BiLeth looked stricken. UrLeyn noticed. "Yes, BiLeth?" he snapped.
The foreign minister looked even more discomfited. "I…" he began. "I, well…"
"What, man?" UrLeyn shouted. The tall foreign minister jumped in his seat, his long, thin grey hair flouncing briefly.
"Are you… is the Protector quite… it's just that, sir…"
"Great Providence, BiLeth!" UrLeyn roared. "You're not going to disagree with me, are you? Finally found a sliver of backbone, have we? Where in the skies of hell did that fall from?"
BiLeth looked grey. "I do beg the Protector's pardon. I would simply beg to ask him reconsider treating the barons in quite such a fashion," he said, a desperate, anguished look on his narrow face.
"How the fuck should I treat the bastards?" UrLeyn asked, his voice low but seething with derision. "They make war on us, they make fools of us, they make widows of our women-folk." UrLeyn slammed a fist on to the table, making the map of the borderlands flap in the breeze. "How in the name of all the old gods am I supposed to treat the sons of bitches?"
BiLeth looked as if he was about to cry. Even DeWar felt slightly sorry for him. "But sir," the foreign minister said in a small voice, "several of the barons are related to the Haspidian royal family. There are matters of diplomatic etiquette when dealing with nobility, even if they are rebellious. If we can but prise one away from the others and treat with him well, then perhaps we can bring him to our side. I understand-"
"You understand very little, it would seem, sir," UrLeyn told him in a voice dripping with scorn. BiLeth seemed to shrink in his seat. "I'll have no more talk of etiquette," he said, spitting out the word. "It has become clear that these scum have been teasing us," UrLeyn told BiLeth and the others. "They play the seductress, these proud barons. They act the coquette. They hint that they might succumb to us if we treat them just a little better, that they will be ours if only we flatter them a little more, if only we can find it in our hearts and our pockets to provide them with a few more gifts, a few more tokens of our esteem, why then they will open their gates, then they will help us with their less cooperative friends and all their resistance so far will prove to have been for show, a pretty fight they have been putting up for the sake of their maidenly honour." UrLeyn hit the table again. "Well, no! We have been led along for the last time. The next leading will be done by an executioner, when he pulls on the chain of one of these proud barons and brings him to the public square to be tormented like a common murderer and then put up to burn. We'll see how the rest of them respond to that!"
YetAmidous slapped the table with the flat of his hand and stood up out of his seat. "Well said, sir! That's the spirit!"
ZeSpiole watched BiLeth shrink further in his seat, and exchanged looks with RuLeuin, who looked down. ZeSpiole pursed his lips and studied the map on the table. The others gathered round the table — lesser generals, advisors and aides — busied themselves in a variety of other ways, but none looked directly at the Protector or said anything in contradiction.
UrLeyn gazed round at their faces with a look of mocking admonition. "What, is there nobody else to take my foreign minister's side?" he asked, waving one hand at the subsiding form that was BiLeth. "Is he to remain alone and unseconded in his campaign?"
Nobody said anything. 'ZeSpiole?" UrLeyn said.
The Guard Commander looked up. "Sir?"
"Do you think I am right? Should I refuse to entertain any further advances from our rebellious barons?"
ZeSpiole took a deep breath. "I think we might profitably threaten the barons with what you have mentioned, sir.
"And, if we take one, carry it out, yes?"
ZeSpiole studied the great fan of window on the wall opposite, where glass and semi-precious stones shone with sunlight. "I can appreciate the prospect of seeing one of the barons so humbled, sir. And as you say, there are enough widows in this city who would cheer his screams sufficient to drown them out."
"You see no intemperateness in such a course, sir?" UrLeyn asked reasonably. "No rashness, no cruel impetuousness which might rebound on us?"
"That would be a possibility, perhaps," ZeSpiole said, with a flicker of uncertainty.
"A 'possibility', 'perhaps'?" UrLeyn said in a voice that mocked the Guard Commander's. "But we must do better than that, Commander! This is an important matter. One that needs our gravest consideration. We cannot make light of it, can we? Or perhaps not. Perhaps you disagree. Do you disagree, Commander?"
"I agree that we must think hard about what we are going to do, sir," ZeSpiole said, his voice and manner serious.
"Good, Commander," UrLeyn said with what appeared to be sincerity. "I am glad we have extracted a hint of decision from you." He looked round everybody else. "Are there any other views I should hear from any of you?" Heads went down all around the table.
DeWar began to be thankful that the Protector had not thought to turn round and ask him his opinion. Indeed he still worried that he might. He suspected nothing he could say would make the General happy.
"Sir?" said VilTere. All eyes turned to the young provincial commander. DeWar hoped he wasn't going to say something stupid.
UrLeyn glared. "What, sir?"
"Sir, I was, sadly, too young to be a soldier during the war of succession, but T have heard from many a commander whose opinion I respect and who served under you that your judgment has always proved sure and your decisions far-sighted. They told me that even when they doubted your decree, they trusted you, and that trust was vindicated. They would not be where they are, and we would not be here today" — at this the young commander looked round the others — "were it otherwise."
The other faces round the table searched UrLeyn's for a response before they reacted.
UrLeyn nodded slowly. "Perhaps I should take it ill," he said, "that it is our most junior and most recently arrived recruit who holds the highest opinion of my faculties."
DeWar thought he detected a sense of cautious relief around the table.
"I'm sure we all feel the same way, sir," said ZeSpiole with an indulgent smile to VilTere and a cautious one to UrLeyn.
"Very well," UrLeyn said. "We shall consider what fresh troops we might be able to send to Ladenscion and we shall tell Ralboute and Simalg to prosecute the war against the barons without respite or negotiation. Gentlemen." With that, and a perfunctory nod, UrLeyn rose and marched away. DeWar followed.
"Then let me tell you something closer to the truth."
"Only closer?"
"Sometimes the truth is too much to bear."
"I have a strong constitution."
"Yes, but I meant that sometimes it is too much for the teller, not the told."
"Ah. Well then, tell me what you can."
"Oh, there is not so much, now I approach it. And it is a common story. All too common. The less I tell you of it the more you could be hearing it from a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand mouths or more."
"I have a feeling it is not a happy story."
"Indeed. Anything but. It is just that of women, especially young women, caught up in a war."
"Ah.,
"You see? A story that scarcely needs to be told. The ingredients imply the finished article, and the method of its making, do they not? It is men who fight wars, wars are fought taking villages, towns and cities, where women tend the hearths, and when the place that they live is taken, so are they. Their honour becomes one of the spoils, their bodies too invaded. That territory taken. So my story is no different from that of tens of thousands of women, regardless of their nation or their tribe. And yet for me it is everything. For me it is the most important thing that ever happened to me. For me it was the end of my life, and what you see before you is like a ghost, a spirit, a mere shade, unsubstantial."