Subsequent to the conquest, recently arrived Horseclans had been settled in the three duchies carved from most of the conquered lands. These clans were every bit as fierce and warlike as the mountain tribes, as the raiding parties which eluded the patrols of troops and strongly garrisoned western forts learned to their sorrow. But the dispossessed were a stubborn breed, and nearly twenty years of frequent and disastrous defeats were required to convince them that the foothill lands were irredeemably lost.
But they had neither forgotten nor forgiven. Their descendants crouched now in their mountains, laired up like savage beasts; seldom did they raid in force, but in winter-especially in hard ones-bands of lanky, bearded, ragged men would drift down from the high fastnesses to butcher a cow or horse or steal a few sheep. And the Vawnee simply wrote off such small depredations, and even some of the larger, for they had learned that attempts to pursue into those mountains were infinitely costly in time, effort and lives.
Only the addled or suicidal ventured near to the line of mostly deserted forts now, for the mountain men were wary, watchful and always athirst for lowland blood. When the Yawn Kindred had made their last, doomed stand at one of the forts, countless of the besieging Crusaders had wakened of a morning to find a comrade’s head severed and propped before him, while several men had disappeared completely from within tents full of sleeping men-days later, the savagely mutilated bodies of these same unfortunates would just as mysteriously reappear close by the points from which they had been snatched, the marks of the hideous agony in which they had died clearly stamped on what was left of their faces.
That Vahrohneeskos Drehkos had led his column into these dreaded mountains, and had, more astoundingly, led more than two-thirds of his original force out, was considered something of a miracle by the Vawnpolitan nobles. The feat heartened their flagging spirits, briefly cheered them with the belief that, blessed with the resourcefulness and courage of such a paladin, there still might be some way of wriggling out of the straits into which greed, envy and an excess of religious zeal had led them.
Drehkos, on the other hand, never so deluded himself. He knew that all the noblemen and priests and most of the commoners were surely doomed, but a hitherto hidden pride compelled him to prepare for and deliver the fiercest battle of which he and the others were capable. For himself, he had no fear of death. It would be the last, deferred sharing with his dear Rehbehkah. But, naturally, no one else knew this, so his followers mistook the evidences of his longing for final surcease from the heartsickness he had suffered since his wife’s death as but another Indication of his matchless bravery.
Through purest happenstance, Drehkos discovered in an unused room of the labyrinthine Citadel a small library of treatises on various aspects of land warfare, penned by such diverse authorities as Strahteegos Thoheeks Gabos, who had commanded the armies of the Confederation a good hundred years agone; Strahteegos Ahrkeethoheeks Greemnos, legendary general to the last King of Karaleenos; the Undying High Lady Aldora’s work on cavalry tactics; and, most important to Drehkos’ present problem, two encyclopedic discourses on the defense of walled cities, one by Ahnbahr Nahseerah, eighth Caliph of Zahrtohgah, the other by Buhk Headsplitter, first King of the ancient dynasty of Pitzburk, he who had defended his city against the combined armies of Harzburk and Eeree for nearly three years until dissension in the besiegers’ ranks broke the siege. And Drehkos shared with the never-to-be-known collector of these masterpieces the ability to read the various archaic languages. He lost no time in doing so, fully aware of his own deficiencies in the military arts.
So it was that soon Drehkos was the very brains of the defense efforts, the Vawnpolitan noblemen cheerfully deferring to a man who at least gave an appearance of knowing what he was about. And soon it was far more than appearance as Drehkos’ quick mind absorbed and digested the contents of the tomes, and just as quickly fitted these new skills to the existing problems. Though he kept to a large extent the patient humility which had won him the love and respect of the men he had led on that terrible march, he had never before either merited or received the awe and adulation which his peers and retainers now afforded him, and he privately reveled in it. Therefore, he kept his finds a secret, kept the books locked in a campaign chest in his quarters and perused them during-the night hours, when most of the garrison lay sleeping.