Nua found the Prince where she expected him to be, ruling his city. His eyes had dark circles under them and the whites were cracked with red lines as if he'd perhaps had little sleep. 'Drinking.' Nua guessed, 'Not that I blame him. After Sobella, and Leaman, and Ulmin, and Tir… who wouldn't have a few too many?'
Weary as he looked, he was clearly focused on the petitioner in front of him, an orc dressed more for the outdoors and travel than for city life. He wore simple leather armor, had no evident enchanted equipment, even his helmet was simple leather. 'Not terrible, it's nice and mobile, good for a light infantryman but… orcs are not known for that. No weapon? Confiscated, has to be, and if he 'let' it be confiscated, he is desperate.' Nua concluded before she was five steps into the room, a moment later, Rasgen noticed her entry and perked up.
Nua listened to the orc while she came closer, in the rough voice they usually had, he said, "...then the centaur tribal confederation pushed us off our land in the southeastern steppe, we made our escape and traveled west. My tribe has survived everything so far, but we weaken. There is no point to haggling. I offer my neck to your yoke if you will only let those who live, settle on some patch of land."
He seemed to take Rasgen's posture change for interest, and he tried to sweeten the deal, "Offer us food to survive until harvest, and we will be loyal citizens, I swear it…"
When Rasgen didn't answer immediately, Nua could practically feel the heartbreak in what she concluded was a defeated chieftain. "Or… we will offer ourselves as slaves… just feed us… the other cities have refused our plea unless we, as they put it, reduce our numbers."
"Well, that's a vicious demand even by my standards." Nua said as she silently glided past him and went up to the throne.
"Rasgen." Nua said with a sweet smile on her face, she felt the sudden stare of the orc who remained kneeling before the throne and his sense of doubt and alarm.
"Dear… please… s-sit." He hesitated only for a moment, and put a hand on the armrest of the empty seat beside him, which Sobella once called her own.
"I shouldn't, not before the wedding, and I don't intend to stay long, I need your time… but he was here first." Nua swept her hand out to gesture to the kneeling orc, while Kaiji set herself on her knees beside the seat of the consort.
"Alright, then this will be settled quickly, and unfortunately." Rasgen slowly shook his head, while Nua stepped to one side to watch. "I am sorry, but your numbers are nearly five thousand. The harvest hasn't even come in yet, that is a great deal to allow to simply 'settle' anywhere around Pas'en. I have no doubt of your intentions, but your people are not farmers, are they, Chief Tharang?"
"No… hunters." He admitted begrudgingly.
"And raiders." Rasgen said pointedly.
Chief Tharang did not deny it.
"I believe your intentions are not hostile… but farming is not as easy as simply picking up a mattock and attacking the ground. It takes some time to master, and the cost of feeding your people is great. Besides that, your past as raiders will make farming difficult to accept, if you're allowed to remain, some would no doubt take up old habits. I can't risk that. We can sell you food but…"
"We have nothing to buy with… nothing but our freedom… we have our weapons, let us serve in your armies…" Chief Tharang pressed, shifting in the unfamiliar posture, he was tense, on edge.
"I can allow you to move through our lands under a specific route and try the north or south…" Rasgen suggested, and the Chief hung his head.
"We haven't enough food left to feed everyone even on quarter rations…" The chief admitted and squeezed his eyes tight.
"You lost to the tribal confederation?" Nua asked rhetorically.
"Yes… why… my lady?" The chieftain opened his large yellow eyes to appraise her more closely.
"I sent one of my men to go deal with them." Nua stated, "They won't be a problem for much more than a season or two. But by then, getting back is probably not feasible."
"I'm sorry, forgive me… I know not the ways of cities, when you say a man, do you mean an army?" Chief Tharang asked, his green brow furrowing low over his deep set eyes.
"No. Just one man. One specialist is worth ten thousand of the ignorant, especially when that specialist has something to prove. In the meantime…" Nua said and put a hand on Rasgen's shoulder, "how about I propose a solution."
Rasgen lifted a hand and turned it palm up, waving it to Nua to give her the floor. "Please." He answered.
"I have a mercenary company I've been thinking of expanding, and plenty of open land. Your people submit themselves to my will as Prince of Komestra, and I will let you fight for me. You can settle those who need a place to live, while the rest serve in my forces. I will give you proper equipment, the training you'll need to fight in the way of the Breakers, and even though you will belong to me, I will reward your service. How does that sound?" Nua asked, knowing just how it sounded to the desperate.
"That sounds too good to be true." Chief Tharang answered, "It sounds like… deliverance." His stomach growled in agreement, making its own case to him for accepting her request.
"In just a few days I will be leaving this city for Komestra. Encamp your survivors outside the walls, I will have Kaiji buy enough food for that time, and then you will follow us to your new homes. You will belong to me… fight for me, obey me even beyond death. But you will eat. Your children will eat, and I will keep your families together. You have the word of House Aiwenor on that…"
She watched the large squarish face of the orc chieftain trying to find something wrong with the offer. His stomach growled again. "My husband to be has already turned you down, and with good reason. He has neither a need nor a use for you as his city is famed for its cavalry. If you refuse the offer in front of you now… I will propose that you be exterminated as a potential problem before you start raiding villages for food or to take people to trade with smugglers to save yourselves."
Nua approached him, her rolling hips held Rasgen's eyes, and her left and right hands were presented to the starving chieftain. She clenched her left hand into a fist, "Submission." Then opened it, and clenched her right hand into another fist, "Or extinction and the survivors will belong to me anyway." She opened it again.
"This isn't a trick?" He looked up at her from his kneeling position, compared to orcish women, she was practically a waif, yet when her left hand clenched, he felt an inch away from the abyss. Her breath had an almost sweet scent characteristic of most elves, but the coolness of it made his skin tingle.
Nua's eyes were hard and without mercy as she held his desperate searching face imprisoned between two open hands that awaited his choice. "Chieftain, tricks are needed when someone is in an equal or superior position. You are not. You can be starved, killed, enslaved, or exterminated. Or I could simply ask my companion to let me borrow his cavalry, or use my own, and harass you as you flee, picking off or picking up the survivors, and then put you into the rest of my stock. I don't have to trick you. It's just that much easier if you make a choice of your own volition than it is if I have to put the work in."
He grunted, and fairly slumped in defeat. "There are five hundred young children, five hundred elders, five hundred juveniles, fifteen hundred child bearing age women, and the rest are our warriors. You can really provide for them all?"
"Not comfortably." Nua acknowledged, "But better than quarter rations at least, and I'll let you supplement supplies with hunting in a few days. Then eventually, yes, full stomachs will be the rule, not the dream."
Without further hesitation, he grasped at her right hand, brought it up, and pressed it to his cracked, broken lips. "You have bought our lives." His stomach growled a third time, "Please…" He released her hand and went prostrate on the stone, "don't waste them."
"That much, I can promise for nothing… slave." Nua said with icy confidence.
"Kaiji, take my new soldier, have him show you to the rest of my new possessions, then see them encamped over near the construction Priceless is doing. Then inform Priceless that she needs to have enough collars acquired for all of them. Iron ones. Then have our cooks prepare a meal for them and acquire enough food for their ranks for a few days. We'll cut rations for the trip to make sure everyone eats. Oh, and…" She gave a vicious smile over her shoulder, "Ensure they all understand what they're faced with. It will be time consuming if I need to have Sado beat it into them for me, and he has better things to do."
"Mistress…" Kaiji acknowledged, rose, and went over to the half starved orcish chief to lay a hand affectionately on his shoulder. As she slowly helped him to his feet, his stomach growled again, and Nua put them at her back to return to the Prince.
"That was unusually kind of you." Rasgen said when she approached and held her hand out to him to take him from the throne.
"Was it?" Nua asked when he stood and then hooked his arm around her own. She didn't bother to keep the knowing smile off her face.
When they passed by a pair of guards and the door shut behind them that would take them to a small meeting room, Rasgen answered her decisively. "Yes. You knew I was going to wipe them out and sell off the survivors, didn't you?"
Nua put her free hand up to her mouth and pretended to be scandalized. "A prince who lies to potential enemies, whoever heard of such a thing?"
"Come now, Nua, you know better." Rasgen said with an even voice that only barely held back his amusement at her teasing gesture.
"Yes, you couldn't let five thousand orcs, even if it wasn't an all warrior band, just wander along, especially desperate and starved. I figured you would offer them the chance to pass through a designated route, then ambush and exterminate them. I wasn't very kind, they're now going to lose their lives in my service instead, but it is a chance. Besides, you're a good man, I don't want you to have to do bad things if you don't have to. Leave that to your wife." Nua patted his hand affectionately.
"At least this time, Prince of Komestra." He said with a warm smile before a more serious look drove it away. "It will be good to have an ally in you, the centaur confederation is a potentially unpleasant neighbor if they grow. They're not good for sieges, but we can't wall in every village or build big walls for every town, if they swept west with enough numbers, it would be problematic to deal with."
"So… I'm your meat shield? Hardly the most romantic thing to say only days before we marry. And here I thought husbands thought they should act as shields for their loved ones." Nua raised a golden eyebrow at him, and he flushed with embarrassment.
"That isn't what I meant, if they do go west, the city states will need to respond together." Rasgen said, reaching for the iron handle on the oaken door to admit them into a private space.
"They won't." Nua declared with resolve in her voice. "Vargas will stop them. Trust me, the place he comes from made nightmares like him routinely, he'll know what to do."
"I'd still rather be prepared." Rasgen said, pulling back a heavy wooden chair for Nua, then sliding it under the table while she sat.
"I can't argue that, we'll send out a joint statement to the other city states then, proposing a common union and a universal truce in the event of a centaur invasion. With anyone who refuses to sign becoming a target for all the other city states in the coming campaigns." Nua proposed the idea off the cuff and Rasgen froze for a moment before he took a seat for himself.
"That was quick." He replied and narrowed his eyes. "What are you not telling me, Nua?"
'Shit.' Nua cursed in her mind as she showed her hand. She clenched her jaw, "Do you trust me?" She finally asked.
"You've done everything you said you would do. So yes." Rasgen answered and set his hands together on the table, interlocking his fingers and steadily gazing at his wife to be.
"Do you believe me, when I tell you that the Triumvirate is doomed?" She asked him more tentatively.
"No, absolutely not." Rasgen shook his head with a sad smirk, "I want it to be true, I do. But there is no force in this world that has been both able and willing to bring them down."
"There's me." Nua snapped. "They can die Rasgen. They're not gods or even demons, they are born, they live, they die. You can choke or stab them and they suffocate or bleed. We can win. Backed by the weapons and equipment of my homeland, and their own invasion… it will all end, I swear it on my life."
Rasgen fairly deflated in front of her, "So that's your aim. Just like Sado."
"Rasgen, no… not just like Sado. He believed the city-states alone were enough as they were. I know differently. But with the trade ties to the west to arm and equip us all, supported by a hundred thousand or more? We can win." Nua said and slammed her right hand on the table hard enough to shatter through the space where she sat, sending heavy wood clattering to the stone beneath her feet. "Sorry." She said in an unapologetic voice.
"Nua, if you do this, we're going to be enemies, not allies." Rasgen said it bluntly and did not flinch from her stare.
"Rasgen… don't… don't do this." Nua almost begged, leaning forward where she sat, "I promised Sobella I'd look after you… that I would protect you, but I can't stop this…"
"Then make me believe it." Rasgen replied without a hint of emotion.
"How about this… let me do as I am doing. If the Tlalmok God-Emperor does not die and his land does not devolve into civil war, I will put all my plans on hold. And… promise me you won't speak of what I tell you next." Nua leaned in as far as she could, and waited until he nodded with quiet intrigue.
"I am a sacrifice. Just like Sobella, that was the bargain struck before the throne of the Ax'Ayact. That I return in eight years as a given sacrifice to the power of his empire, and suffer just what I watched Sobella endure." Nua's eyes grew wet with tears of rage. "They made her suffer worse than I'd ever seen… they tore off her horns from her skull while she screamed, Ax'Ayact ripped open her belly, his sons dragged their claws around the base of her breasts to tear them away from her… she lived through all of it… she survived to see her heart torn out, still beating from her body. Rasgen… that is going to be my fate. I made that bargain knowing that when the time comes, my god's bowl of wrath will pour itself over them. The children of terror are going to destroy them all. If I am wrong… I will fulfill that bargain. I will ride alone into their lands as a royal tribute."
Rasgen's lips grew tight and his breathing became harder, faster as he learned the truth of Nua's journey, "I am telling you… I am betting my life on all that I've told you. If I'm wrong about the coming of my god, and the city-states unite, then keep them submissive, use the unity of the states to better allocate tributes to the weakened Tlalmok. You will be the emperor after me, and you'll be a good one. All I ask is that you stand by me… trust me… you lose nothing if I'm wrong, and gain everything if I'm right. Join me… husband. And we will see a new dawn rise on the world you know."
She held out her right hand to him, it shook anxiously while she wondered if she was extending it to an ally or an enemy, he stared at her extended hand.
He stared at her.
He stared at her hand.
"Please…" Nua whispered hoarsely. "Join me… or she died for nothing but more of the same. With you at my side, she died to buy us time for something to change everything."
"Damnitalltohell!" Rasgen shouted, pounded his fist on the table, cracking the wood in a sudden fit of outrage and he thrust his hand out and grasped the forearm of his mate to be. They rose from their seats. "Fine! You're laying your life down on this, I can't just do nothing… but please be right… I don't want to lose you, and I'd rather we not try to kill each other over the same thing… keeping our people safe."
Nua sighed with deep relief, 'God's bones… I thought I'd have to kill him, this is fortunate.' She thought, while aloud she said, "Good, but this isn't why I've come. It's about your father's death."