Everything, all the hopes K'rar was holding on to, dwelt almost entirely on Shona joining the war. It is what had kept him on his feet despite suffering serious damage, the latest being the impending execution of his mother. If there was even an infinitesimal chance that somehow Shona had been prevented from crossing the border with its large armies, then K'rar had no reason to continue forcing the issue. As if that wasn't enough, Garrera's extra forces from the west had arrived, and this, by itself, fundamentally undermined K'rar's chances of mounting any resistance, lest an offensive. Now it was even clear that Garrera had not actually needed any of his charades of threatening his mother, slaughtering an entire village, implying that even Garrera did not know about his own fortunes. An invisible hand was involved in the play, a hand that had stopped Queen Rukh-shana in her tracks. K'rar couldn't tell how, but he was willing to bet that Goldora had something to do with it. The southerners had been liberal in their approach since K'rar's deposition, except for the provision of their armies. They had not set any standards or made any serious demands, at least not to K'rar's knowledge, but K'rar was more than half sure that Tao was involved.
He and his entire entourage were cooped up in the home of a royalist metalsmith called Zonda, and K'rar was cuddled up inside that man's storeroom, breaking down as he had the night before. He was now beginning to contemplate surrendering to Garrera, but he knew that would mean his own death. Once more, he began to regret having inherited the kingdom at his young age. He knew that a large chunk of the populace was now beginning to get used to the fact that Garrera was the new king, and to get tired of K'rar's futile efforts to change that fact. The tide had turned on him from all sides, and even he couldn't cook up a Hail Mary this time. He knew that in the end his age and inexperience had done him a disservice. But most of all, K'rar knew that sooner rather than later he would have to surrender. His situation was so futile that Garrera could even afford to allow him to be in the same location as him without any prying eyes or menacing soldiers. More than enough times now, Garrera had demonstrated the sorry fact that if any natives were still holding on to the hope that K'rar would reclaim his throne, they were not only putting themselves in danger, but also swimming in a fantasy. K'rar, too, was swimming in a fantasy. And he had to put a stop to it, or risk plunging Korazin, and more so Shona, into the largest war in their history.
K'rar hadn't moved from his posture and was still curled up with his hands around his knees when Ossus knocked on the door and entered without invitation. K'rar looked up just once and returned to his drooling. From the way he walked in and carried himself, Ossus obviously carried bad news, but K'rar was ready for the worst of it.
'They have put the Queen Mother on the noose, but they're still holding back from finishing the job,' he said, 'they think you will eventually show up.'
'Is that all?'
'They…they know we're still in the city. Garrera's men are blocking all exits around the city. So much for the truce.'
K'rar looked up now.
'Rukh-shana's hands are tied, they have my mother, and they've trapped us in this space. What more do we have to do? Must we hold on to a futile hope any longer?'
'My lord, don't say that. We don't know for sure if Shona hasn't managed…'
'You are a seasoned fighter, Ossus. You cannot be that optimistic at this stage. I know you're trying to encourage me, but we both know that Lankh didn't dream up those words. Where is Ashdud?'
Ossus once more put on a guilty face.
'He left with ten of the men. He will try to extricate the Queen Mother.'
'I didn't authorize that,' K'rar complained, but then, it didn't matter. At least his closest man still maintained sheer force of will to try. Whether he stayed by K'rar or went out to try and help his mother didn't matter. K'rar himself had resolved to end this useless strife, by giving himself up.
'I cannot fight anymore,' K'rar said, 'Ashdud ought to know it will not end well.'
'My lord, what are you saying?'
'It has been a good fight, my friend.'
Ossus knew exactly what K'rar was saying, so he did not bother attempting another persuasion. He stayed behind in the room as K'rar exited it, to beat his chest and suppress the hurt within him, as well as to keep his rare tears in his head. He had known. He and the rest of the resilient group had known that the king was after all just a boy, and that all their noble efforts to keep him in the fight would soon weigh upon him. They had known that he was breaking when he suggested the extrication of the Ursan villager from inside the camp of hundreds of men. K'rar had nonetheless proved to be a charismatic leader at such a young age, but he was also the leader that the nation would never have. The enemy had turned on the style, and had finally pulled the last straw holding the Casparon dynasty in place.
When Ossus reappeared in the adjacent room where the rest of the company were stationed, K'rar wasn't with them, and they, too, were downcast and resigned and aggrieved. K'rar had ordered them not to follow him, obviously. But Ossus had a different idea.
'I am going after him,' he said to them, 'our lives are over without him. I will put down my sword next to his.' And as soon as he walked out, all eleven men in the room turned with him. One of them said goodbye to the homeowner, and left his sword behind.
K'rar was riding at a slow, silent trot through the cobbled street, and they stayed several meters behind him. He was aware of their presence. Apart from less than two or three stragglers, they were the only ones on the road with him. With time they came closer to a busier road, and it was from here that the few stragglers became five, then ten, then a considerably large crowd. K'rar was donning his royal robe, and the men following him helped the natives recognize that he was the elusive boy king. As they approached the larger crowds where the execution had been stalled for three hours now, the larger crowd sensed the approach of a new arrival, and drifted like a wave to the back when K'rar came to within a few hundred meters. Ossus and three of the men had now rode their horses to his bumper, fearing that some idiot might try something stupid. But the crowd were as silent as a grave, just following closely as lifeless dolls. They did not need an explanation to understand that this was the end of the road for their king. Obviously, he was not paying the usurper a courtesy visit.
K'rar stopped his horse within eight meters of the crowd gathered in the space. The crowd automatically cut itself in half to create passage for him. Any noise they'd been making instantly turned into a deafening silence. The tall figure of Lankh appeared from somewhere and stood in the center of the aisle, the end of which culminated in the space where the scaffold was standing, cordoned off from the crowd by Hatto's men and some Goldorans. Some of the Goldorans made a move to attack K'rar and frisk him, but Lankh shouted to them to stand down. K'rar had reached the point of no return. He, Ossus, Pliny and the other two men drifted into the square, but only he was allowed to go all the way. He hadn't lifted his eyes, and he didn't until he dismounted, and dared to look around him. The enemy Garrera was standing right next to his mother, who was set up in the scaffold with the noose around her neck. She instantly began sobbing loudly, avoiding her son's face, as he avoided hers. But K'rar was gutted when he saw that another body was lying dead in the square. It was Ashdud's body, and he immediately ran to him. The old man was long gone, having bled out from more than one sword wound across his torso and through it. His hand was still grasping his sword, and his eyes still open, looking up into the empty sky. K'rar had no tears left in his eyes, and although he was weakened by this death, he could only let out dry sobs. Yet another loss for him. He stayed on the ground next to him for a couple of minutes, uninterrupted, before he looked up at Garrera, whose mood he couldn't read off the face. When their eyes met, Garrera drew his sword, and the crowd let out a unified gasp. K'rar's heart missed a beat, but when Garrera moved the weapon, it was not to slit the Queen Mother's throat. He swung it above her head and cut the rope, freeing her, although the noose remained around her neck, and her hands tightly fastened. She dropped from the scaffold like a sack and ran to her son. K'rar couldn't bear the look of her face. The woman who owned some of the most expensive perfumes and ointments in all the land now looked worse than a widowed beggar. Even the white cotton long dress the enemies had thrown over her body were stained with dirt and roughed up like something out of a goat's mouth. Her face was black with tears old and new overlapping each other. The fur of a wet dog looked better than her hair. Still she held her son's cheeks with her tied hands, and placed her forehead against his.
'I'm so sorry, my son. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you,' she sobbed. K'rar had no words in reply, and he wasn't about to form them. He just remained silent through her spirited apologies and promises which he knew she would not fulfil, and a little protests here and there against his coming here. She said to him that she had pleaded with Garrera in a last gasp attempt to save his life, and that Garrera had promised not to kill him, at least not in public. She couldn't finish her words, when two men came to manhandle her away, so she yelled one last loud assurance to K'rar about how she loved him, in this life and the next. They took her and stacked her away in the cage she had been brought in.
'You had until tomorrow,' Garrera spoke at long last, loudly. He jumped from the scaffold now, and drew closer to the boy, saying softly this time, 'I last saw you about four years ago. You have grown. Into a wise young man too, so I hope you understand that most of this is partly your fault.'
K'rar was looking up at the man's face with fervent resentment, but which he couldn't vent out on him. He said,
'Even after you kill me, these people will still view me as king. You are just a usurper.'
Garrera mockingly laughed,
'A king without a castle is no king at all. And a king who doesn't exist, well…'
'What will you do to her?' he asked him.
'Well, she will live out the rest of her days under confinement. You have saved her life.'
'Then get it done with. Do it.'
The man let out a bad chuckle, and shook his head. He looked to the nearest men there and yelled,
'Bring us chairs, insolent fools. Shall we stand with the rest of the crowd?' As the men hurriedly scrambled into the nearest building to bring the chairs, Garrera said to K'rar, 'I will be honest with you. My Goldoran friends were the ones so hell bent on having you killed when we were making the plans. But, I intend to honor your mother's wishes.' The chairs were brought to them, and K'rar didn't want to cause any further scenes, so he sat down too. Their talk was inaudible. The crowd couldn't eavesdrop, but just watched the whole session in silence but for a few murmurs here and there.
'I prefer to die than watch you sell my kingdom to those bastards. Give me a poison here, and I will die by my own hand.'
'I cannot do that. If you must die by your own hand, you will not do it before your own people. I will put you on one of the barren islands in the northeast on the sea under constant watch. You will live out your long life there, and die an old man. It is what your mother asked.'
That suggestion was extremely unwelcome for K'rar. If he had been jesting about wanting to die moments before, he was now serious.
'No. I cannot do that. I cannot live my life watching you desecrate my kingdom.'
'You will be shut out from our world. Nothing will come to your ear. Only your food and water. If anyone tries to reach you, they will be met with brute force and executed immediately. If you feel tired of your life, you may take it. But I will honor your mother's dying wish.'
'Tell me,' said K'rar after a brief pause, 'was it really necessary to slaughter that village if you knew that Shona's armies wouldn't cross the border?'
'I didn't know. Apparently, my wife back in Chaldea sent emissaries to Rabier, Kai, Ziv and Tamar, and got them on our side. If Shona moved her forces by one inch across the border, all would swiftly terminate their economic relationship with Shona. Brilliant, wasn't it? I should have thought of it myself.'
'Your wife? You are a horrible man.'
'I agree.'
'The Goldorans. How could you do it with them? You really believe they'll leave you alone? They will certainly turn you into a puppet, and you will only bend to their whims and their wishes. They will make you a vassal. You have sold our nation. My nation.'
'You should let me worry about that, as I am the king now. Your reign is over as of now. Appreciate the mercy I am showing you.'
'Your reign will not last, General. They will stab you in the back. You cannot bring snakes into your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.'
'Have you been reading the holy books?' K'rar engaged in one last faceoff with the General, and shook his head in disgust. Garrera said, 'are you ready now? Your journey to the island will begin immediately. I will travel with you all the way, to avoid any unnecessary surprises. You have proved yourself a worthy opponent, although in the end, I am a General, and you're just a boy.'
'My bag, on the horse,' K'rar pointed to it. The horse was still standing with them in the square. It was brought to him, and he strapped it on himself, 'will you take me in a cage too?'
Garrera shook his head, 'You came of your own volition. There will be no more embarrassments or altercations. But, the city needs to know that you have handed over the powers.'
'What?'
'The royal garment,' said Garrera, pointing to it. K'rar knew he wanted him to take it off. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and proceeded to do so. Garrera took it with pleasure, and looked around to make sure the crowd understood exactly what it symbolized. The crowd understood exactly what it symbolized.
'My men. Spare their lives,' he had almost forgotten about them, 'and give Ashdud an honorable burial.'
'Don't you worry about that. He and my lieutenant-general Lankh were good friends. He will be sent off well.'
A special carriage was prepared for K'rar, and parked behind Garrera's own carriage. Three men were assigned to him, having been denied the request to be guarded by his own men. Garrera said he couldn't trust the men, and that they would definitely be arrested. In the fight that Ashdud had started, four others other than him had been slain. K'rar saw about eighteen of the rest of the team throw down their swords and surrender, including Pliny, Ossus and Mongoose. The latter was shedding tears for him, and he wanted to slit his own throat, but K'rar denied him that by shaking his head as a final order to him just before he buried his face into the carriage. The crowd dispersed gradually as the procession began exiting eastward from the city. Some followed it all the way to the other end of the city to watch the last of the Casparon kings being taken away by the first of the new dynasty, which had no name yet.
'Things turned out much better for us in the end,' Lankh said to his master in their carriage, 'I was readying myself for the worst scenario with the Hones.'
'Oh you should not stop doing that. The Hone queen will not take this sitting back. She will be plotting something. We will launch a preemptive strike to keep her calm.'
Lankh was happy with these words. He was his master's carbon copy, always looking to impose themselves on others. And now that the Goldorans were sudden allies, there was need for a new hostile neighbor to use as an example to the nation. Rabier, the other nation other than Shona and Goldora sharing borders with Korazin, was an insignificant rival. It was against Shona that Garrera had to lock horns to prove a point to the rest of Moab, even though there was no foul play from the other side.
But, hundreds of miles away and across the Great Louvithian Sea in a southeasterly direction, another man with a grander, more insightful scheme stood on the beach of the great sea, just outside the Goldoran capital, Tyrne, whose highest wall was visible if one looked behind him. The old man was accustomed to visiting this tranquil spot on the coast to contemplate, or meditate, on the multitude of thoughts in his old wise head. He mostly did this on weekends, like today, when he would take some time off his busy schedule. In the past months he had done this more regularly, especially after he commissioned the larger chunk of his armies to the Korazin operation. He stood alone just a small distance from the extent of the waves, and sometimes he threw stones into the sea. Today, he had come to the beach not only to think, but also to meditate on his achievements. Soon, he would receive the news that the last of the Casparon kings was out of the way. Such news on its own would make him a score greater than many of his predecessors as the first Goldoran monarch to wipe out a dynasty. The whole of Goldora would absolutely worship him now, relishing in the glory of finally putting those presumptuous, proud northerners on their knees. But the old patriarch of the nation wasn't planning on joining the festivities that he knew would ensue in Goldora just because of that. He had even greater plans to further trample the northerners. He had succeeded in only the second phase of his grand plan. He had managed to craftily turn their own Generals against them, and then use those Generals to remove his family's great enemies, the Casparon dynasty. It seemed the Casparon family were the only ones astute enough to rule the northerners after all. All the dealings they'd made with Goldora never involved having so much as a rich merchant from Goldora crossing the border. Now, in less than a year, Goldora had more soldiers in Korazin than Korazin itself, thanks to the new ruling family there, not as politically intelligent as their predecessors.
King Tao was smiling to himself with each passing thought. He was also smiling at the fact that his tool, Garrera, actually thought that he had lent him his armies just so Korazin would send some goods and monetary tribute. Garrera had taken the bait, and was now deep into the illusion that he and Tao were friends, who would extend their influence farther west together. He was just bending to pick up a stone when his eldest son—he was father to three sons and two daughters—pulled up next to him. This son, Amavi, was head of the new Trout Channel Plan, and also a Lieutenant in the army. Behind them, at a good distance away, their security details stood in two files of armored men in scarlet-and-black uniforms. Amavi had just joined his father, having come from the city. He was more alike his mother, Queen Teara, than his father, so he was less hairy, having a very thin tuft of beard on his chin that he had never trimmed. His younger brothers were both hairy turds like King Tao. Even his youngest brother, 18-year-old Jalloh, already had more beards and more hair on his body than Amavi. However, Amavi could boast being more good looking and taller than them. He had inherited his mother's southern Goldoran outlook, fair-skinned and beautiful.
'What's going on in that head of yours this time, father?' he said casually, casting a quick glance at his father's face and then looking out at the waves himself, 'we have completed the repair process of the fortresses at Arandis and Hazreel. We are waiting for your orders to move the armies there.'
'This beach. Do you know why it is named the Victor's Strip?' said Tao without moving his gaze from the waves.
'Some of our victorious forefathers landed here after many ancient wars.'
'Wrong. Our forefathers lost many battles,' now he looked at his son's face, 'they won some, but those victories did not name the beach. The victors were the Korazites, and it was here that they handed over our prisoner comrades after winning the First Independence War. As many as 100 ships from their flotilla anchored in these waters, and threw the starving bodies of our fighters on the beach before your great grandfather and his strategists.'
'So the beach is named after northerners?'
'Yes. They named it. Soon, in the not so distant future, I hope we will name it after our own victories.'
'We can already do that. The Korazites already let us into their inner bedrooms. Isn't that in itself a grand victory?'
'Hmm,' the man patted his son's shoulder, 'a victory is only a victory when the soldiers make it home safely to deliver the news.' Amavi nodded, and then Tao went on, 'once the death of K'rar von Caspar is confirmed, you can move the garrisons into the fortresses. I hope you were discreet enough in the repairs.'
'Well there's still the channel between us and the Province. The Provincians didn't suspect a thing.'
'Actually, they should have suspected something now, given the events in Korazin. They will be surprised when the plan is in force, but not very surprised.'
'I received mail from Korazin, speaking of which. It appears Garrera chose to keep the queen alive. After using her to catch the boy, he wants to send her down here, as a token.'
'A trophy,' said Tao, 'hmm. What shall we do with her?'