Crowned in Black: Chapter 16

It was customary in Vlachia to throw a big party and provide a lot of food whenever you were entertaining nobility, but I wasn't a clown and this wasn't a circus. All fourteen of us took seats around the table in the War Room with our choice of beverage, and that was it. The only testament to my authority over the council was my throne, which Istvan had ordered sent up to the head of the oval table. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as it sounded: just a somewhat larger wooden chair than the others, upholstered in sky-blue leather.

My guests didn’t have a lot of elbow room, but everyone fit. However, not everyone was happy with it. The Vlachian satraps, counts and countesses in their own right, sat across from the non-noble leaders of Myszno’s freeholds and common lands. The elegant Duchess Vargan, so tall and dark I wondered if she had Dakhari blood in her, glared derisively across the table at Sandor Olah, the newly minted leader of the Vyeshniki Freehold. Sandor glared right back. He was at least sixty years old, with a stern face, a long, straight beard, and the kind of iron-hard body that any guy in their twenties would kill for. Sandor was a lumberjack turned soldier turned commander, and didn’t look like the kind of person willing to take anyone’s shit.

Beside Countess Vargan sat Lorenzo Soma, richly dressed and laughing heartily over the table with the current inter-tribal chief of the Yanik: a ferocious looking, beetle-browed guy named Haamoye Hazoyan Ul' Tiranozavir. The Yanik tribes each had a single dinosaur as their totem, and so Haamoye had rocked up to the banquet in allosaurus leather armor, a bandolier of t-rex teeth, and the heavily carved and decorated skull of a young t-rex as a helmet. With the exception of Soma, the upper crust nobles had looked at him with a frozen-faced expression rich people might get when a homeless guy walks into their country club. I liked him immediately.

The other surviving nobles of the province were all seated along my right. Boris Turok looked like the stereotype of a Chicago dockmaster from the 1920s. He was pale, kind of stocky and flabby at the same time, with a thick neck and hard pale blue eyes. He ruled the wealthy industrial county of Eger, which contained Myszno's third largest city, Boros. Martin Horvat, Count of Galati, looked like the kind of guy Countess Vargan put under her stiletto heels in the evenings. He was smallish and weak-chinned, especially by comparison to the man on his right: Grima Havolna, dark and scowling, who dwarfed everyone in the room besides Soma and Haamoye. Beside him sat the confident, but diminutive Kitti Hussar, Countess of Bas: Grima’s ward, and soon-to-be Suri’s squire. She occasionally shot venom-filled looks down the table at Vargan. Apparently, there was some beef between the Hussar and Vargan families.

The other two new faces were from the far south, and represented the huge cultural gulf between the Vlachians who’d settled and conquered Myszno, and the people who’d originally lived here. The matriarch of the Tuun, Darte Mishto, was serene in her heavy woolen shepherd’s tunic. Her hair was simple by Tuun standards, an ankle-length fall of salt-and-pepper braids pulled back into a very, very long plait hung with large wooden beads. I knew from my Tuun racial lore that this was the hairstyle of a non-religious leader, and each bead represented one of the clans under her authority. She was flanked by the representative of the Churvi, the shaman Chaan Vatsal. Chaan was dressed head to toe in embroidered white doe-skin. A fringed headband covered the top half of her face, leaving only her black-painted lips visible. She was small, hardly taller than Kitti.

“I hadn’t intended to announce this at the start of the meeting - or at all - for security reasons. But in light of the Regent’s decision to try scapegoat me for HIS treason to the throne, I need to kick this meeting off with some pretty big news.” I never felt right addressing people from a chair, so I stood in front of my throne at the head of the table, with Karalti and Suri to my left and Istvan to my right. Vash hung back behind us, listening and observing from the wall. “We rescued His Majesty from Ilia yesterday, and managed to spirit him and the Princess Sohvi out of Lovi Palace. Queen Eevi was murdered before we could assist her.”

The news bought gasps from around the table. Countess Vargan’s big brown eyes widened. “The Volod is here? In Myszno?”

“In Kalla Sahasi,” I replied. “Currently being worked on in our hospital by the Masterhealer of Vlachia.”

“Masha Urrvik.” The shaman smiled from under her veil. “She does us proud.”

I nodded in acknowledgment, then looked over the assembled and made sure I met the gaze of everyone there. “Let me be blunt. The current regent on the throne is a fraud. Janos is working for the enemy, for Ilia, and he reached his position through deceit. He’s STILL deceiving the country, and I will bet my fortune that once he learns that Ignas Corvinus is here, he’s going to either send assassins to kill the Volod - and blame the death on us - or pull some other kind of shit as a pretext to removing me and everyone else here from their positions. When he’s done so, he’ll replace us all with men loyal to him and to Ilia.”

My speech was met with resounding silence. None of them had known exactly what they were being called in for, and had probably been expecting a post-war brief on the status of Myszno.

“The Kingdom Management System hasn’t declared it yet, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re already at war with the regent,” I continued. “Janos can say what he likes. My loyalty is to the Volod, Myszno, and Vlachia, in that order. To that end, I called you all here to take a vote on a fundamental change to the way this province is run."

I leaned forward, and fixed them all with what I hoped was a hard, but approachable glare. "I want to create a united, modernized standing army for Myszno. An army that serves the Volod, but stands for this province. An army that is capable of repelling any future invasions without waiting on crumbs to be sent here from the capitol. An army that will shortly be equipped with dragons."

The last sent a gasp rippling around the table. Even the shaman.

"Dragons? Then is your queen to lay her first clutch?" Haamoye asked bluntly. The Yanik chieftain was the only one who didn't look even slightly upset. In fact, he had the look of a kid who'd just spotted his presents under the family Christmas Tree.

Karalti bristled. “His Queen is right here. And no, I’m not laying eggs any time soon.”

All eyes in the room shot to Karalti.

“As she said, no. Not for a while, though eventually, we hope to establish a new, free Eyrie here in Myszno. My team and I are going to release the dragons currently bound into slavery to Ilia. Karalti is their rightful queen, and if they’re freed, they will obey her and join our cause."

“And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?” Count Turok scrutinized me, his pale eyes piercing in his doughy face.

“Ororgael and Lucien Hart are currently both in Revala,” I replied. “And Ororgael’s other lieutenant, Violetta, is in Dakhdir. If we move fast, we can infiltrate Ilia and disable the Diamond Pact, the geas that keeps the dragons and their knights enslaved. And when Karalti calls them, they WILL answer. And my bet is that both men and dragons will be thrilled to turn on Lucien and flame him into oblivion.”

“And that’s the extent of your plan? Fly your dragon into a hostile nation, swoop in on one of the most heavily fortified places on Archemi, and somehow steal away with two hundred dragons?” Countess Vargan flashed me a look of disbelief.

“No, but that’s all we need to tell anyone else,” Karalti replied hotly. “These are MY people, and the Solonkratsu are entitled to keep our own counsel should we wish.”

Vargan looked like she was about to snap back, but her Vlachian reverence for dragonkind won out. She closed her mouth and sat back in her seat.

“This plan is ambitious! Daring!” The Yanik chieftain slammed his fist on the table, rattling crockery and causing Count Horvat to jump. “I like it!”

“No one can doubt the courage of the Voivode.” Grisha spoke for only the second time since I’d met him, his voice slow and rough. “Thanks to him, Bas did not become the next orphaned county. Four others lost their lords, but he reclaimed Racsa and Bas both. I believe his mission will succeed.”

"It cannot be that easy," Lord Turok said.

"It won't be easy, but this is the kind of crazy shit that Starborn like me are incarnated on Archemi to do," I said, meeting his silver-blue eyes with my own. "But the most important part of that proposal I just offered isn't the dragons. It's the whole package. I want a unified, modern army, with an independent structure of command, officers who are selected and trained based on their talents instead of their birth, and an organized, scalable corps structure that allows us to deploy at any operational level. I want a separate Army and Air Force. In my life before Archemi, this is what I knew. And if we do this, there will never be another Demon. Myszno can become the model for a Vlachia that could crush a threat like the one posed by Ilia before they gain any traction at all."

My proclamation was met by a resounding silence.

"You might not understand all those concepts yet," I continued, "And that's fine, because it's teachable. You may be wondering how the hell we'd even pay for this. The answer, at least at first, is a mix of calling for volunteers and paid conscription. Yes, it's a huge proposition. Yes, it's going to suck at points. No, I am not becoming a uniformed dictator with a fancy salute. No, this is not a land grab, or any attempt to revoke anyone's titles. What it IS is a separate, efficient military that we manage via two decision making processes called the M.D.M.P, which is used in the planning phases to make decisions for a lot of soldiers, and the O.O.D.A Loop, which is used at the combat operations level."

"I... I confess I don't understand any of this." Lady Varyan looked to the other lords and ladies of the realm. "In fact, I'm extremely confused about everything you just said."

"I'm not." Kitti rose from her seat, back straight. "Because I saw His Grace train and lead Taethawn's men - and myself! - to tie cloth to our backs and jump from an airship into my family's castle to reclaim it. Thanks to him, Solonovka is back in Hussar hands. I don't understand everything he's saying now, either, but I know it works. Zoltan had three times the men, but no chance to win."

"We have ways to train you all in how this works." I nodded gratefully to her as she sat down. "It's a radically different system to anything used in Vlachia before."

"With one exception." Surprisingly, it was Lord Soma who spoke up this time. "The Knights of the Red Star are a corps. Vlachia's ONLY corps, not donated by the lords of the realm to form the fleets and armies during times of need. As I understand it, they are a model for this sort of army, correct?"

"I..." I was briefly taken aback by his insight: but then again, Soma had watched me straighten up and lead the Myszno Defense Force against the Demon. "Yeah, pretty much. So is Taethawn's Orphans Company. And like Countess Hussar just pointed out, they’re really damn good. So good, in fact, that I’ve invited them to become the first official corps of the Free Army of Myszno. And they’ve accepted, pending the vote taken here. Istvan, can you hand out the copies of the proposal?”

“Absolutely, Your Grace.” He bowed, and went to distribute the scrolls we’d prepared earlier in the day.

“Free Army of Myszno? As in, F.A.M?”Karalti giggled in private to me, as the room fell silent while everyone got to reading.

“Shhh.” I resisted the urge to wink.

“An army led by a commoner?” Countess Vargan blurted, after about ten minutes. “Are you out of your mind? For a man apparently opposed to Ilia, you’re setting up the same kind of bloodstained revolution that destroyed their nation!”

“An army led by a general, who is duty bound to report to and only execute commands with the authority of the council, by a strict code,” Suri retorted. “A code that, if broken, leads to court-martial. The general might be a commoner or a nobleman, human or Meewfolk or Mercurion, IF they’re the right person for the job based on their history of service, training and other merits.”

“Perhaps our Voivoide does not understand the concept of nobility, then,” the countess replied icily. “Nobles are a higher breed of person, born to rule. We have different standards of conduct, different blood-”

“All men have blood of the same color.” The leader of the Myzsnoan Tuun finally spoke up. “Are we not seated at this table as equals?”

“Aye. With all due respect for your lofty station, the Freehold has coped well without the delicate touch of any blue-blooded hand for some time,” Sandor of Vyeshniki drawled.

“No,” Vargan replied. “We are not seated at this table as equals. That we are seated at the same table at all is so that we might humor the Voivode.”

I was starting to see what Taethawn was talking about when it came to the Countess. “The army will be commanded by the Chief of the Armed Forces, a 4-Star General. Not me, not you, not anyone born to the position. ALL positions in a modern army, from infantry soldier to grand marshal, are based on merit. Every soldier is taught how to lead where required. And that’s why this is going to work.”

Grima grunted, and handed the paper to Kitti, who began to read avidly. “I am in support of this ‘Joint Armed Forces’ and the Free Army of Myszno. The Voivode has the vote of Bas County.

Ul’Tiranozavir threw his papers down. “This structure makes space for my people as one of these ‘specialist corps’?”

“Yes,” I said. “Developed in consultation with you and any warleaders you want to nominate. I also want the Yanik on board to help develop training. You’re some of the best guerilla tacticians in Artana.”

“Mmm. We Yanik do not serve Vlachian kings as cannon fodder," the chieftain stated. "Nor are we servants to be conscripted. Vlachia has always treated us as though we are second to them, and so I will consider this on one condition. When your queen lays her first eggs, I, Haamoye Hazoyan Ul'Tiranozavir, will be given the chance to make the dragonbond as my ancestors once did."

I was about to open my mouth to argue, but Karalti stepped forward, and her mental voice rang through the room like a bell. "Done."

"Karalti…" I thought back to her.

"No. Later." My dragon hissed softly under her breath.

The Yanik chieftain looked to me expectantly.

“Fine,” I said. “If it’s Karalti’s will, so be it.”

“Then the Yanik are yours to command.” He sat back, and crossed his arms. “I will gather my chiefs and we will marshal to this army, so that my clan shall become ul'Sulankratuu. It will bring all the tribes great honor.”

“You’re all mad.” Countess Vargan set her papers down after she finished reading, cutting off Darte as the Tuun made to speak. “This a threat to the sovereignty of the lords of Myszno, not to mention a ridiculous waste of resources. You expect me to tax my citizens for a rabble of commoners, flea-bitten cats, and savages?”

“Just because YOU don’t see a need for it.” Kitti rose, her face contorted into harsh lines that made her look far older than her fourteen years. “YOUR province wasn’t overrun by the walking dead!”

“The Demon is dead,” Vargan replied stiffly.

“The Demon is very not dead, and he’s in alliance with Ilia,” I snapped.

“So? Ilia is very far from Myszno, Your Grace,” the countess replied sardonically. “You wanted my vote, and I vote against this folly.”

“As do I,” Count Horvat said. “For the same reasons. This is a threat to our status as rightful rulers of this land. An elite force of Meewfolk? Arming peasants with rifles and armor and paying them to become trained killers? We’ll never sleep another peaceful night in our homes.”

I glared at him. “Then maybe you should treat your peasants better.”

“Ouch,” Karalti snickered.

“Vyeshniki owes the Orphans Company a great debt of gratitude,” Sandor broke in before Horvat could snap back. “I support the formation of this army. The Freehold is still recovering from the war and then the lawlessness of the surrounding lands that followed, but if we cannot provide much in the way of men, I’d like to offer our city as a place to train soldiers for the cold and the heights.”

“I’ll gladly accept.” I inclined my head to him. That was four yeses, two nos. I looked to Count Soma.

The big, brawny count of Vastil looked between the faces of his peers, then back to me. He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “I’ve seen the prowess of your command first-hand, like Bas and Vyeshniki over there. I support it conditionally, provided I am recognized as the chief of the Corps of Engineers.”

I resisted the urge to sigh and roll my eyes. “Count Soma, like the brief says, positions are based on merit. Not a birth basis.”

“And I’m one of the best engineers in Myszno! Nay, all of Vlachia.” He spread his arms, beaming toothily. “So that is my proposal. Make me a ranked Colonel in this ‘Free Army’, and I will oversee the engineers and sappers.”

I thought about it. “So you want to become a career officer?”

“For this? Certainly. Litvy is the flower of Vlachia’s intellect, the center of its military craftsmanship.”

I met his gaze. “Fine. But you have to give up your rulership of Vastil.”

Soma blinked his bright blue eyes a couple of times.

“If you’re a career officer, you can’t also effectively rule a county,” I said. “I’m not saying give up your title, but you’ll need to find someone else to rule. Not unofficially, officially. I need to name a new county lord if you decide to join the military in the role you just cited. And if you DO become an officer, you either work your way from corporal to colonel, just like everyone else, OR you submit a proposal laying out how you plan to run the corps, and we vote on it. Fair enough?”

Soma frowned, making a show of thinking about it. “That is a great sacrifice you ask of me. A great sacrifice indeed. I will need to consider the terms… and perhaps negotiate them in private. Vastil abstains.”

“As does Churviin,” the soft-spoken shaman added next. “Our people were one of the first here, but Vlachia has never recognized our sovereignty. I do not see the wisdom in committing to fight for them.”

“Then your vote matters not one way or the other,” Grima said roughly. “Vlachian blood was spilled to save you all from the Demon. That should be enough for you.”

“And Churvi blood was spilled by the Vlachii for generations,” Channa retorted calmly. “Only a fraction of that debt is paid.”

“What if Vlachia DID recognize your sovereignty?” I asked.

“Then I suspect the opinion of our elders will be different,” Channa said. “But only the Volod is capable of granting us the status of a Free Tribe.”

“I’ll speak to him when I can. But this is my province, and if I want to make a proclamation acknowledging your people, I don’t need to ask permission,” I replied.

The shaman bowed her head, her headband rustling. “Thank you. I still abstain until I have brought this news to our elders.”

Darte Mishto raised her hand, looking down at the table. “No. We Tuun are few in number, and we live on common lands. We have no need of the king’s taxes, or enmeshment with Vlachia.”

I frowned, and had the sudden urge to tell her that if she didn’t want the Myszno Tuun to contribute, then they wouldn’t have our protection, either. But it wasn’t likely to go down well. My best bet was to have Vash try and talk to her, but that left us with four yeses, two maybes, and three nos. I looked to Lord Turok.

“I wish to see detailed plans of this army’s structure, finances, and governance before I commit,” he replied gruffly. “If the formation of this army will benefit Boros and not drain my coffers, I provisionally support it, but my vote is abstained until such a time.”

“Then we have a count of five yes - including me - three maybes until they receive further information, and three nos,” I said, standing back from the table. “I’ll prepare detailed documents for you all tonight, but unless someone really changes their mind, the Free Army of Myszno is going ahead.”

“Turok!” Countess Vargan whirled on him.

Turok grimaced as he looked sidelong at her. “What?”

“You surely cannot be serious about supporting this madness?” She got to her feet as well. As she stood, Grima and Kitti both glowered, and got to their feet as well. “We are signing our own death warrants!”

“My lady, the Black Army has served the Crown faithfully and well for two generations,” Istvan pointed out. “This isn’t much different, and the elected General His Grace is offering as leader is-“

“If I need the counsel of a half-breed peasant, I’ll ask for it,” Vargan spat.

I sucked a deep breath through my nose, and pointed toward the door. “That’s it. Get out.”

“Excuse me?” The countess drew herself up like a snake about to strike. “I am your-“

“I don’t care if you have the pedigree of a cocker spaniel and shit solid gold nuggets from your pure-bred ass,” I said, voice low and hard. “No one stands in front of me and insults my men. Now get the fuck out of my War Room before I have you dragged out.”

Soma choked on his wine. Turok’s eyebrows arched. Everyone else froze with polite expressions, except Ul’Tiranozavir. He rocked back and roared with laughter. The sound caused Countess Vargan’s handsome face to contort with fury. Without another word, she turned and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“Get the guards to escort her to the outside of the castle,” I said to Istvan, who looked as shocked as everyone else. “And then we’ve got some proposals to write. As far as I’m concerned, the Free Army of Myszno is a go.”