'What? If the farmers stop farming, we'd all be starving. Surely he has to keep them happy, and those that own the estates?'
'Only if he wants to be nice. This is where we come back to you, the general, and the threat of reprisal. If the farmer decides not to grow food, he gets his door kicked down by your booted foot and told to grow food at spearpoint. Well, that's the implicit punishment for disobeying the king; he doesn't actually have to do it to everyone. By the same measure, you have to go and kick down the farmer's door unless you want Cosuas or Nemtun or some other sword-swinging bastard paying you a visit.'
Ullsaard shook his head and scowled.
'But if legions start fighting other legions, the whole thing becomes a mess. The king doesn't achieve anything by letting that happen.'
'Which is why it's the threat of force that is his most powerful weapon, and your loyalty to the empire your greatest weakness. You can't act out of place, because the long-term consequences could be disastrous for the empire and your future prosperity. Enlightened self-interest keeps everybody and everything working, with the occasional reminder from the king to make sure nobody starts getting ideas that would cause trouble.
'The only real threat to the empire is a person who doesn't care about the empire because they don't care about their future prosperity and well-being. Nobody sane would want to destroy the thing that guarantees their future, so we all go along with the whole enterprise. It doesn't matter what we really think about the empire, as long as it's there, because it's better to have it than not.'
'That's… terrible. You're saying that people are only loyal to the empire because they're scared of not having it?'
Noran shrugged. He pointed to a fishing boat passing a spear's cast away from the galley, two men hauling at their net.
'Do you think they care about any of what I've just said?'
'Probably not.'
'They want to know that they'll get a good price for their fish and nobody is going to turn up and burn down their home in the night. Before the Askhans came, that could never be guaranteed, and now it is. That's what the empire means to them. They don't have to see the huge interacting interests that drive Greater Askhor to appreciate what it's brought them. Before Askhos, we would have been rivals, sending our little warbands to raid each other's villages for a few abada and maybe a comely wench.
'Askhos did away with all of that, showing that if we took a step back and looked at the wider world, we could do so much more. I may not have read his book, and I don't have much time for the Brotherhood, but Askhos was a very clever man. He didn't have to conquer the whole world to get what he wanted; he just had to show people that it was possible. Their ambitions did the rest; whether that ambition was to rule over Enair or just to have a stretch of river that could be fished without risking an arrow in the eye.'
Ullsaard absorbed this in silence, fingers tapping the rail. He nodded gently to himself, but then his brow furrowed again.
'I think I understand what you've been telling me. But what does any of it actually mean?'
Noran leaned back against the rail and gave an expansive shrug.
'Probably nothing at all. Greater Askhor is what it is. You're frustrated at the moment, but you can't fight the whole empire. People are happy with the way things are, from the farmer to the king. Unless you can prove to them that you're offering something better, why would they want to change?'
'You're right,' Ullsaard said with a grimace. 'Cosuas said the same thing, but in a different way. I'm putting my desire for war above the needs of the empire. If Greater Askhor doesn't need a new war now, who am I to demand one? That's just being selfish.'
The general patted Noran on the arm and smiled. 'Thanks.'
'That's not really what I meant…' Noran muttered to himself as Ullsaard set off across the deck towards the ship's captain. 'Ah, bollocks to it.'
The king's herald headed in the opposite direction, seeking the comfort of the Okharan wine stashed amongst his belongings.
Okhar
Midsummer, 208th Year of Askh
I
Ullsaard ducked under the deck beams and moved to the front of the hold where the ailurs were being kept. Bred from cavedwelling cats, reared by the Brotherhood beneath their precinct buildings, the war beasts didn't mind the dark. The three of them — Blackfang, Render and Noran's ailur, Thunderbolt — stirred restlessly at Ullsaard's approach, rolling to their bellies. Blackfang raised her blinkered head, catching the scent of her master. He reached through the wooden bars and patted her shoulder.
'Perhaps I need one of those hoods,' Ullsaard whispered to her. 'Stop me looking at things I shouldn't look at.'
He stroked her mane, checking the fastenings on the armoured hood as he did so. He did the same for the other two. Assured that all three cats were secure, he reached into the bucket of bloody meat beside the door and proffered a chunk through the bars. Blackfang took it gently, lifting it from his fingers with her teeth with the delicate touch of a mother lifting a newborn. A few chews and a long gulp and it was gone. Ullsaard allowed her to lick the blood from his fingers, her thick tongue rasping at the flesh.
'Your turn,' he said, grabbing another hunk and offering it to Thunderbolt. She was a bit snappier, snatching the meat from his grasp and retreating to the far corner of the cage. Ullsaard tossed a third hunk of meat to Render.
The meat was laced with special drugs made by the Brotherhood and Ullsaard waited for the cats to show the signs of their effects. Ullsaard felt mean every time he had to drug an ailur, it didn't seem fair or honest. On the other hand, it was a wise precaution. Though they were mature and trained, it was best not to take chances. He had never seen an unmasked ailur, but apparently it was not good for anyone that had.
The ailurs settled down, heads swaying. Ullsaard waited a while longer before opening the door. He took a chain hanging from the bars and attached it to Blackfang's collar, gently tugging at the rein so that she rose groggily to her feet. He whispered encouragement as he led her out of the cage, closing the gate with his heel.
The ailur's paws thudded heavily on the boards as Ullsaard led her to the ramp placed at the hatch. She followed passively up onto the deck, stupefied by the Brotherhood's concoction. With gentle coaxing, Ullsaard took her to the gangplank while Noran headed below to fetch Thunderbolt.
The sailors shrank back from the plodding beast as Ullsaard took her down to the quayside. They had their dumb superstitions about women on board ship and seemed to think that a female ailur was just as bad. Ullsaard ignored them. All trained ailurs were female, so there wasn't any way to avoid having them on board ship. As far as he knew, the males were kept in the Brotherhood's Grand Precincts as studs.
The docks at Geria were well-established, stretching along both sides of the Greenwater for some distance. The river had been widened and deepened here in the reign of the previous king, to provide a better anchorage for ships moving up and down the empire's greatest river. Most of the ships were singledeck galleys; trading vessels that kept the lifeblood of Greater Askhor moving along the arteries of its waterways. A couple of warships stood out in the centre of the river, patrolling back and forth with sweeps of their oars. An impressive trireme stood proud at the next dock, whitened hull gleaming, obviously newly commissioned. The banks of oars were stowed and her twin sails furled, but the rows of torsion-armed spear throwers on her upper deck leant her an air of ready menace.
Beyond the grey stone wharfs rose the low warehouses of Geria, made of thick wood planks, roofed with tiles of naked fired clay. Cloth banners hung over the doors, displaying the colourful emblems of their owners — more ship captains were illiterate than could read so it was a simple system of identification to make sure goods ended
