Chapter 12
The bakali were across the Dalti.
The news flashed through the streets and squares of Daltigoth. No one knew who first delivered the awful tidings, but within a day, everyone in the capital had heard them. Prices of food, wine, cloth, leather, and other commodities tripled in a single day. A family’s carefully horded savings evaporated before their eyes. For the common folk of Daltigoth, there was only one recourse: they rioted.
Hundreds of people spilled out into the streets and market squares, smashing sellers’ stands and assaulting merchants. The city guards were quickly overwhelmed. In the Canal District, warehouses were broken open and looted. This encouraged hundreds more to take to the streets and make their way to the waterfront to join the plundering.
Ackal V, wrapped in furs despite the summer heat, listened stone-faced as anxious representatives of the merchants’ guilds recited the growing chronicle of lawlessness. When they finished, silence descended on the audience hall. The interval lengthened, grew awkward, and the guildmasters and merchants nervously shuffled their feet.
“Summon the city garrison, Your Majesty!” urged the chief of the goldsmiths. “Give the rioters a taste of imperial iron!”
Still, Ackal V said nothing. He seemed lost in a dream, eyes staring into the distance. Valaran, seated at his side, prompted him almost inaudibly. Her veil, white this time, allowed her to do this without attracting the notice of the assembled commoners. Ackal V glanced at her and smiled. The empress drew in a breath. The closest ranks of petitioners recoiled from the deceptively benign expression on Ackal V’s face. They knew only too well that when the emperor smiled, blood would flow.
“The garrison is arrayed to protect the Inner City,” he said. “There it will remain.”
The merchants and guildmasters dared not protest. Valaran did so on their behalf, albeit most tactfully, her voice low.
“Sire, please reconsider. The safety of the city depends on order being kept.”
“Oh, I shall put Daltigoth in order.” He raised his voice. “Tathman! Captain Tathman, where are you?”
The Wolf stepped forward and bowed stiffly.
“Captain, you and the Wolves will stop the rioting,” Ackal V said simply.
Equally simple was the reply: “As you wish, Majesty.”
Tathman’s sepulchral voice always made the hair on Valaran’s neck rise. The assembled guildmasters were stricken. The thought of the Emperor’s Wolves set loose on the city stunned and terrified all.
The emperor said, “You want order, don’t you? You want an end to the looting, don’t you? My Wolves will pacify the city in one day-maybe less.”
They had come to beg for protection, so the merchants and tradesmen could hardly protest, yet all knew the Wolves were capable of any atrocity. Recruited from the poorest, most distant provinces of the empire, they owed nothing to Daltigoth and everything to their patron.
Ackal V stood abruptly. In a body the guildmasters shrank back from him.
“You see? You have only to ask, and your emperor responds!” He folded his arms and glowered down at the cowering men. His words laced with irony, he added, “I know you’re anxious to return to your shops. Go, and spread the word that peace will soon return to the city-peace guaranteed by the Emperor’s Wolves.”
They managed to depart without actually trampling each other, but no one could mistake their desire to be elsewhere.
Ackal nodded to Tathman. The captain and the other Wolves followed the guildmasters and merchants out.
The next order of business was the emperor’s council with his warlords. Lackeys struggled forward with a carpet-sized map of the land east of Eagle’s Ford. They unrolled it at the emperor’s feet, and the leaders of the Great Horde lined up along the map’s edges. The warlords saluted Ackal V, but there was a notable lack of fervor in their greeting.
Consternation gripped Valaran as she realized she didn’t recognize a single face among them. The warlords from her first husband’s reign were gone-slain by bakali or nomads, or executed by their own emperor for failing to win victories. Only two commanders of experience remained, Lord Tremond and Lord Regobart. Tremond governed the city of Thorngoth, on the south coast. He and his hordes guarded the mouth of the Thorn River, doorway to the heartland of the empire. Regobart commanded the garrison at Six Dunes, the imperial fortress near Tarsis. The empire’s longtime enemy had been quiet so far, but Ackal V did not dare withdraw Regobart’s hordes, for fear the Tarsans would join against the empire.
Most of the new warlords were quite young. There were a few graybeards, men loyal to the Ackal line who’d been recalled from home and hearth to serve in this time of crisis. But not one of them had ever commanded more than a handful of hordes, much less an army.
“The enemy is across the Dalti,” Ackal V said, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with the frightening news. “Their strength and purpose are unknown. Where and how do we destroy them, my lords?”
One of the graybeards, Andruth by name, stepped forward. “Your Majesty, we have twenty hordes concentrated at Verdant Isle.” He bent stiffly and placed a fist-sized onyx token on the map at a spot some five leagues from the capital. “Twelve more are coming down from the Northern Hundred under Lord Ducarrel, and eight are mustered at Bengoth. Lord Crumont’s army has fallen back to the Ackal Path to defend the capital.” Andruth set more tokens down at those spots.
“A line two hundred leagues long and only ninety-eight hordes to defend it?”
Andruth scrubbed his iron-colored beard and exchanged a look with several of his older comrades.
The emperor knew the meaning of that look. “I will not call up the landed hordes! Fat landowners and their sheep-herder minions! I might as well cast the crown of my ancestors into the gutter and be done with it!”
“Majesty, the landed hordes are loyal to the empire.”
Valaran admired the old general’s nerve. His well-chosen words were a veiled reproofs-loyal to Ergoth did not necessarily mean loyal to Ackal V.
“In the reigns of my uncle and father, of unfortunate name”-the emperor meant Pakin II and III-“landed hordes fought against the dynasty and for the line of the usurpers.”
Many provincial hordes had indeed aligned themselves with the Pakin Pretender. That was ancient history to everyone but Ackal V.
Andruth nodded, “Few warriors from those days remain, Majesty. There are over one hundred and fifty landed hordes available. They need only be summoned to service.”
Ackal kicked over the onyx marker signifying the troops at Verdant Isle. “Mention those traitors again and I’ll have your tongue out!” he snarled. Andruth firmed his lips and said no more.
“Send couriers to the Seascapes and the Southwest Hundred,” Ackal V said, resuming his seat. “Muster every imperial horde in both provinces and march them”-he looked at the map-“to Gaer.”
This was a small town in the fertile, forested triangle between the Thorn and Dalti rivers, southwest of the city. Scribes took down the emperor’s order, and couriers were dispatched immediately.
The warlords took turns describing the progress of the bakali through the open country northeast of the capital. Following their usual pattern, the lizard-men moved in a tight column, driving out every human they encountered.
Thousands of refugees were streaming south, to Daltigoth, seeking protection. So far the enemy was moving more west than south, toward the hill country between the capital and Ropunt Forest. There would seem to be nothing there to entice them-no cities, not even many farms. The council listened to learned sages from the College of Wizards speculate on the bakali’s goals, but in the end, no one could say with confidence what the lizard-men would do.