My Inevitable Greatness

Interesting answers and reasoning, Nikolai II, Wyvern, and Stuyvesant. Interesting indeed.

Quift - listen to the Skimmer, but don't trust him on the issue of my sanity. I'm as sane as the next man.*

DarthMaur - the autobiography itself as well as the Collector's Edition can be gotten from any authorized book-seller. There is no "uncensored" version since no censhorship exists and hence no "censored" version, only due concern and considerations for the public good on behalf of and in accordance with the completely spontaneous decisions of concerned citizens exhibiting the public will.



* Okay, that strictly speaking depends on just whom the next man is, but so long as he isn't one wearing his pants reversed on his head while singing "London Bridge is Falling Down", it is a fair bet that.... You know what, I'll just stop that comparison right here, shall I?

The Khergit counterattack was slow in the coming but when it arrived it was mighty indeed. The young nobles' forces were crushed in the field and all too soon the Khergite hordes were building siege engines and preparing to storm the walls. They, like everybody else in Calradia, seldom took the time to besiege a fortification, something that may seem counter-intuitive given the slaughter of storming a defended town or castle, but is easily explained by the idiotic nature of Calradian warfare – setting up a proper siege camp and starving out the opposition over the course of a few months was considered a) unsporting, b) boring, and c) out of the question due to interfering with feast schedules.

So up they came at dawn, a few at a time, straight into the weapons of my few remaining mamlukes, my companions, and the bulk of my army. If I had only had the mamlukes I began the campaign with it would have been an easy fight, but my army had suffered significant casualties during the taking of Halmar. Even so, my army fought in high spirits knowing that I was right behind them with the strategic vision, receiving reports and issuing orders, that I had never lost a battle, that surely the very gods smiled on my battleluck, and, perhaps more importantly, that there was no way to retreat.

The battle was long and I was seriously worried about my dwindling reserves as morning turned into noon, and noon was but a memory, but I maintained a cool demeanour as I directed the battle from one of the town's towers and my troops took courage from my indomitable generalship and ultimately the Khergits broke. I went down to tour the battlements where the waves of soldiers had fought back and forth over every step and raised up the survivors. Every man who fought for me that day received a promotion.


Well, every man who lived, and there were few enough of those, but it is the thought that counts. Besides, I needed a new solid core for my army as the old had been worn down and I was desperately short on veteran troops, and who better than those who had gone through fire and storm for me? A company and an army is a fine instrument, as Nizar had taught me, but it needs a solid core of steel to be the capable of direction by one will alone while still being flexible enough to react to changing circumstances. Training, training, training, was the order of the day!

As for me, I raised my banner and went recruiting and trading up and down the Sarranid Sultanate, diverging only twice from this essential task, and that was for feasting.

Are you surprised, dear reader? I have often enough made my opinion clear on the idiocy of Calradian feasts and how they distract the nobility from perfectly good wars, but while that is the truth, it is as much a truth that given how the nobility felt about feasting, I had to take part or lose status. Besides, feasts provided an excellent opportunity to scheme with other nobles and could, occasionally, be quite enjoyable and even rewarding.

As an example, I got a chance to talk informally with Emir Biliya on the topic of himself, Emir Lakhem, Emir Azadun, and Emir Quryas.



Biliya considered Lakhem to be an artless fool of little worth, Quryas to be a dangerous man about whom he could tell me many a horrifying anecdote, and Azadun to be smarter than he let on to, though, he granted, that didn't take much. He would be happy to provide proof of this claim and suggested we retire to his chambers, where he could show me in private.

His intentions could not have been more transparent, but I was seeking information so I went with him and while he did not surprise, he did disappoint. We had barely entered his room before he tore off his bathrobe revealing his sword, quivering and ready for the thrust, and fell on me hungrily. While he should perhaps be admired for the speed and dexterity with which he unwrapped his dinner to get at the meat of the matter, so to speak, it turned out that his usual hands-on method of courtship, that had nothing to recommend it but directness, had failed to reward him with actual skill despite frequent and vigorous application. Furthermore, his “proof” regarding Azadun turned out to be a piece of doggerel Azadun had written for an underground group of malcontents, as inane as it was pitiful, and his anecdotes regarding Quryas were weak stuff, considerably milder in content than some of the underhanded things Emir Quryas had already done for me on commission.

With the sword of Emir Biliya, the Bathrobe Sage, being proven as inadequate as his pen and learning, I left him in his happy place, determined that whatsoever used I might have for him in the future, my husband he would definitely not be.

It was a few weeks later when I was carrying a load of iron and salt for Shariz that I heard from a passing courier that Malayurg castle had fallen to the Sultanate. As I was in the neighbourhood, I rode to Shariz as quickly as possible and sought an audience with Sultan Hakim, but at this I ran into a small problem. I was informed by palace guard that the Sultan was busy with state business and not currently holding audiences. This shouldn't be seen as a slight to me, gods forbid, the Sultan was not seeing anybody. And if I returned the next day, he would still not be seeing anybody. In fact, he was unlikely to be seeing anybody for several days. Would I, perhaps, care to leave a message?

Graciously I scrawled a simple message and marked it with my seal, I handed it over together with a few souvenirs from my travels to the guard, and I got on my way again. There was money to be made and troops to train and recruit and pressing the Sultan too hard so soon after Halmar would have been unwise.

Upon my way back to Halmar, I happened to come across Emir Azadun visiting a friend of his. Naturally, I seized upon this opportunity to give him a closer personal examination. We had met in passing at various feasts before, of course, but circumstances had never previously been right to get to know him better, and impersonal reports just don't carry the same insight as applying the personal touch. He had a reputation for being utterly indifferent to women, but just how hard could it be? There was only one way to find out.

The dinner was good, and courtesy of a very exclusive and expensive elixir skilfully applied, our host soon had to retire for the night. Emir Azadun had been courteous throughout the dinner, keeping up a meaningless and light-hearted banter, but could that truly be all there was to the man? As I was feeling the night chill, I suggested we hie ourselves to the comfortable fireplace and have a little informal chat about politics, as we were both nobles of note. He agreed graciously.



Everything seemed to be going smoothly and according to plan but slowly the conversation drifted out of my control. He complimented me on my conquest of Halmar, I complimented him on his strong rule of his several villages. I complimented him on his strong physique, he complimented me on my elegance. I noted that my mail was getting cold and uncomfortable and stripped it off, revealing a nice red shirt underneath, he noted that my very presence kept him warm. So far, so good. I complimented him on his cultured approach, he spoke a poem about no rose being without a thorn. Aha, thought I. Then I spoke of the plight of the weaker sex, and he answered with a paean to the downtrodden farmer. FARMER!? I shivered with the cold and moved closer to the fireplace, suggesting that he come closer to the heat as well... and he kept his distance, handing me his tunic and revealing the armoured mail shirt he wore beneath.

I spoke of the toils of statecraft and how they kept my mind from higher things, he spoke of the difficulties of a cultured man in a world of illiterate semi-barbarians. I asked him to lighten my maidenly heart with a tale of romance, he told me a convoluted allegorical story about a rhubarb and an artisan's son that made absolutely no sense at all. I wept maidenly tears of appreciation for the deep and abiding love of the rhubarb and, when that failed to move him, began sobbing heart-rendingly while beating my chest and setting my bosom abouncing. He looked on unmoved and asked whether I needed a drink, I told him that I needed nothing so much as somebody to hold me from behind in a hug to reaffirm the metaphysical joy in the human condition. Preferably without armour, as that always reminded me of war. He acknowledged that that was a well known remedy for the weakness of the weaker sex, took off his mail shirt, moved behind me, and surrounded me with his arms...

I sank into his embrace and I can say with the benefit of many decades of experience that it was the most impersonal embrace I have ever had. He held me tight, his arms like bands of steel, and the scent of him was intoxicating and I would happily have performed a reverse Khünbish right then and there were it not for one thing... Unaccountably, he was unaffected: his breathing was steady and below the belt he was utterly flat.

There are limits.

I pleaded a headache and bade him a good night, he told me that he had always felt sorry for women on account of their frail constitutions, why, headaches were the most common reason for women to terminate otherwise splendid intellectual discussions with him, and he wished it were otherwise, but hopefully I would feel better the next day.

The next day I left for Halmar, no wiser to the character of Emir Azadun when I left than when I arrived. Certainly an enigmatic man, but I thought I had spotted some momentary interest when he spoke of roses. Not, alas, when he spoke of rhubarbs, but it might be something to build on. This was going to be a challenge, but I would have to think it through and find a new approach. Perhaps he just neither turned on on armour, my scent, my softness and my curves, or my form-hugging red shirt? The removal of the latter was an easy matter, but if he wasn't heated properly up in advance, that might be a tactical mistake of the first rank. This bore consideration. Meanwhile, Emir Lakhem could stand closer examination, and it was some time since I had let Emir Tilisman entertain me. I also needed to properly reward Emir Biliya for wasting my time.

In Halmar news from Shariz had preceded my arrival. Peace had been signed with the Khergits ending the 473rd Khergit war and the Sultan had in his wisdom granted me Malayurg Castle and the nearby village of Tash Kulun, making me the proud owner of 7 fiefs: one town, three castles, and three villages.

I was not at all surprised. My destiny could not be averted, not even by a sulking Sultan doing his best to escape my influence. He had lost the struggle before he even began it, and my friendly message to him had merely provided the impetus for him to do the right thing.

Editor's note: The great Khünbish Jalair's love of organization aids the struggling editor. While she didn't write the details of every message or gift in her autobiography, she kept a list throughout her life of every single gift she had ever given and message sent. This particular message appears to have been, “I support YOU for ownership of Malayurg Castle, o Sultan!”, and the gift a wrench and a matching bolt broken in half. Given her unmatched perfect memory, the maintenance of such a list might seem puzzling at first, but presumably she did it to provide the sort of evidence to posterity that most people shamefully neglect. She knew that she was destined for greatness and never let mere personal convenience get in the way of educating the people. This may possibly also explain her lost collection of nail clippings, devoured by the great fire of 1299.

Happy through and through for the first time in weeks, I settled down to take care of all the small tasks of running my fiefs, which had accumulated during my absence. It wasn't efficient to run a realm that way, but Calradia was stuck in an older feudal order than my home continent with the king above all and nobody being a land-holding vassal except to the king. The only other form of vassalage accepted was that of non-landed armed companions to their lords. As a result, I had to personally oversee a vast amount of petty details for every single one of my fiefs and, hardly surprisingly, even though my vast intellect could deal with the sheer amount of information, I just didn't have the time to do so. As a result, the more fiefs I gained, the less efficient my administration and, as a direct result of this, the less security for my people, the less law and order in my villages, and most importantly of all, the less efficient my gathering of taxes. I just didn't have the time to round up and burn tax evaders in person, so I had to delegate some random cruelty and tax farming to the village elders, each of whom would happily skim a large amount of the taxes for his own benefit, and to the merchant's guild of Halmar.

It was about as inefficient a solution as I could come up with, but inefficiency and corruption was infinitely preferable to the sort of problem I would have on my hands if people didn't feel the iron fist and started wondering just what they needed my protection for. Best of all, the people would always have somebody local to blame for their misery.

Even so, the costs of maintaining armed forces sufficient to garrison three castles and my town of Halmar in addition to my standing force was seriously straining my budget and forcing me to engage in near-constant trading.

Trading was all well and good, but sometimes a girl just wants to have fun without wondering about whether she'll be able to afford garrisoning all her castles next weeks, so I began laying plans to change my strategic situation.

The moment I awaited was not long in the coming. A month later, angered by their territorial losses in the 387th Rhodok war, the Rhodok declared the 388th Rhodok war and were expected to invade the Sultanate any day.

I sent word to Emir Biliya to meet me near Jamiche for an intimate little picnic, just him, me, and our hundred-strong warbands.

So, there I was in my tent near Jamiche. It was late at night and Emir Biliya, who was slightly drunk, was failing miserably in a game of hide the sausage due to my superior agility, when suddenly we were rudely interrupted by a Rhodok army of substantial size that happened to be passing by, something that surely nobody could have expected.



As Biliya was acting on the directions of his secondary brain at the time, it took little effort to send him and his merry band charging in against the numerically superior foe. It happened like this: Brandishing my garter that he had just removed, he swore to smite the Rhodok in my name without fear nor hesitation. He was in such a haste that when I reminded him that his armour was back in his tent and he would be better served by taking his time and cautiously marshalling his forces, for surely he didn't need to demonstrate that he was a hero to me, he shrugged his shoulders, asked the loan of a spare upper-body mail-shirt that happened to be roughly the right size and which he had noticed during the game, and, donning the shirt and striking a proud pose, pulled up his trousers and mounted his horse. Attacking a superior enemy in the dark while only half-armoured is a mistake of such astonishing magnitude that it would have been unthinkable in any real warrior, but of the many things that could be said about Emir Biliya in his youth, that one was conspicuous
absent – he was surely no warrior.

Taking my time to get decently dressed for war and don my armour, I summoned my captains, gave Lezalit the head's up, and ordered a charge of my own. Like hail striking a window pane my men thundered down on the mass of Rhodok infantry and archers engulfing Biliya's valiant but doomed charge. I rode along for the first hundred paces, then left the professionals to do their job while watching from a hilltop protected by my personal guard.



I watched with some concern as Lezalit stripped a fallen Rhodok of his armour and slipped away, but he was a very slippery fellow, was Lezalit, and his errand was one that I could not entrust to anybody else. Pretty soon I was much too worried about the battle to spare a thought for his errand, for a Rhodok lord coming late to the party noticed my command post and sent his warband straight up the hill. I had to abandon the hill at full speed seeking protection amongst my mamlukes while my personal guard was cut down one by one guarding my escape. That was truly a narrow escape and a lesson I took well to mind.

Emir Biliya's men fought valiantly in an ever tighter stand and their valour was rewarded. Acting as an anvil against the hammer of my mamlukes, they stood and they died but they held out long enough for the Rhodok army to be broken. It was a night of blood and death and meaningless slaughter and the proud Rhodok army had been unprepared to face the insanity of heavy cavalry operating at night. In ones and twos, then in groups, and finally dozens at a time, they routed and threw away weapons and armour as they sought escape, every man for himself, and my cavalry, my companions, and I, harried them to their death. Many escaped but many more did not, and more than a score were cut down by my blade alone, its kiss in their backs the final judgement and penultimate sensation.

The main Rhodok army of the 388th Rhodok war was crushed before it even got going.



The battle was not without casualties of our own. Apart from my own warriors, whose loss I grieve and whose names would surely live on in song forever if anybody bothered to remember the names of commoners, which they do not, Emir Biliya had suffered significant casualties of his own. Even worse, he had himself been grievously wounded. It would appear that some vengeful Rhodok crossbowman untutored in the proper ways of war had managed to shoot Emir Biliya in the crotch with a poisoned bolt. It was a sight too terrible for a young woman to watch, his physician assured me, and I wept many a maidenly tear when he informed me that Biliya's crown jewels had taken a terrible blow from which he might not recover, and that the physician's assistant was currently trying to draw out the poison.

Emir Biliya's situation demonstrates in many subtly different ways the worth of having true companions, companions to ward against the unseen blow, to warn against the fatal mistake, and to do what must be done, no matter the cost. I was ever well served by mine.

Come the dawn, I enacted the second step of my plan to change my strategic position. With Emir Biliya's men in tow, I led my exhausted but victorious troops back to Halmar and then retired to Unuzdaq castle, which I emptied of troops. I snapped up every Sarranid Lord whose path crossed mine.



From Unuzdaq, we rode straight for Veluca, the great city dominating the center of the Rhodok kingdom. The city was defended by more than three hundred garrison troops and the two hundred men of the warbands of Count Tarchias and Etrosq. Their astonishment must have been great when I sent in my army for the assault.

It was a bloody day but it was just the beginning. When the bedraggled remnants of the assault struggled back into camp, I ordered the camp struck and an immediate forced march for Jamiche. Anybody who wasn't hurt enough to deserve one of the limited spots in the physicians' wagons would just have to keep up on his own or die trying. There was no time to waste if my plan was to succeed and nobody and no touch of compassion or ethics would stand in my way.

The sorely wounded survivors of that march were left in Jamiche and the garrison of Jamiche ordered into the field as I turned and drove straight for Veluca the second time.

If Tarchias and Etrosq had been astonished at the first attack, the second must have worried them. I truly thought that my second army would carry the day, but their hearts just weren't in it. Whether because they were less stout of heart or because of having seen how the Unuzdaq lads got chewed up, the attack collapsed earlier than I had expected. I wouldn't go so far as to denounce the common soldiers for insubordination or defeatism, but they surely dropped back to the camp for lesser wounds with the willing support of their superior officers, unwilling to throw their lives away in what was essentially a war of attrition with the enemy holding all the cards save numbers.

Even so, Veluca's defenders still took a horrible beating, and after I had force marched the survivors of the second army back to Halmar, commanded my third army to take the field, and then returned to Veluca, the Rhodok counts must surely have known fear.



With only some fifty sharpshooters left the sky was considerably less hostile as the third army, led by my loyal mamlukes, began the assault. Though they fought valiantly, the weary defenders who had stopped two assaults during the last few days were unable to stop the disciplined advance of my mamlukes. My men had to fight for every foot paying a toll of sweat and blood but they were the elite of my armies, they were fresh, and they were unstoppable. The day was theirs to lose, but they were nearly fanatically loyal to my cause and would never dare to lose while under my gaze, and they did not.




The city taken, I ordered my army to maintain their order and to loot it systematically rather than every man for himself. I gave each company two hours under the strict command of their officers to loot, neither more nor less. In this way I preserved the majority of Veluca's wealth while satisfying, if only barely, my men's lust for plunder. It wouldn't have worked with less disciplined troops, but these were my elite and they were all too aware of the likelihood of Rhodok armies striking at Veluca.

Before that could happen, I paid a very brief visit to Shariz, leaving Emir Biliya to guard Veluca against my return. This fit him well as he wasn't moving anywhere, due to being in constant agony. Apparently the physician's assistant had failed to draw all the poison from Biliya's rod of lordly might and it had spread to the rest of the crown jewels, darkening the once so bright orbs, so to speak. An amputation might well be the only way out.

Be that as it may, with Emir Biliya's plight happily in mind, I presented the great Sultan Hakim with my fait accompli: Veluca fallen to me and me alone and, while I completely understood that he'd prefer to hand it over to Emir Nuam, did I really need to remind him of my arguments for why he himself would be a much better choice than Emir Nuam if he wouldn't give it to me in the first place?



I didn't. I was sent on my way quickly and returned to Veluca just in time to stop a Rhodok counterattack.



And thus it came to pass that Unuzdaq and Jamiche castles were manned only by skeleton garrisons, ripe for the taking by any interested party, while Velcua and its four attendant villages were mine, all mine!

Phew, busy week, but don't worry. The AAR hasn't been abandoned.

With the Rhodok lords defeated at the very walls of Veluca, the time was ripe for a strike against far Yelen which had no lords protecting it and was defended merely by its garrison. My battle-hardened veterans set out in high spirits while the wounded and the remnants of the garrisons of Jamiche and Unuzdaq trickled in to garrison this rich city in the heart of enemy lands. My castles and the villages they protected would no undoubtedly fall into enemy hands soon enough but that was a price I was more than willing to pay for control of one of the largest and wealthiest towns in Calradia.

Some would no doubt find this cold-blooded, but I really could not afford to let sentiment shackle me or concern for the fate of those trusting in me and left undefended against the wrath of my enemies hold me back from the golden road leading to my inevitable destiny. It was all for their own good in the long run or at least that of their descendants, assuming their descendants lived elsewhere, and their sacrifice would not be in vain.

Editor's note: It is in these small details we truly glimpse the abject humility with which Khünbish Jalair faced her destiny, harshly subduing her natural maternal feelings for her people in the name of the greater good and deprecating her own great sacrifice. She does the right thing and knows that she is doing the right thing, yet nevertheless her heart goes out to those who are affected and she feels a need to justify herself to them or, perhaps, their ghosts. It is this writer's earnest belief that, were the innocent victims of Jamiche and Unuzdaq, who were so terribly murdered when the vengeful Rhodok armies committed atrocities upon them that stain their descendants to this very day, to be asked their opinion on the subject, not a one of them would have asked Khünbish Jalair to sway her course!


So it was in high spirits that I ordered my men to storm Yalen one sunny afternoon.




Yalen fell, and it fell hard. With the walls breached the defenders fought a tactical retreat street by street, setting fires wherever possible to deny me my spoils. When Nizar first came coughing out of the smoke and flames carrying a badly wounded Matheld in his arms, I knew it was bad, but just how bad it was I only knew the following day when Artimenner finished taking stock. Half the town burned and at least two thirds of the population dead or fled. My own casualties were terrible though it must be said that given the circumstances they were lower than I expected, a clear sign that my officers were shaping up under the direction of my companions, but the prize was dearly bought and lesser than I had anticipated.

Nevertheless, I set forth to meet the Sultan. Having met the terrible price of Yalen, I would make sure to reap the reward as well.

Sultan Hakim was suffering from withdrawal symptoms when I met him, but fortunately I well knew the cure for that and left him recovering and with the deed for Yalen in my hand.




Unfortunately, all this warfare was cutting significantly down on the time I could spend gaining influence and friends at court and I was drawing overly on the credit I had established previously. Good relations need to be maintained or they risk slipping away, and some men just wouldn't know how to do the right thing unless stayed on top of them.




Thus I tarried to participate in the number one sport of the noblemen of the Sarranid Sultanate, feasting. I managed to arrive on the very first day of the next upcoming feast, being one of the first to ingratiate myself with the host and in a splendid position to claim some of the best rooms and plot with attendees as they arrived.

Emir Quryas, upon whom I had designs, arrived late the first day but was available for a clandestine meeting upon my word. He was his usual frivolous self as he asked me whom I wanted killed this fine night and took my answer, that Emir Hiwan's head would look fine mounted over the fireplace, jokingly in stride, but turned deadly serious when I raised the possibility of exploring a closer alliance with a possible matrimonial outcome, should our desires prove compatible.

Though a rejection always offends, it must be said that he was kind but firm in his rejection. He rose from the couch on which we had been sitting, took a pace or two, then turned around and spelled out his position forthrightly, ignoring my attempts at interjections.

He found me intriguing, my beauty stunning, and the most attractive unattached woman of the nobility. He admired my strategic acumen and had studied my campaigns closely. He revelled in my wit whenever we met. Yet for all of that, there were some places the clever man should not go. Some gates that should remain barred, no matter how tempting to breach them, if he were to remain his own man, and he was determined to go to his death his own man in body and soul.

A wastrel to the end, for so the world reckoned him, but under no will but his own and I, or so he proclaimed, would dominate any man who fell under my sway. Whether out of pure natural charm, learned artifice, or a mixture of the twain he was unsure, though certainly the inner greatness that he saw shining in me like a beacon to the world muting all around me must magnify the effects, but the evidence was irrefutable.

He had seen the evidence in the behaviour of many of the young fools and my devoted followers and in how his own thoughts turned of their own inclination away from profit and towards lesser pleasures whenever he saw me. In how he had to keep up his guard at all times in my presence lest he fall on me and rip off my clothes, if I would beg his pardon for so crass an image. He held no doubt that he too would fall, were he to let up for even a minute, and be ensnared, a half-willing slave to my will until his death... or mine.

His breathing had been getting harsher throughout this explanation and the distance between us had somehow shrunk. He was standing half bowed over me with his hands shaking as he reached the end and lying on the couch, as I were, my eyes were at the right height to notice that his temper wasn't the only thing I had raised, though to be honest I usually keep good track of that regardless of my position, and I was fingering the knife I had up my left sleeve as I wondered just how I would pass off Emir Quryas death in my quarters, should the necessity arise. I had certainly not expected such a reaction!

Fortunately, he was a man of iron will and I gratefully saw him visibly subdue himself. He sat down at a proper distance, got his breathing under control, and we agreed that upon due consideration we would both benefit the most from maintaining our relationship on a purely professional basis dealing in power and cash.

Demonstrating again the intelligence that had so attracted me, he offered me a 20% discount on the next murder I commissioned. He really was a sweet man, even when he was insufferable, but some things are just too dangerous to touch.

Following that encounter, it was almost a relief to discover the next day that no, Emir Azadun did not turn on to my innocent-townswoman costume. It was worth a try. We had previously only spoken intimately while I was wearing my mail-shirt and my fine red shirt, both of them accoutrements of the nobility, and who knew what was really behind his professed interest in the common classes? Perhaps he liked to go slumming or, who knew, perhaps he needed the image of social vulnerability to assert his own dominance and stir his rod of lordly might to action? It turned out the answer was no to both, but a woman has to try.




He was unfailingly courteous, however, and regaled me with a poem of his own devising, “The Shopkeeper's Assistant's Revenge”, about a downtrodden townswoman working as an assistant in a shop selling fine clothing, whose thoughtless husband impoverished his family to avenge an imagined insult to her honour by a rapacious nobleman. Following twelve incredibly dull verses she ended up dying of starvation following the tragic deaths of their four children, a blessing for her husband the last words to pass her lips as he raised her body to act as a metaphorical banner in the righteous struggle for the right of the commoners in their class warfare with the nobility.

You can tell a lot about a man from his poetry. In this case, that he didn't have the faintest idea of the life of commoners. I should know – I had been one! On the other hand, it was all about the shopkeeper's assistant and I had been that too, though none of this was known to any in Calradia – or so I had thought. Was Emir Azadun more than he looked? (That wouldn't be hard.) Had he somehow gleaned information from my youth beyond the sea or was this mere coincidence? Reason suggests the latter, but I had to be sure. As he had proved impossible to discuss anything but superficialities with in the confines of a formal setting, perhaps a change of setting and getting some fresh air would do him good. I decided to dangle the bait most likely to attract his interest in front of him: peasants!

So I invited Emir Azadun to come with me after the feast and see for himself one of my model villages near Halmar, liberated from the iron-fisted rule of the Khergite Khanate and now safely protected by my benevolent hand. I was, or so I averred, interested in any advice he might give with regards to its governance and empowering the people.

This was, in retrospect, a mistake though it seemed sensible enough at the time. He took me up on my offer and once the feast was over, we set out for Halmar. Visiting my model village, the first thing Emir Azadun noted was that the peasants were unable to defend themselves from an attack. Well, what did he expect? They were peasants! Teaching them how to defend themselves would definitely be giving them thoughts above their station.

He suggested that perhaps the two of us should together train the peasants in stick fighting, showing them how true nobles acted to improve the lot of the common folk, and though that is errant nonsense now and always have been, I agreed. ANYTHING to loosen that man up.

Well, nearly anything. He next suggested that the only proper training was to do it stripped to our small-clothes, just like the peasants, and visions of my distant arena experiences flashed before my eyes as I contemplated fighting peasants with a stick while unarmoured. On the positive side, they were my peasants, so presumably they would be careful and soften their blows, out of fear if nothing else, and it would give me an excellent opportunity to display my charms before him in a way he'd be hard pressed to overlook, so perhaps it was not all to the bad.

First we fought one peasant each and I must say that he didn't look half bad as he sparred with his, displaying his magnificent physique. My bout was somewhat shorter as I bonked mine on the head with my stick while he was wondering where it was safe to hit me. He had a thick skull, as peasants so often have, so he dropped his stick and grabbed his head with both hands as if to assure himself that it was still there. While he was so distracted, I performed a perfect low strike and rammed his fruits with my stick putting him definitely out of action. I made sure to strike a glorious pose when Emir Azadun finished off his peasant and looked to check on me.




Apparently he liked what he saw, for he suggested that we next take on three peasants each, to give the peasants an opportunity to learn teamwork. Before I had a chance to object, he had picked out three peasants to fight me. They looked rough. They looked tough. And they looked seriously pissed off at the way I had knocked out my first peasant, whom I can only assume to have been a friend of theirs.




They rushed me and though I did manage to defeat two of them I ended up flat on my back with more bruises than I care to remember, thankfully none of them to my head. The village elder had thoughtfully hustled away the offending peasants when I came to and nobody had dared to touch my body, but that's all the good there is to say about it. Emir Azadun hardly spared me a glance, for he was busy holding his own against seven peasants!

I told him that I would like to withdraw due to feeling a headache coming on and had the great pleasure of seeing a peasant strike him from behind after he had dismissed them. Unfortunately, he shrugged off the blow and pretended it had not happened, the insufferable man.

We came upon Halmar and I soaked my aching body in a good warm bath. It was at the time the third worst trashing of my life, only beaten by the beating that sent me fleeing to Calradia in the first place and the time Emir Hamezan had me act the unwilling nun for his amusement, but at least on both of those occasions I had ultimately benefited from my beating, which seemed a distant prospect in this case. Never one to concede defeat, however, for dinner I wore a new dress.

Emir Azadun was entirely unmoved by my aches or my purported female frailty. Wholesome exercise was good for mankind and that was that. Seeing me in my pink dress, however, he claimed to be struck with an inspiration possibly divine of origin, thinking thoughts he never had before, feeling an ache within him most uncommon, a desire that he would like to share with me...

Aha, thought I, I still have it.

That's when he began declaiming his “Ode to Pink”, while I sat there stewing and thinking murderous thoughts.




I had to applaud him when he was done, of course, because that is what one does, but after that absurd episode, I bade him tell me about his friends in the nobility. Especially, would he happen to have any opinions on or knowledge of his friends Emir Lakhem's and Emir Tilimsan's marriage prospects?