Fine Day For Zarbs' Unravelling

by Jay Squires

A Special Request to readers
new to The Trining Trilogy:

It will be tempting to skip the summary below and go straight to the chapter. Please take the extra five minutes to read the summary anyway. You’ll get so much more out of the chapter and have a better grounding for the remaining ones. Thank you.
Jay.

BRUSHSTROKE SUMMARY OF LAST 20 CHAPTERS

            With all but one battalion of the Kabeezan Army on the Plain of Dzur poised to attack Glnot Rhuether’s army at the Palace of Qarnolt; General Doctrex postpones that activity and takes 100 men to search for the missing Special Colonel Eele Jessip and his troops. Enroute, Doctrex and his men are ambushed. Many are killed, and some escape, but Doctrex and three of his troops are captured by Supreme Colonel Arklyn Zarbs and his Northern Province Army. Doctrex is grossly mistreated while his men are brutally tortured. One of the tortured men is Jed, who is like a son to Doctrex.

            Zarbs sends a courier with the news of Doctrex’s capture. Glnot Rhuether returns orders that Zarbs is to personally deliver General Doctrex to him at the Palace of Qarnolt; until then, he is to treat the General as an honored guest. This forces the ambitious Zarbs to show the highest level of hospitality to this enemy whom he had been treating inhumanely, one of whose men he had tortured to death.

            In an effort to placate Doctrex, Zarbs allows his own medic, Garvin, to treat the tortured and dying Jed in Doctrex’s room. A bond of mutual respect is forged between Garvin and Doctrex. Garvin’s cousin, it turns out, was the courier who received Zarbs’ orders that reversed the way Doctrex was to be treated. It was out of their newly formed camaraderie that Garvin shared what his cousin told him about the contents of the message to Doctrex.

            The morning of their journey to the Palace of Qarnolt, Doctrex uses this shift in power to coerce his captor to make a side trip to a pond near the Plain of Dzur (where the entire Kabeezan army is assembled, awaiting Doctrex’s arrival so they can launch their attack on the Palace of Qarnolt).

            Once at the pond, his three dead soldiers are hidden under leaves and branches. Garvin volunteers to take the letter Doctrex had composed to a designated officer of the Kabeezan Army. The letter introduces Garvin who would lead them to the pond so the soldiers could be returned to the camp and given a proper military burial. The letter goes on to warn them not to try to rescue Doctrex.

            The journey to the Palace of Qarnolt resumes. Zarbs is increasingly agitated over his fear that Doctrex will tell Glnot Rhuether how he and his men were really treated. The closer they get to the marker where the road turns north to the Palace the more Zarbs a unravels.

BOOK III

Chapter Twenty-one
(Part 4)

Once the crossans had reached their travelling speed and their hooves settled into a kind of muted, rumbling monotony along the dirt road, I snugged myself into the corner of the seat and closed my eyes. I knew if I opened them again quickly enough, I’d catch Zarbs ogling at me, probably with a tortured look on his face. I didn’t care. Let him. Let him dredge his mind to search out any strategy that might produce in me a shred of compassion for him.

I turned my thoughts to Axtilla. After all, she was my reason for rejoicing now in the serendipity of being delivered to the Palace of Qarnalt. My fidelity had always been—would always be—to Axtilla.

Earlier, with the safety of the troops being my responsibility, my soul had felt torn asunder by the agony of having to choose, when the time would come, allegiance to one or the other: Axtilla or Kabeez. But I knew even then—at the deepest dwelling-place of my soul, I knew—my choice had already been made. May the High Council of Seven forgive me, but my allegiance would always be to Axtilla.

Besides, wasn’t this the fulfillment of Kyrean Prophesy? Axtilla’s god, Kyre, prophesied the final mighty battle would play itself out in Rhuether’s kingdom, not between armies, but—as with all spiritual battles—between the agents of spirit and matter, light and dark, good and evil. If Axtilla knew who, or what, these agents were it was locked behind her beautiful lips.

Was Kyre giving the enraptured Axtilla her final instructions at the very moment I was being pulled into the dimension of the provinces by little Sarisa Braanz? Didn’t my being yanked into the same dimension in which Rhuether ruled make me somehow party to the prophecy? What else could it be? Otherwise, it would have been too bizarre to imagine how Sarisa’s father just happened to be a member of Kabeez’s Council of Seven, the very council who would select me—a stranger to Kabeez and wholly inexperienced in warfare—as commanding General over all the Kabeezan Army. How bizarre would that have been—without supernatural intervention?

Finally—mystery of mysteries!—with the training at Camp Kabeez winding down, and deployment at hand, could mere coincidence have accounted for Sarisa choosing that timeframe to pull Axtilla up into the dimension of the provinces?

Coincidence? Or was that innocent child an unwitting participant, herself, in the slow unwinding of the prophecy’s skein?

For each occurrence and its consequence, there seemed to be an immaculate timing, that included this present moment of my sitting side-by-side with my captor and being delivered as an honored guest to Rhuether’s palace doorstep.

Two armies colliding on the grounds of the Palace of Qarnolt were not to be part of the intricately woven reticule of fate. Only this moment did the inevitability of the prophecy’s fulfillment fully reveal itself. I had no answers as to how it would play out, and where I fit in would probably always be a mystery to me. From the beginning, Axtilla and Glnot Rhuether were integral to its fulfillment. Somehow, I was to be injected into the mesh, perhaps as a catalyst. One thing was certain: the players were about to be assembled together. And one of them was my Axtilla.

Let the games begin.

The thought of soon breathing the same palace air as Axtilla, I smiled inwardly (careful not to share that smile with Zarbs).

My eyes still closed, I knew we were approaching the triple-rock marker, if we hadn’t already passed it. Even above the sounds of the hooves, a kind of oceanic breathing rose and fell beside me like waves, swelling up, then being sucked back down into what sounded now suspiciously like an elongated moan.

My eyes snapped open.

My earlier conjecture was wrong. Zarbs was not staring at me. Had his eyes been open they’d have been staring at a space between me and the back of the driver, but angled up above our heads. His eyes were pressed so tightly closed, though, that a number of dark, puffy slits were all that showed. His caterpillar brows were slanted down so closely together they could have been mating. His nose and mouth were scrunched up and he looked to be in exquisite pain.

I cleared my throat and his eyes immediately opened and slanted down to me. His face registered a flash of embarrassment, but I guessed he didn’t want to waste the moment. I’d seen the look before. Fear, merging into panic, possessed his lips, setting them to trembling, and as he spoke it worked down into his throat as well, attacking his vocal chords.

“Oh, g-g-general, sir.” He started to reach out and touch my arm, but thought better of it. I followed the movement of his pudgy, white hand, curiously, and watched him pull it back from not six inches from my arm and drop it into his lap. “I’m sorry, sir, I—I didn’t mean—” He brought his palms up in front of his face, stared at them. As he studied them, they too began to tremble. He buried his face in them and bent forward sobbing between his knees.

“Supreme Colonel Zarbs,” I said, in a voice I tried to keep low enough not to attract the attention of the driver. I bent down to Zarbs. “Get hold of yourself!”

It was too late for the driver. He no longer showed the discretion as before. He turned around in his seat, glanced at Zarbs, then nodded toward the rear of the wagon. Two soldiers pulled their crossans beside us on Zarb’s side.

I glared at them and shook my head. They glanced at each other, and the one closest to the wagon caught the eye of the driver and they slowed their crossans and pulled back. I shook Zarb’s shoulder, and bent closer. “Your men, colonel” I whispered, through clenched teeth. “Don’t let them see you like this!”

“What?” He pulled his wet face from his hands. The driver was back watching the road.

“You’re a fool, colonel.” I bent over to his ear, closer than I wanted to be. “It’s costing you the respect of your troops. Do you understand that?”

He turned toward me and I pulled back. “I wo—won’t have troops, General Doctrex,” he said in a hoarse whisper. His throat spasmed, like a child’s after a crying jag. He sniffed and about the time I thought he was going to start sobbing again, twin trails of snot exited his nose. He pinched them off between thumb and forefinger and sniffed again.

“Why do you say that, colonel?”

“You ...” He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You never even ... cleaned your knees,” he said with the tone of one whose trust had been violated.

It was true that I as much as promised him I would. “Get me some water and a rag, colonel, and I’ll clean them now.”

“It doesn’t matter, now. We passed the marker while you slept. We’ll be turning north soon.” He released an angst-saturated sigh. “It wouldn’t dry in time anyway.”

We rode in silence a while. I refused to commiserate with the murderer of my men. Still, back at the pond I did say I would do something while I had simultaneously minimized in my mind the importance of doing it. Did I owe him an apology for that?

Out of the silence he said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t?”

“It’s of no consequence.” He trained his eyes fully on me. “Fifteen years gone!” He tried to snap his fingers. “He’ll strip me of my rank, General.” He slowly shook his head as his eyes swamped with tears.

“Why will he do that?”

By now the tears were streaming down his cheeks. He leaned in to me, twisting his body to keep his words from the driver’s ears. “The letter my courier brought to me was clear,” he said, deflecting his words off the palm he cupped at the corner of his mouth. ‘You will treat the general with the same respect you would afford me.’ I was to treat you in the manner I would the Almighty Master, himself. The letter went on to say, ‘Prepare your best food for him and attend to all his needs. He is to be the honored guest at our wedding at the future Empress’s request.’”

I struggled to register the same equanimity as one being told his sibling is getting married. Rhuether had been taunting me with the proposed wedding through the Giln brothers’ visions and from the voice he magically projected into Ziltinaur. Still, hearing of the wedding now, and this time from Zarbs, had the force of a dagger driven into my gut. Adding that it was at Axtilla’s request gave the planted dagger a full twist.

It took all my feigned composure to cast my unblinking eyes at Zarbs. “Go on ...”

“That’s it ... except he finished with, ‘If I discover anything to the contrary, Supreme Colonel Zarbs, you will be held personally accountable.’” He stopped, and for a moment looked like a fish gasping for air. “Oh ... General Doctrex ... I didn’t—As soon as I read the letter, I immediately went to your sleeping quarters—”

“Sleeping chamber ... you told the soldier to prepare my sleeping chamber.”

“And—yes—and—but I had no idea!” He fluttered his fingers oddly in front of him. “He’s in irons now; I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Yes; so you opened the door and found me stuffed into that tube, hanging from the ceiling—go on.”

“I had no idea. I thought you’d be in bed. If you weren’t asleep I was going to offer you the young lady to give you the bath you had asked for. You see, general, sir, there was no way I could undo what my men had done behind my back. Do you know what I mean?”

At just that moment, while he stopped to apparently assess the impact of his words on whatever expression my eyes or mouth held, the crossans slowed to maneuver the turn north; with the wagon’s turn, an odd, weighted shift skirted across my lower back, and once the turn was completed, it clamped like a claw into my right ribcage.

“Sir! Are you all right?”

I reached my left hand across and put it on my side. “A cramp, I’m sure,” I groaned. “We’ve been sitting so long.” I must have grimaced. The pain wasn’t going away.

“Shall I have the driver stop? So you can stretch your legs?”

“No.” I sucked air through my teeth. “Give me a minute.”

“But sir, you’re sweating. And your—your color’s not right!”

The hand I pressed against my ribcage was wet. I held it in front of me. The blood trailed from my palm down my wrist, into the sleeve of my jacket.

This was not a new experience to me.

Zarbs gasped and slid away from me on the seat. “Sir,” he cried, “your uniform—it’s all bloody! Oh, Almighty—”

Despite the scorching pain, I think I giggled at his misplaced priority, and then I crumpled and scraped my back down the seat on my way to the floorboard. Anything else he said was garbled, as though I was lying in the basement and aware of the muffled voices on the level above me.

Soon even that awareness dissolved.

NOTE: DON'T BOTHER TO CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW.
IT IS FOR A PREVIOUS CHAPTER.
THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL BE POSTED LATER

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