Which was one reason he had Sermandahknarthas building the Order of Tomanak its own properly spacious-and comfortably heated-hall back in Hurgrum, as well. With luck, they’d have it finished before first snowfall and he’d finally spend a winter in Hurgrum without icicles hanging from the tip of his nose.
At the moment, however, brilliant sunlight spilled down from a sky like polished lapis lazuli, dancing on the enormous lake’s sapphire water, and the chamber’s windows were open to admit a cooling breeze. Distant shouts drifted in with the breeze as construction crews continued their unending labors, and he could hear a leather-lunged hradani sergeant counting cadence from the drill square beside the nearest block of barracks. Bhanak Karathson’s Hurgrumese had learned the value of discipline, training, and drill and used it well. Now they were teaching it to the rest of the Northern Hradani, and if the new Confederate Army remained short of the smooth, polished perfection of the Royal and Imperial Army’s demonstration drill teams, Vaijon would have been perfectly willing to match its battalions against any regular Axeman field force. They were certainly better than any non — Axeman infantry he’d ever seen, and he found that a very comforting thought just at the moment.
Although he was the second youngest person present, Vaijon was, by common consent, the council’s moderator. In no small part, that was because his background was probably the closest of that of any of its members’ to something approaching true neutrality. An Axeman by birth, he came from outside the millennium-long hatred and mutual bloodletting of Sothoii and hradani, and as a champion of Tomanak by training and choice, he served the Judge of Princes. As such, he and the members of his chapter of the Order of Tomanak were sworn to strict neutrality in any confrontation between princes or kingdoms so long as the God of War’s code was not transgressed.
More than that, he commanded the one force which could tell any of the proposed expedition’s other commanders they had no authority over it. And while the Hurgrum Chapter of the Order was going to provide the smallest single component of the campaign’s field force, it was also the most disciplined and highly trained. For the last couple of campaigns, it had been used as often as not as what Prince Bahnak had referred to as the expeditionary forces’ “fire brigade,” and no one in his right mind would care to get on its bad side. That reflection brought Vaijon a sense of satisfaction he occasionally found a bit difficult to prevent from sliding over into complacent pride, and as he considered the other senior officers gathered about the table, he reminded himself (in a mental voice which sounded remarkably like Bahzell Bahnakson’s) to not get too full of himself. All of those other officers were at least as experienced as he was, at least where campaigns and battlefield maneuvers were concerned, and there were some dauntingly powerful personalities seated around that table. Some fairly prickly ones, for that matter…which was one reason he had no intention of mentioning that another reason Prince Bahnak and Baron Tellian had selected him for this particular assignment was that he’d developed something of a talent for herding cats over the last few years.
Hurthang Marahgson, Bahzell’s fourth cousin and the senior member of the Hurgrum Chapter, sat directly across from Vaijon. Hurthang stood “only” two inches over seven feet, but he was quite possibly even stronger than Bahzell. And while the symbols of Tomanak might be a crossed mace and sword, Hurthang disdained such puny weapons in favor of the great, two-handed daggered axe from which Clan Iron Axe took its name. Of course, he normally wielded it one — handed, which Vaijon found just a bit flamboyant even for a Horse Stealer. At the moment, however, Hurthang looked a little uncomfortable (although only someone who knew him as well as Vaijon did was likely to notice it) in his resplendently embroidered, finely woven green surcoat. By choice, Hurthang preferred attire as practical and plain as his cousin Bahzell’s, but his wife Farmah had spent much of the winter working on that surcoat for this very meeting, and a warrior who could have-and had-glared unawed into the very teeth of death had been powerless to resist the calm insistence of the mother of his child.
General Yurgazh Charkson sat to Hurthang’s right, and his expression and body language were a bit on the stiff side, Vaijon judged. Hopefully, that stiffness was only temporary, and Vaijon suspected it had more to do with the unanticipated nature of his elevation than to anything else. Yurgazh had worked well as one of Prince Barodahn’s subordinate commanders the previous year, and he was a known quantity to everyone else seated around the table. Still, of all those present he was the closest to a “self-made man,” a former free sword mercenary who’d fought his way to his present rank and position through sheer guts, ability, determination, and-even in Churnazh of Navahk’s service-integrity. The remarkable thing, really, wasn’t that he’d won the trust of his former adversaries following Navahk’s surrender, but that he’d survived under Churnazh.
Prince Arsham Churnazhson, seated beside Yurgazh, looked like a man who wasn’t entirely happy to be there. On the other hand, he didn’t look like someone who was un happy to be there, either. There were greater depths to Arsham than Vaijon had anticipated before Navahk’s defeat, and while it seemed evident that defeat still stung, Navahk’s new prince was a practical man. And a prudent one, which was the only reason he’d survived Prince Churnazh’s reign. Certainly his paternity didn’t explain that survival, at any rate!
Arsham was still referred to by his own people as “the Bastard,” but however odd it might have seemed to an Axeman, the appellation had always been a title of respect in Navahk. A title, indeed, which specifically separated him from his father’s reputation for tyranny…and one which could only have made Churnazh even more suspicious of him.
Among hradani, more than any of the other Races of Man, rape was an unforgivable crime. Hradani women, with their immunity to the Rage, had provided most of what little stability and order hradani society had managed to cling to for too many centuries for that particular outrage to be tolerated. Those in a position of power might get away with it-for a time-but no known rapist could ever hope to command the true loyalty of any hradani city-state or clan. Yet also among hradani, unlike too few of the other Races of Man, rape imposed no stigma upon its victim…or upon any child born of it. For that matter, children in general were unspeakably precious to hradani, with their low fertility rates, and they were often too busy rejoicing in any child’s birth to worry over minor details like establishing its precise paternity. So while there was enormous shame in Churnazh’s rape of Arsham’s mother, there was no shame in Arsham’s birth, and the fact that his mother descended in a collateral branch from the previous ruling family of Navahk gave him a claim to the throne in the eyes of his subjects which neither his late, unlamented father nor his fortunately deceased half-brothers could ever have enjoyed.
Of course, that same claim had been one of the reasons Arsham had been very, very careful never to dabble in politics during his father’s lifetime. He’d spent his time with the army, instead, which had posed potential problems of its own, given how Churnazh himself had used the army to slaughter his way to power. That was one reason Arsham had always preferred field commands which kept him well away from Navahk, and his father had been perfectly happy to keep him there. He’d still managed to become dangerously popular with his troops, yet he’d also made it abundantly clear-to his father, at least; his half-brothers had been less inclined to believe it-that he had absolutely no interest in the throne of Navahk. The fact that he’d been Churnazh’s best field commander had probably helped his father’s willingness to let him keep his head, Vaijon thought. And then there’d been the minor fact that his mother and his legitimately born older sister had been comfortably housed in Navahk…where they stood hostage for his good conduct, not to mention dissuading him from seeking vengeance upon his mother’s rapist. That was something Churnazh had carefully never discussed with him openly, but Arsham had never been a fool and it wasn’t as if Churnazh hadn’t made examples of far too many of his enemies’ families in the course of his reign.