It is high time that I told you what had happened in the realm of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots, painful though it is to relate the story of the continued tribulations of this forsaken people. As Autumn drew to its windy close, Boris the son of John announced that he wished to wage a campaign against all of the other factions of the realm to settle once and for all the struggles for control of the palace. Now, it is the law in that country that such a campaign should not be waged within less than one lustrum of the previous such campaign, unless all agree. As it happened, the last campaign, in which Theresa the Stubborn had thrown away a commanding position for the faction of the Right Bastards and as a result had been compelled to rule with the assistance of a faction of crazed Northern Hibernians, had itself been fought within only two years of the campaign before that. And now a third within barely a single lustrum was proposed. What times are these? Be that as it may, the other factions could yet have refused to grant Boris the battle he sought. Quid plura? These people were blinded by the sin of pride and accepted Boris’ challenge. And so all took the field with their followers.

The chief rivals of Boris were Count Jeremiah Corbinus, about whom I have told you before, and Joanna of Swindon, whose stronghold lay in the land of the Britons of Strathclyde. The people of the kingdom were weary of these struggles, for most thought that this one too would bring only more indecision and misery. Those who were wise indeed looked back on the battle of Radnor, about which I told you, and other defeats of Boris, whose every plan had been thwarted by the great council of the realm. In this they saw no clear victory for either the Right Bastards or their enemies. Some who were wiser than most thought that the way to defeat Boris was through unity, and through an alliance of the followers of Jeremiah and Joanna so that both would lend their warriors to the other wherever the need was greatest. For indeed, if we study carefully the writings of Orosius what do we see brought success to the city and people of the Romans? Harmony! And what brought them low when once they had ruled the world? Disunity! Or possibly the Huns, depending on who you ask. But anyway, few were those who heeded the sage advice drawn from the fates of earlier rulers. Thus it was that dissension was sown, like the tares of Satan, throughout the enemies of Boris. The faction of Joanna, which, for complicated reasons, is called the faction of Open-Handed Mob-Rule, berated Corbinus for having defended the Western Empire in only a lukewarm fashion, while that of Jeremiah, which is known as the faction of the Laboratores, excoriated the northern wisewoman for having sided frequently with the Right Bastards in the past. The faction of Corbinus, having sat on the fence in the manner of the raven whence he drew his name, finally announced that it would call a second plebiscite on whether or not to rebel against the Western Empire, now that the facts were clearer, or so it thought. This was damned by the followers of Joanna who wanted simply to cancel the result of the past plebiscite on the subject which had called for the rebellion against the Western Empire in the first place. So it happened that the warriors of those factions spent as much time quarrelling with each other as they did in confronting the Right Bastards.

And what of Boris, son of John? Having called the great campaign, he conducted himself in a manner like only unto a buffoon. He refused to meet his opponents in an Ordeal of the Stools, or any other form of personal combat. Instead he issued forth only a stream of lies that anyone with the eyes to see or ears to hear could discern. Once again he pledged to increase the numbers of the Watch by twenty thousand, although his own faction had previously reduced their numbers by exactly that amount; he said that forty new hospices and almshouses staffed by fine alchemists and apothecaries were being built, although the true number was none at all, apart from six that were having their wattle partially renovated. The whole faction of the Right Bastards spewed lies in all directions in the manner of a great fountain of untruth. What was more, Boris avoided all questions from the chroniclers of the realm, to the point that at one stage he even hid in a device for keeping things cold. Above all he repeatedly said that he would, as he put it, ‘get the rebellion done’.

All this time, Count Nigellus the Fool watched from the sidelines. He had raised a mighty army of followers and charged any that wished to lead a band of these men into battle three hundred gold solidi for the privilege. All this money he salted away in his treasury and yet he remained beloved by those who followed him for in truth they were fools themselves. Now he did a deal with Boris and called off half of his warriors, yet without returning to them the coins that they had paid him in order to lead his men to the fray. This caused some dissension in the ranks of his followers.

So the day of the final battle came around with a great clamour. When the dust settled it became evident that, contrary to everyone’s expectations, no matter how wise, Boris and the Right Bastards had won a great victory such as their faction had not won in a generation and more. Woe to the defeated! Joanna of Swindon lost her stronghold to a faction of Pictish freedom-fighters. What was more, the mighty northern fortification, the murus ruber, the great refuge of the Laboratores, was breached in several places, largely because the Laboratores had allowed it to fall into disrepair. This was when that faction was commanded by their victorious Mayor of the Palace Antoninus the Slippery, whose own stronghold lay behind the murus ruber. This Antoninus had waged successful wars against a great monster known as Homo Basildoniensis and won victories across the region called Media Anglia and so thought he could forget the northern fortress. Later, he decided to launch a crusade in Mesopotamia in alliance with the North Aremoricans and went mad. And yet the fall of this wall was a mystery to all, for when its defenders were asked why they had let it be taken by the Right Bastards their answers showed that they had somehow been bewitched and that a great fog had descended upon their minds. The area of the murus ruber had been laid waste by the Right Bastards many, many years ago and the damage which that great harrying had done, had not properly been repaired either under Antoninus or his successor Gaudentius the One-Eyed. Such rashness. The fate of those people had gone from bad to worse in the nine years after Gaudentius’ narrow defeat by the Right Bastards, who then allied with the Open-Handed Mob-Rulers under their leader, Nicholaus the Horsefly. As a result of the government of the Right Bastards, after nine years, some of the people now lived only on the charitable distribution of food. The Right Bastards had cut back on all the fisc’s spending for the relief of the people and this had hit the people behind the murus ruber hardest of all. Yet, such was the fog or madness that descended upon them that they blamed their misfortunes upon people who had moved into the region from distant lands, although in truth these amounted to barely a few dozen, most of whom were trusted apothecaries and poultice-makers. Some declared that they had sided with the Right Bastards because they thought this was the best faction to bring change to the area and undo the damage done by the Right Bastards during their nine years in power. What blindness of mind!

This was repeated across the land. Wherever one looked, one beheld people who had been exposed as charlatans crushing opponents led by honest and hard-working men and women, and people whose lives had been ruined by the Right Bastards joining the fray in support of Boris son of John and decrying Jeremiah with many a mighty oath. Jeremiah might, it is true, have been a bit of a wazzock, as the rustics say, but he was at least an honest wazzock who had never knowingly hidden in a fridge. When the miserable and foolish campaign of Boris was considered, the explanation for his great but mysterious triumph could only be sought in the work of the Devil himself and an army of demons wreaking a great punishment on the kingdom of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots for its many crimes and iniquities. Things did not end there for, peccatis facientibus, the losers, having learned nothing, gnashed their teeth and set about each other with yet greater ire. May the Lord have mercy on these people and their poor kingdom.