Rainer Karga

Rainer Karga, known as Karga ("Crow"), is the commander of the rebellion's fighting forces in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. Before Kemp Corvus's company ever saw him, Baron Vermont said he had heard the mercenaries speak of a man called Karga to whom the military wing answered, and the prisoner Kleber said that this newcomer, whom he had never met, had won the strong loyalty of the soldiers. By hearsay he was bald, in his forties, with a crow worked on his armour.¹²³

When he came before the walls of Sarpyar, he proved a big man, bald and tattooed, with a white beard, plate armour with crow-headed pauldrons and a great two-handed sword. The dwarf Grom Kızılsakal recognised him as a man he had sold weapons to a month before, and said the attack on the countryside had been orderly and well commanded, under a crow banner.⁴⁵⁶

The siege of Sarpyar

Rainer promised that if the fortress surrendered without conditions, all within could leave with their lives and goods, and claimed that even if he took it by force he did not want to kill. Lord Verdun refused. Rainer then presented himself as a blacksmith's son and offered single combat: if he lost, he and his men would withdraw and his life would be in the victor's hands; if he won, he would spare his opponent. He said he would return alone at noon, admitting that he could be killed by assassination or magic but claiming that no one in the empire was his equal in single combat.⁷⁸⁹

The defenders argued that he wanted legitimacy and that answering his challenge played into his hands, but the war priest Rorek held that his oath bound him to answer. Victory for Rainer would not have obliged the fortress to surrender.¹⁰¹¹

At noon he came back with a larger band, among them a respected crossbowman later known as Marcus Boldvar. When Kemp announced that the fight must be with ordinary arms and armour, Rainer replied that his opponent could come as he pleased; he took off his armour and bracer but kept his necklace, gave his own sword to the crossbowman and borrowed one from a soldier. To the priest he said he would rather have faced a soldier, but respected his robes to some degree and would spare him pain.¹²¹³¹⁴

A blow of the priest's hammer, flashing and booming, shattered the borrowed sword, and Rainer took another. For about a minute they fought with weapons, fists, knees and elbows; the onlookers saw the priest tire while Rainer's breathing never changed, as though he were holding back. When the priest broke one of his teeth, Rainer pressed in, knocked him down again and again and left him senseless, but did not kill him. He offered to fight anyone else. Kemp refused to surrender, saying they were now at war, and Rainer left after promising that he would not kill those who surrendered in battle.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

During the siege Marcus warned Ephorus of a murder plot hatched in Rainer's camp, of which he said Rainer had known nothing; when it was foiled, Marcus brought Rainer's thanks. The cavalry that relieved the fortress reported three victories over the rebels, but Rainer had escaped them.^18192021

Commander of the rising

Reports from the countryside told of his smaller forces facing more numerous, more seasoned legions: once he attacked a legion on high ground, once he fought at a forest's edge with a reserve in the woods and support behind, and after each defeat he drew back in good order. The company came to think that his soldiers' loyalty, which outlasted defeat, did not come from strength alone.²²²³²⁴

According to Galriff, head of the city guard of Tal'gard, Rainer had roamed the region for a year, beating the court duellists of important families, who hid their defeats so that his name was little heard. With taxes undiminished through a famine, people had suffered; Rainer won them over by leaving alone those who did not stand against him, keeping his word, distributing food, and, eight months before, robbing a tax wagon and sharing it out. Young men who joined him came back as trained soldiers, and the captain judged that shield walls and orderly retreats were no common mercenary's work. A tavern keeper said Rainer had come and gone for about two years.^25262728

Lord Olgar, of a house that had backed the rising, said Rainer had first joined with a small band of mercenaries who asked no pay, and rose to command its security through calm counsel and accurate information; the soldiers and officers given to him soon became loyal to him in person, and efforts to curb his influence failed. Rainer let officers who would not fight the legion leave, calling them cowards. Olgar knew him as a former soldier who had become known in the region about five years before, hired to fight in duels; his skill had won him a place in knightly tournaments and the title of a knight on foot, which he never used.²⁹³⁰³¹

In Tal'gard

Rainer slipped into Tal'gard dressed as a refugee a few hours before Kemp's company arrived, and the city guard searched for him in vain. Ephorus, brought in a sack to a hiding place, found there a wounded young officer, Lamberd; Rainer came in, told Lamberd he could not take him along until he healed, and stayed to talk.³²³³³⁴

He said he cared for his men, and that in a revolution death was each man's own choice. He rejected any bargain or parley: they did not seek nobility or merely lower taxes; the gods, not men, should decide who lived and died; he had never killed anyone who surrendered and was no man's master. Even if they could not bring down the empire at once, they could make it bleed. He pointed to Neptune as a place outside the empire, and said that in his band dark skin or pointed ears were no matter. He asked Ephorus to keep Lamberd's hiding place secret, threatening him with a cruel death if he betrayed it, and, hinting that he had come to the city for another purpose, mockingly suggested that the prisons holding tax dodgers and deserters be checked. He had Ephorus released unharmed.^{3536373839404142}

The next morning the guard reported three prisoners escaped, a tax dodger, a thief and a deserter, and that Rainer had passed through a district gate in the night with some twenty men while the five guards there did nothing. In the following week sympathy for him grew in the poor quarters and hatred among the rich; attacks far apart were all laid at his door, though not all of them could have been his.⁴³⁴⁴⁴⁵

When the company offered him a duel with an imperial champion, Rainer told Ephorus he would come, on condition that whatever the outcome his men in the city could leave, since he would not endanger the wounded. He thought he had a chance in the duel, but expected that after defying the empire twice he would be killed by other means; though he could flee, he wanted it seen that he did not. Asked about his past, he denied being a former legionary: he had fought in the east as heavy infantry and commanded an outpost, and what he saw there changed his thinking. Wars, he said, are won by the soldiers who sweat and die, not by the emperor; no one should bow to another, and he hoped that one day a commander would let a young soldier who ran home to his family go rather than kill him.^46474849

Spoiler: The duelRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #23; Sürgün Günlükleri #24; Sürgün Günlükleri #31.5 · Say what you have read

To lessen the risk, the company had a poison mixed into the oil that would coat the champion's sword. On the day of the duel the square was packed. Sir Vulcar took his place and Rainer came alone. Both fought at full strength in a duel to the death; Rainer's blade slipped as he went for a gap in Vulcar's armour, and the champion's answering stroke opened a cut. About twenty seconds later Rainer began to slow as the poison took hold, and Vulcar gained the upper hand, wounded him in the belly and brought him down. Rainer raised a hand, said something only Vulcar heard, and after a last movement of the sword lay in his blood: Rainer called Karga breathed his last in the city square amid applause and laughter.^5051525354

By the prince's decree his body was cut apart: his head was hung at the entrance of Tal'gard and his arms and legs in other cities, with signs as a warning, and left to rot. Ephorus thought of destroying the head with a burning arrow to end the display, but did not, since defying the decree could have been taken as rebellion. After his death the rising ebbed away in waves; the few who had fought the legion and the most zealous fled east. Marcus, rallying the last of them against a hobgoblin host, cried that their commanders were waiting in hell.^55565758

Long afterwards, a mercenary named Esbert sought out Kemp, saying he was tracking the man who had killed a dear old comrade and wanted to know whether it was a stab in the back or a fair fight. The comrade was Rainer. Esbert told how Rainer had once refused his commander's order to throw the hired soldiers forward against a death mage's skeletons, and had fought alongside them; how he had persuaded some ten men to stay and hold a village so that its sick and its children could flee, and only three of them, Rainer among them, survived. He could not square that man with the later tales of burned villages. Kemp admitted that in the duel Rainer's opponent had been given help he did not know of, and said he thought Rainer had been beaten by the empire; they wondered whether he had been no fool or madman but a puppet used by greater hands through his hatred of the empire. Esbert said there was no ill feeling left between them, and asked that his friendship with Rainer be kept quiet.^{59606162636465}

Open questions

Who paid for the rising remained unclear. Olgar said he knew of no financial dealings with the elven separatists, which would be high treason, and the company concluded that Rainer had money of his own. Later a governor asked about rumours of elven money behind the rebellion; Kemp said there were clues, but their meaning was not certain.⁶⁶⁵⁰⁶⁷