How could it have come to this, when everything else has happened according to plan? he wondered. Granted, his rise to total dominion over the entire continent of Cauldera had not been without its set-backs, but overall things had worked out exactly as he had expected.
First, he had deposed the weak and ineffective ruler of the small kingdom of Yulen after quickly working his way up the royal chain of command to become the king’s personal adviser. A nip of poison in each of his twin sons’ drinking goblets to emotionally cripple the old man, and a series of successively larger glasses of wine before bedtime had ensured the old fool’s complete ignorance as Khazerai had slowly replaced the guards and staff with men loyal to him. When the coup happened in one swift stroke, the people were actually hailing him as their savior, which he was, he supposed, of a sort.
Next came the annexation of the surrounding lands, during which his agents sowed unrest among the peasants by promising them their own land in return for harsh but not totally crushing taxes to fund the monarchy, leading to an uprising when he invaded each country with his small but well-trained force. Soon Yulen was four times its original size, and its army was anything but small.
Khazerai then had his men trained and equipped with the best weapons and equipment that could be made or bought, and declared brutal war against the rest of the kingdoms. Often this announcement was initially met with derision, as several of the other lands had been unwilling to believe that Yulen, previously known only for producing exceptionally fine chicken eggs, was now on the warpath. Several swift victories ensued, with Khazerai’s trained men overwhelming the ill-prepared, unwieldy enemy armies in a series of swift tactical strikes.
Others thought themselves safe behind the ramparts of the Duchy of Tolera, which was twice the size of Yulen in both holdings and its military. But Khazerai’s spies had also brought that kingdom down from within, whispering to each of the three sons that he should be in charge when their father passed on. When the duke suddenly expired from an overdose of a sleeping draught in his nightly wine, each of the sons, thinking that both of the others had moved to kill their father and claim the throne, declared war on his siblings, dividing up the armies and navies and battling each other. All of which left the kingdom’s borders wide open. With such an invitation, how could Khazerai refuse?
Once again, the ruler of the Yulen Empire was hailed as a savior both behind and in front of the scenes. His men had brokered treaties with each of the three armies in turn, then destroyed each prince when the time was right; one vanquished on the battlefield, one assassination, and the third one by mob reprisal after it was learned about his (completely false, mind you) unnatural attraction to farm animals. Each prince’s death had been blamed on one of the other two, and Khazerai had gladly stepped in to stop the princes’ reign of battle and bloodshed, and replace it with a more moderate reign of fear and secrecy.
With Tolera’s rich farmland, ore-laden mountains, and healthy population under his control, the rest of the continent only needed to be mopped up, either by a show of diplomacy-usually by parking half of his army at a soon-to-be-subjugated land’s border while sending the other half around to flank. While his army was out consolidating his rule, Khazerai did not fear reprisal at home either. As soon as he had taken power in Yulen all those years ago, every able-bodied man and woman had been required to serve a two-year term in the military and spend one weekend a month and three weeks a year fulfilling their duties, making them more than able to fend off an invading army until he could return. But who would even dare try such a thing? No one, that’s who, he thought.
The churches? Hardly. As soon as Khazerai took over a kingdom he banned all religion, stating a policy of “Humans first, everyone else after.” Once he exposed the prelates, bishops, and priests of the local churches as “the hypocritical, greedy swine that they are, the fat, bloated ticks on the backside of the populace, sucking the hard-working men and women-you people-dry, and what do they give you in return? Nothing in this world, that’s for certain.” The commoners had eaten it up. And since the all deities in the pantheon of Cauldera were dependent on the unwavering faith of the masses to grant them their powers-well, in his infamous speech to ten thousand Tolerans, Khazerai had said, “Those who giveth can also taketh away.” The gods’ influence had disappeared almost overnight.
Regardless, with Khazerai standing in front of his seemingly endless Yulen legions and requesting to “parley,” swift acquiescence soon followed. And so, a mere quarter century after he had taken over the small country of Yulen, Khazerai now ruled the entire continent.
And it had all been so easy, he thought. Too easy? No, there had been a fair share of difficulty along the way. The attempted coup in the early days of his reign by a trusted lieutenant leading a small contingent of soldiers still loyal to the old Yulen king. They had been dispatched immediately and announced as traitors to the new regime, which they were. He could count half a dozen assassination attempts by other rulers, which had always ensured that their land moved up to the number one position on his “next to be conquered” list. There had been spies in his own camp to root out, laugh-ably underplanned and underequipped treason plots to uncover, tributes to collect, the usual business of running an all-powerful empire.
And yet it could all come tumbling down around my head if I do not stop what is happening, he thought. Now Khazerai heard the clamor of swords on steel outside the citadel as his troops engaged the invading enemy. The two immediate options were fight or flight, and yet he sat on his throne for a few more seconds, pondering the inexorable chain of events that had led to this.
It had all started about a year ago, when his lieutenant had come to him with a report on what the dictator had thought was a minor matter. “My Eminence, there has been a disturbance on the outskirts of the Western Marches. A family was in arrears for taxes, and the local magistrate had them executed and their pig farm confiscated as an example to the others of your far-reaching will. However, the youngest son of the assistant pig tender survived, and has vowed revenge on both you and the empire.”
“The orphaned son of an assistant pig tender is coming after me?” Khazerai was hard-pressed to contain his mirth. “Post a ten khaz reward for his head, and send the local patrols out with orders to kill him on sight.”
“It will be done, My Exaltedness.”
And Khazerai had thought that would be the end of the matter. However, a few weeks later, as he had been deciding whether to expand his empire to the east, where the Torlingan horsemen roamed the grassy plains, or to the west over the mountains, long rumored to be a land of untold wealth and strange, foreign races, his lieutenant strode up and bowed low before the Throne of Black Blades.
“Most Powerful One, I have news from the Western Marches.”
“Whatever about? Is the mud harvest especially good this year?” Khazerai asked, having long forgotten about the son of the assistant pig tender.
“Remember that orphaned boy who swore revenge against you?”
Khazerai looked up from his maps. “Orphan, orphan-something about swine, wasn’t it? What about him?”
“He has eluded or ambushed several patrols, claiming that they are a tool of the Evil Empire-”
Which they are, but calling my realm evil is a bit much, Khazerai thought.
“-and people in the area are already talking about him as a leader of the small group of rebels in the mountains there.”