"Are they too stupid to learn!?" Emeric snapped angrily. "Instead of taking a valuable lesson from Vajdahunyad, I have reports here of towns and villages daring to refuse my men entry. Turning billeted troops out in the dead of winter. And not paying their taxes!"
Elizabeth looked bored. "They can always be brought to heel, Emeric. Do not concern yourself with small people. The boyars have been loyal."
"Most of them, yes," said Emeric sourly. "But the Szekelers are going to be landless peasants by summer. They're really going to understand the meaning of losing their so-called 'privileges'."
"Without Vlad they will fall apart. They'll be glad enough to come cowed and licking your boots then."
"With or without Vlad they will fall apart. Or I will rend them in pieces, come spring. I have ordered a mobilization. I'll have forty thousand men here, before the spring."
"He will be gone before spring and you can just send them all home again."
"Not before I've taught those towns a very painful and direct lesson for daring to oppose me. I'll have more men on pikes than Vlad's Grandfather did. Every village, every hamlet will get a very pointed reminder. At the moment we can't do too much because of the snow. Anyway, we have the devil finding even the male peasantry now. They're deserting their boyars in droves."
Elizabeth shrugged. "A few women and children should do it. They seem to get that message."
Jagiellon looked at the sweating Nogay.
It was, in magical terms, a great effort to achieve such a materialization.
Normally it could only be done if both the participants were magically skilled. But this Golden Horde general was totally unskilled. Jagiellon had yet to decide whether it was going to be worth sending him back. Of course, Nogay's body was actually still in a ger in the territory of the Golden Horde. But what the spirit does not know, it can do little about. Nogay thought that he was here. Whether the Black Brain let him return would depend on what the man had to offer.
"Gatu Orkhan prepares to raid north. It is late in the season for a major campaign. They will not expect him."
"And this benefits me how, Nogay? I have provided you with much gold for an army and a complaisant khan, who would turn them loose as I wished on the Bulgars and Constantinople."
The Horde had enjoyed several years of relative peace, and abundance, after a long period of civil wars during which Lithuania had devoured much of the northern territories of the Horde. Once their lands had stretched as far east as the Kirgiz Steppe and south to the Caucasus on the other side of the Black Sea. Capture and subversion had brought Lithuania lands and vassal states right down to Odessa. Some of the old parts of the Golden Horde lands had been cut off, and reverted to small khanates. That suited Jagiellon, since those could be devoured at will.
In part, Jagiellon had intervened in the politics of Golden Horde simply because that would stop them raiding his shipyards and pressing north. The murder of Gatu's rival for the khanship had failed. But even the failed assassination of the more obvious heir apparent Kildai had given the grand duke of Lithuania months of peace to continue building. The fleet was nearing readiness.
If a civil war was the best that Jagiellon could hope for, instead of another army of horsemen to turn on his foes, it was still better than the alternatives.
"Khan, we will win. We outnumber them and they have nowhere to run. They are trapped between us and Hungary."
"I will allow you some time to try this. Finally, the matter of the tarkhan Borshar."
"Yes, Khan?"
"He is skilled at killing. Use him, but circumspectly. Remember, as I have told you, he believes my sending come from his god. His mind is less than clear, much of the time. But I have gifted him with certain magics. I believe that may impress the primitives. Now go."
The demon now turned its attention to other matters. There were strange stirrings in a far-distant spirit realm. Those seemed to have ties to the northern regions from whence he once drew the shamans to service in the court of Jagiellon.
It had attempted to investigate. But so far there were just currents, and dark mist.