“So wealthy and fair, Mara, that my father was hard put to enforce his edict that this realm not be subject to raid. For a while it was touch and go, but as the older captains died or retired, he made it stick. Today, it is custom that High-Lord Demetrios’ coasts are sacrosanct.” “But,” Mara pried, still far from satisfied, “Lord Par-dos’ men played merry hell on the coasts and rivers of Kehnooryos Ehlahs for two-score years, and his fathers before him. How came your father to order so radical a reversal of his ancestors’ policies?”
Alexandros shook his head. “Mara, my father was not related to Lord Pardos by blood—not in direct lines of kinship, anyway. Pardos adopted him and compelled the Council of Captains to name him successor and support him. But years before he came to the Sea Isles, my father swore a lifelong oath of service to High-Lord Demetrioa. And my father was an honorable man. He kept to that oath all his life to the best of his ability, despite the fact that he served a cowardly swine.” Then, he related the story.
Lord Alexandros tale
Prior to the fall of Kehnooryos Atheenahs and the subsequent establishment of the Confederation, Demetrios of Treeah-Pohtahmos had been sole and hereditary High-Lord of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, which had since become the nucleus of the Confederation.
As Milo’s tribe and their allies, the swelling army of the outlawed Strahteegos, Alexandros of Pahpahspolis, slowly moved eastward, unopposed, the High-Lord found himself in an unenviable position, although his father had been a warrior-high-lord and had left him not only a well-filled treasury and thirty rich provinces ruled over by loyal nobles, but a large, tough, and formidable army.
Demetrios had been and could be and would be called many things in his seventy-odd years of life, but not, in the beginning, a militarist—that came later. His grasping, grafting, hedonistic clique replaced the administrators of his late father’s honest and efficient civil service; within less than a year, Demetrios and his coterie had emptied the treasury.
Some of his army he frittered away in senseless wars that all ended in the loss of lands as well as men. The better condottas of Freefighters commenced to trickle away to seek the employ of lords who paid in hard coin rather than empty promises.
When he started to sell hard-won border provinces to foreigners to raise the cash to keep his sybartic court supplied with necessary luxuries, the Strahteegoee and certain nobles who had been his father’s closest friends and advisors decided that the young High-Lord would destroy the realm, if not soon stopped. They carefully devised plans to topple their inept sovran and replace him with a council of military commanders until a new High-Lord should be chosen.
Someone, nobody ever knew for certain whom, betrayed the projected coup to Demetrios, along with the names of nearly every man involved. The conspirators and their families—men, women, children, even babes-in-arms—were nearly all netted by the High-Lord’s men, although a few managed to flee into exile and some others fought their would-be captors to the death … these were the fortunate ones. The majority, regardless of age, sex, or known degree of involvement, were put to savage tortures. Many died under torture; many slew themselves to escape further torment. Demetrios saw that most suffered slow, degrading deaths, with their remains thrown into cesspools or the river. He kept some few maimed, broken men and women in his dungeons, having them occasionally brought up for the amusement of his depraved court.
When first the High-Lord heard that nomads were coming from the west, he dispatched a good two-thirds of what army he had left. That army’s gentle mission was to massacre the nomad warriors and take their women and children for sale as slaves. The nomads, warned by a deserter, trapped the army while it marched through a narrow mountain pass and virtually extirpated it.
The first of Demetrios’ cities in their path, Theesispo-lis, fell to a sudden attack and most of its inhabitants were massacred. One of the High-Lord’s three remaining squadrons of Freefighters rode in pursuit of nomad raiders and had the misfortune to encounter a sizable war party; Demetrios had most of the survivors beheaded for having the effrontery to return alive.