Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  Darkfaller was greeted by the secret rebels as a sign of salvation, while the loyalist correctly saw it as a threat. Yet their petitions to Duke to match the Castali aggression was frustrated by the complicated court politics of Roen – the temporary capital selected in favor of a less-protected site in troubled Gilmora. Then the Duke’s flagship was unexpectedly sunk in a tempest, taking his entire family to the Shipwrecker’s Halls. The duchy was thrown into chaos as six different contenders tried to take the throne.

  Castal wasted no time in fishing in these troubled waters. They finished their works at Darkfaller and garrisoned it with three thousand Riverland knights. The loyal counts of Gilmora did their best to hold on to their lands in the face of whispered rebellion, but it was a challenge. Only the threat of the Wilderlands great houses kept the region intact at all.

  When the great houses of Alshar were forced to take sides among the various contenders, many of the Cotton Lords rallied behind their own Count Marbane, a loyalist nephew of the late duke. Though he had a strong claim and much local support in Gilmora, the adept military and political manipulations of the extended interregnum nearly plunged the country into full-scale civil war and kept him from rallying support outside of his land.

  As it was, Count Marbane was hard-pressed to repel the clandestine raids from Castal and the subversion of native rebels. His gallant gentlemen did their best to defend the realm, but when he, too, was forced to either give up his claim or face the assassins of the so-called Black Duke, Enguin, Count Marbane himself rebelled. The Duke’s reliance on the powerful Sea Lords and Vale Lords to control the south gave him a distinct advantage, and the loyalty the distant Wilderlords paid to the ducal house (though it wasn’t always clear which ducal house) put Marbane in an inferior position for the coronet of Alshar.

  When Marbane himself raised the cotton boll standard over his keep and swore allegiance to the dukes of Castal, he encouraged the other counts - and especially the barons of Gilmora -- to also change their cloaks. Though the loyalists, particularly those close to either the Wilderlands or southern Alshar in the west of the country, kept their oaths to the Black Duke, they were reluctant to take up arms against the majority of Gilmora.

  The Black Duke retaliated by sending wave after wave of Sea Lords and Vale Lords against the rebels. To his dismay, Castal honored their oaths of fealty and the great armies at Relan Cor, Castabriel, and Darkfaller advanced to support their new Gilmoran peers.

  The bloody Third Alshari-Castali War lasted five years, and raged throughout the Riverlands. Though the Black Duke’s forces pushed back heavily against the Castali and their Gilmoran auxiliaries, the barons refused to yield up their keeps. Though the might of the Vale Lords and eventually the Wilderlords were brought to bear against them, they had long prepared their castles against the day. Unfortunately, the Gilmoran’s fortified manors and light castles, designed more for residence than defense, fell quickly to the Black Duke’s forces, prolonging the war as he was forced to lay siege to them. But they stubbornly resisted Enguin’s men, though the Black Duke hung every rebel he captured.

  For the first two years of the war the loyalist forces pressed hard against the cotton boll banner. Every keep taken was treated as a domain in rebellion, hanging the lords and despoiling the manors before turning them over to their confederates. The rebels, with the support of the Castali expeditions from Darkfaller, harassed the baggage trains of the Alshari and attacked their strategic depots. When the two forces did meet on the open field of battle, they were often evenly matched.

  To harass Alshar even further, an army from the Riverlands pushed past the forward defenses of the Black Duke and dared to lay siege to the great keeps of the Narrows. Though the gateway to the south was successfully defended, it also succeeded in blocking supplies from the abundant south. The Black Duke’s forces, under Count Barduin, were forced to feed and pay their armies from the stores of the loyalists and their storehouses at Vorone.

  Duke Enguin was angered at the Castali’s temerity, but he knew that the Narrows could never be taken by force, nor starved of supply. He considered attacking the force from the rear and forcing them to surrender, but he felt that was inadequate to the cheek of the Castali. Instead, he marshalled his forces and laid siege to Darkfaller in return. Once again the Castali proved their mastery of siegecraft as they resisted the grand Alshari army in their massive fortress. Though the Alshari force was limited in what it could accomplish, it successfully managed to keep the Castali from sending reinforcements to their allies in Gilmora for two years.

  With the two greatest fortresses of the duchies under siege, the rest of the lands were nearly at peace. This provided an opportunity for the loyalists to add to their purses under the color of war.

  The expertise of the Wilderlord was not in siegecraft, as the Sea Lords and Coastlords practiced it. They were cavalry, and had little to do during the siege of Darkfaller. While their enemies were confined, several groups of Wilderlords took advantage of the state of war between Castal and Alshar to raid deep into the Castali Riverlands under the Anchor and Antlers.

  The Wilderlord raiders were fierce, striking suddenly and by surprise. With many of the Riverlands’ defenders engaged in Gilmora, the villages and towns of the Riverlands were easy prey for the ambitious Wilderlords.

  When the forces of Sir Anbrei of Vorone struck at a town less than fifty leagues from Wilderhall, the great summer capital of the smaller Castali Wilderlands, the raids became too brash to ignore as the fortunes of war. The clergy from both countries tried to intervene, but the Wilderlords invoked the war and Duin’s Law to justify their raids. As their store of loot from the prosperous wool country was growing, they saw little need to cease.

  Duke Enguin had little reason to call a halt to his fearsome Wilderlords, as they harassed his foe and added to his own fortune. Yet the rumors of rebellion in the south were rampant, and even the Wilderlords began to pine for their rustic homes after so long in the field. The cost of the siege of Darkfaller was draining the treasury as it was, and with the Narrows besieged there was no way to get the growing stores of cotton to market.

  Finally, after a series of battles - the naval battle against the Castali which Alshar won, and the Battle of the Field of Relveny, which Alshar lost (due to the treachery of Baron Restralan) Duke Enguin and Duke Jondard of Castal agreed to meet at Barrowbell for terms.

  The Gilmoran war had drained Enguin, both financially and spiritually. His wife was begging him to return from war and take charge in Enultramar. Darkfaller was no closer to falling, and while the Narrows was still defended the Castali were effectively severing the south from the north.

  Had Enguin the Black been raised as a landsman, perhaps the result of the Second Peace of Barrowbell would have been different. But when Enguin saw the opportunity to swap the contentious Gilmoran baronies for the title to six lucrative Castali Sea Lord ports along the eastern coast, historically the havens of the Sea Lords, he took it. Though the territory was still technically Castali, as the Sea Lord barons there were sworn to the Castali dukes, they were entitled to the Alshari Master of Waves as their overlord, in perpetuity, with the restriction that the ships of their havens could not make war against Alshar. In addition, certain trading rights and a host of feudal obligations were negotiated in the final Peace, including some factors with the coast of Remere.

  The result of the treaty was the releasing of nearly all of Gilmoran counts free to swear fealty to the Castali, leaving just enough of the west intact to connect the wooded Wilderlands to southern Alshar.

  Though the Black Duke and his Sea Lord supporters were pleased with the concessions gained at the conference table, many of the other Alshari nobility were humiliated by the bargain. Though no one dared raise the banner of rebellion against the cruel Enguin, the idea that a prosperous third of the duchy was now under the banner of Castal burned at them. Within four years of the Second Peace of Barrowbell, after remarrying a woman of dubious repute,
he was slain by a courtier. His young nephew, Parguin, was installed in his place.

  It took Parguin many years to cement his rule. His southern nobles had grown arrogant in the interregnum, and the Black Duke’s Sea Lord allies were not in favor of the conciliatory duke, who was raised a Coastlord at Falas. But as he slowly won over the folk of Enultramar, and even re-visited the Wilderlands capital at Vorone, he managed to keep the volatile Alshari factions from undermining his rule. While he was bereft from the great income from the Gilmoran cotton trade, there were still resources in the far Wilderlands he favored. The wine trade, too, enjoyed a modest resurgence.

  By the time the old duke arranged a conciliatory marriage with his daughter, Grendine, with Rard, the Castali heir, Gilmora was under Castali rule for a generation. The marriage was more than mere politics, as Grendine was apparently quite smitten with Rard, who was by all accounts a handsome and vital man in his youth. The marriage was made smoother to the Alshari by the re-entitling of many of the Gilmoran domains lost in the peace, though under the banner of Castal.

  Once his daughter, who was not well-liked at court, was married, Parguin turned his attention to his son and heir, Lenguin. Many of his high nobles already whispered that Parguin was far too close to Castal, and so Parguin secured the hand of the niece of the Duke of Remere, ending the long-standing commercial feud between the two naval powers.

  Though Parguin’s efforts in the latter part of his life maintained the peace and the integrity of the realm, he was still not well-respected by his nobles. Much hope was placed in the heir, Lenguin, who was raised like his sire at Falas. The boy was well-groomed for leadership, and Parguin ensured he was known by his Wilderlord nobles as well as the Coastlords, Sea Lords and Vale Lords. Soon after Lenguin’s carefully-negotiated marriage, Parguin passed to his reward and Lenguin took a diminished - but still vital - realm.

  The capstone to the post-war relations between the two realms was their cooperative effort to defeat and conquer the territory of Farise. Held independently, under the fiction that the Magocracy was still extant, the Mad Mage of Farise and his ally the Doge waged war against the merchant fleets of all of the western Duchies.

  Using the ties between the various ducal houses, with the new Castali duke Rard in the lead, the three duchies put aside their differences and agreed to attack and conquer the last shred of their ancient foe once and for all.

  Depending upon Remere and Alshar to supply the ships for the seaward assault, the Castali attempted a daring march down the fierce Farisi peninsula, attacking the port city from behind as the harbor was besieged. Between the masterful use of naval tactics, the powerful ground assault, and the use of warmagi to defeat the Mad Mage, the Doge was overthrown and the Mad Mage slain in his palace. Once the city-state was pacified, the three dukes of the west toasted their brotherhood and pledged to run the territory in concert, with none claiming sovereignty over it.

  Thus was the peace of the Five Duchies assured, through the bravery and fortunes of the brave Alshari.