Forty men at arms?
Jun. 17th, 2012 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerBizarre 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?
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?
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Date: 2012-08-27 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-27 03:34 am (UTC)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.