by J. S. Crews
Such stories had been filtering down to the People Of the Elk over many seasons, and such fearful whispers had troubled Vytaus from the start. Early on, he had resolved to turn the stranger away, if ever he came. Rumors of the terrible fates befalling those failing to bend to the Black Robe’s influence were enough to make even a strong man shudder—assuming such talk was to be believed. Whatever the truth, the People of the Elk were among the strongest Wodonni clans; Vytaus was confident they would not be cowed so easily as others, long ago driven further into the icy hills by their betters.
Now a brewing war must needs be added to his concerns. It was a common thing for Wodonni warriors to raid south of the Long River where the Galenni greenlanders had their great timber fortresses. These fortresses, while foreboding, were all situated on the south bank of the river. The northern bank was patrolled only sparingly by relatively small units, whose main purpose seemed to be racing back and forth, chasing off any Wodonni who dared show themselves beyond the tree line.
With the command of the southern bank and not allowing clan warriors to gather in numbers on the northern, they were often able to safeguard the huge barges of salt, spices, and other trade goods that utilized the Long River for their commerce. Often. Not always. The Long River was, after all, long. It was impossible for them to guarantee security along its entire shore. Raiding along these lines, and even sometimes on the southern bank of the river, was something of a rite of passage for young Wodonni warriors. Even small warbands sneaking south to raid farmsteads for cattle and slaves was common. What was being planned now was more than simple raiding, however. It was war.
Even in his deep well of worries, though, Vytaus felt a swell of excitement at the thought of raising his banners and invading the lands so long denied to his people. In the time of his grandfather’s grandfather, the Wodonni had freely roamed the south, but that was before the Galenni with their steel swords and the turncoat Voronni conspired to push them further and further north into bleaker environs. Yet, even as it stood, Vytaus was blessed to be a man who had never wanted for much. He had land, horses, and livestock; wives to warm his bed; slaves to do his bidding; warriors who would gladly die for him; and four strong sons to follow him. If there was anything he wanted, the gods had blessed him with the strength to simply take it.
Still, life in the Northlands was hard. Winters were long and the growing season short. Even a man such as him, who could lay claim to leagues upon leagues of land, often had difficulty managing the small fraction of it that was suitable for growing crops. There were many lean seasons during which even he, as chieftain, would go to his bed of a night with his belly protesting its emptiness. He would lie there awake, trying to ignore his hunger, knowing that the greenlanders to the south were all fast asleep with full bellies and contented hearts.
If truth be told, the idea of an actual invasion had never been more than a dream. It was common knowledge among the Wodonni that the Galenni were soft men who dressed in silks and samites, gorged themselves on rich foods, and only played at being warriors. All of the fiercest among them they sent to guard their northern borders against the stronger Wodonni, who otherwise would surely conquer them. The problem was that the Wodonni had ever been a fractitious people; it was difficult to raise a sizable army when every clan was, at one time or another, at war with every other clan, and there were even times when there was internal friction among the very tribes of a clan itself. That penchant toward discord had been one of the reasons the Galenni had been able to push the Wodonni from the lands that were theirs by rights in the first place.
The greenlanders were a more unified people, and they seemed as numberless as the leaves of the forest. No matter how many were killed in raids, more replaced them, and their fortresses—while only timber like the hillforts of Vytaus’s own people—were strong and well defended. It would cost many lives laying waste to one, only to then find yourself behind enemy lines with most of your forces depleted. And, even though the greenlanders were weak and would surely be easy fodder for the fierce Wodonni, once those northern garrisons were destroyed, it was said that the great fat cowards lived in monstrous houses of stone with walls so tall no man could ever hope to climb them. Therefore, an invasion had never been attempted in living memory.
Now, though, such a thing might be possible, and Vytaus could not help but to want it with all his heart. He also could not help but to feel a sense of dread growing deep within, however. War and its spoils were difficult not to lust after, but if anything could make life in the bleak Northlands even more difficult it was the prospect of all the strong men marching off to uncertain futures. That would mean missed plantings, and perhaps even harvests, as well as leaving herds untended for the gods only knew how long.
"What now, father?" asked Belios, eldest of his sons and ever his good right hand.
Vytaus turned sharply to glare at him. Insulent boy, he thought, when I wish to hear his voice, I will speak to him! In that briefest moment, Vytaus appraised his son: sixteen summers and stout as a bull with the look of a man to him. He was growing bolder too, that much was obvious. He never would have found the courage to question me a year ago. That is good. He will need to be bold and strong if he is to lead the People of the Elk after me. I will have to find a way to quell that boldness with respect to me, at least. I cannot have him challenging me at every turn. He must still fear me a little, even if I am the last man he ever fears.
Softening his demeanor, Vytaus answered, "Now we are for home to prepare our people for what comes. The men must ready for the muster and we must, all of us, work to provide for those who will be left behind." Freeing his horse from the post where it was tied-up, he mounted as his son did likewise. "Extra grain must needs be secured for our people before everyone else gets the same idea and the price increases ten-fold."
Belios seemed surprised, though you would only know it by a slight change in the tone of his voice and demeanor. The Wodonni were not a people whose emotions were easily read. "Do you think we will be gone so long?"
Vytaus smiled at that. He is getting bolder, indeed. "We? Who said you are going anywhere?" Seeing the boy begin to bristle, his smile became an outright roar of laughter, but he held up his hand in a placating gesture to end the complaints before they had a chance to begin. "Alright, alright! It’s to war with you and I, and I think your brother Brandr as well. The young ones will stay home with their mothers."
Belios showed nearly no outward reaction, even though Vytaus knew that he must be delighted. Good, he thought. Keep your feelings close to you, son. Control them and you will control those around you.
"To answer your question, I do not know how long we will be gone. I mean to see an end to things quickly, but a great chieftain plans for every eventuality when it comes to providing for his people. Never forget that, boy."
Belios nodded his understanding, but then something struck him and he asked, "What did you mean when you said that you ‘mean to see an end to things quickly’?"
Meeting his son’s eyes for another long moment, as each of them rocked in the saddle with the steady gait of their horses, Vytaus said, "If the armies of the Northlands must march, then I mean to be the one leading them," and, almost as an afterthought, he quietly added, "so that I can bring as many as possible safely through to victory."
Chapter One
“The Young Lord”
The afternoon sun shone brightly as the ship sailed into Newport Harbor.
The Captain of the Sea Spirit, a man who looked to be in his forties with blond hair quickly turning gray, yelled several commands in a rumbling voice. His passengers, who knew nothing of such things, could only assume he was ordering that the ship be made ready to dock. Excitement coursed through them like a rising wave.
Today would mark the end for the two young noblemen standing on her foredeck; the end of a long and adventurous journey and the end of their childhoods. They had ridden fully four-hundred miles east through forest and over mountain a
nd field—a journey of more than three weeks—before reaching the city of Bornyn, where they spent three days in the company of the Earl and Countess, who was their kinswoman. It was not the quickest route they might have taken, and that was by design; it had been the boy’s intention to make the most of the trip.
Free from the yoke of parental authority, the boys had abruptly changed the itinerary, ordering the guard detachment serving as their escorts into the wilds. The route they chose had been a more difficult journey—and longer for certain—than was necessary, but that was the idea. They were leaving behind the protection of their parent’s households to become wards of Duke Valdimir and squires in his court. During the interim, however, they were free, and they had taken advantage of that freedom to have an adventure.
Both were now wearing arguably the finest clothing they had ever owned. Boots, breeches, doublet, jerkin, and jewelry, all tailored and made specially for them. They had the court sensibilities of Countess Lorenn to thank. She had been aghast to discover that their furs and leathers were not simply riding clothes, but actually a fair representation of their wardrobes. Glendon was landlocked and isolated, a place where folks made do with things obtainable within a few miles. Bornyn was a proper city that benefitted from commerce traveling the river that shared its name, and so it seemed exotic in comparison. Newport, where they would soon arrive, was a proper seaport city that promised even more extravagance. The things they had brought with them simply would not do, and Her Grace would not have them arriving at her father’s court in less than suitable attire. In fact, she had wanted to dispose of their old things, but the boys refused, and it was all now stowed in chests in the galley’s cargo hold.
Jonas, the older of the two by only a few moonturns, was a youth of fifteen summers with a serious, brooding nature. He stood just shy of six feet tall with hair the color of the bark of the oak trees on the banners that flew over his father’s castle. His eyes were a deep, pale blue. He was a prince of the Calleron dynasty as was his father, who ruled the duchy of Glendon as Duke.
His companion was Alastar Corvinus, who would one day serve Jonas as a vassal lord, much as his father now served Jonas’s. Their family seat was situated a few days ride north and east of Glendon; and that relative proximity, coupled with the boy’s alike ages, had made them fast friends from the start.
Whenever Earl Monrowe had traveled on the business of the lands he ruled in Jonas’s father’s name, he had dutifully dragged his young heir along. On his frequent visits to Glendon, while their fathers were locked away in counsel, they had the run of the castle and grounds and had terrorized the staff as only little boys are capable. In their revels, they were legendary knights in battle, cruel pirates out for blood and treasure, as well as eagles on the wing, but most importantly they were happy. Each had found in the other the brother that the gods had not seen fit to give him.
Their connection had grown only stronger after Al was sent to serve alongside Jonas and the sons of other lords as court pages in Glendon in his twelfth year. It had been a difficult adjustment being away from his mother who, by all accounts, doted on him and his younger sister. Jonas’s father had later admitted in private that some feared she would make a weakling of the poor child if they did not conspire to create some small separation. Duke Joran had allowed Jonas to move out of his bedchambers and into one of the smaller, plainer accommodations reserved for the castle pages, so that he could help ease the transition by rooming with his friend.
Alastar was slightly shorter than Jonas, but by so little it was difficult to tell unless they stood side-by-side. His hair was darker, not quite black but nearly so, and his eyes were a full, rich and earthy brown. Likewise, his complexion was the darker of the two, even though Jonas was sporting an impressive tan after weeks of travel under the sun. He was a cheerful, sometimes flippant, youth with a ready smile and a quick, acerbic wit.
Both watched as the galley edged closer, the city seeming to grow before their eyes, and details began to resolve themselves. From this vantage, they could just make out the high towers of the huge castle, looming over the largest city either of them had ever seen. It was nearly twice the size of Glendon, protected by a wall greater than sixty feet in height, making it more than three times the height of Glendon’s outer defenses.
The sprawling metropolis—or, at least, what qualified as such in their young eyes—surrounded the hillock upon which the castle’s inner-most bailey (the oldest part of the construction) had been built, hemming the castle in to the north, west, and south with the sea directly to the east. The seaward-facing wall of the outer-most bailey stood hard against the lapping blue-green waters with its own private dock. Newport Castle, they knew from their studies, was the largest in the Northern Realm of the Kingdom.
It was now their duty to report to Duke Valdimir and become active players in his hectic court. With his guidance, and that of his advisers, they would learn a lord’s duty to those he rules and the art of statecraft, so they would be ready when the kingdom called upon them to fulfill their hereditary responsibilities. Today they would no longer be counted as children, no longer the carefree boys they had always been. Beginning today they were men of the kingdom, heirs to all they knew and held dear.
They had done their duty as pages and would now spend the next few years as squires, before eventually earning their spurs and being knighted. It was traditional at that point for young men of their station to serve a tour of military duty, preferably with a border detachment, before returning home to their inheritance. Strictly speaking, none of this was set in stone, but tradition was a powerful thing.
Serving at the border, for instance, was not a requirement so much as a Calleron family tradition in which all of the nobility were encouraged to take part. The border fortresses were always in need of dependable men and it was difficult duty, showing both that the Calleron dynasty produced hard men who were worthy of respect and allegiance and that they cared enough for their subjects to eat, sleep, fight, and even die beside the common men if needs be. That particular tradition had doomed more than one heir over the years; even a man destined for the Crown not so many years before, tragically felled by the hand of a brother-at-arms over a trivial matter. The good that came from it, however, was thought to outweigh such risks.
Calleron males were encouraged to compensate by planting their seed copiously in the wombs of their wives. Despite that admonition, however, there were precious few of the line. The King had lost his eldest son in the murder mentioned previously, leaving his second-born—a man of notoriously weak constitution—to rule after him. With the Queen also nearly a decade in her grave, many had urged the monarch to take a new young wife and make more sons, but he had outright refused; his grief was too strong to even entertain the idea of marrying again.
With respect to the remaining two branches of the royal family: Duke Valdimir had but one son and two daughters that lived; and Duke Joran had only young Jonas to carry on his lineage, one other child having been stillborn. Such was the horrible luck of things. Still, not all was dark. Duke Valdimir’s only son Prince Valdic was still a young man with a fertile young wife, who had already produced one heir in the toddler Prince Varian, and Jonas himself might one day have many sons. Only time would truly tell.
The ship eased its way into the large harbor, and the Captain inquired of Jonas again, “M’lord, are ya sure ya don’t want yer banner run up the mainmast t’signal yer arrival fer a proper welcome?”
That would be the appropriate thing to do, of course. That way, men on duty high in the towers of the castle would report the sighting, and all of the overblown pomp and nonsense could ensue. Jonas wanted none of it and remained adamant. They would arrive via the city’s main docks instead of the castle’s private quay as they wished to take the measure of this place that would be home for the next several years.
As they neared the dock, commands were shouted and the forty-some-odd oars rose from the water, then dipped to pull in the
opposite direction to slow the craft on its approach. All was accomplished without difficulty or incident as they came to rest with only a gentle bump.
Jonas and Alastar quickly gathered those few things they would carry ashore themselves, leaving the rest to be brought along later by porters, and disembarked. Standing on the dock, with the rancid stench of fish and seaweed thick in his nostrils, Jonas waved his thanks to the captain upon his quarterdeck. A command was carried by a young dockworker that horses should be brought, but in the end it was a carriage that came and sped them away, both boys trying not to appear uncultured during their first such ride. Where they had come from, carriages were seldom seen, because the crownroad connecting Glendon to the world beyond its isolated mountain vale was the only proper road to be found. Glendon was a rural duchy of dirt roads better traveled on horseback.
Newport, on the other hand, was the capital of the Northern Realm and had much more of a metropolitan air. In fact, they were now realizing the cities where they had spent most of their young lives were called cities only as a courtesy. Newport had begun much as any other frontier settlement: a simple defensive keep and timber palisade wall sited upon a small hill overlooking a natural harbor. The harbor provided an ideal shelter for the many ships needed to supply the bustling new settlement in those early days.
Quickly over time, the wooden keep and defenses were replaced by stronger stone, and concentric walls were added. A busy castletown quickly took root around the base of the hill. Then some enterprising duke had decided it was best to be safe rather than sorry and ordered a wall built to enclose his entire capital. In the years since, it had continued to grow unremittingly, spilling out over the countryside, so that later an even mightier rampart was built.
