“The woman with the red veil is our Liethe Judge of Judges.”
“Here in Soebo?”
“We are having our own private Gathering.”
“Why do we do this?”
“We are aligned with the priests. We rise or fall as they rise and fall. If they become corrupt, will we not be destroyed with them? The priests must have their checks.”
The arrogance of that statement triggered a fury in the young assassin. “And what if we become corrupt?” she erupted, raising a tidal wave in her tub.
“Have you not noticed that one in every three Liethe has been replaced in Soebo? I am new here and was not ready for the hasty journey from Hivehome, I assure you. Thank God for the strength of the Ivieth! You are among the newcomers. Why do you think Fosal trusts a Liethe to murder at his command? Are we not the slaves of the Mnankrei?”
Humility was horrified. “I cannot believe the Liethe have lost their center!”
“Love a thief too long and you become a thief, it is said.” She motioned to one of the girls to bring a large towel. “Here. Let me mop you. I have a daub of perfume and we shall do your hair. Tonight you sleep with High Wave tu’Ama.”
“He is Flesh’s man, not mine. I have my own business to attend to!” Standing in the wooden tub, she glistened by torchlight.
“The High Wave should be the ruler of Soebo. A weakness in the councils, in Ama himself, allowed control to pass to the Swift Wind. When Fosal dies, others of the Swift Wind will replace him but Ama will fight them and you must know him well so that your calculations are exact. You will meet him as Comfort and you will like him. He is a weak man; again he will lose his fight, but he is sensible and just. He has his following. It may be possible to pass command to him and in that case we can dispense with our Kaiel option.”
“I should be meeting Fosal, not Ama. He has requested it.”
“He will wait.”
“He will wait in hot wrath and beat me when I arrive.”
“My child,‘t’Fosal expects you to deliver his blue vial to the camp of the Gathering. He will be patient with you this once.”
Humility felt the gentle toweling of the old crone. She, too, was being patient this once. She, too, depends on me. The nakedness of her wet body chilled the Queen of Life-before-Death to the verge of shivers. They were all depending on her to save their skins from both the Mnankrei and the Kaiel. Clans! Did a clan never think beyond itself! The burden was like a padded overcoat of the north, but there was no warmth to it. Was life to be like this, so serious?
Ah, she sighed, while the two breastless Liethe slipped a fluffy cloak around her shoulders. Life had once been as warm as this bathrobe. Reverie recalled the simple pleasures of the pillow and the table and the wit of a flirtation and even the thrill of a cunning murder stripped of its overwhelming consequences. Youth was passing so quickly!
50
You ask why the kolgame allows the violation of its rules? But are not rules subservient to strategy? and plans subservient to rules? and contracts subservient to plans? The player who fixates upon the rules has replaced his strategy with a lower strategy. He may be defeated by creating a condition under which an application of his own rules will abort his basic goal. The player who fixates upon plans has replaced his strategy with motions. He will find himself walking at the bottom of a river because his plans called for a bridge that was not there. The player who fixates upon contracts has replaced his strategy by a faith in the omnipotence of someone else, and will fail whenever that other man fails. Once strategy is set, rules, plans, and contracts become variables to be optimized continuously. Such is the way of victory,
A MULTI-JAWED VISE was closing on Joesai. During his reluctant idleness, the Mnankrei had slowly been building trenches and check points in strategic places. The whole camp might find itself isolated any day now. He sat fuming in the farmhouse attic, confirming the rayvoice message from Bendaein hosa-Kaiel. There was to be a delay in the forward deployment of the main strength of the Gathering. Deliberately? Joesai strolled to the window, examining his self-made trap with an expert eye. A hill. Good stone fences. An excellent defensive position but little else. By the hairs of God’s Nose what was Bendaein doing?
Via rayvoice Teenae had given Joesai an analysis of Bendaein’s main kolgame strategy. He relied heavily on the sacrifice. I’ll kill him! And now Noe’s message that the Mnankrei were ready with a new biological terror to which he had to respond… except that he was under sacred contract to Hoemei to sit and do nothing. Just what I need. He clomped down the attic ladder so furiously that one boot shot through a rung, dropping him with a bone-shaking jolt.
The contract with Hoemei exasperated him and though he might honor it first with his wits and finally with his life he was also willing to break that contract — and allow negative assessments to enter Hoemei’s Archive files — if the success of the Gathering was at stake. His personal goal was to make his family transcendent above all others, but the clan goal was to take Soebo and place it under Kaiel rule, the means of victory to be governed only by the Over Strategy of Tae ran-Kaiel. To honor at the same time, Hoemei maran-Kaiel, his brother, and Tae ran-Kaiel, his father, and yet to face a situation which neither had predicted, that was Joesai’s dilemma.
His training taught him first to review his Over Strategy when confronted with the unpredictable lest he find himself detoured by an undergoal. All power to the Kaiel through bargaining! That was the Over Strategy. Bargain with whom?
Grumbling, he left the farmhouse to examine his trap on foot. While he paced impatiently in meditation along the ramparts his men had raised upon the farmer’s field, wisdom sang to him a thousand cautionary verses. A strong man must move lightly. Each verse he listened to — unconvinced. Another, sweeter, melody rose from his inner soul in counterpoint to the warning dirge. Throw everything into a devastating thrust straight at Soebo and damn the consequences!
Drums marched over the counterpoint. “Power is not safely abused,” boomed Tae in Joesai’s memory, his scarred face grinning at his young children, “any more than a sharp knife is safely abused, or fire abused, or a sailplane abused. Misapplied power turns on you and consumes you and leaves your ashes floating in the wind. Abuse it and it may kill you instantly or it may play with you first, torturing you slowly while it decides what death to inflict upon your children’s children.”
Returning, the melody of temptation sneaked through the feet of Tae’s mighty drumming. As a child listening to Tae he had wondered just how far you could push your power before it turned on you — how fast the knife? how big the fire? how steep the climb?
The Tae from Joesai’s memory had gifts for his children and he distributed them, still speaking resonantly. “You are Kaiel. Our job is power. Expect to be hurt. Power does not forgive those who are ignorant of its limits, yet who has kalothi enough to know well that maze of limits? But, as Kaiel, also expect to do great things with the sharp knife you have cared to learn to control.”
Each of Tae’s gifts had been a tool. Joesai was given an axe which his father whimsically named “Four Toes” as he put it into Joesai’s hands. In that one rare moment of contact, Joesai had asked him who set the limits. “The ones who die,” smiled Tae.
In another of Joesai’s ears, an ironic song replied to temptation, reciting vast French victories on the way to Moscow. The power wielded by Napoleon was absolute, so absolute that it forever deprived France of Glory. Until the very edge of the last impossible page of The Forge of War, Frenchmen were to be seen in hell pursuing a buxom Glory who flirted with taller lovers.