The population was larger than ever it had been under the old Ehleen sway and, moreover, was growing larger with each passing year. Cities were replacing towns, becoming larger and more congested, and even the land was becoming crowded. The oceans encroached farther upon the verdant coastal croplands with each succeeding year and Middle Kingdoms states were no whit less populous, so the only viable direction for expansion lay to the west.
Compared to the east—from which their ancestors had been driven by the Ehleenee nearly a thousand years before—the peaks and glens, plateaus and vales, were thinly settled, but every tribe or clan or family group felt a fierce pride of ownership in its stony acreage and expressed that pride in bitter, unremitting warfare against the lowland invaders.
And so the huge Army of the Confederation had been engaged in almost constant warfare for over a century, fighting scores of battles and skirmishes for each mile of near-wilderness brought under Confederation control, every inch of arable land bought with the lifeblood of Confederation regulars and Middle Kingdoms Freefighters. Precious few liked the enduring situation of endless war to the west, but most recognized the necessity and inevitability of the advance of civilization against barbarism.
The Undying would have preferred to gain the use of western lands through treaties of alliance, as they had done a generation back with the Ahrmehnee; but, unlike the tightknit Ahrmehnee
Stahn
, the mountaineers were for the most part crude, brutish and highly fractious among themselves, though they displayed a modicum of twisted honor in their internecine feudings—and some of the clans and tribes seemed to hate other clans and tribes nearly as much as they all hated the lowlanders—they seemed to feel that treaties with non-mountaineers were made to be broken as quickly as suited them. Further, their chiefs thought nothing of claiming and selling lands not their own, so the Undying had long ago reconciled themselves to the fact that needful expansion of territory could only advance behind the point of a spear.
Within the Confederation itself, however, there had been no warfare since the crushing of the Ehleen revolts nearly thirty years before. Within cities and towns, crime was petty and small-scale, and in the countryside, brigandage was almost unheard of. The descendants of the Ehleenee pirates who once had been the scourge of the mainland coasts now were the officers and crews of the swift oarships and far-ranging sailing ships that made the coastal waters too dangerous for any but honest merchantmen and the most suicidally foolhardy raiders.
Save on the western frontiers, few towns or cities were still completely contained by walls. All the older, lowland urban areas had spread well beyond their walls and many had wholly or partially dismantled them. Even some of the conservative hereditary nobility had defortified their ancestral halls or even deserted the grim stone piles to live in the new-” style manor houses.
But these nobles were not among those who had fought against the fanatic rebels of Gafnee, Morguhn and Vawn. Those nobles bided within their castellated halls, locked their gates each sundown, slept lightly and with a pillow-sword close to hand. And they distrusted all Ehleenee—for all that most of them had more than a trace of that blood in their own veins—especially the self-styled
kath-ahrohs
or Ehleenee of pure lineage.
Such a
kath-ahrohs
house had spawned her who had been Mehleena Lohgos, ere she was taken to wife by Hwahlruh, chief of Sanderz and
Thoheeks
of Vawn; and loud, long and fierce had been remonstrations of his Kindred at word of the projected match. But he was a stubborn man; moreover was he the son and grandson of chiefs and unaccustomed to tamely submitting to the bidding of his subchiefs. Also, he had the full support of his premier wife, the Lady Mahrnee— widow of the chief and
Thoheeks of
Morguhn, ere she wed her second husband—and against those two the combined Sanderz Kin stood no slightest chance, for all their ranting and raving of Ehleen plots, past, present and future.
But before her bridal year was spent, Mehleena was first and only wife, Lady Mahrnee being suddenly taken with a wasting sickness which claimed her life within two months of its onset. The servants had all loved and respected their dead mistress as cordially as they had quickly learned to hate and fear Lady Mehleena, and there were whisperings of witchcraft and poison. However, the improvable charges remained but the mutterings of older servants.
However, the mutterings increased as ill fortune seemed to stalk the house of Sanderz. In his twelfth year, Gilbuht Sanderz, eldest son of the chief and heir presumptive, drowned in the lake, for all that he had been an excellent swimmer. And that same year, his twin, Ahl, was blinded and almost killed in a freak accident. The mutterings had it that neither “accident” had occurred until
after
Mehleena had been delivered of her firstborn son, dark little Myron.
With one older brother dead and another disqualified for any clan office due to his blindness, the aging chief and his male kin commenced crash-course schooling in the duties, privileges and responsibilities of a chief and a
tahneestos
with Tim and Behrl, the two remaining. boy-children of Lady Mahrnee and Hwahltuh. More and more frequently, this training fell to the uncles and older cousins of the boys, for the health of the chief was failing. Nor was this failing remarkable to any, for Hwahltuh had counted more than threescore years when his first child was born.
But the old chief gradually fell more and more under the sway of Mehleena, for only the potions brewed by her and her cousin, Neeka, served to relieve the unbearable headaches which had taken to plaguing him. These potions cast him into a deep and lengthy slumber, and for days after his eventual wakening, he was meek and biddable as a child, seemingly incapable of formulating his own opinions or of making his own decisions, bowing to Mehleena’s will in every particular. And that weakness was Tim’s downfall.
“I saw them myself, Hwahltuh!” Mehleena’s dark eyes were wide with horror and her voice strident with emotion; her soft, beringed hands were clasped tightly at her heaving bosom. “Tim and Giliahna, in her chamber, on her very bed!
Clipping
, they were, Hwahltuh, and…” Her voice sank to a horrified whisper. “And
kissing!”
The bearded, white-haired man looked up from the arrows he had been fletching for his short, powerful bow. His bushy brows bunched and merriment shone from his light-blue eyes. “Well, Sacred Sun be praised for that much, wife. Or would it more please you to see them trading daggerthrusts or seeking to poison each other, as is the wont of siblings in some noble houses? I’d hate to go to Wind leaving the makings of a battle royal within my own house.”
“But, Hwahltuh,
no
.” She bent closer. “It… it was not as brother with sister, Hwahltuh,
it was as man with woman
, they were! Embraced, kissing, their hands…
their hands
, husband, moving under each other’s clothing
in private places!”
Mehleena moved back, expecting violent rage. But her husband just straightened a bit on his chair, shook his head slowly and chuckled.
“Sweet Jesus save us!” burst out the stupified Ehleen woman. “Don’t you understand me, Hwahltuh? Your depraved son is about to have his incestuous way with his own blood sister, your daughter! You must do something to stop this nastiness or send him away until she be safely wed.”
“Send my heir away? Nonsense,” grunted the old chief, then voiced another throaty chuckle. “He’s a Sanderz, right enough, shows good taste in womanflesh. Randy young colt, he is, as I was, and for all she’s only thirteen, Giliahna is a handsome filly and no mistake.”
Mehleena’s earlier horror was magnified by his attitude. Hastily, she crossed herself to ward off evil and clutched her jeweled cross for comfort and strength.
“Hwahltuh, Hwahlruh, he will take her flower. Then how win you find a decent husband for her? And… and everyone knows that if a child be gotten in incest, it always is either born dead or born an idiot. Have you thought on that?”
“Hogwash!” the old man snorted derisively, casting down his arrow and split quills. “Ehleen hogwash, woman! Do I look like the spawn of idiots,
eh!
My great-grandfather married his sister and got my grandfather on her. If Tim wants Giliahna to wife, he’ll have her with my blessing and that of the clan. What better bloodline could he choose for breeding chiefs and warriors? And if his dalliances quicken her, he’ll have her to wife, like it or not. As for her maidenhead,
pah
, it’s of no importance. She’s a comely chit, wellborn and well-dowered, and there’ll be no lack of noble suitors, wife, believe me.”
He picked up the arrow again, adding, “Mehleena, love, this is not your father’s hall. We are Kindred, here, not Ehleenee, and you must always remember that our ways, our customs, are not your people’s. I have allowed you to cleave to your preferred religion since you wed me, for all that it’s proscribed the length and breadth of our great Confederation, but don’t try to force Kindred into that narrow mold, dear.
“We are free men, we Kindred. We reverence Sun and Wind as did our Sacred Ancestors back to our very beginnings on the Sea of Grass. We never have been priest-bound and saddled with those silly, childish rituals and taboos which your religion has foisted upon you Ehleenee.
“Now, please let me get back to these arrows, love. There’s not much light left and I’d like to finish them today.”
Mehleena left him. Pale and shuddering with frustrated rage and soul-sick of her—to her, justified—horror at the mortal sin her husband was countenancing under his very roof. But, heeding Cousin Neeka’s advice, she did nothing more, said nothing further… until the chiefs next headache.
By the time that Hwahlruh recovered his will, nearly a month later, Tim was beyond the borders of the Confederation : . . and Giliahna was on her way to be wed to the Prince of Kuhmbuhluhn, a man but ten years her father’s junior and recently widower of his seventh wife.
The aging chief sent a letter north with the next Confederation rider to pass through his duchy. In it, he humbly asked his son to forgive his temporary weakness to Mehleena’s importunings, begged him to return at once to his home, his father, and his family, but that letter was never answered. Nor were any others of the scores the repentant old man sent north. At length, his hurt pride surfacing, Hwahltuh stopped writing directly. Instead he entrusted weights of gold to Chief Bili,
Ahrkeethoheeks
Morguhn, that Tim might at least clothe himself well, own the protection of good weapons, decent armor and a well-trained destrier. Nor did the saddened
Thoheeks
of Vawn ever again hear directly from his heir. Only through Archduke Bili—who had been reared and war-trained in the Middle Kingdoms and who had kin and old comrades now in high places—did bits and pieces of Tim’s career trickle south, of Tim’s appointment as an ensign of dragoons in the Freefighter regiment of a well-known and renowned noble officer; of Tim’s knighting into the Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk by King Gy, himself, on the blood-soaked field of Krahkitburk; of his defeat and capture of a famous champion in another battle; and, later, of the lieutenancy Tim purchased with said champion’s ransom.
It was on Hwahltuh’s last visit to the
ahrkeethoheeks’
hall that he heard of the purchased promotion. In the few years of life he then had remaining, his infirmities precluded travel, and the yearly taxes were, perforce, delivered to the overlord by his brother, the
tahneestos
, and Tim’s brother, Behrl.
“You know these strange northern ways, Chief Bili. What does it mean, this title my boy’s bought himself? How many bows will draw for him? Is he still an underling to this Colonel What’s-his-name?”
Bili nodded. “Yes, Colonel Sir Hehnri, Earl of Pahkuhzburk, is still his commander, but the title means that Tim now commands a contingent of fifty horse archers—they call them ‘dragoons,’ up there—with an ensign or two and a senior sergeant to assist him. Tim’s now responsible for the training of his troop, for their welfare and provisioning in garrison or on the march and for recruiting replacements after battles. Their weapons and armor and their horses, however, are provided by Sir Hehnri, except for those men lucky enough to own their own.”
Hwahltuh sighed his relief. He still meant to provide for his loved son, but he had suddenly realized as the archduke spoke that he could beggar his duchy if he had to buy trained warhorses and weapons and armor for fifty-odd men.
Bili went on, grinning, obviously inordinately proud of this younger half brother who had succeeded so well in the land of their mother’s birth and Bili’s own fond boyhood memories.
“Give Tim a couple more good ransoms, if his luck holds, and he’ll be a captain in his own right Hell be totally independent of his present regiment and able to negotiate contracts for his services.”
“With only fifty horse archers, Bili?” the old
thoheeks
asked. “What sovran or lord would be willing to hire on so small a contingent?”
“Ask any one of the hundred I might name, Hwahltuh,” attested Bili bluntly, adding, “You’ve never been in the Middle Kingdoms, good stepfather, so you’re thinking in terms of the vast host of Lord Milo’s army. But none of the states of the north is even a tenth the size of our Confederation, and even if the three largest could somehow be brought into alliance, even that alliance could not pay either the hire or the maintenance of a force the size of our Regular Army.
“Oh, yes, there’ve been the rare times in years agone when one kingdom or another briefly fielded fifteen or twenty thousand fighters, but not recently. They’ve been fighting among themselves for so long that warfare there is almost a game—a violent, bloody and sometimes fatal game, but a game, nonetheless. Quality of troops is of far more importance to the prospective employer than is numbers—quality of the troops and the fame of their commander.
“You can bet your last silver
thrahkmeh
that Sir Tim’s exploits have by now spread far and wide. So if his luck holds and he can manage to put together a good, independent command, he’ll soon be able to pick and choose among some very lucrative contracts. His fortune will be assured. You can be justly proud of him. Hwahltuh. Sun and Wind know that I am.”