Artos nodded. Which means nobody else should get big eyes either, he thought. And I will not have to start my reign with too many of my new subjects cursing my name.
Aloud he went on: “And even purely from a military point of view, keep in mind that not everyone will fight for the Prophet or the Boise usurper. . but that anyone will fight for their home and family.”
There was general agreement, if a little grudging in some cases. Rassmusen spoke again:
“Just one thing more. . Your Majesty.” The tone was absolutely polite, but Artos thought he detected more than a little irony. “Just how do we in Fargo. . and Marshall, and Nebraska. . know we’re not fighting to replace one threat on our borders with another? It’s easy enough for Richland and Iowa and Kirksville to talk; we stand between them and the High Plains and have since the Change. The Sioux gave us a lot of trouble even with this Corwin cult causing problems to their west and distracting them, and obviously they’d be even more of a menace with you and, ah, Montival behind them.”
“Security …” Artos grinned disarmingly. “Apart from my word, that is?”
His voice was calmly friendly, but the Fargo Bossman was a man of broad experience. He looked a little alarmed, and his pale eyes flicked to the Sword again.
“Nobody doubts your word, Your Majesty. But you’re not immortal. Men die, and not always of old age. Policies change too. Geography doesn’t. Suddenly I’ve got a neighbor that’s over a thousand miles wide, instead of a couple of hundred, and I’m concerned about my grandchildren.”
Artos nodded; that was a point. “To my word, you’ll have to add common sense. Montival has, will have when this war is won-”
If this war is won, but let’s be cheerful in public:
“-no more people than Iowa, or only slightly more. Dwelling sparsely in a land many, many times larger; and we have all of old California to the south of us when we need ground for expansion, as you Midwesterners have the empty parts of the Mississippi valley and the lands east of the river.”
“In the long term, though, your great-grandson, say, might get big eyes.”
Artos shrugged. “The Prophet Sethaz has big eyes right now, the creature; and Boise aspires to reunite the whole continent.”
“Yah, yah, but-well, you have a point.”
“The point being that a hypothetical threat in seventy years is no match for a very real one right now,” Father Ignatius observed dryly. “As a wise man said, in the long run we’re all dead. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Artos nodded. “Montival’s center of gravity lies very far to the west, west of Corwin. Defending the Lakota territories we could do, at great cost and effort; fighting east of there would be a nightmare, against foes at least as strong defending their own homes and with their source of reinforcement and supply close to hand. As you said, lord Bossman, geography doesn’t change. Geography in the form of soil and rainfall dictate that the High Plains will be thinly peopled, and will have mountains between them and the lands of the Pacific coast. Montival will be loose-knit by necessity, as well as inclination, and the Sioux territories will be a buffer. Now, to business.”
The Chancellor cleared his throat, looked at Kate Heasleroad, and spoke:
“Iowa will contribute fifteen thousand cavalry, thirty-five thousand infantry, a hundred batteries of field artillery, and engineers, support troops and siege train in proportion,” he said. “They’re already mobilized. We’re also prepared to supply rations, fodder and replacement horses for the other contingents while they’re in the field.”
Generous, Artos thought. Though they can afford it.
He felt more than saw Matti nod slightly beside him. She scribbled on her pad and tilted it so that he could see without being too obvious about it:
And it establishes Iowa as primus inter pares here. Worth it for the long-term effect on the balance of power from their point of view. If they convince everyone of how strong they are, they won’t have to fight to prove it. It’ll show off the advantages of their central location, too. Abel and Kate want Iowa to be the power that settles disputes and holds the scales, but they don’t want to take anyone over.
Kate nodded at her Chancellor’s words. “I might add that the Dominions to our north, all three of them, have agreed to declare war on Corwin provided that we all do so.”
“Right away?” the Bossman of Marshall said.
“No, but just as soon as our forces actually take the field and cross the border, so that they can’t be left swinging in the breeze.”
“About time the Canuks got their thumbs out,” someone muttered. “Sometimes I think that they think we’re hardly better than the Cutters.”
“I don’t insist they love or trust us as long as they’re with us,” Kate went on. “And for their own good solid self-interested reasons.”
Mathilda beamed at her, proud and fond, and Artos blinked a moment as he saw Sandra Arminger’s face peering out through hers. They said that you should get to know a woman’s mother before you married her, because she was your fate in twenty years, but. .
Kate went on: “And I can’t answer as to how many troops that means, but it does secure our northern flank and it can’t hurt.”
There was a murmur of approval. Bill Clements of Richland cleared his throat and spoke:
“Richland, Marshall and Fargo will each contribute a brigade of four thousand cavalry, and their support services and horse artillery. The troops are already moving, and we can discuss command responsibility when they get here.”
And I’m glad that’s Kate and Abel’s job and none of mine, Artos thought.
Mathilda scribbled again:
Clements is happy that the younger brother of one of his Sheriffs is your brother-in-law. It gives him a link to Montival, which means he has an ally on the other side of Fargo and Marshall, which both outweigh Richland badly. They’ve never actually fought but it’s come close, and Richland has had a border war with that smaller realm, Ellsworth I think it’s called. That’s why they’re not here.
He nodded. Carl Mayer of Nebraska rose in turn. “We’ll kick in twenty thousand men, half mounted. Concordia and Kirksville will put theirs under our command; five thousand more total. Twenty-five thousand men. We’re already working on reconditioning the railways, have been for months now. We can push them across Wyoming to the Rockies as soon as the troops can protect the working parties.”
Artos heard Bjarni grunt slightly, as if someone had punched him in the gut and he was hiding the impact. The number of soldiers promised here was more than the whole of his people, men and women and children together, and these rulers were casually talking of campaigns across distances nearly as great as those between Iowa and Maine. In the abstract, he sympathized; he’d been stunned by the dense populations here when he came through last year as well.
Bjarni was probably asking himself why he’d bothered to bring his little battalion at all. . and then reflecting that it was for honor’s sake, and also because while Syfrid of the Hrossings was here, back home the new kingdom was being consolidated by his wife and his uncle Ranulf, who was also commander of his hird, his guardsmen. Not to mention the prestige he’d bring back, and the loyalty and tales of the men of all the Norrheimer tribes who’d have fought and fared so widely under his command.
Though the most remarkable thing of all about the Midwest is that even with all these people hereabouts, still they till but a fraction of the land, and it so fine and fertile-only a tenth even here in Iowa where there was no famine and there are as many folk now as there were in the year of the Change. Still less is put to use elsewhere, where things were so much worse in the terrible years.