In 1991, when the former Yugoslavia exploded into a multi-faction civil war, I was morbidly fascinated.  For me, anything that incites the extremes of human behaviour is automatically a subject for research.  I explored the history of the Balkans and studied its folkways. I was struck with the importance of a single figure, Josef Tito.  It seemed that, by the sheer force of his personality, he  kept people from the various nations from killing one another.
          When he died, things changed.  People like Slobodan Milosevich began to harp on Serb Nationalism.  He had his counterparts in Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and the other sub-states that had once enjoyed a reasonable prosperity as Yugoslavia.  Manipulators of media began to play with memory, revise history.  It's so easy when, like the Milosevich family, you have a near-monopoly on TV, radio, film and print.
          I had the germ of an idea for a novel.  I would create an alternate world, an earthlike place with technology at pre World War One levels.  I don't know if this can be called a fantasy novel.
It has no wizards and very little magic.  It just is what it is, an Alternate World.  In this world, called Freeth, there are different geographies which lead, in turn, to different political destinies.  I worked at the craft of what is called World Building.
          This novel has gotten so huge that I now see it as a series of books, with a prequel and a sequel.  So begins THE SHADOW STORM:  BOOK ONE.  I will post a few chapters and see if I can draw any readers.



           

                          

                                                   

                                                 The Shadow Storm

                                      By Art Rosch February ã18, 2014

“In the mists, there are unseen friends.

                                    And in my friends, there are unseen mists.”

                                                                        From the Matanyata of Raya

A Little History

            A statesman is a rare creature.  The term "statesman" evokes an aura of moral authority, gravitas and self-sacrifice.  Occasionally someone arises who uses power for unselfish purposes, or yokes himself to higher goals.  This is a statesman.

            Osskar Skolov, President of the fledgling Kesh Republic, was a statesman.  Even his enemies granted him that stature.  He had spilled plenty of blood but he had never betrayed a friend and he always did what he said he would do.  A man of power who keeps his promises earns respect all over the world.

            Osskar had united the many warring fiefdoms of the peninsula called Keshicstan.  The multiple histories of Keshicstan differ in detail depending upon who is telling them.  The four Nations of the Kesh have vied with one another for thousands of years. Skolov's dream had been to unite the fractious tribes of the Kesh into a political whole.  It took arduous struggle but he had succeeded in forging a new State.  The Kesh Republic endured; a single generation had now passed. The Republic was twenty eight years old.  It was a united Keschicstan's first democratic form of government.

            Some hoped for the republic’s collapse.  Among them were reactionaries from what had become the Four Autonomies.  They wished for a restoration of their ancient empires.  These empires were mostly imaginary.  The only true chord of history running the length and breadth of Keshicstan was one of raids and blood feuds. 

            The nations who occupied Keshicstan were like four fingers runninng up the Kesh Peninsula from the Vorget Ocean to the towering ranges of the Sarkadian Mountains.  The four nations, now called The Four Autonomies, were the Kumysh, the Paltysh, the Lobanski and the Drugestni.

              The animosities among the Kesh were fueled by tribalism, religion and greed.  Blood feuds still raged among the clans in the mountains.  Bickering between followers of The Adoration, The Schism and the Goom were always spilling rivers of blood. Yet the tireless efforts of Skolov and his inner circle had bonded these ancient rivals into a modern republic.  Now menaced by huge empires, the Kesh were more frightened of the Klute, the Reverence and the Triple Culture than they were of each other.  There were still  terror groups plotting to restore the "Old Kumyshia" or whatever state was being touted by their revisionist historians.  The rational Center, federalists and republicans, wished desperately that the fringe elements would disappear. 

They never did.  Crazed longings for the days of the Paltysh Empire, or the Drugestni Kingdom, haunted the political landscape of the Kesh like the stink from an old paint job.

            Osskar Skolov had played upon these fears and suppressed these false memories, bandying his motto everywhere:  “Solidarity is Survival.”

            Skolov had begun life as a simple soldier.  In the immense eastward reaches of the powerful Klute Hegemony, a civil war had raged between followers of the two ‘Glavniks’, the hereditary rulers of the Klute.  Prince Igor was the son of Glavnik Pyotr, and he claimed succession when his father was poisoned.  Prince Iossip was Igor’s uncle, and was widely accused of doing the poisoning.  Uncle and nephew split the Hegemony into the White and the Purple Klute and war had raged across a continent.

            Osskar Skolov had been leader of a band of Kesh Comitadji.  This term, Comitadj, attaches itself to young men from the mountains who take up the life of nomadic mounted warriors.  In the traditions of the Kesh, a Comitadj becomes a protector of the powerless in times of invasion and oppression.  Various governments utlilize bands of comitadji in time of war as guerillas and scouts.  They are mounted privateers of the border regions, for sale to the highest bidder.  In times of peace they are bandits; in times of war they are heroes.

Osskar Skolov sold his services to Igor, and it was Igor who won the civil war, to become the new Glavnik.

            Skolov, however, built a mobile and powerful army around his core of fierce Comitadji. In the confused aftermath of the civil war he managed to wrest the Kesh Peninsula away from the influences of all its sponsors and oppressors.  By doing so, he had turned the very geography of Keshicstan into an economic threat pointed at the hearts of the great empires. The peninsula is shaped like a bulb, with its socket screwed into the Sarkadian Range.  In the north, the land butts into the Glazrov sea.  This narrow choke point is called The Bolkar Strait.  At its narrowest point it is twenty four miles across.  On clear days one can see the bluffs of the continent of Evra pushing into the sea like the paws of giant lions. 

            When the Klute civil war ended, the new Glavnik was filled with wrath.  Igor scourged his officer corps, impaled hundreds of his advisors, butchered the peoples of whole cities that he considered disloyal. None of these savage measures could prevent a new Kesh Republic from being established.  Igor wanted Keshicstan!  It was a natural extension of the Klute lands, the westward terminus of the continent of Tauernoy.  If he controlled the peninsula, he controlled the  Bolkar and Skora Straits.  If he controlled the Straits he could strangle the entire world. He had anticipated an expansion into the Peninsula, but the war had exhausted his treasury and decimated his armies. 

            He was not the only monarch on Freeth who wanted the resources and the strategic advantages of dominating the lands of the Kesh.  Every nation with a powerful army cast its eyes on Keshicstan, planning and waiting.

            In the meantime, for twenty eight years, Osskar Skolov had held a precarious balance, fending off enemies from both within and outside his very important Republic.

One:  Commander

For some months, Anton Shariev was afraid that his boss was losing his mind. 

            One day Osskar Skolov arrived at work wearing sporting clothes, as if he were out for a game of Holes.  To everyone who knew him, this was astonishing.  Osskar never appeared in public wearing anything besides his trademark uniform.  It didn’t matter whether he was working, hunting or dancing with diplomats' wives.  He wore a version of his uniform.  They were all of the same design. Only the fabrics and colors changed.

              Skolov was totally identified with that uniform.  It consisted of an officer's tunic, a a cylindrical cap of black lamb's wool and an over-the-shoulder style of  belt.  The flared wings of his cavalryman's trousers were tucked into knee high riding boots.  Sometimes he holstered a giant revolver that people called an “Osskar”.  Seeing him dressed otherwise was shocking.  Osskar in his uniform WAS the Kesh Republic.

             Recently, Anton had seen a glassy-eyed mania creeping into Skolov’s manner.  His behavior was becoming more and more odd, by small increments. Only someone who knew Osskar well would perceive these subtle shifts; it took Anton some time to admit to himself that the Great Man's mind was drifting off center.  This filled him with dread.  If Skolov's judgment grew clouded he could destroy everything they had fought so hard to achieve.

            Anton was shocked when his friend appointed a Personal Historian.  It just wasn't in Osskar's nature.  It seemed utterly wrong, as if The Commander had been overcome by an evil and capricious djinn.  He was a man who knew how to laugh at himself, a man without pomposity or grand pretensions.  The Historian, a dry professor by the name of Ruslam Jeloof, followed Skolov all day long, listening to the Great Man’s stories.  Anton had heard tidbits of these stories as he went about his work.  Lately he had discerned outright lies, fabrications that weren't remotely necessary to add luster to the career of Osskar Skolov.  Meanwhile, Jeloof took notes, which he later digested into a daily log. He read this log to Skolov first thing every mornng. 

            Early on  the Tenth of Moricarry, Shariev was to brief Skolov on the fortifications in the north.  War was inevitable.  Sooner or later, the Klute armies  would come pouring through the passes.   The guns, the tunnels, the obstacles, would not stop the Klute but they would slow them down while mobile Kesh columns converged on the major points of penetration.  That was the plan, anyway.  Much depended on the Triple Culture's dreadnoughts bottling up the Glavnik's new navy as it attempted to pass the Bolkar Straits.

            Anton Shariev, Minister of Defense, knew from long experience that war plans were like blueprints for buildings that will shortly topple.

Skolov’s office was modest.  The windows looked onto the south side of the Kavalanski Palace, where two rivers, The Droon and the Sabich, flowed under the city's many bridges.  The walls held decorations and souvenirs from his career as a Comitadj.  Weapons and bombs from seven failed assassination plots sat atop file cabinets and small tables.  A pair of crossed sabers hung behind the desk, their gleaming blades inscribed with the gnarled tree branch patterns of Old Lobanski script.

            The boss’s work area was littered with official papers and folders tied with blue and red ribbons. Skolov leaned back in his big leather armchair, feet on the desk.  The palace was virtually deserted.  Two of Osskar’s trusted bodyguards, Kwerk and Ayatov, were posted just outside the door.  Historian Jeloof was perched on a stool in one corner of the small office, with a pencil dangling idly between two middle fingers.  Early sunlight split into bands of light and shadow as it flowed through venetian blinds.

            Shariev entered this scene, running early, as usual.  Jeloof was about to read the notes from the previous day.  Skolov was relaxed and smiling, his great mane of silvery hair standing straight up from his wide brow.  Shariev felt the palpable charm of his leader.  There was, however, something alarmingly brittle about this man, on this day.  With a feeling as though he had fallen down a mineshaft, Shariev truly admitted to himself: he looks crazy. His smile is too broad, too glowing.  It isn’t the Osskar that I know.

            To a less acute observer, this bouyancy would pass for magnetism.  To Anton Shariev, it had a euphoric quality that undermined Skolov’s natural gravitas.   At sixty, he looked forty.  He was known for his clarity and candor.  He had written nine masterful works on statecraft and military strategy. He was both an intellectual and an athlete.  His shoulders were massive, bulging out of the sports shirt that he should not be wearing.

            This may have explained why Shariev felt a tingle of subliminal alarm as he entered the room.  Skolov just wasn’t Skolov any more.  He wore spats, knee length socks over puffy woolen sport pants, suspenders and a sports shirt.  He lolled with his feet elevated on his desk.  His shoes were fixed with the short gleaming steel spikes of Holes players.  Anton wondered briefly if he might be looking at one of Skolov’s doubles.  He dismissed the thought.  Anton knew the real article.

            With his palms turned upward, Skolov gestured expansively when he saw his friend.  “Aha!  Colleague Anton! You’re a bit early but it’s a pleasure to see you, even with your long gloomy face."  He looked at the historian.  "The Worrier, that's what I call him." He turned back to Shariev.  "Always worrying, especially in the morning.  Look out the windows, look at the world!  The sun is rising, birds are singing!  Who cares if the carrion eaters of the Empires are gnawing at our frontiers?  This is a permanent condition.  Call it our Hot Peace.  Eh!  That's good!  Hot Peace."  He turned to make sure the historian was making a note of this catchy term.  Jeloof was dutifully writing in his tablet.

            Skolof twined the fingers of his hands, turned them inside out, extended his arms and cracked his knuckles with loud pops.

            "Aah," he sighed.  His hands had taken a fair share of shrapnel.  His right pinky finger was lopped off at the first joint.  Scar tissue covered his palms.

            "I was just about to hear what Colleague Jeloof gleaned from yesterday’s proceedings," said Skolov.  "Go ahead, read your notes."

            “Sir,” Jeloof said respectfully.  “I have only three paragraphs of notes.  It was an  ordinary day.  You spent three hours with Citizen Vridilov discussing his difficulties in designing a workable flying machine.  There's not much else of distinction beyond your regular administrative duties."

            The smile on Skolov’s face disappeared.  He stood abruptly, using his body to push his chair backwards so that it hit the wall with a padded thunk!  He reached to one of the pair of antique sabers and withdrew it from its clip on the wall.  He strode with exuberant purpose to the side of the tall thin man with his pencil and clipboard.  Terrified, Jeloof retreated into a corner of the office, dodged forward, dodged back, slunk along the inner wall, but could not evade his employer.  Skolov stabbed into the right cheek of Jeloof’s rangy buttocks.  His raised voice sounded rough and splintered.

“There are no ordinary days in the life of Osskar Skolov!  Maybe this will give you something to write about!”

            There was a shocked silence in the office.  This was an insane autocratic gesture in the style of some medieval Klute despot like Igor the Awful.  Shariev stood there,  stunned. 

            Blood spilled down the leg of Jeloof’s trousers.  The historian’s face went from pale to scarlet.  He looked over his shoulder at the bleeding wound and  began to weep.  His tears reminded Shariev of his own adolescent daughter after a tiff with her boyfriend.  Jeloof was standing directly beneath the other saber that hung clipped to the wall.  He then did the unthinkable.  He took the sword into his hands and slammed it down on Skolov’s head with firm and utter finality.  Osskar barely had time to raise the other sabre to his waist before the fatal blow had fallen.  The Commander had not considered the dry twig of a man to be capable of holding a sword.  He had not braced for a counterstroke, he had simply stood panting, enraged.  Now he was dead.

            It took about five seconds for Kwerk and Ayatov to enter the office, assess the situation, and shoot Jeloof full of holes. They were so surprised, so numb with shock that it was easy for Shariev to draw his own pistol and kill both bodyguards.  Kwerk died instantly with a shot through the heart.  Ayatov took a bullet in the arm and a fatal shot in the temple.

            Shariev was now alone in the Commander’s office with four corpses. He was deafened.  Smoke filled the air and the smell of discharged firearms burnt his nose.  He was thinking at incredible speed.  He could feel his pulse in his ears, and the walls of the room seemed to twist and buckle for a moment.  Shariev deposited his shame, grief and terror into a remote vault in his psyche.  It took great effort.  There was no time to be emotional. 

            If word gets out that Skolov is dead, murdered, the Kumysh will blame it on everyone else and begin a secession bill in their legislature.  The other Autonomies will follow suit and street fighting will begin between the separatists and the unionists. Keshicstan will implode and the empires will take advantage of the chaos to invade from every quarter.  These months were desperately needed by the Keshic military to complete its preparations.  Without Skolov, there would be no Army Of The Republic.  Skoloff commanded loyalty in his person as The Great Comitadj.  He had Besha affliations with every clan;  every hetman in every peak and valley owed a debt to Osskar.  As Prime Minister in the Demyat, Osskar was transferring loyalty piecemeal to the Kesh Republic.  It was a long and gradual work.  If he died without a strong successor, officers and soldiers from the Four Autonomies would return to their homelands and resume the blood feuds that had burned for a thousand years.  Then Igor and The Klute would come flooding through the mountain passes to pick off one army after another.  Morthone Friedrich could not allow this to happen.  The Triple Culture and its allies would be at war with the Klute and its allies, and all of Freeth would be at war.

            It would be the first true world war on the planet.  The largest battle would be for control of the peninsula, Keshicstan.  By the time it was over, The Republic would be a wasteland.

            Anton opened the door carefully.  It was just past five in the morning.  No one was in the Kavalanski Palace.  This baroque monstrosity, residence of former Kings, had been converted into the hub of the Republic’s government.  A few janitors patrolled the lower floors, stacking the furnaces with coal.

            Anton would now have to act with great cunning if he was to keep Skolov’s death secret.  He conjured a map of deployments of all the military formations that would be involved in this struggle. 

            The Triple Culture, by treaty, would be obliged to defend the Kesh Republic.  This defense could end up looking like an occupation; if they came, the Morthone's troops would never leave.  The Morthone’s navy was prepared to deploy in an arc across the Bolkar Straits to blockade Klute shipping.  This would force Igor's army to come across the Sarkadian Range.  But Friedrich's fleet was only powerful on paper.  Many of The Culture’s dreadnoughts were berthed at Zyle Harbor for refitting.  Shariev anticipated the emergence of a viable aircraft, or an underwater torpedo boat.  These things were in the works, still visions on the draft tables of engineers and designers.  This was a time of innovation, many of which would be frightful.

            In a tangle of cross-alliances, as economic and historical grievances erupted,

twenty nations would soon be fighting one another.  Most of that fighting would be around and within Keshicstan.    

            There was a key to Skolov’s office in his desk drawer.  Shariev found it and left the office, locking it behind him.  He went down the corridor of what had once been royal parlors and bedrooms, now utilized as offices. He found a supply closet and extracted a large roll of brown wrapping paper and several rolls of tape.  He took a box of cleaning rags under one arm and hurried back to the Commander’s office. 

Working frantically, Shariev cleaned up the blood, rolled bodies in carpets, opened the window to air the smoke from the room.  Dawn was breaking over Kacedon’s spires and minarets.  The Anwars were calling to Ayubah, the Masters were ringing steeple bells and the Acolytes were sweeping burnt incense coals in front of their iconostases.

            Sweat poured from Shariev’s body.  He needed time.  Six months at least for the new defense perimeters to be completed.  The Klute Civil War had been followed by the Independence War.  Twenty eight years ago a vicious war had been fought.  It had never really stopped.  It had gone into remission, like a cancer.  Continual outbreaks and alarms disturbed the repose of the continents Evra, Skora and Tauernoy. 

The treaty of alliance with Friedrich and the Triple Culture protected the new Kesh Republic.  It came with a heavy a price.  Tariffs had been lifted.   Trade agreements forced Osskar to lay a burden of heavy taxation on the citizens of the Republic.

In return, fleets of dreadnoughts and cruisers flying the tricolor of Friedrichs’ realms patrolled the Bolkar and Skora Straits.  They ranged up and down the coast of Evra and parried warily with their de-facto enemy, the Klute Imperial War Marine.  As for ground forces, the Morthone’s divisions were still far away.  If they came to the defense of the Kesh, it would take weeks for them to deploy.  They might not come at all, if Glavnik Igor could break the blockade of the straits.  Then Igor could stall Culture troop movements and send his client armies into the Culture’s vassal states.

Time, time, Shariev needed time. 

He could not even mourn the loss of his mentor and friend Osskar Skolov.  He couldn’t indulge in the grief and shame of being forced to murder Kwerk and Ayatov, loyal soldiers who did not deserve such a fate.  A spasm of emotion was swallowed up in the moment’s urgency. He needed to restore the office.  There were rugs in the storeroom.  He must get two to replace the bloodied shrouds he was now using to transport the bodies.  He found what he needed, a large wheeled cart, and brought the new rugs into the office.  He moved furniture, straining to shift the Commander’s massive desk a few inches at a time.  Then he put the bodies on the cart and rolled it to the service elevator.  There were four rug-and-paper wrapped bundles, six feet long, tied with beige twine.  The elevator rose with infuriating slowness, groaning on its cables.  At last the chamber came even with the steel crosses of the folding gate.  Shariev grasped the handle, accordianed the gate open, and clumsily moved the cart into the interior.  It was now quarter till six.  Within the hour, employees of the various ministries would be arriving for work. 

            Shariev pressed the button to take him to the basement, to the boiler rooms.  The elevator clanked and creaked, shuddering its way downward.  The defense minister mopped his brow with a clean rag.  He examined himself.  He was covered in blood and bits of bone.  He would need clothing.  He took the minutes of labored descent to think through his next moves.  First and most obvious was to activate Skolov’s best double, a man named Felix Birel.  This man had been surgically altered and trained for years. Shariev would have great need of Birel in the coming days.  He would also need to contact the Chief of the War Staff, Iosef Surijatsky.  He could confide in Iosef, but instinctively he wanted to hide the truth for as long as possible.  

            To the east, Igor the Fifth, “The Glavnik”, maneuvered and prepared his armies, the forces of The Klute Hegemony.  To the southwest, across the Skora Straits, the Party of Reverence threatened the Republic.  Their military was second rate, their equipment out of date.  Nonetheless, divisions had to be stationed to keep them from landing.  To the northwest, the Triple Culture maintained its friendly ties with the Kesh only so long as it was cheaper to buy from them than to conquer them.  If a power vacuum occurred on the peninsula, the three empires would rush in like three great rivers, each waving the standard of its religion, proclaiming war for the greater glory of whatever God happened to apply. No matter that Friedrich was an ally.  He would bring his armies to “defend” the Kesh, and then never leave.  None of the empires could afford to let the other dominate the peninsula.  The Land of the Kesh was a geo-strategic fulcrum.  Part of the reason for Osskar’s success was the fact that so long as he restrained the Four Autonomies and held The Republic together, a balance of power obtained and the empires could relax.  None wanted any of the others to have Keshicstan. 

            This armed stability could go on for decades, perhaps generations, but for one obsessive ruler, Glavnik Igor.  He seethed with rage towards Skolov for thwarting his annexation of the peninsula.  It was a personal affront.

            Osskar Skolov’s very existence had acted as a dyke to hold back the tides of war.

            Shariev gripped the front of his waistcoat and tore at his lapels in a gesture of agony.  He needed some way to vent the emotion that was being so tightly held in check.  His fingernails dug through the black woolen material until they scratched his ribcage.  A silent sob twitched his shoulders like a hiccup.

No more, no more, he told himself.  I can’t grieve now.  I have other things to do.  Memories of Osskar flooded through him: Osskar pretending to feel no pain as a bullet was removed from deep within his thigh.  Osskar laughing with his head thrown back, a bottle of raki glinting in the campfire light.  Osskar with his brows knit over a map as he worked out escape from a hopeless encirclement.  In spite of his attempt at self control, Shariev’s shoulders trembled and he winced with the salt sting of tears.  His face was filthy.  The lines of tears made clean narrow stripes across his cheeks.

            Goddammit!  This was a nightmare!  A nightmare!  Of all the things Skolov had done, and done wisely, he had dallied over the most crucial: a smooth transfer of authority.  He, Shariev, had urged this for years upon the Commander.  Who will succeed you? he implored.  What if something should happen?  The Constitution provided, upon the loss of a Prime Minister, an interim government headed by the Cabinet, with Shariev as its de facto head.  After a period of ten weeks, a general election would be held.  During that ten weeks, all registered parties would campaign, form coalitions, jockey for position, and the resulting party or coalition with the greatest number of elected representatives to the Demyat would establish its leader as the new Prime Minister.   As things stood right now, the next Prime Minster would be the industrialist Zemso Borenko.  This revanchist lunatic was a Kumysh, and behind his rhetoric of reconciliation hid the old dream of secession and Kumysh grandeur.  His policies would lead to invasion, disintegration of the Republic, and a wider war over the carcass of the peninsula. 

            Osskar could not let himself believe in such an outcome.  He would laugh and flex his shoulder muscles, stretching the fabric of his tunic as if to demonstrate his excess of vitality.  “Anton, there’s time.  Who can succeed me?  Be realistic!  Who!  There IS no other Osskar Skolov.  I’m going to have to create one!  And I haven’t found the proper clay, as yet.  I’m not god, I can’t make a successor out of nothing.  You don’t want the job!  Neh?  You are a behind-the-scenes type.  Maybe…maybe, if Surijatsky were less eccentric, I could see it.  But no…..we must wait.  There is time.  Borenko is nothing but a joke, yes, a dangerous joke, but it would take a lot to bring him to power.  I have my eye on young Vlahos.  I know, I know, he’s a stripling!  But I see the potential in him.  Think about it.  Another five years and young Alyosha’s beard will start to have some grey in it. Then he will be taken seriously by the old Comitadji.”

In hindsight Shariev understood that a mental illness had laid hold of Osskar.  It had come slowly at first.  In the last two months things had accelerated, the Commander’s behaviour had become subtly out of tune.  How little was understood about the mind!  A new science was emerging, Psychodynamics, but it was still primitive.  What could he, Anton, have done?  His mind swung wildly with strange emotion.  Could I have suggested that Osskar see Professor Zuring and go into treatment? 

            The thought was so absurd that he laughed with his mouth closed, and a cloud of snot dripped from his nostril and spread through his moustache.  He wiped his face with the rag he held.  Perhaps I need a few sessions with the doctor myself, he thought miserably.

            The elevator settled with a bump.  Shariev slammed the screen aside and rolled the cart out into the subterranean vastness of the Kavalanski Palace. 

            There were pillars receeding into the smoky distance.  A caged gas light shone feebly, every twenty feet.  This part of the palace had not yet been electrified.  There was a rumble, as of machinery, furnaces, vents being opened and closed.  There was no complete map of the palace’s subterranean layers.  It was riddled with tunnels, legacy of Kavalanski paranoia.  Anton set off towards a sound of muted roaring, seeking the heat of the great boilers.

            He got about fifty yards when a convergence of two walls became a corridor.  Only a few paces down this corridor there was a steel door.  It was slightly ajar.  He looked through into a spacious chamber, lit with kerosene lamps, fitted with a spider of colossal vents working their way up into the palace.  He saw an old man seated on a stool, smoking a pipe whose stem was so long that its bowl rested on the floor.  Next to him, a vast pile of coal rose to the ceiling.  A giant furnace roared behind its closed iron gate at the far side of the chamber. The man wore the white skullcap of a Lobanski Mountain Man.   This spectral figure looked up and met the eyes of Anton Shariev.  He rose, lifting the pipe with him, leaning it against a niche where old furniture lay stacked. 

            The man was tall, with a face like a predator.  A sparse beard of white stubble covered his chin and upper lip.  He touched a finger to his skullcap respectfully, but without subservience.  “Minister”, the man spoke, “what are you doing here?” He approached Shariev, walking with a pronounced limp.  Anton did a lightning assessment.  This man was a Lobanski, displaced from his mountains and his flocks, serving as a janitor in the Kavalanski Palace.  He had fought bravely, saved someone’s life in his career as a bandit, a Comitadj.  As his reward he had been given a sinecure, a job in the palace, an apartment and a stipend.

            Shariev would have to bestow his trust on this man.  He rolled the cart through the door.  “There has been some difficulty,” he explained vaguely.  “I need to burn these parcels.”

            “Certainly,” the man rumbled.  His voice had the thickness of one who speaks little.  He examined the trussed beige packages, and his nostrils opened and closed, opened and closed.  Shariev knew the man smelled blood. 

            “Difficulty indeed,” the Lobanski said sardonically, darting a keen glance at the minister.  He displaced Shariev at the handle of the cart and rolled it towards the furnace.  “You need to dispose of some awkward refuse.”

            Gratefully, Shariev let the man take the burden..  He mopped his brow once more then joined the janitor at the door to the furnace.  The man opened the wrought-iron hatch.  It gave a poignant squeak and revealed its well-tended and relentless fire.  In the light of the flames, Shariev’s torn and bloody clothing was visible,.  The hill man looked him up and down, shrugged, and pulled at the first package.  Shariev felt a dreadful sense of lese majeste, that he was consigning the Commander, the Leader of the Solidarity, to an anonymous furnace fire, that the Prime Minister's smoke would go up and out the chimney of the Kavalanski, that the heat from his bones and tissues would be distributed to a hundred radiators heating a hundred rooms. 

            The old Comitadj lifted one end of the first bundle, and Shariev took the other side.  Together, they fed it into the flames.  Indifferent to its fuel, the furnace roared briefly, then settled to its steady crackling.

            Before Shariev could designate the second rug-wrapped tube, the old Lobanski pulled at the one containing Skolov.  It was damp with blood, and part of the paper ripped, revealing a hand.  The hand was uniquely distinctive.  It was missing part of its little finger.  Its old cuts and burns belonged to one man and only one man and that man was famous enough so that his hand told his identity.

            The janitor dropped the package back onto the cart, and in a swift and practiced movement  pulled a dagger from his belt and held its gleaming blade to the throat of Anton Shariev.

            “I want to know what’s going on here!” the man bellowed.  “I invoke K’nuun. Why is the President’s body being fed to the furnace?  Who has killed him!”

            The K’nuun was the ancient tribal code of the Kesh, an oral tradition that every Kesh male learned from birth.  To invoke K’nuun meant that one of two responses was demanded: the absolute truth, or, the phrase “The K’nuun is not within reach.”  The latter was only permitted if the truth put the speaker’s family in danger of blood revenge. 

            Slowly, Shariev raised his right hand and held it under the Lobanski’s nose.

            “Do you smell gunpowder?” he asked.  The blade's point was drawing blood from the area near his jugular. 

            The Lobanski nodded.  “Gunpowder.  Go ahead.”

            “The President was killed by a sword.  His bodyguards killed his killer, then I killed his bodyguards.  It’s gruesome, but you can examine his body and see if I speak true.”
            The pressure on the blade slackened.  The old mountan man thought for a moment.  “I see.  You must keep the President’s death a secret.  He is the only man who commands the loyalties of all the Autonomies.  If his murder is made known, the Republic is weakened and becomes fair game for the Empires.  And the Empires have been rattling their sabers, itching to get back into a war.”

            The dagger came away from Shariev’s throat.   By the flickering light, the Defense Minister saw the old man straighten his body proudly, draw himself up to his considerable height. 

            “Then I must die too,” he said, smiling broadly.  “I could give you my word to keep this secret, but we both know that secrets are like blood: they appear at the first scratch. I will die for the Kesh.  Not for the Republic.  Excuse me, sir, but the Republic can screw itself.  I’m too old to change my ways.   I am a Lobanski first, a Kesh second.  This is a far better death than I had hoped.  Even my grand-daughters have been taunting me:  ‘grandpa, why are you still alive?’  I have outlived most of my sons and even some of my grandsons.  I am stoking a furnace, exiled from my flocks, my horse and my saber, because of a war wound that never healed.  You have brought me a good death, worthy of a Comitadj.”

            Shariev stepped back from the heat of the fire.  “You will die a warrior, and when it can be known, I will add your tale to your Besha’s K’nuun.  I will see to it that your family is cared for.”  The Besha was the man’s clan affiliation. 

            The Lobanski examined Shariev.  “You are of my size.  You will need my clothes. I will go into the furnace at the side of Osskar Skolov.   He was a great man, the greatest of the Comitadji.”

            Shariev sagged into the man’s arms with exhaustion and relief.  “You are my brother,” he wept into the Lobanski’s bony shoulder.  The Lobanski wept back, squeezing him tight. 

“You are my brother in the K’nuun.  Let us respectfully cremate the Commander and then you can slit my throat and make steam of my blood.  My smoke will mingle with The Commander's smoke.”

            Before enacting the ritual death of the Lobanski, Shariev became his brother. He learned his name, his tribe, his clan, his Besha, and the man learned that of Shariev.  The old warrior, whose name was Leet Krvash, showed Shariev a tunnel out of the palace of which he had been unaware.  It would take him to a decayed gazebo in Vronsky Park, where he could slip quietly into the city. 

Krvash shed his clothes.  He stood proudly in his faded set of long johns.  He washed himself in a bucket of warm water, took one final drag from his pipe.  He looked exultant.  He wept with joy.

            “This is a death that means something!  I thought I would rot here, getting so old that I would not be able to straighten my limbs, and then my daughters would lay me on a bed in my village and smother me in my sleep.  Which is only proper!  I would have been an embarrassment!  This is a unique death: a warrior’s death.”  He knelt on a great pile of rags gathered from around the boiler room.  Shariev, too, had shed his clothes and put them into the fire, along with the bodies of Kwerk, Ayatov, Jeloof and Osskar Skolov.  He circled behind Leet’s back, grasped his forehead but refrained from pulling the head back or touching the hair.  That was not the way to slit a throat.  He allowed Leet Krvash to adopt the Pride Posture, The Warrior's Way.  When the man was set, Anton passed Leet’s blade across his throat.  The blood flowed like an apron across the Lobanski's torso.  It spilled onto the rags.  Leet Krvash sighed, dropped to his knees and fell forward.

            Shariev fed him into the flames with the prayer called The Cry For Redemption, from the Schismatic Rite.  When it was all done, everything cleaned up, he donned the clothes of Leet Krvash and went down the long, fetid tunnel that led from the Kavalanski Palace. 

            He wondered, as he cautiously pushed up the planks of the gazebo’s floor, how many more people he would have to kill with his own hands before this horrible business was done.