Excerpts from "A History of Calradia" by Simon Schama

[Pellagus]

Feel free to add your own excerpts.

With the so-called Dark Knights vanquished, life in Calradia returned pretty much to normal. That is to say, the fragile peace that the invasion had forged didn't last very long. The first signs of trouble began in the south. Asugan castle, the last stronghold of the Dark Knights, retained a small garrison of Nord soldiers. The Great Khan, assuming that the castle would be returned to him, arrived one spring morning with 300 mounted troops and announced he was grateful that the Nords had looked after his castle for him and would be happy to assume control once more.
The Nords, more specifically High Jarl Ragnar, disagreed. Despite the fact that Asugan castle lay deep in Khergit territory, and despite the fact it couldn't be any farther from Sargoth, Ragnar ordered his men to hold the castle, making the point by sending Vigfus and his army to hold Asugan and Jarl Aedin to Malayurg. His intention was made clear and the Nords and the Khergits were at war again.
To make matters worse for the Khergits, in the east, the Vaegirs were intent on moving their boundaries south and invaded Sungetche. The Vaegirs hadn't done very well during the Dark Knight conflict; the Nords had used the war as an excuse for a land grab and had taken Reyvadin and Rivacheg, pushing the Vaegirs back to the snow line. Prince Yaroglek was no fool; he knew the Nords were too strong at this time, so like Sanjar Khan, he looked for something he could easily retake, he helped himself to Tilbaut Castle which had been taken by the Rhodoks. The Rhodoks by now were rather unhappy with the Vaegirs, the Khergits and the Nords, and declared war on the lot of them.
The Rhodoks had suffered heavily during the war with the Dark Knights and this would work against them. They tried to re-take Yalen, which Ragnar had 'aquired' with the help of Pellagus early in the Dark Knight conflict under the auspices of keeping it as a 'lure' to pull the Dark Knights into the Yalen Valley, which Pellagus all but controlled by this point. As it turned out, the Dark Knights attacked the south east instead, leaving Ragnar in posession of a lot of choice real-estate.
And what of the Swadians? Well, they had kept themselves well-armed and well-defended throughout the conflict and Queen Katilus used this to her advantage in the aftermath, attacking the Rhodoks, the Khergs and the Vaegirs simultaneously, spreading south and east.
So this is how it was, 75 days after the Dark Knights were destroyed, Calradia was doing what it did best, of course, tearing itself apart. But within a month all that was about to change.

Pellagus, the brave champion of the Nords, was hugely popular with the common Calradians. He alone had defeated the Dark Knights at their last stronghold. He had, halfway through the final siege of Asugan Castle, taken on a Dark Knight army on the Khergit plains, before returning and regrouping to take the castle. Pellagus was a loyal Nord, but he was growing increasingly unhappy with his lot.
Things came to a head exactly 100 days after that final, fateful battle. Pellagus had been steadily taking land from the Rhodoks, pushing slowly south until he reached Ibdeles. He had fully intended to stop there, disband his armies and live off the income of his castles and villages. Perhaps it would have been this way, had not fate stepped into the fray. While Pellagus was at Culmarr, his own castle, the Rhodoks arrived at Ibdeles and slaughtered the tiny garrison that Ragnar had granted. Enraged at the Rhodoks and sickened at the casual way Ragnar treated his men, Pellagus took his army south once more, re-taking Ibdeles and pushing on to Jelkala, the capital of Rhodokia. With the sun behind him, Pellagus attacked the city.
By accounts of the time, it was an awesome sight. Pellagus brought with him over a hundred Arbalestiers, whose bolts smashed through the shields and armour of the men tasked with defending the walls. Within the hour, Pellagus was on the walls, leading the charge and swinging his war axe into the defending lines. He must have been a terrifying sight to the Rhodok spearmen facing him. He and his companions had taken the armour of the vanquished Dark Knights as their own. This armour was incredibly strong and light and meant that Pellagus could lead from the front. A contingent of Huskarls and Cavaliers backed him up, carving into the lines of Rhodoks and pushing them back to the keep. By the end of the day, Jelkala was defeated. High Councilman Graveth fled, leaving his Lords to their fate. Pellagus let them go. He was not interested in imprisoning them. He was, however, very interested in keeping Jelkala for himself and sent a messenger to Sargoth asking Ragnar to grant him the city.

At this time, Jelkala was a lavish city. It's wealth came from the wines grown in the southern Yalen valley and it exported across Calradia. It's fat, bejewelled merchants nervously welcomed their new masters with a banquet in Pellagus honour. The celebrations did not last long however. Ragnar had decided not to grant Pellagus the city, instead giving the title to one of his nephews. To Ragnar this must have made sense; Pellagus already owned three castles, more than any of his other Jarls. He could not expect to be granted a city as well? Sure, he was a great and noble soldier, widely regarded for his exploits, but he was no better than any other Jarl.

Pellagus disagreed. Nobody had fought longer and harder for the Nords than he had. While other Jarls hid in their strongholds, Pellagus had defended all of Calradia against invasion, taking allies wherever he could. His diplomacy had helped forge the truce which eventually united all Calradia against the dark knights and this was how he was to be repaid?
He took a very bold and very dangerous step. Word went back to Ragnar that Pellagus would not relinquish Jelkala. In fact, he would make it his capital city. He reinforced his troops at Culmarr, Ergellon, Etrosq and Ibdeles castle, and built defences around their villages. Then he sat back and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. The Rhodoks tried to take Ibdeles castle, but were pushed back. Graveth attacked Pellagus in the field. Pellagus, though surprised, managed to defeat Graveth and sent him packing to Maras Castle to lick his wounds.Pellagus, ever the diplomat, followed Graveth there and brokered a peace, offering to help Graveth fight the Khergits. Secretly, however, Pellagus had already made peace with the Khan. But Graveth didn't have to know that, did he?

Back in his hall at Jelkala, Pellagus hired advisers to help run his new kingdom. He began work on a university and used his army to lay waste to the bandits that plagued the valley, making Jelkala even more prosperous. All the while he kept an eye on the north. Yalen still belonged to the Nords, but not that you would know. No Jarl would risk a sortie into the Yalen valley to relieve it's troops. Pellagus, now a king, albeit a reluctant one, set his sights on conquest once more, and set about taking the town.

 

[The Mercenary]

Chapter 5

While Pellagus was wildly waving his axe during the First Calradian-Geroian War, the leader of D'aerthe, a small mercenary band that operated from the shadows, was watching the Dark Knights and the Geroian war prowess. She, the Lady Caitlyn Duskryn, was a skilled mercenary who had traveled far, gathering a small band of the best swordsmen and archers in the lands, but whose past was completely unknown; it was even unknown whether she was indeed a noble. She had variously worked for the Swadians, the Vaegirs, and the Nords, but few in Calradia knew of her company and their forces. All that was known of her was that she owned the small village of Ismirala, having taken it from the Vaegirs in a cunning twist of diplomacy, and that her forces all but owned the cities of Praven, Tihr, and Narra, and the castles of Almerra and Ismirala. While they left the governing of the cities to the governments of those cities, the people's hearts truly belonged to the mercenary.

Around the time that she had finally claimed the people of Praven, a mysterious force exploded into the southwest and rapidly expanded, causing most of the powers to suffer, and marking the start of the First Calradian-Geroian War. Lady Duskryn never took a stand against the Dark Knights - she practically disappeared during this period, although small patrols or bands of roving Dark Knights were often found dead near Ismirala and the Holy Swadian Empire. The mysterious deaths warned the Dark Knights away from Swadia, which contributed to the relatively small amount of destruction in the area. Reports came of castle after castle falling to the Geroian invasion, worrying the Lady Duskryn. Finally, she took a stand, when the town of Tihr came under siege. A large force of 300 battle-hardened mercenaries, almost 75% of the full might of D'aerthe, reinforced the town of Tihr, with Lady Duskryn and her second-in-command, Commander Alyssa, at the head. There, alongside the Jarl Aedin, the momentum of the Geroian assault was reversed.

Fewer than a score of mercenaries left the city alive. That number did not include the Lady Duskryn, who was killed by an unknown Geroian soldier, after defeating Lady Larktin in single combat. A stray shaft from a ranger caught her straight between the breasts, and split her heart. With her demise, the remaining estimated one hundred and twelve mercenaries of D'aerthe retrieved her corpse and vanished again. Rumors indicated that her daughter took over the governorship of Ismirala, took command of D'aerthe, and rebuilt its power. It is certain that a second Lady Duskryn would later be found in the service of Queen Katilus, King Pellagus, and the High Prince Yaroglek, variously, before finally joining Pellagus in his conquests. She never swore loyalty, and vanished five years later, with the rest of Bregan D'aerthe, in 1262. She later resurfaced from time to time, often aiding in the destruction of a castle, before vanishing again.

Curiously, neither the Lady Caitlyn Duskryn nor the Lady Alyssa Duskryn ever sought to rule a country. It is certain that the excellently trained mercenaries at their disposal could have taken multiple cities and castles, and held them, and by all accounts the two Lady Duskryns were brilliant warriors. However, neither ever sought a position other than that of commander of a mercenary band, fighting for rulers in exchange for gold and precious goods.

More details on the life of Lady Alyssa Duskryn, the heir of Lady Caitlyn Duskryn, may be found in chapter 16.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

...a loose confederacy of tribesmen led by Sanjar Khan. ‘Politics’ is perhaps too strong a word to describe the internecine squabbling of the various Calradian factions at this time, and the continent more closely resembled, according to one contemporary commentator , “a large Ponde, filled with Various Fishes, which when Stirred Up,  does offer  such Thrashing and Biteing, Seizeing and Nipping, as is Fearfulle to Behold”.

The influx of mercenaries, travellers and vagabonds to Calradia in the latter half of 1256 did little to pour oil on these troubled waters. Traditionally, the usual causes of migration – famine, war, poverty in neighbouring lands – have been cited to explain the sudden appearance of what was effectively a new social class – that of the mercenary warlord and his followers.  However, recent research indicates that it may have been the state of perma-war, combined with the inevitable social frictions at the constantly shifting boundaries  of the five main statelets which generated a new class that was willing to strike out and make it on their own.

These warlords were of all social classes and inclinations. Some traded, some were actively employed keeping the roving bands of bandits in check, and some even brokered peace deals between nations. Some, such as Pellagus, offered their swords in vassalage, contributing to an unprecedented passage of Nordic dominance. Others, like the Duskryns, mother and child, and the notorious Bolo Vaegirborn [his surname adopted as a flag of convenience to insinuate himself with Prince Yaroglek, who would never have admitted this haystack-born Khergit peasant to his court], conquering and holding several cities for a number of years. The majority, however, were men and women who led small forces of fifty to one hundred troops. These were self-regulating bands of nomads and outlaws, roaming the land and doing good or ill as they saw fit. They fed on the periphery of every conflict, seeking advantage where they could. One of these men was Baheshtur, now called  the Brave.

The tales of Baheshtur the Brave are known to every schoolchild, but his early life is wreathed in obscurity. That Baheshtur was a real person is not in doubt, but the extent to which his life story was embellished, not least by himself, is open to interpretation.  He was born in the uplands above Tulga in an area not strictly within Calradia, but which gradually came within the influence of the Great Khan as Baheshtur grew to manhood. It was a harsh and unforgiving region, defined by its meagre resources.  Feuds often developed between neighbouring clans in the form of territorial disputes, and it was against this backdrop that Baheshtur’s story began. It is said that the daughter of the headman of the Humyan was extraordinarily beautiful, and that Baheshtur had won her heart by excelling at a local exhibition of horse archery. As the Humyan and Baheshtur’s own tribe, the Sapyan, had been feuding for generations, it was felt that this match might persuade the clans to set aside their differences and ally against the increasing influence from Tulga.

However, there seems to have been some confusion over the size of his bride-to-be’s dowry, which quickly spiralled into violence and recriminations. The wedding never took place, and on the appointed day, Baheshtur buried both his older brothers instead. This was ill-received by Sanjar Khan, who, it was rumoured, had engineered the entire situation as part of his continuing efforts to stamp out feuding and unite the tribes. His envoys forbade further violence, on pain of dire punishment. Baheshtur, never a pragmatic man, lay in wait one dark night, killed one last unfortunate Humyan, and fled.


It is not until a number of years later that we meet Baheshtur again. There has been much speculation that he spent that time as a relatively anonymous hired hand in another mercenary company, with many famous commanders of the time named as leader. What is certain is that he resurfaced in 1260 with his own band of warriors, and in the years before his death in 1270, set about building his own myth, as he rose to prominence in southern Calradia.

Baheshtur the Brave is most commonly associated with the area north of Ichamur , which in those days was heavily forested. Recent archaeological evidence seems to point to a prolonged stay at Sungetche Castle, but as that site is only now being excavated, it is too early to say. He used this wooded area to launch forays against the Steppe Raiders and Mercenary Bands that roamed the steppes at that time, protecting the villagers and sharing his plunder with the people. Many village records of the time, such as they are, detail increased trade revenues, livestock increases and even village improvements carried out by the Protector, or the Brave One, neither of which titles was ascribed to Sanjar Khan in his lifetime. Thus the legend of Baheshtur the Brave grew.

One would have thought that this outlaw operating on the boundaries of his nation would have posed a threat to the Great Khan himself. At first, this was not the case. Although there was still a price on Baheshtur’s head, Sanjar Khan was happy to turn a blind eye to his presence as long as it suited him. And suit him it did. On the one hand, Baheshtur operated almost exclusively along the disputed northern border with the Vaegirs. Here, he served as a major deterrent for any forays south by the Vaegirs (a remaining scrap of parchment from High Prince Yaroglek’s letters states, “that Damn-ed  Basher [sic] keeps me an Honest Manne”). Furthermore, his mostly law-abiding band of men also protected the Khergit villagers from marauding bands of outlaws, and calmed unrest while the Khans were away prosecuting their many wars. It is also thought that part of the informal treaty between Baheshtur and Sanjar Khan stipulated that Baheshtur could not under any circumstances revisit his homeland, which had been calmed and almost brought within Sanjar’s control.

This happy state of affairs continued for many years. There is no need to repeat the many escapades and adventures that have now passed into legend – the story of Baheshtur and the Swadian Princess, the story of Baheshtur and High Councilman Graveth’s Hat, the story of Bahestur refusing the Sargoth Toll – but it is worth revisiting the unhappy end to his career.

It seems Baheshtur, though possessed of many wives, had never forgotten that sweet girl of the Humyan, who pledged her heart to him so many years before. The winter of 1269-70 had been harsh, with many of his cattle dying and some of his key henchmen retiring from the life that had served them so well over the last many years. His melancholy was increased by news that his father, his last surviving kin, did not have long to live. In the spring of 1270, as the snow melted on the High Steppe, Baheshtur made a fateful decision. He would revisit his homeland, see his father one last time, and if she had not married, he would take his childhood sweetheart as a wife.

One fine day, Baheshtur and his wagon train, laden with gold and valuables, rugs and spices, made its way out of Peshmi  and headed due east towards the Meera Pass, beyond which were the highlands of the Humyan and Sapyan. He carried gifts for both tribes, and was accompanied by a small number of true men and women, his stalwart followers from the years before. Viewing the group from our present vantage point, and through the long lens of history, we can see the simple baggage train as the funeral  procession it was, but there was nothing in that beautiful spring morning to alert Baheshtur of the perils ahead.

Or was there? Surely he would have been aware of the Great Khan’s political machinations, which seemed to court the Humyan at the expense of the Sapyan? Had he seen that the Khergit Khanate had lately evolved into a coherent nation, rather than a loose rabble of tribes and chieftains? Had he noticed the corresponding increase in military strength, as a settled nation of contented villages were able to levy more and more conscripts for the Khan’s armies? Had he ever thought that a nation which had stable standing armies is one which was less reliant on anachronistic independent bands such as his own?

Perhaps not.  The baggage train passed Asugan Castle, which was uncharacteristically quiet, and made its way up the Meera Pass. Unknown to Baheshtur, two battalions of crack Khergit troops were dispatched from  Asugan within hours of his passing, and slowly wound their way up into the mountains. As his party reached a point on the trail now known as Baheshtur’s Fall, which combined a tight switchback on one side with a precipitate drop of two hundred feet on the other, a band of Humyan which had been waiting further up the trail initiated a large rockslide which swept Baheshtur and all his party to their deaths. They then joined with the following Khergit army and led them to the valley of the smaller Sapyan tribe, whom they eradicated without trace. From that day on, the Humyan became the most loyal of tribes of the Khanate, and were incorporated into the Khergit nation with great fanfare and weeks of celebration in Tulga. The utter destruction of the Sapyan meant that few stayed away from the celebrations, as Sanjar Khan cemented his power and prepared for a Khergit offensive against the Calradian Nations which would change the course of history...

 

[The Mercenary]

Oh, I'm sure some of this stuff might make it in game as background details. I'm sure this might even get a sticky if it continues to grow. Anyway. I believe I'm about to explain the history of each of the five kingdoms.



Prelude: Genesis

Calradia is a small area on a large continent, yet it is the birthplace of four distinct cultures. To understand the motivations of the cultures, it is necessary first to understand their histories, which shaped them into the peoples they are today.

Part One: The Swadians

The Holy Swadian Empire is the dominant power in Calradia. Strategically located along vast plains and rolling slopes, with rich sources of gold and silver in their mountains, plenty of iron and coal for good steel, huge forests for lumber, and irrigation ditches to grow food, the Swadians were excellently positioned for prosperity. Unfortunately for the Swadians, they are located in the center of Calradia, an extremely volatile position to occupy. To the East, the Vaegir Principality looms threateningly, while the Nords continue pressing South, the Khergits raid North, and the republican Rhodok Council continues to defy Swadia. However, in spite of this, Swadia has built a rich culture that does not center around war. Their warriors are highly skilled with the lance and sword, but they maintain a small regiment of special forces, who raid with their longbows and longswords.

The ancestors of the Swadians first arose in the Senuzgada Forest. They were a civilized society centered around hunting and gathering, and were among the first assimilated into the First Calradic Empire (also known as the Great Calradian Empire). The Swadians, here, began farming, and became renowned as the finest horsemen in the Calradic Empire. Armoured in simple bronze plate armour and carrying bronze-tipped spears, they became the shock troopers and the knights of the Calradic Empire. However, in the year 977, the Calradic Empire dissolved under pressures of internal rebellion, the nomadic Khergit tribes of the south, famine, and attacking Nord warriors. The Swadian knights defended the Kingdom loyally, but were ultimately defeated as the Emperor's own Praetorian Guardsmen turned on him, executing him in the capital of Suno. With the dissolution, the Swadians were hard-pressed, as the Imperial Army turned upon itself. Finally, the Swadian Knights restored order, led by the prestigious warrior Elsin Harlaus. He, a commander of the Imperial Army, and the general of the Swadian Knights, established the Holy Swadian Empire, and a church to aid the common people and give hope. The Swadians have since quested to reunify the Empire, believing that it marked the Golden Age of Calradia. King Elsin Harlaus was killed in action against the Vaegir people, and his descendants have mostly fallen in combat to attempt to reunify Calradia. The current monarch, Queen Katilus Harlaus of Praven, the daughter of King Wroth Harlaus, has continued the long quest, which has spanned three hundred years...


Part Two: The Vaegirs

The Vaegirs have never been a fortunate people. They occupy the East of Calradia, a harsh and unforgiving tundra. Under the rule of their Princes, the Vaegirs have become a very prosperous people, however. Their resources are mostly in high-quality iron and lumber, which they use to trade for other necessary supplies. Their warriors are highly skilled with the bow and sword, using their bows to hunt the animals roaming the tundra. The Vaegirs have also discovered a way to carve ivory and yew together to form the highest quality bows in Calradia. With these skills, the hardy Vaegir people have maintained their survival.

The barbarian tribes known as the Lelnist first roamed the Vaegir tundra. They lived a bleak existence, but became highly capable with their bone and rock weaponry, to the point that they were able to resist the Imperial Army and its bronze armor and weaponry. The Lelnist first encountered the Imperial Army in the year 732, when the Emperor Calnon sent it to scout the eastern reaches. The Lelnist repulsed these advances, and the furious Emperor sent a huge army into the Vaegir tundra. However, the great strength of the Imperial Army, the Swadian Lancers, were ill-suited for a campaign in winter in knee-high snow, and they were forced to turn back. The infantry of the Imperial Army continued forward, taking heavy casualties, and building forts along the way. Finally, in late spring of 733, the Imperial Army received reinforcements, and suppressed the native Lelnist. The Lelnist became known as the Vaegirs, and forged treaties with the Calradic Empire, finally assimilating and becoming the elite archer groups of the Empire. Indeed, some of the Vaegir warriors became the Emperor's own trusted guard, the Praetorian Guards. However, with the massive amounts of unrest arising in the year 977, the elite warriors of the Praetorian Guard turned against the Empire, and assassinated the Emperor Nerigula and his entire family. The Vaegirs then warred with the Nords, Rhodoks, and Swadians of the army, until finally they were forced to retreat under the Praetorian General Imers Ive Yaroglek. Returning to their native tundra, the Vaegirs have always remained bitter at the Swadians for forcing them out of the paradisaical lands of central Calradia, and refuse all advances to unify once more with the Swadian people. The Vaegirs, however, have formed close cultural ties to both the Khergits and the Nords...

Part Three: The Khergits

The Khergits are a mysterious group. They arose near the end of the Calradic Empire, and indeed, were partially responsible for its fall. They occupy a dusty, hot, dry land to the south, and are the greatest horse archers known in Calradia. They have few resources apart from gold, which is indeed less valuable than water in the barren steppes. However, they have the finest horses in Calradia, and are masters of crafting recurved bows.

Little is known of the Khergits before the year 950. It is believed that they merely lived as nomadic tribes, warring with each other over supplies. However, in the year 950, the core Khergit tribes of the Ta'i'chi'ud, the Oshki'ud, the Kere'yiud, and the Int'eewud were united under a single ruler, a Khan. This man, Charka Khan, continued expanding and absorbing other tribes, building the beautiful cities of Tulga and Narra. He also built forts to resist the incursions of the Imperial Army, and in 975, dealt the 2nd division of the Imperial Army, composed of Swadian Knights, Vaegir auxiliaries, and Rhodok and Nord Legionaries, a crushing defeat, killing them all and destroying 25% of the Imperial Army. Two years later, the crippled Imperial Army was stretched thin, and was ultimately dissolved as the Empire fell. Since that time, the Khergits have lived much as they have before, patrolling the steppes and defending their borders, though they are no longer a nomadic people. They have forged close ties with the Vaegirs, although they do occasionally war with the Vaegirs...

Part Four: The Nords

The Nords were first seen in the icy lands to the North of Calradia. They crossed the sea, and are the only major political faction in Calradia that are not native to Calradia. The lands they occupy are rich with timber and farmland, but have little in the ways of metals. However, their proximity to the sea means that the Nords have never run low on food, easily just fishing for their supplies. They trade with the Vaegirs and Swadians for necessary supplies.

The Nords first settled Calradia in 817. They were excellent seafarers and the Calradian Empire eagerly embraced them. However, this was not the first time they had landed in Calradia. The Nords had raided Calradian lands for centuries before, and they had even invaded. One Jarl was convinced that the Calradic Empire had promised him all of Calradia, and when he arrived to claim it, was infuriated to learn that they had only promised him a strip of land along the coast. He marched and assaulted the Vaegir tundra; he was slain with most of his men and his flag was tossed into the sea. This was only one incident in a long line of incidents between Calradians and Nords. However, in 817, the first 600 Nords settled Calradia. They became known as excellent warriors, and were assimilated as part of the Legionaries of the Imperial Army. The Nords rebelled with the Vaegirs and Rhodoks in the year 977, the Year of Betrayals, and tore the empire apart. Though driven back by the loyal Swadian Knights, Legionaries, and Auxiliaries, the Nords continue to expand, receiving more and more reinforcements from home every year...

Part Five: The Rhodoks

The Rhodoks are a republic that occupy Southwest Calradia. They are a farm-based economy, supplemented with good iron and some lumber. Their people are primarily skilled with the pike, spear, halberd, and crossbow.

The Rhodoks were the second culture assimilated into the Calradic Empire. They became the siege engineers and foot soldiers of the Imperial Army, serving as Legionaries. The Rhodoks were conscripted at the age of 16, served in the Army until they were 24, then could either retire with a parcel of land to farm, or continued service. The longer a Rhodok served, the more land he got for his service. This system went on for several centuries, with both parties content. However, the Rhodoks grew more and more discontent, as the Empire grew more tyrannical. Finally, in the year 977, things came to a head, when a massive drought coupled with a plague of locusts and disease resulted in the deaths of 97% of all crops in Calradia. The result was a mass famine. The Rhodoks revolted with the Vaegirs and Nords, fighting the elite of the Imperial Empire, and ultimately destroying the empire, but being repulsed. However, where the Vaegirs and Nords merely escaped, the Swadian Knights and elite legionaries continued into the Rhodok lands, ultimately capturing every fort and city. The Swadians then used the Rhodoks to supply their armies and conquests, until the Rhodoks finally rebelled in the year 1201. Led by a warrior named Grunwalder, they broke the Swadian charge and defeated the Fourth Swadian Army Division, establishing their freedom. Since, the Swadians have maintained distant relations with the Confederacy, trading, but often warring as well...


Part Six: The Mercenaries

...Calradia has ever been at war, and war breeds mercenaries. Each empire uses mercenaries to fill out its armies and to wage war on one another. Mercenary companies are not rare in Calradia, and some mercenary warriors have achieved great prominence, even joining the nobles of the kingdoms. Famous examples of mercenary companies include the Golden Company, a 1,475-man strong company comprised of 1,200 elite mercenaries, 200 sergeants, 50 Captains, 20 majors, and 5 commanders, and Bregan D'aerthe, a company commanded by the Lady Duskryns, who later stemmed the tide of the First Geroian Invasion. These misfits are found throughout Calradia, and have endured since the formation of the First Calradic Empire...


End Prelude.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

Ok, this is preposterous, but I can’t resist!
[nods to Adam Thorpe’s Ulverton, of which this is a cheap rip-off]

Required Reading: Prelude, Part 5: The Rhodoks.

Spoiler

Part Five: The Rhodoks

The Rhodoks are a republic that occupy Southeast Calradia. They are a farm-based economy, supplemented with good iron and some lumber. Their people are primarily skilled with the pike, spear, halberd, and crossbow.

The Rhodoks were the second culture assimilated into the Calradic Empire. They became the siege engineers and foot soldiers of the Imperial Army, serving as Legionaries. The Rhodoks were conscripted at the age of 16, served in the Army until they were 24, then could either retire with a parcel of land to farm, or continued service. The longer a Rhodok served, the more land he got for his service. This system went on for several centuries, with both parties content. However, the Rhodoks grew more and more discontent, as the Empire grew more tyrannical. Finally, in the year 977, things came to a head, when a massive drought coupled with a plague of locusts and disease resulted in the deaths of 97% of all crops in Calradia. The result was a mass famine. The Rhodoks revolted with the Vaegirs and Nords, fighting the elite of the Imperial Empire, and ultimately destroying the empire, but being repulsed. However, where the Vaegirs and Nords merely escaped, the Swadian Knights and elite legionaries continued into the Rhodok lands, ultimately capturing every fort and city. The Swadians then used the Rhodoks to supply their armies and conquests, until the Rhodoks finally rebelled in the year 1201. Led by a warrior named Grunwalder, they broke the Swadian charge and defeated the Fourth Swadian Army Division, establishing their freedom. Since, the Swadians have maintained distant relations with the Confederacy, trading, but often warring as well...

Diary of A Rhodok Smallholder

19 August, 975
Today I, Jeth Porter, receive my honourable discharge from the Imperial Army, having fulfilled  ten years service and gained the rank of Captain. Under the terms of our ancient treaty with the Swadian Empire, I have been granted a smallholding of twelve acres of land, with some chattels, in the vicinity of Buvran, my mother’s village. I go now to take up my rightful claim and by the grace of god, will prosper there.

15 September, 975
This day I signed the papers which transfer Lack Farm to my name. It is as pretty a holding as I could hope for. The land slopes gently from west to east, and is bordered by a brook from which I can water both animals and pasture. The house  is bright and airy, having windows in both rooms, and the barn will provide adequate shelter if, as I hope, I can increase my herd past the six cattle allotted me. There is much common ground in the village for the grazing of sheep and goats, if I can come by such animals. The south pasture is rocky, but I believe I can improve it.
As the notary applied his seal, he congratulated me on my luck. I paid him one denar and two pfennigs for this privilege. 

30 September, 975
There is much to do before winter. Buvran is a small village, and poor, and I have been able to hire two hands to help me with my work. Both men will receive a pfennig a day, and sleep in the barn.  I will work them hard. I attended church, and gave thanks for my good fortune.

2 October, 975
Made the acquaintance of Selvey Rivers today, who claims kinship through my mother. He gave advice on the starting of an allotment, of which I know little. Tomorrow I will choose suitable ground.  I must feed myself, as unrest in the region has made victuals exceedingly dear.

15 October, 975
Much disturbed today by news of bandits in the village. Ploughed the west pasture and prepared the ground for planting in the spring. I plan wheat and barley this coming year, and root vegetables the year after. The dung came from my own cattle, which prosper.  I have set my halberd inside the door.

25 October, 975
I have come by two dozen ewes, at a cost of half a denar each. The man selling could not make them pay, he said, and was happy to receive such a good price. I know livestock; they will profit me.

30 November, 975
I will use the stones from the south pasture to build a wall there, for I like not my neighbour. His animals  graze unrestricted on my land.

.....

2 March, 976
It has been a mild winter, and I hope to reap the benefits of my planning this last year. I have been blessed with ten lambs this spring, and next week will plant my crops. Today I made an arrangement with the ploughman. Old Selvey tells me I must take a wife.

5 April, 976
The Miller family were evicted from their holdings today; they had not paid their taxes. I feel sorry for them, these Swadians  tax us to our limits. The sheriff dumped many of their rags in the street. If I cut them fine, they may improve the soil in the small field.

7 April, 976
The Miller farm is up for sale. The family has departed, no one knows where.

20 April, 976
I find I need help with milking and chores, so I have hired a girl. She is a lumpen creature, but I dare not house her in the barn, as my men are not as godly as I. She will sleep in the kitchen.

25 April, 976
The planting is complete.  I visited the moneylender in Jelkala, and received favourable terms.  I bought up fifteen acres north of the village, and it should take a late planting of barley, which I can sell at market. I bought more cattle, seed and feed, and will extend the barn. Repayment is due in the autumn, by which time I hope to realise a fine profit on my investment.

26 April, 976
There is some resentment towards me in the village. It seems the Millers, whose farm I bought, have still some kin in this area, and they talk against me. But I have done no wrong. The girl I hired is a good worker, if a trifle bold. Sometimes she does not drop her eyes when addressing me, and I have to admonish her. I believe she finds me overly stern.

30 April, 976
The unrest in the area continues, with many of the youth of the village abroad at dusk. The factor’s office in Buvran was burned during the night. I see the signs of neglect in the fields, and fear many will not be well-provisioned come winter.

15 May, 976
Visited the Cooper family today. Their daughter is of marriageable age, and Lew Cooper would like to make a match. The family and I shared tea and the meeting went well. Miss Cooper is a respectable match, if a little low spirited. My crops do not do well. They seem stunted.

30 June, 976
God forgive me. I was woken in the night by a commotion in my yard, but when I looked out, it was quiet. If these rogues hope to intimidate me, they are mistaken.  I lit the lamps and spent some time oiling my crossbow. The girl was frightened by the noise, and required  comforting. I told her she was a foolish creature, but as we sat close, she grabbed my hand and pressed it to her breast. I knew not what I did thereafter, or rather I knew too well. Afterwards, I was seized with remorse and insisted we pray. The girl laughed, the wretch.

30 July, 976
The men now give me knowing looks, which I find unbearable. The girl is shameless, and gossip abounds in these parts. I have not been invited back to the Cooper house. My barley withers in Miller’s Field.  I have taken the girl to my bed often, this last month. One good thing – Lord Chell has increased his patrols and the unrest has died down. But because of this, taxes are up. It is hard to bear.

22 August, 976
The girl is with child!

30 September, 976
Disaster. The harvest has been poor, as I knew it must. This is retribution from the good lord. Others’ crops have failed as well, but my expertise should have produced a good yield. My loan is due, next month, and I will just be able to pay if I sell the cattle.  I may extend the loan a year, though the rates are punitive.
That is what I will do: sell some livestock and start again. I must hope that next year will be better.  I will pray the year 977 will be a good one.  By the grace of god, it will be.

 

[The Mercenary]

Note: PM me your character's lives and details and I'll add it to the list. Also, as of this post, no OT posts will allowed in this thread. That is to say, only background details and the respective chapters that they are from will be allowed. I will permit a new thread for what you think should be added next.

Appendix A: Calradian-Geroian War Warriors

Throughout history, Calradia has been shaped by the hand of those warriors willing to take a hand in its creation. In the First Calradian-Geroian War, it was shaped no less. The histories of some of these characters is listed in the following.

Lady Lyrin Larktin: - Born as the first child of King Torgin of Geroia, Lady Larktin was renowned as the finest warrior in Geroia. She was gifted the finest armour in Geroia and the finest weaponry and horse in Geroia. She spent most of her early childhood training, from the age of four. Thus it came to be that when she reached the age of 23, she was given the aid of Lord Kryntal Purin, Lord Harpol Tantius, Lord Byntrus Gracius, and Lord Pilnit Grife, and several hundred of the skilled Geroian elite warriors. They marched into Calradia, annihilating much of it, and capturing many castles and towns. Finally, they were turned back at the town of Tihr, where Lady Larktin was defeated in single combat for the first time by Lady Caitlyn Duskryn. The army was repulsed, and the momentum of their charge was broken at the Siege of Tihr, but not before Duskryn and her elite mercenary band were defeated. As Lady Larktin continued to attempt to conquest, the Jarl Pellagus smashed into her army, defeating it again and again. Finally, in 1258, Lady Larktin was defeated for the last time in the First Calradian-Geroian War, and returned to Geroia in defeat.

Lady Caitlyn Duskryn/Lady Alyssa Duskryn: The Duskryns no longer inhabit Calradia. However, the two with their mercenary company shaped much of the future of Calradia. Caitlyn Duskryn helped the Swadians seize much Vaegir territory, then turn around and seize it right back for the Vaegirs. She was personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, killing them personally. Her mercenary band would proceed to kill hundreds more, and the Lady Alyssa would continue her bloody legacy and kill thousands more, before the Lady Alyssa departed Calradia forever at the age of 24 with her lover the Lady Mintrin and the rest of her elite mercenaries. It is rumoured that the Lady Duskryn and her troops came into the service of the Geroians soon after. The Lady Caitlyn was born in a land far away to the west, and the Lady Alyssa was born in Praven. Caitlyn became a formidable warrior and traveled towards Calradia, but was impregnated by a man who was most likely King Torgin of Geroia. She proceeded into Calradia, building a formidable mercenary force, before she gave birth to her daughter in Praven. Her daughter Alyssa would later become her second-in-command, and eventually commander, of her mercenary force Bregan D'aerthe (literally D'aerthe's Blade, D'aerthe is believed to be the two ladies' real last names).

Their military campaigns as commanders of Bregan D'aerthe were the Winter War of 1253 (serving the Swadians), the August Revolution of 1254 (putting down the peasants), the Swadian-Vaegir War of 1254 (on behalf of the Swadians), the Internum (on behalf of the Vaegirs), the Battle of Jelbegi Point (aiding the Khergits), the Battle of Ismirala Pass (defending against Swadia), the 9-Day War (in service to Swadia), the Nord-Rhodok War of 1255 (protecting the Rhodoks), the January War of 1255 (attacking the Rhodoks for the Nords), the Siege of Almerra Castle (aiding Swadia), the Liberation of Almerra Castle (aiding the Rhodoks), the Retaking of Almerra Castle (aiding the Swadians), the Siege of Grunwalder Castle (aiding Swadia), the Liberation of Haringoth Castle (aiding Swadia), the Second Internum (aiding the Swadians), the Swadian Civil War (serving Queen Katilus loyally), the First Calradian-Geroian War (aiding the Calradians, CD was killed here), the Tihrian Revolution (aiding it), Pellagus' Invasion of Swadia (fighting Pellagus), Pellagus' Second Invasion of Swadia (aiding Pellagus), the Northwest War (aiding Pellagus), the Second Northwest War (aiding Pellagus), the Third Northwest War (aiding Pellagus), the Fourth Northwest War (fighting Pellagus), and the Fifth Northwest War (aiding Pellagus). This is in addition to the many, many assassinations that they personally performed. They never lost a war that they fought in.

All in all, it can be seen that Bregan D'aerthe served whoever paid the most, and had no loyalties to any of their employers. Lady Alyssa Duskryn once stated that she had killed exactly 5,282 people to Lord Haringoth the Younger, before killing him in the name of Jarl Pellagus.

Jarl Pellagus: He came originally from the small principality of Halvard, over the mountains far to the west of Rhodokia. Halvard was at that time little more than a keep on the east-west trade route,  surrounded by an accretion of taverns, warehouses and barns beyond which lay a few rude hamlets and farms. Pellagus was a minor noble in the court at Halvard and probably the first person to meet the force of the Dark Knights under the command of the warrior Lady Larktin.
Halvard is seen by scholars almost as a trial run by Larktin of her eventual and devastating assault on Calradia. The fields were trampled and razed, the farms and villages around Halvard were put to the flame, their names forever lost to history.
As the massive army rode unopposed towards Halvard Keep, Pellagus hastily assembled an army of guards, bowmen and ordinary folk. The battle was short and one-sided. Pellagus charged first but was quickly unseated from his horse and struck down (it is said by the Lady Larktin herself). When he awoke, he stumbled bruised and bloodied through a landscape of corpses to find Halvard destroyed. The invaders had left as quickly as they came, leaving only death and desolation. A wide track of hoof-prints led west.
Pellagus returned to the battlefield to retrieve his broken sword, took what money he could find and set off for the coast. Nine days later he arrived on a merchant ship at Tihr, to find Calradia in a state of war once more. Poison words, spread by agents of the Dark Knights had sown dissent between Jarl and Prince, Councilman and Queen, and Khan and all. Pellagus bought a horse and supplies and rode for Sargoth, to petition the High Jarl Ragnar with his story and attempt to bring consensus between the factions of Calradia, before the Dark Knights arrived.

Crusader Count Visilen Arowynd: The son of a Veagir warrior settled in the Holy Swadian town of Burglen and a Tavernkeep's daughter native to the area, Earl Arowynd's given name was Loracha, but took Arowynd after a noble knight in the Lancers of the Old Calradic Empire. Enamoured with the histories he learned during his pageship at Praven's court he began to dream of a new Empire, not a remake or a shame of the Old Empire, but a new Holy Swadian Empire forged with the blood of Calradian heretics on the foundation of God's power.This dream got it's first quenching of thirst during Arowynd's Squireship under the late Sir Delard Haringoth at the Battle for Tilbaut Castle on the Nordic/Veagir border. Protecting his Lord's flanking under a hail of ivory shafts, Arowynd whetted his blade on four heretics that day, but more importantly he was shown, by god's sweet Grace, the path to a reforged Empire. Blood. Only the death of every man who denied Swadian Overlordship and the Archbishop's dominion over all men souls could bring his dream to reality. The death of his mentor grew steel in the young Arowynd and gave him the resolve to steam ahead on his quest.

He was knighted by Sir Klargus, lord of Suno, and served under him in the campaign against the Rhodoks in the Spring of 1257. It was this long fight against the republic of pretenders that Arowynd received both his first serious wound and his first sight of the implacable Dark Knight horde, as the lay men called the steely eyed warriors of Geroia. At the fight at Culmarr Pass, the Geroians came as a relatively small force, for the invasion and subjugation of a place Calradia's size. They were, however, a flood unstoppable by the likes of the 17th Swadian Army Detachment. The first skirmishes made Arowynd realize the inferiority of his own company, so he harried the Geroians for two weeks, using his knights more like the sun worshipping Khergits than the heavy cavalry they were. This hit and run tactic cost Arowynd a fourth of his men, but was successful in slowing the Geroians long enough for Sir Klargus to escape, gaining the newly captured Grunwalder Castle for Arowynd.

After the near annihilation of the Rhodoks at the Dark Knight's hands, a force under Grife arrived on Arowynd's doorstep in late winter, 1258 to wrest control of Grunwalder from Arowynd. After six bloody attempts at the walls the castle was finally taken, with the Swadians fighting like hellcats to the man. Arowynd himself suffered a staggering number of wounds and nearly died of desanguination and the subsequent fever, but recovered, doomed to rot in Grife's dungeon at Grunwalder. However, he was released by Queen Katilus's nephew, the Younger Sir Haringoth, son of Arowynd's former mentor. The battle for one of the few pockets of Geroian resistance was fierce, but the young Haringoth felt he owed a debt to Arowynd for his service to the late Haringoth.

The day in late 1258 when the House of Arowynd was named Count of Grunwalder, in trust to the Throne of Praven, was the first step on the path to a new Swadian Empire, and one that cost the lives of hundreds of men, but was one celebrated by the Empire. That same day, he was knighted a Crusader by Queen Katilus of Praven.

The relationship between Count Arowynd and Lady Alyssa Duskryn:

Arowynd hated Duskryn passionately. He believed her to be a disloyal whore who was too good with her tactics and too good with her sword. He pushed for her execution several times, when she switched sides in a conflict to aid whoever had offered more money. Her atheistic beliefs also grated on his nerves. Eventually, he managed to convince Queen Katilus not to seek D'aerthe's aid anymore. This may have succeeded - Bregan D'aerthe's primary employer was the Holy Swadian Empire, which was the only kingdom with enough money to afford D'aerthe's services for more than 3 months.


Bolo Vaegirborn:  The name Bolo Vaegirborn is steeped in infamy, for popular legend has him as the man who summoned the Dark Knights to Calradia. He was the unwanted product of a liaison between a serving wench and a Praetorian Knight and was born in the stables behind  Jik’s Tavern in Halmar. His mother later became a procurer for Halmar’s houses of ill-repute, and Bolo grew up in the seedy underbelly of the criminal world. As a boy, he ran errands and completed his apprenticeship as a pickpocket, before graduating to the leadership of a successful gang of thieves and extortionists. In this he excelled, until at the age of 20, he was expelled from Halmar in a purge of the underworld carried out by the city guard under the auspices of Tulug Khan.
  This merely had the effect of widening Bolo’s horizons. He assembled a mercenary company, and eventually fetched up at the court of High Prince Yaroglek of Reyvadin. Here, he adopted his surname as a means of insinuating himself into Yaroglek’s good graces. He became a valued vassal, helped by his low cunning and ruthless politicking, while he made enemies of many of the Vaegir lords. Yaroglek encouraged him in this, as a divided gentry made his position more secure, even going so far as to making Bolo a present of an Ivory Bow, which had previously been the unique weapon of the Prince’s elite guard. Bolo was granted the fief of Rindyar Castle, which he had been instrumental in capturing from the Swadian Empire.
  It still was not enough. Bolo had had a taste of the good life, and wanted more. He renounced his oath to Yaroglek, but through some manipulation of that inveterate schemer, he was forced to give up his now heavily-garrisoned fief. To Bolo, it seemed that he was almost back where he started, a street boy from Halmar, and he was incandescent with rage. Again, he raised an army, and continued to prosecute war against the Swadians, taking the forts of Vyincourt and Derchios, and advancing on Dhirim. This task was made considerably more difficult when the Vaegirs ended their war with Swadia. And then, in what he considered the final betrayal, Yaroglek denounced him as an outcast and declared war against him! Now he found that he was trapped between the twin pincers of the Vaegirs and the Swadians, and his small company struggled for survival.
  In desperation, he decided on a course of action which was to change the nature of conflict in Calradia forever. He knew of the warlike Geroians to the west, and he despatched runners to their court proposing an alliance. His hope was that they would declare war on the Vaegirs, thus distracting Yaroglek, and he included all he knew of the Vaegirs’ strengths and weaknesses, including detailed plans of their fortifications and troop makeup.
  The Geroians, with their Dark Knights, were already massing for war against Calradia, but Bolo’s message provided the excuse they needed for a full assault. Although they viewed the Calradians as mere insects to be crushed beneath their boots, if the war went badly they could claim that they were invited to Calradia, and Bolo’s document was welcomed by their diplomats. They attacked the Rhodoks first, before pushing east to engage the Khergits and the Vaegirs. This provided Bolo with a welcome respite, but even he was not safe from their inexorable progress across the Calradian map. Eventually they took first Derchios, and then Vyincourt. Lord Tantius mounted Bolo’s head above the gates, where his baleful stare looked north towards Reyvadin, until the crows picked out his eyes.

This Space For Rent

This Space For Rent

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

The Migration of the Nords

350 - 700

On a clear day, if you look northwest from Tihr, you can just make out the southernmost part of Nordland. Today’s mild and self-effacing Nordlanders give no hint as to the barbarous hordes that ruled the seas for several hundred years in the middle ages. This harsh, seabound land ensured that the Nords relied on the sea for a large part of their diet, and so their shipbuilding skills were much advanced compared to other nations at that time. This, allied with their naturally warlike demeanour, meant that Nord raiding parties began appearing regularly Calradia from around the year 350 onwards.

At first, they were content to raid the seaside villages and towns, carrying off goods and slaves. Occasionally, the Nords appeared to trade, rather than make war, and some of these traders settled in Calradia. Sometimes prisoners were taken by the Empire, and were assimilated into the population of the coastal towns. Over the next three hundred years the Nord population, though small, was the fastest growing people in Calradia.

As the coastal population became more Nordic, the raiding parties pushed further and further inland in search of loot. In the latter half of 699, they sailed up the river Mander, as it was known then, to a point halfway between Dhirim and Suno, almost to the heart of the Empire. As Calradia had no navy with which to repulse these raiders, a traders’ delegation was despatched from those cities to the coast, to treat with the Calradian Nords there, to see if something could be done. They were willing to intercede with the Empire on behalf of the Nords, and promise them some coastal lands, if the raids could be stopped.

Word of this delegation filtered back to Nordland, and through exaggeration and distortion, it was thought there that the Calradian Empire was willing to cede all its northern lands. The lure of a green and pleasant land of their own was attractive to many Nords, and it was determined that a party of warriors and diplomats be sent to Calradia to treat with the Empire.

Gundig Hairy-Breeks

Gundig was a fearsome warrior in the classic Nordic mould. Nordic society was notable for its egalitarianism, most notably for the equality that existed between men and women which would later influence Calradian custom and allow the likes of Katilus of Praven to become queen.  Nordic power was bought with fists and club, rather than through any hereditary rights. It was this system which allowed Gundig to rise to prominence. Though he wasn’t the sharpest axe in the war chest, Gundig’s proficiency in arms allowed him to command the greater part of the Nordic fleet at this time.  He was a wealthy man in his own right, but he sensed an opportunity for further fame, and in his words, “to further the glory of the Nords, and lead our people to this new land of milk and honey”. He petitioned to be allowed to lead the delegation to Calradia.
 
              Other less charitable accounts suggest that Gundig, a heavy drinker even by Nord standards, became convinced that the trolls were out to get him, and that this motivated his departure from Nordland. In Nord folklore, it was common for a troll to assume a a beautiful appearance in order to trick a character into following them into their mountain home, then hold the character captive for years.  Gundig, who had woken up many times far from home, sometimes without his clothes, with no memory of having got there, made the natural assumption that he was a marked man, and that he’d better find a land where these evil creatures didn’t exist.

                Be that as it may, in the summer of 700, Gundig set sail for Calradia. Initially he sailed into Wercheg, in full pomp and circumstance, and was surprised to find that the land he had been promised amounted only to a narrow coastal strip between Tihr and Fearichen. One of the diplomats in his party, Ulf Longnose,  urged him to return to Nordland with this news, and prepare for war. He complied, but the embarrassment and loss of standing with his men gnawed at him. A day out from Wercheg, he cut Longnose’s throat, heaved him over the side, and turned his ships back towards Calradia.

                Gundig’s  three longboats drew up on the sand of what is now known as Gundig’s Point, and there he planted his standard. His speech that day has passed into legend, but it is doubtful how many of the Calradian Nords rallied to his banner. He sent out messengers to Wercheg and Tihr, and raised an army of the dispossessed and discontented. Then, in a curious decision, he marched east, on Rivacheg.

Perhaps he thought that a massive hammer-strike against the Empire would be a powerful statement of his intent. Certainly, there were lesser prizes that he could have taken between Gundig’s Point and Rivacheg, such as the forts of Alburq and Bulugha. Instead, he left these castles at his back, and launched a full scale assault against the Rock of Rivacheg (described elsewhere).  Perhaps he had also underestimated the strength of the Vaegir tribes, who were part of the Empire at that time. The fighting was fierce and bloody, and at the end Gundig was forced back towards the sea. There he found his boats had been burned, and he made his last stand at that piece of land which bears his name.  His army was killed, to the last man, and the standard he had so proudly planted was uprooted and thrown into the sea.

700 – 970

Gundig’s rash actions made life very difficult for the Calradian Nords, and in the ensuing 50 years they were persecuted with all the zeal befitting a ‘Holy’ Empire. However, all things must pass, and at the start of the 9th century, Calradia had become more accepting of them.

                There was much unrest in Nordland at this time. A century of mild winters had swelled the population to bursting point. Concurrently, it had been a time of religious fervour, where the old religion was being challenged by the insidious influence of the Empire, through the adopted religion of the returning Calradian Nords, and the occasional missionary hardy enough to brave the scorn of the Nords (a joke of the time makes reference to the difficulty of enumerating the Empire’s 5 Commandments when you didn’t have any fingers left).

The Nord leaders, therefore, decided on a plan of ‘enforced emigration’. This amounted to rounding up the proponents of the new religion, and putting them on boats to Calradia. The first six hundred of these people arrived on the Calradian shores in 817. Fortuitously, they were welcomed by the Empire, which was riven with internal divisions. The Empire's success was founded on a divide and conquer system, by which they matched tribe against tribe in ‘manageable’ disputes, and thus ensured the security of the Empire as a whole. By welcoming the Nords, settling them on their northern shores, and arming them, they had access to a brand new army, which was grateful for their munificence, and which was loyal to the core.

This pattern of assimilated immigration continued over the next 150 years, and despite the dozens of minor conflicts involving the Nords, could have endured for many more years. It was, however, brought to an abrupt end by the plague and pestilence of the 970’s.

 

[Bunduqdari]

'Asban of Narra (my character)


A mere child was wandering the plains
His face and rags testified his pains
At Narra he arrived when his story began
The rootless boy's name was 'Asban


In learning a craft he showed skill
In Narra he had a destiny to fulfill
Always helping the needy and the ill
Much loved was the man named 'Asban


When bandits and brigands struck with force
With a sharp saber he stormed them on horse
An arrow from his bow never strayed from course
Much celebrated was the warrior named 'Asban


Inspiring men to ever higher heights
To the death were his men's plights
From scorching deserts to the northern lights
Much honored was the general named 'Asban


None but The Almighty lives forever
Age made him wise and clever
Until his throat they severed in his last endeavor
Much revered was the old man named 'Asban

 

[Lord Samuel]

Chapter 17: The Rhodok Revolution

The Tale of the Jamiche Brotherhood

'Those were villeins and ruined merchants, dressed in rags and rusted armors. They swore to fight for freedom and independance, barely armed but with much courage, and they stood up bravely to their oppressors.’ (Paulus Kettering)


A VELUCAN AMBUSH
One moonless summer night of the year 1201, in the nearby of Veluca, an Imperial patrol encampment was ambushed by rhodok Partisans armed with bows and arrows.
Taken by surprise, unmounted, and most of them barely awake, the Swadians scattered around the camp at once, fleeing under a deadly storm of rhodok arrows, in great confusion and panic. Taking advantage of the ensuing chaos, the skilful Partisans managed to take many swadian lives that night, before fading back in the darkness, without suffering any loss themselves.

At dawn, the remnant Patrolmen gathered back.
“I could recognize one of them”, said one Swadian. “Two days ago, in Veluca, a Jamichan herdsman stared at me in a manner of insolence. I trashed the dog proper, believe me, in a way he would remember all his life. And now I saw this little riffraff putting a knife in Ahalbert’s back. That’s when I recognized him.”
The other Swadians listened, and they believed him. They buried the bodies of their friends, and on the fresh graves they swore to avenge their deaths.

Then, they rode towards Jamiche, hunting for vengeance.


THE MASSACRE OF JAMICHE
Upon arrival, the Swadian troopers searched the houses and asked for the men.
But most of the men were still in the fields at this hour, for it was harvest time, and the Swadians couldn’t find but younglings and old men in the village, and they accused the Jamichans of hiding the rebels.

On his knees, Micheal the Elder beseeched them.
“My lords” he said. “There are but women and children here, and old people too. They haven’t done any harm to the Empire, nor would they only think of doing so. If it is blood you need to avenge your brothers, you can take mine. But if it is Justice you seek, you will have mercy upon us.”
“Who are you to dare giving us orders, you villein?” the Swadian captain said in furor.
“I am Micheal, the Elder of this peaceful village, your humble servant”, he answered, standing up. “But, my lords, although I am a slave, I know you will listen to me, for I have the sense of what is just and what is wrong”.

In rage, the Captain cut his eyes and his throat, and his tongue. They killed the cows, the pigs, and the dogs, and every living soul they could find in the village.
After that, their Imperial uniforms now covered in blood, they pillaged the houses and they set fire to them.

From the fields uphill, the men saw the black smoke, and, abandoning their tools and their horses, they all rushed back to the village, running like madmen.
It was already too late.

Upon arriving at the village, Micheal the Young, son of Micheal, saw the head of his father, planted on a pike, his tongue and eyes cut.
Later, near the stables, he found the pale body of his little child, dead, hidden behind a dead ox.
Alaien Fredbrott, son of Petraeus, found the mutilated and burnt corpses of his mother, brother and two sisters in the family house.
Jaen Retturhus, son of Eadmun the Mason, searched the whole village for his wife Amilia. He searched every place in anguish, every ruin, and the surroundings, during two days and two nights, too, but he never found the body of his young wife.

There were more than fifty dead bodies in the village. Three girls had fallen into madness, and Freda the blonde was mute. A dozen young children were found half-dead. Six of them died in the following night.


THE JAMICHE OATH
On the morning of the third day, the three young men sat together. Jaen, Alaien and Micheal were the last in the deserted village. The others had left the day before for Veluca, with the few surviving women and children, taking the remaining cattle with them.

Their faces were grey from the ashes and the dust. Their eyes were now dry and dead for they had shed all the tears of their bodies.
They looked at each other in silence.
Then Micheal spoke.
“We have lost everything we loved and cared for to these swadian devils”, he said. “Life is nothing but burden and hell to us, now. We aren’t dead, but nor are we alive anymore.”
Jaen shuddered. “But I’ll tell you this, my brothers: I will not dare to die till our blood isn’t avenged”.
Alaien nodded sadly. “Swadian justice doesn’t apply to us Rhodok serfs. Our lord is as corrupted and wicked as any other. Rebellion and war is all what’s left to us, now… We have fought under swadian command during conscription, but we have no army, and no leader”.
Jaen said: “I’ve heard of a warrior who trains and organizes the rebellion in the Sarenian mountains. Grünwalder is his name. We will go and find him”.
Then Jaen rose on his feet: “We are this dead village, and we are all the dead rhodok people. The dead have no master, and likewise we will have no master anymore, but the ones we will freely choose for ourselves. We now are the Jamiche Brothers, and only washed from slavery and humiliation, in our oppressors’ blood we will come to life again”.

“Let’s pledge eternal fidelity to all of our Brothers, to those who will come to us, and to those fallen. We take the oath never to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the freedom of the Rhodok People is established and fixed upon solid foundations.”

In the ruins, they found two swadian Longswords, and an old crossbow.
They also found three shields. One was blue, one yellow and one red. They took one each.
Then, they rounded up the old plough horses, which were scattered in the fields, and they saddled them.
After giving their village a last look, they rode together to Saren.


THE BROTHERHOOD
On their journey, they went through then villages of Emer, Ilvia, and Serindiar, and everywhere they were joined by Rhodoks, young and old, willing to evade serfdom or Imperial conscription. All of them took the Oath of the Jamiche Brotherhood, repeating the same pledge.
When they arrived in Saren, the Jamiche Brotherhood counted approximately a hundred men, mainly infantrymen and crossbowmen, in rags, very few of them mounted on horses.

Alongside Grünwalder, they learned the handling of their weapons and the tactics of war.
They fought with him again and again till he was killed. Then an army of a thousand, the Brotherhood  took Jelkala, and then Veluca, while the Swadian forces were split on multiple fronts.

In the year 1204, Jaen, Micheal and Alaien were among the founders of the Rhodok Confederacy, and they established the Charter of Jelkala.

Then, refusing public office, they returned to their beloved hometown as they had sworn, with their spouses and a few companions, and back to their life of humble peasants.
They died there peacefully, surrounded by family and friends.

Although some consider that their goals have been achieved, the dissolution of the Brotherhood was never formally pronounced, and it is believed to have lived on as a secret organisation, that might have been at the origin of the successful upheaval of Yalen in 1220.

Today the three tombs of the first Jamiche Brothers are still honored and revered by the Rhodok people, and carefully looked after by the Jamichans.
Thorn has mysteriously grown from the graves, and it is said that it can’t be uprooted.

 

[The Mercenary]

Chapter 22: The First Calradian-Geroian War

Precursor

The Kingdom of Geroia was an offshoot of Calradia, according to most scholars. They were uprooted by the First Calradic Empire, fleeing across the mountains. There, they were fired by hardship and tempered by tears, and forged into the strongest military force ever seen in the Calradic region, with, on average, the strongest warriors ever seen in the Calradic region. However, for reasons unknown, they did not receive news of the Calradic Empire's Fall for many years, and finally came back to reclaim their ancestral lands in the year 1258, commanded by the Lady Lyrin Larktin, heir to the throne of Geroia.

Fall of Maras Castle and Veluca

The Geroian Tenth, Sixteenth, and Thirteenth Knight Battalions hit Maras Castle under Lord Tantius in early Spring 1258, at night. The garrison of the castle was aroused too late - the Geroian assassins had already killed all the sentries, and the main army was already in the castle. The small resistance gathered proved no match for the Dark Knights, who massacred the garrison without a single casualty.

Meanwhile, Lady Larktin's army, composed of the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Knight Divisions and the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Archer Divisions slammed into Yalen. They settled down for a siege, brutally destroying every village around Yalen, massacring the villagers, slaughtering every animal and child, and launching the corpses at the walls of Yalen. Less than a week later, the Geroians destroyed Yalen's gate. Yalen, without its Lord and his elite guard of Arbalestiers and Halberdiers, fell with ease to the Dark Knights, whose keen blades ripped through Rhodok maille as easily as they would through naked flesh. Within an hour, every Rhodok with a weapon in Yalen lay dead.

The Rhodok Response

Councilmaster Graveth responded with force. He immediately roused all divisions of the Army of Rhodokia and requested authority to engage and beat back the unknown attackers as soon as the word arrived from Yalen. The council granted it, and the army was roused. When he received word that no troops came from Maras, he sent a division to persuade Councilman Gharmall to obey his orders. The six survivors of the division returned with word that Gharmall was dead, his head piked out on the walls. Graveth, infuriated, made the mistake of splitting his army in half, sending it to deal with Maras. The Geroian assassin groups butchered the army, led by High Councilman Gutlans,  as it marched to Maras. Graveth never received word of this, for he was killed with the rest of his army by Lady Larktin and her forces. The High Councilman Matheas, his replacement, sought aid from Swadia, the Nords, and the Khergits. None of them sent relief, and Jelkala fell soon. Soon, Almerra Castle was the last Rhodok bastion in the south, augmented by Bregan D'aerthe's trained mercenaries.

Larktin cuts East

With the Rhodoks near defeat, Lady Larktin cut to the east. She cut a swathe through the Khergit lands, massacring all of their armies and eventually controlling the entire West Steppe. The Vaegirs joined the Khergits and a combined force of 2,000 Vaegir and Khergit troops met Lady Larktin and the Seventh and Ninth Divisions at the Battle of Narra. It was a crushing defeat for the Vaegirs and the Khergits, who were totally outmatched by the Geroians, who had the advantage of a fortified position outside of Narra, the higher ground, and much better commanders. Dundush Khan and Prince Crahask escaped with about 200 men between them...

More later, practicing violin.

 

[Pellagus]

1258, The Winter of the Sleeping Bear.

That winter, after the Dark Knights were no more, accusation and recrimination quickly began in the courts of the factions about who had helped whom, or who had hindered or secretly raided this or that village.

The Swadian elite, despite their protestations of chivalry and honour, were soon back to their habitual sniping and backstabbing of one another. This must have been depressingly familiar to the Queen, Kaitilus. And somewhat surprising, too. The war had been good for Swadia. The advance of the Dark Knights had done little damage to the realm and new territories had been opened up by the acquisition of fiefs and castles across Calradia. It should have been a time of rejoicing and yet her lords and advisers whispered of discontent and intrigue. The name of the upstart Isolla was never mentioned, but must have been on the minds of many. This atmosphere of paranoia locked the Swadians into a state of paralysis, which would only be broken when the Khergits began their habitual raids along the border.

The Khergits had suffered far more at the hands of the Dark Knights and their kingdom was in disarray. Deserters and bandits plagued the merchant routes and the steppe villages bore the brunt of a combination of harsh winter and cruel Khans, intent on squeezing every last denar out of their charges. The Khans bickered about what to do throughout the freezing steppe winter nights and pushed into a corner, they responded in the only way they knew how, by declaring war on the rest of Calradia.

The Rhodoks and Vaegris had also lost territory, but to the Nords. Neither was in any state to fight at that time, and were content to lick their wounds and plot their revenge. For the ordinary Rhodoks and Vaegris, this was no bad thing. The Nords bought furs from the trappers in Rivacheg and wine from the merchants in Yalen. Some even joined the armies of the Jarls and patrolled the uneven borderlands.

So the Nords were content and none more than the Sleeping Bear himself, Ragnar. In his youth an aggressive and skilful general, the High Jarl seemed happy to sit in Sargoth and watch the merchant caravans come and go. His standing army of 600 could often be seen quaffing ale in the taverns or on the festival ground. Half pay in the army of the High Jarl was good pay, but many of them yearned for the screams of battle. Yet the Sleeping Bear slept on. Many have questioned why, when the Nords were in such a strong position that Ragnar did not rally and press his advantage south.

Well, it seems that Ragnar was in love.

A young Swadian lady, known from the records of the time as Lady Silla, had come to his attention. Lady August Pliant Silla was the daughter of a minor noble who had been killed by Gerioan Knights in a minor disagreement over a grain shipment. She had sworn revenge and become a fearsome horsewoman equally at home wielding a lance or a sword. As a mercenary she and her small army had protected many merchant caravans out of Sargoth during the Dark Knight wars. Her dark hair and oval face were classically Swadian (it is reputed she was the model for Leonardo Da Veidar's 'Suno Lisa') and Ragnar was smitten. He is said to have dined with her alone on several occasions, where she tactfully declined his enticements to join him in his bedchamber. This was unknown amongst Nord society, where courtship was an alien concept that happened in other countries. On the draughty northern coast, if two people liked each other, they generally did something about it. Usually as quickly as possible before frostbite set in.
And so the Sleeping Bear did nothing that winter, much to the frustration of his Jarls. By the following spring, the Vaegris and Rhodoks had recovered enough to make sorties north and the Jarls were too busy holding on to the territories they held to expand their borders. To make matters worse for Ragnar, Lady Silla left as quickly as she had arrived in his life. She returned to the Swadian land of her birth, to manage the fief inherited from her father and bestowed on her by the Queen (after a protracted legal argument. The cost of this forced her to become a mercenary as well as a merchant, but that is another story.) Many have commented on the sudden legal settlement. Had the Queen sent Lady Silla to Sargoth herself on purpose to waylay the Nords in some clandestine way? If so, Lady Silla certainly succeeded; for by the spring the Nords were too busy to trouble the Swadians in any meaningful way as an outcome of what happened.

Ragnar spent most of the rest of that year at Sargoth, until his wife returned from an extended visit to her ailing sister in Wercheg, when he unexpectedly developed a taste for war again. He took his army deep into Vaegir territory, following the retreating snow as far as Khudan. His army was tested and found wanting at the city walls, and a humbled High Jarl would spend much of the rest of the year at Reyvadin, licking his wounds.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

Deshavi's Story

Deshavi considered her hands as she strung her bow. Long years of steeping flax in the river Mander had left them calloused and cracked, and not as supple as they should be for this kind of work. She focused on the task at hand, damping down the bitterness that threatened to rise. Plenty of time to dwell on that later. Plenty of time.

Perhaps today would bring some release. They had pursued the bandits since morning, and had finally cornered them in a narrow ravine where they had had to turn and fight. As her commander, Terina Isi, arranged her troops, Deshavi checked her quiver and surveyed the scene. The company was small, but every man was a killer. The cavalry had the left flank, the archers the right.  The archers were slightly elevated to give a clear line of fire over the infantry, whose small numbers had been pushed forward to try and entice the bandits into fighting on Isi’s terms.

She looked forward to where Isi was instructing her infantry. Deshavi had gone from company to company over the past few years, accepting work where it most suited her, and was currently riding with the Poppy of the East. This was the moniker her men, imaginative as only Calradians could be, had bestowed upon Isi. It reflected her eastern provenance and also, they said, because after battle the field was so drenched in blood it resembled a meadow of gently waving poppies. Whatever, Deshavi liked her. She was as far from a mercenary as one could get, being petite and even demure at times, but she carried her authority easily, and her men were loyal.

She could see the bandits massing at the far end of the ravine. This one would play out like all the others. They’d send their few horsemen against Isi’s ground troops, hoping to smash and demoralise them, with support from their archers. It was a desperate gamble, for they knew their pursuers had cavalry of their own, but perhaps they hoped the terrain would keep them from the battle long enough to turn the tide. Deshavi hoped that among those thirty men there would be one whom she knew, or even two. She had been a bandit herself, once. But here they came.

She nocked an arrow to her bow and waited. There was no point targeting the bandit horsemen, as they moved too fast to be an easy shot. Better to hold until their ground troops came into range. Her fellow archers were well disciplined and silently held their fire. The bandit vanguard bore down on the small group of mostly-Rhodok infantry. As time slowed down, the tension rose. Hooves thundered on the ravine floor, and the war cries of the bandits echoed between its walls. Deshavi noticed the infantry subtly moving closer together. At the last moment, the Rhodoks braced their spears and the bandits smashed into the spearwall.  A couple had time to wheel away, but six had been unhorsed. Isi commanded her cavalry to charge. As the Rhodoks set about the fallen horsemen with spears and halberds, Deshavi knew the fight was as good as over. The remaining bandits would never make it within range of her archers. Panic rose in her, and she hooked her bow over her shoulder and spurred her horse forward. Isi would haul her over the coals later for this breach of discipline, but she would not be denied.

Her courser galloped down to the valley floor, outpacing the heavy chargers as she made for the bandit rearguard. Arrows whisted past her ears, as she scanned the line for familiar faces. There! Her heart leapt. Surely that was Burglen Brynn? She could see his pasty face underneath a leather skullcap. Brynn had always looked unhealthy amongst the weatherbeaten bandits, the sickness of his mind writ large upon his face, she’d thought.  She closed on him.

Burglen Brynn had been welcoming at first, when she’d been captured by bandits outside of Elberl. Later, she’d come to see that this was motivated by cowardice, the dissimulation of a man who was watching and waiting for his chance. The leader of the bandits was a man called Krakem, nicknamed Sea Dog, who hailed from Tihr. He ran a tight group and insisted that prisoners were treated well, so that they could either be enlisted or ransomed later. Either way, the bandit group benefited. So Deshavi’s great fear and horror at being captured was quickly transformed into an equally intense respect for the man. And later, there was more than respect. There was love.

Sea Dog had taught her to fight. He insisted she spend hours each day at archery practice, and supervised the close-quarters training himself. He had the rugged looks of the Nordic race, but was as lithe as a cat. When he stood close and held her hips to correct her stance , a thrill ran through her body. More, he was delicate in asking her about her history. He didn’t push her, but soon she had shared it all.

        Her father had married her off early, to a drunken lout called Tordar from Kulum who between binges, beat her unmercifully. Their marriage was a travesty, and she began to think of ways to escape. One night, an opportunity had presented itself. Tordar had been late home, and she had gone to seek him, as her father was due to call in the morning. She’d found him passed out from drink beside one of the flax pools between the tavern and home. She couldn’t wake him. Out of her frustration and anguish, a plan began to form. Here was her chance. All she had to do was roll him up to the side of the pool and dump him in. He’d drown, and when he was discovered, everyone would assume he’d fallen into the pool in a drunken stupor.

But she couldn’t move him! She tried and tried, but was too weak to move his vast weight to the edge of the pool. Her efforts yielded nothing, until eventually he began to stir. She cried out in despair. At that moment, she decided to escape. Anything would be better than this. She hurried home and packed what clothes and food she had, and set out south. It was a hard road she travelled, for she was not welcomed in the villages, and the towns had their own dangers for a single woman travelling alone. She left Suno in the hope that Praven would be better, and was near Elberl when she was taken.

Sea Dog accepted her for what she was, and they grew closer. Before long, they were sharing a bedroll, and this caused a whole new set of problems. The men were jealous. Being a bandit was a hard life, and men being men, the woman in their midst became an unhealthy obsession for some. Why should Sea Dog have all the fun? When she told him of this, he merely said that this was their way, and that they’d have to fight to hold on to the happiness they’d won. He wasn’t a trusting man, but he was a straight one, and had anticipated the challenge to come in the light of day. That was his downfall. 

One night Deshavi woke and felt the need to make water. She moved off into the bushes, and as she crouched, she heard a noise. Peering out, she could see a darkened shape making its way through the camp. She recognised it as Burglen Brynn, and relaxed. Probably up for the same reason she was. As she turned away, she noticed that he was making for the spot beside the fire where Sea Dog lay. And something was glinting in his hand. Too late, she realised what was happening. She was stricken by fear, and she couldn’t call out. Brynn stepped close to Sea Dog and slid the blade between his ribs. Then he noticed Deshavi wasn’t there. He stood up and said a word and many dark shapes rose from their blankets. They were all in on it. Deshavi backed away from the clearing and made for the horses. She unhobbled a mare and set off at a canter, to the noise of shouts from behind.

After that, Deshavi had had enough of bandits and their kind. She mourned her loss, but already she was a different woman to the girl who had fled Kulum. Her bitterness now drowned her grief, and she made for Praven. There, she signed up with the first mercenary band that would take her, and vowed revenge against the whole of Calradia. She would fight against these men, these apes and jackals, and she would hunt down the bandits who had wronged her so.

Burglen Brynn fought rising panic as he saw the woman on the courser bearing down on him. They were trapped like rats in this ravine, and there was no way out. He looked around frantically. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same. There was nothing for it but to fight. He unshouldered his claymore and assumed his stance. The woman was making straight for him and closing fast, her black hair streaming out behind her. There was something about her he couldn’t place. Did he know her? She carried her sword in an unconventional manner, above her head with the point forward, poised for a killing blow. Well, he’d deal with that. He got ready to sidestep the charging horse, intending to take a foreleg off as it passed. She did look familiar. Triumph and despair was intermingled on her face, each emotion fighting for dominance. He blanched.

At the last moment, the woman feinted almost imperceptibly right and then corrected her course immediately. By instinct, his body betrayed him and followed the feint. Who was she?  She brought her sword forward and the point made unerringly for his eye. As it plunged into his brain, his senses screamed one last time: Deshavi!

 

[Megazero34]

Amid the ruins of the dark knights, a lone scavenger was picking through the dead of Jelkala, he was searching for black armor to sell, when suddenly, theres a large crunch, the scavenger turns arround and swears violently. "looking for me?" says a man clad in black armor. the scavenger falls down on his knees and begs for mercy. "I have no time for weaklings such as you." and with that, he draws what appears to be a hand and a half sword and slices his victim's head off.

As he is cleaning his blade an ivory arrow lands near his foot, looking arround he sees a figure on the walls. "Lord Inalas! prepare to meet death itself!" says the archer. the dark knight swears and dodges the next arrow, and grabs a jarid, throwing it right in the middle of the archer's face. Laughing as the archer's dead corpse falls off the walls and the jarid is pushed all the way thru his skull. "You always were a fool Zava, now your foolishness has earned you the sleep that lasts eternal."

Several years later near a small farm at Buvran.

"cant catch me" said Tom. "yes I can!" said Timothy. the two children run around the farm playing when suddenly the sound of a sword unsheathing is heard. the children stop playing and stare at the claymore as the man in black armor grins wickedly. the sword moves swiftly and tom is decapitated, provoking a scream from Timothy. a man rushes out with his sword, Zeral, the flame of the east in his hand. "TOM!" the man cries out in anguish. "long time no see traitor" says lord Inalas. the man turns white as a sheet. "lord Inalas, you will pay for this." says the man. "we shall see Arcturus, we shall see." says the dark knight.

After a long and furious sword fight Arcturus suffers a wound to the shoulder and gasps out in pain. "ive been looking forward to this Arcturus." said Inalas. "you always were one for dragging it out, I'm not suprised Larktin didn't kill you." said Arcturus. a glint is seen and Arcturus rises once more and throws his dagger in between Inalas' eyes, killing him instantly.

"Arcturus, are you alright?!" said Angela, a native of Buvran and wife of Arcturus. "im not in too much pain my love, but I'm afraid I ruined your grandfather's dagger. "Horta can always Repair it. Im just glad your alive." said Laila.

and they proceed to bury young Tom, afterwords Arcturus vows to hunt down every man who wears the black armor and kill them mercilessly.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

The Playboy of the Western World

He stretched out on the chaise longue, his eyes shut, while the violin concerto played in the background. He could get used to this. For dinner, there had been roast boar and fine wine, with an assortment of succulent sweetmeats.  A great fire roared in the hearth of the Lord’s Hall, to take the chill from the autumn night. He’d even been able to pick up a troupe of musicians on his travels, and they were responsible for tonight’s chamber music - the sweet notes of Rhumbach’s Concerto No. 2 filled the room. And the cellist, what a comely wench!  Yes indeed, he could definitely get used to Calradia.

  “Grife!”  He sighed and opened his eyes resignedly. Lady Larktin stood in the doorway, silencing the musicians with a look. At a nod of his head, they gathered their instruments and scurried out. Lord Grife rose and stood to attention. He saw Larktin cast a disapproving glance at the empty carafe of wine on the dinner table.

  “Wine, m’Lady? It’s a wonderful vintage from Veluca, the best in Calradia, and the cellar is full of it. It is really too good to waste. I’ve even had some sent down to Brula Khan, poor man; it might fortify him against that damp dungeon air.”  He made to ring for more wine, but Larktin cut him short.

  “I require only that you gather your troops; we must march on Narra tomorrow. Winter is coming on and it’s imperative that we strike east before the kingdoms unite. Our task will become more difficult then, so I want to be in Tulga by year end. We leave at noon.” She stalked from the room.  Then she reappeared momentarily in the doorway. “And Grife. Put some damn clothes on.”

  The next day dawned clear and cold. Grife sat astride a grey mare in the courtyard of Distar Castle, supervising the hostlers as they made his destrier ready to travel. His troops were already in marching formation, and Lady Larktin passed down the line, making her inspection. He saw her nod in satisfaction, and a brief surge of pride surprised him in its intensity. So he still sought her approval then? Well, that would pass when he took Narra. Then he’d be his own man. He already knew that he was her best commander, and knew that she knew it, despite her obvious distaste for his lifestyle. Tantius and Gracius were old, and while Grife’s face was prematurely aged from indulging the finer things in life, he wasn’t much older than Purin.  Purin. He’d have to watch that one.

  Pilnit Grife was hardly the archetypal Geroian. That nation had been forged in war, as the first settlers moved west upon their expulsion from Calradia centuries before. They had first displaced the Western Peoples, fighting for every inch of land, and steadily pushed West, North and South, subjugating all the peoples of that region. The years had been hard, and the Geroians, as they now knew themselves, were constantly at war. For hundreds of years, they knew nothing else, and their culture was shaped by advances in technology and battle tactics, rather than by the arts or the softer sciences. The end product was perhaps the most warlike race the world had ever seen. Their metallurgists had produced the most advanced weapons and armour that could be forged by man, and their bloodstock was second to none. They were relentless in their prosecution of war, and it had been many years since the Geroian armies had known anything but victory.

  Lord Grife was different. Somehow as a young man, he had been imbued with an appreciation of poetry and music, and sought out learning wherever he could find it. He developed a taste for the finer things in life. This marked him out amongst his peers, and their scorn was the making of him, as it pushed him to become an even better soldier, so that no man dared mock him. He travelled far and wide in these days, volunteering for duty in far flung lands, all the while soaking up the best of each new culture. Cultures he was engaged in subjugating, ironically enough, but still. Through this exposure to hardship, constant war, and by studying the tactics of those sent against him, Grife developed into one of the most ferocious warriors in all Geroia.

  When the opportunity arose to be part of the Calradian Expeditionary Force, he leapt at it. After all, was this not the cradle of Geroian civilisation? For a scholar, the chance was too good to refuse. He’d had to pull a lot of political strings to receive this opportunity, but so far he had not been disappointed.

  They marched out the gates of Distar on the stroke of midday. He rode alongside Larktin at the head of a long line of troops which stretched out behind them for over a mile. They stopped at the village of Bulugur to take on some final provisions, and here Grife saw a sight that warmed his heart. About twenty villagers were scuffling around in the village square, trying to kick a decapitated head into the church porch. Football! This was a Geroian game, played sometimes after an easy victory had been won, and Grife himself had introduced it to the Calradian troops he had assimilated into his army. He beamed with delight as he saw it being adopted with such gusto by the peasants. He almost felt like getting down off his horse and joining in. But duty called, and the provisioning done, they made their way towards Narra.

  A day out from Narra, their scouts reported a large force camped outside that city. Larger than any they had faced thus far, for it appeared the Vaegirs had joined forces with the Khergits, and according to the scouts, they faced an army of over two thousand men. This was an interesting development, thought Grife. The Khergits were hardly known for their discipline, and the Vaegirs were not much better. He held a sneaking admiration for the Varangian Guards and their elite troops, and their archers were second to none, but how they and their Khergit allies could be managed as a coherent force was beyond him. It struck him that the greater part of the army would be archers of some kind. He touched his armour. It itched infernally, but it also told him that archers wouldn’t win this battle. He spurred his horse forward in anticipation.

  The Dark Knights marched through the night, and when dawn broke they occupied the high ground above Narra.  Below them, the opposing army was spread out on a great grassy plain. The Geroians had taken up position well before dawn, and had thrown up earthworks and dug ditches long before their enemies had grouped for battle. Grife and Larktin knew that the Khergits could not wait until the Dark Knights came onto them; their battle tactics were predetermined by the makeup of their troops, and in this they were restricted to a swift and deadly assault on horseback.
The Khergits took the van. With a great yelling and screaming, they attacked the Geroian lines, hundreds of them, with the Vaegir Archers hurrying along in their rear, trying to get into a supporting position. The Khergits were too eager, however. They easily outstripped the Vaegir force, and hit the Geroian ditches at full speed. Dozens were unhorsed, and dozens more reared back or came to an abrupt halt against the hastily-built earthworks. From behind these, Larktin’s heavy cavalry emerged in a long line, flanking the Khergits and turning behind them. Simultaneously, the Dark Knight infantry rushed forward, to attack the now static Khergits. It was a massacre. When the killing was well in hand, the cavalry peeled away from the fighting and charged the Vaegirs. Their archers went down under the steel hooves of the warhorses, and the scattered Vaegir infantry were cut to pieces by the advancing Dark infantry, supported by their own archers.

  It was a rout. Before the sun had reached its zenith, the opposing army had turned and fled, what was left of them. Grife offered his congratulations to Lady Larktin, and cast a speculative eye towards the city of Narra. The walls were crowded with witnesses to the battle, and he expected only cursory resistance in the face of this display of power. He’d be in Narra by nightfall. He wondered whether it had a library. 

 

[The Mercenary]

A hasty portrait of Lady Lyrin Larktin, by the famous painter Michelangelodar, who painted it as a favor to escape with his life.

 

[Josef_the_Pretender]

The Deal

Casimir Razin stumbled in the deep snow as he ran through the forest. His breath came ragged from his chest, and his legs cramped with pain. The silver beeches all around looked ghostly in the fading light. He’d left the path far behind, and the pristine snow lay like a shroud over all. It’s like a dream landscape, he thought. But it was no dream.  They’d first spotted the Khergits in the early afternoon, their silhouettes outlined against the grey sky a couple of miles behind. There were maybe twenty of them, which meant serious trouble.  Razin knew it would be an hour or more before they were overtaken, as the snow meant that their pursuers wouldn’t risk their horses at more than a canter for fear of hidden obstacles beneath. He split his men, sending six north towards Uslum, hoping to draw the Khergits off. He and Blazek headed west, deeper into the forest.

They’d left Ichamur three days earlier, disguised as village farmers. They’d debated the merits of this plan, as opposed to sending fast riders, but as the political situation worsened, they could see no alternative.  Sanjar Khan was becoming nervous. The Dark Knights had brushed the Rhodoks aside with ease, and their progress was taking them inexorably closer to the Khergit border. Even now, Lord Purin was sieging Veluca, while Grife was ensconced at Grunwalder. It was thought that Larktin was planning a move south, and the reports from Brula Khan at Distar Castle became more frantic by the day. It didn’t bode well that a hardened border lord such as Brula seemed to be losing his nerve.

Razin, though Vaegir by birth, was Sanjar Khan’s spymaster. It was, to an extent, a profession that transcended borders. None of the Great Khan’s other advisers would have survived long if they had not been Khergit, but the Spymaster was immune to such nationalist instincts. His Vaegir connections had been invaluable to Sanjar in the long war between the nations. It also helped that he was out of the public eye. In this capacity, he knew that the Khergit lords were grumbling. Sanjar, even before the Dark Knight invasion, had been fighting a war on three fronts. There were the ancient conflicts which had reignited with the Swadians and the Vaegirs, but there was also a more insidious threat. Whenever the Khergits captured an enemy fort, or recaptured one of their own, shortly thereafter a mercenary warlord would appear at the gates demanding the surrender of the lightly-garrisoned castle. How did these warlords get their intelligence? This question was corroding the Khan’s court from within. The easy capture of these fiefs made Sanjar look weak and incompetent, and there was a growing movement against him.

Then the Dark Knights invaded, adding fuel to an already-smouldering fire. The lords were on the brink of rebellion and Sanjar had to do something. That he had to send his spymaster on this mission to the Vaegirs was bad enough. But that he had to send him disguised as a common farmer showed the danger that they all faced. If he sent a personal envoy under guard, he was afraid some of the would-be rebels would intercept the party and ensure they never reached Reyvadin. After all, in the final analysis this was a power struggle, and it suited the usurpers to maintain the status quo, as every day that passed weakened the Khan. And if they knew what message Razin carried, it would tear the nation apart.

Casimir clutched the satchel to his chest and stumbled onwards. Splitting the group hadn’t worked. Their pursuers had also split up, and he could hear the horsemen calling to each other as they followed his tracks. He glanced at Blazek. His face was as white as the snow, and Razin knew the game was almost up. He dared to look behind. They were close now; if they’d been wearing markings he would have been able to see them. Instead he saw a rider nocking an arrow to his bow, and before he could cry out a warning, he’d let fly. Blazek pitched forward into the snow, the arrow between his shoulder blades. In desperation, Razin turned and ran. Suddenly, in the twilight ahead, he saw horses. Swadians. It was over, all over. He stopped and awaited his fate.

The Swadian horsemen advanced out of the gloom. There were maybe thirty of them, all knights. Just then the Khergits spotted the newcomers. This was obviously an unexpected development, for they stopped in confusion. The knights charged. They passed Razin, the sound of their hooves muffled in the snow. For all that, the spymaster thought, it was the sound of death. They were quickly upon the Khergits, and he heard the sound of lances smashing through lamellar armour.  It was over as soon as it began.

The knights turned and trotted back. Their leader, a tall man in a coat of plates, reined in his charger and removed his great helmet. Razin gasped, for he recognized Earl Arowynd, a coming man in the service of Sir Klargus of Suno.  Arowynd’s fame outstripped his rank, for now, as it was well known that he followed the creed of the Old Calradian Knights, and his ferocity in battle was the talk of the land. But what was he doing in Vaegir lands? The spymaster hoped his disguise would hold. He saw Arowynd cast an appraising glance at the satchel he still clutched.

“Greetings, good farmer,” said Arowynd. “Lucky for you we happened by just now.” Something in the way he said this made Razin think that it was anything but luck. “Those heathen dogs won’t bother you any more.” He looked at the darkening sky. “Night draws in. Will you share our campfire?” Razin looked back to where the knights were setting up camp. It didn’t look like he had much choice.

  “Thank you for your help, sir. It was fortunate to have you nearby. I would be happy to share your protection this night.” Razin slipped easily into character. He hoped that he would be could eat with Arowynd’s men, as far from this unsettling man as possible. His hopes were soon dashed.

  “I would take it as a compliment if you would share my meal. Perhaps you have some news that may be useful to me.” Arowynd paused. “You may have some knowledge of this area, bandit gangs and suchlike?” He smiled and dismounted, removing his gauntlets and rubbing his hands as a page took his horse. “You there! Get that fire going!”

Later, as they sat in front of the campfire, the inquisition began. Finding that Razin could tell him nothing of import, the Earl probed deeper, inquiring as to the purpose of his trip, his companions, and how they came to be in the woods so far from the recognised highways. I could ask you the same thing, my friend, thought Razin.  Finally Arowynd turned to him, the firelight glittering in his eyes.

“Let’s get to the point, shall we? You have the accent, and some local knowledge, and your story about travelling to Ulburban to buy some cattle fits well enough. But let’s face it, you’re no more a farmer than I am. I’ll be blunt. What’s in that satchel?”

“Money, my lord. Money to pay for the cattle, and some letters to the villagers.” Despite the cold, Razin started to sweat.

“Both you and I know it isn’t mere letters, Razin. And those Khergits knew too. Why else would they follow you for so long? We picked up their trail two days ago, and have been following them ever since. At a discrete distance, of course. You have a choice. Give me the satchel, or you die here, and I take it anyway.”

Razin opened the satchel and handed its contents to Arowynd. It was a letter, but not between villages. It wasn’t even a peace treaty. The document outlined plans for an alliance between Sanjar Khan and High Prince Yaroglek, to unite and face the Dark Knight horde. It granted concessions to the Vaegirs about lands and fiefs that the two countries had warred over for a hundred years. To most Khergits, the proposed agreement was treachery of the highest order, and in the hands of the border lords it would lead to the deposition of the Great Khan, and so Razin thought, the eventual downfall of the Khergit nation. For he knew that this was Sanjar’s last gamble. The Khan had spent years uniting the tribes, using both force and guile, and he saw this, rightly, as his legacy. Assailed on all sides as they were now, it was doubtful that the Khergit Khanate would survive. He needed Yaroglek’s troops for two reasons: their combined armies would be a show of force unlike the Khergits had ever witnessed, cementing his hold on power and demoralising his rebel lords, and it would stop the Dark Knight advance at the boundaries of the Khergit lands. Razin watched as Arowynd read the letter avidly, the firelight on his face first showing his amazement, then his thoughtfulness as the ramifications of the document became clear, and finally his calculation.

The spymaster felt hollow inside. The Swadians were still their sworn enemies, and if Arowynd released this document, as surely he must, he could look forward to the disintegration of the Khergits and their utter destruction at the hands of the Dark Knights. The nation would split, and split again, until they amounted to a land of wild tribes, warring against each other as they had always done. The document was a gift such as no enemy faction dared dream of. Arowynd had in his hands the potential for the greatest intelligence coup in Calradian history. Finally he looked up.

“Well. It is nice to make your acquaintance, Casimir Razin. I think we both realise the value of what I hold here and I can see the dread on your face. This document could severely disrupt the plans of two nations, were it to be circulated at the right time.” Razin awaited the inevitable.

“However, now is not the right time. You see, we Swadians share many of these fears of yours. The Dark Knights threaten our borders too. And while on a personal level, I’d like to drive you godless scum off the face of the earth, I must act in the interests of the state. The Khergits and Vaegirs united may do our job for us. Personally, I doubt it, but at the very least, both nations will be weakened, and pose little threat to us for years to come. You have considered the cost, I see, so I will not harangue you as to the advantages for Swadia if this came to pass.”

Razin reeled. Could this be happening? Arowynd continued.

“We’re not at war with the Vaegirs, for now at least. Tomorrow, I will give you a horse and an escort of hand-picked men. They will take you to the gates of Reyvadin, and make sure you deliver this treaty to Yaroglek without further danger. We can only hope that he agrees to this proposal. But I think he will. There are obvious advantages for him. And having the Khergit Nation beholden to him for the rest of his life is not something he would willingly refuse.”

With that, he tossed the letter back and stood up.

“I doubt I’ll see you in the morning, for I must bear these tidings back to the Queen. Good luck Razin, for these are troubled times.” He stalked off.  Casimir felt numbed. Yes, he was aware that the treaty would benefit the Swadians for years to come, but that was a price he and the Khan had been willing to pay. Why then, did he feel such foreboding?

  He made his way to his bedroll but sleep didn’t come easily that night. By dawn, he had reassured himself that the treaty would work, and that in a month or two he, Casimir Razin, would lead the Vaegir armies over the Sungetche pass and into Ichamur. Sanjar Khan would cement his legacy, and rule the Khergits wisely for years to come. He set out for Reyvadin, his hope renewed.

 

[The Mercenary]

The Battle of Shattered Stones

Lady Larktin stood at the table casually dressed in a short black skirt reaching to her mid-thighs and a black tunic. In front of her stood Lord Tantius and Lord Purin, two commanders, one thirty years older than Larktin, the other only a few years older. She commanded their full attention as she gestured on the maps spread out in front of her.

"Kryn [Purin], you and two divisions of infantry will cut eastwards and south, dropping behind Sanjar's fortifications here. Harp [Tantius], go northeast with four regiments of Knights and cut around Sanjar to the pass of Tulga, and cut off Yaroglek's soldiers. If you fail to reach the pass in time, join Purin and I in flanking this fortress. Burn everything in your way and kill every Calradian you see."

With those words she turned her back on the two commanders and stalked away, towards her private chambers in what was recently a Khergit castle.

The two men she left behind watched as she strode away, then nodded at each other and went to go ready their soldiers.

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Sanjar, Great Khan of the Khergits, Unifier of the Tribes, High Commander of the Khergit Army, and very worried General, stood anxiously on the walls of the fortifications that he had ordered his men to built forty leagues to the southwest of Tulga. Behind him stood the last Khans free of captivity, Dundush, Alagar, Imirza, Asugan, Chaurka, Sebula, Karaban, Nasugei, and Belir. Belir and Imirza had brought their seasoned Hordes with him, the Red and Blue Hordes, and his combined army stood at 4,200 strong. He knew it wasn't enough.

"Find the Vaegirs", he snapped at a nearby messenger, "we need them here NOW. And find out what happened to those mercenaries we hired two days ago. There were supposed to be 300 of them, and we haven't found any in the camp."

The messenger bowed and ran off, jumping onto his horse and galloping into the horizon. Sanjar gazed across the flat steppes towards Narra, scarcely a hundred leagues away. He knew that that ***** Larktin was heading towards his fortifications with an army of twelve hundred men, but he had no idea what happened to her two lieutenants, as reports estimated that one had six hundred men and the other four hundred. He glanced anxiously at the peaks of the Jarisstan Mountains to the North - Yaroglek's army of six thousand troops were heading south through the Pass of Tulga, and were less than a days' march away. Sanjar sighed, looking back towards the dark storm that had come to his lands, dropping his hand to the hilt of the finest blade seen in the Khanate, and staring through the heat haze, across the dry, dusty, arid landscape he had come to love so much. If he failed here, it would forever be lost to his people. The knowledge only strengthened his resolve to defeat the Dark Knights for the first time. It had been so long since he had first set out on his quest...he had simply been the son of a minor Khan at the time, thirty years ago. His dreams had finally been fulfilled, uniting his people and creating a powerful empire, and now it was all threatened. His spymaster reported discontent stirring in his Khans, who had lost faith in his leadership, and everything he had worked for might yet come to naught. He shook his head wearily. He was too old for this - if he survived the fight, he would pass power on to his son, Jeilgi, son of the Khan, and retire with his wife, Meirla. He ran a hand through his gray hair and returned to the keep in the center of the castle.

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Larktin's waist-length blonde hair swirled around her black plate armour as she spun and slashed furiously, her two-handed practice sword beating heavily into Lord Pilnit Grife's shield. Grife managed to disengage, sweating and catching his breath. He was the youngest of the commanders chosen to accompany Lady Larktin, but he was a highly atypical Geroian. He enjoyed luxury and culture, and devoted himself to those instead of perfecting the art of war - he was still a highly skilled warrior, however. Yes, Grife thought, he was the most cultured and intelligent of the Geroians, and his star was rising rapidly - he had even had the influence to convince old King Torgin to send him, scarcely 26 years old, instead of the more experienced General Hrin on this mission, with Torgin's beloved and beautiful 22 year old daughter Lyr-

Grife sprawled on the ground, confused. Larktin stood above him, looking amused, her wooden sword resting casually on the ground in front of her feet, point first. Grife winced as he started to pick himself up, realizing that he had been slashed hard while he was lost in his reverie. Larktin clasped his hand in hers and pulled him up hard, then walked back towards the practice racks and put away her wooden longsword. Grife watched her interestedly as she peeled off her masterwork plate armour without a care and slid on her undergarments, ignoring the men eying her in the room. He winced, then, feeling the heavy blow that had brought him down.

"That's going to bloody sting tomorrow," he muttered. He sighed, and changed out of his black armour, putting on his normal clothes, and returned to his chambers in the northwest tower, ringing for some of that delicious Velucan wine he had brought with him on this march. As he finally relaxed, reclining in a comfortable chair in front of his fireplace with a cup of wine and his favorite book, Lady Larktin walked through his chamber door. He winced as he leapt up and stood at attention in front of her. It was too bad, he reflected as he admired her shapely curves, that she seemed to be asexual.

"Did you hear me?" Lady Larktin said quietly. "Oh, crap," he thought. "I wasn't paying attention at all!" He glanced out the window at the dark, starry night sky. "I beg your pardon, my Lady?" He nodded to himself. "Suave." Larktin frowned slightly, then repeated her orders.

"We're marching northeast tomorrow, at dawn. I want you to be ready for some special tasks."

"Understood, m'Lady. Anything else?" Grife prayed that she wouldn't ask for anything else. Larktin paused slightly, and turned back towards him. She eyed him up and down, and nodded approvingly. "That's it, Grife. And it's good to see that you're starting to get some initiative of your own." With that, she walked away, returning to her own chambers.

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Larktin inhaled deeply, closing her eyes, enjoying the scent of the early morning air, as she stood at the balcony of the center tower of the keep. She was still in her translucent nightgown, the wind caressing her face and blowing her long hair back. She truly did love Calradia - it was a pity that its people had forced her people, the original Calradians, out, with their barbaric actions. She could have enjoyed living peacefully with the Calradian peoples, and she had always had a secret fondness for literature, theatre, music, and wine. She looked out over the horizon, considering the progress her armies had made, wiping all but a few Rhodok castles out, massacring Swadian patrols, and taking half of the Khanate. Perhaps she should stop here, she reflected. She enjoyed speaking with the Calradians, and had often invited captured Lords to join her and her lieutenants for dinner, discussing astronomy, mathematics, and science. She had learned little of those topics except what might be useful in war, and found the discussions to be truly invigorating, as she suspected her lieutenants did as well. She turned back towards her bedchamber, pulling her heavy black plate armour, gauntlets and greaves on, then settling her swordbelt on her slender hips and sliding her masterwork longsword into its scabbard. She concealed a knife on herself and tossed her hair back, then left her room for the dining hall. They would be engaged with Sanjar in two days.

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Prince Yaroglek glanced at the heavy fortifications that Sanjar had built. Palisades and stone walls strung a league across in a shield for Tulga, with caltrops, earthworks, and a mighty keep. If things went right, he reflected, he'd expand the Vaegir holdings, repel the deadliest force ever seen in Calradia, and make Sanjar indebted to him for all his life. A feral grin came to his lips as he glanced at his morningstar, a weapon he had fondly nicknamed Skullcrusher. He turned towards the Princes he had ordered to accompany him, signaling orders and reinforcing the weak points in Sanjar's defense structure. He rode back to the Khan's keep, his personal guard accompanying him.

"Sanjar, we're here. You can stop praying to whatever monkey Gods you pray to," he said mockingly. Sanjar didn't seem to hear him. "Sanjar? Khan? Lord of all he Surveys?" Yaroglek frowned. He stepped forward anxiously. "Are you okay, Sanjar?"

Sanjar turned and grinned, hugging his old friend Yaroglek. The two rulers smiled. They had fought and waged war on each other in the past for political reasons here or there, but at heart they were still the same old -and highly competitive- friends they had always been. Sanjar looked at him seriously then. "Larktin and her troops will be here by daybreak tomorrow. Yaroglek nodded grimly. "We'll stop her. Not even Count Arowynd and his bloodthirsty army of Swadian Paladins would be able to break our armies here and now."

Sanjar turned away. "Maybe, my friend. Maybe."

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The farmer panted desperately as she fled towards the fortifications of Sanjar. She glanced behind her desperately, seeing a Dark Knight bearing down on her with a lance. As she glanced forward again, sprinting faster, she tripped and tumbled down a gully, falling into a shallow stream. She lay there groaning and staring up at the cloudless blue sky as the Dark Knight reined his charger in, and dismounted, drawing a greatsword. The knight descended into the gully, glancing left and right for the farmer. As he raised his greatsword, the farmer did the only thing left to her to do - she rolled. The greatsword slammed into her back, a long but shallow cleave into her back. She screamed and scrabbled away desperately along the muddy gully, trying to reach the trees. Birds scattered in the trees as she managed to gain her feet again and ran through the trees, heedless of the branches that reached out to stop her progress and cut her. All she was focused on was the fact that she had less than a league left to run to safety, to escape the monsters who had butchered her father and mother.

The knight returned to Lord Tantius. "One escaped, my Lord. She made it to safety at the Khan's fortifications. Our scouts also report that Lady Lyrin's army is preparing to engage Sanjar even now. Purin's army is ready for combat and will flank twenty minutes after Lady Larktin and Lord Grife engage. Milady's orders for us are to flank with Purin, attacking from the north as Purin strikes from the southeast, and milady attacks from the southwest." Tantius turned slowly. "Very good, captain. Ready our men, we will join our lady and crush these Calradian rabble." He reflected inwardly...perhaps that whore Larktin will die in this battle and I can take command of this army. God knows she doesn't know how to command.

"Move out, Captain."

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The two commanders surveyed the field that they would be fighting on - Larktin looking for weaknesses, Sanjar looking for positions of strength. Sanjar felt that old knot of nervousness in his stomach, the knowledge that this would determine his legacy and place in history, whether the Khergits would stand together or fail, and whether all of the Khanate would be swallowed by this storm. He pulled his helmet onto his head and drew his long dao.

"It's time. Get the troops ready, commander."

Lady Larktin glanced at the field. She instantly saw the one weak spot in Sanjar's defenses, and she knew that Grife saw it too.

"Grife."

Grife turned towards her with a flourish and a bow. "Yes, m'Lady?"

Larktin pointed at the weak spot in Sanjar's fortifcations. "Don't attack that spot. Sanjar's a seasoned commander, he wouldn't leave a weak point in his defenses unless he knew it was a trap."

Grife nodded. "Anyth-" Larktin cut him off. "You won't be fighting on the front lines today. I need you to stay back and coordinate the army's movements with Purin and Tantius."

Grife looked surprised. "Really, m'Lady?"

Larktin nodded. "You've earned a chance to command. Good luck. And remember. This is for the future of our people."

Larktin swept her cloak off and mounted her champion charger. She looked quite impressive, her waist-length blonde hair blowing back and gleaming in the light of the afternoon sun. Her figure seemed enhanced by her armour to Grife. "Good luck, m'Lady."

He watched as she rode down to the front lines and signalled a charge. Her voice wafted up to him in a long battle cry, and twelve hundred knights charged as one, their lances gleaming in the sun, a slender figure at their head, her hair blowing back in the wind.

Discussion Questions:

No, not really.

 

[Pellagus]

The Ivory Temple

Parl watched his last arrow thud into the very edge of the target. His shoulders slumped. At least that one had hit the target. Well, that was that. He looked down at the bow in his hands. It had been his older brother’s hunting bow, back when his older brother bothered to practise. Now he ran the small brewery at the back of their farm in Mechin, was very popular with at least 3 girls that Parl knew of, and had little time for hunting.
The Senior Templeman, Gradolek, put his hand on Parl’s shoulder.

“Come on, son.”

The Templeman led him away from the practise field. Soon they were through the walls of Reyvadin and walking along its rough paved streets. Parl noticed they weren’t heading toward the marketplace.

“Templeman, the marketplace is down there a-ways, my father will be wanting to get back before nightfall.”
“Hah, I sent your father home hours ago, boy. That’s where we’re heading!”
Parl looked ahead, and saw the solid bulk of the Ivory Temple rising up before them.
“But, I missed my last round of arrows…”
“Ha ha, everyone does! Why do you think they set the practise field so close to the walls, boy? They know that every lad who brings his granddad’s old hunting bow will have to aim high with that last round. Much too far to shoot straight, see? The wind blows over that bloody wall and takes your arrow wherever it fancies. You did well to hit the target that last shot mind, not many as manages that, I can tell you and I’ve seen a fair few in my time. Mind yourself boy.”

The Templeman steered Parl around a group of men arguing outside a tavern. The Templeman spat in the road.
“Bloody Pabst and his men! Pabst the Brave? Pabst the fool more like!”

Some of the men looked round at this outburst, Parl shrank from their glares.

When they were a bit further on, he asked, “Who is Pabst, Templeman?”
“Damn idiot is what he is, hero of Slezkh, they say. Took it on himself to be protector of them and they love him for it, pah! He’s no better than the bandits and mercenaries he kills, I reckon. Anyway, never mind him, we’re here!”

They had indeed reached the Ivory Temple, a squat cylinder of a building, made of close-fitting stone blocks. There were carvings on some of the massive slabs. They were mostly of elephants, or people killing elephants, and quite often people being stepped on by elephants. Parl had seen these carvings before when he’d visited the town with his father on market days. Lines of the strange beasts ringed the outer wall of the temple in a band and met above the main gate, over which a carved elephant head loomed, with gilded tusks.

Templeman Gradolek led them round the side of the temple and away from the commotion in the street. This was the working end of the Ivory temple, away from the majesty of the front. The carvings on the wall here showed men following the elephants. Most of them were shovelling dung. Parl guessed this was the stonemasons unsubtle way of announcing they were at the back end of the temple. There were animal pens and sheds here amidst the familiar smell of manure, but there was also a practise field for archery. A couple of junior bowmen were firing their bows at what to Parl’s eyes appeared tiny targets. He watched with amazement as arrow after arrow thudded home and true, until the Templeman pinched his shoulder and led them through a side door and into the temple itself.

It was dark and surprisingly cramped inside the temple. It seemed to Parl to be a warren of corridors and his sense of direction soon gave up on him. The air was thick with the smell of tallow and wax. In the gloom, Parl saw a man working above a wide, steaming cauldron. Every now and then he removed a long strip of gleaming ivory and cautiously bent it, before placing it back in the boiling water. Nearby, another man was turning a lathe, though Parl could not see if it was ivory or wood that the man was working. They passed through rows of finished bows and around what looked like a tree trunk hung with dozens of quivers, each filled with arrows. In another corner, sweating men were working sinew against the glow of a hot fire and another boiling cauldron. And above them, everywhere they went, were hung hundreds of tusks like curved stalactites.

Finally, they reached a wide open space which seemed to Parl to stretch up and up. Even here, rows of tusks hung down like fangs in some huge mouth. At the far end of the chamber was a simple stone altar, above which was a huge skull, far bigger than that of a cow. Parl knew at once it must be the skull of an elephant. It had no tusks.

The old Templeman had stopped walking and seemed to be taking in the room. He sniffed.
“Smell that? That’s the smell of old things, Parl. This is an old place, far older than the princes of Vaegris. Old Yaroglek would have you believe his family built this place, but it’s far, far older than him or his line. The town itself grew around this building, you know, it has been here a long time.”
The old man stood silent. Parl thought perhaps he should be asking more questions, like his dad had told him to.

“Is this where we come to pray, Templeman?”

Gradolek laughed so hard at this he doubled up. He slapped his knee and grinned at Parl.
“Do we strike you as religious, Parl? Who would you have us pray to on the battlefield, boy? Yon skull? When the thing that keeps you alive is your skill with a bow or your speed with a sword? Heh, this is our meeting hall, where we decide if we will work for the prince! Hah, you look surprised! Did you think we were his to command? Heh, he needs us, boy! And when we are called, we will fight like no other soldier in Calradia, but betray us at your peril lest you find our arrows trained on your head. Don’t forget Parl, a single arrow can end a war, be it in the princes head of that of his enemy. Yaroglek knows this well. Come on, there is something you need to see.”

The Templeman strode across the hall and Parl struggled to keep up. They went straight up to the altar, then Gradolek led Parl around and behind the great stone slab. Parl saw two Ivory Guards, either side of a flight of stone steps leading down. The Templeman took a candle from a nook in the wall and lit it on another already burning. Then Gradolek said something to one of the guards that Parl could not hear and led Parl down into the gloom.

“Never ever approach these stairs on your own, boy, or the guards will cut you down without a pause.”

Parl could see the old man grinning in the candlelight and could not tell whether he was joking or not. He decided quickly it would be wiser not to try finding out.
At the very bottom of the steps was a fat stone column which apparently blocked the way, but Gradolek led them around one side through a narrow gap. On the other side Parl felt the darkness open out before him. As his eyes became accustomed, he could see they were in a deep vaulted cellar. More of the great columns rose out of the twisting shadows. For a boy, Parl was not easily frightened, but it was not a place he wished to linger. The air smelled damp and it was colder than it had been above. Gradolek moved with purpose through the darkness and Parl followed.

Suddenly, out of the dark rose another set of tusks, far larger than any Parl had ever seen attached to a skull even bigger than the one in the hall above. Behind them was a ribcage so large Parl could have walked through it without stooping and beside it were leg bones at least as long as a man was high. Parl stared for a moment, but noticed that the Templeman had carried on further into the vault. He hurried to keep up as they walked on in silence. Slowly he realised that the floor was sloping down and was no longer as smooth as it had been. The walls and roof here were rough and the ceiling was no longer worked stone and it was if possible even colder.  They were in a cave! Parl’s eyes gaped in the darkness as he followed the Templeman down deeper and deeper.

Finally Gradolek slowed. The walls were closer together here, but the ceiling had risen again; Parl could feel space above him, though he could not see much. The air tasted stale. The Templeman lit another candle.

“See, look above and around you Parl!”

In the flickering light from the candles, Parl made out what the Templeman was pointing to. Crudely drawn figures on the wall. They carried bows! They were running and firing arrows… Were they hunters? Yes, there was something big and brown and… it had tusks! They were hunting an elephant! Was it the giant they had passed in the chamber above? It certainly looked big. Perhaps the artist had been a bit over excited and got the size wrong…
Parl’s thoughts raced as Gradolek stood beside him silently. This was a test he felt sure. He cleared his throat, which sounded unusually loud in the cave.

“This is old isn’t it? Really old? Is this where the Ivory Temple began?”

Gradolek smiled, his eyes gleamed in the candlelight and he stared very intently at Parl.

“Sometimes in a warm spring, when the summer seems to come early, I have heard of villagers on the snow line finding huge bones and pelts in the ice. Bones like the ones we passed, yes. They were hairy, not like the elephants far to the south, whose tusks cost our order so highly. And they lived here, in Calradia, a long time ago.”
“Where are they now?”
“Hunted to death, or gone away. Who knows? Perhaps it is where the Ivory Temple began. But it is a long time past, young Parl, and it is our secret. You know it is one we keep because you have never heard it before today. Do you understand Parl? You are one of us, now.”

Parl had more questions for the Templeman, but Gradolek had turned and was climbing up out of the cave. Parl looked one last time at the figures on the wall and noticed that the artist had taken special care to paint the bows and arrows in white… But behind him, Gradolek was almost out of sight.

Parl hurried to catch up with the Templeman.

 

[amade]

The Last Bounty Hunter.

"I dare say he camped here not two days ago, Ganvei."

Ganvei was staring to the East. In the distance he could see the smoke rising from the many chimneys of Reyvadin. Much further beyond that, snow capped mountains loomed up from the horizon, their size still impressive even though they're several leagues away in the distance.

"He had chicken by the looks of it. Left the camp and continued Westwards."
"Blast, if he goes over the river that means we're going to have to chase him through hordes of sea raiders!"
"Hah! That bunch we came across yesterday was hardly a challenge!"
"I can hardly call losing almost two dozen of our men to the blood-thirsty bastards a stroll at the beach!"
"Which is more dangerous actually, what with those raiders landing there almost every bloody day of late."
"Shut up!"
"Is there any chicken left?"

Ganvei kept silent, he tried to ignore the ramblings of what remained of his severely reduced company. They proved their mettle against the fierce sea raiders, no doubt about that... even though in the end they all had to make a blind retreat in the dark. Yesterday was a disaster. No... A calamity is what it was. Ganvei turned around to the West and shaded his eyes against the sun riding low over the horizon. Kulum would be across the river, only a couple of days away on horseback. The water would be much too deep to ford but Zhimet won't be using the heavily patrolled bridges to the North or to the South. Someone in that village must be helping him out.

"You're sure he went West, Larn?"
"You know you never have to double check if it's me, chief."

Ganvei noted the hint of reproach in Larn's voice. He never doubted Larn's tracking abilities but it never ceased to amuse him how annoyed the man could get everytime he asked. Out of the six remaining men under his command Larn was the only one he'd known from old. Always outnumbered, always in a desperate situation, the two of them had always managed to cheat death and escape. It occurred to Ganvei that almost all his life he had spent it running away from things. I chase, only to be driven back almost everytime. Yesterday was no different.

He turned to his troops, they were all visibly weary from the hard riding the night before. The sea raiders were a persistent bunch, you dare not stop for a rest until you could hear the birds singing again. Their ever constant warcries scare even the wildlife miles away from them. Larn, only a year older than him, shrugged. Ganvei understood the simple gesture to mean, yes, we got away again this time. His frayed grey hair reminding Ganvei of their age. Ganvei himself was bald, and if he looked into a mirror he wouldn't be able to tell his own age if only because he couldn't see his wrinkles for all the scars he's had over the years. The rest of them were quite young. But not inexperienced. If not, they certainly would not have survived the night before. Only one of them was truly lucky, the youngest one called Kalechvy who wasn't even in his twenties yet. He seemed to be more cocky than before when he realized that he made it out of hell the previous night with only a few scratches. A very idealistic youth, Ganvei found himself wishing the lad had at least lost a finger or two last night to teach him a valuable lesson in survival. Over the years he himself had only 8 and a half fingers and 6 toes left. But he had yet to lose his thumbs. The day he lost his thumbs would be the day he'd quit bounty hunting.

"I see that you gents are still in high spirits despite last night! So I suppose there will be no objections in continuing our pursuit Westwards?"

The men were silent, but one groan was clearly audible.

"Are you not up to it, Guchyo?"
"That wasn't me, chief! That's me stomach beggin' for rations!"

That earned a round of laughter from the men. Ganvei found it hard to believe they still had any morale left after what happened to their comrades last night. He wished he had more men like this. But they never last. They never do. He'd heard of tales from far down south where a lowly steppe nomad had fought his way up from his mere humble beginnings to lead one of the most fearsome mercenary bands ever to roam Calradia. Few men were lost under his command, which was something of a trademark among even the Khergits who use their advantage in mobility to limit their losses. He gained respect and a place among the nobility, made powerful enemies that Ganvei could only dream of in his nightmares. His downfall at the hands of Lady Larktin of the Dark Knights were the talk of every town and village Ganvei visited lately. People refused to believe it. Already legends and myths surrounding the two powerful figures were mushrooming out of control. Some say he was only wounded, such men never truly die, and will rise again one day to purge the Dark Knights out of Calradia. Others say he had joined forces with Lady Larktin, swooned by the power promised to him and by the Lady's rugged beauty as well. The most outrageous tale Ganvei had heard was the one where the man had indeed died upon a stake but was ressurected three days later to return to the heavens where he came from!

Ganvei wasn't ambitious. All he wants is that tomorrow comes for him again. Bounty hunting is merely a way of making a living, though on reflection he considered what most bounty hunters made these days were not a living. Quite the opposite in fact. He glanced at the boy Kalechvy again. I used to be like him. All idealistic, thinking about bringing hard justice to criminals and looking all dashing while doing so. Look at him, his once stylish clothes in tatters now, but he is still wearing it as if some wenches are going to pass by and remark how dashingly rugged he looks. No wonder I hate him, he reminds me too much of another person I really hated... a much younger me.

"You can forget dinner, Guchyo. I'm still not easy with those raiders from yesterday still roaming around these hills. We'll press on and hunt anything that crosses our path."
"Just our luck we had to lose all our rations during last night's misadventure." Larn shook his head lightly.

The rest of the men grudgingly mounted their horses, the poor beasts looking just as weary as their riders are. At Ganvei's signal they start to trot toward the setting sun. To think that this Zhimet fellow will only net him and his company barely over a thousand denars. It's not as if fighting is the only thing he knew how to do in life. He's well aware that his closest friend Larn will be hanging up his bow for the last time after this job for a more peaceful life in town. There aren't many bounty hunters left in Calradia. Sure, there are plenty of mercenaries running around but they're really no better than the bandits they occasionally hunt down. And the worse part is people often liken us to them. He looked again at his men following behind him. Their tired looking eyes staring at nothing but straight ahead, only God knows what they've been through to get this far in the trade. They could have been mercenaries, earning many more denars than they do now. Or they could have been bandits, earning whatever they like they can get away with. Only the boy still has that keen righteous glimmer in his eyes. And once that is gone too? These men may be the last bounty hunters in Calradia left for all he knew.

No. Ganvei did have an ambition. He will not let age or the changing world defy him. More than anything, he is determined to become the Last Bounty Hunter in Calradia.

 

[amade]

The Saga of Nizar - Exploits of a Great Adventurer
Abridged Edition - Vol IV, 3rd edition, 1483

It has been many years since I left my home soil of the steppes. During my initial journey into the valley of Praven I have, in various occasions, rescued plenty of peasant women from the roaming bands of steppe bandits who infest the land between Halmar and Ichamur. My ever faithful steed carry me fleetingly into battle, my sword swiftly cutting into the belly of the vagrants before they could even let loose an arrow, the women ever so grateful.

But now, compared to the beauty that is the Nordic maidens there is no doubt that I do not long for the time spent polishing my skills across the steppe any longer. I have been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of some of the graceful ladies of the Swadian court, I have swooned many a zesty and strong minded Rhodok woman, I have even tamed wild and hardy Vaegris wenches countless times before. But the Nordic maidens... Ah! What a challenge they are to me, I could almost feel my reputation to be under threat. And yet nothing compares to their beauty, their bravery and their spirit.

It is for this reason that I've associated myself with a certain band of mercenaries. It is as if I have found a beautiful flower blooming within a desolate wasteland. A maiden of Nordic origin, whose name I shall not disclose here, had enlisted herself with the mercenaries for reasons I do not know myself even until now. It was in a tavern in the town of Sargoth whereupon I chanced on the occasion to gaze at her limitless beauty. I was momentarily awestruck, what was a fair maiden as she doing in this filthy, gloomy waterhole amongst brute, stinking barbarians? She was approached by a certain man, only marginally cleaner than the people in the tavern, and was invited to join the man's mercenary company. For the first time in my life I knew that here was a chance I could not afford to let slip. Such a rare beauty should not be left to waste! I inveigled the mercenary captain to accept me into his company.

The mercenary captain was reluctant to accept me at first, I could see in his eyes that he felt threatened by my aura of superiority. To his credit however he later proved to be a remarkable warrior, second only to my own prowess in the field of battle. He does not show fear to the enemy, his reputation far precedes him as even the nobility know well of his various deeds. Finally I've found myself a challenge worthy of my level. I have no doubt that soon my own name will be sung in noble courts across Calradia, in tales spun out of my rivalry with the mercenary captain. My valorous deeds compared to his within taverns and around campfires everywhere. Young men will be be inspired to achieve great feats while fair maidens dream of sweet romance with none other in their soft slumber.

The maiden I spoke of earlier was more than what I had expected. She was worthy of being called a Valkyrie. In battle she never flinches from arrows passing overhead, she does not turn her head in disgust from the blood and entrails flying around us while the enemy fell to our feet one by one. I was entranced by her beauty and her courage. Not to be outdone I girded myself and strived to increase my pace in the mêlée. My actions had not gone unnoticed, she was impressed by my sublime skill in both wielding the sword and in my wit as I hurled poetic repartee to the enemy. I suspect however, that the captain had also noticed this and I detect a hint of jealousy within him.

During the many weeks I've spent with the mercenary company I've managed to carve myself quite a reputation. It won't be long before the stories regarding me surpass that of the captain's. Yet, not all is rosy within this company of uncultured men although this hardly unexpected. A few of the uncouth mercenaries find me to be distasteful, which I find it to be amusing considering the grub they have for mealtimes. Their daily habits are not to be spoken of either, I've never been with a more undesirable bunch of savages in my life before. It is only the presence of the Nordic maiden which makes enduring it all worthwhile. If I could persuade the fair lady to leave with me I would have already done so, but the Valkyrie is also an ice queen. Though she holds me in high regard she continuously brushed off all my advances. Be it by gentlemanly deeds or soothing words she would not budge from her decision to stay, I have yet to resort to pleading and groveling and hope that I will never have to stoop so low. I swore an oath that I would soon be able to break open the gates to her fortified heart. Oh, to embrace her in my arms and to free her from her miserable surroundings! A lowly fate among these men is not worthy for one as pure as her.

Having set in my mind to follow her everywhere she would go I chose to stay and fight with the company. The captain is still worthy a rival for me, at least. Every morning I wake I look toward her tent as she comes out into the new day, her graceful yet formidable features accentuated by the dawning sky outlining her. She is almost a tale upon herself, a living legend and a Goddess. An Ice Maiden from the Nordic lands. I will win her over. It is a promise not to be braken.