Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  “I am Carnus the Evervictor and I feel no guilt about anything,” the man scoffed as he tore her clothes off and threw her on the couch. There were armed guards by the entrance from the arena as well as the exit to the utility rooms. Besides, Carnus was too strong for her. Resistance was impossible.

  “If you have a wife or daughters, think how you would like them to be treated,” Blan pleaded. “Have some pity for me and others may show compassion for you and yours.”

  “As it happens I do have a wife and I have daughters just about your age,” Carnus said through a gruesome laugh. “No other man dare touch them, for they belong to me. I also have many other children by girls just like you all over the country, so don’t look to me for sympathy. I won you and I’m going to have you. When you have my child, think of it as a memento of Carnus the Evervictor and his greatness.”

  Blan struggled but it was no use. She wept, not so much for the pain and bruises that Carnus inflicted upon her, but in despair for her sense of self-worth. In that darkest time of her anguish she felt that her life force had been sullied forever. She blamed herself for getting into this situation and for not thinking of a way out. She wept for the memory of Telko and felt that she had let him down. She felt that she had let everyone down.

  Victims often find unjust blame in themselves when their legitimate choices are hijacked by the circumstances of their victimisation. Meeting Telko had changed Blan with love, but it had not changed her logical disposition in all other matters. Her emotions had ebbed low since she lost Telko, more than she was aware, yet she was resilient. Time would heal her. It would bring her the wisdom to understand that her ordeal had not lessened her in any way, nor had it justified any guilt or shame on her part. But that was for the future. Now Blan was shattered, at her lowest emotional ebb.

  As he departed, Carnus gulped down the flagon of wine left for his celebration. It should have been there when he arrived but it didn’t appear until just before he left. A hooded dwarf with a hunched back had crossed the room like a shadow and placed the flagon on a table near the door. The armed guards by the door had barely noticed.

  The arena was empty when Carnus left Blan. He had rarely been so pleased with himself. He had won many of these contests and taken many girls, but he had never had the satisfaction of bringing one with such stunning looks and regal manner to such a depth of despair. “Serves her right,” he spat as he slammed the door behind him. He went out into the middle of the arena and looked around at the empty stalls imagining them full again with cheering crowds.

  That was when he felt the first pain in his stomach and a burning sensation in his mouth and throat. Indigestion, he thought. But it quickly became worse. He had suffered battle wounds before, yet nothing had been as painful as this. He screamed as he felt as though a sword had ripped through him from throat to bowel. Then his vision started to fade. He clawed at the ground in panic. Several soldiers came running and carried him out of the arena to his tent. By the time he got there he was writhing and jerking uncontrollably. On a medic’s advice he was tied down to prevent him from further injuring himself. His sight finally failed altogether and his legs and arms became paralysed, but the pain did not subside. All the next day was sleepless agony for him. When night came again he heard a soft voice close to him.

  “I did this to you. I poisoned your wine.”

  “Who are you?” Carnus groaned as another surge of pain wracked his gut and chest.

  “You were on trial. You were offered the chance to treat her with dignity. You defiled her instead. I was too weak to stop you, so I was your judge. I sentenced you to a life of darkness for the darkness you brought to her life.”

  “What right do you have to do this to me? Who are you?” the man groaned.

  The figure bent closer and whispered in his ear.

  Carnus screamed but it was too late to repent. He had condemned himself in front of his witness and judge.

  The shadowed figure had already left before the guards arrived. The agitation of the gladiator’s body had now entered his mind with equal force. He raged at the guards. His claims soon reached the general.

  65

  “This man… Carnus is his name, is it not…? The gladiator who gives himself the ridiculous epithet Evervictor?” the general laughed, and then in a more sombre voice. “He has clearly lost his mind as well as his usefulness to me. Put him out of his misery. Cut his throat and bury him somewhere down in the valley, out of sight. It is preposterous to suggest that some avenging shadow is sneaking around this camp. We can’t have nonsense like that upsetting our warriors.”

  A rumour swept the camp that a shadowy hunchback dwarf had appeared from nowhere and replaced the gladiator’s celebratory drink with poison. An investigation revealed that there were no dwarves in the camp and no poisons other than those which would have killed the gladiator instantly. Furthermore, the arena operator had run out of wine on the evening in question. A very large woman, unlikely to be confused with a dwarf, had been sent to get more but had not returned by the time the gladiator fell ill.

  Seeing the punishment the general meted out to the gladiator, the guards who started the rumour had second thoughts. They told the general it was all just a silly campfire joke and they had seen neither flagon nor dwarf. They were thoroughly lashed but their retraction of their story saved their lives.

  But rumours are hardy things. Soon soldiers were suggesting, albeit in fun, that Blansnette was protected by a vengeful demon. The rumour followed the circus from camp to camp. Although Blan was again put on display with the other Prize Girls, no gladiator chose her for the next eight nights. Indeed, no contest victor seemed to want to look at her.

  Another rumour started at that time and spread far and wide. The rumour was that a new heir to the Crown of Krar was on the march, a terrible and ruthless goddess of justice and vengeance. This was sedition, so it spread faster than other rumours. It grew underground like mushrooms, and it became a prophecy as powerful as that of the Destined Princess. For reasons nobody seemed to understand it was called the Queen Memwin Prophecy.

  When Memwin overheard mention of the prophecy, she was shocked. She had not mentioned her name to anyone. She had merely told one person that she was the daughter of Cakrocken Cankrar.

  What Memwin did not know and could not have understood at her age was the complexity of the relationships within an army. Large armies of the type deployed by Black Knight consisted of different types of people who had joined up for different reasons and had different motives. Some were adventurers looking for loot. Some were landless peasants promised grants of land (and prepared to kill the original owners to get it). Some were reluctant conscripts. Some enjoyed raping and killing victims and had joined up for the opportunity to do either or both with impunity. Some were professional soldiers, often with a family tradition of military service, who frequently considered alternative careers (but rarely very seriously). Some were very intelligent people, no less so than the greatest lords and ladies who ruled nations, except only that they were born poor and the military was the only available escape for them.

  It was this last group that would have been an interesting study for Memwin. Intelligent, cynical veterans knew and understood far more about politics and history (and, indeed, military matters) than their generals imagined. It was they who spread the Queen Memwin Prophecy; their own little game of manipulation; their way of exercising power over their fellow soldiers and of hitting back at a system which had denied them opportunities fit for their talents. Two old soldiers, friends now relegated to latrine duties, had witnessed Duchess Fenfenwin being taken before Black Knight more than six years ago.

  “Did you hear that Carnus has been poisoned by a daughter of Black Knight?” one old soldier said to the other.

  “I did. The story is spreading all over the camp. Hey, remember when that Duchess Fenfenwin was captured? Beautiful girl! Fancy someone like Black Knight getting his hands on her. Anyway, a whole bunch of us we
re brought in as witnesses… something about that Destined Princess Prophecy.”

  “I remember,” said the first. “We made it our business to keep up to date with what happened. Fenfenwin had a daughter called Memwin.”

  “Let’s make up a prophecy of our own,” the second whispered with a mischievous smirk.

  “How about the Memwin Prophecy?” the first whispered with a smile.

  “That will give those jerks of generals something to worry about,” said the second, no longer bothering to whisper. “But Memwin would only be about five now.”

  “Who cares? A bit of fame might do her some good, poor girl,” said the first.

  Then a broad grin came over the face of the second. He half covered his mouth with his hand and reverted to whispering as he said, “Even better, the Queen Memwin Prophecy…!”

  “Genius!” said the first, eyes wide.

  “Who knows, we might make her a queen and start a revolution!” the second chortled. They both then roared with laughter. Several heads turned their way but soon turned back when they saw these two old soldiers clapping each other on the back.

  It took them just two minutes to agree the details, another five minutes to find a gossipy soldier likely to spread the rumour, and thirty minutes more for the prophecy to reach its one-hundredth recipient. It spread through the camp and beyond like winter rain on the uplands.

  As for poor Memwin, when another child of her age might have nightmares about shadowy bears sneaking up on her bed, or of falling into shark-infested waters as the land falls away from beneath her feet, her nightmares would now be of unbidden crowds of strangers suddenly converging on her and demanding that she make queenly decisions on matters she knew nothing about.

  66

  When Memwin witnessed Blan’s suffering at the hands of the gladiator, she was moved not merely to tears but also to extreme rage. At first she thought about charging at the man and thrusting a kitchen knife into him, or trying to do so. She wished to be a knight with a sword so she could ride in and hack him to pieces. However, almost as soon as these thoughts had come, she was surprised by a strange self-awareness. She discovered that she could control her rage, even as tears poured silently down her cheeks, so she set to work on an improvised plan using some of the tactics for self-preservation that had passed through her mind, along with many other dark thoughts, since the day that Craskren had attacked her. She could not defend herself or Blan with strength or martial skill, so she used what she had: her ability to study books; her aptitude for creating detailed strategies from what she learnt; and her determination to put her plans into action.

  Memwin was shaking with misery because the door guards were still watching and she so much wanted to go to Blan and hug her and comfort her. Besides, she had not yet found an escape route for Blan. As an insignificant kitchen helper Memwin could come and go barely noticed, and she needed to keep doing that for a while longer. She took out the cushions she had strapped to her back underneath the threadbare, grey blanket she had used as her cloak and hood. Then she resumed her role helping to clean the kitchen. There were many children working as servants around the place and Memwin made sure that she was the least noticeable of them all.

  On the next night Memwin wanted to explain her reasons to someone. She thought that justice required such an explanation. The circus would move on in the morning, so this would be her last chance. The sickness and paralysis Carnus had suffered from the mushrooms would wear off after a few weeks. She had been most particular about the types and quantity of mushrooms she used. They were surprisingly common in certain areas around the campsite. However, the blindness was permanent. She had used just enough wood-alcohol to blind without killing, at least in accordance with her calculations. She had worked it all out in the library at Proequa, just in case she ever came across another Craskren.

  She guessed that Blan would not approve of blinding as a punishment, yet the punishment had been clearly stated in an old judgment passed by one of Memwin’s ancestors, some old duke of Proequa, or so Memwin thought from her reading about it in an old, dusty tome which had been almost too heavy for her to lift. A serial rapist had been sentenced to ‘darkness for the darkness’ that he had brought to his victims. What her ancestor had actually ordered, albeit in arcane language, was imprisonment for life in a deep dungeon without a window, so Memwin’s otherwise admirable efforts to decode technical writings had, on this occasion, led her to error.

  The judgment had also ordered castration of the offending organ, but Memwin did not want to try anything messy, and she did not think that cutting off such a small body part would amount to an adequate punishment. She decided instead to use poisonous mushrooms. She did, however, administer doses of mushrooms and wood-alcohol within the correct limits to achieve her intended purposes. When she heard that Carnus had been executed, she felt a little put out that her plan had been thwarted; the only permanent punishment she had intended to inflict was ‘darkness for the darkness’.

  Later, as she was settling down to sleep in a tent allocated to kitchen staf, Memwin was thinking about her recent actions. She was trying to work out whether or not she had done the right thing. At last, as sleep was coming, she muttered to herself, “There are some very nice blind people working in the citadel who deserve sight, so why should I feel guilty about that scumbag going blind, or that his boss did away with him?”

  “What’s that you say, dear?” a woman nearby asked in a sleepy voice.

  “Nothing,” Memwin replied, “just a nightmare.”

  She wanted to confess her role to Blan, even if Blan chastised her for taking the law into her own hands. However, she had a sense that Blan was too hurt and emotional to be burdened with this yet.

  Memwin knew more words than many adults. However, she was not yet skilled in verbalising her more complex thoughts either in speech or in her own mind. Had she been able to express her feelings and intuitions in words, she would have confessed to having a capacity for great ruthlessness and that Blan needed her for this, whether Blan knew it or not. Blan needed friends and allies, and Memwin felt that she could help Blan, in some ways more than anyone else could, especially now. To be needed for her own talents made Memwin feel a thrill of purpose and accomplishment that she had never experienced before. These were the feelings and intuitions that motivated her and gave her a sense of destiny.

  67

  6th November

  Questan woke with a start. The sun was bright and well up in the sky among cotton wool clouds. He had not intended to sleep through the night but his aching back, neck, limbs and joints sharply reminded him of his age. He had needed to rest.

  Before the last war, Questan had spent much of his free time fishing and hunting in these marshes between Quolow River and Polnet River. There were secret glades and pools where boats were left by regular users. One of them was his, little more than a hull three paces long and a board which served as a seat, abandoned ten years ago but now needed. He wondered if he could still find it and, if so, if it would still be serviceable.

  He searched most of the day and at last he found it. The painter had rotted to nothing, but reeds had grown around the boat and kept it from floating away. The boat and both oars were still sound enough to use in calm waters, at least after he had ruined his knife by chiselling off some of the gunk that had grown on the underside of the hull.

  Quolow River at this point was divided into many streams meandering through the marshes to the lake. This was the first stage of Questan’s secret way into Quolow.

  In the middle of the marsh was a hill around which two streams of the river flowed. Although the hill was low, it was an excellent vantage point from which to view the road to the city’s southern gate.

  No one had built a watch tower on the hill. Questan had looked into it when he was president and his engineers had discovered that the ground was too soft to support anything much for long. The enemy had not placed a sentry there, no doubt because of the difficult
y of finding a way across the maze of marshes and waterways to get there and back. It needed an old hand like Questan to do that with ease.

  The view from the hill was instructive if not panoramic. Questan never ceased to be fascinated by the way the city sat on the ridge which divided the lake from the great valley to its east. Quolow River ran past the top of the southern end of the valley and at one point passed no more than five hundred paces from where the land fell away almost as sharply as a cliff. One short canal cut from the river to the valley head would have caused the river to cascade down into the valley instead of flowing through the marshes into the lake. In similar vein a short channel cut through the narrowest part of the ridge between the lake and the valley letting water flow into the valley instead of over the falls at the northern end. Such a channel through the ridge was just what Questan had ordered to be dug during the last war. Care had to be taken to let through just enough water to deter enemies in the valley without letting the level of the lake fall so much as to compromise the city’s lakeside defences. After the war, the channel had been blocked up with a stone wall and the city walls had been extended further into the lake, the latter being to ensure that there would be no incentive for a future enemy to dig a new channel in order to access the city’s lakeside frontage from land.

  Questan could see the filled-in channel now. It looked like a wide bridge, two miles north of where he lay in the grass on the hill. He recalled fondly how he had won the arguments those years ago, and how well his decisions had served his city, both then and now. To attack the vulnerable lake side of the city without a substantial fleet, the enemy would have to reopen the channel to the valley and let out so much water that the water level of the lake would drop by at least five fathomes. However, that would prevent him from bringing a fleet anywhere near the city and the exposed lake bed would be far too soft for him to take siege engines there. In fact, only foot soldiers could attack from that direction and, of course, from their point of view the city would be five fathomes higher than before. Furthermore, the valley would be partially filled with water, thus hampering the enemy’s control and opening new opportunities for counter-attack. Clearly, that wily General Utukin had wisely decided to leave the lake as it was and to wait for naval backup. Questan remembered Utukin from the last war when the general had been a mere First Spear centurion, albeit the most able one in Black Knight’s army.