TYRAK HAD NOT RIDDEN directly home to Arrgodi.
Jarsun had promised him an army of his own when he returned, the better to help him take charge of his homeland and weed out the rebellious elements among his own forces. It was to collect this fighting unit that he had first gone after leaving Jarsun.
During the years they had fought together, Jarsun had taught Tyrak a great deal about the waging of warfare, battle strategy, governance, dominion, and related matters. He had mentored Tyrak more effectively than any tutor ever had. Unlike the gurus Tyrak had had as a boy, Jarsun taught more than calmly analytical philosophical theory; his were hard-won ground truths, ripped raw and bleeding from the reality of Jarsun’s own life and adventures. Tyrak’s enthusiasm also enabled him to learn more effectively; instead of the sullen resentment or sneering indifference he had shown to earlier gurus, he received every mote of wisdom from Jarsun with admiration and respect.
True education came about through insightful learning, not from simply being taught; the greatest lessons were those gained through self-awareness and realization, not merely rote repetition, especially for a warrior whose most valuable knowledge was practical and often made the difference between life and death. Tyrak had learned his lessons well with the king of Morgolia, and among them was the crucial insight that while any good leader could rule a kingdom, it took an extraordinary one to continue to rule it.
His encounters with Vasurava and the shocking failure he had experienced on both occasions had shown him the importance of relying on more than brute force to defeat his enemies. The news of his own army’s disbandment and the subsequent dissolution of the Marauders made him realize the necessity for an elite unit that would serve him with absolute loyalty. His own countrymen and clansmen, while great fighters, were too independent minded. He needed a group of prime soldiers who would obey and serve him unquestioningly unto death.
Jarsun had given him the Eoch Assassins.
An army of eochs.
A motley collection of soldiers taken as slave children from enemy camps and kingdoms during Jarsun’s many raids and invasions, clinically indoctrinated, then trained into superb fighting units, the eochs had no nationality, no family, tribe, clan, faith, or affiliation. They lived and fought purely for the honor of the warrior code. Their only means of proving self-worth was through fulfilling the wishes of their commander.
In this case, Jarsun had raised a particular unit to obey Tyrak as their leader. To them, Tyrak was stone god incarnate, the ultimate being, and could do no wrong. By implication, all those who opposed him were evil incarnate and must be destroyed. Their world was neatly divided into these two convenient compartments. Tyrak = good. Tyrak’s enemies = evil. Indoctrinated so deeply into this conviction, they could not comprehend any worldview that challenged it. In short, it was simpler to kill them than to attempt to argue them out of the conviction that Tyrak was stone god.
And killing them was not simple at all.
The dregs of their communities, witness to the most horrific war crimes, abuse, atrocities, brutalities, and every other variation of human cruelty, they had had every drop of humanity drained from them through a training program designed by Jarsun himself, a regime of such sustained and vicious indoctrination that only the hardiest, most indestructible specimens could survive it at all.
Those that did survive were deemed to have excelled, because survival against such odds as Jarsun stacked against those pathetic eoch orphans was excellence in itself. They came out as lethal killing machines, superbly conditioned and honed to fighting prime, obeying only Tyrak, committed to destroying all others, regardless of the risk to their own lives or well-being. His Eoch Assassins could be ordered to maim themselves, commit suicidal actions, or even endanger the lives and limbs of their fellows, at a single command.
Jarsun had squandered several Eoch Assassins just to demonstrate this fact: those that survived with mutilated bodies or severed limbs had to be executed because an Eoch Assassin had to be self-sufficient and ruthless to a fault. Even Tyrak was not privy to the training regime nor to the process of indoctrination, as these were personally supervised by Jarsun himself, and none but he possessed full knowledge of all the details and methods employed.
It did not matter. He had created such a formidable fighting unit that no other force comparable in number could survive an encounter with Tyrak’s Eoch Assassins. If anything, they could be put up against a force far superior in numbers, position, or means, and while they might not triumph against impossible odds, they would cause such damage and cost to the enemy as to render that enemy’s victory hollow.
It was this band of fighters that Tyrak had gone to collect from the remote wilderness camp where they were billeted, spending their days in endless training and preparation. Jarsun had not permitted the Eoch Assassins to be used in his own army, or to serve anyone but Tyrak himself. At one point, Tyrak had wondered aloud, if the Eoch Assassins were that effective and loyal, then what would happen if he were to command them to go to battle against Jarsun?
“You would cause me great losses,” Jarsun replied, answering the question quite seriously and without taking offense. “But eventually your Eoch Assassins would be wiped out to the last individual.”
Tyrak had chuckled and said that if the Eoch Assassins were able to get to Jarsun himself before being cut down by superior numbers, it wouldn’t matter if they were all wiped out. After all, the ultimate goal was to kill the enemy’s leader, was it not?
Jarsun had smiled and said that Tyrak had a great deal left to learn about warfare. (This was in the first days after Tyrak had joined him.) “The purpose of war is not merely to kill one’s opposing king or commander; it is to render that kingdom or force incapable of attacking you again. It’s not enough just to cut off the head; it’s more important to sever the limbs and puncture the vital organs.”
Tyrak had frowned, not able to grasp the application of this anatomical metaphor to actual warfare. Jarsun had shrugged, saying he would understand in time. “But to answer your question about the Eoch Assassins,” the Krushan said, “they might succeed in causing me great losses before being cut down to the last man, but they would never succeed in harming me personally.”
Tyrak had again laughed and suggested that Jarsun was only saying that because he could not accept the idea of defeat.
“No, my friend,” Jarsun had said good-naturedly. “I say that because, while my Eoch Assassins will indeed obey you unto death, they do so not because they are loyal to you but because they are loyal to me. You see, they obey you because I tell them to obey you. They obey me because they are trained to obey me. That is a crucial difference. If, by some unhappy mischance, you were to order them to attack my army, they would do so, but they would stop short of causing me any personal harm.”
Tyrak frowned and asked how that was possible, if the Eoch Assassins thought of him, Tyrak, as stone god incarnate.
Jarsun smiled his calm smile and said, “They think of you as stone god incarnate, but of me as the stone god himself.”
And so, Jarsun had explained, he could name any man or woman as his avatar and the Eoch Assassins would worship that person as their master thereafter. But Jarsun himself always remained their true stone god and commander.
After that, Tyrak never asked any theoretical questions regarding the loyalty of the Eoch Assassins. He simply accepted the gift and used it as best he could.
And when he returned to Arrgodi, he took the Eoch Assassins with him.
Now he raised his whip and spun the lash out at thin air, once, twice, then a third time, giving his aides the predetermined signal to start their “festivities.” It was time to let Arrgodi know their crown prince was home again.