Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series (87 page)

Though the Narasi were unskilled in stonework, he sent to them six monks of various construction orders to oversee the project.  The effort took twenty years to complete, and the far-sighted monks did not merely carve a pass, they built a castle out of the living rock to protect the passage they constructed.  The great mountain keep was a wonder, protecting the southern realm from the north and defendable from the south.  With its dedication, and the subsequent flood of younger sons and commoners searching for fresh opportunities, a string of small fortresses across the Dry Lands and the southern portion of the Land of Scars was quickly constructed and the settlement of the abundant and fertile Gilmoran plains, proper, began.

Within two generations the new fiefs torn from the western Riverlands began to send magnificent loads of cotton back through the Narrows to the ports of the south.  Within four generations, the Gilmoran cotton trade outpaced the wine trade in Enultramar.

The Cotton Lords of Gilmora became an important military force when the fifth Duke of Alshar called his banners against the Storm King’s Uprising.  Though the expedition from Gilmora was small, the fierce loyalty and magnificent finery of the Cotton Lords impressed the folk on both sides of the conflict.  When they returned home, many brought brides, brothers-in-law, and interested adventurers who sought their fortunes.  Almost all brought large coffles of slaves purchased from the Sea Lords, who had turned from piracy to slavery under the dukes.

The duchy north of the Narrows was a far different culture than the stratified south.  The Cotton Lords were extravagant and generous, absorbing the chivalric ideals popular amongst the Castali and Remeran Riverlords.  Their vast estates employed hundreds of serfs and villeins to fuel the broad fields of cotton, corn, beans and oats they grew.  Towns grew as the demand for smiths and artisans from the south brought new crafts to the comparatively primitive region.  Eventually they grew into great cities, patronized by the large, expansive families of the Cotton Lords.

The revenue brought into the duchy by the new trade was staggering.  Gilmoran cotton was deemed superior by the great weavers’ guilds of Cormeer and Merwyn, and even low-quality cotton bearing the Gilmoran seal fetched a premium price.  Every hundred bales that crossed the Narrows saw a bale go into the Duke’s treasury, and every hundred which departed the docks of Enultramar saw two.  While this seemed a small tax to pay, the ducal household found itself with a fortune in cotton in quick order.  

While the fertile plains of Gilmora brought forth crop after crop of cotton, the younger sons and restless souls continuously explored the frontiers to the north.  The explorers found a rough and wild country filled with forest after endless forest of deciduous wood.  To the Narasi-descended Cotton Lords the land represented opportunities to hunt, hawk and fish.  To a seafaring people like the Sea Lords, the first glimpse of the Alshari Wilderlands represented fleets of ships.  When the first of the rich Alshari iron depostis were discovered in the midst of the country, the fleet-minded nobles of Alshar saw their future.  

The ducal household itself funded the expeditions into the Wilderlands to open an iron mine and begin logging.  Expanding the Cotton Tax at the Narrows to two bales in a hundred to fund the effort, soon miners, smiths, mercenaries and adventurers poured into the deep interior.

Unlike the relatively deserted Gilmoran plains, where only a few peaceful farmers and tribes of River Folk lived, the highlands of the Wilderlands, like the feared Land of Scars, was filled with wild tribes of Mountain Folk, Kasari, the clans of the Pearwoods, wild tribes and ferocious wild animals.  The settlement was not nearly as peaceful as Gilmora’s, and the constant raids by the belligerent tribes bred a culture of powerful cavalrymen and rangers, harking back to their Narasi barbarian forebears, just to maintain the logging camps and mines.  

Led by the Gilmoran hero, Lord Tudry, these raids became collectively known as the Goblin Wars, due to the powerful presence of the Mountain Folk (
casadalain
) tribes in the region.  Over the course of two decades the Wilderlords, as the culture came to call themselves, dominated the forests wherever their heavy cavalry went.  

As they drove the gurvani and other tribes into the foothills of the Mindens, the highly organized, highly-secretive Kasari became the greatest challenge to the Wilderlords.  Though they tried repeatedly to overwhelm their mountain strongholds, the Kasari proved indomitable.  Eventually they settled with the duke’s representatives by sending a small number of the giant trees the Master of Waves coveted.  Nor were the Pearwood clans easily pacified.  Though the Wilderlords repeatedly sent military expeditions and diplomatic overtures with expensive gifts, the clans continued to raid the nearby Wilderlord settlements.  

The tenth Duke of Alshar was particularly intrigued by the Wilderlands portion of his domain.  When the Castali Riverlords began to test the new frontiers between the duchies, though the Cotton Lords of Gilmora were successful on the field against their Riverlord counterparts, it was the heavy cavalry of the Wilderlords that devastated the foe the most.  Their broad oakwood and rawhide shields, thick iron lance tips and heavy hauberks of Alshari steel cut through the more lightly-armored Riverlords like wheat at the First Battle of Barrowbell.

Just as noteworthy, though less celebrated, were the three companies of Wilderlands yeoman armed with their powerful bows.  A laminate of yew and hickory, these longbows, designed to slay wolves, bears, goblins and lions at a distance and tipped with well-forged iron points, shredded the Castali infantry in droves.  Though they were not awarded lands or titles the way the Wilderlords were, the strength of the archery of the Wilderlands folk was instrumental to keeping the Castali at bay.

Unfortunately, the very success of the conquest of the Wilderlands lead to the greatest loss of the great Duchy.  The duchy’s increase of the Cotton Tax at both the Narrows and at port in order to fund the construction of the new summer palace at a small river valley in the south of the Wilderlands.  It was the extravagance the dukes showed on their new palace at Vorone that irritated the Cotton lords as much as the increase in the tax.  They felt that the capital should be in their cosmopolitan midst, not among the near-savage folk of the Wilderlands.

At the same time, the dukes of Castal were luring their lucrative cotton trade from the expensive transport through the Narrows toward the eastern-flowing rivers beyond Barrowbell.  When the Alshari dukes raised the tax on cotton yet again, and the viscounts of Enultramar conspired to raise the cost of transport, a number of Cotton Lords secretly began to send a portion of their crop east, not south.  

The dukes could not help but notice the quiet rebellion, and sent agents to enforce their rule.  Yet that merely provoked anti-Alshari sentiment among the Gilmoran lords.  Though the counts appointed by the duke were loyal, many of the wealthy baronies of Gilmora were plotting to change their allegiance to the duke of Castal, who promised far more lenient terms.  Castali agents also infiltrated the society of Gilmora, spreading dissention and whispers of rebellion in every inn and tavern, castle and estate they came to.  Between Gilmoran dissent and Castali encouragement, it was only a matter of time before it came to war.  

The first Revolt of the Barons began when an unpopular loyalist was appointed one of the four Gilmoran counts.  He and his party were soon seized and put to death in a clear act of rebellion. Raising the standard of the cotton boll, the Gilmoran rebellion lasted two years.  Only when the duke called the banners of the Wilderlords to pacify them, and hung the leaders, was the rebellion crushed.  

Though the duke lessened the cotton tax after the rebellion, he increased his enforcement efforts.  The damage to relations between the duchy and many of the old Gilmoran houses was already rent, however, and ever did the murmurs of rebellion flare when loyalists were not about.

The second rebellion, Sir Lomarand’s Rebellion, stemmed from a fight between a local lord and the ducal inspectors.  Once blood was spilt, the fire of rebellion flared quickly, and soon half of Gilmora was in arms against the loyalists.

Castal waited propitiously to intervene.  When the easternmost baron declared his fealty to Castal, and not Alshar, Castal was quick to enforce the claim.  After almost a year of sputtering, eventually the rebellion turned into the three-year long Second Alshari-Castali War.  Though the duke called the banners of the Wilderlords to assist, the harsh winter north of Vorone that year delayed their deployment.  The rebels seized on this delay and continued the war nearly two years after Castal agreed to stop sending men over the frontier to aid them.

Having lost a barony, and nearly a third of his duchy, the Duke of Alshar met with the Duke of Castal for talks.  The cotton tax was again reduced at both Narrows and port . . . but no sooner was the agreement concluded, the Duke of Alshar declared a ducal monopoly on wine and cotton sold from Alshar.  There would be one fixed price for both, the duke decreed, stabilizing -- and limiting -- the profits available to the Cotton Lords’ estates.  Though angered, after the brutal hanging of rebels and traitors after the previous war the Cotton Lords were subdued in their reaction.

Though Castal did not continue to provide material aid, the far-sighted dukes planned ahead for their next opportunity.  The great works at Darkfaller were begun the same year the First Peace of Barrowbell was concluded.

Darkfaller was the greatest fortress ever attempted by the Narasi, who rarely built on the same magnitude of works as the Magocracy.  But in Darkfaller the Narasi genius for fortification finally came to the fore.  When it was complete, a great ring of five keeps, encircled by a massive, two-tiered wall behind a massive moat overlooked the Gilmoran from southern Castal.  

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.