Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  Three hours before sunrise the night was as dark as it would be. The waxing moon, half-way to full, was hidden above thick clouds. Large barrels were quickly rolled up to the castle while archers shot at anyone appearing above the walls. The hooded and cloaked shadows rolling the barrels quickly fled out of the range of any arrow or bolt from the castle. Several defenders who attempted to shoot at them were forced to retreat by a hail of arrows.

  Flames suddenly burst from some of the barrels and they exploded against the wall, just as catapults unleashed a bombardment on the wall above the rear service entrance to the castle. Near that same entrance there was a roar of voices and a loud clashing of pots and pans, farm implements and even a few weapons. Long ladders were seen being moved around and brought closer to the wall.

  The barrels of explosive powder had no significant impact on the wall, nor did the catapults do any real damage. Nor did the owners of the ladders, roaring voices or clashes of implements come within arrow shot of the castle wall. However, the commotion lasted long enough to distract the castle’s defenders. They did not notice a team of pirate acrobats emerge from some unexploded barrels near the front gate, mount half-way up one side of the gate, and slide Blan’s skysheet in so it hung down the lower half of the gate, with half its width hidden between gate and wall, and the other half exposed on the outside. Job done (with some extra difficulty due to the skysheet being still quite hot on one side), the acrobats melted away and the commotion died down, leaving the castle’s defenders confused and anxious about what had just happened and what it might mean.

  Blan had warned Arnapa that the plan might take an entire day to work and it might not work at all until a sunny day arrived. With a sky so overcast, Arnapa did not dare hope for an early outcome. However, by dawn the clouds on the eastern horizon had cleared. Unhindered sunlight struck the carefully angled panels of skyhull. Their skysheet coatings collected the sun’s energy and transferred it in a blaze of light onto the exposed part of Blan’s roll of skysheet. Within seconds the panels went black, but not before Blan’s roll also went black. Nothing more happened for a few seconds; it seemed a long time to Arnapa.

  Everyone was stunned to silence when they heard three deafening cracks, two in quick succession, and another crack two seconds later. What followed was a more drawn-out, bone-shaking, screaming rattle as the huge castle gate fell outward and crashed on the ground. The middle and lower hinges had snapped under the stress caused by the skysheet’s heat. One side of each hinge was intensely heated by the hot side of the skysheet roll while the other side remained icy cold. The hinges had been made in haste and not with the greatest care. The acrobats had been instructed to make sure that the skysheet was pushed into the gap far enough to reach the iron hinges. The jolt from the two lower hinges had then cracked the upper hinge. The gate fell, first from the hinged side and then, drawing its locking bars with it, from the other side.

  The castle might have comfortably housed a thousand defenders if it had been fully repaired after the earthquake, but only the walls, gate and outer defences had been attended to. The defenders were overcrowded and miserable. Their leaders had hoped to hold out until Black Knight returned to retake the harbour, but there was no hope of holding out for long without a gate. After about an hour of heated argument, the ordinary soldiers mutinied, arrested their officers and offered their surrender to the besiegers.

  The prisoners were disarmed and sorted into three groups. The first, by far the largest group, was made up of ordinary soldiers who swore not to rejoin the Kraran invasion. The officers and specialists who knew some of the enemy’s strategy and tactics but were not involved in war crimes made up the second group. The third, very small group, consisted of those who were possibly war criminals.

  The first group was sorted into work details to repair the damage caused by the occupation. After a few weeks of that, they would be escorted in small groups to a place halfway between Sirsette Manor and Pitpet Brook from where they could make their own way through the foothills of the mountains until they reached roads or rivers that would take them to the coast and then to their homes. The second and third groups, perhaps two hundred in all, were kept as prisoners for interrogation. Penntrafa was awarded the contract for selling those convicted of war crimes. Although slavery was usually illegal under the law of Austra County (as applied before Black Knight’s occupation), it was permitted as an alternative to the death penalty.

  The handling of prisoners turned out to be one of the major challenges of the mission. Apart from the enemy garrisons in the castle and in the three main towns along Equa River, the Langardam pirates captured a total of eight dragon boat crews returning from patrols northeast of Sand Island and another dozen returning from the far end of the docks near the cliffs of Mount Equa. They also captured many enemy soldiers in the jungle and adjoining woodland or hiding out near the farms they had been preying on.

  Penntrafa’s pirates were quite good at finding people. Their job description required them to hide in mangrove swamps and venture into jungles either to escape pursuit or lie in wait for prey (to ‘collect tax’ as Penntrafa called it). Soon after arriving ashore and consulting with Arnapa and Gardolinya, Penntrafa sent many of her crew with local guides to comb the jungle and surrounding countryside for enemy soldiers not yet captured by Gardolinya’s militia.

  As fraught with risk and difficulty as the mission to recapture Austra Castle had been, the task of restoring a free and civilized society was greater by far. The entire county had been liberated, not just the castle. What had started as a military venture had become the creation of a new civilian government. People needed food and water urgently, roads and docks had to be repaired, the Equa River dredged, goods and services produced, free markets opened, trade pursued, disputes resolved, law and order maintained, and elections held to replace local officials who had not survived the occupation.

  Arnapa proved to be a capable administrator. She was fortunate to have the willing assistance of the surviving local officials who had administered the county before the occupation, as well as experienced Akrinan commanders who made up a large part of the group that Telko had brought with him. The latter proved helpful not only in general matters of government but also in the investigations of the new War Crimes Court. Nonetheless, it was clear that Arnapa had previous government experience at a high level, although nobody seemed to know when or how she might have gathered these skills.

  35

  Panners Stream – 2nd October

  “Blan, we must go now,” Nightsight said, gently touching her shoulder. “The castle has been taken without loss of life, thanks to your ingenious plan.”

  Blan roused herself from sleep and nodded. She should have felt pleased that her plan had worked. It was a comfort to her at some level, yet it did little to lift her spirits or drive the sadness from her heart.

  “Telko would have liked to see that,” was all she could say as tears flowed silently down her cheeks again.

  Suddenly Blan wondered if the crystal brains could give her some answers. She could not think of any logical reason why it might do so, and she would normally spurn such an illogical thought, but Actio 28 was deeply associated in her mind with her last happy time with Telko. That alone made her want to retrieve it and hold it, just as she had done on that last night when Telko was watching her; that last night which seemed now to be in a lost kingdom of love and happiness.

  “Can we first go to Panners Island?” Blan asked. “There are things I hid there. I must retrieve them.”

  “Of course,” Nightsight conceded, delighted that Blan had found some purpose, however small. Although he had not yet suffered the death of a lover, he had suffered other sad losses in his life, and he felt that he could understand Blan’s anguish. He tried to think about how he would feel if something terrible happened to Arnapa, but he found it too disturbing. One could try to build defences against adverse events in the future, but to dwell on such things was to suck life from t
he present. He hoped that Blan could find a way back to her normal self, one step at a time. She would never be the same, but there were so many things for her to look forward to. He was sure that Telko would have told her the same.

  He said nothing of these thoughts to Blan. Her pain was still too raw. He thought that saying too much now might seem to be making light of the tragedy. He did not want to do that and, in any event, he knew he was far from adept at counselling others. Instead, he would help her within the ambit of his own talents. He drew the canoe back into the water and was pleased to see that Blan tried to help, though her mood was still distant and sombre.

  For her part, Blan was making an effort to block out her emotions, to force herself to play her part in the mission. She feared that she might fail Telko and her friends by losing her rationality. At an emotional level, she wanted to curl up with Actio 28 and somehow conjure up a picture of Telko which would remain forever, just as the tapestry of Fenfenwin had captured forever one moment of that beautiful person’s life. Also, the crystal brain was the one thing that, Blan thought, might focus her mind and enable her to continue to help the war effort.

  36

  “Dualfield Resonation Displacement Component: Actio 28 requests query?” It recognised Blan as soon as she laid her hands on it and directed her thought to it.

  She just said in her mind, “Hello.” That was all that was needed because the device already knew her and detected her intention to address it.

  Blan had retrieved all three of the brains and set them in front of her as she sat on an exposed part of the small sandbar halfway along the northeast side of the island. She remembered stopping there a month ago with Praalis, and yesterday with Telko.

  “Nightsight, can Arnapa spare me for the day while I examine these?” He had helped Blan dig up the crystals and had watched in amazement as they responded to her touch.

  “Of course, take all the time you want,” he said sympathetically. “If you need anything, just ask one of the guards. They will be doing shifts; two on the island and another two with fast horses on the highway.”

  “Thank you, Nightsight.” As she turned back to the crystal clusters she noticed the two guards nearby, an athletic-looking woman of about thirty and a well-fed, bald man of about forty. They were both chanting a lament in a language Blan did not understand but recognised as Akrinan. She promised herself that she would learn that language as soon as possible.

  “Repeating request, Dualfield Resonation Displacement Component: Actio 28 requests query?” Blan heard it, yet knew that no noise had been made.

  “May I just call you Actio 28?” Blan asked, though she did so in her thoughts rather than stating it aloud.

  “Dualfield Resonation Components will now be known to Blancapaw as Actios.” The other two Actios flashed with what Blan understood to be their recognition of the abbreviation.

  “Thank you. Who are these other two Actios?” Blan requested.

  “Referenced by centre of gravity, Actio 19 is twenty fingers north of Actio 28; Actio 25 is twenty-five fingers east of Actio 28.”

  Blan identified Actios 19 and 25. Then she sat for a long while looking at them. At first, her mind seemed to go blank. She was exhausted by grief and dehydrated, mostly from the warm and humid climate but possibly also from many hours of almost constant weeping. She struggled up and fetched some fresh water from one of the guards.

  Her thirst quenched, the first meaningful thought that came to her was that the Actio knew the measurement system now used by humans, so the system had possibly been taught to humans by the Visitors; humans must have been in a very primitive state when the newcomers arrived on Earth. That awareness seemed to break through her mental lethargy and ideas started to flow through her mind about how she could use the Actios and what she needed to ask them.

  “I counted fifty Actios in the sky ship. I left forty-five there and sent two over the mountains. Can you tell me where those two are now?” Blan silently asked.

  The answer was, “Locations of Actios 5 and 8 are unknown; presumed neither active nor charging. Location of the other Actios is shown in my visual output.”

  Blan saw the arcs of light in the upper face of Actio 28 change to form a map. A subdued yellow glow covered an area of about one league’s radius around the orbears’ cavern. She recalled that the Actios remaining in the sky ship had all been left attached to the filaments issuing from the inside of the hull. They received energy from the ambient light in the cavern.

  “Why can you only estimate the location of the charging Actios?” Blan asked

  The answer was, “A charging Actio produces a weaker signal. I can calculate the location more accurately by coordinating with one or more other Actios, by a method analogous to navigational triangulation.”

  Blan left it at that for the moment since she already knew the location of the sky ship. However, she was pleased that she had brought the other two Actios with her now that she knew they could be used for triangulation.

  She stayed a while longer at Panners Island working with the Actios. She discovered that the quimal with the Geode, which had escaped with Black Knight’s quimal the previous day, had not gone far. It was standing one league south of Port Island and had recently been in communication with other Geodes, some probably also on quimals, around the coast of Arctequa from Port Cankrar to Punandin. Blan guessed that Black Knight was in the process of calling forces in to blockade Austra Great Harbour. The rapid fall of Austra Castle had possibly dissuaded him from launching an immediate attack.

  Blan placed Actio 19 at one end of the island and Actio 25 at the other end. Then she spent several hours experimenting. She found that she could get Actio 28 to work with the other two to map out nearby features. She already knew that the Actios contained a master map of the world, but it was clearly very old and out of date; Panners Island, for example, did not exist then and the lower part of Panners Stream had a very different course which led some miles out beyond the current coast. The remarkable thing was that the Actios sometimes automatically updated their map as Blan used them. However, she could not yet be sure which of her enquiries had caused this to happen.

  She guessed that the Actios were programmed by the Visitors. If so, it suggested that the devices might have been intended to work with others in other sky ships. There was not much point in being able to carry out triangulation if all Actios were in a single ship. Perhaps there were other sky ships waiting to be discovered, Blan mused.

  Not surprisingly to her, she discovered that she could not get answers to just any question she wanted to ask like, “Where is Telko’s body? Do you have any suggestion about how I might find him?” It was plain to her that the Actios were deductive machines. They had some facility to think for themselves, especially eliminating ambiguity and interpreting the magnetic changes caused by her thought, but coming up with new hypotheses of their own was not their forte. Blan decided not to call them brains any more as they did not possess true emotion, imagination or innovative intelligence.

  With the guards’ help, Blan packed her three Actios into separate bags and made her way to Austra Castle on a borrowed horse. It was much bigger than Plashanette, though not quite as large as Whitestorm. However, riding horses, even through strange surroundings, no longer seemed such a challenge for her.

  It was nearly dark when she arrived. She could not help swallowing hard when she saw the castle for the third time in her life. The first time she had been fleeing it; the second time she had paid no attention to it, being consumed with grief; this time she was deliberately approaching it. There were some of Telko’s people on hand to take the horse from her and help her onto the ferry across Equa River. She reached the other bank about two stadia upstream from the beach where she had stolen a boat in what seemed like a former life.

  Everyone seemed to be busy. Local tradesmen were already repairing the castle’s internal stairway to the watchtower at the top; Nightsight had already been up there by rope and had re
ported that quimals were gathering to blockade the harbour. The pirates were guarding the harbour entrances and laying shipping traps there. Locals led by Akrinans were in the captured dragon boats patrolling the shallow waters around Port Island and Sand Island. Other Akrinans were helping the crew repair and adapt the captured quimal; they were happy to discover that it had been built in Akrin, although sold to Pelfa many years ago, and therefore of superior construction to most of Black Knight’s fleet. Nightsight’s canoeists were stationed around all the waterways and were setting up beacons for speedy communication.

  37

  Austra Castle – 4th October

  Blan spent most of the third of October sleeping. The morning after that was overcast again and rain came in heavy bursts from the sea, more like the winter rains of the north than the downpours of the tropics, except it was still very warm.

  For a moment after waking Blan thought that she was in her own bed in her own cottage. The bed was similar, and the room was not so different. She could also hear the sea. Then she felt the pillow and it was still wet from her tears. Everything that had happened came flooding back to her.

  She went to the window and saw that she was in a house overlooking Equa River. There were many boats and barges in the river, coming and going between the castle and the towns upstream. She noticed several canoeists racing at speeds which suggested that they were carrying messages; with Black Knight on their doorstep they would hardly be holding competitions. She realised that the sound of the sea was coming from the harbour half a mile behind her. It sounded as though waves were breaking against a sea wall. Perhaps a great storm is coming, she mused. It would not trouble her friends much with the harbour to protect them. She hoped that the enemy quimals outside the harbour would have to flee from its path.

  Arnapa had arranged for Blan to stay in the most comfortable room she could find. It was in a house about half a mile upriver from the castle.