Diplomacy, in the opinion of the humane, ought always to be attempted before hostility. The humane and successful preferred their diplomacy conducted while at the head of an army. Despite the impossibility of conjecturing how fairy kings and queens would respond to that style of argumentation, Atkosol judged it worth trying.
His principal demands, that they give up all their power and surrender the secrets of the central area to his wife, doubtless must strike any monarch unfavorably. He prepared a series of allowances and concessions to mollify the fairies, who in forcing the humans to make them could preserve their dignity. In the end, he would insist only on cooperation with the study of Ertith Energy, a term becoming harder to dislodge by the day, and an end to their aggressive recruitment methods. The strongest would be allowed to preserve their titles, their local aesthetics, and their names if they still wanted them after Atkosol made his library available to search for compelling historical figures. As for Hacanthu, the dispute was susceptible to several resolutions which they had perhaps not considered. They might submit the matter to a judge or a committee chosen with the acceptance of all participants. A tournament of champions was easy to arrange, and unquestionably they deserved a portion of the ticket proceeds. Other proposals could be considered. Further, any fairy ruler who opted to embrace the delights of travel could depend on Atkosol for a small tourism package including reasonable funds, a horse or donkey at the fairy's preference, and letters of introduction addressed to the elite of various lands.
Indecision can undermine any enterprise, termite-like, a lesson Atkosol had learned long ago and incorporated into several speeches. He ordered the diplomacy tour to commence directly after the final strategic conference. Any further planning must fail to be useful unless accompanied by knowledge of which rulers accepted the proposal and which rejected it, at which point Medant Denmarof would tailor a strategy appropriate to the circumstances or else take a position of less responsibility such as, to give an example, former guard-captain. The camp had set up a betting pool on how many kings and queens would capitulate (as cultural observers would have expected, the Yean Defiafi work gang wanted to bet desserts while the Adabans deemed the proper currency to be work shifts), and the matter consequently had all the more urgency.
The mustered army's bulk comprised more than two hundred troops mostly of the Workman and Small Fry classes, the latter having the honor of the front ranks. Medant further commanded a cohort of fairies who, upon being informed that the army's Ritualists would take no precautions against afflicting them with rituals, declared that was exactly what they wanted. An assortment of advanced combat classes assembled by happenstance rather than design added to the force's effectiveness as well as its cost, similar to a confectionery sampler to which Shtaugirs affixed his signature. Myrmidon Medant Denmarof, Symbol Knight Gabdirn Haubentlag, Battler Millim Takki Atsa, Brawny Knights Onsalkant Tlol and Onsalked Otnilk, and others, mostly travelers, tried not to awe the common soldier too much. The four participating Ritualists meanwhile exceeded the typical complement of that class in an Adaban fighting force by four. Altogether the volunteer legion barely qualified for the duty of shooing livestock out of the real army's path, but thus far fairies had offered less resistance than cows.
The limitations of fairy transportation, or Lommad transportation to be more exact, had been tested. Her capacity for moving people to the fairy realm encompassed approximately “a full party” in her words. She handled over three hundred people spread across an area equal to the average theater without issue, and only the difficulty of rounding up subjects for the experiments prevented her from yanking more. Entessihotka representatives threw big parties.
The entire army manifested in the lake district at Atkosol's command, which consisted of the word “please.” The few soldiers who had not been there as part of a test, the two Brawny Knights for example, possessed enough discipline not to express their amazement. Nor their disappointment. Some time was required, the old hands knew, to appreciate how uncanny the fairy world was, if that could indeed be done while among a couple hundred other humans who imposed their mundanity on the scene and even provided their own wind.
The stolidity of the Brawny Knights, a pair of professional mercenaries specializing in convoy escort, held firm even when presented with a glittering lake that surrounded a fairy castle like sleep around dreams or a vault around money. That of the amateurs did not. The noise produced by their startled cries was appropriate only for tribes which traditionally lost to Adabans, and Medant ordered Lieutenant Gabdirn to look at them accusingly. For the guard-captain to do it would have lowered the authority he derived from remoteness while reducing the troops to shame rather than compliance, he later informed Dirant incidentally while giving a statement to a clutch of reporters.
A request for an audience received immediate consideration and approval, the event occurring directly afterward. Whatever the cynic who reduced every interaction to force or the threat of such suspected, the army did not contribute to that process. For all the grandeur of the castle, Ydridd dealt with less in all her kingdom than the mayor of Ividottlof did in his one small town. There were art galleries whose curators were busier. The queen would have seen a mouse on the spot if it learned to talk and petitioned for more abandoned temples to inhabit and store magic swords, which perhaps had happened. Regardless, Atkosol entered the throne room along with his lesser diplomats, which might not have been allowed had the fairies understood most of them were also officers commissioned on the basis that they were good in a fight.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Queen Ydridd rejected the offer. “We have a general, we have a claim, and we are not intimidated by your army.”
“Perhaps if you troubled yourself to view it . . .” Atkosol suggested.
“We are fairly certain that is a duty of generals. Doltandon Yurvitas, is that true?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Dirant, Aptezor, and Taomenk had either been mistaken about Yurvitas's intentions or correct about the probable outcome. He had become a general himself to replace the one he sold Ydridd. Only a private conversation might reveal whether he had accepted the position after failing to dig his way out, deprived of an engineer's assistance as he had been, and any such conversation was more likely to consist of shouts and suggestions of violence than anything informative. Nevertheless, Dirant believed it, and he convinced several other members of the delegation while Yurvitas and his second-in-command Gelfid Etenkloss, who appeared less dissatisfied with that position than her old one, went on a quick mission of inspection at Ydridd's behest.
“Ought we to be intimidated?” the queen asked her general when he returned.
“Exceedingly so, Your Majesty.”
“Gelfid?”
“Their army is far superior to yours in size and quality.”
“Oh.” Ydridd tried to think about her inferior martial position while retaining her royal demeanor and had trouble enough with the former alone. “Fix that. We remain unintimidated.”
None of Atkosol's concessions moved the queen. Her officers knew they would not; Doltandon's smiles increased in wryness while agitation hopped around Gelfid and tugged at her like an impatient little sister. Atkosol in the end withdrew disappointed, though not devastated. “Stubbornness often is dissolved by reflection,” he said before ordering his guard-captain to arrange a marching song. As the column departed, Queen Ydridd was seen on a balcony, looking down on the ordered ranks and listening to their voices made ominous by uniformity. She retreated when she realized she had been detected, uncommon behavior for the fearless.
Atkosol directed his private force to enter the beach district. As appealing as it was to play the old hand, the people who had participated in earlier fairy adventures had been far too honest about the boundaries of their travels to claim they knew anything about that area. Taomenk, Lommad, and a few escorts alone had been to the beach, mountain, and sky districts as fairies identified them, though not with enough consistency for a style guide to insist on Sky District. “Are they not kingdoms?” more than one person asked, receiving of course no answer.
The beach kingdom over which Jiojjil ruled, not that fairy kings were known to do much besides give palaces to people who already owned a couple, presented relaxing oceanfront scenery familiar to survivors of the Suvozingedyai Sea as it lurked in their memories. The ocean wailed in a far less figurative sense than hearers liked, especially poets deprived thereby of opportunities for invention. Waves and swells did not comport to the usual behavior of such in the standard world; rather than rising and falling in proper sequence, watery mounds formed and stayed around as long as they liked, and if they often resembled faces in agony, that was simply one additional rudeness. The color of it also refused to be pleasant, mostly gray with diseased-white highlights and, some swore later, streaks of blood.
The visitor suspected the adjacent beach to have been designed to build expectations for the ocean to dash, if he were a pessimist. The pessimist of a different sort suggested the land and sea to have been formed by gods on different committees who failed to coordinate their efforts. As for optimists, there were none. Not there.
The sands of the beach shone like gold and silver. Before the army mobilized, Mr. Taomenk assured the troops that the sands had been found not to be precious metals in order to prevent the historically common scenario of soldiers abandoning their formation for plunder. He went on, far too honestly, to state he was not yet sure what materials they were. On hearing that the troops engaged in some modest looting, reckoning that a pocketful of possibly valuable sand beat wasted space unless fairy curses altered the calculation. Aside from that, fruit-bearing bushes studded the terrain where travelers of broad scope expected palm trees. What kind of fruit went unexamined on the advice of countless fables.
Out of all the regions, the beach had the least usable area. Across from the sea, high cliffs ensured no visitor got the idea he could escape his misery. Even so, roads surely could be cut through those and enable the construction of a tourist resort aimed at lovers of the macabre, to say nothing of the potential if the ocean could be corrected. The notion did not seem impossible. Water in the fay world was susceptible to categorization in a way the normal sort was not, and if a method existed to convert Jiojjil's wicked surf into the friendly kind which supported footsteps in Ydridd's country, the resulting property values would create a thousand Atkosols provided the legal determinations went the right way. The existing Mr. Atkosol had not promised each soldier plots in the conquered territories, but precedent favored that outcome. The legion's potential plutocrats thought about that in preference to contemplating the terrible ocean.
A procession of armed troops attracts notice. That statement held in Greater Enloffenkir, Chtrebliseu, Neast, or anywhere else humans settled, and though the reaction might have been different in fairyland, it was not. The denizens who peeked over the cliffs, jogged alongside on the beach, or paused to wave before going about whatever it was that occupied them all day did however lack the intense concern felt by civilians worried about possible damage to their crops, their homes, and their persons. They treated the diplomatic effort more in the manner of a parade, down to the addition of a bard who provided some marching music.
“How many syllables are in your general's name?” Wiuyo asked, and the answer pleased. She repaid the favor Medant's parents had done her by informing them Jiojjil's army was still at his hall as recently as half an hour earlier if they wanted to have a gigantic battle worthy of an entire cycle of songs.
“Unless there are more than five thousand fairies there, the song must figure in a comedy and nothing serious.” That was the consensus among the Adabans, but they received the tip gratefully on account of its promise they would finish that stage of their march within the estimated period, which was the actual result.
