The Pinnacle Of Empire (Book 6), page 16
part #6 of Neuyokkasinian Arc Of Empire Seroes Series
“That stubborn old fool should have surrendered the city by now,” the general said.
“I never could count on his doing the expected,” Nindax said.
Someone suddenly flung back the tent flap. Nindax jumped up, knocking over the field table and maps as he snatched out his sword at the unannounced intruder. “Who dares?”
“Greetings, Majesty,” Xthilleon said casually as he entered, releasing the tent flap, but not before the king noted the guards stood at attention outside as if they didn’t see the sorcerer pass between them. “I see you’re making your final preparations for storming the city.”
“You should be announced, wizard.” The general snapped. He picked up the field table and redisplayed the maps.
“I’ve no time for such courtesies,” Xthilleon snarled. His flaring eyes chilled the king. Then his features softened; he gave a token bow.
“Indeed.”
“Your Majesty will waste precious time storming the walls. You will succeed eventually, of course, if the enemy’s relief forces don’t reach here first. But be assured, they are marching post haste as we speak.”
“Relief forces?”
“The Velstorbokkin army on the way back from Soondaree. Nemenese has had a visitation from two imperial emissaries. They’ve convinced him that the empire isn’t participating in the invasion.”
“The Velstorbokkin army won’t return in time.”
“Possibly not, but then can you afford to risk that?”
How do you know all this?”
“You won’t take the city by siege in time, Nindax. You need my help. And then there is the matter of the crown prince.”
“What matter of the crown prince?”
“You’ve let him slip through your fingers.”
“He’ll remain beside his father. Everyone knows of his absurd, undying loyalty. He’ll fight to the death to defend his father.”
Xthilleon turned darker, his skin almost purplish. His face twisted and the lines deepened in a frown. His eyes appeared to grow in his head. “Fool! You’ve let the crown prince escape.”
“How dare you call me a fool?”
“You cannot now destroy Velstorbokkin and absorb it into your kingdom. You can defeat Nemenese and subjugate his kingdom, but you cannot annihilate it, not now. The crown prince lives and will lay claim to the throne even if you kill his father. Now you must defeat Velstorbokkin and take Nemenese prisoner. If you can capture the city, you must convince him you captured his son as well. The most you can hope for is to make him swear loyalty as a supplicant to your throne before he learns you don’t have his son in your grasp.”
“How do you know all this?”
Xthilleon’s face relaxed as the sun breaking through dispersing storm clouds, but the insidious snarl remained. He rolled a small orb in his right hand fingers. Internally, the orb seemed to swirl like clouds and emitted a pale, frosty light.
“I know; that’s all you need to know.”
“You’re too presumptuous, wizard.”
“Majesty,” the general said, calling Nindax attention to the city. “The army is now moving the first siege machinery in place around the city.”
“Give instructions to their commanders to begin firing boulders at the walls immediately upon reaching their range.”
“Perhaps a few boulders shot into the city, into the homes and businesses, creating more suffering and thus panic will soften their resistance. The more the panic the more those remaining inside the walls will pressure the king to surrender,” Xthilleon noted. His smirk reflected pleasure at the thought.
“Useful idea, Xthilleon,” Nindax said. “Have every third catapult fire boulders into the city, General, but let’s not destroy too much of it as it will soon be a province of the new Senoshesvas Empire and we’ll want to extract large war reparations.”
The Senoshesvasian army reformed into formal units. They marched around the capital, banging swords and spears on their shields, chanting ‘surrender’ as one unified, terrifying clamor. Then the cries fell silent and the boulders began to rain down on the fortifications and into the city. The elegant carvings on the pylons on either side of the main city gate were quickly smashed off. The gates themselves shuttered with the blows but held. To Nindax’s annoyance, the royal Velstorbokkin standard still flew over the royal palace.
* * *
Xthilleon retired to a small isolated tower in the hills behind the invading army where he could work undisturbed. He had but one devoted assistant, a totally depraved oaf rescued from Nindax’s dungeons under sentence of death. Xthilleon had sealed an enchanted chain around the creature’s neck that would instantly strangle him at the sorcerer’s command should Xthilleon sense disobedience. There would be no more treachery for the Dark Lord.
When the two had finished setting up the sorcerer’s contraptions, Xthilleon dismissed Morphenius and began chanting his incantations over the basin of moon water. The water display passed through various visions before a scene appeared from the dowager empress’ broach. Helgamyr was squabbling with Tottiana which wasn’t unusual. The sorcerer was about to move on to monitor other visions when he heard mention of Saxthor.
“Saxthor’s sailed away and left you almost before you rose from your birthing bed,” the dowager said.
“Mother, he left to rescue your father,” Tottiana said. “You’d have condemned him if he hadn’t gone to save Grandfather, and now you condemn him for trying. You’re unreasonable.”
“Sailed, sailed from where and when?” Xthilleon mumbled.
“Tarquinia is a long ways away, even on fast horses,” Tottiana said.
“Tarquinia! The emperor is sailing from Tarquinia.” Xthilleon searched a map and found Tarquinia on the north central imperial coast. “He’ll soon reach the port if I judge the distance and his speed correctly. I’ve no time to create a monster to kill him. I can’t kill Emperor Saxthor openly and still hope to seize and control the empire, but I can remove him remotely. Lost at sea in a raging storm, perfect. First, I must deal with Nemenese, then the emperor.”
“Morphenius!” Xthilleon called out. “I’ll need the following ingredients; I don’t care where or how you get them, but get them before dawn. I’ve just enough time to catch the emperor on the open sea.”
“Yes, master,” the oaf said. Drool ran down the right corner of his puffy lips. “Does master needs another of them scrolls?”
“I’ll tell you when I need you to get something, idiot. Get the ingredients and meet me in the cellar.”
Morphenius hunched in a slight bow. Wiping the spittle from his chin and frowning, he shuffled off to get the items.
Xthilleon clutched the scroll he’d already retrieved and descended into the tower’s dank cellar to the well that sustained the inhabitants during a siege. The water was cold and still palatable. The sorcerer drew out a pot of water and took it to a work table, brushing off the dust with a fouled cloth left there by the previous occupants. The wizard heard Morphenius’s trundling feet scraping on the cellar stairs. The oaf plopped the ingredients on the work table and stood back watching and waiting for orders in silence.
“The fungus I found growing on the dead rat beside the well this morning gave me the idea” Xthilleon said.
“That the stuff you had me scrape off and grind to a dry powder?”
“The very thing,” Xthilleon said. He grinned and rubbed his long, cold fingers over the oaf’s bald head, then patted him like a pet. Picking off a louse, he frowned and wiped his hand on the oaf’s dirty tunic. “That and the roots you ground and soaked in water will make the perfect potion to reduce King Nemenese’s defiance, raise his fear, and stir his mind to amplify imagined threats.”
Morphenius chuckled with the wizard’s grin. His rotted teeth disgusted the wizard, who then turned to the pot on the table and stirred in the powder and sludge.
“Start a fire there and simmer this until I return. Careful you don’t over boil it. We want to extract the poison but not to break it down. Understand?”
“Yes, master,” Morphenius said, already collecting bits of wood and breaking a crate for more.
Xthilleon went upstairs and retrieved his wand, verified the correct scroll with the correct spells, and returned to the cellar. He approached the oaf from behind and stabbed his hand. Morphenius jumped back, startled.
The oaf clutched his forearm. “What’d I do wrong?”
Xthilleon quickly jerked his arm and held it over the pot he’d taken from the fire letting blood drip into the simmering sludge.
“I needed blood for the potion, didn’t I tell you?” Xthilleon squeezed the oaf’s hand, wringing blood from the stab wound before thrusting the creature’s arm away from the pot and himself. Morphenius remained silent and slunk back into the shadows, holding his red, swelling arm.
The wizard stirred the pot and strained the liquid through a cloth filled with dried herbs. Then, chanting three spells in succession over the foul liquid, watched the dark residue settle to the bottom, leaving a clear liquid. He poured the liquid into a small vial and climbed back up to the tower’s first floor.
“Here, take this and be careful with it,” Xthilleon said to a servant of the Velstorbokkin chatra previously selected and bribed. “Sneak back into the city and pour it into a goblet of wine for the king. Be sure he drinks it.”
“Will it kill King Nemenese? I won’t do it if it kills the king. The guards would be on me in an instant.”
“No, fool, it won’t kill the king. If I’m right, his response might not even be noticed in his present state of panic.”
“I’ll need more money to do this. If I’m to do something to the king, it will mean more risk.”
“Clever boy,” Xthilleon said taking a leather pouch from his belt and tossing three coins to the conspirator. He noted the boy was jittery, glanced at the wizard, then looked away. He hesitated. “Take them; you’ll earn what you get.”
The boy took the vial and grabbed the coins in his other hand. He bowed and rushed out the door.
“Fool, his name is second after the chatra’s on the proscription list. King Nindax will silence him before anyone knows the potion ever existed,” Xthilleon turned to see Morphenius shuffle up the stairs still clutching the arm that now ended in a filthy rag tied around his swollen hand. The oaf glanced at the wizard and headed off to some refuge. Xthilleon stood at the tower door watching the treasonous boy slink back toward the secret tunnel that would take him back into the crumbling capital. He closed the creaking door slowly on the sight and future resistance.
* * *
10: Velstorbokkin Falls to Senoshesvas
The emissaries had raced back to inform Saxthor that King Nemenese had accepted the empire wasn’t behind the attacks. They brought his urgent request for imperial troops to drive back King Nindax. Saxthor delayed only long enough to see that Tottiana would recover from her ordeal and the baby had stabilized. Then, he left Engwaniria for the northern port of Tarquinia on the Tixosian Sea. There he took ship in a race to catch up to the imperial fleet. He’d sent it earlier from Malledar transporting imperial troops to relieve the siege of the Velstorbokkin capital. Belnik and Tittletot jostled on the imperial trireme’s deck beside the emperor.
After much difficulty, Xthilleon identified Saxthor’s trace. He followed the progress of the emperor’s three ship group in his basin of moon water. When out on the open sea, the sorcerer began an elaborate incantation creating a powerful atmospheric disturbance. As dark, billowing clouds formed swirling and spreading, Xthilleon concentrated the breathtaking power and drove it toward the ships.
“I told you to stay with the empress,” Saxthor said. “You two never listen to me.”
“I’d have stayed behind as Your Majesty insisted, but this big fellow was most impertinent and would not do as he was told,” Tittletot said, puffing up and turning to point at Belnik whose mouth fell open. “Of course, if he was coming, you couldn’t expect me to stay behind with the women and children. You should have him tortured, strung up on the wall, and flogged unmercifully for disobedience.” Tittletot appeared most serious but then, head nodding, grinned at Belnik whose eyebrows arched beneath glaring eyes. The intimidation failed to disturb Tittletot’s composure.
“Why you little backstabber!” Belnik said. “You know full well it was your stubborn insistence that we accompany Saxthor that persuaded me to join this expedition. Majesty, have him flogged for his deceit.”
“Me? Would you sacrifice so innocent a lamb as myself to save your own hide from justice? You’d sacrifice this defenseless little scapegoat to sooth the emperor’s just anger? You’d thrust me beneath the crushing blows of brute force to save yourself the flogging you so richly deserve.” Tittletot turned to Saxthor, who watched the amusing drama. “How have you so endured this treacherous beast for years, Majesty? Surely you must see he needs flogging for his own good.”
“So now it’s treacherous beast, is it?” Belnik grabbed a shield from the ship’s gunwales and raised it over his head as if poised to smack Tittletot over the head. Tittletot ran off down the deck with Belnik in hot pursuit, leaving Saxthor bent over laughing.
The imperial flagship and its two accompanying triremes were under full sail from the outset. The ships’ rams rose and plunged into the sea. Frothy clouds of sea spray splashed over the bowsprits as the great triremes surged through the western Tixosian Sea. Oarsmen strained to keep the warships moving forward still faster to overtake the imperial navy.
A day short of Soondaree, great charcoal clouds began forming, darkening the western sky with swirls like black smoke. Saxthor noted the flagship’s captain monitored the developing tempest. He alerted his crew and the accompanying ships to the danger.
“Your Majesty should retire to your cabin,” the captain said. Belnik and Tittletot were instantly scurrying down the deck toward the stairs leading below. “The seas will get rough and I can’t risk your being swept overboard.”
“Those clouds do look ominous, Captain. Is the storm likely to come to sea or stay over land?”
“It’s heading this way. I’d try to make for shore, but we wouldn’t make it in time. We’d be dashed on the coastal rocks here; there’s no safe harbor nearby. We’ll have to try to weather the storm on the open sea.”
Sudden cold gusts of wind began to lash at the ship.
“Furl the sail,” the captain shouted to the crew. “It’ll be torn to shreds in this wind. We’ll have to rely on the rudder and oarsmen to keep us into the wind.”
The storm grew and spread, covering the western sky, streaming straight for them. As it swallowed the coast, torrential rains began to pour down on the ships, the huge drops smashing on the deck with pounding force. Silver and white whipped through the swelling sooty clouds. Lightning shot down all around the ships. The thunder intensified with crashing hail the size of chicken eggs shattering on the deck. The crew hovered beneath any protection as the ship rose and plunged in the great waves that broke over the ships.
“This is an unnatural storm,” Saxthor mumbled to himself.
A great wave raised the ship jarring it to starboard; the oars broke free from the water. Muffled sounds of oarsmen below fumbling with the whipping oars added to the terror of the storm’s midday darkness. The great ship jerked back to port when it righted itself.
“Steer for that island!” the captain ordered the helmsman. “We must try to shelter behind it to break the wind and surge or we’ll be lost in this churning sea.”
The great flagship’s timbers creaked under the strain as she began a slow turn in the churning sea. The starboard side of the ship was all but swallowed in a wave. The ship shuttered but held together as she righted herself and began to cut again through the whitecaps heading for the island that from time to time disappeared behind massive walls of water.
Noting the scent of sea water mingled with smoke from the extinguished galley fire, Saxthor looked back at the accompanying triremes, struggling to keep up. The second ship was falling behind.
“Captain, the Princess Tah is struggling. She’s low in the water.”
“She’s taking on water for sure. Her pumps can’t keep up,” the captain replied, water pouring off his helmet as the two men looked back at the ship. “Nothing we can do to help her now.”
“Look, there behind her, is that her rudder?” Saxthor asked, pointing to the roiling sea swirling around the ship, bobbing this way and that. Suddenly, the great wooden rudder, with ropes trailing like kite streamers, rose free with the swells beside the trireme. Then a massive wave crested next to the ship and thrust the great oak-beam rudder like a spear into the side of the Princess Tah smashing a fatal hole below the waterline. All Saxthor and the captain could do was watch as water rushed into the ship. “Is there nothing we can do?”
“We couldn’t reach her in time,” the captain said.
Within minutes, the great trireme plunged into a wave, bow first, and disappeared from sight.
“She’s gone… in an instant,” Saxthor said, his voice was hushed. “Just like that, she’s lost with all hands. Could there be survivors?”
“There wasn’t time to escape. The sea would have sucked them down. In any case, if we tried to turn back for survivors now we’d go to the same fate. Turning back in this sea would rip off our rudder too. We must make for the leeward side of that island and hope we make it before this storm sends us into the deep.”
“Look, there to the west,” Saxthor said.
The captain’s eyes seemed to swell, staring. A black, swirling funnel descended from the typhoon’s epicenter. The ship’s timbers groaned and creaked. The oarsmen strained to keep the ship’s course amid swirls and waves that slammed the palatial ship from every direction. The black funnel bore down on the two ships.
“Can we make the island’s protection? Saxthor asked.
“Ramming speed!” the captain yelled.
A great wave tore the helmsman from his grasp on the rudder’s handle. It knocked him unconscious against the railing. The ship lurched wildly. Oars flailed in the air. The jostling ship almost jettisoned the captain overboard. Saxthor jumped for the rudder’s handle and wrapped himself around it, straining with every muscle. Water poured over his face nearly blinding him. He was able to bring the ship back on course before returning steering oar to the befuddled helmsman.
