The Groveller.

Another ten minute experiment. This time fantasy.



The Groveller.

My name? You wish to know my name.

Why, Sir, I cannot thank you enough for asking one as lowly as I, as pathetic and small, as wormlike, a mere nematean nothing squirming in the mud at your feet for something as utterly useless to your own magnificence as my name.

And I shall not be slow in giving it as I am sure your time is valuable, valuable as gold, and equally as precious and beautiful and shiny. My name, ugly in the mouth as it is, is Larahill the Groveller, once of the bounteous Kingdom of Varn where I was the son of the son of the son of the very man who started our noble profession. For it is noble. Though I am it's most lowly example, worth little more than attempting to grovel the excrement from the arse of a dog and...

You would know more? Why, I can scare believe that a man of such obvious and clear intelligence as yourself is unfamiliar with the lowly unimportant and only partially well-renumerated as it deserves to be job as that of a groveller is.

Or was.

But we shall come to that.

The position of groveller came to be in the wondrous, tree lined, mountain rimed, sun kissed and water dribbled upon Kingdom of Varn under the beneficent and munificent reign of King Harand the Changed of Ways. When my very own great, great, great Grandfather whose seed would far better have been spent being spilled on the ground or in a handkerchief than begetting the line of one as earth bound and miserable and malformed as I.

Talk less?

Well, what a wise course of action that is, Sir, for indeed I am one given to filling the air with the effluvium of my wo...

Yes. Less. I do understand the word. Though my understanding of words is often...ah, no. Put the blade away good sir. I shall indeed, speak less.

See, before King Harand changed his ways they were somewhat, unwise, some may say, in that he executed a policy of enjoying himself and taxing the populace to such a degree they became blinded to his magnificence and chose to revolt. In the last moments of that revolt my grandfather stood before the mob and grovelled. He grovelled as no man has before or since. Why, he very much invented the forms of abasement; begging, renting and crying, that have become the modern form of grovelling once so worthwhile to the wellbeing of Varn.

Was I good?

I was not my father good, no, not that good. For my father grovelled Agmin the Violent out of a death sentence and not once, not twice, not three times but four times before Agmin ran out of money and into a noose. But it must be said, Agmin truly enjoyed the life my father won him.

Though many others did not.

That is not to say I am without plaudits entirely, Sir. Why, I can see from your wondrous dress and sumptuous, subtly garish fabrics that you are of Iren and was it not I, Larahill who won General Vordice a reprieve after his disastrous defence of the Eastern Isles which are now in the hands of your most glorious and I have heard exotic and curvaceous and bountiful Empress? Although, I am first to admit, that your people may be a little cross at the fact that I freed him to counter attack I am sure that the ensuing destruction of our fleet and your subsequent annexing of our western territories go some way to making up for my actions which were carried out with the best of intentions and at almost Ruinous cost to the general whose estate never did pay up..

But I must not boast, that was only one of my many grovellings and am, was, one of many grovellers. Busily upholding the Varnish way of life which was of benefit to all Varnens.

Until the King, in his wisdom, banned grovelling.

Banned it!

After so many glorious years, after so much tradition.

So, good Sir, this is how you find me here, in this much reduced position and forced to stretch out my had, beg, cry, nay, grovel even, and ask you in all the best faith and knowing of your exalted and most high position.

Can you not provide one of your assassins at a little cheaper price?

As I'm sure you can tell. It's for the good of the kingdom.