When King Innocentius VII personally led his people out of their homeland, the Lusitanian army was said to number 58,000 cavalry, 307,000 infantry, and 35,000 sailors, for a total of 400,000. Since then, they had lost 32,000 men in the conquest of the Kingdom of Maryam, over 50,000 at Atropatene, and another 25,000 in the siege of Ecbatana. Their numbers had already dropped below the 300,000 mark.
After the wave of slaughter and plunder finally slowed, the leading generals of Lusitania turned to planning how to make their conquest of the great nation of Pars permanent. Then a piece of news arrived that shook them more than anything since they had left Lusitania.
Their king, Innocentius VII, had expressed a desire to marry Queen Tahmineh of Pars.
“How old is the Queen of Pars, anyway?”
“Probably late thirties. Not so different from His Majesty.”
“That’s not the issue. She is the lawful queen of an enemy nation, and a heathen. A marriage like that is impossible.”
The generals, thrown into confusion by the sudden announcement, gathered before the king and urged him to abandon the ill-advised idea.
“Queen Tahmineh is an ill-omened woman. Every man connected to her has met a miserable fate.”
“With Your Majesty’s authority, there is no need to take a heathen, and much less another man’s wife. We can bring the most beautiful women from Lusitania instead.”
The king said nothing, sulking in silence. It was an unreasonable wish to begin with.
Seeing this, one of the generals raised his voice, “Look at the fate of Prince Kayumars of Badakhshan, his minister, Shah Osroes V of Pars, and Andragoras III. All men ruined by Tahmineh’s beauty. Do you still wish to become the fifth, Your Majesty?”
King Innocentius was stunned. Within his sluggish, fragile body, superstitious fear and fierce obsession struggled against each other.
“But those men you speak of were all unbelievers who did not receive the grace of Yaldabaoth,” he finally said. “Perhaps God Himself placed this trial before her. Perhaps it is her destiny to become the wife of a devout follower of Yaldabaoth.”
The generals had no answer to that. Clicking their tongues at the king’s stubbornness and sophistry, they withdrew for the moment, waiting for another opportunity to advise him.
Gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, amethysts, topaz, jade, ivory—mountains of treasure filled the palace vault. The Lusitanians could hardly believe their eyes. They wondered how such a wealthy nation had ever fallen to them. Even stripping Lusitania itself to the bone would never have produced such riches. That was precisely why they had driven themselves into foreign conquest. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
The royal horses of the king and queen were scented with saffron along their manes and necks. Even the torches lighting the palace corridors carried fragrance, infused with musk.
The treasury itself was strictly forbidden to plunder. Unlike other rooms of the palace and the houses of commoners, anyone who stole from it was to be burned at the stake.
When the king first inspected the treasury, the accompanying generals gasped in admiration.
“The wealth of Pars is beyond anything we’ve heard,” one said.
“All belongs to God,” the king declared. “Do not touch a single item.”
The pure devotion of King Innocentius did not sit well with his generals. They had left their barren, rocky homeland with scarce water and greenery to invade a foreign country that had never wronged them. Officially, of course, it was to spread the glory of Yaldabaoth and wipe out the heathens from the earth. But with their victory at Atropatene and the fall of Ecbatana, that divine glory had already been achieved. Surely now it was time for men to reap the real rewards.
The fanatical king said everything belonged to God. But in the end, it was the priests—led by Bodin—who managed God’s wealth. And what, the generals thought bitterly, had those priests ever done for conquest or victory?
Along with the incident involving Queen Tahmineh, the Lusitanian generals grew increasingly dissatisfied with the king, and they began to place greater hopes in Prince Guiscard.
Guiscard, the king’s younger brother, held numerous titles—prince, knight commander, general, lord—that it would take all the fingers on both hands to count them. He stood almost as tall as his brother, but his body was lean and far more youthful, and his eyes and movements brimmed with energy. Unlike the king, who only looked to God and the clergy, Guiscard showed great interest in the world of men and the earth beneath them. To him, life only had meaning if he could rule everything and claim all its wealth for himself.
From the younger brother’s perspective, King Innocentius VII had no ability to lead a campaign across the western third of the continent. When Guiscard once asked him, “How do you plan to supply the army, brother?” the king had answered, “God will rain heavenly grace upon His faithful.” That was the kind of man he was.
In the end, it had been Guiscard who organized the four-hundred-thousand-man army, arranged its supply lines, prepared the fleets, set the routes, and even led it to victory with his generals. The king himself only prayed for victory to God and had never once commanded a single soldier. He could not even ride a horse and had traveled the entire campaign in a carriage or palanquin. That, in a way, was almost admirable. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
I am the true ruler of Lusitania, Guiscard thought. And it was I who actually conquered Pars. As he listened to the complaints of the generals who came to him, he found himself agreeing with them.
“I understand how you feel,” he said in a low but heated voice. “I have thought the same for some time. The king treats those clerics too generously, and he gives far too little to you meritorious men.”
He was using the generals’ discontent for his own ambitions, but his words were no lie. In particular, his intense dislike for Archbishop Bodin, who wielded influence at the king’s side, was very real.
“Look at Bodin, Your Highness,” one of the generals said. “He talks of punishing heathens, purging heretics, and hunting sorcerers, yet all he does is torture and kill those who cannot resist. He has never once stood on a battlefield with a sword in his hand. Why should a man like that hold more wealth and power than those of us who risk our lives?”
“The same happened with Shapur,” another added. “He was a heathen, yes, but a brave warrior. If his hands had been free, he would have crushed Bodin like a chick. Instead, Bodin was screeching like a mad monkey while he whipped him. It was disgraceful.”
These complaints and grievances were valuable information to Guiscard. Even as he listened to them at length, he could not simply dismiss them.
At first, when he heard that his brother had become obsessed with the Queen of Pars, Guiscard sneered in private.
“Even my brother is not immune to women,” he muttered quietly. “So humans cannot live by faith alone after all. Still, if he must choose, he could at least pick someone young instead of a woman past her prime.”
But when curiosity led him to see the captive Queen Tahmineh for himself, he could no longer laugh at his brother. Beyond her beauty, Tahmineh seemed to possess a strange magnetism, something that drew in anyone who lived in and near the corridors of power.
Later, while Guiscard wrestled with this torment in silence, a man approached him with advice. He served as his unofficial adviser and guide for the campaign’s geography, though no one knew his true identity, not even Guiscard. He always wore a silver mask in public.
“When Your Highness achieves his ambition, you will have not just one woman, but ten thousand beauties at your command,” the man encouraged. “Why become fixated on a single woman from a fallen country, and one who belongs to another man?”
“Yes. That is true,” Guiscard said at last.
Banishing his lingering doubts, he drained a cup of nabidh and went off toward the king’s chambers. This ability to abandon what he could not afford to keep was, perhaps, what set him apart from his brother.