When it was time for Bellor to go, he started to return to his small space ship, but his coordination was way off. At one point, he tried to move all three of his right legs at the same time, and fell over.
“Well, my friend,” I said. “It seems that I finally know what your limit is in alcohol!”
“It is indeed true that I have overindulged, to my considerable embarrassment, but it was not the alcohol that subverted the control of my legs. Ethanol is only a healthy food to people of my sort. It was rather the inordinate amount of various sugars in some of your potables, some of which have a certain physiological effect on those of my race. Fructose in particular. Without stepping over the bounds of good taste, may I ask if you could you perhaps assist me to my vehicle?”
“Are you sure that you can drive?”
“I am sure that I cannot,” Bellor admitted. “However, Belladonna is fully functional, and she will take me home quite safely.”
“As you wish.” I picked him up, swearing that he weighed less than all the booze that he had drunk, and put him back in the small pool of water in his tank. Once he managed to get all of his legs inside, the lid closed, and the little black ship went home.
Agnieshka, who always seemed to know what I was thinking, said, “Remarkable creatures!”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
Wrapping It Up
Kren spent the rest of the day collecting up heads and decapitated bodies and sending them down into the tunnel for resurrection, that is to say, to be eaten alive by young carnivores who would soon have their brains taken over by the person that they had just eaten.
The colonel’s insignia on his shoulders was a great help in getting the troops to obey him. Never once did he have to kill one of them to encourage the others.
Bronki and Dol were wearing armor with captain’s insignia that Kren had arranged for. They set up a surgery in one of the basements, and with the help of a dozen shanghaied soldiers, performed well over a thousand questionably legal operations on slaughtered civilians. Many of them were members of the former nobility hereabouts, but some of them were merely servants who had gotten in the way. Kren decided that he might as well have them all. There were plenty of young carnivores. With the right conditioning, he was sure that he could make most of them into willing slaves.
When they ran out of heads and decapitated bodies, the duke’s men started slaughtering the nobility who had been captured, but not yet killed. Many of them were still in their eating stupors, and never did wake up.
Bronki ran into over a dozen of the nobility who had once been friends of hers, since in five thousand years, you meet a lot of individuals. With a bit of trickery, and some help from Dol, she managed to send these down for resurrection with their brains intact, having quietly cautioned them to act as if they were brainless when they woke up, and reminding them that one day, they would owe her some really big favors.
* * *
Duke Dennon spent his time negotiating with groups of Tendi’s soldiers who had yet to surrender, and accepting their oaths of allegiance, once they did.
“Kren, I think that this might be written up as one of the most successful campaigns in history,” the duke said. “We have taken a major duchy, killed almost a thousand of their soldiers, and captured nine entire divisions of their troops, thus far. And we did it with an assault force of only two divisions, and the loss of barely two dozen of our own warriors! And I owe much of this success to you! I thank you, Kren, and somehow, in the future, I will find a way to reward you properly.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I would say that ours was a mutually profitable relationship. But for now, I have only one favor to ask.”
“Ask it!”
“I understand that you will be needing all of your regular troops, controlling this new duchy, at least until your new recruits go through basic training and get settled in to your army,” Kren said. “But could I please have your engineers back? The construction and tunneling projects on my land have come to a dead stop without them. Also, there is one of your captains, Yor, who is a remarkably good administrator. I would like you to transfer her to me permanently.”
“Absolutely! I’ll release them to you immediately! And you are right about my needing the rest of my army for the foreseeable future, but look. You seemed to want half of the enemy soldiers that you had resurrected. Would you like them all? I have plenty of new recruits for the time being, and I’ll be getting many more once I’ve had a chance to talk to Tendi’s other divisions in all of his outlying fortifications. After all, I have more land now, but one fewer border to guard!”
“Thank you! I’ll take them! I’ll have to figure out a way to get them, the old nobility, and my carts back to my lands. There’s no way that we can get the carts up that small tunnel that your engineers built into the basement here, but it’s a three week march back to your palace by the old tunnel.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the duke said. “I’ll be marching all of these new recruits back to my old palace by way of that tunnel. That’s the program, you know. You fill your new lands with your old troops, and then take the new ones, retrain them, distribute them around your old lands, being careful to break up all of their old platoons and squads. Left as individuals, they rarely cause trouble.”
Dennon continued, “Anyway, they might as well haul your prisoners and property back to the palace while they’re at it. From there, I’ll have a MagFloat train take it all back to your Research Center. I’ll be staying here, of course, and I’ll be bringing most of my leaders here as well. You have to do that with newly conquered land, for a few years at least, until the populace is used to your rule. My old estates are secure enough to get along without me.”
“Again, thank you, Your Grace. Well then, Bronki has finished slicing up all of the brains that needed it, so with your permission, we’ll be going home.”
“Must you leave so soon? I thought that you’d want to stay for dinner. We’re serving Tendi!”
“I hate to give up on a chance to eat a real duke, but I’m still a schoolboy, Your Grace. Tomorrow is a school day!”
After a quick talk with Dennon’s chief engineer, Kren, Bronki, and Dol changed into their usual academic garb, walked to the train station, and bought tickets for home.
* * *
A team from the Battle Confirmation Authority soon arrived at Tendi’s old castle. Their job, among other things, was to confirm that the Laws of War had been properly adhered to.
They were particularly fascinated by the ancient tunnel that Duke Dennon had found, and even though he repeatedly warned them that he had lost seven soldiers trying to explore the mazes at each end, the inspectors insisted on investigating it personally, using electrically powered motorcycles that they had shipped in.
When two of their members were permanently killed in a cave-in at the east end of the tunnel, they gave up on this portion of the investigation.
They spent three weeks interviewing everyone concerned, and even talked to Kren, at Bronki’s apartment.
In the end, they declared that everything had been done in a legal manner, and congratulated Duke Dennon on his remarkable victory.
The duke had a thousand sets of arms and armor sent to Kren for use by his new guards. They were identical to those worn by the duke’s soldiers, except that he had them painted in red and black, to match Kren’s academic garb.
Kren thanked him profusely, and then quietly had all of the tail armor removed and put in storage.
* * *
Kren returned to school, got good grades, and stayed with his program of making huge winnings at his betting on collegiate sports.
Bronki stayed angry at Kren, refusing to speak to him for weeks, but betting on him nonetheless.
Dol remained philosophical about the entire affair, knowing when she had a good thing going.
* * *
About the time that Kren’s first, well-fed offspring were eating their way up to the top of the grass as juvenals, his biochemists reported that they thought they knew which genes were responsible for Kren’s athletic prowess.