It is regrettably true that in Tristia, for every brave, selfless soul willing to sacrifice themselves for others, there’ll be at least one complete arsehole determined to look out only for themselves. What no one had ever told me was that the arseholes most skilled at this were Tristia’s military leaders.
‘You can’t be serious,’ I said, standing nose to nose with General Herredal. Behind him was an impressive entourage of lieutenants whose primary military function appeared to be laughing on cue at their fearless leader’s jokes and scowling on his behalf at any who dared to question his ineffable wisdom. They were doing a lot of the latter right now.
‘I fail to see what confounds you, Trattari,’ General Herredal repeated. He gestured at the two other Generals in the room. ‘It is quite clear: we have given our terms to the King himself and none of us have any intention of altering our demands.’
Here’s something else I never knew about war: in Tristia, when the King wants to send the army into battle, his Generals have the right to renegotiate the terms of their service. This strikes me as a spectacularly bad tradition, especially on those occasions when a vastly superior army has just declared war and half the Duchies have seceded, taking their troops with them. Not only were Generals Herredal, Abruni and Orzeno demanding simply preposterous sums of money, they also wanted lands, noble titles and – and this was the best part – ships, for their personal and no doubt immediate use.
It was the ships that really got to me.
‘You son of a bitch,’ I said, grabbing him by the collar, ignoring the lieutenants reaching for their ceremonial daggers; Kest and Brasti were kind enough to show them the error of their ways. It’s amazing how educational a punch to the nose can be. ‘You’re already preparing to run!’.
‘How dare you accuse the General of—’
The other lieutenant’s words were cut off by another smart punch to the nose, this one delivered by Gwyn, who’d agreed to provide what intelligence he could on Avarean military practices.
‘My apologies,’ the young Rangieri said. ‘They told me we were going to fight the enemy and I got confused.’
General Herredal was probably in his late fifties, but he was strong enough to shake off my grip and he looked ready to more than pay back the abuse we’d given his men in kind, but Valiana stopped him.
‘Enough!’ she cried, looking exasperated. ‘All of you! The matter of payment is separate from the more pressing issue of where this fight will take place.’
‘And I have told you—’ Herredal appeared to be struggling to find a suitably insulting way to address Valiana.
‘—“your Grace”,’ I suggested.
He sneered at that. ‘Not likely. I imagine by the time she makes it to the front gates of Rijou her title will have already been taken by another.’
‘Again,’ Valiana said, ‘a matter secondary to the more important question we must deal with today.’
‘The army will remain here,’ Herredal declared. ‘It will be less costly to hold out in Aramor and wait for the enemy to come to us.’
‘So you would let them march through Pertine as if the Duchy were already theirs?’
He gave her a patronising smile. ‘The Duke – I’m sorry, the Prince of Pertine – has already signed an armistice; I’m quite sure the piss-drinking barbarians will be exceedingly polite to their new friends.’
‘Pertine,’ Valiana said, ‘is still part of Tristia, General.’
She was halfway to accusing him of sedition at this point, but Herredal clearly didn’t care. ‘It’s easier to fight here than in enemy territory, which Pertine will be if we try to send our troops through it.’ Valiana was opening her mouth to respond, but he cut her off. ‘I will not discuss military strategy with fools who have no concept of the art of war.’
‘You are the fool,’ Gwyn said. ‘Once the Avarean horde enters Tristia it will never leave. They would lose every last man and woman among them before they ceded one inch of territory.’ He turned to me. ‘If you are to fight them, it must be at the border between the two lands. Only there can you have any hope of showing them this country will cost too high a price.’
‘Once in Pertine, there will be no way to retreat,’ Herredal added.
‘And no doubt that would make it harder for you and your personal staff to reach your new ships,’ I couldn’t stop myself saying out loud.
Herredal locked eyes with me and smiled, practically daring me to hit him. ‘I’m not the one who started this war, Trattari, so don’t blame me that it cannot be won. And don’t doubt for a moment that this new King of yours has his own ship ready and his own plans to escape the country when it falls.’
‘The people who have to live in this country, General,’ Valiana said, ‘do not have ships, nor do they have the ability to flee. Their only hope now lies in us showing the Avareans that we are as great a nation of warriors as they are, in showing this . . . this rokhan that means so much to them. Only through courage can we—’
Herredal held up a hand. ‘I will not be lectured to by you, girl. I have actually fought Avareans. No, if there is to be a fight, it will be here in Aramor.’ He glanced around his entourage, who were busy nodding and murmuring assent. ‘Furthermore, while I have already compromised my beliefs and agreed that women may fight – though the Gods know what punishment they’ll rain down on us for that foolishness! – I will have none of this Bardatti nonsense.’ With that he picked up and slowly crumpled the piece of paper upon which Nehra had set down the placement of her own warband: her drummers, musicians and singers.
‘The Bardatti are part of this fight, General,’ Valiana said. ‘Their ways may seem strange to you, bu—’
‘Strange?’ Herredal bellowed. He turned to Nehra, sitting by the window scribbling furiously. ‘You, minstrel,’ he called out to her. ‘What is it exactly you’re doing right now?’
Nehra looked up and raised an eyebrow, as if the General had missed the blindingly obvious. ‘I’m composing the warsong, of course.’
Okay, so even I knew that didn’t sound like a particularly vital component of military strategy.
General Herredal sighed, apparently having had enough of us all. Ignoring Valiana completely, he turned to me. ‘Allow me to make this very simple for you and your little King: none of you know how to fight a war; moreover, you have no idea how to even manage troop allocations, movements, supply lines – or anything else. Without me, you have no army. So you can either accept my command at my price, or you can find yourselves with no army whatsoever.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Unless you fancy yourself a General now, Trattari?’
‘Me? No, sir,’ I said politely, ‘you’re quite correct: troop movements, supply lines . . . It’s all rather beyond me.’
‘Good, in that case . . .’ He held out the document listing his demands.