The discussion between the various delegates went on for several more hours, during which each of them outlined the situation in and around their own countries. They listed their various military commitments and made a rough estimate of the number of troops they could spare to send north and help fight the Shadowarmies. Some of them gave ridiculously low figures, obviously only a token force that they felt they had to send but no larger than they could possibly get away with. The Clandanian delegate, for instance, stated loudly and proudly that they would send five hundred of their finest warriors to help Belthar in its hour of need, an announcement that was greeted scornfully by the others who knew that Clandania had one of the largest armies in the region and was obviously hoping to use it after the war, when all its neighbours were weakened and vulnerable.
Others, however, were genuinely unable to send very many soldiers, being in rather dire straits at home. The Samnians, for example, were in the middle of a vicious war with the Lirians, the evil inhabitants of the Megran mountains, and were only able to send another five thousand men, in addition to the ten thousand they’d sent earlier. Kenestra and Calmany, on the other hand, both had rather small armies to begin with, only just enough to defend their own borders.
In contrast, however, the shae folk from Lourell were able to announce that four divisions of the Army of Life could be spared to help fight the Shadowhosts, particularly now that some of their old enemies, the gl-hugs, had called a temporary halt to hostilities in order to fight the same enemy. “When I came to this conference,” the shae said in his beautiful, melodic voice, “I was prepared to commit only two divisions to help you, but now that we learn that twelve houses of the gl-hugs will not be fighting us until the greater enemy had been defeated, I believe that we will be able to spare an additional two divisions. The rest of our army will be enough to fight a purely defensive war against the other gl-hug houses that will continue to attack us.”
“What about the shae folk of Tenneras?” Lanaris asked the Beltharan General. “Has there been word from them yet?”
“No, not yet,” replied the General. “Our ambassador is still negotiating with them. They’re still bitterly resentful of all humans, not to mention virtually all other races, since the shae wars, even though they took place thousands of years ago. The shae folk have long memories. And, of course, there’s no point thinking about the Tas-Lanneans at all, assuming they’re more than just a myth.”
Everyone knew what he meant. After the shae wars, the Tas-Lanneans had shut their entire country off behind an impregnable barrier of magical force and refused to have anything else to do with the rest of the world. No outsider had seen a Tas-Lannean in thousands of years, and it was not even possible to say for certain that the race still existed.
In the end, the various delegates around the table pledged to send sixty five thousand warriors to help fight the Shadowarmies, consisting of forty thousand trogs, ten thousand shae folk and fifteen thousand humans, most of which would be divided equally between Belthar and Fu Nang, with the rest coming to Pargonn to help them resist the expected sea attack. In addition, the dor-maja said that he would scour the world looking for others of his own kind, along with good dragons and other champions of justice and freedom that might be willing to come to their aid. Sixty five thousand sounded like a lot, but it was really quite a small number compared to the armies of Belthar and Fu Nang, not to mention the Shadowarmy itself. The delegates could send a lot more if they wanted to, but despite everything they’d heard, they still weren’t convinced of the urgency of the situation. The enemy had been defeated three times before, they were thinking. They would inevitably be defeated again. Somehow, Resalintas Knew, they had to be made to understand the real situation. Their victory in the war would depend as much on their ambassadors abroad as on their soldiers.
There was a brief adjournment for lunch, following which they spent the afternoon discussing battle tactics. The moves they thought the enemy most likely to make and the merits of various responses to them. Most of the delegates favoured battle plans that would take the war north, safely away from their own countries, but most of the widest passages through the Copper and Silver Mountains were in the northern halves of those ranges and Belthar and Fu Nang wanted the enemy kept safely away from them, pointing out that the heartlands of their two empires must be kept safe at any cost if there was to be any hope for civilization. Listening to the seemingly endless bickering that filled the room, Resalintas was inclined to agree. Belthar and Fu Nang, between them, accounted for only a small part of the continent’s human population, but all the other nations, kingdoms and independent cities were always so busy squabbling amongst themselves that they’d never be able to unite and present a coherent opposition to the enemy, and with all due respect to the shae folk and the trogs, they just didn’t have the human ability to think in terms of whole continents, being much more concerned with what went on within their own borders. If Belthar and Fu Nang fell, the enemy would virtually have won.
Eventually, as the yellow sun sank towards the horizon, the discussion began to break up into a few stubborn delegates refusing to abandon their selfish points of view and arguing noisily with each other while the others listened with forced patience, and Lanaris decided that the council of war had accomplished just about as much as it usefully could. He stood up, therefore, and held out his arms for silence. “Gentlemen, those of you who still have points you wish to discuss may return here tomorrow to continue, but I think the time has come for the rest of us to take a well deserved break. We will adjourn our meeting here, and those of you who wish may return to their own lands via our teleportation network. Thank you all for coming. This has been a very successful meeting, and the agreements made here may well be the deciding factor that will lead to our eventual victory. We in the Fellowship will keep you all in touch with each other, using our extensive network of field agents and operatives, and should any of you find yourselves in need of any additional help, we’ll do our best to see that you get it. Thank you all once again for coming.”
The Paladin then turned and left the room, and the delegates also stood up to leave in a sudden buzz of conversation. Pronias went over to speak to the Beltharan General, and the dor-maja followed, sitting down next to the priest, his long tail whipping back and forth behind him in agitation.
“Well, we’ve got a few things to report back to Ilandia,” said Keller as he and Resalintas carefully shouldered their way through the milling delegates towards the exit. “A passel of news and no mistake.”
“Indeed,” agreed Resalintas absent mindedly, his mind full of ideas and strategies for the defence of Fort Battleaxe.
“I expect they’ll want to oof!”
The Sergeant swore as he tripped over the dor-maja’s tail and landed flat on his face on the floor. The giant leonine creature leapt to its feet and spun around with embarrassed words of apology as Keller picked himself up, but stopped short in mid sentence, staring at the Ilandian in alarm and confusion. The Sergeant had hit his head on the side of the table, and a thin trickle of blood flowed from a small cut above his eye, but it wasn’t the rich crimson colour of normal blood. Instead, it was a light shade of pink, the colour of a baby’s skin, and everyone standing close enough to see knew exactly what it meant.
“Clay man!” shouted Prince Fennerel, making the whole room turn to stare.
The thing that had been masquerading as Sergeant Keller made a bolt for the door, pushing past the startled Nyundians but Pronias grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back. “Not so fast, monster!” he said as several other delegates crowded close to see what all the fuss was about. “You’ve got a few questions to answer, like how Ah!”
The priest gave a cry of pain as the clay man slashed his wrist with a thin knife, breaking his grip on him and making another break for the door. By now, though, there were too many other people gathered around, reaching out to grab and hold him, and seeing that escape was impossible the clay man plunged the knife into his own stomach before anyone could stop him.
The delegates watched in macabre fascination as the corpse of the clay man changed back into its natural form. Tall, gaunt and hairless, with a narrow face, pug nose, thin lips and huge staring eyes.
“This is outrageous!” cried the Prince furiously, pointing an accusing finger at Resalintas. “I had no idea that a priest of Samnos could be so stupid as to not recognise a clay man when he sees one! And to bring one here, to this meeting! It came this close to reporting everything that happened here to its real masters, betraying us all! I demand that...”
“Your Highness,” interrupted the General. “With all due respect, please shut up. You know as well as anyone how hard clay men are to detect, and doubtless it replaced the real Sergeant as late as possible, to reduce its chances of being found out. Your outbursts shame the Empire and the Emperor.” He shouted orders to the attendants who were standing near the door. “Don’t allow anyone else to leave until we’re sure there are no more clay men among us. Send for Lanaris, get him back right away.”
The prince was incensed now. “You’ve embarrassed me for the last time, Agranna!” he shouted at the General. “I’ll have you drummed out of the service! I'll have you exiled to the farthest corner of the..."
“Poison!” gasped Pronias, clutching his slashed wrist tightly with his other hand. “The blade was poisoned.” He prayed to Samnos for the power to heal himself and the knife wound vanished as the skin closed over it, but it had no effect on the action of the poison. His face turned scarlet and he started to tremble.
Resalintas took the priest in his arms and added his own prayers, as did Lanaris when he re-entered the room, taking in the situation at a glance, but none of them did any good. The poison acted with appalling speed, giving the priest a burning fever and making him shake uncontrollably, and although Resalintas and the paladin prayed as they'd never prayed before, it had not the slightest effect.
“Fetch a cleric of Caroli!” shouted Lanaris. “Quickly!” One of the attendants ran off to comply.
“Poison doesn't work of priests of Samnos,” said Tuska in disbelief. “How is this possible?”
Lanaris had pulled the knife from the corpse of the clay man and was examining it closely. “I sense demonic evil on this blade,” he said, placing it carefully on the table. “Mere healing is not enough. A purification must be performed. We will need a dozen priests, it doesn't matter of what faith. Summon priests immediately.”
There was no time, though. Pronias fell to the ground, and Resalintas carried him over to the table, laying him down on it and taking off his cloak to make a pillow. “No use,” whispered the senior priest in a tortured voice. “It’s the end, I can feel it. Our Lord will take me soon.”
“Don’t say that,” said Tuska comfortingly. “The priests will be here soon, and they’ll have you healed in no time. Don’t just give up.”
“Do not insult him with such words,” said Resalintas angrily. “This isn’t some timid civilian, terrified by the prospect of death, but a priest of Samnos, the mightiest of our order in the world. Let him die with the dignity he deserves.”
Pronias reached out a trembling, sweaty hand and gripped Resalintas’s wrist. “The Sword,” he gasped in a voice that had suddenly turned dry and rasping. “Davress of Samnia.”
Resalintas nodded, understanding. The Sword of Retribution was always carried by the most powerful still actively fighting priest of Samnos in the world, and when that priest died or retired from active combat due to age or injury, it instantly teleported to the next most powerful priest. Pronias was telling him that a priest called Davress in the Theocracy of Samnia would be the next to possess it.
The priest was suddenly gripped by a series of convulsions as the poison continued its deadly work and Resalintas, seeing that the priests wouldn’t get there in time, decided to spare him the agony that would inevitably follow. He drew one of his boot knives and held it in front of the senior priest’s eyes, letting him know what he was about to do and, despite his convulsions Pronias nodded in agreement.
Resalintas opened the dying priest’s chain mail armour and cut open the leather vest beneath, exposing his chest, and then he slipped the knife in up to the hilt just beneath the breastbone. Pronias died almost immediately, with only a tiny trickle of blood running from the wound, and as the last breath escaped from his lungs with a grateful hiss of relief and release, the fabulous Sword of Retribution vanished.