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Blah Blah Blah: A Demon King's Autobiography, Chapter 4: Attacking Sirex
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I love my Elze, but she is a strong woman - she will neither let her love for me overpower her, nor allow my love for her to overpower me. Love is a feeling, a state of mind, an action. It is expressed in seeking the flourishing of the other person, not in seeking to satisfy their every passing whimsy. So when we parted ways the next morning, despite the longing in both our hearts to stay by one another's side, neither made the slightest move to suggest it. Or even to suggest it was acceptable, to sacrifice sense on the altar of passion. Those who do such things are doomed to ignoble deaths that they falsely believe noble.
Gathering for war was not something that even the Hittani king could do in a single day, so I was forced to wait in his palace, kept as a guest alongside Vida. Her body served to delight me in plenty of ways, and I sought to delight her in even more, making her shiver and squirm beneath my tongue, to gasp and pant and thank me, to praise me as a lover and in her heart of hearts, wish me for her husband.
Even in those early days, I would not have minded making Vida into my wife instead of my concubine - but I had not done that. Nor could I recklessly disregard the decisions of my elders and the other clan heads, so I did not feed those fantasies. I allowed her to imagine herself happy as my concubine, happy as the mother of my children, happy in my bed and happy to help me, but I did not encourage her to imagine myself as her husband. It would have been putting a fruit before a child only to sweep it away - and that sort of tomfoolery doesn't tend to make one's bedpartners happy.
Still, I made a good show of lavishing my affections on Vida. Not to some obscenely greater extent than the norm, but enough that she was appreciative, affectionate, that the blossoming feelings in her heart were put on full display for her grandfather. The man did seem suitably appreciative, when we did meet, and he did poke at the reason why she was a concubine instead of a wife - a statement to which I could honestly reply that it was others' decisions, not my own, and I would have preferred making Vida my wife in the first place. He had seemed satisfied with that answer.
Due to the vagaries of statecraft, I didn't spend that much time with the man until we actually set out, a week after our arrival, with an army at our back. Some ten thousand soldiers, being supplied by a dizzyingly complex supply chain - though nothing compared to the sort you have in your world. At that point, I walked beside him, as a representative of a hopefully-allied power on this grand mission of his.
Of course, my heart thundered and roared at all the chances that stood before me. I had worked towards this, built towards this, and at last, I would have the chance to truly prove myself on the field of battle. Not some defensive war, not some raid or banditry, but a genuine act of conquest - and I did not need to fear defeat, only death, since my people would be attacking from the other side of the country, and if every soldier here died, then Ibaal would still be strong. And like any proper Ibaali royal, I wasn't too afraid of death, either.
"Was this entire affair your idea alone, Alifex?" It was the Honored King speaking, to me, for the first time in our journey - his own fleshraker mount strode right alongside mine, clawed feet pounding against the crimson plains beneath us.
"No," I told him. "I spoke with the revenant of Ishtar, and she provided me useful advice."
"When you spoke to her, was it about just... anything? Or about Sirex?"
I let out a small laugh at his keen insight. "I must admit that I did have the idea floating through my mind. It is part of the reason I married your granddaughter - that Hittana would make a good ally, to Ibaali, to the Ozken clan, to myself."
"I can appreciate ambition in a young man," he said, in a tone of voice that suggested he could - but that there was some hesitation there, too. He went silent, simply staring out at the horizon. There was the occasional small settlement, here and there, but the war that had raged across Sirex had left much of its lands poor and rural. Nothing worth taking, no city worth conquering. Only the land itself, once the armies that were destroying it were properly dealt with. "But do not be too ambitious. It was ambition that led those fanatics to power, too," he added, with a certain lazy smile, recalling the Lucifene purists in western Sirex. "And now they are all dead."
"Indeed," I agreed. The other factions of the civil war had gathered together with the Ibaali and utterly crushed them, their mad ravings clearly bad for all parties. We demons are not like you, who idly hoped that Mansur would never turn his attention their direction: we understand a threat to all when it displays itself, when a group steps beyond the simple logic of self-enrichment and into something far more dangerous and endless in scope. We know that in such battles, it is all against all. It is the fact that you did not know this - perhaps still do not, you damned fools - that motivated me to so gladly take Mansur's hand when it was offered.
He did very nearly crush you, after all.
But I digress. "I am an ambitious man, but I assure you, my ambitions are limited to those according to my station." They would expand as my station rose, of course, but that was only natural. Ambition is like an esurient: it has an endless hunger, always ready to eat more. "Today, I wish for glory in battle, and a happy reunion with my wife."
He looked perhaps less happy at the idea of me reuniting with my Elze than I was. Understandable, as it would hardly be possible to be more happy with the idea than I was. "Your Elze, yes. She is an... impressive woman."
I laughed at that. "You should see her in battle - perhaps if you are lucky, you will be given the chance to. My Elze is..." I licked my lips, the ofidex that served as my tongue flashing out to wet them, to prepare me to speak such wonderfully honeyed words as I could ever manage, "the most beautiful woman in the world. Vida can only ever be a distant second, I am afraid - but she is second, so far as my eyes are concerned, I assure you. I am not some lothario who finds every girl with hips and a bust to rut with."
"You have been with only two women, then?" He prompted me. I nodded without shame. One of those women - the first woman I ever laid with - was my Elze, after all. How could I be ashamed of that fact? "Many young men let their eyes and hands wander," he noted, as if offering me one last chance to speak the honest truth.
"I understand their impulse," I told him. "After all, they are not married to my Elze. But my hands would never stray from her side, were she not willing - and she will not abandon Vida. She has found she... enjoys the girl."
"I must admit that Vida has not spoken so kindly of Elze as she has of you."
"That is easily explained. Elze does not have an ofidex in her mouth, and her tongue is not used to bring your granddaughter to the greatest heights of ecstasy which a woman can experience." He let out a chuckle at my joke. "I can assure you, if I thought Elze would ever hurt your granddaughter in any way beyond, perhaps, some jealousy and similar minor frictions, I would never have taken Vida as my concubine. I am not some Pig King," I said.
The Pig King is a reference you would not understand, and so I shall endeavor to explain it to you in short. Once, there was a king who kept killing his wives and concubines, because he was a misogynistic fool who thought that women were simply inclined to cheat on all men, rather than that they were inclined to cheat on a pathetic, paroxysmal worm such as himself. Since many of his wives and concubines were drawn from surrounding nations, in time, his country was invaded and his own courtiers mounted his head on a pike to appease those who had come to avenge their daughters and sisters. The lesson is straightforward, and does not need to be explained.
"She certainly does not seem to think so. I do feel some envy - an ofidex," he noted, with a small laugh. "They are not found in Hittani, so we can hardly afford to learn the proper rituals, or to give them to our princes."
"There are prices to my ofidex," I noted, with a small bow of the head. "To maintain its unlife takes a small portion of my own magic - perhaps one part in twenty or one part in ten."
"Mm," he hummed in acknowledgement. "Perhaps being better able to satisfy a woman is not worth quite that much."
"It does do other things, but yes - even among the more westerly Ibaali, where the ofidex scurry across the sands in such quantities that they sometimes appear white, there are relatively few men and women with my particular talents. They are valuable in their place, but they are not valuable in every place. As is the case for many things."
The Honored King let out a soft laugh at that. "Indeed. I have to say, Alifex, I am glad that my granddaughter was taken by such a bright young man, rather than some cad or fool. Even if I do wish that you had married her instead."
"The choice was not mine, nor was it the choice I would have made," I told him simply. "But I understand. Such words may sound hollow, compared to your granddaughter's happiness."
"No, I believe you," he replied, with a shake of his head. "I am not some fool who doesn't know his neighbors. It is precisely the sort of thing the Ibaali would do, to demand humiliation rather than making peace. You are wise to have made a different decision."
I did not wish to simply accept such a compliment - we were speaking of the humiliation of his granddaughter, after all. It was important that I make clear that I had no part or interest in that. "If I were wiser, perhaps I could have convinced my people to treat your granddaughter more kindly."
He smiled at that, though he offered some words to dissuade me of that way of thinking. "You cannot take responsibility for everything, Alifex. The world does not rest beneath your boot."
Even in that moment, a mere princeling among a vibrant but politically weak nation, I would gladly have proclaimed that it should rest beneath my boot. There was no ready path towards that goal, not at that time, but so many young demons dream of becoming the great conquerors remembered in history for generations, the sorts to found Hittana and Daminatex and Nov and Califex and Parathix. But, I could hardly say such things to the Honored King. I would merely look like a fool, particularly given that clawing that high up might very well harm Hittana as well. "You speak wisdom. I will take it to heart."
"Try to," he told me, with a certain stiffening of his spine. His next words were the sort carefully chosen - the sort given when one wishes to tell but not to say something. To me, in that moment, more important than their hidden content was the fact that he was saying them to me. It suggested that, by infatuating his granddaughter with me, and my comportment otherwise, I had done good at worming myself into his heart. "Even in Nov, where the kings rule a vast land and are unequaled in power... even there, the kings do not rule alone. No man can conquer the whole of the world. Else, they would not have had two great civil wars in as many centuries."
I took the hidden meaning of his words as well, of course. To speak of Nov as a place disunited, was to tacitly admit that Hittana was disunited. While no doubt any fool could tell you that there is no country where everyone speaks with one voice, there was no reason to dare suggest it about one's own country, when you were its king. Power does not truly exist, save in its illusion. If the people of Reqas had, as one, decided to ignore Mansur, then he would have been powerless, and then dead. "Thank you for your wisdom, Honored King. I will contemplate it."
* * *
In Sirex, there were three factions - once four. The Khardi, seeking perhaps to make their own petite kingdom, as foolish an idea as it was; the old royalty, with their base in the east, seeking to hold onto power; and the new royals, with their base in the west, seeking to claim control of the whole nation based on some ancient laws that I can hardly care to recall. There had also been the Lucifene purists who had been born in western Sirex, and even taken some parts of Ibaal - but they had been utterly crushed.
Given Hittana's location, we would naturally clash with the old royalty, not the new royals or the Khardi, and indeed, we saw the scurrying of scouts on our periphery. There were a few killed, brought down by arrows or magic, but there were too many - both of us, and of the scouts - to possibly disguise our movements, so it was hardly a week after entering Sirex territory that we were shadowed by the Sirexi army.
I say shadowed for a reason. Their numbers were fewer, owing to the long war and its devastation, but their intent was obvious: keep us from taking any land. Despite the devastation, walled cities still dotted the lands of Sirex, and they were critical to anyone who wished to control the countryside. Their hope, no doubt, was that by mere presence they would dissuade us from laying siege to any of their cities, by their own ability to strike at our supply lines and to smash us against the walls.
For a day or so, we allowed their shadowing, but even then, there were whispers of turning around to crush them. They kept their distance and always made a small fortified encampment, moving only when they felt confident we couldn't come upon them easily. But, when a powerful force enters your territory, and you threaten it - the natural expectation is that it will soon turn around on you. And, indeed, that is precisely what we did.
The force separated in two - one part, the smaller, was sent off to hide. The other part, the larger, continued on its course. Our scouts kept an eye on the enemy encampment, waiting for the people there to decamp to follow after us. To be clear, this camp was over an hour from our main force by fleshraker when they decamped, so that we could not easily kill them when they left, and they could return back if we tried to wheel around on them.
I was with the smaller part of the force, as was the Honored King himself. Let it never be said that the nobility of demons shies away from war, risk, and death - my own heart pounded with excitement in my chest, as we watched from a distance, as the main force left the fortress with only a skeleton crew. They had not noticed us in our hiding spot, gauging by the fact that relatively few men remained behind to protect the small camp. I couldn't help but wish my Elze was by my side, but now for reasons other than the creature comfort of having one's beloved in one's arms. She could have probably taken the camp entirely on her own - but instead, it fell to me, and a few hundred of the Hittani men, to do it.
We waited for an implacable time, simply watching to ensure that the main force was too far away to stop us. I could feel the excitement of my fellows, the way that silence stretched out among us, because of the intensity of anticipation. We would crash down upon this camp, and then our main force would crush their main force, and the looting, and the violence, and the bloodshed, would all be a suiting paean to the Lucifenes.
"Do not let your lust for battle drive you mad, Alifex," the Honored King said, his voice quiet as we waited in place. The fact that he spoke to me at all, particularly to give me good advice, was another show of our increasing closeness. "My granddaughter would be unhappy if you died because you did something foolish." I simply nodded in agreement, my heart still pounding in my chest in anticipation. He smiled, no doubt recognizing that no words could truly still the bloodlust that burned in my chest.
Still, I was no fool. I waited for the appointed time, and kept with the rest of the force. My shield was held aloft above my head to protect me from the rain of the enemy's missiles that came as they saw me. Their yells of surprise and fear as they saw us rushing towards them, their allies nowhere in sight, were delicious. I cannot say how truly transcendent the feeling was, to watch battering rams, carried by four fleshrakers each, simply slam right through the walls of the fortress, sending them shattering inward, pale white wood shattering and speckling the red fields beneath.
Demons with true character, with true courage, with true martial skill and all the valor of a genuine warrior - they came down upon us as one, desperately trying to stem the tide. I was near the front, and kept my shield firm, blade slicing out to cut at, to cut down those courageous warriors. My lips were, I'm sure, torn into a rictus grin, as we all made our way through the enemies, as we seized the fort.
I fought not far apart from the Honored King, either. I could recognize his grunts and pants of exertion amidst the battle, but I could not spare a glance his way, as we held off the soldiers and pushed them back. Their yells of panic were increasingly desperate with each of their own that fell beneath our swords, but they did not yet retreat - though we hardly gave them much chance to, doing our best to press them against their own walls, to turn their fortress into a trap.
In the midst of the battle, I heard the heavy thump of a demon's body not so far from me, and managed to spare a glance - I saw, then, that the Honored King had fallen, one of our enemies armed with a spear that was aimed for his neck. I moved with the alacrity that only a demon prince can bring to bear, quickly cutting my sword right into the spear's haft. It got only halfway through, but when I tugged and pushed, the wielder fought and grunted against me, unable to kill the Honored King. One of his allies, held off only by my shield, desperately cut at me, and in turn, I was protected by another one of the Hittani soldiers who stabbed at that man, taking advantage of his distraction and helping to protect me.
When I finally pulled my sword loose from the bastard's spear's shaft, the Honored King had managed to get to his feet, stumbling back from his would-be attacker. The man tried to dart in quickly, but the general press prevented it, and he was, in short order, cut down. We soon managed to get on firmer footing, and the enemy was crushed. Only a small handful surrendered towards the very end, perhaps one in ten, when all their spirit was broken by our crushing force, and every imaginable avenue of escape clearly closed off to them.
While we were ready to slaughter our newfound prisoners if the need arose, for the moment, we simply took their weapons and money from them and bound them up. Their numbers were enough that they represented a meaningful bounty in themselves, and no one wanted to kill them. They would fetch a better price as slaves, after all.
I know already what your heart is blithering about - slavery? What an immoral institution! Let me speak to you as one might a child: if these men were not taken as slaves, they would have simply been killed. Does anything that I have described of Hell sound as though there are POW camps for the defeated? If they had defeated us, and I had been pressed down against the warm red soil and bound, I know that I would have been sold as a slave too - and I would have been thankful! Better a slave than a dead man! I may be more positive than the average man, since my Elze could and would surely find and free me, paying or killing my way out as fit her mood and the particulars of the circumstances, but any soldier serving alongside me.
It is your wealth that makes you think of slavery as some awful institution. You are so insulated from true consequences and true hardship that you sincerely think you would rather die than suffer the mild humiliation of being a slave. That you would rather kill than allow men to be subject to this humiliation. It is inanity, and not worth dealing with any further than I have here. I do not care to persuade you. Believe what you like.
Naturally, as repayment for saving the Honored King from death, I was given the chance to pick one of the captured men to keep as my own slave. Indeed, it was the first pick - some few of the Hittani may have grumbled that I was not one of them, but the rest accepted the logic that protecting their king was worth some small prize. I looked through them as best I could, seeking the signs of nobility in the hopes of fetching a higher price by selling one back to his family. In the end, I found my slave: Barand, a young princeling, his social status similar to my own in Sirex.
The man who had saved me as I saved their king, of course, was given second choice of slaves, and picked a similarly valuable one from the lot. For the remainder, there were a few singled out by their fellows as exceptionally brave or having done something truly worthwhile in the battle, and given their own selections. The remaining slaves were given up by lot to the other soldiers.
By the time that we finished the whole matter, we had both rebuilt the wall we had destroyed, and also begun to man the fort properly. I myself stood in one of the overlooking watchtowers, and Baran was bound behind me, looking grim. His expression only grew grimmer when he saw his allies' forces beginning to approach at a good march, because even without being told, he knew the very same thing I knew: those men were returning because they were being chased by our main force. But they would not find a fortress to hide inside - rather, they would find their enemies had seized their fortress.
For the main force, that battle provided some great chances for heroism and loot, just as I had experienced in the taking of the camp. But for myself, it was dull, watching a greater force come upon a small one and crush it, hurling down some missiles at the poor fools who dared try to take some shelter against the camp's walls. It was a quick battle, and most of the force fled in a rout, a rout I could not help to chase down and had merely to watch as more and more of the men were killed, their bodies left upon the field, stripped bare of weapons and armor. Some fragments escaped - I even saw a few - but the bloody aftermath of the battle made clear that we now controlled the field, and the Sirex would take a great while to take it all back.
My thoughts drifted to my Elze, of course. She would gladly have helped and killed, and I would have found the whole battle far more entrancing, were the Fang of Asmodia to reap the men as if they were wheat. Alas, she was no doubt still with the Ibaali, perhaps in western Sirex, but surely not to come back any time soon. I merely steeled my heart again, and focused on the prosecution of the war, and on making a good impression on the Honored King going forward.
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I love my Elze, but she is a strong woman - she will neither let her love for me overpower her, nor allow my love for her to overpower me. Love is a feeling, a state of mind, an action. It is expressed in seeking the flourishing of the other person, not in seeking to satisfy their every passing whimsy. So when we parted ways the next morning, despite the longing in both our hearts to stay by one another's side, neither made the slightest move to suggest it. Or even to suggest it was acceptable, to sacrifice sense on the altar of passion. Those who do such things are doomed to ignoble deaths that they falsely believe noble.
Gathering for war was not something that even the Hittani king could do in a single day, so I was forced to wait in his palace, kept as a guest alongside Vida. Her body served to delight me in plenty of ways, and I sought to delight her in even more, making her shiver and squirm beneath my tongue, to gasp and pant and thank me, to praise me as a lover and in her heart of hearts, wish me for her husband.
Even in those early days, I would not have minded making Vida into my wife instead of my concubine - but I had not done that. Nor could I recklessly disregard the decisions of my elders and the other clan heads, so I did not feed those fantasies. I allowed her to imagine herself happy as my concubine, happy as the mother of my children, happy in my bed and happy to help me, but I did not encourage her to imagine myself as her husband. It would have been putting a fruit before a child only to sweep it away - and that sort of tomfoolery doesn't tend to make one's bedpartners happy.
Still, I made a good show of lavishing my affections on Vida. Not to some obscenely greater extent than the norm, but enough that she was appreciative, affectionate, that the blossoming feelings in her heart were put on full display for her grandfather. The man did seem suitably appreciative, when we did meet, and he did poke at the reason why she was a concubine instead of a wife - a statement to which I could honestly reply that it was others' decisions, not my own, and I would have preferred making Vida my wife in the first place. He had seemed satisfied with that answer.
Due to the vagaries of statecraft, I didn't spend that much time with the man until we actually set out, a week after our arrival, with an army at our back. Some ten thousand soldiers, being supplied by a dizzyingly complex supply chain - though nothing compared to the sort you have in your world. At that point, I walked beside him, as a representative of a hopefully-allied power on this grand mission of his.
Of course, my heart thundered and roared at all the chances that stood before me. I had worked towards this, built towards this, and at last, I would have the chance to truly prove myself on the field of battle. Not some defensive war, not some raid or banditry, but a genuine act of conquest - and I did not need to fear defeat, only death, since my people would be attacking from the other side of the country, and if every soldier here died, then Ibaal would still be strong. And like any proper Ibaali royal, I wasn't too afraid of death, either.
"Was this entire affair your idea alone, Alifex?" It was the Honored King speaking, to me, for the first time in our journey - his own fleshraker mount strode right alongside mine, clawed feet pounding against the crimson plains beneath us.
"No," I told him. "I spoke with the revenant of Ishtar, and she provided me useful advice."
"When you spoke to her, was it about just... anything? Or about Sirex?"
I let out a small laugh at his keen insight. "I must admit that I did have the idea floating through my mind. It is part of the reason I married your granddaughter - that Hittana would make a good ally, to Ibaali, to the Ozken clan, to myself."
"I can appreciate ambition in a young man," he said, in a tone of voice that suggested he could - but that there was some hesitation there, too. He went silent, simply staring out at the horizon. There was the occasional small settlement, here and there, but the war that had raged across Sirex had left much of its lands poor and rural. Nothing worth taking, no city worth conquering. Only the land itself, once the armies that were destroying it were properly dealt with. "But do not be too ambitious. It was ambition that led those fanatics to power, too," he added, with a certain lazy smile, recalling the Lucifene purists in western Sirex. "And now they are all dead."
"Indeed," I agreed. The other factions of the civil war had gathered together with the Ibaali and utterly crushed them, their mad ravings clearly bad for all parties. We demons are not like you, who idly hoped that Mansur would never turn his attention their direction: we understand a threat to all when it displays itself, when a group steps beyond the simple logic of self-enrichment and into something far more dangerous and endless in scope. We know that in such battles, it is all against all. It is the fact that you did not know this - perhaps still do not, you damned fools - that motivated me to so gladly take Mansur's hand when it was offered.
He did very nearly crush you, after all.
But I digress. "I am an ambitious man, but I assure you, my ambitions are limited to those according to my station." They would expand as my station rose, of course, but that was only natural. Ambition is like an esurient: it has an endless hunger, always ready to eat more. "Today, I wish for glory in battle, and a happy reunion with my wife."
He looked perhaps less happy at the idea of me reuniting with my Elze than I was. Understandable, as it would hardly be possible to be more happy with the idea than I was. "Your Elze, yes. She is an... impressive woman."
I laughed at that. "You should see her in battle - perhaps if you are lucky, you will be given the chance to. My Elze is..." I licked my lips, the ofidex that served as my tongue flashing out to wet them, to prepare me to speak such wonderfully honeyed words as I could ever manage, "the most beautiful woman in the world. Vida can only ever be a distant second, I am afraid - but she is second, so far as my eyes are concerned, I assure you. I am not some lothario who finds every girl with hips and a bust to rut with."
"You have been with only two women, then?" He prompted me. I nodded without shame. One of those women - the first woman I ever laid with - was my Elze, after all. How could I be ashamed of that fact? "Many young men let their eyes and hands wander," he noted, as if offering me one last chance to speak the honest truth.
"I understand their impulse," I told him. "After all, they are not married to my Elze. But my hands would never stray from her side, were she not willing - and she will not abandon Vida. She has found she... enjoys the girl."
"I must admit that Vida has not spoken so kindly of Elze as she has of you."
"That is easily explained. Elze does not have an ofidex in her mouth, and her tongue is not used to bring your granddaughter to the greatest heights of ecstasy which a woman can experience." He let out a chuckle at my joke. "I can assure you, if I thought Elze would ever hurt your granddaughter in any way beyond, perhaps, some jealousy and similar minor frictions, I would never have taken Vida as my concubine. I am not some Pig King," I said.
The Pig King is a reference you would not understand, and so I shall endeavor to explain it to you in short. Once, there was a king who kept killing his wives and concubines, because he was a misogynistic fool who thought that women were simply inclined to cheat on all men, rather than that they were inclined to cheat on a pathetic, paroxysmal worm such as himself. Since many of his wives and concubines were drawn from surrounding nations, in time, his country was invaded and his own courtiers mounted his head on a pike to appease those who had come to avenge their daughters and sisters. The lesson is straightforward, and does not need to be explained.
"She certainly does not seem to think so. I do feel some envy - an ofidex," he noted, with a small laugh. "They are not found in Hittani, so we can hardly afford to learn the proper rituals, or to give them to our princes."
"There are prices to my ofidex," I noted, with a small bow of the head. "To maintain its unlife takes a small portion of my own magic - perhaps one part in twenty or one part in ten."
"Mm," he hummed in acknowledgement. "Perhaps being better able to satisfy a woman is not worth quite that much."
"It does do other things, but yes - even among the more westerly Ibaali, where the ofidex scurry across the sands in such quantities that they sometimes appear white, there are relatively few men and women with my particular talents. They are valuable in their place, but they are not valuable in every place. As is the case for many things."
The Honored King let out a soft laugh at that. "Indeed. I have to say, Alifex, I am glad that my granddaughter was taken by such a bright young man, rather than some cad or fool. Even if I do wish that you had married her instead."
"The choice was not mine, nor was it the choice I would have made," I told him simply. "But I understand. Such words may sound hollow, compared to your granddaughter's happiness."
"No, I believe you," he replied, with a shake of his head. "I am not some fool who doesn't know his neighbors. It is precisely the sort of thing the Ibaali would do, to demand humiliation rather than making peace. You are wise to have made a different decision."
I did not wish to simply accept such a compliment - we were speaking of the humiliation of his granddaughter, after all. It was important that I make clear that I had no part or interest in that. "If I were wiser, perhaps I could have convinced my people to treat your granddaughter more kindly."
He smiled at that, though he offered some words to dissuade me of that way of thinking. "You cannot take responsibility for everything, Alifex. The world does not rest beneath your boot."
Even in that moment, a mere princeling among a vibrant but politically weak nation, I would gladly have proclaimed that it should rest beneath my boot. There was no ready path towards that goal, not at that time, but so many young demons dream of becoming the great conquerors remembered in history for generations, the sorts to found Hittana and Daminatex and Nov and Califex and Parathix. But, I could hardly say such things to the Honored King. I would merely look like a fool, particularly given that clawing that high up might very well harm Hittana as well. "You speak wisdom. I will take it to heart."
"Try to," he told me, with a certain stiffening of his spine. His next words were the sort carefully chosen - the sort given when one wishes to tell but not to say something. To me, in that moment, more important than their hidden content was the fact that he was saying them to me. It suggested that, by infatuating his granddaughter with me, and my comportment otherwise, I had done good at worming myself into his heart. "Even in Nov, where the kings rule a vast land and are unequaled in power... even there, the kings do not rule alone. No man can conquer the whole of the world. Else, they would not have had two great civil wars in as many centuries."
I took the hidden meaning of his words as well, of course. To speak of Nov as a place disunited, was to tacitly admit that Hittana was disunited. While no doubt any fool could tell you that there is no country where everyone speaks with one voice, there was no reason to dare suggest it about one's own country, when you were its king. Power does not truly exist, save in its illusion. If the people of Reqas had, as one, decided to ignore Mansur, then he would have been powerless, and then dead. "Thank you for your wisdom, Honored King. I will contemplate it."
* * *
In Sirex, there were three factions - once four. The Khardi, seeking perhaps to make their own petite kingdom, as foolish an idea as it was; the old royalty, with their base in the east, seeking to hold onto power; and the new royals, with their base in the west, seeking to claim control of the whole nation based on some ancient laws that I can hardly care to recall. There had also been the Lucifene purists who had been born in western Sirex, and even taken some parts of Ibaal - but they had been utterly crushed.
Given Hittana's location, we would naturally clash with the old royalty, not the new royals or the Khardi, and indeed, we saw the scurrying of scouts on our periphery. There were a few killed, brought down by arrows or magic, but there were too many - both of us, and of the scouts - to possibly disguise our movements, so it was hardly a week after entering Sirex territory that we were shadowed by the Sirexi army.
I say shadowed for a reason. Their numbers were fewer, owing to the long war and its devastation, but their intent was obvious: keep us from taking any land. Despite the devastation, walled cities still dotted the lands of Sirex, and they were critical to anyone who wished to control the countryside. Their hope, no doubt, was that by mere presence they would dissuade us from laying siege to any of their cities, by their own ability to strike at our supply lines and to smash us against the walls.
For a day or so, we allowed their shadowing, but even then, there were whispers of turning around to crush them. They kept their distance and always made a small fortified encampment, moving only when they felt confident we couldn't come upon them easily. But, when a powerful force enters your territory, and you threaten it - the natural expectation is that it will soon turn around on you. And, indeed, that is precisely what we did.
The force separated in two - one part, the smaller, was sent off to hide. The other part, the larger, continued on its course. Our scouts kept an eye on the enemy encampment, waiting for the people there to decamp to follow after us. To be clear, this camp was over an hour from our main force by fleshraker when they decamped, so that we could not easily kill them when they left, and they could return back if we tried to wheel around on them.
I was with the smaller part of the force, as was the Honored King himself. Let it never be said that the nobility of demons shies away from war, risk, and death - my own heart pounded with excitement in my chest, as we watched from a distance, as the main force left the fortress with only a skeleton crew. They had not noticed us in our hiding spot, gauging by the fact that relatively few men remained behind to protect the small camp. I couldn't help but wish my Elze was by my side, but now for reasons other than the creature comfort of having one's beloved in one's arms. She could have probably taken the camp entirely on her own - but instead, it fell to me, and a few hundred of the Hittani men, to do it.
We waited for an implacable time, simply watching to ensure that the main force was too far away to stop us. I could feel the excitement of my fellows, the way that silence stretched out among us, because of the intensity of anticipation. We would crash down upon this camp, and then our main force would crush their main force, and the looting, and the violence, and the bloodshed, would all be a suiting paean to the Lucifenes.
"Do not let your lust for battle drive you mad, Alifex," the Honored King said, his voice quiet as we waited in place. The fact that he spoke to me at all, particularly to give me good advice, was another show of our increasing closeness. "My granddaughter would be unhappy if you died because you did something foolish." I simply nodded in agreement, my heart still pounding in my chest in anticipation. He smiled, no doubt recognizing that no words could truly still the bloodlust that burned in my chest.
Still, I was no fool. I waited for the appointed time, and kept with the rest of the force. My shield was held aloft above my head to protect me from the rain of the enemy's missiles that came as they saw me. Their yells of surprise and fear as they saw us rushing towards them, their allies nowhere in sight, were delicious. I cannot say how truly transcendent the feeling was, to watch battering rams, carried by four fleshrakers each, simply slam right through the walls of the fortress, sending them shattering inward, pale white wood shattering and speckling the red fields beneath.
Demons with true character, with true courage, with true martial skill and all the valor of a genuine warrior - they came down upon us as one, desperately trying to stem the tide. I was near the front, and kept my shield firm, blade slicing out to cut at, to cut down those courageous warriors. My lips were, I'm sure, torn into a rictus grin, as we all made our way through the enemies, as we seized the fort.
I fought not far apart from the Honored King, either. I could recognize his grunts and pants of exertion amidst the battle, but I could not spare a glance his way, as we held off the soldiers and pushed them back. Their yells of panic were increasingly desperate with each of their own that fell beneath our swords, but they did not yet retreat - though we hardly gave them much chance to, doing our best to press them against their own walls, to turn their fortress into a trap.
In the midst of the battle, I heard the heavy thump of a demon's body not so far from me, and managed to spare a glance - I saw, then, that the Honored King had fallen, one of our enemies armed with a spear that was aimed for his neck. I moved with the alacrity that only a demon prince can bring to bear, quickly cutting my sword right into the spear's haft. It got only halfway through, but when I tugged and pushed, the wielder fought and grunted against me, unable to kill the Honored King. One of his allies, held off only by my shield, desperately cut at me, and in turn, I was protected by another one of the Hittani soldiers who stabbed at that man, taking advantage of his distraction and helping to protect me.
When I finally pulled my sword loose from the bastard's spear's shaft, the Honored King had managed to get to his feet, stumbling back from his would-be attacker. The man tried to dart in quickly, but the general press prevented it, and he was, in short order, cut down. We soon managed to get on firmer footing, and the enemy was crushed. Only a small handful surrendered towards the very end, perhaps one in ten, when all their spirit was broken by our crushing force, and every imaginable avenue of escape clearly closed off to them.
While we were ready to slaughter our newfound prisoners if the need arose, for the moment, we simply took their weapons and money from them and bound them up. Their numbers were enough that they represented a meaningful bounty in themselves, and no one wanted to kill them. They would fetch a better price as slaves, after all.
I know already what your heart is blithering about - slavery? What an immoral institution! Let me speak to you as one might a child: if these men were not taken as slaves, they would have simply been killed. Does anything that I have described of Hell sound as though there are POW camps for the defeated? If they had defeated us, and I had been pressed down against the warm red soil and bound, I know that I would have been sold as a slave too - and I would have been thankful! Better a slave than a dead man! I may be more positive than the average man, since my Elze could and would surely find and free me, paying or killing my way out as fit her mood and the particulars of the circumstances, but any soldier serving alongside me.
It is your wealth that makes you think of slavery as some awful institution. You are so insulated from true consequences and true hardship that you sincerely think you would rather die than suffer the mild humiliation of being a slave. That you would rather kill than allow men to be subject to this humiliation. It is inanity, and not worth dealing with any further than I have here. I do not care to persuade you. Believe what you like.
Naturally, as repayment for saving the Honored King from death, I was given the chance to pick one of the captured men to keep as my own slave. Indeed, it was the first pick - some few of the Hittani may have grumbled that I was not one of them, but the rest accepted the logic that protecting their king was worth some small prize. I looked through them as best I could, seeking the signs of nobility in the hopes of fetching a higher price by selling one back to his family. In the end, I found my slave: Barand, a young princeling, his social status similar to my own in Sirex.
The man who had saved me as I saved their king, of course, was given second choice of slaves, and picked a similarly valuable one from the lot. For the remainder, there were a few singled out by their fellows as exceptionally brave or having done something truly worthwhile in the battle, and given their own selections. The remaining slaves were given up by lot to the other soldiers.
By the time that we finished the whole matter, we had both rebuilt the wall we had destroyed, and also begun to man the fort properly. I myself stood in one of the overlooking watchtowers, and Baran was bound behind me, looking grim. His expression only grew grimmer when he saw his allies' forces beginning to approach at a good march, because even without being told, he knew the very same thing I knew: those men were returning because they were being chased by our main force. But they would not find a fortress to hide inside - rather, they would find their enemies had seized their fortress.
For the main force, that battle provided some great chances for heroism and loot, just as I had experienced in the taking of the camp. But for myself, it was dull, watching a greater force come upon a small one and crush it, hurling down some missiles at the poor fools who dared try to take some shelter against the camp's walls. It was a quick battle, and most of the force fled in a rout, a rout I could not help to chase down and had merely to watch as more and more of the men were killed, their bodies left upon the field, stripped bare of weapons and armor. Some fragments escaped - I even saw a few - but the bloody aftermath of the battle made clear that we now controlled the field, and the Sirex would take a great while to take it all back.
My thoughts drifted to my Elze, of course. She would gladly have helped and killed, and I would have found the whole battle far more entrancing, were the Fang of Asmodia to reap the men as if they were wheat. Alas, she was no doubt still with the Ibaali, perhaps in western Sirex, but surely not to come back any time soon. I merely steeled my heart again, and focused on the prosecution of the war, and on making a good impression on the Honored King going forward.
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