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Vol.5, Ch.2, P.5

 

In all the lands did hang an air of anticipation, like an ember ready to burst—like a guillotine set to fall. In Hensen were Rolf and all the braves bustling with preparations for battle. A ways south thence, soldiers watched from the walls of Balasthea, keen to disallow another stealthy assault. The folk of Ström, meanwhile, strived each day to make good of their nascent government, an effort echoed by their neighbours to the east in Tallien. And south again from the latter land laid the marquisate of Isfält, holy province of Londosius, and as well, the expected site of the next great battle.

A three-front offence—such was the aim of Rolf and the military minds at Hensen. The Víly-Gorka alliance, the Reùlingen host, and the anti-establishment Cutcrowns were to compose that martial enterprise. Yet it was a fact that the last of those three were once Londosians themselves; why they so sought to sunder themselves from their former masters is best explained by the dusking days of the province whereupon they were based: the county of Artean, eastern neighbour to Isfält itself.

It was no secret that the prior lord of Artean was a drivelling lackheart. His subjects, high- and lowborn both, felt his fecklessness on the daily, for ever and only was he a man deep in his indulgences. Indeed, rather than busy himself with bettering the lives of his citizenry and fulfilling his lordly office, all his love and all his energy went instead to the collection… of art. Canvas or sculpture, he discriminated not; the count of Artean was a connoisseur of the crafts, and so ever poured into his passions the princelier share of the public’s taxes.

He did not think this unwise. No, of course not. In fact, he thought it his very purpose—as a self-proclaimed aegis of the arts, as a perceiver of subtleties and sophistication, as a measurer of the material and the imaginary. He was of the belief that the preservation of Man’s inspirations made manifest should fall squarely upon the laps of all Londosian wealsmen. That his means to that end amounted to no more than misappropriation, that his was a dereliction of duty, a neglect of his noblesse oblige, all for the sake of his selfish pursuits, never once entered his mind.

Suppose that he did begrudgingly quit his galleries for his office chamber, if for just a day or even an hour. Nay, no good would come of it, and neither has any ever. Governance, economics, civil affairs—these he but took for tedium, and for none whereof did he possess the slightest sliver of good sense. Yet that bothered him little, let alone saddle him with any shame. For him, the sense for culture and creativity was all that mattered.

But one day, word had reached his ears of Londosian shipyards yearning for lumber. And as is oft the case, when there is demand, supply is soonest sought. Perhaps tempted by potential capital for his pursuits, the count of Artean then set quill to scroll, mandating that a mountain in his province be logged, and wholly so, at that.

The Arteaners collectively sighed. “Yet another folly in the works,” they grumbled. “Pretending again a busy lord in between his fits of artistic cravings?” others mocked. Some amongst them, however, could scarce believe their ears. Pale and livid, they protested forthwith, and even moved to stay their lord. Evidently, the common sense to conduct a survey of the land to be logged had not occurred to him, nor the formulation of any plan or schedule with which the monumental works should be carried out. This portended ill.

For his part, the lord would have none of it, and cupping his ears, saw to the culling of the mountain’s greenery. A month wheeled on by. When next the moon saw it, the mountain from above looked bald of all leaf and bough; the sight, however, was soon obscured, and for rather long, as it was now the springing of summer, and with it, the westerly winds were come to wet the lands. But axed and uprooted of all trees that once fastened the soils, the ensuing, unceasing rains melted the very face off of the mountain and flooded the fields below with mud and stone.

Hundreds of homes vanished. Pastures and plantations were painted, buried under black and brown. And swallowed up amongst it all were the smallfolk—uncounted, uncountable.

This seemed the end for the lord. No more of his madness would his subjects suffer any longer. Amidst their railings and rebuke, a change had visited upon the count, one that left him wasting away in his chambers, his conscience sick and despondent. The numberless dead, the incensed citizenry, the resultant loss of all favour and support—none of that mattered. No, indeed. For it had come to light that the masterpieces that so sat and hung upon his galleries, his halls, and his repositories were many of them mere forgeries. The aegis, the perceiver, the measurer was all but crushed.

Taking this as a boon, the lord’s son soon rose to the occasion: convincing his fading husk of a father to abdicate the countship, the son summarily made himself master of Artean.

Then with all speed, the lordling bent his will upon the county’s recovery. Budgets were assigned, schedules writ, a teeming task force formed to plan and implement all manner of solutions to set Artean back on its feet. Even Central itself deigned to throw its weight behind the effort with a generous injection of capital.

Things finally began to look up. Swift and sound were the lordling’s policies, his hand striking true wheresoever he set it. Indeed, a man most capable was the son proving himself, that he very well seemed a golden hawk hatched from the half-hearted hens of his line, and the folk of Artean were all the gladder for it.

Yet the recovery efforts were, at the end of the day, an enterprise set against the whim and might of Mother Nature, and only too seldomly do such wagers play out to expectation. Slowly, slowly, but oh so surely, then, did all the labours begin to unravel. Tasks tarried, schedules slacked—eyes nearsighted soon discovered no end to the muck and mire to be moved. And if one could name a single grievance shared by all the wunderkinds of the world, that was precisely it: the going awry of their precious plans. And for the prodigy he was oft-proclaimed to be, this development left the son increasingly cross by the day.

For in him was self-love a flower tenderly tended. A narcissist, the lordling lauded his capable and calculating self to a fault—more so of late than ever before. He was to be the hero rising from the ashes of his father’s failings, to be the lord Artean ever longed for, to be the winner of the wilted hearts of his people. The ray of hope; the hand from heaven reaching down to save those accosted by this catastrophe.

The messiah.

So paved had seemed that road of his. And having beheld it, the lordling could not help but crave what its courses promised: glory. Fame, fortune, grace, and glory—all these must be his, he had thought, and thus like a hound upon a scent, he had sped down that road, determined to see it to its end. But when his plans and policies began to crack and the recovery efforts fray at their seams, so did the mists begin to roll over that road of his. Lost and disillusioned, the lordling awoke at last from that dream, cold with sweat and panging with impatience.

Upon so doomed a path, a humble man would have turned heel, and back at the start, began again all the wiser. A haughty one, however, would only push onwards with what little is left him, death and doom be damned. For this is but a trial, he thinks, and he the one destined for its triumph. Of the two, the lordling was squarely the latter.

All his labourers thereafter found themselves worked to the bone. Mound after mound after mound of mud and ruin remained for removal, and much delayed as the work had become, it was ordered that it continue deep into the night, and every day, at that. But it hardly stopped there. Daily working hours stretched from ten total to twelve, and then to sixteen. And at the last, it was fattened to twenty. Sleep was scant. Rest became sin. To the bone, indeed; soon did many start to succumb, collapsing unto the mud they so toiled to remove.

Men of the military ought have been employed from the outset, one might say. The county had them in spades, that was certain—a Fiefguard of its own, in fact, whose number had long patrolled the mountain borders that straddled Nafílim territory. Yet more a fact still was that those very men were not to be moved. For months now, war had been raging in Artean, as from over the mountains were come the Reùlingen, bringing with them battle as sporadic as sparks of a fickle fire.

Cornered, the lordling conscripted more men from the commons, pouring them all into the endless mud-moving. But met with the working conditions so wicked and woeful, it was only a matter of time before the new hands cast their shovels in desertion. Oh, how bulged the veins upon the lordling’s brow when he found out. Swiftly into the foremen’s hands were issued whips, that they might answer insubordination with a spirited lash or three.

It was then that Mother Nature seemed to muster an answer of her own: long rains, returning now with relentlessness most abnormal—and with them, landslides. Local, but all the more cruel and frequent, they assailed and swallowed no few of the labourers. Alas did it come to it again: senseless death and needless sacrifice.

But that hardly stopped the insanity. On and on, the labourers were made to moil away, as into their ears screamed their foremen, themselves spurred on by the lordling’s wrath. Punctuating the pouring rain was the wielding of whips, gashing the backs of any who dared tire or faint.

Hell on earth it was, indeed. On the toiling grounds… and in the homes besides. For as it happened, many breadwinners had been conscripted to the recovery. Thusly deprived of their daily coin, families from every corner of Artean soon sank deeper into debt and destitution.

Rational minds hung their heads. There was no reason to recover so quickly. Not any longer, at any rate. Whatever survivors that could have been saved were, by this point, long lost to the elements, after all. The inspectors, the advisors, all arrived at the same conclusion: only the passing of generations now would see the ruined fields revived and resettled again. Indeed, though most unfortunate, till the homecoming of the Fiefguard must the muck and devastation be left as they were.

Nevertheless, the lordling relented not. He was dead set—nay, obsessed. That Central’s coin was backing this, that their eyes and ears were trained upon the son, likely had much to do with it. But to his subjects in all their suffering, none of that mattered. Not in the very least. They were fraught, fracted, forlorn, and for what? What? By now, their resentment, their own wrath was more than boiling—it was a bomb ready to blow.

In answer, Artean’s long-operating resistance, the Cutcrowns, stoked themselves to a new fervour. Though they were hardly alone: following the fall of Ström and Tallien, the rebel groups all throughout Londosius were inspired to action. Yet of them, Artean’s had been a colossus by comparison, and stood now only to grow greater still.

However, right upon the precipice of riot, right when the Cutcrowns were set to storm the citadel, shock shone on the face of every Arteaner.

For appearing now in the heart of the county were the Reùlingen.

 

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In spite of their sheer population, Clan Reù might have seemed like recluses; not in recent years had they shown any activity of note, let alone set one foot over the mountain border. That is, till he appeared in their midst.

Walter was his name. The stirrer of the Reùlingen nest; a star upon the battlefield; a heroic name upon Nafílim lips.

“Lufestiċas!” he shouted, and from the cackling skies over Artean, there showered down numberless stakes of solid levin to impale the Fiefguard ranks. Such a scintillating sight well-conjured scenes from the Scriptures, of heavenly retribution raining down upon the wretched, and to these soldiers of Londosius, of Yoná Herself, that irony was more than unforgivable. Yet as though to baulk their indignance, the next magick was quickly incanted. “Hildewiða!”

This was spellcraft most exemplary. Already had the prior magick driven the Londosian ranks into disarray; now unto them, through them, screeched winds as sharp as scythes, shearing dead any who had survived the levin volleys.

“Gwaaa—akh!” so bellowed their final breaths, to which Fiefguardsmen from the middle ranks roused themselves. “There!” they cried. “That be Walter! Off with ’is ’ead! Off with’ee!!”

Walter. Vile and venomous Walter. If only he would fall. If only. Whipped by the thought, the Fiefguardsmen bent their wills and blades towards him. Try as they might, however, they could not touch him; the Reùlingen were leading themselves all too well. However, at times would a Fiefguard defender, daring as he was decorated on the field, fleet forth and find himself but one pace from felling once and for all the hero-wiċċa. Only, sooner besetting the desperate Man would be the Edelkrieger who so guarded his quarry.

“No closer, you!”

There: a sword-frau, the flash of her keen steel fending off the spearpoint so intent upon Walter’s neck. Over and again this played out: she who would shield the hope of the Reùlingen, and the hope himself who would weave woe unto the Fiefguard.

This was going ill. Left unturned, soon would the Nafílim flood the lord’s manor. Soon would end all of Artean. Thus rallying his fraught and failing men was the Fiefguard commander, high upon his horse, his voice a peal of thunder roaring from the rear ranks.

“Fear not the fiends!!” he blasted. “Fetch the wounded! Reinforce the flanks! Left an’ right! Left an’ right!”

Long had this commander led the defenders of the fiefdom, and in turn was their trust in him ever unchallenged. But even as his men far ahead heard his vociferation, they could do naught but stare, frozen in their fright. For afore them was Walter, his staff raised high and wreathed in rivers of odyl. Rivers wringing. Rivers raging. Nay, these were no rivers; tendrils and dendrites they were, levin and electricity as red as blood and black as night, all concentrating unto the howling head of Walter’s staff.

The air snapped and stung and snickered and cracked. Ears shuddered at the shrieking crescendo. The red-blackness thrashed and throbbed from the hero-wiċċa weapon, gathering, growing, till at length, Walter gave the incantation.

“Slihthund!!”

The battlefield shone red. Reams of levin funnelled together to fire forth in a single, searing line, a serpent of pure heat. Through the myriad ranks it wove, screeching as it went, crossing a distance unimaginable for a magick, through, through, through. And there, gaining the Mennish rearguard—

“Khah…?”

—it pierced the commander from upon his steed.

His eyes gaped. His body fell. His heart exploded.

At once, his men descended unto panick, screaming and bellowing altogether. The chain of command was cut. Morale vanished; victory fleeted. And as the Men then fled, so did the Reùlingen ranks follow, tracing a course straight for the lord’s manor.

And in a few hours’ time, Artean was taken at last.

For the lord and lordling, though weeping and wailing both, had refused surrender, and mingling in the chaos that was the fleeing stampede of the Fiefguard, perished when the Reùlingen barred their escape.

So ended the suffering of them and theirs so ensnared in the recovery operations. Nay—so were they saved, and by what but an invasion of a race they had feared for so long. Yet as they watched, a weight was lifted from their shoulders, and in all their hearts, the frosts of that fear began to thaw into a thing none of them could yet put to word.

 

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