Then came first the horrifying word that King Rahndos and seven other claimants to the throne had, all in one day, deliberately slain themselves! Thoheeks Fahrkos, who had no more right to the throne than Zastros, had been crowned. Then had the kingdom been well and truly split asunder as a host of pretenders’ warbands marched north and south and east and west, fighting each other as often as they fought Fahrkos. Cities were besieged or felled by storm, villages were burned; noble and peasant alike fled to mountain and forest and swamp, as fire and rapine and slaughter stalked the land in clanking armpr.
Portos and most of Zastros’ other captains defended their lands as best they could, stoutly held their cities, and awaited word from the Witch Kingdom, where dwelt their lord.
They waited for three long years, while the once-mighty, once-wealthy Southern Kingdom dissolved around them into a hodgepodge myriad of small, ever-warring statelets. Fahrkos ruled his capital and controlled a few miles of land around it, but a large proportion of his predecessor’s fine army had left with many of his most powerful lords, when they departed to cast their hats into the much-crowded ring. The strong central government that had made the Southern Kingdom what it had been and extended its borders over the years had collapsed into anarchy and chaos; from the western savannas to the eastern saltfens, from the Iron Mountains to the Great Southern Swamp, might made right and the status of men was determined not by their pedigree, but by the strength of their swordarm and the size of their warband.
At last the long-deferred summons came and Portos led his squadron to the rendezvous, leaving defense of his lands and city in the hands of his two younger brothers. By the time Zastros and his Witch Kingdom bride, the Lady Lilyuhn, arrived, there were fifteen thousand armed men to greet them … and a full tenth of that force was Portos’ squadron.
Portos and all the rest had expected an immediate, lightning drive on the ill-defended capital, but Zastros marched them west, bearing north, through the very heart of the savannas onto the shores of the King of Rivers; and men marveled at the size of his force—the largest seen under one banner since the breakup of King Fahrkos’ inherited army—and noble and peasant alike came from fen and from forest to take their oaths to so obviously powerful a leader . . . only such a one as he could put things right again.
Then it was north and east for the more than doubled army, and petty claimants—who might have had a bare chance against equally unworthy opposition—saw the death of glorious pipedreams and swore their allegiances to Zastros and added their warbands to his, so that, by the time he camped below the walls of Seetheerospolis, the fifty thousand men under his banner left the Eeyeh-geestan of the Iron Mountains no choice but to throw their far from inconsiderable forces and resources into Zastros’ lap. And the massive army marched due south, again bypassing the capital, then east to the fringes of the saltfens.
Only when he had almost seven times his beginning strength did he turn toward the capital and King Fahrkos, whom he considered a traitor, since Fahrkos had been one of his supporters in his first rebellion. As Zastros’ van came within the crown lands, the pitiful remnant of that mighty force that had trampled his aspirations into the gory mud of Ahrbahkootchee only five years agone threw down their battered arms, hailed him savior of the realm, and begged leave to serve him.
King Fahrkos, even his advisors and bodyguard having deserted to Zastros, slew his wife, his daughters, and his young son, then fired the wing that had housed his loved family, and fell on his sword. Only the prompt arrival of Zastros’ huge army prevented the entire palace complex from burning.
So the victorious Zastros was crowned High King of all Ehleenoee, a new title, never before claimed by any other. But to the faithful Portos, the price of victory had been steep. Soon after his squadron’s departure, his city had been stormed, sacked, and razed by some bannerless warband; only the citadel had successfully resisted, but both his brothers had died in the defense. And what with disease and accident and the occasional skirmish, no troop of his squadron could, on Coronation Day, muster more than fifty men.