BOOK II OF III: The Reign of the Sultan (2 page)

As soon as his body came to rest halfway
between sitting and lying, he immediately propped his hands behind
the back of his head for support, sunk even deeper into the
pillows, and sighed.

A few moments later, he began to meditate
heavily over his fifty-two years of life … a very successful life
that consisted of several successful wars, quite a few successful
land-expansion campaigns, and sixteen hardcore battles!

Really, it was because of Vaspan and all his
valiant efforts, that his own empire was now one-half the size of
the Kingdom of Thorium and one-quarter the size of the Sharia
Empire. Not surprising to anyone, both neighboring nations were
bitter enemies with the Vaspan Empire, because he had taken quite a
bit of their lands.

The two empires, once upon a time, were
originally “one big happy family!” After all, Vaspan’s original
birth-name and title was Prince Vaspan Helenus, and he was the
younger of two brothers with no sisters, and for ninety-nine
percent of his life, with no mother. His older brother, by twelve
years, was Prince Brishavus Helenus.

Their father was the previous Sultan of the
Sharia Empire—Brishavo Helenus the Eleventh. He was forty years old
when Vaspan was born.

Of course, Vaspan did have a mother named
Vaspa, but the Sultaness had tragically died the very night of his
birth from complications during childbirth—sadly she had only
reached the young age of thirty-two … rare were the times that her
name, persona, or history spoken of by Brishavo or Brishavus.

It was even worse for Vaspan because he never
knew his mother. Both his father and/or brother would grow angry
and storm off whenever he would ask any questions at all about her,
especially during his youth. Their bottled-up rage caused him to
believe over the years that they secretly blamed, resented and even
hated him because of Vaspa’s death.

A few years after her death, Brishavo began
building a harem on the top floor of the palace, and selected the
most beautiful women throughout the world to be his harem girls.
Inevitably, he and his concubines produced dozens of children, in
which the kids alone were “B-grade” royalty. Perhaps it was because
of the harem that he never again married, or perhaps there just
wasn’t any other woman who could replace his first bride—only he
knew for sure.

During Brishavo’s early years as the reigning
Sultan, forty years in total, he had created “from scratch” a
second seaport city called Lasparus. During his later years, he
easily conquered the small, inland village of Mauritia and
transformed it into a thriving trade city.

Combined with his beloved Capitol of Pavelus,
these three cities not controlled the entire western borders of the
Sharia Desert, yet also spanned across thousands of miles along the
Sea of Albusina. Due to their centralized locations with more than
a dozen major seaports, this made the entire Sharia Empire
incredibly wealthy, successful and powerful!

For most of Brishavo’s life, he looked
remarkably young, handsome, and strong, as his aging process was
more like a fine wine. He had always been healthy and physically
powerful, but, not surprisingly, semi-tyrannical to his citizens in
his high taxes, and of course the severe penalties for evading
those taxes, or for trying to start rebellions.

However, only a month after his fifty-fourth
birthday and for the next eight years to follow, he had slowly
begun to rot away due to malicious cancers in his body and his
brain, which the medics could not treat even with the best of
medicines, nor could the clerics chant or pray away. In fact, he
spent his final three years of life completely trapped in his
“deathbed,” too weak to move.

Still, during this bedridden timeframe, the
Sultan had wit enough to order the construction of the first layer
of stonewall-fortifications to surround most of the seaport of
Lasparus. Unfortunately, his crazed tyranny grew far worse as he
began killing every single cleric in the Sharia Empire (which there
were originally a little more than a thousand priests from about a
dozen different religions), destroyed all their temples, tomes, and
artifacts within all three cities, and permanently abolished all
religions.

All the while, the two brothers were forced
to watch their father transform from a muscular warrior into a
skeleton with sunken eyeballs, slightly resembling an unwrapped
mummy. In this man’s final week of life, he had gone completely
insane, babbling incoherently to himself the entire time he was
conscious, and dying only two weeks and three days before Vaspan’s
twenty-second birthday.

Three days after their father’s death and
funeral, Brishavus became officially inaugurated and crowned as
“Sultan Brishavus Helenus the Twelfth!” After all, he was the next
in line to rule.

Exactly two weeks later, upon the day of his
birthday, Vaspan finally mustered enough courage to ask Brishavus
if they could both rule the Sharia Empire equally; after all, it
would probably be many decades before old age and death would
finally take his thirty-four-year-old brother.

Without hesitation, Brishavus snarled out
something to the effect of, “Only after my own natural death will
you be given the opportunity to rule the Sharia Empire, my little
brother….but if I die by any other means, I promise you will never
get that chance!”

Even though Vaspan grew quite frustrated and
angry at this response, he ever-so-barely managed to keep his poker
face, as he had long ago figured, and ever-so-secretly planned,
that this would be his older brother’s answer.

So, for an additional two months, Vaspan
waited with patience—after all, it was no secret that Brishavus
would be sailing for Lasparus with half of his naval fleet for a
month, consisting of seven hundred ships from sleuths, to transport
ships, to frigates and galleons. Twenty thousand sailors would be
navigating these ships, and forty thousand soldiers would be coming
along for the ride.

The brand-new Sultan’s first agenda was to
inspect the second layer of stonewall-fortifications that six
thousand stonemasons had just finished installing in Lasparus ...
at the same time he would take what he called his “well-deserved
vacation.”

Once that month was over, his next agenda was
to leave a quarter of the fleet and half of the soldiers behind in
Lasparus, take half of the stonemasons and sail back to Pavelus for
just a week, in order to ensure that his younger brother hadn’t
botched things up.

Once that week was over, his final agenda was
to sail south to Mauritia—along with his sailors, soldiers, and
stonemasons—in order to begin building this city her own set of
stone fortifications. He figured it would take a year to build city
walls that were fifty feet tall and seventy feet thick.

Only three days after the Sultan had left for
Lasparus, Vaspan stole one-third of the entire forces still
stationed in Pavelus—troops that had been secretly loyal to him for
many years.

He had—since his father had first become
sick—recruited the officers, who in turn recruited the underlings,
by his very persuasive words with promises of fortune and glory,
which until this moment in time he kept “top-secret.”

The very few that said “no” to Vaspan’s plan
were killed under
mysterious circumstances
, yet one who
surprisingly said “yes” was the Sultan’s number two general,
Commanding-General Flak.

After all, most people—including this senior
officer who had honorably served the empire for twenty-five
years—did not like the brand-new Sultan, as he had been a
slave-driving bully since boyhood to just about everyone, except
his own father. So it wasn’t all that surprising when Brishavus
delivered the order that all of the troops (enlisted and officers)
would indeed be assisting the stonemasons in Mauritia, so they
could build the fortifications even faster.

“Absolutely absurd” was Flak’s angry thought
upon hearing that news, but his superior officer, Ruling-General
Trey, verbally praised out his opinion to the Sultan, declaring,
“Yes, my Sultan….that will make our soldiers even more stronger,
physically!”

Thanks to that final nail in the coffin, Flak
carefully arranged it so that all of Vaspan’s mutineers remained
behind in Pavelus, and were the only ones on guard duty the night
they would secretly depart the city. Now the one and only reason
why they did not immediately take over Pavelus itself was the fact
that few of his troops (especially Flak) had thoroughly been tested
for their loyalty to him.

So, after Vaspan and his army quietly left
Pavelus in the middle of the night, they began the march down the
coastline toward Mauritia.

Once the first formation had been called on
the beach, about a half-dozen miles south, where two hundred large
merchant ships awaited to take them all to their new city, Vaspan
immediately declared to his men, “I am no longer Prince Vaspan
Helenus. My new name and title is simply, ‘Emperor-Sedious Vaspan
the Magnificent!’ Now the first thing I need to know,
Ruling-General Flak, is how many soldiers we have….”

Out of the sixty thousand soldiers stationed
in Pavelus, it became tabulated that twenty-one thousand, one
hundred and twenty-two troops had come along on horseback and
supply wagons stuffed with money and valuable treasures. Only a few
had changed their minds at the last minute, but were immediately
killed before they could retreat back to Pavelus.

Several weeks later, Vaspan and his army
arrived via the ships near Mauritia’s borders, conquering it
without so much as a drop of blood spilt (as all thirty thousand
troops stationed in this inland city were already loyal to
Vaspan)!

After all, he had visited Mauritia quite
often these last eight years. While there, he richly blessed them
all with money and gifts, and whispered promises that he would make
a far better ruler. Once convinced, the Mauritians secretly began
to build hundreds of thousands of defensive traps, expertly
designed by Vaspan, whom had loved to build animal traps since he
was a little boy. These traps were a necessity because this city
had no solid walls or fortifications of any kind.

Upon their arrival, everyone—Vaspan, his
fifty-one thousand, one hundred and twenty-two troops, and even his
thirty thousand citizens—worked around the clock to set up all the
defensive traps for miles around the entire city, especially around
the river itself that passed perhaps a dozen miles from the city’s
borders. They all knew that Brishavus would retaliate as soon as he
heard the news.

Two days later, the very second the Sultan
had heard the report of the treason committed by his younger
brother, as well the desertion of one-third of his troops including
his second highest ranking general, he became furious! Immediately
he, along with seventy thousand sailors and soldiers—including five
thousand soldiers that had initially been stationed in Lasparus—set
sail for Pavelus.

En route back, the Sultan was relayed the
information that his younger brother had just stolen Mauritia,
which sent him into an unadulterated rage!

So, the day after having arrived at his
capital city, he squeezed ten thousand additional soldiers onto his
ships, which gave him a grand total of ninety thousand men. This
made the ride extremely uncomfortable for everyone but the Sultan
and his top generals.

Without delay or the proper planning, the
fleet sailed south around the continent for Mauritia. Not
surprisingly, because of the extremely low food and water supplies,
as well the very cramped and uncomfortable conditions, the morale
of the troops quickly began to get low…

Two weeks and one day later, the fleet
arrived at the base of the river. There, the troops dismounted, for
they would have to march the rest of the way to Mauritia—of course,
the Sultan was in the rear of the formation. Almost right away,
they began to run into Vaspan’s impressive array of traps!

Two days later, and without so much as a day
of actually battle, he had lost more than eleven thousand men,
thanks to the deadly traps installed by what Brishavus classified,
“My little brother’s $%#@ treasonous band of %@#$ mutinous
riff-raffs!” Every single night, Vaspan’s citizens secretly set up
even more traps all across the battlefield.

On the third day, a fierce battle erupted
like a volcano between the two enemy forces—by day’s end, more than
twenty-two thousand men had been slaughtered, and fifty thousand
wounded. More than two-thirds of those casualties came from the
Sultan’s side, whose death tolls tabulated to nearly fifteen
thousand.

At the end of the fourth day of combat, the
report was delivered to the Sultan that he had lost more than
twenty-five thousand additional men—ten thousand alone had died
from booby traps.

Brishavus now began to fear losing the battle
for the very first time. Due to this fear, he delivered the order
to his number one general to retreat with the remaining forces back
to their ships, and sail back to Pavelus, so that they could fight
again on another day…

So, for the next thirty years to come, there
always remained a stalemate between the two feuding brothers, even
though they shared three more vicious battles against each
other.

And during these years, Vaspan, who was far
more ambitious than his elder brother, had successfully tripled the
size of his lands—though most of this acquired land had been stolen
from the Kingdom of Thorium, which lay to the southeast of
Mauritia.

An equally great accomplishment for Vaspan
was the fact that he now had two fully operational and fortified
trade cities under his command.

His capital city currently bore a population
of a little over a one hundred thousand, consisting of people of
all classes—peasants, middle-class, rich, merchants, nobles,
guards, slaves, etc., etc. Most of the people were middle class and
up. His other city called Driven, which he had built from scratch,
now bore a population of fifty thousand people of all classes,
again, mostly middle class and up.