Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  Arnapa, on the other hand, had reacted differently. Over the last few years Zeep had seen Arnapa visit the duchy from time to time and knew that she had secret discussions with Count Tor. Zeep was fascinated by Arnapa and strongly attracted to her. The journey across the mountains had been the first time that Zeep had been close enough to Arnapa to speak to her on a personal level. Eventually Zeep had broached the subject of intimate relationships between women. Arnapa had said, somewhat obtusely, that she considered herself to be a free spirit and she would never form a relationship with one person to the exclusion of others. Zeep knew that something was going on between Arnapa and Nightsight. However, Nightsight was not here, and Arnapa had, after all, implied that her relationship with Nightsight was not exclusive.

  Zeep tentatively knocked on the door. She waited a while and was just about to leave when Arnapa opened it and swept her arm back to invite Zeep to enter.

  Zeep started to say, “I came to let you know that the first pigeon messages have been sent…” Then she intended to say, “And, of course, to see how you were,” but Arnapa cut her off.

  “I don’t want you to be hurt,” Arnapa warned softly as though she had read Zeep’s innermost thoughts. “I have other lovers”. Then with a smile she reached up to put her hands on Zeep’s broad shoulders.

  For her part, Arnapa craved love wherever she could find it. Sometimes she even settled for the pretence of love, as with her affair with Black Knight. But she knew that Zeep’s heart was pure and gentle and, in many ways, as needy as her own. She didn’t feel that she was being disloyal to Nightsight or any of her other lovers by reaching out to this kindred spirit, a woman as isolated from a normal life as Arnapa herself.

  “I understand that,” Zeep affirmed as she thought that the hurt of loneliness, so well known to her, was greater than any hurt that might come from sharing Arnapa with others. Silent tears touched her cheeks as she effortlessly lifted Arnapa up to her and held her close.

  Zeep’s work left her little time for a private life. She would always remember and cherish this moment of intimacy with Arnapa.

  14

  Austra County – 28th September

  By the time the sun rose over the treetops Arnapa’s team had assembled their fifty canoes for the descent of Panners Stream. Blan, Arnapa and Telko were examining the wheel of the mill that adjoined the house and Blan was pointing out to them where skyhull material had been used to repair it. She described the cave near the rapids where Pitpet Brook joined Panners Stream that she had visited when she was last in the area, and what she had found there. She told them as much of the story of the Vanantii and the Chanangii as she felt necessary to enable the others to make sense of what she was saying about the skyhull material.

  Arnapa did not know how the skyhull material had found its way into the mill wheel. It had not been repaired since she had occupied the manor. She promised to ask Gardolinya but doubted whether he would know where the material had been found.

  “The old baron’s workers could have found the material anywhere in the woods or jungles around,” Arnapa speculated. “There might have been piles of the stuff lying around and just overgrown by the jungle. Maybe the jungle was not even here when your Chanangii built their ship. So long ago, it could have been a different landscape altogether.”

  Blan thought about this for a while. Changes in sea-levels, forests and mountains over the course of time were matters that had been increasingly on her mind since she laid eyes on Mount Equa, so different in shape to the other mountains, yet containing rocks so very similar to those of Slave Island.

  “If I find the sky ship again, as I believe I can, I am sure that I will discover materials and secrets there that will help us,” Blan promised. “However, I will need fifteen to twenty strong men to lift the vessel.”

  “I can’t imagine what you have in mind or how it might help us,” Arnapa replied, “but, were it not sufficient that Praalis has absolute confidence in you, I have witnessed your talent. I will trust in your judgement. However, remember that we must all reach Austra Castle within three days.”

  “I can take eighteen of my men with me to help Blan find her sky ship,” Telko offered. “If it is very near the rapids where Pitpet Brook meets Panners Stream, we can investigate the sky ship while the rest of the team bring the canoes down past the rapids. It should take almost as long to move the canoes as Blan and I will take to complete our investigation. Should we be a little longer than expected, ten canoes can be left for us below the rapids and we will follow you downstream with little time lost overall.”

  Blan was delighted with Telko’s offer. Arnapa felt uneasy about it but without being able to think of a logical reason why that was so. In the end, Arnapa agreed with the plan.

  While the team’s pack horses had been burdened mostly with sections for fifty lightweight canoes, they had also carried essential parts for three large catapults, although not the heavy iron joints and timber beams that could be sourced locally. Nevertheless, Blan had also made sure that some extra equipment of her own had been brought. She had squeezed much of this into the packs wherever she could find space and she had arranged for three horses to carry the larger pieces. Now, having obtained Arnapa’s agreement and Telko’s support for her quest to rediscover the sky ship, Blan excitedly sought out these special parts and gathered them together. They were the fittings and tools from which she hoped make a small waterwheel. She distributed the items across the ten canoes that would be used by her group and she asked Telko to make sure that some of the men he chose for the mission had experience of woodwork and metalwork.

  “I can do better than that,” Telko boasted. “I will bring five shipwrights.”

  The canoes were larger and more heavily loaded than anything that Arnapa was accustomed to use this high up the river, so the team had to carry them half a mile downstream before the water was deep enough to bear them. Even so, Blan and Telko set off with their group at midday and made comfortable progress. The other groups followed soon after with Arnapa and Zeep in the lead. The rest of the team, a hundred of Telko’s people, remained to guard Sirsette Manor and keep the escape route open back over the mountains. This included Zeep’s assistant pigeon-handler who remained at the manor house with half of the pigeons.

  *

  Blan found that the voyage down Panners Stream was quite pleasant after the arduous passage through the mountains. In its upper reaches the stream was broad and very shallow, but still strong enough to propel the canoes forward with little effort on the part of their occupants. Eventually it became deeper and, as tributaries joined it, stronger still. As far as Blan was concerned, accustomed as she was to the narrow waterways of her homeland in Occidentala, Panners Stream was a river in every respect, as indeed was Pitpet Brook.

  They saw no sign of other human activity as the open woodland of the mountain foothills gave way to denser forest and then to jungle. There were many strange noises in the jungle but nothing that would suggest the presence of enemies.

  The climate became noticeably warmer by the hour, and eventually hot and humid. Before they departed, all the canoeists had consumed and covered themselves with various concoctions that Arnapa and Blan had brought over the mountains in sizeable quantity. These were to ward off attack by mosquitoes and tropical parasites. Nobody needed encouragement to take Arnapa’s advice in this regard. Although malaria and yellow fever had long ago disappeared from the world, there were other unpleasant illnesses carried to humans by mosquitoes and other flies, and no one wanted their body to become infested with the parasitic worms that lurked in tropical rivers and ponds. As Blan was to discover one day, some of those nasty organisms were the descendants of creatures deliberately created by a former civilization of humans for the purposes of warfare which, by escaping into the wild and then mutating, had evaded destruction in the Catastrophic War as well as the later geological upheavals.

  When Telko and Blan glided untroubled through a particularly thick swarm
of flying insects, Telko called over his shoulder to Blan.

  “Black Knight’s followers suffer the tropics badly. Nothing learned from the last war has been used to ease the plight of those sent to this one. Many soldiers who have passed through Austra County have become very ill. The Krarans have no remedy for it. It is outside the experience of their cool, northern climate. In Akrin we have concoctions to repel parasites and fight tropical disease, but seemingly not as effective as yours. Coming from a northern climate as you do, how did you come to discover these medicines?”

  “My grandfather discovered them after his escape from Krar,” Blan explained. “He travelled throughout the known world, including the tropics. He taught both Arnapa and me. He first taught me about the medicines found around my home. I could smell them from many paces away, so I learnt quickly. When we came through this jungle he told me what to look for and, of course, what to smell for. I could find them by smell much faster than by sight; unfortunately my sight is somewhat less than ordinary and I am thinking of getting lenses to help me read. Anyway, Arnapa and I had little trouble finding what we needed in the jungle and swamps west of Proequa River and even around some of the streams near Nantport where patches of original jungle can still be found.”

  “You are a remarkable woman, Grand Vizier Blancapaw, Countess of Western Point,” he said, smiling. Blan giggled and then they both burst out laughing.

  They settled back to guiding their canoe down the fast current, both marvelling at the richness of the jungle that crowded the shore on either side of them and reached over them. Blan thought about how different this was to the last time she was in Panners Stream. She had been utterly exhausted; dressed in a torn sheet; bitten by insects, fish and whatever else she did not wish to imagine; had an unquenchable thirst; and was pushing a small boat upstream against a strong current, her injured grandfather inside. By contrast, she was now gliding effortlessly downstream, quite comfortable with a man she loved, and with time to observe and absorb the fascinating things she saw where jungle met river.

  “Why do they call this a stream?” Telko asked. “Surely it’s a full-size river.”

  “Praalis told me that it was to distinguish it from the mighty Equa River, which is deep and wide enough for sizeable ships to voyage many leagues, almost to the cliffs of Mount Equa. People would refer to the River, the Stream and the Brook when they meant Equa River, Panners Stream and Pitpet Brook respectively. All three would qualify as rivers in most countries, I think.”

  At that moment Arnapa and Zeep came level. They had paddled fast to catch up with Telko’s group. Arnapa called across to them.

  “We have made faster time than I expected. Some of the tributaries from the north have swollen Panners Stream with unusually heavy rain in the mountain foothills. The rapids are now just half a mile away. We will stop shortly and make camp. Zeep and I will go forward to show you where.”

  Arnapa and Zeep then paddled ahead.

  Blan and Telko soon came to a place where the stream broadened and waterworn rocks kept the jungle away from the water’s edge. There was an area of rocky riverbank on the left where Arnapa and Zeep were already tying a mooring cable around a thick tree trunk which had grown a few paces apart from the main body of the seemingly impenetrable jungle.

  As she came closer, Blan saw that it was not by chance that the tree trunk was standing clear of the jungle. The bank had been cleared except for that one tree. The jungle had tried to return but had so far only managed to repopulate the bank with smaller plants and saplings. The stumps of rotten timber posts could be seen on the bank and in the water, too regularly spaced to be randomly sewn trees. Blan guessed that they were the remains of a small jetty.

  When Blan and Telko brought their canoe to the bank they could see that the mooring cable was in fact like a ladder made of rope. They then remembered why they too carried a length of rope ladder in their canoe and why each canoe was equipped with a similar length.

  There was still enough daylight coming between the trees overarching the river for them to build their makeshift port without lighting any lanterns. As each canoe arrived, its section of rope ladder was joined to the others. When all were assembled the ladder reached from the mooring tree down the side of the stream almost as far as the rapids. The ladder was linked to other trunks or strong branches wherever they could be reached along its length. The canoes were tied to the lower line of the ladder while the upper line was used for support by the team members who had to clamber along the treacherous bank from one canoe to another to distribute spare rations and medications or pass on communications.

  By the time darkness enveloped them, everyone was asleep except for three pairs of guards. The guard duty shifts were just three-quarters of an hour each. Those on guard duty gladly conceded that Blan, Telko, Arnapa and Zeep should be exempt as their minds needed to be the clearest and most refreshed for the challenges ahead.

  *

  Deep into the night, the great shadowy form of Ooggah seemed to materialize a few paces from the water’s edge. The guards did not see her, but her liquid brown eyes studied them from the shadows of the jungle. Those eyes soon fixed on the sleeping form of Blan, her chest gently rising and falling with each breath and her right arm splayed out toward the man in the same canoe, their hands gently clasped together.

  15

  Pitpet Brook – 29th September

  Blan and Telko woke together as daylight crept across the highest leaves of the jungle. They gathered their group together on the river bank with all their essential supplies and the parts for Blan’s proposed waterwheel, and they prepared to set off through the jungle for the waterfall on Pitpet Brook.

  Blan had one more request to make of Arnapa before setting off. It was about something that had only occurred to her the previous night when she had tried to visualise the next day’s activities.

  “Arnapa, please leave one of our canoes tied up on this side of the rapids. If we find something we wish to send to Proequa straight away, we will need a canoe to take it back to Sirsette Manor.”

  Arnapa agreed. They could spare one canoe. If Blan found anything that should not fall into enemy hands, it should be sent back upstream, not taken with them to Austra Castle.

  Cutting through the jungle on foot with all her luggage proved not quite as difficult as Blan had imagined. Once there had indeed been a small jetty at the place where they had tied up their canoes. Years ago, when there was more river traffic, the jetty had been at one end of a jungle track which led to the waterfall and then north along Pitpet Brook for several leagues to an abandoned gold mine. Adventurous prospectors would still try their luck there from time to time, at least until Black Knight imposed travel restrictions on most of the population. Arnapa had been shown the track by Gardolinya and sometimes used it to collect jungle plants for her concoctions.

  Nevertheless, it took two hours for them to carry their burdens just half a mile to the waterfall. The path was almost overgrown but still evident to anyone who looked carefully. It had been kept open in recent months by the regular passage of wild boar and other large creatures, not by human industry.

  The going was hot and tiring. It was a relief when they came out onto the stony banks of Pitpet Brook, saw the waterfall and felt the fresh spray of tiny droplets of cool water on their faces. Blan felt a thrill when she looked up and saw the great hill of rock in front of her on the other side of the waterfall, the rock that contained the orbears’ cavern and the secret that lay within.

  In the distance to her right, Blan scanned across the huge rocky bowl of the rapids and saw some of Arnapa’s group already struggling forward with laden canoes. They were edging around both sides of the rapids, using the linked rope ladders to support canoe and canoeist alike as the latter swam, waded, clung to rocks or vines, and lifted the canoes across obstacles. As all the canoes were moved forward one length, the rear section of rope ladder would be detached from whatever trees, branches or rocks it had been tied to a
nd passed on to be added to the front of the procession.

  “It looks like we have the easy job,” Blan called out to Telko, moving her lips conspicuously so he could read them. The sound of the waterfall drowned out ordinary conversation.

  “We have for now,” Telko replied with jovial resignation. “Difficulties will come our way soon enough. Enjoy the good times while they last!” Little did he then realise how true this old cliché would prove to be, or how soon it would apply itself to his own life.

  Telko’s men passed a rope ladder underneath the waterfall where there was a ledge between the overhanging cliff and the water gushing over it. The ledge was slippery with moss and slime; not a safe path for carrying equipment. When ten men had crossed one-by-one to the other side, those on each side of the river set up a kind of overhead pendulum crane made of ropes and a canvas cradle reinforced by wooden struts. This was to be used to swing the tools, equipment and supplies from one side of the river to the other.

  Heavy support ropes were passed across the river and fixed between a large boulder high up on the east bank and the branch of a huge tree on the west bank. With the crane’s cradle in place on the western bank, two of the most agile of the Akrinans climbed along the support ropes to fix the position of the cradle’s hanging ropes so the cradle would hang down as near as possible to the middle of the river and could be swung like a pendulum from one side to the other. The cradle also had control ropes and a small pulley system attached to each side to enable the men on either bank to draw it and its contents to their side of the river. As it turned out, when the cradle was allowed to swing into the river, controlled by the ropes and pulleys on both sides, it dipped into the water a little, but this was not a serious problem as the cradle’s contents that needed to be kept dry such as rations and medicines could be placed on top of the parts and equipment that would not be harmed by water.