"Does Your Majesty plan to take an active part in the defense?" asked Jorian.
"Bountiful heavens, dear boy, nay! Can you imagine us, with our girth, trading spear-thrusts on the battlements? Besides, we have always been a man of peace, with little use for fire-eating sword-rattlers. And now, meseems, our city and our life must needs depend upon these same swashbucklers. Doctor Karadur, you should muster your scientists and wizards to the work of defense. Have you, perchance, a spell to summon some unhuman race—say, the silvans of the Lograms—to our aid?"
"I will see what the House of Learning can do," said Karadur. "But let Your Majesty not count upon any such assistance. The unhumans have little love for mankind, having been harshly entreated by them. To seek to compel aid from them is like holding a sword by the wrong end, so that it wounds the hand of the wielder. But I go—"
"Stay, stay. Now that we have given the essential commands, there is no reason why we should not finish our tea."
"But, sire, I—"
"Nay, relax. A quarter-hour more or less will not decide the fate of the city. Do have some of these mushrooms, gathered in the jungles of Baraoti."
"If Your Majesty thinks them safe…" said Jorian, staring uneasily at a yellow-spotted purple fungoid growth of singularly repulsive appearance.
"Nonsense! We have been eating these for years, and we have not lost a royal taster yet, heh heh."
Jorian manfully swallowed a mouthful of fungus. To give himself a pretext for not eating another, he said:
"Your Colonel Chuivir reminds your servant of the tale of King Filoman and the golem general."
"Go ahead, dear boy," said the king. "You will not mind if we steal a bit of your mushroom, will you?"
"Feel free, sire."
"This king," began Jorian, "otherwise called Filoman the Weil-Meaning, was the father of the celebrated Fusinian the Fox. King Filoman was also an outstanding ruler in his way. He had the noblest emotions and the best intentions of any Kortolian monarch. He was intelligent, courageous, honest, hard-working, moral, kind, and generous. His only fault was that he had no common sense, and in practice this fault often cancelled all his other virtues put together.
"One legend says that this fault was caused by an astrological conjunction at his birth. Another avers that, when the fairies gathered for his naming ceremony, the fairy who was supposed to confer common sense lost her temper when she beheld another fairy wearing a gauzy gown just like hers and flounced out in a rage without bestowing her gift.
"Early in his reign, King Filoman confronted the problem of the defense of his realm. Being a peace-loving man, he supposed that others felt likewise. In this opinion he was encouraged by his minister, an oldster named Periax whom he had inherited from the previous reign.
"Periax urged Filoman to reduce the army to a mere royal guard. 'Wars,' quotha, 'are caused by mutual fears and suspicions, which in turn are caused by armaments. Get rid of the armaments and you will abolish war. When our neighbors see us disarming, they will know that we have no aggressive intentions towards them and lose their fear of us. Then they will follow our example, and peace and brotherhood shall reign forevermore.'
"Periax did not enlarge upon the real reason for his advice. This was that he was himself too old and creaky to sit a horse, brandish a sword, and perform other warlike acts. In these early times, the king and his ministers were expected to lead charges in person. Periax reckoned that, as a result of his pacific policy, war would at least be deferred until after his natural death, and he cared not for what befell the kingdom thereafter.
"Periax's argument seemed to Filoman like sound sense, so he virtually disbanded his army. Now, at this time, Kortoli's southern neighbor, Vindium, was under the rule of Nevors the Daft, whose character is implied by his sobriquet. I need not detail the enormities of his reign: wasting his treasury on solid gold statues of himself; slaying ministers, kinsmen, and associates on the slightest pretext; whimseys like making his army dress up as frogs and go hopping about the parade ground on all fours, shouting 'Diddit! Diddit!' while King Nevors rolled on the ground screaming with laughter.
"In time, a cabal of noblemen and officials got the king apart from his bodyguard, hacked him to pieces, and threw the pieces into the Inner Sea. Then the problem arose, who should take the unlamented Nevors' place? For he had slain all his near kin.
"As it happened, an astute and ambitious lawyer, Doctor Truentius, had foreseen these events and gathered a powerful following among the commons. When King Nevors was slain, Truentius marched to the palace at the head of thousands of his partisans, chased out the relicts of the old reign, and proclaimed a republic with himself as First Consul.
"Truentius was the most brilliant man in Vindium. He had read all the historians and philosophers and prophets and had thought deeply on questions of government. He it was who, more or less singlehanded, invented republican government in Novaria. He drew up a constitution for Vindium which, considering its early date, is still acclaimed as a marvel of profound and original thought.
"Knowing himself the ablest man around, Truentius inferred that his decisions as to what was best for the Vindines were necessarily right. Therefore, anyone who opposed them was by definition an enemy of the people and hence a scoundrel for whom the direst punishment were too lenient. Soon Vindium City saw in its main square a large wooden block, served by a man with a black hood over his head and a large ax in his hands, wherewith to smite off the head of anyone so malign and perverse as to dispute the infallible reasoning of Doctor Truentius.
"After a couple of years of this, Truentius, finding that such domestic problems as the production and distribution of wealth and the reconciliation of order with liberty stubbornly resisted the best efforts of himself and his headsman, bethought him of spreading the blessings of popular government to the rest of the Twelve Cities. Besides the benefits that such a program would confer upon the other Novarians, it would rally the Vindines, who were beginning to fall into seditious factions, behind their First Consul and furnish him with a pretext for making his rule even more absolute. He therefore sent an ultimatum to King Filoman of Kortoli, demanding that Filoman abdicate in favor of a popularly elected consul.
"Naturally perturbed, King Filoman sought advice. The advice he got from his councillors, however, was so contradictory that Filoman could make nought of it. Some were for arming every man in the kingdom and resisting to the last; but others pointed out that no such stock of arms existed.
"Some said to reactivate the old army and recall the retired officers to the colors. But it transpired that most of these officers had gone abroad to seek service as mercenaries. The former general of the Kortolian army, for instance, was now serving as a captain in the forces of the Grand Bastard of Othomae. It would take too long to recall them, even if they were willing to come.
"Old Periax urged Filoman to yield to Truentius' overwhelming force. But others said that, judging by his master's conduct, the new First Consul's first act would be to set up a chopping block in Kortoli City to shorten everybody who might possibly be a threat to him, which included all those present.
"At last it was decided to make some arms, and buy some, and call up the lustier young men, and hire such former officers as could be found to train them to use them.