the Myszno Defense Force had been rallied by Lord Bolza in the traditional feudal way. He ordered his satraps to round up every young-ish peasant male, stuck a spear in his hands, then let them act as cannon-fodder ahead of a better trained, but highly localized knight-based cavalry. Each county had provided what it could – some artillery here, a few airships there - and it had been a complete unmitigated disaster against the unified, fearless undead army of Ashur the Demon. In the end, the defense force had fallen apart, leaving Istvan - under Lord Soma - to manage a disorganized mass of panicking, scared people. Not soldiers.

Standing armies were rare in Archemi. Vlachia had the only one I’d heard of, the royal Black Army. But as I’d whined about earlier with Istvan, I knew even Vlachia’s military was still very feudal: ponderous, centralized, and likely to collapse if Ignas were disabled or killed. Which is exactly why Ororgael and Lucien had targeted him.

If I had my way, that was about to change. Neither Ororgael or Lucien had served in combat. Ororgael, as Michael Pratt, had been a desk jockey for an intelligence outfit, and he had some memories from Baldr’s time in the field, but it wasn’t the same as crawling the jungle and feeling, to your bones, how that system felt for the people on the pointy end. They could pretend to play general, but some part of me knew it was just that: pretend. They were smart, but there were experiences in me that they’d never had. And I was about to leverage them to build the best military operation Archemi had ever seen.

The first step began as soon as I closed the KMS and headed downstairs. I went to the stables, borrowed a hookwing and rode out into the huge camp bunkered outside my castle: the barracks of the Orphans Company. Their commander, Taethawn the Bleak, was drilling hookwing-mounted archers on the plateau about half a mile from the castle. He himself was mounted on Payu: his scarred, sharp-eyed destrier. What Payu lacked in size, he made up for in loyalty and intelligence. The dinosaur spotted me before his rider did, standing tall and giving a hoarse, barking cry. Taethawn's head swiveled, and when he saw me trotting up, he beamed crookedly.

"Halt! Attention! Stand for his Graccccce!" Taethawn called to his men. His marshals passed the orders down, and suddenly, the apparent chaos of the training field swirled into parade formation, every man calling out the company's salute: 'Orphans Com-pany!'. The Meewfolk riders had a command structure similar to the Mongols: what looked like an unruly racing mob to the untrained eye was, in fact, a tightly disciplined and structured unit in which marshals - distinguished by the red flags on their backs - oversaw and lead bands of a hundred and fifty archers. The riders drilled in weaving around each other at full speed, so that the riders ahead were firing and providing cover for the archers who were reloading, while specialized mobs ran rings around - and protected - the army's heavy triceratops-mounted mobile artillery. Taethawn was a military genius in his own right, and that was why when he hopped down, I clapped my hand into his callused paw and shook with him as an equal.

"Looking good, commander," I remarked to him. "How's everyone doing? Your men recovering from the last campaigns?"

"Admirably, your grace." I knew now from my trip to Meewhome that Taethawn was an unusually large, rough looking brawny bastard as Meewfolk went. “The experience of resting while being paid isss novel for them, however. It makes some of them agitated, eager to return to battle. But they will not be ready for two weeks yet.”

“Good. I’m glad they’re keen.” I smiled at him, and did the slow squint thing that cats did when they were happy - another small thing I’d picked up from Meewhome. “I’ve got a meeting with the lords of the land in an hour, so I won’t fuck around. I have a proposition for you. Got time for a short ride?”

Taethawn’s tail arched curiously. He flickered one ear toward his marshals, then turned and called in his native tongue to her. “Mrr’rirl! Continue the drill! I must speak with the Voivode.”

Mrr’rirl yowled in affirmation, then turned to the company and looped her arm over her head. “Let’s go, everyone! Flag marshals, on three…!”

As the drill resumed, Taethawn reined Payu around and clicked his tongue. The hookwing snorted, and flicked his brilliant red-feathered tail as he trotted off. I followed, pulling up beside and slightly behind so we didn’t clash legs.

“Ssso, what is this proposition?” Taethawn asked in his thickly accented Vlachian. “Hopefully a noble title, so I might be the first Prrupt’meew lord of the mainland in some seven thousand years, mra?”

“You’re not actually too far off,” I replied - in his own language. “Not a noble title, yet. Remember how I was telling you I wanted to create an independent standing army for Myszno?”

He looked over with his mismatched eyes, scrutinizing me. “You speak the mother tongue now? You flatter me, Your Grace. Perhaps a little too much.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Taethawn,” I laughed. “I didn’t learn this language for you. Me, Karalti, Suri, Gar - you haven’t met him yet - and Rin went to Meewhome to consult the Priest-Queen of Ruu Wat, so we could get permission to consult the Avatar.”

Taethawn’s ears pinned back. He looked like he’d been slapped when I mentioned the Priest-Queen, then incredulous at mention of the Avatar. “You… met with Solai? And tried to speak with the Avatar?”

“We did speak with him. Nice guy, but a bit morbid.” I motioned to the new earring I sported: a small, intricately forged gold tear-drop loop in the Meewfolk style. “He gave me and Karalti a ticket on and off the island.”

Taethawn closed his eyes and turned his head forward, grappling with some old pain. “That is… a great honor they conveyed on you, my lord.”

His sudden stiff formality told me that I’d fucked up somewhere. I frowned. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head, sniffed, and pulled Payu to a halt. We were out in the plateau grasslands now, a good distance from the soldiers we could still hear shouting in the distance. “Though I must wonder why a human should wish to speak with Solai, let alone the Avatar.”

Ohh. The casual use of the Priest-Queen’s first name made my bro senses tingle. Taethawn wasn’t tense because of me… it was something to do with her. Solai was one of the best fighters I’d ever met, and Taethawn was probably one of the best military minds to have come out of the island. I was starting to get a hint of what might have happened.

“The long and short of it is that the war to end all wars is coming,” I replied. “I know that sounds dramatic-“

“It does, yes.”

I snorted. “It’s not a lie, though. The Caul of Souls is fracturing. The Drachan are waking up, and they have agents - some of them Starborn - working toward freeing them so they can try to finish what they started.”

“The Tru’auvin.” The Prrupt’meew word for them was very similar to the Draconic word, and meant ‘Deceivers’. The fact Taethawn knew it surprised me… but now I looked at him, there was a sort of princely bearing about him that was easy to miss when he was acting the part of the mercenary commander. “The Shield of Ancestors around the island, too?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. “Solai seemed to think it would hold, even if the Caul of Souls fell. But if the Shield of Ancestors is tied to the energy of the Nine in the same way that the Caul is, then yeah. It’s going to fall, and soon.”

“I do not know. Only the Avatar knows the workings of the Shield.” Taethawn’s tail lashed restlessly. “But why do you tell me this? I am an arrow in your bow, Your Grace. Pay me enough and point me at the enemy, and I will pierce them. Matters such as these do not concern me.”

“I’m telling you this because Solai said she’s willing to pledge the armies of Meewhome to the cause if I can forge diplomatic relations between Vlachians and the Prrupt’meew,” I said. “She doesn’t want to help a race of people who treat her people like shit, and rightfully so. And Ignas-”

“Was captured by Ilia, last I heard.”

I paused at the sharpness in his tone. “Yeah, he was. But he’s in the hospital of my castle right now. We just got back from rescuing him.”

Taethawn’s head swiveled sharply.

“You’re the only one who knows that so far, and it needs to stay a secret,” I added. “For now. He’s in surgery, battling for his life.”

“Well, look at me! From struggling bandit to Kingsguard!” Taethawn laughed harshly, bending to slap the side of Payu’s saddle. “Unfortunately, my lord, if you wish to recruit me as a diplomat, you are scratching at the wrong tree. I cannot ever return to my homeland, and should I even lay eyes on a Priest-Queen - any of them, but specifically Solai - then she and her battlemaids will tear my head from my shoulders and piss down the stump of my neck. Look.”

He reached back, and ruffled the white fur of his head. I’d always thought that Taethawn’s white fur looked scruffy and dirty around his face and neck because he was out in the field a lot and just didn’t care, but as he rifled his claws through it, I saw that the ‘dirt’ was actually whorls of intricate black tattoos inked into his skin.

“These are the tattoos of a criminal exile,” he said. “They mark me as being lower than filth.”

“I didn’t think Meewfolk had crimes,” I replied. The design was difficult to make out: which meant that his fur had been shaved, once, to allow the artist to do the inking.

“Oh, we do. Rape, murder, lying under oath, betrayal of oaths, kidnapping…” he sneered, and licked his front fangs. “There is a penal colony on a small island off the coast where tattooed criminals such as myself dwell, overseen by the Kikki’lah, the dolphins. They are as intelligent as they are cruel, and rejoice in their role as wardens.”

“You escaped from there?”

“Mm.”

I paused for a moment. “What the hell did you do to earn a life-long place on Solai’s shitlist?”

He laughed again. “Ahh, my lord, you have such a way with words. You figured it out, did you? No, I did not rape her, or brutalize her, or do any such thing. There… might have been a kidnapping. It is a long and sad story of a very unlucky, stupid boy and a beautiful pearl diver who loved the Sun Throne more than anything else in this world, including him. But you have a meeting to attend, yes? So you had better tell me this proposal, unless I have already answered your question of me.”

“Nah, I didn’t pick you as diplomat material,” I replied. “What I wanted to ask was: would you be interested in having the Orphans Company established as an official Corps within the Free Army of Myszno? That means you and your forces would be on full payroll, stationed here permanently in barracks and a fort we’ll build for the purpose. You’d be named Major-General of the Orphans Company, with a twenty-year tenure, and there’s a title in it for you at the end of that tenure. Pensions and life-long medical care are the perks for your men, regardless of whether or not you live to see out that full twenty years - but as you get older, I figure your role will move from being on the field to more strategic. The Corps is something that will live past you, that could carve you a place in Vlachian history and start a tradition of elite Meewfolk soldiers that could last for generations. What do you think?”

He frowned, tail flicking from side to side, but his ears were perked. After working with him and his troops for a while, I was starting to learn more of the catfolks’ body language. He was both disconcerted by the idea, and intrigued by it.

“It is true that I am not getting any younger,” he replied haltingly. “And it is also true that I will either one day fall in battle, or direct my marshals from a warm, sunny windowsill. I’d ever only planned for the former. The only good luck I’ve ever had is in warfare, my lord. That is why I was named ‘the Bleak’, because my fortunes have ever only been made through violence.”

“Well, being a general is a violent career.” I grinned.

“Indeed. And a greater station than any Meewfolk has held on this mainland in several millennia.” He looked down thoughtfully. “You remember what I said in the Great Hall? You will make many, many enemies within the noble courts of Vlachia by doing this.”

“I know. But I’ll also make some really powerful friends, and of all the kings Vlachia has ever had, Ignas is the only one who has regard for your people,” I replied. “If Myszno forges a really fucking good army that serves the Corvinus throne with pride and ability, we not only inspire him to issue edicts and shit, we model the ways that Vlachians, Yanik, Tuun and Meewfolk can work together. And to be bluntly honest, it’s our only hope moving forward.” I brandished my right hand, and the Mark of Matir. “I told Matir that I WOULD unite the races of Archemi against the Drachan, and that we WILL defeat them. That starts here, in Myszno. And you, man… you’re a brilliant commander, and more than that, you genuinely care about your troops. That means something to me. Because of those things, I want you to be a part of this from the start.”

He made a soft rumbling sound in his throat, almost like a stifled purr, but cleared his throat before the motor really got going. “I see. And will I have a say as to how my men are deployed, housed, and so on?”

“Absolutely. You and me will sit down and work it out together.” I motioned back to his riders. “The whole point of a corps is to be self-managed, able to function without constant oversight. I want the Orphans to be the best company they can be, and you’re the one who knows what that looks like.”

Taethawn drew a deep breath, and looked to the sky. “It is a grand vision, my lord… and one that I have idly dreamed of, on and off, ever since the Orphans Company took its name and forswore banditry to become something greater. It shall not leave this conversation, but I… have privately wished to achieve what you proposed, yes? To show the Vlachians that my people are not just wastrels and vagabonds, capable of nothing but crime. That so much of my people’s troubles stem from having been stripped of our pride so many times. The Drachan, the Solonkratsu, the Aesari.” He paused to hack and spit at their name. “By the time humans spread over this land, we were a people scattered and defeated. But it was not always this way. I know that the glory days of my kind is long past, but there is no reason we should not proudly stalk the lands that were once ours, living as the warriors we ought to be.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Archemi is big enough for all of us. The Avatar told me that Karalti and I are the Paragons of the Sixth Age, and part of being the fucking Chosen One with the Mana Spear of Big Dickiness means that, if we’re victorious against the Drachan, then we get to set a course for the age that comes after us. I want that age to be one where Archemi heals some of these old wounds that scar it. I want to leave this place better than how I found it.”

“And it is for that reason that you are the Paragon, Spear of Dickiness and all,” Taethawn laughed. “Yes… if you can convince the lords and ladies of this place of the wisdom in your vision, Hector, I will join your cause. But you will need all the luck I do not possess to woo them, I can promise you this.”

I patted my hookwing on the neck, and reined him around to start back toward the road leading to the plateau. “You think it’ll be that hard?”

The Meewfolk made a sound of disgust. “You have not yet met Lady Vargan, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Then may the Triad watch over your poor soul, my lord. I suggest you bring an exorcist to your council.”