Chapter 7

One week and three days later the entire squad, Chungi, and I slipped into Katahalana through the escape tunnel at three AM. We were equipped for silent killing and we did a damned good job of it, if I do say so myself. It was made a little easier because the new officers hadn't had time to send for their families, or at least the families hadn't arrived, thank God.

With the headquarters building secured, I sent Chungi down to open the small military entrance on the back wall. We had just enough time to get three thousand armed men inside the walls before the sun started peeking out.

There was no need to lock the defenders into their barracks this time since they were more than cooperative once they saw they were outnumbered by fifteen or so to one. In fact, when Jorgenson explained where they needed to line up to see about joining us, a stampede broke out. We had the whole place organized and settled down within two weeks.

Things didn't suit me exactly though. I had two strong forces now, but they were divided. It wouldn't have been so bad, since they were only about twelve miles apart, but with typical ancient times efficiency the twelve miles between my two walled cities was expanded to nearly twenty miles of winding path of least resistance road.

Quasterson was the closest thing I had to a combat engineer. He hadn't lasted long in the construction trades because he liked to be where small arms were being fired. Still, he had some training, so he was nominated. With a little legwork out of Chungi, we found six locals who knew something about building bridges, although the whole bunch together couldn't be called brilliant by any stretch.

There was no sense pissing and moaning about what we didn't have though, it was time to use what we did have. I made it simple for Quasterson.

"Take the six guys Chungi found, along with about fifty soldiers, and mark off a road from here to Quancho, a straight road. If it takes six months or six years, you're going to build it," I said, giving him his marching orders.

He showed he was a lot smarter than I'd thought right away. He sent Chungi's volunteers into the city to hire fifty men to help - fifty men who didn't think picks, shovels, or axes were beneath their dignity. At least I knew he could use the battalion surveying equipment which had made the trip with us.

I'd expected them to have a route picked out in a day or two, but they didn't. It took them a week and a half of walking back and forth from Katahalana to Quancho, clearing brush here and felling trees there, and all of it was done before he even broke out the surveyor's tools. They made good progress afterward though, and a week later he had a new road staked out. He did admit he was going to need a little help designing the bridge though.

Quasterson had made a small deviation from my initial instructions. The road wasn't a straight line between the two points. It was two straight lines though. He'd picked a narrow portion of the river to bridge, but it was half a mile south of the straight line I'd called for. It had the attraction of needing a bridge which was less than one third the length of what we'd have to have in the straight line. It also dodged several larger hills that were in the way too.

Hell, it was fine with me, so I told him to get started.

"How many men do you want me to use?" he asked.

"How many can you use? I don't mind hiring plenty of men, as long as you keep them all working. I don't want a shitload of them standing around holding up shovels," I said.

"Well, I guess we'd better start with what we have and then add to them as we get a grip on what we'll be doing. We are going to need to have some equipment built though. I've asked around and no one in this time and place admits to knowing what a Fresno is. They should be easy enough for a blacksmith to build though," he said.

"Well have them get started. We've got plenty of money for the time being, at least," I told him, and he beat feet to get things rolling.

While all this was going on I'd already decided I didn't much like being the head man in charge of a city, or two of them. The daily details started piling up on me. I didn't give a rat's ass about who had stolen whose chickens. I tried putting that shit off on Chungi, and when he balked I made him find someone to take care of it if he wasn't going to. He did a bang up job.

I don't know where or how he found Silbitsa. The poor old codger had been a slave, but Chungi found out he'd been a judge somewhere before he was captured, kidnapped, and pressed into hard labor.

The newly named Judge Silbitsa turned out to be a Godsend. Chungi found him a nice big building to use as a courthouse and assigned twenty of the late King Dasga's former soldiers as enforcers and away we went.

Judge Silbitsa didn't hold with public beatings, and I was glad enough about it. He did hold with working off your debt to society though. He didn't have offenders whipped, he had them working. His first big project was cleaning the shit out of the streets. Along with it he put his enforcers on notice to catch people who were putting shit and other bodily waste back into the streets.

In two weeks you couldn't find anyone with enough nerve to even piss in an alley. Especially since a first offense would have you building a privy for your crime. The streets were soon clean and you could find a shithouse within easy walking distance anywhere in the city. Hell, I doubled his salary, doubled the number of his enforcers, and asked him to find a deputy he could get going back in Quancho.

It was a surprise we were able to get things organized and working well in Katahalana without any interference from Pentah, the capital.

Our first run in with what they still considered higher authority came in the form of a group of fifty odd soldiers escorting our new King Korban's newly assigned ruler of Katahalana. They came riding down the road one day just after noon, intending to set Officer Karbala on the seat of power here at Katahalana.

Of course I was notified at least two hours before they reached the front gate. I didn't know exactly what they wanted at the time, but I expected I wouldn't want to cooperate.

I could have just had the gate closed and not allowed them to enter, but it wouldn't exactly be neighborly, now would it? Chungi and Jorgenson had the streets they would need to use cleared of our citizens and also took the time to have archers placed inside the buildings around the sort of courtyard in front of the main headquarters building.

As takeovers went it was relatively bloodless. When the fifty soldiers with the party noticed they seemed to be covered by a few hundred archers they were reluctant to obey Officer Karbala's order to kill us all. Since I was pretty close, I shushed him with my Glock. I didn't see any reason to let him get his men all in a lather.

It seems no good deed goes unpunished. One of the carriages in this parade contained Officer Karbala's young wife, and her two handmaidens. Seems Officer Karbala was lately come into command by the expedient of marrying King Korban's oldest daughter.

I don't mean to say she was ugly; it was nothing of the sort. She and her attendants were lovely and I didn't really mind increasing my household. Still, it was the principle of the thing. How many wives must a man endure in the service of the country hes taking over?

Luckily they hadn't been married long, and so Christina wasn't hopelessly in love with Jallaton Karbala. She didn't even wince when I had him taken away to be fed to the swine. I had learned just lately swine were not squeamish about such culinary delights. Too damned bad I didn't know about it when we were wasting all our time burying those other assholes.

Shealta, Chungi's mother, was taking a break from her kitchen management duties to watch the excitement and when I asked she said she'd be proud to show my new woman and her attendants to my quarters and she'd even explain everything to Jareeta, my number one wife.

Jorgenson agreed to make the happy announcement to the captured troops about their joining our forces. When I asked what he'd do if they didn't want to join, he said we didn't really need them all so badly anyway, and the the swine never complained about being overfed. It's funny, but all of them seemed delighted to join our ranks.

What the hell, everything here was moving along smoothly, so I decided to go and make sure my new woman was settling in comfortably. When I reached my quarters I found Christina, my new arrival, wasn't fond of the notion of joining a multiple marriage.