Chapter Sixteen – The Instructor
The Grand Duke returned to the castle in a foul mood. During his trip he had discovered that most of Hórkustk Ris province was not under Danubian control at all. The only enclave remaining was the provincial capitol, and the only reason that city was still under the Duchy's control was that the Kingdom of the Moon had not yet sent an army large enough to conquer it. The city was packed with Danubian refugees who had been denied permission to move north, precisely to prevent the people of the capitol from knowing how bad the situation was immediately to the south. There was inadequate food for the crowd and a lot of the people had become sick.
The Grand Duke had discovered the awful news that the entire western half of the Duchy was under threat. Hórkustk Ris was the only major Danubian city to the south of Danúbikt Móskt. After that city was taken, there would be nothing standing between the Army of the Moon and the Duchy's people.
The Grand Duke rounded up his military advisors and demanded to know why no one had told him about the foreign occupation of Hórkustk Ris province and the plight of tens of thousands of sick refugees. It turned out the advisors had been divided about telling their ruler the truth. Some advisors did want to tell him about Hórkustk Ris as early as the previous summer, but they were overruled by the advisors who were determined to procrastinate. The advisors remained loyal to each other, so the ones who wanted to talk to the Grand Duke about the occupation were stuck in a dilemma. They either had to betray the ruler, or betray their peers. In Danubian culture, betraying one's companions is considered extremely dishonorable, so the more honest advisors' actions were restrained by cultural taboos.
The Grand Duke was angry at himself for not realizing his advisors were lying to him. Now that he knew what was going on, he needed to find out why he had been deceived. The ruler summoned the Grand Prophet of the Great Temple to assist his interrogation of his subordinates. With the Prophet present, the advisors would have to lie in front of the leading Clergyman from the Danubian Church if they wanted to continue protecting each other. The presence of the Prophet, coupled with the Grand Duke's insight and ability to extract information through simple conversation forced the full story out of them. He already understood that it was not simple fear or procrastination that had motivated some of his subordinates to cover up the invasion and force their companions to go along with the deception. It turned out that the traitors had made arrangements with the Lord of the Moon to be spared, along with their families and properties, when the Kingdom invaded the Duchy. All they had to do was facilitate the capture of Hórkustk Ris by withholding intelligence and delaying any response from the Danubian Crown.
The Grand Duke did not want the public to know that he had been deceived by his own advisors. So, there was no public trial of the traitors, no retaliation against their families, no public spectacle at all. He simply grabbed a long bow and ordered Royal Guards to take the traitors to the execution post. He ordered them tied to the post one-by-one and shocked his spectators by conducting the executions himself. The castle staff, the Royal Guards, and the matrons watched with dumbfounded expressions as their ruler fired five arrows into a traitor, checked to make sure he was dead, ordered the body taken away, and then proceeded with the next execution.
Before ordering the bodies taken out of the castle and returned to their relatives, the ruler wrote the following for each household:
If you value your lives and the safety of your children, you will not ask why this happened. I assure you my action was justified. Bury your relative, say nothing, and your Path in Life will continue in peace. Disobey my command, and the Destroyer will visit you. The choice is yours.
The Grand Duke of the Duchy of Upper Danubia
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From their balcony the concubines watched their master killing his subordinates. They were terrified, because they did not yet know what was going on and assumed the sovereign had gone mad. His behavior over the next several days did not reassure them. He vented his anger and fear through sex and copulated with the eleven women as though he were possessed. He did not spare the group's spokeswoman: she had to join her companions in the Royal bed-chamber and endure his rough treatment.
After spending a week calming his nerves with his women, the ruler re-emerged, determined to meet the impending threat coming from the south. He had several months to prepare for the upcoming military campaign, because during the 18th Century it was very difficult for any country to invade any other country during the winter. Large-scale military operations usually took place in the summer, when it was easier for invading armies to live off the land.
The Grand Duke replaced his executed advisors with field commanders from the Royal Army. He ordered the commanders to familiarize themselves with standard military strategies and drills commonly used in Europe at the time. He did not plan to emulate those strategies, but needed to know how to counter them. The Danubian Royal Army, especially the cavalry, would have to adapt to fighting on open ground and abandon the traditional strategy of using forested areas for concealment and protection.
The most significant decision facing the Grand Duke was his country's reliance on crossbows. The crossbow had served the Duchy admirably over the past several centuries, but it was an archaic weapon suited for guerrilla skirmishes and silent raids. It was not a weapon suited for confronting a large modern enemy army on open ground. Like it or not, the Grand Duke's army, or at least many of its troops, would have to switch over to using muskets. The Danubian ruler wrote to a Vienna arms dealer to speed up the purchase of modern muskets. He cringed at the cost of the cumbersome weapons and their ammunition, but he had no choice.
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