Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  Once she was satisfied that everything was in order Blan walked to the water’s edge and stepped into the water to cool her feet. She had taken a few short naps through the night, to keep alert, but she now felt a wave of tiredness sweep over her. She would be busy for the rest of the day and would then have to set out on a long journey without much chance of getting any rest in the meantime. Most of all, she needed to keep her mind alert so she would not forget something she needed to take with her, or gloss over checking something that could not be fixed or corrected once the expedition had set off.

  The water felt refreshingly cool; not too cold. Blan thought that a quick swim might brighten her up and clear her mind. Nightsight and Arnapa were not due to come here until well after dawn; she reckoned that she had at least an hour to spare. Rather than take another nap she removed her clothes and laid them carefully on a dry part of the stone floor. Then she walked slowly into the water until it was up to her neck. She swam around gently, without exerting herself, while she allowed the cool water to caress and comfort her body and, indeed, her mind.

  She had been relaxing in the water for just a few minutes when she heard a splash behind her. She looked around quickly. In the flickering light cast by her lantern, now sitting on the floor near her clothes, she saw a tall, muscular man walk slowly into the water and then pause. It was Telko.

  “The water is very refreshing after such a busy night,” he said softly. “May I join you?”

  He had removed most of his clothes to expose his magnificent physique. However, Blan noticed that he was still wearing some kind of undergarment around his waist. She knew nothing of the fashion in his populous country, that everyone wore bathing trunks when they went swimming. She suddenly remembered that she had absolutely nothing on at all. At home she would always swim naked because there was never anyone else around to see. She wondered if she would have to stay in the water until he was gone.

  “Of course, come in, it’s very nice in here,” Blan called. Whilst worrying about her nakedness, she also really wanted to talk to him some more. He quickly swam out to her until they were shoulder to shoulder looking back toward the lantern. She asked him to tell her more about his homeland and he asked her to tell him about hers. They talked for twenty minutes, yet it seemed to them like days. They laughed together and found that they were no longer shoulder to shoulder but facing each other. Suddenly they both felt a thrill as their fingertips came together in the water between them. Fingertips became hands and then arms and then bodies. Their lips touched and opened.

  This was not the first time that Blan had been in a passionate embrace with a man. There had been a few young men; she had never let them go too far and had always managed to extract herself on friendly terms. She did not include her encounter with Black Knight as one of her romantic escapades. She deeply hoped that the earthquake had interrupted him before she had become a slave to his dynastic ambition. Only time would tell. Once he had convinced himself that she had agreed to be his Destined Princess, he had been far from brutal. To her extreme embarrassment her body had responded to Black Knight’s unexpectedly gentle caresses and this had not helped her undermine his arrogant assumptions about her. She did not want to think about the possibility that such an evil man as Black Knight might, under other circumstances, have been able to seduce her. She was not like Arnapa who seemed to be able to move seamlessly from one personality to another, one moment Black Knight’s eager concubine and the next moment the dedicated Master Spy engaged in trying to bring about his downfall. Blan had just one personality, a complicated one in the eyes of some people, a simple one in her own eyes, but she was only comfortable being herself and acting on her own conscience.

  This was different. What Blan felt now with Telko was real infatuation. No, she mused, this was true love. She would marry this man if he asked her. Should she ask him? Not yet. There was a war to wage.

  Telko too felt that he had found his true love. As the most eligible bachelor in his country he had been sought after by many women and he had entertained many of them. He was spoilt for choice; but he had never before found or even dreamed of finding someone like Blan. Everything about her enthralled him. He knew he was in love with her. Should he ask her to marry him? Not yet. He knew how she valued her independence. She also held a great office of State, albeit one which had not yet resumed its ancient importance, and in the future she would have important decisions to make for State reasons. There was also a war to be waged. Telko did not want to act selfishly. He would not ask her yet.

  Exhausted from their passion, the two lovers lay together in the water for a while.

  Suddenly Blan blurted out, “Arnapa and Nightsight will be here any minute!”

  They quickly waded ashore, brushed off as much water from themselves as they could and dressed again. No sooner had they made themselves presentable than Nightsight and Arnapa marched through the doorway from the promenade.

  It was much lighter now. The rising sun, although still hidden by Mount Equa, had already inflamed the clouds with red and gold. Nightsight and Arnapa immediately saw Blan and Telko and greeted them jovially.

  Nightsight launched into a discussion with Telko about the coming mission, seemingly unaware of what had passed earlier between the two lovers.

  Arnapa, however, took less than a second to see that something had changed. She looked searchingly into Blan’s eyes and smiled knowingly. Blan blushed. Arnapa saw this as a confession, as good as signed and sealed.

  “I can teach you many of the tricks of being a spy, Blan, but I can’t recommend that you become one with that blush of yours,” Arnapa whispered gleefully to Blan.

  Then, with a nod toward Telko and Nightsight, she added quietly, “I now see that Telko has lost the hesitation of the newcomer and has transformed into the totally confident veteran. He now reminds me of my brother. I will have to keep an eye out for you two love-birds on this mission; make sure you turn up on time, and so forth.”

  Blan, still blushing, smiled sheepishly. Arnapa then knew that her intuition had served her well.

  Arnapa and Nightsight left the boathouse first. Telko and Blan had one last kiss before leaving. He lifted Blan up in his arms so they were face to face, her legs clinging around his waist. Only a man of Telko’s size and strength could do such a thing so easily with her. Although Blan carried no unnecessary weight, she was very robust and heavy boned.

  Glowing with fulfilment and basking in the loving gaze of Telko’s deep purple eyes, Blan mounted Plashanette and set off for Arnapa’s house. As she did so, she wondered about Arnapa’s reference to having a brother. Arnapa had never before told her anything reliable about her family. First she was wife to Baron Sirsette, then that was just a fictional cover story. She was said to be cousin to Pencar and Penna but that too turned out to be a fictional cover story. Did Arnapa have a brother? Was he someone known to Blan? Blan was curious.

  9

  From mid-morning and onward, throughout the daylight hours, small groups of riders were seen accompanying caravans of carts travelling north along the highway that connected the city to Proequa River dockyards. They were moving at a leisurely pace. Enemy spies who might have evaded Count Tor’s search parties would see nothing unusual about this, unless they risked exposure by following the caravans for several leagues. Then they would have seen many of the riders and heavily-laden pack horses abandon the caravans and turn into a side road leading into the mountains. In fact, some riders were guards who continued with the caravans to the docks, but exactly two hundred and four riders took the road to a ruined fort in the mountain foothills.

  By nightfall the whole landward team had assembled under cover of the woods near the ruined fort. Arnapa remained mounted, the better to be seen and heard by the others. Telko stood nearby, the better to reinforce Arnapa’s authority over the Akrinans.

  “You have all been briefed on what we plan to do and how we plan to do it, so I will now just reiterate the main points you need t
o remember before we meet again outside Sirsette Manor,” Arnapa announced. “We have thirty-four groups of six. I will lead the first group.” She waved her hand to those who would be going with her: Blan; Telko; Zeep; and two of Telko’s people, one an older man to help Zeep with the carrier pigeons and the other a middle-aged woman with medical experience. Gardolinya had already gone back over the mountains to spy on Sirsette Manor and its approaches.

  “Your group will follow in the same order as the number given to it, from Group Two through to Group Thirty-Four. Each group has two additional pack horses for the weapons, tools and supplies. The pass is too narrow and dangerous for larger parties to manage with reasonable safety; even six riders and two pack horses will be a challenge, so take care. Each group should stay far enough behind the one in front to avoid congestion, at least until we are below the snow line on the other side. The whole team will assemble again as we approach Sirsette Manor and wait for me to liaise with Gardolinya. He will be there to meet us.”

  Arnapa hoped that the old man would be there. No plan had been made for how or when they would meet. There were too many uncertainties. Such a large-scale crossing of the pass had never been attempted before as far as Arnapa knew.

  Gardolinya was also at great risk. Their arrangement was that he would leave coded messages at the cave or at a designated place near the approach road. Beyond that, they would use their spy craft to find each other, assuming that Gardolinya was free to do so. However, Arnapa considered that there was no point in worrying the team members with these uncertainties. They were all experienced people who did not need her to call the odds.

  “With thirty-four groups starting out a quarter-hour apart, it will take at least eight hours and probably much longer between my arrival at the manor and the arrival of the final group, so we will know what is happening at the manor long before we are all gathered there. Are you happy with that, Telko?”

  “Yes, all my people are clear that you are in command and they have all been fully briefed about the mission. The group leaders also have additional instructions about what they have to do and they have each briefed their own group. These are my best people. I hand picked them all. Have no worries about them following the plan.”

  “Then let’s go!” Arnapa announced more cheerfully and with less trepidation than she felt.

  Telko, Blan, Zeep and the others mounted their horses. Unfortunately, Blan could not take Plashanette with her, nor could Zeep take Whitestorm. Neither horse was accustomed to mountain paths. Zeep was consoled that she looked no more outsized sitting on her sturdy mountain horse than did Telko who was taller by one finger.

  As Arnapa led her group into the mountains, the second group was ready and waiting and the third group were already carrying out final checks on their horses and baggage. The other groups were relaxing until the approach of their appointed departure time.

  *

  While the mountain team was assembling near the ruined fort, the canoe team was engaged in a similar exercise. Groups, each of ten canoeists in five canoes, were leaving the boathouse and heading for Eastern Passage where they gathered together out of sight of enemy shipping.

  Keeping to their groups, they set off after dark under a moonless sky.

  “Each group departs three minutes after the last,” Nightsight had instructed. “You leave in the order of the number allotted to your group. Keep your distance until the next resting point, and stay as near the cliffs of Mount Equa as you safely can. We don’t want an enemy lookout to alert the garrison at Austra Castle that we are on our way. We will all rest well at Unnamed Fjord before we proceed to rendezvous with Arnapa.”

  They were not expecting Unnamed Fjord to still be occupied by the enemy. All the action was now around Port Fandabbin, Proequa and Slave Island. There was no reason for the enemy to expect an attack on Austra Castle, or so Arnapa and Nightsight hoped.

  10

  Mountain pass – 25th to 27th September

  Arnapa’s final brief to her team before setting off had been short. There had been no time for her to teach all the group leaders how to avoid being followed by spies. She had to put her trust in the loyalty and competence of Telko’s Akrinans. Now that a permanent garrison was stationed near the ruined fort, Arnapa hoped also that spies would be discouraged from trying to follow her team into the mountains.

  To reduce the chance that a captured horse might lead an enemy over the pass, all but one horse in each group would be blindfolded, except when resting and when the path became especially treacherous. None of the horses had been over the pass before, so they would not recognise the places where they stopped to rest. Arnapa and Tor had agreed that it was no longer possible to keep the pass as carefully secret as before. If the war went badly at Port Fandabbin all would be lost and the secrecy of the pass would not matter much.

  Rather than give each group comprehensive directions at the outset, which would reveal the whole journey, Arnapa left easy-to-see tokens at regular points along the track, which contained instructions for the next stage of the journey. Only the last group leader would collect these and destroy each one as soon as he reached the next. Telko appointed one of his most senior and competent officers to lead the last group.

  The journey was made a lot quicker than it would have been had frequent backtracking been employed to confuse spies. However, with the amount of baggage carried, not to mention the baskets of pigeons, this crossing took Arnapa considerably longer than the crossing she had made with Nightsight and Gardolinya nearly three weeks earlier. Leaving shortly after sunset and riding for two hours at a time, interspersed with one hour periods of rest, it was not until the middle of the next day before the first group reached the western snowline. There they dismounted and led their horses up to the top of the pass. This was arduous work. They took longer rests and reached the top just as the sun was appearing in the east; then they continued without pause to the eastern snowline.

  Not far beyond the snow they stopped to rest, and to redistribute the luggage so they could mount their horses again. A great rock jutted out above them like the prow of a ship.

  Arnapa, Blan and Telko climbed to the top of the rock. It was hard going because patches of ice lined the stair-like track that led up around one of the sides of the rock. Once at the top, they looked back for signs of the next group appearing in the distance behind them.

  “If only I had Nightsight’s powers of vision,” Arnapa cried in frustration as she peered back up the mountain slope. Even her spyglass did not help.

  “Don’t worry; they will come,” Telko assured her. “The mountains of Akrin are not so different from these. Where is Sirsette Manor from here?”

  Arnapa turned around and looked eastward. The land fell away steeply in stony swirls and blobs until it became increasingly wooded. After two or three leagues the woodland thickened and eventually merged into deep tropical jungle. Somewhere below them, about a league away, if one could fly, stood the manor house she had come to know so well. She pointed in the direction she knew, although she could not see the house.

  They waited until midday. At last they saw Group Two coming around a narrow ledge some five hundred paces behind them. Someone in the group saw them and gave broad signals with his arms to indicate that all was well. The three descended from their rocky lookout and, without waiting, Arnapa mounted her horse and signalled the others to follow her on the last leg of their journey to Sirsette Manor.

  *

  Blan felt that she was walking through a misty dream as she alternately rode and trudged across the mountains. She was a young woman in love. She and Telko both kept busy with the chores at hand and did not talk much. There was little unnecessary talk all around, everyone was so tired. But every now and then her hand would meet his as they were lifting a saddle onto one of the horses, or his hand would meet hers when they both reached for the same utensil, and they would look briefly into each others eyes and smile. Beyond that, they both knew that the mission had to come
first, so they kept apart unless there was a worthy chore to share. Besides, they both understood that Telko’s followers were overwhelmingly people who missed their wives, husbands or lovers at home. Neither Blan nor Telko thought it seemly to advertise their romance just now, when others might be yearning to be with loved ones. The fact that all the Akrinans had already noticed their prince’s romance, and smiled upon it with great approval, had not yet occurred to either of the young lovers.

  After a while Blan noticed that they had come to the place where she and Arnapa had used the skysheet to foil Borckren’s attack, and where Nightsight had slain Borckren with his arrow. She was pleased to see that there were no signs that anyone else had been there since. In fact, there was little sign that anything had happened there at all. She felt it hard to believe that those events had occurred just seventeen days ago. It seemed like a lifetime, before she knew Telko or Memwin, Zeep or Neep. She felt that her life had wholly changed since then.

  Thinking about the battle with Borckren brought Blan back from her romantic dreams. Her scientific disposition began to assert itself again. Sure, she now had Telko’s love, but she must not let that hamper either of them in their efforts to resist the enemy. She started to think again about the mission at hand, the sky ship, the Communicors and her heart-felt responsibility to help the cause of freedom.

  *

  Sirsette Manor – 27th September

  By mid-afternoon Arnapa and her group were approaching the outskirts of Sirsette Manor. They had slowed down so the next group could catch up and they could see the third group not far behind.

  Blan heard the tinkling of bells on the road ahead. The track was now quite wide and she was riding between Arnapa and Telko. She reached out to touch Arnapa’s shoulder. Then she signalled for them to stop, her other hand to one ear so as to indicate that she had heard something unusual.