“I have heard this also,” Rick said. Not least from the Vothan priesthood. “But the servants of Yatar have always held the Caves of the Protector, and have distributed the gifts of Yatar fairly and with honor. How should I change what has always served the people and the god alike?”
Apelles bowed to acknowledge the compliment.
Sharp lad, Rick thought. Get my opinion now, while nobody’s listening. Next he’ll try to get me to say it in public. He’s learning his bureaucratic skills— and I can’t even complain, since we brought in Roman scribes to teach them how to set up a bureaucracy.
Christ, I hate paperwork! But we can’t live without it. It takes a quart of wheat every day to feed a man. A bushel of oats to feed a war horse. The food has to come from somewhere. Food, wagons, weapons, ammunition—all the details of keeping an army in the field, and then there’s food for all the peasants growing madweed. We’re getting very dependent on this bureaucracy, which means the priests of Yatar. So long as Yanulf is in charge of the Yatar cult in Drantos, that’s all right. But he won’t live forever…
As they reached the cave entrance, a junior acolyte ran up to them. “Master Apelles,” he shouted. “Master, you are to tell the Lord Rick that the Lady Tylara has arrived.”
Tylara was lovely. She ran toward him, but before she could reach him they were intercepted by a tiny dark-haired bombshell. “Daddy!” she screamed. Rick scooped Isobel up and held her high, while she laughed, and her hounds bared their canine teeth and growled that anyone, even the master, would so treat their charge.
“She’s grown so,” Rick said.
“They do, lord,” Erinia the nursemaid said. She sniffed, her comment on men who let their children grow up without them.
“And the boy?” Rick asked.
“He sleeps, lord,” Erinia said. “As well, after a ride like today’s.” She spoke with a thick Tamaerthan accent, and her manners were of the clans, not the households of Drantos. There would be no point in asking her to fetch the boy; she’d let him see his son when he woke, and not before.
There was no talking with Tylara, either, not while Isobel was there. She clutched at Rick and laughed, and when he put her down she held his legs.
So little time, Rick thought. So damned little time to spend with them, and so much to do.
“How could I not come?” Tylara said when they were alone at last. “Dravan is our home, and these Westmen menace it. Should I then stay in Tamaerthon?”
Rick laughed. “I hoped you would come.” He went to her.
She returned his kisses, then pushed his hands firmly away. “Later. First we talk alone. Then with the Wanax. And then we bathe.” She kissed him again. “It will not be so long…
“Long enough.” He went back to the writing table where her last letters lay. “The University,” he said. “You say it may not be safe.”
She shrugged. “The minor clans and lawless ones see much wealth and few soldiers in a town bordered by wild hills and lochs. They dream of more booty taken in hours than they will see in their lives. Can you blame them for those dreams?”
“Maybe not, but we can’t let it happen. Is it safe there?”
“For the moment. Until Mac Clallan Muir must withdraw his men. Rick, that may not be so long, unless you have gold and grain to send. If they are to feed their children, the dunnhie wassails must go and work their lands. My father cannot forever keep them as Guardsmen, and he cannot send other clans whose chiefs have no love for this place where crofters are taught to defeat warriors.”
“I know. I suppose the first thing is to send some Drantos troops to help keep watch. Only I’d want to send Chelm soldiers, and we’ll need them all against the Westmen. I’ll need Caradoc and his archers in the west, too.”
“Strip away Caradoc’s archers, and your University will no last the season,” Tylara said. “Your star-men will needs be alert all the time, and even so there are few enough of them to face a thousand hillmen.”
“The University must survive, Tylara.”
She had been ready to reply, but something in his voice stopped her. “At the expense of our lands?
“At all expense. Tylara, every six hundred years this planet, all of it, all its peoples, are knocked back into a dark age. That has to stop. Has to, and the University is the only way.”
“Then we must find ways to protect our University,” she said. “It too will be part of our children’s rightful inheritance. We must preserve Chelm as well— and I doubt not that I have for a husband the only man alive who can do all that.”
The rooms were perfect duplicates of Rick’s office suite in Castle Dravan: small office with writing desk, larger conference room with slab table and side boards with wine cruets. The walls either had maps painted on them, or were smooth-surfaced and whitewashed for writing. A charcoal brazier stood in one corner, and a rack for cloaks and weapons in another. Apelles had even duplicated the carvings on the chairs…
“Within a ten-day we meet with the Grand Council,” Rick said. “And before that, we’ll meet with Lucius and Octavia and Drumold. But you’re my council.”
Tylara nodded agreement from her place at the other end of the table. Between them sat Elliot, Gwen, Warner, and Art Mason. “This is not the Council of Chelm,” Tylara said. “Nor any lawful group. Yet—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. This was a meeting of the starmen who held the power of gods. For a moment she seemed very vulnerable.
“I think you’ll like Octavia,” Gwen said. “That is, if you can get Ganton to spare her for a couple of hours.” They all grinned at that; they’d hardly seen her since she arrived with Gwen and Warner.
First came reports. University research projects. The quest for movable type- “—but I wouldn’t print any books yet,” Gwen concluded.
“Why not?” Rick asked.
“Because the Shalnuksis can’t possibly misunderstand their significance,” Gwen said. “They’d know they were faced with a major outbreak of technology. God knows what they’d do.”
“They may anyway,” Rick said.
“Also, do you want to just throw all these changes at Tran?” Gwen asked. “You’re going to lose control of the situation anyway—”
Rick saw Tylara’s frown.
“—and some changes are more unsettling than others.”
“I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, keep working on it,” Rick said. He sighed heavily. “We haven’t a lot of -time. Next order of business. Elliot, you were with Parsons. He tried to run things by force. I’ve used a different policy. What do the men think of my way, now that Parsons is dead?”
“Cap’n, I was dead wrong about you, and I’ve said so,” Elliot said.
“I’m not after an apology, Sergeant Major. I want an assessment of the situation.”
“Sir.” He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Colonel Parsons had not yet attempted to plant surinomaz, but it’s reasonable to suppose he’d have done no better at that than he did in holding the land,” Elliot said. “While he was in command, we lost Corporal Hartford to guerrilla activity. Five more troopers were severely wounded. A total of twenty-three successfully deserted.
“Since you took command, Private Reznick has been killed in action, and three others have been severely wounded, all in battles. There have been no losses to guerrillas. Ten former deserters, eleven counting Mr. Mason, have returned to duty, and nobody has run off. Troop morale is high. We have over six hundred acres in surinomaz, and I guess there’s no revolt brewing out there even if the peasants aren’t too happy about growing the stuff.” He shrugged. “On the evidence, your way works.”
“And the men realize that?”
“Most,” Elliot said. “All that count.”
Meaning there are things you aren’t telling me, Rick thought. But no point to that now. “The key to ‘my method’ has been to cooperate with the legitimate rulers here.”
“You have done more than this. You have become one of us,” Tylara said.
“The point is, I’ve tried to regularize our positions. One key to that is Wanax Ganton. Another has been the triple alliance of Drantos, Tamaerthon, and Rome.”
“I would place your friendship with Yanulf and the Priesthood of Yatar at equal importance,” Tylara said. “Especially as The Time approaches. Husband, no one has more admiration for you than I. I also know that you do not recite your accomplishments to gather praise from us. What is it you wish to say?”
“I have a policy question,” Rick said. “But I wanted everybody to look at it from the right direction. The question is—what do we do about Ganton?”