“Do… something!” Ffesh cried at both of them impatiently. “I’m sure you’ve already sent some instructions, Dilwa.”
“Indeed, I have,” replied the Lord Chamberlain.
“Very well, then,” said the bishop. “Are you all still here? Defend the city!!!”
The two officers bowed and left, vacating the room with all the grace of two waddling dish-ducks.
“Well?” barked Kven, the imperious and self-important aristocrat.
While his House might have once held the balance of power during the Age of Emperors, the current lord was little more than a symbol of an institution which had long ago been usurped by theocratic authority. Kven was tall, after the Tremna type, seven-foot in height, with a high brow, dagger-like nose, keen brown eyes, jet-black hair dancing on his shoulders, long ears, a thin bony face and strong chin, seated upon a long thin neck and gaunt frame, rather like a depiction of death itself, his body draped in a white cloth doublet over a woffgi-silk shirt, tight trousers of the same hue and material as his doublet, over which he wore an outer robe, open in the middle, rather like an Arabian bisht—called a sfal in Tremni—lined with gold thread along its hem and embroidered with the emblem of his house, as on his doublet, such that there could be no doubt as to his identity. Around his neck he wore a thin gold torque, on his hands white leather gloves and white high-heeled boots of the same. Altogether, he was a fine example of a decadent and long-redundant aristocracy who had long since outgrown their usefulness. Rather, like an extra cog on a tightly-cogged wheel, he was frustrated and perpetually dissatisfied, yet too subdued by tradition to lift a finger against his tormenters. That did not stop him from speaking like a lord, even though he hardly befit the title.
“They must be demon-worshippers,” Ffesh continued. “Though they call themselves the Shaffu. The children of Asharru, the demon servant of Afflish the Accursed, they have helped our government for thousands of years. We use them to silence our critics, remove dissent and keep the Theocracy in power. We pay them annually—protection money—a tribute, if you will and, in turn, they are our guarantee against rebellion. But to march in public—in the open—is unheard of! And they’ve come against us! How dare they!”
“Who is master of whom?” Kven asked, concerned at this revelation.
“We… well—we pay them.”
“But who pulls your strings?”
“We have been on good terms with them for thousands of years. Something’s wrong… but what?”
“Did someone forget to pay?” Kven said sarcastically.
“Why the seal of Amon-Ra? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” asked Kven. “Who first spoke to Amon-Ra in a vision—at least in recorded history?”
“Ishmael the Great.”
“So whose banner is it? The heir of Ishmael.”
“The Protector of Ffantbav?”
“He’s Saffik’s heir,” said Kven. “So, he’s hardly the heir of Ishmael. It would have to be through Saffik’s younger brother King Ishmael Gan, which leaves the Protector of Okayeshvi or Wadakit.”
“Wadakit is already under the protectorship of Saffik’s heir,” Ffesh observed. “When Benad died, his son-in-law, Weshob the Second, Protector of Ffantbav and Duke of Tvimbal, who was married to Benad’s daughter, Daffla, became the new protector.”
“I know that, of course,” Kven asserted. “But there must be other males in the line of Wadakit. In any case, it should be the heir to the lines of Wadakit or Okayeshvi. Saffik’s line has never held the throne; the Duke of Yalaniuntva is of a non-royal line from the House of Mael, though next in line for the throne after the male heirs of Ishmael the Great, while the Protector of Wafftayunda and the Dukes of Melekaman are all of the line of Tsilel and hence excluded from the throne by Amon-Ra’s ban. The Dukes of Tvimwush, Tvimnub and Yigvaltv are descendants of Tsilel’s full-brothers.”
“So Wadakit or Okayeshvi—allied with the Shaffu… it still makes no sense. No one even knows about the Shaffu, except for the bishops and patriarchs and their trusted advisors. No, none of this makes sense.”
“I shall go to the wall,” Kven said. He was fatalistically bound to his house and city. “And die in defence of Ffantplain if need be. Perhaps I shall suffer for Kval’s sins.”
“Go then and Godspeed,” said the bishop. “I shall stay here and wait. I fear that the horde of infidels shall burst through our walls and murder us all.”
“If the House of Kven shall fall this day, let it be said that we died fighting, sword in hand, and the Great Spirit was on our side. Farewell, Bishop.”
He left the room in a hurry, ordered his manservant and squire to fetch his armour, shield and sword, and made ready to mount his ffentbaff. The squire fit his helm, breast-plate and sword-belt with sword and sheath; his ffentbaff was large and muscular, its wool died white and its body covered in bright steel plate-armour. The beast groaned loudly as he mounted it, followed by his squire and a dozen knights in train, each armed and mounted in the same manner as Tvem Liksh. Hundreds of watchmen rushed to and fro, mounting the wall and rushing to defend the city gates, led by Sfen Wuksh, while Tvem Liksh gathered the reserves, knights and squires, builders and other fit boys and men, arming them in haste, as the city’s catapult was wheeled out by two large ffentbaffs and the defenders at the walls boiled pitch and collected shrapnel and other missiles to throw at their enemies.
“Commander, what news?” called Kven, addressing an officer of the watch on the wall.
“The invaders have stopped, milord,” replied the stone-faced warrior. “Their army waits at the gates.”
“Why do ye not attack?”
“We’ve received no orders to, milord.”
“Open the gates! I will speak to them.”
“My lord? The gate is our defence. They will swarm us!” Tvem Liksh warned him.
Sfen stood at his side with an expression of concern.
“Come Tvem, Sfen. Let’s find out who leads this invasion. Are you two afraid of facing the enemy?”
Sfen grunted.
“Open the gates!” Tvem ordered.
A watchman turned the wheel, two okshas high, and the great gate groaned and opened slowly, like a lumbering kunug—or ‘giant’—its huge iron hinges firmly fixed in the thick stone walls. Made of jyag-wood, the hardest of trees from the Great Forest of Nor, it was a foot thick and four okshas high, opening on one side. When it had opened fully, the three men rode forth atop their ffentbaffs, followed by the twelve knights. Kven’s heart sank in his stomach as he saw the huge army facing him, countless mounted ffentbaffs with lofty ffentwas atop, each carrying archers, cloaked infantry bearing brutal axes and swords—a barbarian horde thirsting after blood and conquest. Still, he was a lord and he maintained his dignity and poise as he approached the Shaffu forces.
“Heika!” he called. “How now?”
“Heika!” Plant Man called in reply.
As they looked up to behold the plant-like man atop the royal ffentbaff, their eyes betrayed fear and confusion.
“Who are ye?” he asked them, his tone imperious and his voice loud.
For a moment, Kven froze as his mind attempted to comprehend what his eyes were telling him.
“What manner of man art thou?” he asked.
“Are we slaves that we should be questioned so?” Plant Man thundered. “Speak, soldier. Who are ye?”
“I am Kven the Fifth, Lord of Ffantplain and Chief of the House of Kven, Guardian of Shivka Forest and Lord Martial of Shivka District. This is the Superintendent of City Defences, Tvem Liksh, and Head of the Watch, Sfen Wuksh, and these are the knights who form my personal guard. We demand to know who ye are and what your business in the Theocracy is.”
Plant Man laughed, while Ffen and Arwa smiled.
“Is that all?” he asked sardonically. “I am calle
d Ifunka Kaffa, son of Kandaspu, but I am now known as Plant Man. As ye can see, I am a being of immense power, the bearer of the Verdant Coin, a gift from Amon-Ra himself. I rule over the plant kingdom, controlling every blade of grass beneath your ffentbaffs’ hooves. Behold!”
Stretching forth his arm, a ring of kobotv-trees sprung up from the ground as saplings, surrounding the lord and his retainers, quickly fattened and matured and reached four okshas high, walling them in. Alarmed, their ffentbaffs bellowed and tried to extricate themselves. Kven’s white ffentbaff reared and threw him into the branches of one of the trees. Raising his arms again, the trees retreated into the ground and vanished. Kven struggled to his feet and tried to remount the ffentbaff which, instead, charged off into the distance, leaving him behind. Tvem pulled him up onto his own mount.
“I apologise,” said Plant Man. “I did not mean to completely humiliate you—I only desired to put you in your place. You see, I am now the King of all Tremn and your pathetic Theocracy is about to come crashing to the ground in a blaze of chaos and destruction. Your options are these: renounce the Theocracy and swear allegiance to me as High-King of Tremn, and live—nay, even remain as the Lord of Ffantplain—or maintain allegiance to the Theocracy and perish in a sea of bloodshed and terror. Where is your puppeteer, the Bishop Ffesh? He is your real leader, is he not? Thou art but a petty puppet, art thou not, Kven—a lord in name only? See how they even send you to me like a huntsman sends his cur! Go back to thy master and tell him what I’ve said.”
“And who are these?” asked Kven when he had recovered his poise. Raised to be a lord, he would not cower before the fearsome aspect of his enemy. “Wild tribesmen? Demon-worshippers?”
“They were infidels from the depths of the forest, the assassins of the Theocracy, keeping your world in order. They were called Shaffu, from Shaffnâ; now they are all followers of the Right Religion, free from the domination of false priests; these are the Army of Plant Man! We shall scale your walls, burn your houses and annihilate the House of Kven—that most treacherous of houses, which betrayed Kishton and supported the usurper, Ush. Go to Bishop Ffesh and speak my words. Tell him that Brother Ifunka Kaffa of the Order of the Monks of Bishgva, from the Monastery of the Brown Owl, is here, with Brothers Ffen, Shem and Ushwan—yes, Ushwan—whom he sought to murder at the hands of the Shaffu. Tell him that we spared his life once but the time for reckoning is at hand! Go!”
Flushed and dismayed, the lord and his knights turned about and rushed back into the city, ordered the gate to be closed and rushed back to the Bishop’s Headquarters. He approached the bishop with all due haste and repeated what Plant Man had told him. The bishop’s face went pale green, as if all the blood had been drained out of him; his expression was one of grief, his eyes lost any spirit of hope and vivacity. He fell to his knees and bowed his head.
“Waila, waila, waila!!!” he yowled—the Tremni expression for extreme grief and despair.
“Your Eminence, there is no time for this!” Dilwa urged him. “We must act and act now!”
“How has this happened?” Ffesh cried. “The Shaffu have betrayed us! Where is the Sage, Shaffu-Nayakht-go? What of Asharru their Lord?”
“I saw no sign of them,” said Kven, though he did not, indeed, know what either looked like.
“Send riders to Ritvator. We need reinforcements.”
“To what end?” asked Ffesh. “He will rip down our walls with the very trees of Shivka!”
“We can hold them off at the walls,” Kven advised. “They have only a battering ram and ladders. We can stave them off, keep them at bay, until Ritvator comes to our aid. By then, Kubbawa will have raised an army of tens of thousands to quash the rebellion.”
“I agree, your Eminence,” said Dilwa prudently. “Send the riders; call Ritvator to our aid.”
“I myself shall go,” Sfen volunteered.
Kven eyed him disapprovingly.
“Very well,” said the bishop. “And send word to Okayeshvi in the north and Ffantbav in the south. This is a threat to the entire Theocracy. They may have surprised us but they shall not catch Ritvator and Kubbawa off-guard.”
Sfen saluted and left the chamber; he left his deputy in charge of the watch, mounted his ffentbaff with two of his men and selected three other groups of riders to send word to Kubbawa, Okayeshvi and Ffantbav. Opening the back gate, they set off. Having anticipated this move, a battalion of mounted Shaffu engaged them. A hail of arrows struck the Ffantplain riders like pins in a cushion. Sfen’s chest was punctured with a dozen shafts, blood pouring out from every wound, his mouth gurgling blood and bile, and then the fool fell headfirst off his mount.
“Yônadh-im khû erim-krâ (bring him to the General),” said an officer in Shaffi. “Khashla-zen khashvavuff-krâ ffi miftîkhsha-zen-ffish ftôn gvînshuff-krâ. Ffêntaff-zen vâl-krâ ffi gâladh-im ftôn gayiff-krâ (behead the others and stick them on spears. Harness the ffentbaffs and join them to the galad).”
They beheaded the other riders and dragged Sfen’s corpse away. When they reached Tesh-Khan, he smiled.
“They’ve tried to warn the Theocracy,” he said. “But they have failed, your Majesty.”
“Excellent,” said Plant Man. “They have given us their answer. Rain arrows upon their watchmen!”
“Shân-paft-zen! Shân-zen atolsha-zen-reffû (archers! Arrows over the wall)!”
Thousands of bows were drawn by myriad archers on ffentwas.
“Lîffê-krâ (fire)!”
Kven was in the Headquarters with the bishop and Dilwa as they heard the whining scream of thousands of arrows soaring into the air.
“It’s begun,” said Kven stoically as his eyes watched the jagged-edged arrows dotting the air above the city like streaks of black on a cyan-blue canvas.
The watchmen and citizens looked up in alarm as the missiles rained down upon them, piercing eyes, sticking throats, stabbing shoulders, backs and breasts, filling the streets with splatters of blood and bits of torn flesh. The jagged arrowheads sliced and pierced, ripping meat from bone, slaying watchmen, knights and bystanders alike. Women suckling babes, beggars on the curb, children-at-play; all fell dead or maimed at the first volley. Cries of anguish, shrieks of pain, desperate pleas for divine protection in their moments of agony, deafened the ears of all spectators, who watched in horror as their compatriots died and clutched at wounds all around them.
“Holy Votsku!” exclaimed the bishop. “What of our riders?”
“Dead, most likely,” Kven supposed. “Our watchmen are all dead or maimed. We shall have to surrender.”
“No!” Ffesh protested. “If they take us, they will conquer the next city, and the next! We must send out word to our friends.”
“We have no messenger-wultvas.”
“Is there no other way?” he pleaded.
Kven thought for a moment.
“My forebears built a tunnel. I am the only one who knows its location.”
“Take me there,” the bishop begged.
“Would you abandon your people?”
“These savages, this ‘Plant Man’ as he calls himself, will murder me.”
“Why? What did you do to him—to his friend, Ushwan?”
“I didn’t do anything. It was the Abbott. He asked the Shaffu to abduct the monk.”
“Then this abbott has doomed us all. As for me, I must stay with my people, my clansmen. I will take you to the tunnel. We shall live or die as one people—the Children of Kven.”
Fatalistic and determined to die an honourable death, the lord led the cowardly bishop to the underground tunnel. Located under the dungeon in a level accessed only through a drainage tunnel which led down into a narrow floor, one and a half okshas high, through which they, along with Dilwa, crawled with great difficulty. Squeezing through for some minutes, they reached the tunnel entrance. Carved through solid rock at least a
thousand years ago, the tunnel led three kobotvs out to the edge of Shivka forest. Cramped, damp and confined, it was an arduous task to crawl through it, but Bishop Ffesh was willing to give it a try, especially as it meant the difference between life and death.
“I go to Ritvator,” said the bishop.
“May the Great Spirit keep thee safe,” said Kven as the richly-robed ecclesiastic crawled into the damp and dirty passage, followed by Dilwa, whose face displayed evident disgust.
Returning to the Headquarters, Kven called together Tvem Liksh and all the surviving watchmen and armed men, including Yobid and Ffelka, who had managed to avoid being hit by arrows by hugging against the crenels of the wall. They were three thousand strong, some as young as twelve and as old as two hundred, a motley gathering of weak and strong, the rich and destitute, the experienced and novice, the sure-handed and the clumsy. Children of Kven and some of Ril, they looked at their chief with eyes of expectation as the Shaffu army beat its drums and chanted “Isheim hei! Isheim hei!” He mounted his ffentbaff and stood upon its back at the centre of the crowd, his face a pattern of stoic resolve, of courage in the face of insurmountable odds and baronial dignity. He spoke to his people with words of inspiration, welling up from the depths of his soul.
“People of Ffantplain!” he thus addressed them. “The hour of deciding has come! This is the moment—one moment—when we rise or fall as a people. The tribesmen of Kven—my people—and the mixed host of Ril—ye are both joined together like clay and water and cannot be sundered. Yet now a hammer seeks to smash our bond of unity, to destroy your way of life. What is at stake are your lives and livelihoods, your families and babes, your homes and possessions. When these gates are breached, our lives shall be forfeit, our families—fodder for the sword and axe, and our homes shall be burnt to the ground. At this moment, let us stand as one people; let us steel our resolve and gird our loins. We shall fight as soldiers; we shall fight as never man has fought before; we shall fight as brothers-in-arms willing to die for one another. When their army ascends our walls, drop boiling pitch upon their skulls, slash at their arms and heads, send their ladders flying, smash them with our catapult and terrorise them so that it may said that Ffantplain did not shirk its duty, that Ffantplain did not cave in to evil, that Ffantplain did its darnedest! Go, men! Go!”
The Rise of Plant Man, Lord of War, Conquest and Revenge: Green Monk of Tremn, Part II (Coins of Amon-Ra Book 2) Page 23