Demansk nodded. “If he wants a parley, I’ll give him one. You’ll be my envoy. And—”
He paused, took a deep breath.
Just do it, tyrant. If I have to look at another mound of corpses . . . sooner or later, I’ll stop seeing them as human bodies. Sometimes I feel as if I’m there already.
“You have my permission—authority—to negotiate as you choose. As long as it’s within the boundaries we discussed, I’ll leave the details to you.”
* * *
When Prelotta did send out for a parley, Demansk couldn’t help but smile. Whatever else—even under these circumstances—the barbarian had a sense of humor. There was something just plain comical about two proper Vanbert matrons mincing their way across a bloody field, looking simultaneously nauseated and scared out of their wits, carrying between them a big bundle of official documents. Tax records, from the look of them. Nothing else was that bulky and voluminous.
* * *
Adrian returned a day and a half later.
“The sticking point, from your point of view, will be Franness. He’s agreed to all the rest. Auxiliary nation status for the Reedbottoms—your vassals, he knows it, with a face-saving veneer. The Reedbottoms to tear down Kallinek’s Wall and build Demansk’s Wall two hundred miles to the south, covering the territory not already shielded by the Reedbottoms themselves. No hindrance to the movement of Confederate troops anywhere this side of the new wall. That includes moving through Reedbottom territory, although I agreed to Prelotta’s demand that we have to give them a week’s notice.”
Demansk nodded. “No problem, that. I’d give them a month, anyway—pure misery for people, forcing them to billet armies without sufficient time to provision—unless we have to go to war with the Reedbottoms. In which case, of course, I won’t give them any notice at all. We’ll come back to Franness later. What else?”
“He keeps his guns, and his gunmaking industry. But he agrees not to make any field guns or siege guns, although he insisted on having the right to purchase a few from us. Which I gave him. May as well. He’ll start a secret industry anyway, and there’s more than enough swampy badlands in Reedbottom territory to hide it. If we let him buy a few, maybe he won’t drive the secret industry that far.”
Again, Demansk nodded. “I don’t care about that. He’ll never be able to match our production anyway. Truth is, he’ll need some big guns soon enough. The rest of the Southrons are not going to be happy with him.”
For the first time Demansk could remember in weeks, the smile on his son-in-law’s face seemed genuine. “To put it mildly. Especially when they find out that we’ve agreed to his definition of where the territory of the Reedbottoms ends—which is going to come as a big surprise to the Grayhills, I can assure you.”
“Good,” grunted Demansk. “Keep him busy the rest of his life fighting off the damn savages, instead of us having to do it. And hope that his successor isn’t as capable as he is. Or—”
He waved his hand. “But that’s for someone else to worry about, half a century from now. We can’t solve every problem. Did he also agree to provide assistance for the, ah, ‘settlers’?”
Adrian’s smile widened. Demansk felt his own heart lighten a bit. Damn, I like this young man. He’s almost managed to crowd Barrett’s memory out. Far enough, anyway, that it doesn’t ache all the time.
“Oh, by all means. Prelotta will be delighted to assist us in relocating the ‘new settlers’ to that big chunk of land we’re taking for ourselves in the southern continent. Why not? If we fill up the territory between Kallinek’s Wall and Demansk’s Wall, it means we’ll have to keep troops along the new wall to defend the new settlements. Leaves him free to use his own forces to keep encroaching on his neighbors.”
“He had no problem with the status of the, ah, ‘new settlers’? Most Vanberts would.”
Adrian shook his head. “He could care less that they’re all a bunch of ex-slaves. He’s smart, Father. Smart enough, I’m sure, to understand that many of them will give up farming, soon enough—tough business, that, carving a farm out of wilderness—and start drifting into Reedbottom territory. Even the least-skilled freedman will know how to do something that barbarians don’t. The Reedbottoms just wind up absorbing some new members into their tribe, which they’ve been doing for centuries anyway, and get another boost. On things like this, they’re . . .”