The southern frontier. The rainy season was making the nights longer and the ground wet. The precipitation outside the manor hadn't subsided for close to two hours, and that meant that the General had to endure more time in the same place with an apoplectic King Tao of Goldora. Garrera was a rambunctious, imperious man, a true soldier. But the man on the opposite end of the table was worse by many degrees. His outlook only was domineering even to Garrera, as the latter was once a man who received orders from a man like the former. Now he was in that office too, but the fact that the man athwart had never in his life had to execute commands was a fundamental difference between them. That Garrera was using Tao's men didn't bother him as much as Tao himself did. Garrera whimpered in this man's presence, and he could tell—which infuriated him—that the man athwart relished it.
But Garrera was unable to grasp the reason behind Tao's current irritation. The rebellion was Garrera's problem. Tao was getting his proceeds for the help he provided with his armies, so why was he preoccupied with the rebellion? Tao knew why. And he was glad that the featherbrained king before him did not understand it. Garrera was a military specialist, the definition of the sword and shield and armor and helmet. He was no novice or featherbrain in that regard. But he was a featherbrain in political matters. The man did not understand fully the disadvantageous implications that K'rar's being alive was. To the extent of the rebellion threatening his power, Garrera understood the importance of killing him. But to the extent that K'rar undermined Tao's power, he did not. Underneath those shriveled gray hairs on Tao's head was the real reason for his incandescence: as long as the true king of Korazin lived, he stood in the way of Tao's endgame in all of this. Tao wanted to fully control this traditional enemy of the south. He wanted to be remembered as the king who took the north. He would go down in history as the greatest ruler of Goldora they'd ever had. He was already on the path of doing this, for in his homeland, the whole population was singing his praises for the influence he had planted in Korazin. But they still regarded Korazin as it was before, the only difference being that its ruler had betrayed his own nation and taken sides with Tao. Tao wanted them to view it as he did. Although Tao would never sit on the Korazite throne, he wanted to be the unseen spirit that watched over it. He wanted to give orders to the king of Korazin, and to appoint and remove him as he wished. To tap the enemy's own resources and feed those at home. Besides, Korazin was prodigiously more endowed and more prosperous than his own barren kingdom. But all of these dreams, Tao knew, were perhaps less than dreams if the spine of Korazin remained intact, if K'rar von Caspar remained alive.
There was no shred of doubt about this, because just six months into Garrera's rule, Korazin was readily resisting the strong arm of Goldora. And although K'rar the spine was alive, those seeking his head did not know his whereabouts. They were no closer to finding him than they had been six months ago. But he only needed to be alive, and for all of Korazin to know it, for Tao's grand plan to fail. Six months, and the boy had successfully mobilized enough support, largely civilian, to cripple the plan. A nation means its people, Tao knew this. The people were the flesh and the bones that surrounded the spine, and the spine's health kept them like this. Tao also knew that an attempt to drive him out by launching an attack on the people was a good ruthless strategy, but one that would also strengthen the nation's resilience. In one town where Garrera had tried this out, civilians had died in a mass protest, but also hordes of Goldoran patriots. That painted a bad image back home. In many other towns and cities, like Kedesherad, K'rar's small guerrilla had wiped out 66 Goldoran men. They came and went like ghosts. They had also slit one administrator's throat and burned down his home in Tishri, the northwestern district, not the rich southern town of the same name. Small problems that would soon become giant ones were in their inchoate stages in Chaldea. The tributes that Korazin owed to Tao were being sabotaged by splinter groups, and the population was readily behind it.
'If the boy is not found and removed once and for all, all that you worked for will be gone in less time than it took you to plan the coup,' Tao was explaining to Garrera.
'I'll find him,' said Garrera quickly, 'I don't know why you're so worked up about.'
'My men are being slaughtered by ghosts, in case you've forgotten. I have appearances to keep up myself,' was the reply.
'My appearances matter too,' said Garrera, 'I have leverage which I have been reluctant to use. I will employ it now.'
'The boy's mother?' said the harsh-toned Tao, 'I hear you are feeding her like a queen.'
'That is not because I like her very much. In fact, she's causing problems for me, but I had to wait for a right moment.'
'To kill her? The way I see it you are determined to keep her alive until she topples you,' he said this with much force.
'No, I must keep her alive until I get a hold of the boy, and then I will kill them both.'
'I am still not hearing the plan, and it better be a good plan or else I am considering recalling my men.'
'Our deal is not yet complete,' Garrera immediately protested. The withdrawal of Goldoran mercenaries was extremely detrimental, and the mere mention of it shook his spine.
'No, but that is your fault. Can't you see the unintended ramifications of your failure to get a hold on that little boy? First, you will never get a foothold as ruler. Second, it will not be long before Shona verifies his existence and antagonizes me. You know, Rukh-shana has more support than the both of us in Moab. Do you not know what it means if she mobilizes her troops? You are a military man!'
The General had not really given that much thought, and it shocked him. More than two thirds of his Goldoran mercenaries were still stationed along the western border with Shona, with almost no discernible response from that side. Garrera had thought this was an elaborate trick, so he had maintained the deployment. Now he was gradually beginning to understand the Goldoran.
'I am out of ideas,' he said, as much as he hated to admit.
'You still have much to learn as a ruler,' this remark had a fat condescending gesture to it, 'but you are an established military General. Deal with the problem as such, a General.'
It was not until the following day that those words suddenly made sense to the General. He was travelling through Kemosh on the way north to the capital, when he suddenly sat straight in his royal carriage. He had figured it out, what it meant. He had pondered this along the entire route in absolute silence, and now it had dawned on him that he was being too soft. Since his ascension, he had taken a soft kingly approach because all eyes in Korazin were on him. He was already public enemy number one, but if the boy had been eliminated early, the nation would have already healed. Garrera realized that he had been behaving as if the nation had already undergone this stage, as if it had no choice but to endure the fact that he was now king. Yet the nation still viewed him in the same image as it did six months prior. A villain, a blot on the landscape, a disease. As long as that boy remained alive, especially on home soil, this was the image he displayed. And Garrera knew that he must act as a villain once more, lest the wounds the rebellion was inflicting on him now failed to heal after his victory. If he won.
It was true. Queen-mother Noor-shan was being well treated. She had been brought back to the palace and kept in its dungeons, but then Garrera had tried the diplomatic approach, and released her from these confines, so that she was in good health before he destroyed her at the right time. But then, this temporary resurrection was extremely unwelcome to the new girl on the block—Queen Kishra. A lot of things had changed since her marriage to Garrera. No, she had changed a lot of things in this palace. Things that pitched her into a battle of wits with the old mistress of the house. As soon as Kishra became queen, she immediately began to restructure the organization of the palace's internal social affairs, especially concerning its women. She did not want to be a mere queen, the wife of the king, even with the considerable political power she had. She for example had veto powers in some decisions of the Korah when it was prejudicial to her own interests, and she could also make some decrees without the Korah's approval. Still in some instances, she could influence the sentences of criminals. But there was considerable intermittence in all these things, so that she had to sit still and look pretty for most of the time. For that reason the new queen had established the Women's Pavilion at the palace to have some control of things. That way she felt like a true queen, because she effectively had absolute powers in the Women's Pavilion.
The Women's Pavilion greatly changed the way of things at the palace. First, all the women of the palace were to take up accommodation there. The women from the old system had stayed around despite the overthrow of the king. She had given them a choice to leave, which carried crippling punishment, or to stay, which carried some rewards. The women would not have left anyway, as this was their employment with which they sustained their families, and also because employment at the palace was a prestigious position, even as a maid. As a result, less than a handful had made the decision to leave. The new queen's first order was to create a strict code of rules, governing all the women of the palace. First, only women could set foot in the Pavilion, with the exception of the king and sometimes the chief eunuch, a new position she had created. Then, she introduced an assembly of the women which she convened whenever she wished. There was also a literacy curriculum in which all the ladies were required to recite poetry, read some texts such as the Rites of a Dignified Lady among other things. Throughout all this there were new rules regarding the respect Queen Kishra was to get, and this included the men of the palace. She was to be referred to, not as Her Highness, but as Her Majesty. This would be the normal way. It was the normal way, but the problem was that there were two majesties in the palace, and the palace staff all still revered Noor-shan and referred to her as Her Majesty. Kishra outlawed this, even having two court ladies flogged for calling her a Highness and Noor-shan a Majesty. There was nothing she could do about Noor-shan's presence here because it was the king's wish. But she could terrorize her as much as she could as long as she was in her domain, the Pavilion. She was determined to put Noor-shan in her place as a mere woman of the palace. She for instance assigned her the chores of a maid, as part of her authority as Head of the Women's Pavilion. That had terribly failed, because the court ladies and maids would in no way let Noor-shan do those chores. In fact, it turned out that they easily obeyed Noor-shan at any time if Kishra decreed something prejudicial to the former. Noor-shan, however, had no issues acting in her new lowly capacity in some respects, which infuriated Kishra. For example, Kishra had thought that she would disrespect the assembly or the recital of texts and things like these, but the old Queen obliged with these well. It was not until Kishra broke her own rules and had to allow her guards, male ones, to do some dirty work for her to spite Noor-shan. Inside the Pavilion, she was guarded by the chief eunuch only. Five times she had had Noor-shan imprisoned in a room without food for several hours. Once, she had had her stripped and made to walk the palace in her inner garments, which was equivalent to nakedness. Still, in six months, Kishra was closer to murderous insanity than royal hegemony. She wanted Noor-shan gone, if not from this life, at least from the palace. Noor-shan could not be allowed to have one of the royal chambers, or mini-palaces, in the palace. Thus she had to stay in the Pavilion, and all the time she was there that Kishra wasn't, she was the true queen. Kishra's pleas to Garrera to send her away fell on deaf ears.
But her wishes were vindicated the morning after Garrera had arrived from the frontier. That morning, things looked very different from the way they had been for six months. Garrera called an emergency meeting of the Korah. These men came to the palace on demand, as they were more often in Chaldea than in their own districts of administration. The Korah met irregularly, and those times, it was the Chief Administrator that convened it. This morning the mood was arresting because Garrera had summoned it. But that wasn't all. He had also summoned Hatto, the chief of the military, and two of his subordinate generals. All these military men arrived in military uniform and armor, which was uncharacteristic, but it was obvious that this was part of the commands they received from Garrera. They arrived last, when all the officials who didn't wield weapons were already in the throne room, and instead of sitting they stood just in front of the Chief Administrator's seat, which was below the platform of the king. All the men in the room, as well as maids who were serving tea, paused when these men stormed in in silence and marched majestically to their positions. The king and his wife would arrive last, and they did so soon, so that everyone stood up and made bows. Garrera was arrayed in armor. This, too, shocked the audience. And he was less than pokerfaced. He seemed agitated, angry. The Korah knew he had traveled south to meet with Tao secretly, but they couldn't tell if that meeting was the cause of Garrera's threatening outlook this morning. Besides, Garrera had met Tao at least three times since his coronation, and things hadn't changed much in the days following. Today was different. He didn't even allow Maldab to waste time saying irrelevant things, because as soon as Maldab began gesticulating, Garrera stood himself, and walked to the edge of the high platform. His eyes were on Hatto.
'I suppose you received my correspondence.'
'Yes General, I did.' Hatto was still used to this title, and Garrera allowed it.
'And?'
'You were right, sir. We had been missing the details,' he said. Everyone except the military men were completely lost, 'and upon reexamination of the attacks, as well as their severity and frequency, the boy must be hiding in the Debasian.' He was referring to the multiple vigilante attacks that had been the cause of a lot of headaches. Both the severity and frequency of the attacks was very high near the forest. There had been only a single massive attack south of the capital Tirzah, where guerrillas had made off with twenty one wagons worth of supplies and slaughtered 24 Goldoran troops.
'Then let us get going,' said Garrera, 'I have had enough of this. All authority will be temporarily in the hands of the Queen until I return.'
For Kishra that declaration meant not only that she had control of the realm, but that she could deal with Noor-shan once and for all. But Garrera destroyed her short-lived delight when he ordered Hatto to fetch her, as they would be travelling north with her.
'Your Majesty,' she affected a pretense humility, 'that is not my place.'
'You are the Queen. It is your place. So use it well.'
And he led is military officials across the hall to exit, leaving behind many bewildered faces. The only reason for summoning all the administrative officials was to make this announcement.
K'rar and company had found a spot between two faces of the mountain that was just perfect for a den of rebels that they had become. It was situated at an altitude just enough to spot incoming enemies, and to launch an offensive without so much as a resistance, even if the enemy was fairly larger in number. K'rar and his top officers slept in tents they had managed to procure, pitched on the flattest surface they could find. The rebels based here were no more than 200 men, not counting the females with the group, some of them married to the men who had joined the militia for the king. These two hundred weren't the only ones K'rar had managed to organize to help him. In fact, other bands of fighters were scattered throughout Korazin, one of them led by the Chief Constable Mershak. Mershak's men comprised mostly of former constables under his command, and were hiding near Tishri. These were responsible for striking down those 66 Goldoran century soldiers. He was one of about six high ranking royalist soldiers that they had managed to unearth out of their hiding. Three of these were actively being hunted by Garrera's men. The plan was to stifle Garrera and confuse him regarding K'rar's whereabouts, before rallying all his men together and waging war, hopefully with Shona's forces on his side.
K'rar had learned lots of things in his six months living out of doors. He was now 14 years old, having attained this age in the sixth month of exile, the tenth month of the calendar, that is, Tebeth. K'rar had been Ashdud's student in combat from his 10th birthday, but the lessons had been intermittent, as K'rar was in some cases disinterested. K'rar just loved to read a lot, not missing a chance to read about the history of some king somewhere as far as Kai. He certainly never missed anything in the topic of war. K'rar had read almost all the books in the library palace that had a war theme to them. He was good at it. His favorite was An Army's Favorite by Ze Hai Gharial, some of whose text he could recite perfectly. Z. H. Gharial was an old Moon Province strategist before it began its first war of independence from Goldora. That independence was not very far back in history. In fact, his great grandfather had participated in that war for the Moon Province, side, and that had fueled the already tempestuous relationship between Goldora and Korazin. Great grandpa had contributed greatly, and the Moon was now free from Goldora. K'rar was in fact surprised that Goldora hadn't made a move to retake it after the invasion, seeing that Korazin was the only real hurdle in their way. In six months K'rar had learned his sword fighting, and was now busy in his archery lessons. K'rar was found to be ambidextrous. Ashdud and his men couldn't stop talking about his ability to use his left hand as well as his right. K'rar had harnessed it at their behest, and was now teaching himself to fight with two weapons simultaneously, one in either hand.
But K'rar's combat lessons were only a topic among his few teachers. His intelligence was awe-inspiring. It was he who had made most of the decisions for his guerrilla warfare, delivering one too many bloody noses to the enemy. All those with him on the mountain had learned to respect him as a kid who knew exactly what he was doing. He boasted an observant eye, and an opportunistic charisma. He took lessons from everything, including animals. He believed that they could teach him something. For example, one thing he admired about an owl was its silent flight, so he instilled into his men to avoid shouting war or singing war songs or chants when they charged at an enemy, depending on the circumstances. He also admired the serpent's excellent stealth attacks, its ability to hide in plain sight. This was when he first began writing these things down. So far he had catalogued the serpent, an owl, a leopard and various other animals, especially predatory ones, each with the lesson he learned from it. He kept this book close to his body at all times. He kept it concealed from the rest, even Ashdud, feeling that it was best to surprise him with a complete text.
Today K'rar was at it again. This time, he was interested in monkeys. They had come to his attention the day before, when they continuously sabotaged him and his men's hunting, spooking off prey from above. K'rar was thinking about an attack from above, an aerial assault. He was in a valley just below the camp, where he and Pithadia had gone to take water. He and Pithadia were now very close. In fact he now spent more time around her than Ashdud. After all she was the only one in the camp who was close to his age, since everyone else was older than 20. While he now felt closer to her, she revered him to the extent of taking an arrow for him. She wasn't sure what feeling that was. She wasn't sure if it was just respect for her king, or if she was harboring romantic feelings. She convinced herself it was the former, denying that she could have softer than tender feelings for a boy six years her junior.
'If I take back my throne,' he was saying to her, 'where will you go?'
'I shall go wherever the king wishes,' she replied. K'rar thought the answer was cliché. He asked again,
'And if I gave you a choice?'
Now she hesitated before admitting that she would like to stay in his close service. That was the answer he had hoped to hear.
'That's what I would prefer,' he said. She was struggling to keep her cheeks from blushing. A man's footsteps approached from the back. It was Kanga. He was brisk and glum, obviously carrying a message. K'rar asked him before he said anything, 'what's the matter, Kanga?'
'You have visitors, my lord.'
'Do I not always have visitors?' K'rar said with his back turned.
'These are from Queen Rukh-shana, my lord.'
K'rar immediately turned around.
Four of the six visitors were standing outside Ashdud's tent, treating themselves to rum. These made their bows and made way for him to enter and find a face he could confirm was from Queen Rukh-shana, that of Rohr.
'I am glad you are in good health, Your Majesty,' Rohr said immediately, standing up.
'Thank you,' K'rar said, 'how did you find the camp?'
'Well, I connected the dots. Her majesty sent me to confirm that you are alive. She wants to know what you think about her plan to send forces this way.'
'I have been hoping on it,' said K'rar, 'but the border is heavily guarded. I do not want to commit Her Majesty's armies to a war from which there is nothing to gain.'
'If I may say something Your Majesty,' said Ashdud.
'Say it.'
'Technically, there is something to lose if Goldora controls Korazin. So there is gain in not letting them do that, even with Shona's help.'
'Your Majesty,' said Rohr, 'Her Majesty knows your considerations. That is why she has been reluctant to react to Garrera's escalation at the border. She has asked me to say that it is now a family matter more than a political one.'
K'rar knew this. Even in his hoping on Rukh-shana's help, he knew that Shona stood no chance against Goldoran forces in the long run. The Goldoran army was over twice the size that of Shona's. They glorified their military so much that among Goldoran youth, joining the military was considered as custom if they wanted to attract any repute to themselves and their families. A young man who expressed no interest in the military, even one who was already capable of sustaining himself by other means, was to some degree lower in the societal strata than a son of a poor carpenter who was in the military.
'I know,' he said, 'but if we lost, then those savages would have effectively overtaken all of Moab. I'd rather sacrifice one than both of us. If we must fight them, we must do it slowly but steadily.'
'I agree,' said Ashdud, 'we don't have enough men.'
'That's right. We need to have forces from within first. Please tell Her Majesty to wait for my signal.'
'Yes, Your Majesty,' said Rohr.
'How is Helga?'
'She is worried about you, Your Majesty. It was her idea to send me here.'
K'rar smiled. He was moved.
'Tell her I'm glad she thinks about me. But I will escape this. She needs not worry. Now you men get some real food and rest, and we'll see you off by morning tomorrow.' An attendant immediately went about seeing that the men were catered for.
That night was scheduled an attack on a Goldoran stronghold in Magherita, a lumbering town on the foot of Debasian's highest peak of the same name. K'rar's informants had scouted the area and found out that more soldiers had been deployed there, expecting an attack by K'rar's guerillas. This base was the closest to the hideout, being situated on the mountain too. K'rar knew they had more than once been ordered to search the forest, but they hadn't even come close to finding K'rar's people. But they were an existential threat, and K'rar's advisors had all voted on destroying them first. Ossus and Pliny had been sent out to prepare other hideouts close to Magherita for the attack. The rest of them were converged in K'rar's tent discussing the final touches. Although K'rar was militarily perspicacious, Ashdud led the strategies, and K'rar was only contributing as much as others and then giving his approval. This camp was on the opposite side of Magherita the peak, but on high altitude. The approach would be concealed by the forest as best it could. Midnight had been chosen as the best plan of attack. The men with Ossus to the east of Magherita town were to serve as bait to divert the Goldorans' attention, so that K'rar and Pliny's men would devastate the base, which was a new establishment, having been put up on the site of an old, disused Constabulary post. The Goldorans were setting up these bases in various other towns and cities, especially those with high economic wealth. Magherita wasn't really in that category, but they had set up the base anyway, obviously in response to the high number of attacks in this part of the land.
'The base is fenced off with logs, but the entrance faces south. There is only one watchman in a miniature watchtower on this corner,' a scout was reporting, 'we must take him out quickly.'
'No,' said Ashdud, 'that would alert the base. If Ossus diverts their attention, the watchman will be reposted. If he is not, we have to sneak past him and get inside first. Once we're in, we have good chance to eliminate the rest of their camp. But if they smell us before that, we lose the element of surprise.'
'There would be lookouts in the forest too, don't you think?' K'rar opined.
'Yes, it is true. We have our own lookouts as a countermeasure.'
'Alright,' he stood up, 'it's almost time. We should begin moving.'
Everyone in the room wore and exchanged confused looks. K'rar said,
'I am coming along this time.'
'Your Majesty, I must object. It is too dangerous,' Ashdud said immediately.
'I will not be joining the fray,' K'rar insisted, 'I'll be watching from the sidelines. Bring me my armor.'
The Goldorans at the Magherita Constabulary were not like those at other postings. Their Centurion was a man of high repute, and his high standards of discipline were known well. To some, these were for the good of the modern soldier, but to others the man was just a wet blanket who was alcohol intolerant. That is why the mood at Magherita was a mixed one, especially because of some among the 100 newcomers from Chaldea. Arameid's own men had grown used to his standards, and had no qualms over them. They had served under him for many years. But the newcomers came with their own centurion and were in a drinking mood, which Arameid, as head of the operation as long as it was here at Magherita, strongly forbade. The visiting centurion had tried amicable means to get him to allow his men to enjoy themselves after a long journey, and had failed. So the camp was full of bad blood on just the second day after the new arrivals. Arameid's men and Dhali's were at loggerheads, cocooning away from each other. A furious Arameid had even dismissed several men for attempting to incite a mutiny, and had punished several others too with the Military Code of Conduct regulations, a book he always carried with him. The code was a very old instrument that for other soldiers just existed in spirit. That wasn't the case for Arameid. His men hadn't earned their rewards of military service by mistake. He hadn't been rewarded with a massive chunk of land for nothing. He was not about to let go of his disciplinary code. This is what he was trying to instill in Dhali's thick bonce when a messenger brought a message that the outpost had come under attack. The centurions immediately dropped their hostilities, and both said,
'Are they directly outside?'
'No, sir,' the soldier was answering to Arameid, as he was in his team, 'a scout came back. Alone.' The Goldorans always sent out two scouts, 'and he's injured.'
'Then why have you not rung the bell?'
Most of the camp would have been sleeping by this time, with only a few perimeter watchmen and some insomniacs. When the soldier scuttled out, Arameid sharply scolded Dhali,
'Now I hope you understand why the men need to be sober. We are not in our homeland, centurion. This is hostile territory.'
Dhali had no answer to that. The centurion was right, at least for now.
'I'll deal with the raiders,' he said.
'No,' Arameid said softly, 'your camp is not ready yet. Stay back and brief them, if we have to pursue the raiders. My men have been preparing for this.'
The camp outside had transformed from tranquil to a hullaballoo. Men with sleepy eyes were rushing to the armory and to the gate. The archers were scampering around the place to get to the vanguard. They had reason to be frantic, since they had an embarrassing losing streak against the guerrillas. They knew what was at stake. In its inchoate stages they had taken this situation lightly. Even Garrera had taken it lightly. But now they knew that if they just sat back and relaxed, they would lose thousands in the long run.
In a few minutes all the men were lined up in a long file along the front wall, both up on the rampart and along the base. The raiders were not very visible in the dark, but by their chanting voices the men at the camp imagined them to number in the hundreds. The Goldorans' numbers were sufficient to crush the raiding party, but Dhali was still ordering his men to stand their ground and not leave the outpost. Which was a problem for Ossus on the other end. This was unusual. The Goldorans were expected to pursue him and his goons, as they were now accustomed to. Yet despite the chants and the insults they were shouting, including a racist song against the Goldorans, they didn't move an inch from the wall.
'Something's wrong,' Ossus said to the nearest man, 'they don't want to give chase.'
'We haven't provoked them well enough.'
'Yeah,' Ossus agreed, and turned around to his goons, 'archers!'
About 40 men came forward in their formation, armed with bows and arrows. The Goldorans could see them in spite of the darkness.
'Shields!' shouted Dhali, 'shields!'
But the men were disorganized. Many of them had left their shields behind. Many of them were struck down. Yet, Centurion Dhali ordered his men to stay put. And Ossus knew then that he had to send a message to the second wave from the opposite side of the Goldoran camp very quickly.
'If they attack now, it will be a bloodbath. We have to tell them.'
That would have been easy, a matter of sending a messenger around the outpost and into the forest, but only Ossus and a few others in his marauder squad knew where to locate K'rar's men. Worse still no one knew how they would approach the outpost and from which direction on the mountain behind. They were still discussing this when it became clear that the attack on the other side had been launched already, because several men at the gate began to run frantically back within the walls to regroup. Apparently the other attack was not, as Ossus had thought, to take place through the main gate. The assault came from the back, somehow. Now he was unsure whether to join the attack, seeing that K'rar's men would be severely outnumbered, or to retreat back into hiding with his own men.
As K'rar had promised, he was watching from a high spot in the forest where the attack was visible. In just the first five minutes he noticed that his men had landed in a wasp's nest. He was watching with two men, former Korazin Army infantrymen, and Rohr, who had insisted to join the fray. The guerillas had breached one weak spot in the wall and forced themselves in. From K'rar's vantage point, the compound of the outpost was visible. It was well illuminated, and K'rar could see, much to his shock, that the Goldorans certainly did not chase down Ossus' men. It looked like all the men at the outpost were still inside the structure.
'This is bad. There should have been a signal from the other men to warn us,' K'rar said.
'These men must retreat,' Rohr said, 'or you will lose them all.'
K'rar stepped down from his perch, behind an outcrop on a precarious, slippery part of the descent.
'Tell them to retreat,' he said to his nearest men, and he began to shout the order himself while scaling down the hill, with his soldiers carrying torches to light his way. They had to physically prevent him from getting too close to the flashpoint on the wall, where Ashdud and his men were being reduced to cornered animals. Goldorans were shouting "kill them all!' and "slaughter the bastards!" and the like. One man reached K'rar in the narrow flat between the outpost and the hill, and explained that the Goldorans would pursue them if they retreated, which meant jeopardy of their secret hideout in the mountain.
'Retreat now, we will escape toward the other side of the range,' K'rar said, and once more began shouting the order very passionately. His men heard his voice. Then, as if by providence, the Goldorans' attention was shifted from his men to the main entrance. In that minute they got a breather, and Ashdud caught up with K'rar and loudly explained why,
'It's Ossus. He has launched an attack at the gate!' he was loud, so as to beat the din.
'His men aren't suited to resist the Goldorans, why did he do that?' K'rar questioned. Ossus had more civilians than trained soldiers in his team. So too did K'rar, but the civilians in his camp had been put through basic war training.
'It seems he is buying us time to retreat,' said Ashdud, 'what shall we do?'
'Retreat,' K'rar maintained the position still, 'now!'
'You heard the king, retreat now!' Ashdud relayed the information to the men who were surrounding the king. They began to roll back up the mountain through the trees en masse. Some wanted to carry K'rar on their backs so that he shouldn't have to climb, but he swiftly declined.
The hill was steep, but they were safe within its trees by the time someone shouted from the rear that the Goldorans were once again interested in this party, and had begun a hot pursuit of them. K'rar could see the long file of torches, not the men carrying them, running toward their direction. Once more the concern of the hideout came into play, but K'rar was ahead of it. While his top officials were murmuring amongst themselves about taking another route and getting lost themselves until morning while being pursued by a reinvigorated Goldoran force, he silenced them when he suddenly said,
'They can see our torches, and they can track our movement on the ground.' The boy snatched a torch from the hand of one of the men and stifled it, saying, 'extinguish the torches.'
'Pardon, Your Majesty?' Ashdud asked for everyone else.
'We'll go up to the corner behind the hill there,' he pointed into the dark, referring to a narrow forest road curving around the hill, 'everyone, put out your torches, and find a tree to climb. Now!' K'rar stepped forward himself to lead by example. The men took some moments to digest the strange command, but their countenances revealed that they acknowledged its practicality. Ashdud himself began to shout the command to the men,
'Follow the king!' he yelled.
All they had to do was mimic K'rar when they arrived at the bend. Within a minute or so the forest was silent and dark and eerie. Within the next couple of minutes the approach of the chasing pack began to be audible, and the few sotto voce conversations in the trees went mum. The Goldorans were being led by both Arameid and Dhali. K'rar's tree soldiers could hear these men loud and clear, as Arameid was shouting to his men to spread out. As K'rar had hoped, the Goldorans soon came to a grinding halt because they could not see any burning torches in the proximity.
'How fast are they?' Dhali was saying to his companion.
'Can't have gone far. We must be able to spot them. This group must be the one harboring the boy. Been in the forest this whole fucking time!' Arameid looked around him to find his senior officers, 'where's the second officer?'
'Here, sir,' the man holding that title in Arameid's own troops stepped forward. His name was Maximin. He was easily two meters tall, and a bully.
'Take fifteen men and continue the chase. If you see them, follow them discreetly until they lead you to their hideout, then send a report. You must yourself stay there and study the place until morning, then you may return. Understood?'
'Yes sir,' said Maximin.
'It's time to clear out a rat's nest.'
The trees gradually cleared of the Goldorans, and the Korazites in their foliage came down with terrified faces, especially those who had heard Arameid's words. That included K'rar.
'They're coming for us,' Ashdud declared, and looked down at his king. K'rar said nothing at first. He just began to walk back up the mountain. In three meters he gave the order to find the men in the forest and kill all but five, who were to be brought to him alive. Ashdud sent out some of his best men with a guide, the best in the business whom they had found in the forest, living as a hermit to escape the law. With K'rar's pardon he had pledged his allegiance to him.
K'rar wanted a good night's sleep to ponder his counter measure, because it seemed obvious that the outcome they had tried to prevent by storming the Goldoran base first was inevitable: the savages were coming. It would take them ages to traverse the precarious mountain and to locate the camp, but if they had set their minds on this, it was achievable. Between now and then K'rar had to prepare to fight them. K'rar also knew that the Goldorans would enlist more troops to this cause. Garrera had grown weary. A good thing for K'rar at this point, but not in the long run. He had to make a move now.
K'rar was awoken by the soft touch of Pithadia, something he was getting too accustomed to lately. Lady Esella was there too, and she was wearing an apprehensive countenance. K'rar was now getting accustomed to this too. Besides, he was only just a boy requiring the attention of a mother, a position lady Esella had undertaken, as Pithadia was too young to do so. While Pithadia was waking him for his breakfast and other morning duties, K'rar knew that lady Esella was here to express her hostility toward his decision to go on a raid with the soldiers.
'You could have told me,' she said immediately K'rar sat up, 'do you have any idea how worried I was?'
'I didn't tell you because you would have stopped me,' K'rar said plainly. Of course, Lady Esella couldn't stop him with her authority, but she could have prostrated herself before all the men to do it, and K'rar would never let something like that take place.
'You know how dangerous it is for you to lead an attack.'
'I was watching from the sidelines. Ashdud wouldn't have allowed me to join the combat anyway,' he said, 'please don't worry about yesterday. Worry about today. We must get ready. The assault gave up our location, although not precisely.' he stretched to get out of his blankets.
'I know that. Still you didn't have to go. Don't leave me worrying like that again.'
When K'rar came out into the morning sun in the open, several of his guerrillas were already out and about. Ashdud was one of them, giving instructions to some men across the ground. As soon as K'rar came out into the compound fully, the men suddenly burst into rapturous applause, with some yelling long life to K'rar, and some making many bows. K'rar didn't understand the meaning until he asked the nearest man, who said it was about last night's heroics when he ordered the men to climb the trees. Ashdud scuttled across the ground to appraise him of the fact that the Goldoran scouts were successfully apprehended, and that there were messengers from the west with a message. K'rar wanted to see the Goldorans first.
Two were severely injured because they chose to fight over submission, and two had been killed trying to escape. The healthy one couldn't be older than 25, and K'rar could tell that his men simply had mercy on him. One was blind in one eye, which was covered in a scaly substance. He looked much like a reptile. K'rar's men had nicknamed him that. They were tied up against a tree trunk, all three of them, and they had spent the cold night there too. K'rar's men bullied them a bit to shake them up. They were tired and in tatters, and one of them couldn't lift up his head. K'rar approached the youthful one first. His appearance gave away a more docile attitude in contrast with his companions. He scrutinized him, and the man scrutinized him too, and then said,
'So you are alive.'
'You're going to tell me what your plans are,' K'rar said plainly. The man scoffed at him, saying,
'You wish.'
When K'rar's men moved to punish him for that slight impudence, K'rar stopped them.
'There's three of you,' said K'rar, 'you are deployed in a foreign land, you have left families behind, and I know you aren't more likely to be rewarded a lot for all this than to be punished for bungling the mission. One of you is bound to tell me. And of course I will kill you all after you do,' he intentionally looked at the man's face with a mixture of both disdain and fury, and then turned to his men, 'place them in different locations, and roast them with irons until two of them say the same thing. It will be the truth. And keep them awake at all times.'
'One has refused to eat. He wants to starve himself to death,' a man reported.
'Shove the food in his mouth,' K'rar said, 'if he wanted to die, biting his tongue was a faster way to do it. He wants to live.'
K'rar could finally make time for his messengers, whom he found playing against Ashdud's men with sparring swords. Ashdud was here too, as well as a large party of spectators. The activity came to a stop when K'rar showed up, and there were respectful bows from the three messengers, two of whom were former soldiers of the realm.
'I'm glad you can finally see us, Your Majesty,' said the one nicknamed Echo for his ridiculously thin voice. K'rar affected a brief smile back.
'Thanks for making it back,' he said, and added before the man turned, 'Ashdud, give me a sword.' A brief silence, in which the men at the scene gave him a chance to repeat these words. He did so by beckoning at Ashdud to hand him the sword. Ashdud had two swords, one of them real, and he handed over this one. K'rar said, 'the wooden one.' Ashdud handed him the wood, and K'rar dismissed Echo's previous opponent and stood in the circle himself.
'Your Majesty?' Echo said.
'Don't worry, it's just a wooden sword,' said K'rar. The spectators laughed. Some of them had seen K'rar train, but most of them didn't think he was even interested in sword fighting. He trained separately with Ashdud and his original entourage, quietly.
Echo was one of those who had never seen the king hold a weapon, so he lunged and threw very soft thrusts of is sword, which K'rar easily parried.
'Attack in earnest, Echo,' said Ashdud.
K'rar nodded at Echo to confirm Ashdud's words, and took a defensive stance with his sword raised high and sideways. While he learned most of his skills from Ashdud, K'rar was always bound to modify his own style of play. He didn't defend in the conventional way, that is, using the sword to parry all of his opponent's attacks. K'rar taught himself that the sword was just an extension of his whole body. To gain an advantage, one had to use his whole body, not just the weapon. All fighters have a good and bad side in a fight, and will always fight with the good side facing forward, of course holding the weapon. But K'rar was equally good on both sides, and that helped K'rar's style. His defensive move engaged more of his body getting out of the line of attack than on the sword to keep the enemy weapon at bay. That allowed him a window of opportunity to launch a counter attack, especially from the leeward side of the opponent. But K'rar needed a second weapon to do this, so in this fight, all he could do was bewilder Echo by his agile movement while staying on his right side. This was still sufficient to worry Echo, who, like many of the rest, couldn't understand K'rar's movements. Whenever Echo thrust his weapon, K'rar moved more sideways than backwards while parrying the attack, and then move forward quickly to attack the opponent's back side. Echo struggled to keep up with this, being forced many times to reposition his stance to keep his weak side away from K'rar. K'rar knew this, and intended to cause him to make one mistake to disarm him. The moment Echo took too long to turn, K'rar was quick to attack his backside and keep himself there by putting Echo at sword point. The crowd cheered rapturously.
'My lord, I didn't know you could fight like this,' Echo said, while still being held, with K'rar's sword on is neck.
'Well my life is on the line,' said K'rar, 'one's got to do what one's got to do.'
'You learned this in six months?'
'No, I have been Ashdud's student for much longer. Now, please, let's go in.'
K'rar invited Lady Esella in to hear the message too. The three men were in the tent with K'rar, Ashdud and Pliny when she showed up. She had never been part of these things, so she looked a bit confused by the invitation. K'rar's intention was unknown even to Ashdud. He wanted to show her that he wasn't just a king by birthright. As soon as she sat down, K'rar said to Echo,
'I think I know the news that you are carrying.'
Echo and his colleagues shared looks. Echo said,
'We carry bad news my lord.'
'Yes, I hoped so. As they say, bad news travels fast. You are here to tell me that the Goldorans are evacuating the western frontier. They know we're here, so they're coming. Isn't that it?'
This time everyone else began looking this way and that.
'Yes indeed, my lord. That is indeed what we are here to say. But how did you know?'
'Last night's raid didn't fail because of poor strategy on our part,' K'rar said, 'there were more men there.' He looked at Ashdud, who was embarrassed.
'They're rallying all their troops,' Pliny pointed out.
'Yes,' K'rar said, 'in the trees I noticed there were two leaders in the camp. One of them cannot have been there from the beginning. He was a new arrival.'
'If they come in their thousands, we can't face them,' Echo said to him.
'Indeed. Ashdud, what shall we do?'
'Your Majesty, we are well hidden by a forest and a mountain. I still don't believe a thousand men can find us on this mountain unless we want to be found.'
The rest of the party agreed, including Lady Esella.
K'rar looked around at them and said,
'Garrera knows this. He will start an operation to scour all this mountain, yes, but he will also ensure that we cannot escape. He will bring not only the men from the west, but an entire army to block this peak's access points, and we will be short of supplies in just a week. We have goaded him beyond endurance. That is why we cannot remain on this mountain,' K'rar looked around them, especially at Lady Esella. From the looks on their faces, it was clear that none of them had considered this possibility. Once again K'rar had surprised the men, but even more so Lady Esella. Ashdud immediately said,
'I'll go make the preparations to break camp. Where will we go, Your Majesty?'
'Not yet, Ashdud,' K'rar said, 'Rohr and his men. They are still here, yes?'
'Yes sir,' said Pliny.
'Bring them here.'
Pliny left and returned almost immediately with Rohr and his party. They were camping in one of the adjacent tents.
'The Goldorans are moving their forces here,' K'rar said to Rohr, 'they know we're here.'
Rohr just expressed the same shock as all the rest without uttering a word. K'rar went on,
'Change of plans. We will need Shona's forces this time,' K'rar stood up. Everyone else who was seated did so too, 'but not the way the Queen was planning. Tell the Queen that I would like her to move her forces in secret across the border,' he turned to Ashdud and said to him, 'bring me a map.' When it was laid out in front of him, he went on, 'you should cross at more than one spot,' said K'rar, 'Ashdud, what part of this border is barren?'
Ashdud took some time to study the map and choose a spot on it that answered the question.
'This northerly region here,' he said, 'the plains of Dura. It's a barren savanna, but it is laden with wild animals.'
'Can our armies camp there?'
'Er, perhaps my lord. But it is open ground. We cannot hide for long there.'
'We are not hiding anymore,' said K'rar, 'I am as tired of Garrera as he is tired of me. He is waging a real war, and we must respond in kind,' he turned his attention back to Rohr, 'have a few hundred men cross a busy border, so that Garrera hears the report. Then have the rest of your army cross this plain. Keep as low as you can, because my plan hinges on Shona's army not being seen. Ashdud, how long can our guerrillas take to meet here?' the area on the map was called Na-hor.
Na-hor was a town situated in a valley at the east end of the plains of Dura. The plain was hundreds of miles wide, stretching all the way from the Hone border to Na-hor. Na-hor was known for its trade in wild game and skins, which its traders bought from paid hunters. Sometimes they even sold crocodile meat, but K'rar's father had banned this. Na-hor traders traveled with these things occasionally to the bay of Korazin to sell. For three months of the year, that is, Adar, Nisan and Iyyar, the game that made up most of the trade would leave the Dura savanna en masse to migrate west, and meat trade at the city of Cockroach and other cities fell. This mass migration was after the next month, but some of the wildebeest and buffalo would have already began moving west.
'Full mobilization from all over Korazin would take about a month,' Ashdud said, 'and then there is traveling to the plains.'
'What about Shona's forces, Rohr?'
'Should be about the same time, my lord.'
'There will be game coming your way,' said K'rar, 'hunt some of it to beef up supplies when you arrive.' No one understood the rationale of this direction, but no one bothered to ask.
'My lord,' said Ashdud, 'there is still the question of your mother.'
K'rar had pondered this question. And he knew that his mother's chances of staying alive were very slim, and worse still were the chances of her extrication from her current situation. He did not belong in the optimistic bracket, and he couldn't keep out dark thoughts regarding Noor-shan, nor create an ideal situation in his mind.
'My mother will be used as a bargaining chip. When that happens, I will more likely honor the demands. Ashdud, if that happens, and you can see it will compromise our plans, you have permission to disobey me.'
'When do we leave Your Majesty?' Pliny wanted to know.
'Prepare the men, Ashdud, including Rohr here,' K'rar said.
'Yes, my lord. May I ask why?'
'We will complete last night's mission and attack the Goldoran post. We leave in two hours.' And he walked out of the tent without further discussion. The bodies inside the tent remained in their positions, exchanging faces. The silence wasn't broken until a minute later when Ashdud said,
'He knows they won't be ready,' Rohr said, smiling in appreciation of the king's strategy.
'The king is destined to be a great man. He will do great things for this nation.'
'Indeed,' Lady Esella concurred immediately, 'I have never seen him like this. I only just heard about his heroics from last night.'
'If it wasn't for him, the Goldorans would have already overrun this place,' Pliny said.
'Has he always been making these decisions?' Lady Esella asked.
'No. He's only been like this since yesterday's operation,' said Ashdud, 'but he sounds like a sage in these matters already. The camp is more endeared to him more than ever.'
'Well, he has come of age. I think Garrera has himself a more formidable foe than he imagined.' Rohr said.