Kalvan stopped writing with his quill pen, set it aside and began to massage his temples. He stood up, stretched and walked over to a narrow castle slit, where he watched the First Royal Regiment of Foot practicing their musket drill in the outer courtyard. The musketeers formed ranks, assumed positions-with the first ranks dropping down to their knees-and 'fired.' Had they been really firing the noise would have been loud enough to wake baby Demia, but these dry runs were essential for teaching the musketeers shot discipline.
Kalvan's study was on the third and top floor of Tarr-Hostigos, along with the Royal bedchambers, the Royal nursery, the solar, and the upper chamber, which acted as the Royal Army's Chief-of-Staff operations room and meeting hall. The second floor contained the dining hall, Prince Ptosphes's quarters, the guardroom, the common hall, and the Great King's audience chamber. The first and largest floor held the Great Hall, the kitchen, the servants quarters, and the Royal Armory.
From the third story, Kalvan could see the First Regimental colors, a red flag with a blue square containing the royal double-headed gold ax in the upper left-hand corner. The officers and their guards were outfitted with red plumes, while the enlisted men wore red sashes over their breastplates or leather jacks. Kalvan had done away with the blue sashes they had worn last spring since they were too hard to see from a distance. Set off, against leather jacks and dark woolen shirts, the dark blue sashes and plumes had blended in too well with the uniforms, adding to the ever-present fog of war. These red sashes could be seen three fields away by a one-eyed bull.
A year ago Kalvan had seriously thought of using his own colors, maroon and green, for the Royal Army until Rylla had made a convincing case for sticking with the traditional Hostigi colors of red and blue. Now only his bodyguards, King Kalvan's Lifeguard and the First and Second Royal Horseguard, used his flag-a maroon keystone on a green field-and colors. He knew that these small details might appear trivial to the non-military mind, but to an army on the march, with dozens of distinct flags and banners, it might well mean the difference between fighting its own advance guard, and reconnoitering the enemy before they came within artillery range.
At this height the standard Royal Army battalion, consisting of two one hundred and ten men companies, and a small headquarters unit, appeared awfully small. These undersized battalions had also been difficult to maneuver enmasse. Now was probably the time to double the battalion strength, by adding two additional companies of shot. This would then make each 'New Model' battalion almost the same strength as last year's regiment and with twice the number of arquebusiers, since he planned to convert all the pikemen in the Royal Army to shot weapons. That should put a bee in Grand Master Soton's burgonet.
This would give the Royal Hostigi Army the advantage of concentrated firepower without depriving it of the flexibility of small unit movement, since each company would still have its own sergeant, or petty captain-he was still working on getting the new titles accepted-and chain of command. Note: Make a New Model' army more along the lines of Gustavus Adolphus than Maurice of Nassau. Then, if they were facing tercio-sized units, like the Hos-Ktemnos Sacred Squares, he could form up two or three of his New Model regiments into Gustavus's famous 'Swedish Brigades.'
The Royal Army of Hos-Hostigos was growing faster than Styphon's temple bureaucracy at the Holy City of Balph. Thousands of new recruits, many of them captured mercenaries from the spring campaigns, were swelling its ranks. Now as winter approached, thousands of free lances, from all over the Trygath and Northern Kingdoms were arriving daily, eager to sell their services to a Great King who paid them year around rather than only during the campaigning season. Another of Gustavus's innovations that Styphon's House was sure to pick up on once they realized the great mercenary leak into Hostigos had grown from a trickle to a stream.
The net result was that Kalvan needed a new source of income; by Dralm's Beard, make that several sources. The Royal Treasury was still making vast sums selling excess Hostigi fireseed, mostly to Hos-Agrysi Princes, but soon most of the Hostigi production would have to go into powder depots for next spring's invasion of Hos-Harphax. Kalvan had already spent over half the gold looted during last year's campaign from Styphon's temples in the Harphaxi princedoms' of Dazour, Balkron, Ark-los, and western Syriphlon-almost two hundred thousand ounces of gold and six times as much of silver!
At this rate, not even Prince Balthar's Great Hoard, taken after the Siege of Tarr-Beshta last year, would last more than another year or two. There were times when Kalvan wondered if he were the Great King or Great Robber Baron of Hos-Hostigos. They were definitely living on borrowed time, and borrowed income as well. Eventually, there would have to be an accounting. The cost of year-around mobilization was forcing him into war as much as Styphon's Holy Crusade; even if Styphon's House was to sue for peace, he would still have to go on the offensive or risk demobilization. He hoped no one in the Inner Circle was smart enough to come up with a here-and-now version of the Cold War!
When it came to cash reserves, Styphon's House held a full deck; they owned most of the great banking houses. This was why he had taken the here-and-now unprecedented move of attempting to corner the market on all the uncommitted mercenaries in the Six Kingdoms by promising the unprecedented offer of year-around wages. This had opened the floodgates; mercenaries of every stripe had poured into Hos-Hostigos from every part of the Six Kingdoms, and the Middle Kingdoms as well.
In order to understand the here-and-now history of mercenary troops, Kalvan had spent the last year, going over old records and histories. The original Zarthani settlers had moved by boat down the Great Lakes, or Saltless Seas as they were called here-and-now, to the Niagara River, where they were halted by Niagara Falls. Here, the migratory wave split up into three different rivers, one landing at the natural harbor at Ulthor (Erie, Pennsylvania); the second going ashore in upstate New York, moving down the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers to New York Harbor where they founded Agrys City; the third portaged Niagara Falls and moved down the Saint Lawrence, founding Zygros City at the site of Quebec.
The Ulthori branch portaged to the Allegheny River, went down the Allegheny, using one of the short portages to the tributaries of the Harph (the west branch of the Susquehanna River). Since the Zarthani had metal tools, they could build bigger and better boats than the Ruthani, or Native American Indians, could even though they had little or no natural advantage over the Ruthani in woodcraft. Therefore, the early Zarthani settlers kept to the river valleys as much as possible until they reached salt water at the mouth of the Harph where they founded HarphaxTown, which later became Harphax City.
Harphax Town may have originated as a fishing village, but it quickly became a naval base, since a fleet of Great Lake galleys based there could drive the Ruthani canoes off Chesapeake Bay and dominate all of Tidewater Virginia. Isolated from the rest of the major landmass by Zarthani boats and a line of fortifications roughly along otherwhen Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, the Ruthani in the Delmarva Peninsula were soon exterminated.
The Ulthori Zarthani left the western shore of the Chesapeake alone, since the Ruthani there could retreat into the Piedmont, safe from Zarthani naval vessels, and make raids into the Tidewater. So the Zarthani proceeded to colonize the flat land of the Delmarva Peninsula. Within a few years they began producing a surplus of corn, which meant for the first time the settlers in the Harph Valley were something more than subsistence farmers in a perpetual combat zone. Later a second wave of Zarthani migrants moved down the Harph to Delmarva, this population increase meant more farming, hence more food in storage, more ship and wagon building, and more young men to be soldiers. The result was that sizeable Zarthani armies, with the infrastructure to support them, were now available to carry the war to the Iroquois.
Erasthames the Great was not so much a Napoleon as a Carnot who could organize the Chesapeake watershed into a war machine that could grind down the Ruthani by sheer staying power when it couldn't beat them in battle. Erasthames did not resort to conscription. Instead he levied heavy taxes on farms and boat and wagon operators, using the proceeds to pay soldiers. Eventually, he had a large supply of mercenary soldiers, which meant that the profession of mercenary, at least in the Northern Kingdoms, became an honorable profession, if only because so many sons spent a year or so at it. Undoubtedly, Erasthames the Great had lavishly subsidized the priests of Galzar. By the end of the Ruthani wars the profession of mercenary was not just honorable-it was traditional.
The shipyards of Harphax City had a boom time from the beginning, producing first war galleys, then small merchant vessels to carry settlers into the Chesapeake and north, then coastal vessels to trade with the Carolinas. Harphax City turned into a prosperous seaport. In a few generations the ship builders and ship owners and ship captains turned into shipping magnates and became considerably wealthier than the upstream boat and wagon train operators. This meant that Harphax City, and likewise Agrys and Zygros Cities, developed the economic muscle to dominate their upstream relatives and before long the oligarchies/monarchs of the seaports began to throw their weight around upstream, if for nothing else, to protect and encourage their trade routes back to Lake Erie and Grefftscharr.
So it was the seaport city eventually became the capital of a Great Kingdom, whose unity was more economic than political. As long as an upstream Prince behaved himself and paid appropriate tribute-while above all keeping the trade route running smoothly-the seaport kings had no problem with letting him do as he pleased. Styphon's House didn't invent this local autonomy; it merely encouraged it to keep the political power of the Great King low and the fireseed burning.
Kalvan's discussion with Skranga and Harmakros about conquering Hos-Harphax and placing Phrames in the throne was more than just talk. If the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos were to have good trade relations with the rest of the Five Kingdoms, it was imperative they either made friends with Hos-Harphax or beat-her-up militarily and install a friendly King-the latter being the easier of the two possibilities if Lysandros were crowned Great King. The merchants of Hostigos hadn't yet begun to riot in the streets; they were too busy dealing with the smugglers who were anxious to share some of the Hos-Hostigi Styphon's House temple loot. When that treasure ran out, Hos-Hostigos would begin to look like Spain in the Eighteenth Century, when the South American and Mexican gold and silver mines began to peter out. Already inflation had halved the value of the Royal Hostigos Crown in one year.
There was much more to being a Great King than winning battles and robbing temples-the latter, thankfully profitable work!
Kalvan heard the door open and turned to see Rylla, dressed in a gorgeous blue gown, walk inside. For a moment, he sat transfixed-Rylla looked every inch a queen, in fact, in that outfit she reminded him of Princess Grace of Monaco, with a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and a well-turned nose. Being married to Rylla was the best part of being Great King of Hos-Hostigos. If Styphon's House would only leave them alone, he'd be content to play consort for the rest of his days.
"Did I disturb you, darling?" Rylla asked, coming into the study.
"No, my love. I'm just going over the muster roles of this year's recruits for the Royal Army." Kalvan gently laid the piece of tan, crumbling-at-the-edges paper on the silver tray and pushed the tray across the table toward Rylla. "Try picking it up and reading it. If it starts to fall apart, leave it on the tray and read it there."
"After all this time, I'd almost stopped believing… And if I can't read it?"
"Then we don't charter the Royal Hostigos Guild of Paper-makers this moon."
Rylla nodded and reached for the paper as cautiously as if it had been a newborn kitten with the mother cat watching. As she lifted it up, the edges where she held it started flaking like a too-thin slice of army ration bread. She hastily put it down and started reading: