The Grace of Kings (21 page)

“I only learned from the best. When the lord is an honorable bandit, then the follower must come up with unconventional means to achieve his lord's goals.”

Cogo and Kuni laughed together.

Kuni did not emulate the Krima-Shigin style of military preparation. The way his romantic notions of banditry had been dashed made him suspect that peasants swelled up by the momentary joy of having unexpectedly overthrown their Xana masters would be no match for trained Imperial troops. It was only a matter of time before the empire recovered from these stumbles and fought for real.

“Lord Garu!” Muru saluted smartly as Kuni showed up at the training grounds near the Zudi city gates.

Muru had turned out to be a decent swordsman, and by tying a shield to his left forearm, he could fight as well as any bandit in Kuni's gang. Now that Kuni had taken over Zudi, Muru became the corporal in charge of one of the squads guarding its main gate.

Kuni waved for Muru to be at ease. He still felt guilty about what had happened to Muru, and having the corporal show such respect embarrassed him. “How's Phi?” he asked.

Muru lifted his chin in the direction of the training grounds. “He's in there, hard at work with Commander Çakri.”

Kuni had to do what he could to turn former bandits and rioting citizens into some semblance of a real army. He began by assigning Mün Çakri to lead the soldiers in conditioning exercises.

He was stunned by the scene that greeted him now. A fence had been erected around a circular patch of ground about fifty feet in diameter. Inside, the earth had been doused with water to turn it into a mud pit. Five large pigs squealed and ran around, while ten men—every bit as muddy as the pigs—stumbled after them, struggling to pull their feet out of the thick mud with every step.

“What is going on here?” Kuni demanded.

“Seeing as I'm a butcher,” Çakri said, puffing his chest out proudly, “my training methods may appear somewhat unconventional.”

“This is
training
?”

“Wrestling pigs in mud will develop the men's agility and give them endurance, Lord Garu.” As he surveyed the sweaty, mud-coated trainees and loudly squealing pigs, Çakri's bushy beard stuck out all around his mouth, like a hedgehog. “It will make them ready for the slick tricks of the Imperial pigs, too.”

Kuni nodded and walked away before he broke down in laughter. He had to admit, Mün's madness did have its own logic.

The former stable master, Than Carucono, was put in charge of the cavalry—though this really meant fifty horses shared by two hundred men. “I need more horses.” He began his habitual lament as soon as he saw the duke.

“And I need lots of things: more men, more money, more weapons and supplies, but you don't see me complaining about it. Than, you'll have to make do with what you've got.”

“I need more horses,” Than said stubbornly.

“I'm going to start avoiding you if you don't come up with a new theme.”

For training in more formal tactics, siege craft, and infantry formations, he turned to Lieutenant Dosa, who had been the top-ranking Imperial officer of the garrison at Zudi. Dosa had surrendered after his men dropped their weapons before the rioting citizens of Zudi, and he seemed dedicated to the rebel cause. Kuni didn't exactly trust him, but he felt that he had no choice. No one else on Kuni's staff had gone to military school, after all.

Kuni sent his men on regular patrols of the surrounding countryside to clear it of bandits and highwaymen. By a combination of threats and promises, he recruited many of them into his own army—though Cogo and Rin had to persuade him to hang a few notorious leaders who had killed too often as examples. He might have plied the outlaw trade once, but that didn't prevent him from now becoming the bandit leaders' worst enemy. Again, it was simply a matter of economics: Merchants sold goods and made profits, which gener­ated taxes, which paid for everything else the duke needed. And none of that would happen if bandits choked off the flow of commerce.

By the third month of the new year, merchants began to travel the roads to Zudi again, and the markets of the city once more bustled. The farmers outside the city also began spring planting. And even fish from the coast could once more be found in Zudi.

“For someone who has never been able to keep even a few prisoners in line, you're doing a pretty good job running the city,” Jia said.

“I've just gotten started,” Kuni boasted.

But he worried. Everything had been going well for him—too well. He felt sure that this was just a momentary lull before the dam broke. The empire was going to make its move soon.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE KING OF RIMA

A HAMLET, RUI AND NA THION, THE BIG ISLAND: THE THIRD MONTH IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF RIGHTEOUS FORCE.

Tanno Namen was old.

He had been a soldier all his life. Heeding the call to serve the homeland and to bring Kiji glory, he had begun his career as a lowly pikeman under General Kolu Tonyeti, the father of General Gotha Tonyeti. He had risen through the ranks steadily by dint of his bravery and unflinching dedication. By the time he finally retired as a general of the Xana Empire, he had spent more than fifty years on the battle­field.

Then, he had gone to the northern coast of Rui Island, to his home village, where he purchased a large estate next to the sea. He planted olives and wolfberries, and he kept a dog named Tozy, who had a limp and would fall asleep next to Namen as he dozed off on the patio overlooking the star-speckled sea at night.

Namen spent his days lolling about the turbulent waters of the Gaing Gulf in his tiny fishing boat. Sometimes, when the sea was calm, he would stay out for a few days and drift with the currents, sleeping in the shade of the sail when it was noon to keep cool, sipping rice wine when it was night to keep warm. When the mood struck him, he would stop, drop anchor, and take out his fishing rod.

He enjoyed catching marlin and sunfish. There was nothing like a meal of raw fresh fish.

Sometimes, on these long sails by himself, he would see the graceful dyrans leaping out of the ocean at sunrise, their scales shimmering like rainbows in the sun, the long, silky tails tracing out parallel arcs in front of his boat. He would always stand up, put his hand respectfully over his heart, and bow. Though he had slept with a sword by his side all his life and never married, he had a great deal of respect for the power of the feminine, symbolized by the dyran.

Namen's one great love in his life was Xana. He had fought for her and bled for her until she was elevated above all other Tiro states. He was sure that his fighting days were over.

“Look at me,” Namen said. “My limbs are stiff and slow. My sword hand shakes when I try to raise it. I'm most of the way to the grave. Why have you come for me?”

“The regent”—Kindo Marana hesitated, being careful to select the right words—“has removed many generals he suspects of disloyalty. I cannot comment on what I think of these charges. But it has left me with few senior commanders with experience or skill. I need, indeed I'm desperate for, someone to help stem the tide of the advancing rebels.”

“Younger men will have to stand up and be counted.” Namen leaned down to stroke Tozy's back. “I have done my duty.”

Marana looked at the old man and his dog. He sipped his tea. He calculated in his mind.

“The rebels say that Xana has grown indolent,” Marana said, his tone contemplative and his voice low, as though he were speaking to himself. “They say that we have gotten used to lives of ease and forgotten how to fight.”

Namen listened without showing any sign that he had heard.

“But some say that Xana has not changed at all. They say that the Unification happened only because the Six States were divided and weak, not that Xana was ever strong and brave. They ridicule tales of the bravery of General Tonyeti and General Yuma and call them exaggerations or mere propaganda.”

Namen smashed his cup against the wall. “Ignorant fools!” Tozy's ears stood up as he turned to see what had angered his master so. “They are not fit to kiss the feet of Gotha Tonyeti, much less speak his name. There is more courage and honor in General Tonyeti's little toe than in a hundred Huno Krimas.”

Marana continued to sip his tea, keeping his face impassive. Motivating a man was about finding the right tender spots to push until he couldn't wait to do what you wanted, just like defeating a tax dodger involved finding the one thing he cared about and squeezing it until he opened his purse and willingly, tearfully, offered up everything he owed.

“The rebels are really doing that well, then?” Namen asked, after he was calmer. “Reliable news is hard to come by.”

“Oh yes. They may not look like much, but our garrisons run for the hills as soon as they see the dust thrown up by the rebel mobs over the horizon. The people of the Six States want the blood of Xana to flow, to satiate their hunger for vengeance. Emperor Mapidéré and Emperor Erishi have not ruled . . . with a gentle hand.”

Namen sighed and unfolded his legs from
géüpa
. Holding on to the table, he stood up with some difficulty. Tozy came closer and leaned against his legs as he bent down to scratch the dog's back, but his spine ached and he had to stand back up.

He stretched his stiff back and ran a hand through his silvery hair. He could not imagine getting up on a horse again or swinging his sword with even one-tenth of his former strength.

But he was a Xana patriot through and through, and he realized now his fighting days were not over.

While Marana stayed on Rui to raise up an army of volunteers, young men yearning for adventure and willing to die to defend the spoils of Xana's conquests, Namen set sail for the Big Island. He would assume command of the defenses around Pan and see if the rebels had any weaknesses that could be exploited.

Along the northwest coast of the Big Island lay the former territory of Haan, curled around the shallow and cold Zathin Gulf and still firmly under Imperial occupation. The floor of the gulf was rich with clams, crabs, and lobsters, and seasonally, herds of seals came to feast.

Moving away from the coast, the land rose gently and turned into a dark forest. The Ring-Woods, ancient, primeval, roughly diamond-­shaped, formed the heart of the resurrected Tiro state of Rima. Land­locked and sparsely populated, it was the smallest and weakest of the Seven States prior to the Unification. It seemed a bit of a paradox that Fithowéo, the god of war, weapons, the forge, and slaughter, chose his home here in ring-wooded Rima.

While the towering oaks of Rima formed the masts and hulls of many ships in the navies of the other states, Rima herself never had ambition for the seas. Indeed, her armies were famed for their ability to mine and tunnel deep under the camps of opposing forces and then blow them up with fireworks, an art that Rima craftsmen had perfected from working the rich veins in the Damu and Shinané Mountains.

An old folk song from Xana before the Conquest went something like this:

Power abhors a vacuum, need demands complement.

Cocru and Faça draw their strength from solid land;

Deep miners of Rima wield fire in either hand.

With ships, Amu, Haan, and Gan rule the watery element,

But he who masters air, the empty realm,

Seizes the vantage point, holds the world's helm.

The song purportedly explained why Xana, once it mastered the airships, achieved victory over all the other Tiro states. But in truth, the description of Rima in the song was a bit exaggerated. The fiery miners of Rima had indeed once been fearsome, but that was a long time ago, and they were only the last embers of a dying glory.

There was a time, long before the Xana Conquest, when Rima's heroes, wielding weapons made by the best bladesmiths in all of Dara, had dominated the Big Island. The Three Brother States of Haan, Rima, and Faça had made an alliance that combined Haan's sleek and advanced ships, Rima's superior weaponry, and Faça's rugged, terrain-defying infantry into an unstoppable force. And of the three, Rima's warriors had by far the most renown.

But that was when armies were small, steel was rare and expensive, and battles were waged by individual champions dueling mano a mano. Under such a system, Rima's small population was no disadvantage. Fueled by the wealth of her mines, the Rima kings could afford to train a few elite swordsmen and hold sway among the other Tiro states. And Fithowéo's favor for the domain was understandable.

But once the Tiro states began to field large armies, the prowess of the individual warrior became less important. A hundred soldiers fighting with brittle iron spears in formation could still bring down a champion clad in thick armor and wielding a sword of thousand-­hammered steel. The martial prowess of someone like Dazu Zyndu was mainly symbolic, and even Dazu himself understood that battles were won and lost as a result of strategy, logistics, and numbers.

Under such a system, Rima's decline was inevitable. It became dominated by Faça, the far more populous state to its northeast, and its once illustrious past became merely a distant memory. The Rima kings turned for solace to ritual and ceremony, keeping alive a dream of greatness that was long dead.

Such was the Rima that had been conquered by Xana, and the Rima that was revived.

“Rima is hollow,” the spies sent out by General Namen told him. “Faça troops drove away our garrisons and re-established Rima a few months ago. But Faça has recalled them to help in a dispute with Gan. Rima's own soldiers are untrained and the commanders full of fear. They can be easily bought with gold, women, and the promise of clemency from the emperor.”

Namen nodded. Under cover of darkness, three thousand Impe­rial troops from Pan quietly ferried across the Miru River, marched stealthily around the tip of the Damu Mountains, and disappeared into the dark woods of Rima.

With the help of Faça's King Shilué, King Jizu, the grandson of the last King of Rima before the Unification, had reclaimed the throne in the ancient capital of Na Thion.

Young Jizu was bewildered by the change in his circumstances. He had been just a boy of sixteen trying to make a living as an oyster­man on the shores of Zathin Gulf, and his biggest concern was winning the heart of Palu, the prettiest girl in the village.

And then soldiers of Faça came into his hut, knelt down before him, and told him that he was now the King of Rima. They draped a robe of silk woven with gold and silver threads over his shoulders, handed him an old cruben bone inlaid with coral and pearls by the jewelers in misty, salt-kissed Boama, and whisked him away from the sea and from the dark but lively eyes of Palu, eyes that said so much without making a sound.