Of course, as a lad Bahzell himself had questioned some of his father’s more peculiar notions. What need did a warrior have of reading and writing or arithmetic? Why worry about tradesmen and artisans or silly things like laws governing money-lending or property rights? Where was the honor in learning to hold formation instead of charging forward to carve your own glory from the enemy’s ranks? And-despite himself, Bahzell smiled a little in memory, even now-surely bathing every single week would ruin a man’s constitution!
But he questioned no more. Hurgrum’s army hadn’t simply defeated five times its own numbers; it had slaughtered them and driven their survivors from the field in a rabble, and it had done so because it fought as a disciplined unit. Because its maps were accurate and the commanders of its fast-marching contingents, or at least their aides, could read the orders their prince sent them and close in upon their enemies in coordinated attacks. And because it was uniformly trained, because its warriors did keep formation and were equipped with weapons of its own city’s manufacture from the hands and forges of the “shopkeepers” Churnazh despised.
That was a lesson even other Horse Stealers could appreciate, which explained the new allies Hurgrum was gathering in, but since seeing Navahk, Bahzell had come to recognize an even more enduring side of his father’s accomplishments. Prince Bahnak’s native city had been bad enough before he came to power, yet Navahk was worse than Hurgrum had ever been. Far worse. It was a place of noisome streets cluttered with garbage, night soil, and small dead animals, heavy with the stench of unwashed people and waiting pestilence, all presided over by swaggering bullies in the colors of the prince who was supposed to rule his people, not plunder them himself!