Into The Darkness

Now Rathar interrupted with more than a little alarm, saying, "Your Majesty, King Mezentio's men have been most scrupulous in observing the border between their kingdom and ours that existed before the start of the Six Years' War. They are as happy to see Forthweg gone from the map again as we are. They want no trouble with us; they have their hands full in the east."

He needed a moment to decipher King Swemmel's expression. It was a curious blend of amusement and pity, the sort of expression Rathar might have used had his ten-year-old son come out with some very naive view of the way the world worked. Swemmel said, "They will attack us.

Sooner or later, they will surely attack us - if we give them the chance."

If King Swemmel wanted to go to war with one of his small, weak neighbors, that was one thing. If he wanted to go to war with Algarve, that was something else again. Urgently, Rathar said, "Your Majesty, our armies are not yet ready to fight King Mezentio's. The way the Algarvians used dragons and behemoths to open the path for their foot in Forthweg is something new on the face of the world. We need to learn to defend against it, if we can. We need to learn to irritate it, too. Until we do those things, which I have already set in motion, we should not engage Algarve."

He waited for King Swemmel to order him to hurl the annies of Unkerlant against King Mezentio in spite of what he had said, in which case he would do his best. He also waited for his sovereign to curse him for having failed to invent the new way of fighting himself. Swemmel did neither. He merely continued with his catalogue of grievances: "King Tsavellas casts defiance in our face, refusing to yield up to us the person of Penda, who pretended to be king of Forthweg."

Swemmel had recognized Penda as king of Forthweg until Algarvian and Unkerlanter armies made Penda flee his falling kingdom. That was not the point at the heart of the matter, though. Rathar said, "If we invade Yanina, your Majesty, we collide with Algarve again. I would sooner use Yanina as a shield, to keep Algarve from colliding with us."

"We never forget insults. Never," Swemmel said. Rathar hoped he was talking about Tsavellas. After a moment, Swemmel went on, "Atid there is Zuwayza. The Zuwayzi provocations against us are intolerable."

Rathar knew perfectly well that Unkerlant was the kingdom doing the provoking. He wondered whether Swemmel knew it, too, or whether his sovereign truly believed himself the aggrieved party. You never could tell with Swemmel. Rathar said, "The Zuwayzin do indeed grow over bold." If he could steer the king away from launching an attack on Yanina, he would.

He could, which he reckoned hardly less a miracle than those a first rank mage could sometimes produce. King Swemmel said, "The time has come to settle Zuwayza, so that Shazli may no longer threaten us." As he refused to accord Penda the royal title, so he also did with Shazli. He went on, ready the army to fall upon Zuwayza at my order."

"It is merely a matter of transporting troops and beasts and equipment to the frontier, your Majesty," Rathar said with relief "We have planned this campaign for some time, and shall be able to unleash our warriors whenever you should command - provided," he added hastily, "that you give us time enough to deploy fully before commencing.

"You can do this and still leave a large enough force in reclaimed Forthweg to guard against Algarvian treachery?" Swemmel demanded.

"We can," Rathar said. Unkerlanter officers had been planning for war against Zuwayza since the day Swemmel drove Kyot's forces out of Cottbus. Some of those plans involved fighting Zuwayza while holding the line against Algarve in the east. It was just a matter of pulling the right sheet of orders from the file, adapting them to the precise circumstances, and issuing them.

"How soon can we begin to punish the desert-dwellers?" Swemmel asked.

Before answering, Rathar reviewed in his mind the man he was like liest to use. "Not so many ley lines leading up toward Zuwayza as we would like, your Majesty," he said. "Not many through the desert leading toward Bishah, either. If we hadn't already established supply caches up there, we'd be a good while preparing. As things are… We can move in three weeks, I would say." In practice, it would take rather longer, as such things had a way of doing, but he was sure he would be able to keep King Swemmel from actually ordering the assault till everything was ready.

But, as he'd thought only a few minutes before, you never could ten with Swemmel. The king screwed up his face till he looked like an infant about to throw a tantrum. "We cannot wait that long!" he shouted. "We will not wait that long! We have been waiting for twenty years!"

Rathar spoke in what he thought to be the voice of reason: "If you have been waiting so long, your Majesty, would you not be wise in waiting just a little longer, to make sure everything goes forward as it should?"