The Aebeling (16 page)

‘And you are still sure this is the right thing to do, interfere like this.’

‘Definitely; and he brought it upon himself. But Brys did say that there was no instruction to kill the runaways – so I’ll try not to kill him.’

She kissed him again. ‘Well, if you return safely, I have a gift for you.’

Conn was about to ask and she put her finger on his mouth. ‘No questions. When you get back.’

Still curious, Conn headed out to join Wilgar and his Fyrd. Cathal had left with his band the previous night and should be hiding in the forest below the escarpment, and making sure that the arrival of Wilgar’s larger and more noticeable troop was not reported. With Conn in tow, they headed to the wall and arrived as the sun was setting, and when it was sufficiently dark, they carefully made their way down the wall to the river valley below. Wilgar knew the paths, and the head to tail line of animals make it down in less than an hour.

An hour later, they had forded the river, and made it to the forest where Cathal waited. There they un-wrapped their new surcoats. Cathal had a family emblem of a wild pig and this was on a surcoat of green, while Wilgar’s Fyrd wore the yellow sun on brown. Not only the surcoats but the Fyrds themselves were of different types. Conn was developing regiments of both heavy and light cavalry. The heavy were based on the Cataphracts, and both horse and rider were covered in armor; the horses in lamellar and the rides in a chainmail byrnie over a gambeson. They wore round felt lined brass helmets with face protection and coif to protect their necks. For weapons they carried a lance, and the newly manufactured curved Kilij sword; it was longer and better made than any common sword in Meshech. The Cataphracts were designed to be destructive; they would charge with their lances, plow their way through the enemy line and then strike with their swords. For backup they also carried bows.

Conn called his light cavalry the Sagittari – and whilst they was similarly armored with chainmail and gambeson, their horses were unarmored, and they did not carry lances, and whilst they were armed with the same sword and circular shield, their main weapons were the bow and the hundred arrows they carried. They were designed to strike from a distance and at speed.

The plan of attack was for Conn to open the gate, the Sagittari to charge in using their bows to create havoc and enrage the defenders, and then run away. The Rakians would then rush out to chase the attackers and run straight into the Cataphracts. It was a simple plan and if it worked, it would not be pretty for the Rakians; Conn expected very few to survive.

The two groups moved into position; several wiga on foot going ahead to silence any guard posts before they could raise the alarm. Cathal had been able to let a few tilia know that they should all be indoors at night and were not to do anything. Not surprisingly, the roads were uncommonly deserted.

Luckily for Conn, Salvia was an unusual village; on two sides it was surrounded by forest, and the keep and its palisade were quite close to the edge of the forest, rather than being in the middle as was more typical. Since taking the keep, the Rakians had been busy strengthening the palisade walls, and they had guard post on the corners, but there was a weak spot in any wall, and Conn had learnt where it was. Leaving the pony in the forest he scampered the rest of the way on foot; some hundred yards thought the undergrowth and saplings. Only a dozen houses separated the keep from the forest and Conn made his way through without being seen. From the plans he had drawn, Conn believed that the blind spot was between the two highest corner sentry boxes, and he successfully made his way to the palisade walls in between – the highest point being over thirty foot from the ground. Successfully under the wall, Conn threw a grappling hook to the top of the palisade and hurled himself up, carefully going over the top and down the other side.

Inside, Conn slipped quietly around the houses and buildings. He waited for a couple of guards to pass, who weren’t too observant or careful, but then they weren’t expecting trouble. He arrived at the gateway in due course, and climbing up the guard-tower, he quickly overcame the Rakian guard, disabling him in a chokehold. He unlocked the main gate, and right on schedule two of his men pulled the gate open. For his pièce de résistance, Conn took his bow from his back and two specially prepared arrows; fitted with firecrackers. He lit and fired them in quick succession and as the first soared into the air it exploded, being quickly followed by the other one. The result was pandemonium.

The Sagittari hit the Cotlif in moments; firing arrows into walls and the few Rakians unlucky enough to be on guard duty. Almost as soon as they had arrived, the Sagittari were gone; while the wiga inside rushed from their barracks to saddle their horses, and follow their ‘new’ Folctoga in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, this would have been a bad idea as they ran straight into the Cataphracts.

Conn retreated to the outside wall, going out the same way he came in. He found his horse and headed back to the meeting point. No-one knew he had ever been there. The first one back, Conn had nothing to do except wait. Within a short time, Wilgar and his Fyrd turned up, and they were without loss. Cathal arrived about an hour later; reported that twenty Rakian had died today when they charged the Cataphracts. Consequently, there were only six Rakians left, and when Cathal entered the Keep again, they quickly surrendered, including the Eaorl. They were all under guard, blindfolded with hands bound on horses behind them, and he handed them over to Wilgar – who promptly departed for Lykia with the prisoners in toe. It was now close to dawn and leaving the Eaorl behind, Conn followed along behind.

He was eating in his kitchen later that afternoon when he was informed that the former Eaorl of Salvia had ‘arrived’, and he was brought forward to learn his fate – he would soon be joining his kin building roads.

After the prisoner was taken away, Annisa and Sileas sat down with him.

‘I want you to take Sileas as Bedda.’

It was so off topic, that Conn was startled, ‘I’m not sure that I understand...’

‘You know that you can have three, don’t you?’

Conn nodded. ‘I do – and Eaorls can have four and Healdend five.’

‘Indeed – and if you want more, you can make arrangements to demote one of your Bedda to be a Scylcen. You don’t need to do that yet – so Sileas is my gift to you.’

‘And she is happy about this arrangement?’

‘Very – but not as happy as me. It will allow me more time to rest.’ She patted her belly. Seven months pregnant, Annisa still insisted on visiting Conn in his bed at night. She also worked at her position of Burhgerefa; but as a concession to Conn, Annisa had taken Sileas under her wing as an assistant. The widowed sister of the Eaorl of Tovio, Sileas had been bedda to a Thane, but had lost her family in the attack by the Rakians. Sileas was almost thirty, very pretty; tall with a full figure, her long black hair hung down and around her fine featured face with dark brown eyes. The only reason she was alive was because she had been visiting her kin in Lugia the day the Rakians had attacked her home and Tovio. Sileas and Annisa were also kin as scions of the ancient Eaorldom of Ilissus in Silekia.

As part of his macro management of his domains, Conn had appointed a Lykian scribe to a new position of Herald; his job was to manage a registry of births, deaths, and marriages, compile genealogies of everyone, and to avoid confusion, to allocate everyone a surname – retrospectively. His office had also to create and maintain a record of all heraldic emblem in use in Meshech – and if need be, create new one – as he did for some of the new Lairds. It was he who determined that both Annisa and Sileas descended from the former Eaorls of Ilissus. Luckily for him, Meshechians were extremely knowledgeable about their ancestors as filial piety was considered the duty of all family members.

Not wanting to be difficult to get on with, Conn chose not to argue, and Sileas moved into his bed that very night. She was already in his longhouse as she was sleeping in one of the ends where his staff slept.

CHAPTER 08

Conn’s second spring dawned on a transformed Haran, a replenished Veii, and a reinvented Hama. Conn now also had two daughters – twins to everyone’s surprise – Elwyne and Alana, and like their brother, they also had blue eyes; and were manipulative and demanding, and Conn hoped that they wouldn’t be like this all their lives. He was mistaken. He also suspected that Sileas was now pregnant. Twins were extremely uncommon – and considered very dangerous as deaths at childbirth were common. Sileas was hoping that she wasn’t also pregnant with twins. She was also wrong.

As expected the winter crops were bursting with grain ready for harvest; the animals were having foals, calves, kids, lambs and piglets at an alarming rate with twins and triplets common. The weather had been kind, the season kinder. Conn suspected something had to go wrong soon.

The New Year also gave Conn his first exposure to the religion practises of Meshech, with a fire and fertility celebration in gratitude for a bountiful season – which, Conn noted, was not unlike a Beltaine festival. They built four bonfires, one in each cardinal direction and each dedicated to a different Gyden, and decorated in different colors. The north was dedicated to Badb and the Moetians and Lykians, and they wore blue. South was for Tabiti and the Gatinans, and was decorated in red. In the west was Inanna, whose color was green, and her people were the Silekians. Lilith was in the west and wore yellow for her Trokians. Without any form of priest or priestess amongst them, real information about the Gyden was hard to come by, but he did learn that Tabiti was also called ‘the banished Gyden’, while the Silekians described their Gyden as ‘missing’.

How Gyden could either be banished or missing was beyond anyone’s explanation.

All the girls and women over sixteen winters dressed in one of the four colors, even if they were not actually from Trokia or Gatina. When the bonfires were lit at dusk, the musicians started playing their kettle drummers, bamboo xylophones, and bamboo flutes. The females danced in the smoke and haze; dancing clockwise while the males danced anticlockwise. It was choreographed to a point, in a long circle, and they danced as long as the musicians played, and they played as long as a single girl danced. It was exhausting – when they started dancing, they were dressed – but by the time they finished, they were almost naked – something common with fertility dances.

Conn added to the music with his didgeridoo – one of the instruments he played – as it seemed to fit into the music played by the Lykians. Conn also played the bagpipes but that didn’t seem appropriate – and he had been ‘banned’ by Derryth from playing the bagpipes in Halani. Derryth was not fond of bagpipe music, it seemed.

As well as euphoric exhaustion, the festival was meant for cleansing and renewal, as well as matchmaking, and many that danced were the new Silekian arrivals – and they took the opportunity to ‘hook up’ with other Silekians or even Lykians. Conn had an excess of Silekian males so many took Lykians as bedda. The Eaorl of Tabae’s children used the festival to formalize the relationships with their new partners.

The winter harvest was completed when Conn left for Tabae. Behind him, hundreds of horses and donkeys were being prepared to carry the grain from the harvests, as well as a small range of manufactured goods from Hama. Some were the traditional packhorses while the “new” horse collars created a new form of transport – a horse drawn version of the traditionally ox drawn two wheeled ‘red river’ cart. The horses were quicker, and technological improvements to the cart allowed them to traverse the extremely bad roads that connected the towns in Lykia, as well as carry six times as much. The workshops in Hama were also building a range of wagons – a heavier four wheeled ‘Conestoga’, the long distance people carrying “stagecoaches” and “Hanson’s” for carrying people around town. These would take some time to come into use; and the roads being built by Conn’s teams was going to hasten this process.

Conn arrived in Tabae at the end of spring as agreed, and he joined Octa in his keep for supper. Tabae was also being transformed; it was not the same run down village that he had arrived in so very few months previously. Now that Hengist, with his new bedda, had returned, the pace of change would increase.

As they sat at the table in the remodelled keep, Conn handed over a long thin wooden box.

‘What’s this?’ Octa opened up the box; it was full of thirty silver Ryals. Shiny and new, Octa examined them in the light. ‘So you have found more silver to reforge?’

‘You might say that. These were cast from ore.’

‘Ore?’ He looked at Conn curiously. ‘Haran doesn’t have any mines – they have all been exhausted.’

‘That is not necessarily true – we’ve reopened a lot of old mines – especially the coal ones. Taransay has different ways of mining that allows us to go deeper. Hama, however, has a lot of mines that you have never exploited because they were hidden by the Ancuman before they left. This is from one of those – and it is a very good one.’ Conn explained the first discovered and the several others that followed after the new what they were looking for.

‘Half your luck.’ Octa handed back the box. Conn waved it away.

‘No – they are for you.

‘For me? Why?’

‘T think it only fair that I give you thirty percent of the output…’

‘Thirty percent? What does that equate to?’

‘About twelve thousand Ryals a month.’

‘A month!! Gyden!’ Octa was initially stunned but then looked at Conn intently. ‘What’s the catch?’

Conn shook his head. ‘No catch – but I will have to add more men to my Fyrd to ensure that no one steals ‘our’ ore. I can’t watch it and the border.’

Octa laughed, a happy laugh, ‘I knew it – there is always a catch! And this thing?’ He pointed to the codex that Conn had just handed him.

‘It’s a census of everything in Haran, Hama, and Veii. Just so that you know what is going on. Even every person is listed by name; also every birthing, dying or joining for the last year.’ Conn opened it up to show the information; Octa’s officials peering over his shoulder with interest. Meshechian used scrolls – a codex was just another one of Conn’s “new” inventions. With a leather cover and hemp paper inserts it was one of the first from the factory in Hama.