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them."
"Styphon will pay," Kalvan said. "Styphon ought to; he got Sarrask into this
mess in the first place,"
Ptosphes commented. He turned back to Rylla. "What then?" "Well, when Sarrask
surrendered, the rest of them began pulling off helmets and holding swords up
by the blades and crying, 'Oath to Galzar!'They all admitted they'd taken an
awful beating at Fyk, and were trying to get into Nostor. Now wouldn't that
have been nice?"
"Our gold-plated friend here didn't want to come along with us Dalla
said. "Rylla told him he didn't need to; we could take his head along easier
than all of him. You know, Prince, your daughter doesn't fool. At least,
Sarrask didn't think so."
She hadn't been fooling, and Sarrask had known it. "So," Rylla picked it up,
"we put him on a horse one of his guards didn't need any more, and brought him
along. We thought you might find a use for him. We stopped at Esdreth Gap@--l
saw our flag on the Sask castle; that looked pretty, but Sarrask didn't think
so . . ."
"Prince Ptosphes!" Sarrask burst out. "I am a Prince, as you are. You have no
right to let these-these girls-make sport of me!"
"They're as good soldiers as you are," Ptosphes snapped. "They captured you,
didn't they?"
"It was the true gods who made sport of you, Prince Sarrask!" Kalvan went into
the same harangue he had given the captured officers at Fyk, in his late
father's best denunciatory pulpit style. "I pray all the true gods," he
finished, "that now that they have humbled you, they will forgive you."
Sarrask was no longer defiant; he was a badly scared Prince, as badly scared
as any sinner at whom the Rev. Alexander Morrison had thundered hellfire and
damnation. Now and then he looked uneasily upward, as though wondering what
the gods were going to hit him with next.
It was almost midnight before Kalvan and Ptosphes could sit down privately in
a small room behind Sarrask's gaudy presence chamber. There had been the
takeover of Tarr-Sask, and the quartering of troops, and the surrendered
mercenaries to swear into Ptosphes's service, and the Saski troops to disarm
and confine to barracks. Riders had been coming and going with messages.
Chartiphon, on the Beshtan border, was patching up a field truce with
Balthar's officers on the spot, and had sent cavalry to seize the lead mines
in Sinking Valley. As soon as things stabilized, he was turning the Army of
the Besh over to his second in command and coming to Sask Town.
Ptosphes had let his pipe go out. Biting back a yawn, he leaned forward to
relight it from a candle.
"We have a panther by the tail here, Kalvan; you know that?" he asked. "What
are we going to do now?"
"Well, we clean Styphon's House out of Sask, first of all. We'll have the
heads off all those priests, from Zothnes down." Counting the lot that had
been brought in from the different temple-farms, that would be about fifty.
They'd have to gather up some headsmen. "That will have to be policy, from now
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on. We don't leave any of that gang alive."
"Oh, of course," Ptosphes agreed. "'To be dealt with as wolves are.' But how
about Sarrask and Balthames? If we behead them, the other Princes would
criticize us."
"No, we want both of them alive, as your vassals. Balthmnes is going to marry
that wench of Sarrask's if I have to stand behind him with a shotgun, and then
we'll make him Prince of Sashta, and occupy all that territory Balthar agreed
to cede him. In return, he'll guarantee us the entire output of those lead
mines. Lead, I'm afraid, is going to be our chief foreign-exchange monetary
metal for a long time to come.
"To make it a little tighter," he continued, "we'll add a little of Hostigos,
east of the mountains, say to the edge of the Barrens
"Are you crazy, Kalvan? Give up Hostigi land? Not as long as I'm Prince of
Hostigos!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have forgotten to tell you. You're not Prince of
Hostigos any more. I am." Ptosphes's face went blank, for an instant, with
shocked incredulity. Then he was on his feet with an oath, his poignard half
drawn. "No:'Kalvan continued, before his father-in-law-to-be could say
anything else. "You are now His Majesty, Ptosphes the First, Great King of
HosHostigos. As Prince by betrothal of your Majesty's domain of Old Hostigos,
let me be the first to do homage to your Majesty."
Ptosphes resumed his chair, solely by force of gravity. He stared for a
moment, then picked up his goblet and drained it.
This was a Hosof another color. "If the people in that section don't want to
live under the rule of Balthames, for which I shouldn't blame them, we'll buy
them out and settle them elsewhere. We'll fill that country with mercenaries
we've had to take over and don't want to carry on the payroll. The officers
can be barons, and the privates will all get forty acres and a mule, and we'll
make sure they all have something to shoot with. That'll keep them out of
worse mischief, and keep Prince Baltharnes's hands full. If we need them, we
can always call them up again. Styphon, as usual, will pay.
"I don't know how long it'll take us to get Beshta-a moon or so. We'll let
Balthar find out how much gold and silver we're getting, out of this temple
here. Balthar is fond of money. Then, after he's broken with Styphon's House,
he'll find that he'll have to join us."
"Armanes, too," Ptosphes considered, toying with his golden chain. "He owes
Styphon's House a lot of money. What do you think Kaiphranos will do about
this?"
"Well, he won't be happy about it, but who cares? He only has some five
thousand troops of his own; if he wants to fight us, he'll either have to
raise a mercenary army-and there's a limit to how many mercenaries anybody,
even financed by Styphon's House, can hire---or he'll have to levy on his
subject Princes. Half of them won't send troops to help coerce a fellow
Princeit might be their turn next-and the rest will all be too jealous of
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