Adrian returned the grin, willingly enough. He’d hoped they might make this mistake.
“Please, Rawal! You insult me. We want lands of our own—without having to quarrel over it—and the best pickings will be on the coast.” He dismissed the rest with a shrug. “The woman knows the area well. She is my hunting bitch, no more.”
Helga emerged from their quarters just in time to hear the last remark. Fortunately—Adrian blessed every god and goddess there was, in every pantheon he knew—she did not understand the language of the Reedbottoms very well.
Rawal glanced at her, back at Adrian, back at her, back at Adrian. Between the grin and the facial scars, Adrian thought his face might actually explode.
“No doubt. But that is not why Prelotta sent me. He asked me to deliver to you a message.” Rawal’s voice assumed the slight singsong of one man quoting another verbatim:
” ‘Do not forget, Adrian Gellert, my lust for the matrons.’ ” He sat back in the saddle. “That’s it. Don’t ask me what it means. I have no idea. The Great Chief Prelotta is sometimes a bit odd.”
And with not another word, he reined his velipad around and trotted off.
“What was that all about?” asked Helga.
Adrian translated, leaving out certain unnecessary passages involving female animals and hunting.
” ‘Lust for the matrons’?” she puzzled. “What does that mean?”
Adrian scratched his head. “I’m not sure myself.” Inwardly: Raj? Center?
After a moment, Whitehall’s voice came. Interesting. Center, what was the name of that king? The one from that country named France, I think. Henry this or that. Said something—
paris is worth a mass.
* * *
The march to the sea was a nightmare. Not dangerous, particularly, for such a large and well-organized and well-armed group of men—except for the ever-present dangers of hunger and disease. Just hideous.
The barbarian invasion had ravaged the southern provinces, saving only the larger walled towns. Then, and in many ways even worse, the rebellions and slave revolts which erupted throughout the southern Confederacy after Tomsien’s disaster at Lurion ravaged them further. Landowners and nobles often escaped the barbarian bands roaming the countryside haphazardly. It was much harder for them to escape their own infuriated underlings, who not only knew where they lived but had a personal grudge to settle. The landscape across which Adrian and Helga and their little army marched was dotted with the burned shells of noble villas and estates—and, not infrequently, the corpses of their former owners. Who, as often as not, had been put to death in a manner whose gruesomeness would have shaken the most barbarous Southron warrior.
Nor were slaves and landless laborers the only ones with grudges to settle. After decades of increasingly extortive and corrupt rule, the Confederation was a crazy quilt of hatreds and resentments. All of which seemed to boil over at once.
Tax farmers suffered even worse casualties than landowners. If for no other reason than because the wealthiest landholders tended to be absentee owners. Their country estates could be put to the torch, but they themselves were safe—for the moment at least—behind the walls of Vanbert or the other great cities. Whereas, in the nature of things, a tax farmer needs to live close to his “crop.” When the long-simmering eruption took place, tax farmers were much in the same position as a peasant standing in a field of corn—every one of whose stalks was suddenly alive, armed, and filled with bitter memories of the fate of their predecessors.
Grudges, hatreds, resentments—everywhere. In the towns, the garrisons were usually able to maintain order. Enough to suppress any major uprisings, at least, even if they could not prevent the multitude of small homicides and beatings which took place constantly. The garrisons could keep the masses from storming into the central squares; they could not possibly keep those same masses, scattered in small bands, from looting the shops and (often enough) maiming or killing the proprietors. Any money lender or pawnbroker who did not make it to the garrison barracks within a day after the news of Lurion spread was unlikely to survive another.
In the countryside, where nine out of ten members of the Confederacy still lived in the less urbanized southern provinces, the garrisons did not even attempt to maintain order. Not loyal ones, at least. Garrisons which rebelled, ironically enough, often did establish a certain rough “order” within the immediate region. They had to, if they were to survive themselves. A loyal regiment can expect, even if vainly, to get pay and provisions from the central authorities. Mutineers must look for their own pay.