1. Downtown EliriaTurning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats
The Panopticon blimp cast its long shadow over the gawping Elirians standing about in the market place as it once more repeated its message over its loudspeakers and across all radio frequencies.
“The Khan has proclaimed his Lordship upon these lands! Rejoice and Submit! Unite under the Khan and the Empire of the Elw shall expand victoriously and to the greatest extent possible. All who resist shall be exterminated by those who adhere to the Righteous Path! Praise Zurvan! Rejoice and Submit! Holy War has been declared upon the Elfinshi and the Hyperborean! The Purity of the Children of Lest shall be restored!”
Most of the townsmen just continued to gawk skywards. Under the reign of the Cho’Gall they had become accustomed to myriad forms of strangeness – but this was something else entirely. A few of the more prudent – certainly amongst those who displayed certain Elfinshi characteristics were already starting to edge away towards the side streets and the dark corners and recesses of the chaotic tumbledown urban landscape of Eliria.
A new voice over the loudspeaker:
“Please be advised that your facial expressions and key emotional state indicators are under continual observation. Failure to provide a positive acknowledgement of the news of your changed political status will result in proactive measures being undertaken by the state authorities.”
There was no response from the crowd.
“That means clap or we open fire you idiots.”
The silence that followed was then punctuated by a muted applause which steadily grew in pitch reaching a frantic crescendo of ecstatic jubilation, an outpouring of popular exultation, made all the more urgent by the sudden arrival of a helicopter gunship looming ominously over what was now a full-blown demonstration of spontaneous enthusiasm for the Khan’s new reign.
Elsewhere, on bridges and quaysides throughout the city, Gentlemen-Cudgellers were seen dragging sown-up sacks, in each instance containing something of a considerable bulk frantically struggling and murmuring within, and then with a hearty cheer and a volley of gunfire from their associates would pitch sack, contents and all, into the fast flowing waters of the East Elwynn.
It would be noted and subsequently remarked upon that public officials were dismissed from their office in such a manner on that first day.
2. Ardashirshahr
Meanwhile, in the Babki heartlands, there was no need for ‘incentivisation’. The call for a return to the good old days was met with sincere and unbridled enthusiasm, at least amongst the lower orders.
The rumour of a coup, or a mutiny, thrown in with the prospect of a massacre had closed down the shops, sealed the bazaars, and silenced the talk in the cafes. For the wealthy and cultured mercantile elites the atmosphere was oppressive and tense – the Babkhan poor once arrayed in their customary mobs and prepared for war seldom bothered to distinguish between the foreign enemy, foreigners and the rich – all of whom became tangled together in a nightmare of association born of the fanaticism of the populace who now smelt blood in the air. They need not have worried, and the Master of Cudgels for the Bailiwick of Ardashirshahr was sorely disappointed at the lack of sport, for aside from looting the Museum of Elfinshi Vices, the crowds, some fifty thousand strong, having chanted the obligatory cries of “Margh-Bar Elfinshi, Margh Bar Tudeh, Margh Bar Ohl’Tar etc.” pledged themselves to the Khan’s salt and returned to their homes looking forward to a future where each of them had been promised land and rich loot to be taken from the northern unbelievers.
The Fältkompani "Peroz Zjandaria", untroubled by any instances of civil disorder beyond the usual, was free to take up its defensive positions at key points in the city.
3. Castle Eliria
The first salvo of Hydra rockets had struck against the Gatehouse, pounding timeworn masonry to rubble with disdainful ease. The lead Apache attack helicopter discharged flares as it banked sharply back towards the treeline from whence it had emerged to initiate the first stage of the all-out assault on the citadel of the Dukes of Elwynn. There was no sign, initially, of any resistance – perhaps the advantage of surprise had been maintained. The other eleven Apaches now made their approach, salvo firing their rockets at the west facing towers of the outer wall.
A cloud of smoke and dust obscured the features of the Castle as the attack helicopters of Luftjägarkompani "Kapav Dawn" retired back towards a holding position five miles distant from the scene of their first intervention. To this scene was now added the white puffs that heralded the explosion of white phosphorus shells in close proximity to the Castle Keep, showing the ground around it in hideous incendiary chemicals. The WP munitions serve primarily to illuminate a target when falling as flares or as a smoke screen when billowing white clouds are created by burning flakes of phosphorus at their point of impact, but – as already noted – the phosphorus will burn ferociously on any surface it comes into contact with, including human flesh. The shelling was originating from the barracks of the Pansarkompani "Janavasper" which had disdained even to leave the grounds of the Elwynnbrigaden Depot barely six miles distant from the point where the rounds fired by their Jinnah Light Guns were falling.
Disorientating for those in the Castle, it would also obscure their view of events ongoing in the City outside where a mixed force of eight-hundred Elwynnbrigaden light infantry and Kopfjäger ‘Kettenhunde’ were moving through the city throwing a cordon around the Castle and isolating it from the streets leading down into the city.
At the same time a detachment of Cudgellers under supervision of the Bludgeoner-General were proceeding to pound their cudgels upon the very chamber doors of the Council of Eliria itself.
The Khan’s reply to Decree LXXIII, long-delayed, was now at last at hand. The siege of Eliria had begun.
4. The Araxion Border
Daniel Dravot rinsed out his mouth with a swig from the goatskin water bag slung at his saddle-bow. It was bitterly cold, even for Mo'lluk, and it had taken yet another draught of Treesian Red to return any semblance of warmth to his frozen innards. It was such a cold as he had not felt in a long time, not since that long desperate scramble out of the accursed gorge that had been the scene of his first fall and ruin. It had been quite some time since he had last been anywhere on horseback, quite some time indeed, and he bitterly regretted the necessity of leaving the Kopfjäger behind in Eliria but that would be where they were needed the most – for the time being at least. Nonetheless the muscle memory, the knack as it were, of kicking a squat and cantankerous Elw-Pony in such a manner as to assure its grudging acquiescence to a common direction of travel for rider and mount had come back assuredly enough and now he was able to set the pace for the column of three thousand five hundred mule riding Elwpandur bandits who stretched away for miles behind him in the most appalling disorder, chivvied by the ‘advisors’ from the Jägarkompani assigned to the so-called "Fedayeen Ardashir" who with threats, cajoling and the judicious brandishing of machine-guns, compelled the brigand army to retain some semblance of cohesion as they slithered along the southern bank of a tributary river flowing into the West-Elwynn. This river formed the frontier, on Dravot’s right was Alalehzamin – the hellish abode of his paymaster, to his left across the river was Araxion, pastures new and deuced little else as far as anyone could discern. It was the sort of Elfinshi ridden pastoral paradise that the Babki instinctively despised. Only natural then that with all hell breaking loose in the capital at that very moment they should be seeking to breakout to the north and ravage the seemingly defenceless lands.
The Fedayeen Ardashir was a curious hodgepodge muddle; miles ahead of Dravot, away to the east, two hundred and eighty of the finest battle tanks ever seen on Benacia were sweeping northwards, flanking the river frontier by driving through the county of Eliria, and charging onwards into Araxion, heedless of any notional frontier and itching for the mother of all battles. Purchased from the Mavet Panser Firme courtesy of a generous loan from the Yabotinsky Fortress to the Khan, the Ezekiel MBT represented the apogee of the Khan’s war fighting capabilities – the Elwpandur though must by contrast have represented something close to its nadir. They were not so much soldiers as a vast criminal gang of lawless vagabonds and ruffians. Their virtue was found primarily in the cheapness of their hire and their proclivity for murdering anyone incapable of putting up a fight.
The strategy then, such as it was, was simple. The Ashkenatzim panzers would destroy any semblance of organised resistance whilst the Elwpandurs would follow up by obligingly slitting the throats of any unfortunate who survived the first encounter before being allowed to disperse across the countryside to indulge in their more habitual pursuits of havoc and rapine. The main challenge was to get them there. Fourteen thousand Elwpandurs and fifty-six thousand assorted civilian camp-followers together with their mules and wagons were on the move in the wake of the panzers, less of an army and more of a tribal host, they had been roughly divided into four columns – although to describe the surging mass of humanity in such a manner would convey a false impression of precision – there was absolute chaos in the ranks, in fact there were no ranks in this bashibazouk horde, just a formless mass of humanity intent on following the panzers with a view to killing, looting and praising Zurvan.
Dravot on the other hand had another objective. With his column following the course of the riverbank he was keeping an eye out for a suitable fording point or, if the gods were smiling, perhaps even a bridge so that his command might swing inside the curve of the main force and cut into Araxion, giving him a fighting chance of getting to the main prize first – the famed and mysterious Tower of Allot. Why the Khan had rejected his request for a helicopter-borne air assault continued to mystify him. Aurangzeb had dismissed the request out of hand, cryptically referring to ‘events which must be allowed to proceed.’ Stuff and nonsense of course as far as Dravot was concerned, and typical of the obliquely stir-crazy Babki mentality.
To cut to the chase then was Dravot’s plan, by fair means or foul, get to the Tower first, discover whatever loot was there to be hand, butcher and bolt and then slip across the border into Amokolia and live out the remainder of his days as a rich man. To hell with the Khan and the insanity, if the Osmanid wanted to bring destruction down on Elwynn and himself so be it. Dravot was going to watch it all from the sidelines. Luxuriating by Jove.
KAHN! I just finished reading 