"That's the standing excuse of every
incompetent!"
"Go on, Stranor; what sort of bad luck?" Verkan Vall asked.
"Well, first we had a drought, beginning in early summer, that burned
up most of the grain crop. Then, when that broke, we got heavy rains
and hailstorms and floods, and that destroyed what got through the dry
spell. When they harvested what little was left, it was obvious
there'd be a famine, so we brought in a lot of grain by conveyer and
distributed it from the temples--miraculous gift of Yat-Zar, of
course. Then the main office on First Level got scared about flooding
this time-line with a lot of unaccountable grain and were afraid we'd
make the people suspicious, and ordered it stopped.
"Then Kurchuk, and I might add that the kingdom of Zurb was the
hardest hit by the famine, ordered his army mobilized and started an
invasion of the Jumdun country, south of the Carpathians, to get
grain. He got his army chopped up, and only about a quarter of them
got back, with no grain. You ask me, I'd say that Labdurg framed it to
happen that way. He advised Kurchuk to invade, in the first place, and
I mentioned my suspicion that Chombrog, the Chuldun Emperor, is
planning to move in on the Hulgun kingdoms. Well, what would be
smarter than to get Kurchuk's army smashed in advance?"
"How did the defeat occur?" Verkan Vall asked. "Any suspicion of
treachery?"
"Nothing you could put your finger on, except that the Jumduns seemed
to have pretty good intelligence about Kurchuk's invasion route and
battle plans.
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