Forty men at arms?

[osprey_archer]

Bizarre Tortallan factoid of the day: all fiefs are limited to forty men-at-arms. No matter how lively the border on which they sit, not matter how raid-prone their Scanran neighbors are, no matter if their fief is five hundred miles square: forty men at arms. The fact that Dunlath has exceeded this number, and moreover set up heavy fortifications, is a clear sign that they're up to no good.

Um, I can come up with a good reason for Dunlath to be heavily fortified. It's right on the border with Scanra. And it's sitting on a motherlode of black opals, which the Scanrans would surely love to steal. I realize that the Contes don't want their nobles to have enough men at arms to rise up in rebellion, but surely border fiefs like Dunlath need to have enough troops so as not to get overrun whenever the Scanrans feel like a little recreational raiding!

They clearly can't rely on the King's Own or the Queen's Riders to do it for them. When Daine and Numair figure out that Yolane's plotting high treason, the closest armed forces are a few days' ride away: no help at all during a lightning raid. (Why doesn't Numair ask the neighboring fiefs to lend their men at arms till the Own arrives? Isn't this the kind of on-the-spot military presence the kind of thing that men-at-arms are for? And it would be a good way to ensure that they're not involved in Dunlath's treason - always a worry; treason spreads so.)

Also! Also! How big is Dunlath's massive and treasonous army of men at arms, shockingly larger than the forty allowed? Twice forty.

Yes. Yolane and Belden mean to conquer all of Tortall with a ravening horde of eighty men at arms. Who could be stopped by...summoning up the men-at-arms from the three closest fiefs...

And, okay, Yolane and Belden also hired some mercenaries, plus they've got five kickass mages who are going to kill off a significant proportion of the King's Own with magical bloodrain. But given the mages, why did Yolane bother hiring her treasonous but not actually useful extra forty men-at-arms? (Besides the fact that she's colossally stupid, as witness the fact that she thinks Ozorne will actually let her reign over anything.)

Why does Tortall bother having knights and soldiers with conventional arms, anyway? It seems like a tremendous waste of time and treasure to train soldiers - let alone pour years into training conventional knights! - if a well-trained battle mage can blow up whole groups of them like Tristan Staghorn does in Wolf Speaker. Wouldn't it be much better to spend all that cash on battle mages?

...I feel that there's a flaw in my logic somewhere in there - that there is a reason continue fielding vast armies - but I'm not sure what it is.

***

On the bright side, Maura of Dunlath is awesome and I will write about her at length later. There's going to be a book about her soon, isn't there?

Comments

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I was listening to a podcast about magic in fantasy recently, and one of the topics was magic; specifically, working it into the world building. Why do the Harry Potter characters use owls instead of email - what is the point? And, if there is no cost to using magic, why is it not used all the time, for everything? There is a cost to using the Gift, but as you say, there are powerful mages who would be far move effective than a mere 40 men at arms.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Do you still have a link to that podcast? It sounds like it might be relevant to my interests.

I think the idea, with Tortall, is that there are very few mages so powerful as to be more effective than forty men-at-arms. But because most of the mages we actually see are extremely powerful (Alanna, Jonathan, Numair, Ozorne, etc.), it feels like there are more than enough super-powerful battle mages to go around.

Do you remember if Daine goes to the front during the Scanran war? It seems really silly for Tortall not to use her: she could destroy the Scanran's ability to fight so easily by asking the local animals to wreck their supplies and their horses not to fight.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

It's the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (http://geeksguideshow.com/show-list/), number 8. Tey're pretty long but some are quite interesting.

Daine does go north during the Scanran war - it's mentioned in one of the protector of the small books - but she's only mentioned briefly.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Daine does indeed go up to the front, but it's strongly suggested if not quite outright stated that she's only used for spying and maybe relaying messages. Which is a pity.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Wow, the Tortallans are not really good at making effective use of available resources. Think of all the lives (well, Tortallan lives) Daine could have saved by enlisting the animals against the Scanran aggressors! Talk about a morale-destroyer. The very earth would seem to be against them.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

No kidding. I have similar issues with the Dominion Jewel, which is used effectively in SotL, used ineffectively in Immortals, and then suddenly made a problem in PotS so it can never really be used again. Um.

This is a large part of why I think Jon's running Tortall into the ground, and that Roald is going to get stuck with a seriously nasty mess when/if he ever becomes king.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I haven't read PotS in a while. Why can't the Dominion Jewel be used again?

Definitely Roald is going to inherit a kingdom with a lot of simmering tension beneath the surface. Jon (and apparently also his dear grandpa Jasson) deals with unreliable nobles by impoverishing their families (and therefore presumably also their fiefs), which may be effective in the short run but is going to create a lot of simmering anti-Conte anger.

And he gives almost all the plum jobs to his knight school friends, which all the other nobles have to hate. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the conservative nobles plot a coup.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Apparently, there was a famine after Jon used the Jewel at his coronation, which beggared Tortall. It was a horrible time, so horrible that apparently Jon forgot all about it during the Immortals war. XD Pierce didn't really think that one through, I think.

Also, Jasson and Jon are explicitly expansionist/imperialist. Fully half of Tortall was only added to the country during Jasson's reign, if we can trust the maps (which we maybe can't). I would not at all be surprised to find the Bazhir and Hill Country splitting away under Roald, or trying to.

...This, coupled with the general intelligence Roald displays in canon (unlike his father. Oh, Jon) is a large part of why I am convinced that Roald is a) a ruthless bastard and b) already secretly running the country, aided and abetted by Shinko and probably some others. I think Roald knows precisely just how badly Jon's effing things up, and Roald is quiet, not passive.

I kind of wish Pierce'd go there in canon - it seems so obvious that there's either a conservative coup or a Bazhir/Hill Country civil war brewing, but I don't think she'll go there. Which is too bad - that'd be fun.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I personally think it would be awesome if Aly's spy mission in the Copper Islands was not merely a gods-created accident, but secretly an imperialist mission to cease the Copper Islands as an indirectly ruled colony of Tortall. It's the kind of thing Jon would do.

I have trouble seeing Roald as the ruthless bastard type. Endlessly efficient, yes; secretly running the country, totally; and capable of showing the iron fist behind his velvet glove when called for, of course.

But I can't see him enjoying his iron fist moments, which I think is a prerequisite for being a bastard. I mean, look at the way Jon and his friends relish throwing their weight around when they're squires. That's bastard material.

Roald, on the other hand, goes out of his way to make everyone feel included. Possibly this is his way of trying to stave off a conservative coup and/or a Bazhir/Hill Country civil war - oh, Mithros, how awful would it be if both those things happened at the same time?

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Fair point. I do definitely think that Roald has a greater capacity for ruthlessness than his dad, though, or at least a greater willingness to be ruthless. Roald is also subtle, and I think he is perfectly capable of doing, or ordering done, the nasty things that running a kingdom sometime need done. Jon, after all, has one major pitfall: he wants to be liked, to be seen as the Good King. And I do think Roald looks at his father, takes copious notes, and resolves to act in exactly the opposite ways his parents do. (No, I don't think Thayet's a good queen, either.)

...I am also somewhat fond of the idea that there is serious insanity in Thayet's family, and that Jon's mom discarded her as an option for a reason, and that coming back to bite Jon in the ass. What can I say, I love messing with Jon.

The coup could easily provide the opening for the rebellion. I also don't think that marrying off all Roald's siblings to foreign countries or having Aly in the Isles means that those countries would just play nice with Tortall and stop raiding them.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Are you thinking Thayet will go mad and cause problems? Or that Roald will become increasingly unstable, so that when Jon dies he'll know he's leaving the kingdom in the hands of someone who can't possibly run it?

And no, of course marrying off all the Conte kids out of the country won't make peace! Not that this stopped people from trying that strategy historically, either, mind you. At least it means that they aren't home to plan coups, though.

I'm thinking Aly's plan would be to manipulate the Isles into becoming a vassal state of Tortall's. But this would involve a rather involved AU.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Mostly I'm thinking that things are working out ridiculously well for Jon & co. in the books, and I have a burning urge to complicate things. XD

True, on the marrying off the kids thing, but that seems to be what Pierce is thinking. Also, wouldn't it be wise, given Jon's problems at home (with the conservatives, the possibility of two regions of his country splitting away, etc.), to marry off one or two more of those kids to people within Tortall, if these marriages somehow do bring magical stability?

I sometimes get the impression that Pierce is leaning hard on the Dominion Jewel, when it comes to Tortall's stability. Anything ridiculous on a political/international scale she can just sort of go, "Eh, of course it stabilizes Tortall! Jon has the Jewel!" and throw reality out the window.

Which is fine, as far as it goes. But I wonder now if Roald would be able to wield the Jewel, or if it would "find its way back" to Chitral...

I think your plan for Aly is the only thing that makes her even remotely palatable to me.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I actually wrote a post (http://osprey-archer.livejournal.com/202494.html) about this Aly AU way back, but then I got sucked into rereading all the TP books because it's been yeeeeears since I read them, and didn't develop it any farther.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

I love that post. I didn't leave a comment because I have nothing useful to say. Aly and the Trickster books in general bother me.

In general, I wish things, esp. on the political/international relations front, were more problematic in Tortall. I've (grudgingly) come to terms with the fact that even Pierce's ostensibly political works aren't really about politics, and I can totally understand it not really being her thing, but I wish they were anyway, especially because she does keep bringing politics/international relations up, only to discard or solve it simply.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

The other reason to have an army is that there are relatively few mages in total. Sure, maybe one mage can destroy forty men at arms, or a whole squad of Riders, but that mage has to be in the right place at the right time. Conversely, as we later see in PotS and sort of see here, if you put your faith in a handful of mages, even nonmages might eventually be able to take them down, and then where would you be?

It's the whole "putting your eggs in one basket" problem. Also, mages are mostly useless for defending borders, especially if you can't just magically seal it off.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

True. And IIRC the Tortallan mages can't teleport, so they couldn't sit in Mage Central eating bonbons waiting for the magical summons to the put down the invaders who tried to sneak past border post #23.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

Actually, Thom teleports in LR. While dying of that Gift fever. It's a weird little scene: he shows up in Alanna's room at - was it Myles' house? And he must be physically there: he's solid enough for her to hug and she can feel he's burning up.

Then again, I think Thom might be more than a bit abnormal. We never see that sort of trick again.

Your point still stands, though. The only other rapid mage transportation we see is Numair in bird form, and that's explicitly stated to be something only a rare few can do.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Well that's just a bizarre scene. Maybe...maybe...maybe its easier for Thom to teleport because he's dying, and therefore already kind of on the boundaries between worlds? Also, isn't he kind of imbued with magic at that point? Clearly that gives him weird powers.

[zodiacal-light.livejournal.com]

It is such a bizarre scene. I like both your theories, and I may have to steal the "on the boundaries between worlds" thing for a fic, if you don't mind.

ETA: I also sometimes wonder if at least part of Thom's abnormal abilities (such as maybe being able to raise the dead...) is because he has no concept of his own limits. IDK.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Go for it!