Usurper

by David Waine

  The flute trilled its final quivering note and her dance came to a stop, rump in the air, crotch so near Kubelik’s nose that he could smell it. The scent excited him. It had been a deliberate ploy by her. Kubelik’s reputation for enjoying his pleasures was as great as his father’s and his voice counted for more than any other, save the august monarch himself.

  The heir to the throne of Draal slapped the girl on her backside and sent her sprawling across the table, his handprint red on her buttock.

  “Take her away,” said his father softly, “we will discuss her destiny.”

  The girl was led away by two guards to await her fate. Either way, she would be ravished by all of them — starting with Sulinan, then Kubelik, then working her way down the hierarchy to the two guards — before morning.

  The king leaned back in his chair and examined the faces around the table. The lust was fading from their eyes now as their minds turned slowly from her pulsating thighs to matters of importance.

  “One thump and she lives,” cried Kubelik.

  Every man around the table thumped the table once with his fist, ironically mirroring the Kingdom’s gesture of approval. The girl was saved.

  Sulinan directed that she should be told of their decision only after they had had their way with her. There was nothing quite like the fear of death to put an additional piquancy into a girl’s performance.

  “So, gentlemen,” he announced, “to business. How prepared are we? General Siriak?”

  A grizzled old warrior, scarred through many campaigns, rose at the far end of the table. “Our standing army numbers slightly over eighty thousand, sire. This figure is larger than our enemies believe it to be. In addition, with reservists, we can call upon a total armed strength of almost three hundred thousand men — an increase on the Sutherlanders’ knowledge by about fifty thousand. All are now in full training at camps spread about the realm.”

  By tradition, Draals still spoke of the Kingdom by its original name of ‘Sutherland’.

  Sulinan nodded. “And the navy, Admiral Flenn?”

  The Admiral was at least as old as Siriak, but not as scarred, his ships having seen less actual action than the land born troops. He stood, grey haired and straight, pausing to remove the slave dancer from his mind before he could continue. “We have thirty large ships of war to the Sutherlanders’ twenty-two, backed by over a hundred smaller, faster vessels. We maintain our inshore squadron off Graan to keep an eye on their blockade.”

  “It’s hardly a blockade,” interrupted Siriak harshly, “you could break it easily if you wished.”

  “As you broke their armies at the pass two decades ago?” responded Flenn acidly.

  A soft cough from the far end of the table attracted the attention of all others. General Trulik rose from his seat. “If I may, Your Majesty, I believe the time has come to acquaint all our commanders with our plans.”

  Siriak and Flenn sat back in their chairs. They already knew. They had helped to develop them. All others, however, Kubelik included, craned forward.

  Trulik cleared his throat again and continued. “Gentlemen, it is no longer enough to rely on our traditional tactics. History has proved that.”

  Siriak sat stiff in his chair. Twenty years had passed, but the shame of his defeat would never leave him. Even subsequent triumphs on their northern border had failed to erase it.

  Trulik knew his discomfort and minimised it immediately. “Most of us around this table shared in that defeat, but time moves on, however. Make no mistake, the Sutherland is far less assailable now than it was then.

  Grim silence greeted this announcement.

  Finally Kubelik raised his head. “So how do we crack it?”

  Trulik swallowed to clear his throat. “Until this year, Vandamm’s strategy held us effectively at bay.” He allowed that statement to sink in. Heads began to rise. “Yes, gentlemen. Until this year! Last summer General Siriak and I uncovered a second practicable crossing point into the Sutherland. It is a cave that passes right under the border ridge to an uninhabited valley on the other side.”

  He allowed the moment to hang. Kubelik was now straining forward, his eyes aflame.

  “It was a small opening, but our engineers have enlarged it into a full-size tunnel.”

  Heads were now turning.

  “How many troops could we squeeze through at once when the opening is enlarged?” asked Kubelik.

  “As many as we wish. The far valley is desolate. We can build up a whole army base there without their knowledge. Before they realise what has happened, we can have an entire army in the Sutherland, splitting their forces.”

  “What is to stop them from stumbling across our work before it is finished?”

  “Another astute question, Your Highness.” Trulik warmed to his theme. “In theory, nothing. We have, however, kept a constant watch on the valley for almost a year now, and in that time we have seen but a single soul.”

  “A military man?”

  “No. He had a military bearing, but he did not wear any Sutherland uniform of our acquaintance. He was dressed all in black and wore a black mask across his face. When he saw us, he spurred his horse and made off down the valley. We kept a careful watch for weeks afterwards for any patrols he might have alerted, but there were none. Whoever he was, he did not go to the authorities. I suspect he was a brigand and he ran off into hiding.”

  “So the valley is unguarded?”

  Trulik nodded firmly.

  “Thank you, General Trulik,” intoned Sulinan. “Now, gentlemen, our chief strategist has just informed us of our trump card. Admiral Flenn?”

  The Admiral rose to his feet and indicated the port of Gulal on his map. “The enemy knows that we are building an invasion fleet here. Vandamm has spy ships, stationed here and here. Our sources in the Sutherland tell us that his son, Soth, will be sent on a major diplomatic mission to the south, taking several warships with him, a variety of smaller craft, and towing a number of hulks. It is these hulks that give his intentions away. Our sources in southern lands confirm that they know of no such diplomatic initiative, which is what we suspected anyway. We assume, therefore, that this squadron will sail north secretly to lie off Gulal and send in the hulks as fire ships to destroy our invasion fleet before it sets sail.”

  All around the table nodded. Admiral Flenn now smiled cruelly as he delivered his masterstroke.

  What the Sutherlanders do not know, however, is that this invasion fleet is a ruse, placed there by us with the express intention of letting them burn it.”

  Kubelik thought for a moment, drumming his fingertips on the table. “I still don’t understand how this gives us an advantage.”

  “Vandamm’s admiral, Killian, will attack our fleet at night when his spy ships see us loading the men — uniformed criminals, not regular troops. Instead of waiting for the tide, however, our three new warships will be towed out to sea under cover of darkness, whereupon they will sail south to join the rest of the fleet, leaving the transports to their fate. Thus, when Killian learns of this, he will know that our fleet has been strengthened to thirty-three ships of the line at a time when his is effectively reduced to seventeen. He will immediately recall his ships from Gulal, leaving the way clear for our true invasion fleet, which is secretly building two leagues upriver, at Foll, to escape unmolested.”

  “Clever,” remarked Kubelik, impressed.

  “In short, gentlemen,” announced Sulinan, “before Vandamm realises what is happening, his navy and the Border Force will be fully engaged, Graan overrun, Dumarrick’s legions committed and Nassinor cut off from Brond by our own forces. We can have an army of up to a hundred thousand men on Sutherland soil before the action commences. With his forces stretched, we can mop them up piecemeal and obliterate them entirely. By spring, my son, will reign in Brond.”

  Kubelik smiled harshly at the thought. The idea of bloodletting always excited him almost as much as the idea of rutting. The idea of crushing their near neig
hbour's peasants from his position on Vandamm's throne appealed even more than either. Then a new thought occurred to him. In his natural excitement at the prospect of such exquisite carnage, he had momentarily forgotten his dearest ambition of all. “What of Avalind?” he asked.

  “There must be no figurehead left as a focus for revolt among those we choose to spare,” replied his father.

  Kubelik’s face clouded, but Sulinan smiled indulgently. “She will not be sacrificed until you have had your way with her. Capture her alive and carry her back here when you have achieved your victory. We can celebrate together by parading her naked through the streets, where the vermin of the city can view her flesh, and you can ravish her before the entire populace and publicly dispose of her in any way that you choose, the grislier the better as far as I am concerned. That would provide a fitting final degradation to mark the downfall of the Vandamms: destroyed utterly while at the very pinnacle of their power.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Kingdom had never seemed so beautiful. Flowers bloomed everywhere in green fields around Brond. Even the forest, normally so forbidding, displayed a verdant allure. The capital wore its summer face with every building scrubbed until its stonework sparkled. In the sunshine, people smiled happily, greeting one another courteously as they passed. Merchants’ stalls were set out with pile upon pile of fresh fruit and vegetables, all dripping wet and gleaming in the sunlight. An overheated baker emerged from his aromatic bakery to mop his perspiring brow before vanishing back within to withdraw yet more loaves from a glowing oven. Up the street a cheery butcher flashed greetings to all and sundry as he clove meat, missing his finger by a hair’s breadth with each stroke.

  Callin sat back on his favourite bench in the market square and took this in. Soon all would be chaos and heaven only knew how many of these good people would be dead. The thought sobered him. The Hag’s prediction was coming true piece by piece. Simack was dead by his action, if not his design, his father was dying and a major war was brewing.

  The thought sickened him in a way that the benign weather could never assuage. The price was too high, too inhuman. He did not want to be king. He inhabited a world that was essentially good and had treated him kindly. For the first time in his life, he had achieved the exceptional. Was that not enough?

  Only then did he realise that he had not really achieved anything. The Hag’s words: You will be invincible until you reject me, came back to him.

  Only invincible because she was. Simian’s and Keriak’s feats: they were genuine. He had been seduced by power that would not even be his own to wield, but hers, through him, as her puppet. Because of that, two strangers were dead, arguably murdered; his brother was dead, butchered horribly for a reason he could never understand; his father was dying of grief at an act for which he, Callin, bore a secret responsibility. Four more people — one of them his beloved remaining brother and another the loveliest creature on God’s earth — were condemned to perish on the altar of his own ambition.

  He hung his head in shame. Was there no road back? Could he reject her now and avoid the awful consequences that were inevitably unfolding?

  Suddenly he knew who had sent the assassin that night. The Hag had done it to lock him into her unholy pact. Despair welled within him. He was powerless to change it.

  Or was he? Was a profane agreement binding in the sight of God? His actions since that fateful night had been virtuous, or at least forgivable. The one exception had been his murder of Simack, which was sufficient to damn him for all eternity. Yet he had not consciously killed his brother. If anything, he was the weapon rather than the assassin. The Hag had used him. Were not all sinners forgiven if they repented? If he proved loyal and fought valiantly in this coming war, might her prophecy come to pass without further villainy on his part? Could he possibly present her with Sulinan’s head? He could then reject her, having already repented for his sin. He repented it now, with all his heart.

  Screwing his eyes tight shut, he muttered between clenched teeth, “Hag, I renounce you and all your ways, now and forever. Remove your charm.”

  *

  Midsummer brought the annual hunt and that brought the noble families from all over the Kingdom. The Dumarricks arrived with all their pomp and pageantry and there were more of them this time. Lissian greeted her father and mother at the gate. Baron Loda looked sidelong at her reduced form. Baroness Dumarrick was moved to remark that she hoped her elder daughter was being fed properly in Brond. Lissian, however, merely smiled and told her that she had never felt better.

  Her older brother, Bram, reined in and greeted his sister perfunctorily, not even noticing her improved condition. Then Callin’s heart skipped a beat.

  Another figure was emerging from the baroness’s carriage. Unlike her sister, she was tall and slender. She had Lissian’s glossy raven locks, but they hung in gleaming tresses over her shoulders. She was clad in an emerald travelling gown, the hue of which was echoed in the startling green of her eyes. Her face — the arched eyebrows, straight nose, full lips, the hint of gold in her skin. Callin was lost in admiration. Was this vision was a Dumarrick at all? Perhaps she was a ward, a cousin — a goddess.

  “I perceive that you have not seen The Lady Xunin before, Sir Callin,” said a voice at his shoulder.

  Soth stood there, a smile on his usually sober face.

  “Your Highness,” Callin made the traditional obeisance.

  Soth waved it aside. “This is not a formal occasion.”

  Callin immediately relaxed and turned his eyes back on the wonder that was now greeting her elder sister some thirty paces away. “Xu — Xunin?” he stammered.

  Soth nodded. “Baron Loda’s youngest. She is about Avalind’s age and, though I say it, remarkable, given her heritage.”

  “Is she married?” Callin spoke before the words had even formed in his head. Immediately he kicked himself for such an indiscretion, and coloured.

  Soth laughed gently. “No, not yet, although she has had no lack of offers. They say her father is saving her, but I don’t believe that he currently has anyone in particular in mind. The lady seems content to wait.” He turned a genial gaze on the younger man. “I read your thoughts, Sir Knight, and I understand them completely. She would, indeed, make a fine match for a man such as you. I wish you luck and fare you well.”

  With that, he left Callin to admire the girl. Her greeting of Lissian was full of sisterly embraces, but was returned with bare civility. The vision had yet to notice him, but the ogress still had her hopes. That would explain her zeal to shed the fat and acquire some sort of condition before he found someone worthier than Mussa on whom to exercise. With her wondrous, and not so secretly despised, sister in town, she was obviously concerned that her own chances were fading.

  Greetings over, Baron Loda shepherded his family through the gates and into the courtyard, where King Rhomic waited to greet them formally. As she passed, Xunin turned to the young man who could not help but stare at her, open-mouthed. She paused for a moment and smiled warmly at him. His heart leapt into his mouth. With a huge effort, he summoned his will to force his body into a courteous bow. She replied with a graceful bob and passed on her way, looking back at him one more time before she disappeared.

  His own family’s arrival was a much more muted affair. This year Dorcan sent word that they would come by the postern and Callin was to meet them there.

  As they arrived, he saw the reason. His father was so diminished that the deterioration was obviously irreversible. They helped the creaking old man out of his litter — he could no longer even sit his horse — and set him as squarely as could be arranged on his feet. He grasped his youngest son by the shoulders, as firm a grasp as he could manage, yet a pale shadow of what it had been a year before, and smiled, his eyes betraying his deep love of all his children.

  “I have waited long for this moment, my son. I am content.”

  As Dorcan supported the old man away to the Vorst family suite,
Callin turned to Avalind, “He looks a little better.”

  She shook her head. “He isn’t. He is putting a brave face on it, naturally, but he is now dangerously weak.” She looked at him frankly. “He has spent all his strength in trying to stay alive long enough to see you dubbed. Well, he has achieved that, or at least he will tomorrow. After that we can only look forward to his deterioration accelerating as his remaining powers desert him. We have a severe trial ahead of us, Sir Callin.”

  That evening he sat at his father’s bedside for a full hour, reminiscing over times past, and for a further hour with his brother, discussing their sire’s fate.

  “We hoped that your news would revive him, and it did for a while. Once you are officially dubbed, though, he will feel his life’s work is complete and that the honourable thing to do would be to make way for a younger man.”

  “How long?” asked Callin.

  “Who can say? The doctors don’t know other than that he won’t see next winter out. Months maybe. Weeks more probably. Perhaps days.”

  “Then,” said Callin with finality, “if it is unavoidable, my prayer is that it will be days. I have no wish to see my father slowly fall apart.”

  “Amen to that,” replied his brother, “arrangements for the funeral are already laid down. Merely the date needs to be added. Although, from what I can surmise from the little that has been filtering through from Brond, all arrangements may be thrown out of joint at any time.”

  Callin understood but was mindful of his vow of secrecy. Still, this was his brother, soon to be Count Vorst and a member of the war council in his own right.

  “I cannot say much,” he said, “but nothing is likely to happen before the autumn. Just be certain that Nassinor’s roads are in good repair and our forces, reservists included, fully trained and armed.”

  “All in hand,” Dorcan confirmed, “will we be required to move quickly?”

  “Much depends on things that are, at the moment, pure theory,” said Callin truthfully.