Force did have its place. The carpet was blood-red; the black spot was long-dried blood. The first time that Karl had called his barons together, Baron Derahan of Holtun had called him out, challenging him, man to man.

A brave act, really; by making it personal, binding his barony to loyalty to Karl if Karl defeated him, Derahan had made the challenge tempting.

Tennetty had advised against it, as she stood behind the baron, one hand gripping his hair, the other holding a dagger at the side of his throat, fully prepared to economically slice through a jugular and kick him on his way.

There was no tradition of the prince being subject to such, of course. Holtun's Prince Uldren, like Bieme's Pirondael, had been a fat man, barely able to wheeze his form upright. A twelve-year-old boy could have danced around either and killed either with a pin.

But Karl had just told her to let him go, then nodded at the baron. When Tennetty cut Derahan's hands loose, Karl had simply dragged him across the room, pushed him away, tossed Derahan a sword, and then batted the baron's sword out of his hand and hacked his head off.

Karl nodded at Terumel, the new Baron Derahan, sitting next to the military governor of his barony. Terumel returned Karl's gaze levelly as Karl deliberately stood on the spot where he had killed Terumel's father.

Karl faced the table where the barons sat, the Biemish ones with a senior adviser or majordomo, the Holtish with their military governors. There was one exception to that latter. Vilmar, Baron Nerahan, sat conspicuously alone, the seat to his immediate right conspicuously empty.

The Holt had a sharp-nosed face and a bristly mustache; he always reminded Karl both of a weasel and that appearances could be deceivinga"while the little baron looked like somebody had called Central Casting for a stool pigeon, he was a self-disciplined man, resolutely fair, always more concerned with gaining his barony the most benefit out of the Consolidation, never with evening old scores.

Ellegon had mindprobed the little man more thoroughly than usual, and had been impressed with both his intelligence and his resolve.

Karl itched to kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d for some of the things he had done during the Holtun-Bieme War . . . but that would have violated the amnesty.

He smiled genially at Nerahan.

Just give me an excuse, Nerahan. Just a little excuse, and I'll kill you with my own two hands.

Sometimes, life really sucked. Nerahan had been a G.o.ddam Boy Scout ever since the war, never coming close to giving Karl an excuse to take his head. He never would; not only did the baron know what his future held if he turned against Karl, but events had persuaded him that the new ways were the better. He was a brutal man, but a flexible one.

Behind Nerahan, General Kevalun stood quietly, looking more like one of Nerahan's retainers than the military governor of that barony. And a younger retainer, at thata"his short blond hair hadn't receded with age, and his face was almost baby-smooth. Kevalun looked perhaps twenty-five, too young to be a general, but he was actually the father of a sixteen-year-old girl.

"To begin," Karl Cullinane said, as he took his seat at the head of the table, General Garavar at his left, Thomen Furnael in the seat of honor at his right, "I want to make the obvious announcement: Effective immediately, the military governor of barony Nerahan is relieved of his duties and rea.s.signed to the House Guard." Karl nodded to Kevalun. "General, I thank you for your services on behalf of all of Holtun-Bieme. You have done a splendid job."

There were nods from around the table, mainly from the military governors of other baronies and from several of the Biemish barons. The only Holt to join in was Nerahan. "If," he said, raising a finger to emphasize the word as he repeated it, "if the emperor is ever . . . inclined to dispense with your services, General, I'll have work for you."

At least for public consumption, Kevalun took it as intended. "I thank you, Baron." He bowed toward the barona"the first time he had ever done so.

Karl smiled. "Dismissed, Kevalun. See Garavar later about your new a.s.signment." He deliberately kept his eyes away from the far end of the table, where Baron and Baroness Keranahan sat, the military governor of their barony sitting between them.

Kevalun's new a.s.signment was going to be barony Irulahan, where General Caem'l was alternating between almost Prussian repression and Marshall Plan flaccidity. Karl had no objection to hanging people for fomenting rebellion, but it made less sense to lynch suspected robbers a.s.saulting his tax collectors than to hang the lords who gave them protection. n.o.ble necks snapped with more effect.

Still, there was no need to embarra.s.s Caem'l in front of the others; he would be allowed to retire with dignity. Or with what dignity was possible when a man was being relieved for manifest incompetence, which wasn't all that much.

Kevalun stood up even straighter, his eyes fixed on infinity. "Yes, Emperor."

He spun on his heel and stalked out of the hall, barely limping at all on his bad leg.

"I don't know, Karl," Ranella said, sitting next to fat Lord Harven of Adahan barony, "but I think Adahan's about ready to be turned loose, if you can get the baron to do his job, instead of . . . being educated at Home." The master engineer c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "Or let Harven be regent. He can handle it, Karl."

To Ranella, he was always Karl. To Ranella, it was much more important that they were both Home engineersa"she a master, he cla.s.sified as a senior journeymana"than that he was the emperor and she a barony's governor.

At least that was what she affected. Maybe she just liked to be able to first-name an emperor.

Seated at the far end of the table, Andy-Andy shook her head. "It seems to me that that is not properly a matter for this council," she said. "If the emperor requires the advice of this body, he can ask for it."

She kept her face grim; Karl nodded his agreement. He didn't want to rush into liberating the Holts. Nerahan's new freedom was going to make the Biemish nervous enough. Best to let them see how that went before freeing another Holtish barony.

"No, Ranella," he said as he shook his head. "I see no need to rush forward and remove military governmenta"we'll see how Nerahan does, first."

The Holtish barons were good poker players; not a face creased into a smile. Thomen Furnael's frown even deepened.

d.a.m.n Ranella, anyway. She was good at what she did, but only at what she did. Getting the Adahan mines and the Furnael steel plant into operation was going well, but Karl was often thankful that the influx of labor, money, and goods for the two projects kept barony Adahan well pacified; Ranella couldn't have handled an uprising, and another governor couldn't have handled the building of the plants so well.

Part of it was that she was a woman. With the exceptions of clerics and wizards, women were expected to breed children, not practice formal crafts and professions.

There was a payoff: The few women who did manage to succeed against such expectations tended to be pure cream of the crop. Tennetty was a good example. While Tennetty was a vicious, sometimes s.a.d.i.s.tic killer, it wasn't her naked brutality that had made her able to run squads on Karl's raiding teams; it was the general acknowledgment that her combat judgment was as good as there was.

Plus, of course, Karl's sponsorship. That counted for a lot.

Similarly, Riccetti had always been very openly impressed with Ranella's intelligence, and while the years had put wrinkles around her eyes and an unbecoming potbelly on her torso, her mind had only sharpeneda"but as a tool for building, not governing.

"We'll discuss your administration of the barony tomorrow, Ranella. You're to stay over tonight; the barony can get by on its own for an extra day."

"Whatever you say, Karl." Ranella shrugged. "Anda""

"Governor," Dowager Baroness Beralyn of Furnael put in, "if I can address his majesty properly, so ought you." There was a slight emphasis on the personal p.r.o.noun; Karl decided to let it slide. He had always had a problem trying to keep Beralyn in line; she blamed him for the death of Rahff.

That makes two of us, Beralyn. He swallowed, hard. In Karl Cullinane's time, many, many good men had died fighting on the right side of their just cause, but the way that Rahff had died in his arms was always freshly painful.

Tyrnael snorted in disgust. "This isa"" He caught himself and swallowed. He shook his head, then raised a palm in apology. "I'm sorry, but there are babies lying dead on the ground in my barony and you are arguing over forms of address?"

Arondael looked at Karl, then, at Karl's nod, spoke. "I am in agreement with Baron Tyrnael. We're faced with responding to an attack; let's not be distracted by minor issues of address and of who governs where."

Getting out those last words was clearly difficult for the slim man; the freeing of Nerahan's barony bothered him. During the Holtun-Bieme war, in an attempt to bull Arondael into sending a detachment out of his besieged castle, Nerahan had begun catapulting prisoners over the wall and into the courtyard.

The prisoners had included Arondael's son, his son's wife, and three of their children. War brings out the ugliest in men. All were dead long before they hit the ground; alla"alla"had been, within earshot of the castle walls, repeatedly raped by Nerahan's men, at Nerahan's orders.

Arondael's eyes searched the table for support, finding some, which didn't surprise Karl. "We have to show the Nyphs that we won't be attacked without fighting back," he went on.

Thomen Furnael's young face was grave beyond his years as he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly. "Baron, what if it wasn't the Nyphs who attacked us?"

"So? What if it wasn't?" The older man dismissed it. "There's no way of knowing for sure. Say it wasn't; a.s.sume it wasn't. How can they know that we know that for sure?"

Andy-Andy's chuckle sounded forced. "I think you lost me on that, Baron Tyrnael."

"Baron Tyrnael? If I may?" Nerahan raised an eyebrow. At Tyrnael's surprised nod, Nerahan went on. "The problem is this: a.s.sume that the raid was actually executed by non-Nyphien forces. Nevertheless, for all we can know, it might well have been done by the Nyphs.

"The Nyphs know that. Now, if they discover that they can raid into Hola"into the empire without retaliation, won't that encourage them? Regardless of whether or not they did so this time, won't they see it as weakness?"

Tyrnael grunted an a.s.sent. "Exactly. Better for the Nyphs to know that if anyone crosses into Bieme to kill and enslave our people there will be a reprisal. Let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds guard our border from their side, instead of sending raiders across, or," he went on, the scorn heavy in his voice, "forgetting to stop them."

Everybody started talking after that, although the Biemish barons carried most of the conversation.

Karl sat back in his chair and let the argument flow undirected, Tyrnael and Nerahan urging immediate retaliation, Arondael and Ranella counseling accepting the official Nyph explanation.

The trouble with Nerahan's argument was that it made sense. It was much better, as a general principle, to force your neighbor to keep his own country from being a source of raids into yours than it was to try to patrol a border. That last was doomed to frequent failure.

Better an educational combination pursuit/reprisal raid la Black Jack Pershing or Ariel Sharon than some Jimmy Carter-style loud talk while carrying only a small stick that you were frightened to use.

But that was only a generality. Every case was different: Pershing had known he was chasing Pancho Villa; Sharon had always had good intelligence as to where the PLO was hiding.

With Danagar yet to return from Nyphiena"and that, all by itself, didn't bode wella"Karl still didn't know who was responsible, and he didn't know where whoever was responsible was.

Better to find out who was responsible, and punish him or them. While it probably didn't make much of a difference to a Realpolitik-oriented baron, Karl shrugged to admit that he had this fetish about trying to restrict punishment to the guilty. One of the troubles with war was that innocents died, but at least you should try to limit the damage to innocents on the other side.

Still, as a matter of state policy, if the Nyphs allowed their rulers to strike into Holtun-Bieme, it was proper to hold them collectively to account.

But what if it was Ahrmin? What if it was the Slavers' Guild, trying to trigger an empire-Nyphien war the way it had the Holtun-Bieme war?

He needed some time. Ellegon could be back any day. Maybe the dragon could do some gooda"but probably not. If the raid had been instigated by Pugeer, he would hardly have informed his envoy.

Karl would have to confront Pugeer. In person, with Ellegon at his side to read the Nyph's mind.

And if Pugeer was responsible?

He could practically hear Walter Slovotsky. If you insist on juggling knives, you're going to get cut.

If Pugeer was responsible, he was dead.

He turned to Thomen Furnael. "You've been quiet, Thomen. I need your thoughts."

"I doubt that. I might not keep quiet with them."

He knows!

Karl kept his face somber as the boy eyed him coldly.

"I think this is all premature," Thomen went on. "It's not enough to guess, not when we can know. I say we should wait for Danagar." He seemed about to say something more, but stopped himself. "Wait until we know."

"You have nothing to say with regard to my point?" Nerahan asked airily. "You don't find it relevant, Baron?"

"Ifa"if we can discover for certain that it wasn't the Nyphs who are responsible, then we can let them know that. It would be insane to hold people to account for something that they're not responsible for." He turned back to Karl. "You asked my opinion. That is it."

Karl nodded. "And a sound opinion it is. Tyrnael, Thomen, please stay. The rest of you are dismissed."

He caught Andy's eye. "All of you." He didn't want her around for this.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:.

Cowboy.

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest.

a"Thucydides.

"Down in the valley," Jason Cullinane sang as he rode night herd, looking out on the sea of cattle.

He kept singing as he decided, not for the first time, that there was something he would have to ask his fathera"if he ever was able to face him.

In the meantime, he kept singing. A few hundred yards away, he could hear, although just barely, the slow dirge that Ceenan kept up for the benefit of the idiot cows around him.

"Down in the valley . . ." Jason sang. He had a lousy singing voice, but the cattle didn't seem to mind.

Whether or not it was true, Falikos had the belief, common among drovers, that singing to the cattle would help prevent them from stampeding. During the day, while the beasts were moving, a stampede was merely unfortunate; it could scatter cows far and wide, but almost always in the direction of their march.

At night, a stampede could be deadly. A sudden sound could send the nervous, stupid creatures in any direction, trampling anyone who was insufficiently vigilant or inadequately lucky.

Maybe the singing did help keep them calm. There was n.o.body else within earshot; he sang a slow, mournful tune he had half learned from his father, improvising the lyrics that he couldn't quite remembera"

"Down in the valley, the valley so low,

Hang your head low, cows, hang your head low.

They'll chop you for burgers,

Or make you a stew,

And if I live to be a hundred,

I'll never smell anything worse than you. . . ."

a"and adding an editorial comment or two as, under a canopy of twinkling stars and slowly pulsing faerie lights, Falikos' herd mooed and shuffled and stank into the night.