Chapter the Eleventh: Prospects
As I was waiting at Halmar for the Khergit counterattack, I found myself with spare time on my hands and nobody to manipulate save my companions, who were used to it, and servants, who were either too stupid to notice or too wise to let on that they noticed.
With the merchant class fawning on me as well, at least in public, and with my army being regretfully off limits – a hand's on approach to stimulate the esprit de corps, making officers rise to the occasion, and to encourage healthy rivalry, had been all well and good when I was merely a nobody with a warband, but it just wouldn't do now that I was recognized as one of the great ladies of the land.
I suppose I could have turned to the priests for entertainment but between Borcha and the merchant of Shariz and their tomfoolery, I was very, very, leery of getting more involved in religious matters than I had already been forced into by mischance.
I tried settling my mind by sparring with my companions, but when I called them to me Marnid and Rolf cried out “ALL PRAISE... KHÜNBISH! DIVINE.... KHÜNBISH! HAIL THE VIRGIN! KHÜNBISH!“ and threw themselves into the dirt before me. Rolf's huge body was shaking with laughter as he attempted to kiss my boots while Marnid, who was obviously the culprit behind this practical joke, kept up the chant, and Nizar played a jaunty little tune on his lute as counterpoint. Lezalit and Borcha were furious, though for very different reasons, but the rest of my companions thought it a splendid joke. Even Old Man Ironguts was affected. A fleeting smile crossed his face and, finding the unfamiliar territory to its liking, decided to camp there for a while.
I kicked Rolf in the face to teach him a lesson or say rather that I tried to. Like the rest of us, he was dressed for war, so my impulsive action resulted in my kicking him in the helmet which rang his head like a bell, at which he laughed even harder.
I stalked off for my chambers, my dignity in tatters. Sometimes you have to know when to call a strategic retreat and this was definitely one of those times. With a final cry of “VIRGIN OF HALMAR!” ringing in my ears, I slammed my door. Marnid's sense of humour was ever inappropriate.
It was thus in a contemplative mood that, as so many other young women before me, my mind turned to marriage.
Gone was the naivety of a few years before. Where once I had innocently planned to marry an old noble, tend to him to the best of my ability, send him to an early but happy death, and then rule with custody over his children from a previous marriage, my experiences with the battle-hardened nobility of Calradia like Emir Hamezan had disclosed the fatal flaws in that plan.
The surviving older nobles of the Sarranid Sultanate were those who had survived the battles and intrigues of their youth. They were those who had put aside sentiment and passion in favour of cold hard steel and the joys of power and had proved that they deserved their place by being harder and more ruthless than their fellows. While they had no objections to younger feminine companionship, they weren't ready to be led in
anything, they all had grown heirs, and besides, they all had wives and I had no intention of remaining a mere mistress, being a lady of note in my own right.
Not insurmountable obstacles, one might argue, but climbing into one's bridal bed over the bodies of the groom's family, while a plan not without its attractions, was a plan that might well backfire.
No, if I wanted a useful husband, I would have to train him myself. I'd need somebody old enough to have survived the suicidal and moronic impulses of young men, yet young enough to respond well to domination. Somebody stupid enough that he would be overawed by my superior intellect and look to me for directions, yet clever enough to be capable of acting independently given only loose instructions. Somebody honourable enough not to spend time plotting on his own, yet dishonourable enough to remain useful in my own plots, and finally somebody that the other nobles would listen to as one of their own.
With the significant risk of having him around for a long time if he didn't misstep to a degree requiring replacement, it would in addition be preferable that he be possessed of a decent wit, a great deal of patience, and few perversions disliked by society, not to mention being a hardened warrior, but not one too much in love with his horses, and a respected diplomat, but not one too much in love with his own words.
Somebody who could truly appreciate the supreme image of femininity, which was me, while not being a skirt chaser. The possession of huge tracts of land would be nice but was not imperative as I had enough for both of us. Superior riding skills, stamina, and a loving tongue wouldn't be amiss either.
I was
such a romantic at that age.
My girlish visions, however, had some trouble reconciling themselves with the eligible bachelors of the Sarranid nobility. The idea was that I'd provide the brains and my husband to be would provide the balls, so to speak, but the selection wasn't impressive. The first-born sons of the nobility fell naturally into three groups, second or third sons being, of course, completely out of the question.
There were the two I called the “Bathrobe Sages”. Always willing to discuss the decline of imperial power, the rise of the independent kingdoms, and the importance of their own lineages, they were about as boring in person as you can imagine.
Emir Biliya, 25 years old, the son of Emir Dhiyul. A good catch by dynastical standards, his family was the best connected in the Sultanate. Both his uncles, Ghanawa and Nuwas, were Emirs in their own right, as were his cousins Ayyam and Tilimsan. Unfortunately he was well under the thumb of his father and a weakling more interested in philosophy than the battlefield. A seeker of truth, only his family connections kept him from being ostracised from the nobility, a fate much deserved due to his chosen area of study. His tendency of seeking knowledge by knowing any woman he could back up in a corner and get his clammy hands on, willing or otherwise, made him proof in person that even for a wannabe sage, the pen was not always mightier than the sword and in some situations lacked all influence save writing memos after the deed.
He nearly managed to corner
me during a feast in Shariz but I managed to distract him with a nearby serving maid as I was stalking other prey that night. She didn't sound entirely unhappy with being caught, though, so who knows what I missed? Either way, dominating his errant sword might be more trouble than it was worth, but it was not an unknown task to me and perhaps I could straighten him out if I took his sword firmly in hand?
Emir Ghulassen, 27 years old. Known for being a bit too friendly with his grooms and playing with dolls, this moronic cretin had informed me during a party in Ahmerrad that, while I was undoubtedly a worthwhile individual in some way he couldn't immediately recognize, he just couldn't be seen in the company of somebody, who so clearly didn't understand his artistic temperament and lacked style.
Besides, he had been awarded
my castle of Asugan, an injustice of towering proportions that I was not soon to forget. He was probably impotent to boot – that would explain his atrocious behaviour in full, but I make no accusation.
Then there were the three poseurs who went for the cultured look with flowing robes and terrible hair.
Emir Azadun, 26 years old. An energetic and cultured man, who aspired to be a poet despite an utter lack of ability. A known schemer, but an incompetent one, it was an open secret that he considered himself a misunderstood man of the people and funded primitive revolutionary activities intended to support the plight of the common man against the nobility. In this too he was a mere dabbler and was considered mostly harmless and his treasonous dabbling an eccentricity. An able leader of men in battle, he was always in the forefront of the Sultan's campaigns but had lost more men to disaffection with his speeches than he ever did to enemy action.
Claiming that the soul of poetry was his muse and only companion, he had broken the hearts of several of the daughters of the nobility and was said to be utterly indifferent to the fair sex. Breaking him to the bit might be an entertaining challenge, but did I
really want to marry a man primarily known for his utter incompetence?
Emir Lakhem, 26 years old. A romantic fool, you had only to mention his name at a feast to set the hearts of the unmarried ladies aflutter – and some of the married ladies too. Believing himself to be the protagonist of a heroic epic, he attempted to do everything heroically. Unfortunately, neither being a heroic man by nature nor one favoured by destiny, he relied on book-learning to guide him in heroism, with predictable results. His failures were many and varied, but they were almost invariably considered
romantic and tragic failures by the ladies of the nobility and some of the more impressionable young men rather than, as would have been more appropriate, the natural outcome of inadequate planning and worse execution.
Always in a mood for fun when he wasn't charging dashingly across the desert on one errand or another for a lady, he was hung like a horse and one of my favourite toys amongst the younger nobility, but his tendency of aiding
any unspoiled young maiden with a problem (including, or so it was rumoured, the problem of being an unspoiled young maiden) and his being as dumb as a doorknob reduced his value as husband material. Still, he was a
very good rider and might make an excellent puppet, but did this outweigh his substantial downsides?
Emir Muhnir, 25 years old and the son of Emir Atis. An educated man of middling skill, he was in many ways one of the most conventional of the young nobles and certainly the easiest to manipulate. Moderately pleasant, an average warrior, an above-average rider, and with good connections, the main strike against him was his most disturbing boot fetish. Could a woman truly stay sane with a husband who valued her boots higher than her booty? My intuition said no.
The third group were the military midgets, mighty warriors who thought they were strategists of note because they were able to point a hundred men in the same direction and make them charge.
Emir Ayyam, 23 years old. A sheep-faced young daredevil, he spent his life in the saddle eschewing the company of his equals save those attempting to match him in depravity. Living the rough life with his warband, he was never happier than when he was torching a village. Expertly wielding his flaming sword, he was the sort of noble who gave raping, pillaging, and looting a bad name while justifying it with religion. He had recently been overheard telling a village elder he was busy flaying, that “I am the punishment of God...If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you", at which even his fellow hotheads stood aghast.
The foremost member of the dangerous set amongst the young nobility, he was not expected to be long for this world unless he got married to somebody who could absorb most of his restless energy sometimes soon, but even with his status as a scion of the greatest noble family in the realm, who would be crazy enough to marry such a hothead?
Emir Hiwan, 33 years old. The son of Emir Hamezan. He was a disgusting pig of a man, who deserved nothing but a quick death. A morally upstanding member of the aristocracy by reputation, I had cornered him at a feast in Shariz away from the other guests to get to know him better. Following a preliminary chat, I thought he quite fancied me as he took me in his arms, held me close, and carried me to an alcove, but oh, was I ever wrong. I was heating up nicely from such chivalrous treatment, when he informed me in no uncertain terms that while he admired my valour and beauty, he found me to be severely lacking in the virtues of femininity, delicacy, and purity, and he begged my leave to withdraw.
As this upstanding member's upstanding member had breached the gates and was five inches up my keyhole at the time he withdrew in haste, I considered his claim not just hypocritical and proven at least partially wrong by virtue of demonstration, I also took it as a grave insult. Insofar as I hated any of the Sarranid nobility, Emir Hiwan and his father, Emir Hamezan, took pride of place. And I
never forget.
Editor's note: Emir Hiwan's deeply rude behaviour demonstrates clearly the decline of chivalry during this rough age. A true cavalier would never offend a lady so, much less the pure of heart and unsullied Lady of Mercy. Only her heroic nature prevented this rank villian's actions from breaking her heart, the only barrier remaining that he had not yet violated or by bypassed by seduction. Typical of her essential goodness, the great-souled Khünbish Jalair made little of this gross affront in her autobiography, though heaven itself must have cried out in vengeance! His capture and subsequent execution on the steps of the great temple in 1268 was surely ordained in the Courts of the Holy, where all important things are decided.
Emir Quryas, 29 years old. An accomplished wastrel and rake who considered murder an art form, he staved off bankruptcy by virtue of being the foremost duellist of the Sarranid Sultanate and, some of his admirers claimed, of all of Calradia. A much-married man, he was widely suspected of complicity in the death of his three first wives. Losing one or two in a few years, well, that could happen to everybody, but losing
three in six years and none of them in childbirth, that just reeked of carelessness.... or complicity. While I had employed him with some success in the removal of rival merchants before I was raised to the noble class and his fees were not unreasonable, though he always required payment in coin rather than in kind, and while he was probably the best strategist and tactician of all the young nobles when he could be bothered, and while I certainly didn't object in principle to having a spicy and edgy marriage, marriage to him might be a bit
too edgy. Swimming with the sharks is best done armoured or not at all, and swimming in armour carries its own risks.
Emir Tilimsan, 31 years old. The son of Emir Ghanawa, and the third of the terrible cousins, he was cousin to Emirs Ayyam and Biliya and the most conventional of the three, which by no means should be mistaken for normal. I met him under unusual circumstances, which predisposed me against him, but he ever strove to be polite and useful and my opinion of him improved upon closer acquaintance. Our first meeting was not one out of which romances are made, at least not without copious artistic license, but reflection on my mistakes may prove instructive to the careless, for such I was in this instance, though perhaps excusably so under the circumstances.
This was some short time after my introduction to the court but before becoming a sworn vassal of the Sultanate and I was visiting Emir Hamezan in Ahmerrad on my way to Asugan castle and my destiny. I had been entertaining the old goat at a candle-lit dinner for two wearing a rough peasant dress he had had prepared for the occasion and had eaten more than my fill. Upon leaving I had gone to a lonely balcony to empty my stomach. As I was puking my guts out over the side of the balcony in the moonlight, I felt a cold draft of night air as my dress was lifted in one swift movement and I was taken by surprise from behind while rough hands held me down and a handsome voice spoke in my ear, whispering sweet nothings and ordering me to be a good peasant and relax, for he was a nobleman newly back from campaign and I the honoured vessel for his lever, grown hard with disuse on the trail, so he would appreciate me performing to his satisfaction without any unseemly actions that might cause his mighty lever to accidentally tilt me over the edge. With no way to leverage my weak body in opposition to his manly strength and even less of a desire to be recognized or of acting up in a way that would bring others to the scene of my humiliation, I bore the indignity with stoicism as he pounded away, while giving him all the signs of pleasure he expected and plotting my revenge.
Two days later, as he was leaving Ahmerrad for his home, we caught him in ambush outside the town limits, Lezalit, Matheld, Nizar, and I, knocking him off his horse, tying him up, and dragging him off to a ruined fortress close by. Without ever speaking a word, we stripped him of his fine clothes and tied him spreadeagled to an upstanding iron cross near the edge on the roof, leaving him alone to await the coming of nightfall and the chill of the desert night. As darkness fell and the moon rose, I came to the roof dressed in my best noble clothes, wielding a wicked whip and a truly formidable dagger I had bought for the purpose, and after blindfolding him, told him it was time for him to meet his fate as a man. He had maintained an admirably stream of blustering until then, but when I tilted the cross such that nearly half of it was over the edge and he could feel the deep drop beneath him, he screamed once and fell silent. I whipped him a bit, then held my knife to his groin, told him I had been waiting for this, and ordered him to perform to my satisfaction without any unseemly actions or risk being tilted over the edge.
At this he began laughing uncontrollably, loudly and, above all, honestly, much to my surprise, and he rose to the occasion as I had my wicked way with him, sparing him no indignity. The only one of the terrible cousins who was ever able to laugh at himself and see turnabout as fair play, he had a truly wicked sense of humour. When his heat had melted my ice, so to speak, we had a good long talk and I decided to let him live. He was both amusing and competent when you got to know him and in my life I have suffered much worse than being taken for, and as, a peasant, and he was easily guided by one who held the whipping hand, but he was
definitely not a good and honest man. Now as well as then, there are too few people like him around for one to kill them off merely for personal pleasure or petty vengeance. So long as they remain under your control, you have a first rate tool, and we were bound by ties of lust and mutual amusement. Respect would come later. My companions were most surprised when I introduced him to them next morning, as they hadn't expected him to live to see the dawn, but in this as in nearly everything else, they obeyed my will and they saw my wisdom as he turned into one of my more reliable and effective tools.
Even so, marriage might merely lead us from ill met by moonlight to star-crossed lovers and from a practical purpose, did I
truly want to marry into that mad and bad family?
I am sure there is more than one lesson to be gained from that story, but the one I remember the clearest is to always check your back and take care not to be caught with your rear exposed between a rock and a hardcase.
Editor's note: Emir Tilimsan's behaviour, which was shocking even by the standards of the time and would never happen today as it is certain that no true nobleman would ever so much as think of forcing himself upon an unwilling woman, and which was unforgivable save through the nearly divine ability of the kind-hearted Khünbish Jalair to forgive those who had wronged her, should be seen in the wider perspective of his family history. He was a scion of the most deranged noble family that Calradia ever bred, a family of egotists whose perversions were only limited by their imaginations. Compared with other members of his family such as his third cousin twice removed, the “Forklord of Mazigh” or his deceased grandfather, Ayyam “Decapitator” Nuwas the Apologetic, he was remarkably well-adjusted. For a study of the descent into madness of the lineage of Abdul Alhazred the Moderately Sane, the seminal work is Azadun the younger's slightly sensational work “Alhazred: House of the Afflicted”.
The first two meetings of Emir Tilimsan and Khünbish Jalair were adapted into the famous licentious romantic play, “A Midsummer Night's Scream”, by Nizar the poet during his playwright period in the 1270ies. Nizar took considerable poetic license with the source material and featured the rugged and handsome pirate Robberdock the Ironrod playing opposite the immortal queen of the Gates of Heaven, Melonia, as he strove to find the Key to the Gates of Heaven, that would grant him absolution, only to discover at the end of the first act that he had owned it all along. The fact that it was an adaption rather than an original work and the result of Nizar's fertile mind only became apparent with the later publication of Khünbish Jalair's autobiography, ”The Life and Times of the Unparalleled Khünbish Jalair”. The degree to which Nizar based his play on information received directly from the unrivalled Khünbish Jalair and to which degree he made things up out of whole cloth has been a hotly debated topic amongst the literati ever since, but even the most devoted scholar of literature of the pro-Jalairian school of thought in Nizarian literature must have his moments of doubt late at night, where he pulls out a ruler, measures off 12.6 inches, and begins considering the lever principle and lifting capacity.
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So, a challenge to the readers, the answer to be divulged in good time. Which of these splendid young men of the nobility did Khünbish Jalair set her cap for, and why? Did she single out one for her attention and stalk him until she got him or did she divide her attention amongst a smaller group and take the first to fall?
Make your guesses, preferably including a good reasoning for your choice(s) based on Khünbish Jalair's personality as revealed in the first eleven chapters, and make your guesses while they are hot!