A History of the Eyrsh People
foreword to the first edition
by Professor Guyward Rulling, Senior Reader of the School of History, the Scola
VIII 52 Lenten
The education of our children is most poor these days: of this the evidence is manifest through the sloth of the youth and their limited industriousness. Quality education might prevent this perversion with the rigorous and studious application of the tools of the educator: lectures, discipline, beatings, public shaming, and quality books. With focused, repeated reading accompanied by exacting, word-for-word transcription by the pupil, it is by this text they will soon possess such a rigorous knowledge of the history of our great people such that even the dimmest of students will show something of the illumination of learning.
Though we are certain that this book shall be read for pleasure by all who are so able, it is also an effective tool of punishment, suitable either for beatings due to its thickness or quiet reading for unruly youth who have yet to learn the virtues of silence.
The many great merits of this book will be noticed at once by the educator of quality and discernment, who, through its application, shall usher in a new golden age of enlightenment. For what is history, properly taught, but the ordering of the mind and the correction of the will? The child who knows not from whence he comes will wander into error, novelty, and vice; but the child who has been soundly instructed in the deeds of his forefathers will stand upright in the world, obedient to truth and not easily led astray by fashion. Let every worthy school therefore keep this volume close at hand, whether upon the lectern, within the rucksack, or beside the rod, and let no pupil say, upon pain of correction, that he has not been given every opportunity to improve himself. If by this means even a small number of our youth are made diligent, sober, and tolerably informed, then the labor of its composition shall have been richly justified.
book one
I Wheel
Of the Dying Sun
Of the Folk-from-across-the-Sea
Of the House of Good Hope
Of Brensa and the Hade
Of the Wels
Of Twicrownie
Of the Groundseol
Of the War of the Carreigh Tree
Of King Wiglathe
Of Kingwife Hyspoeca
II Wheel
Of Young Wolffolk and his Wolfings
Of the Great Eor and the Harrying of Twicrownie
Of the Subjugation of Good Hope and the Flight of the Thede
Of the Death of Wiglathe and the crowning of Wolffolk
Of the Champ of Fishcharrow
Of the Wielding of the West
Of the Wels-scourge
Of the Ardine Campaign
Of the Death of Wolffolk
Of the Wars of the Wolfings
Of the Successor Wars and the Wolfyoke
Of the Latrocies and the Mothic Rising
III Wheel
Of the Great Mothe
Of the Sundering
Of Millburhs and Stederiches
Of Holystaine and the Wye
Of the Pentarchy
Of the First Balthfry War
Of Westremothe and Sisburhie
Of Austrimoth and the Fyrdland
Of the Second Balthfry War, or the Dispenser War
Of the Wretchpath of Eyrth
IV Wheel
Of the Century of Doubt
Of Harrow
Of Eyr
Of the Hybrean Wars
Of the Eyrsh Quitclaims
Of the Tweirite Wars
Of the Pentarchic Wars
Of the Fall of Brensa
book two
V Wheel
Of Sesbrea and the Court of the Moon
Of the War of the Wyestone
Of the Circe
Of Arca and the Great Peace
Of the Ardine Wars
Of the Ardine Rising
Of the Cause
Of the Mark
VI Wheel
Of the War of the Five Wodes
Of Aldus and the Aldine Dynasty
Of the Growth of Eyr
Of the Scola
Of the Barbadines
Of the Conquest of Wichtland
Of the Tea Eys
VII Wheel
Of the Wode of the Werld
Of the Marchlandes
Of the Celerimy War
book three
VIII Wheel
Wheelfire and the Wode’s Washerwoman
The Brother's War
IX Wheel
The Westerners, the Wole, and the end of the Wode
Western wars and new alliances
The Escourts and the Settlements
The Marechalc’s Ardune
Kyneland
The Revolt of the Marchlandes
The Golden Mouse
the first wheel
Of the Dying Sun
It was long ago on the Antipodes that the history of the brave ancestors of our great Eyrsh people first begins. Though these tales were first written down much later, and those first books are now long lost, fragments of the haunted times of our forefathers survive. They record a bleak existence, when dense ash filled the sky, when all was cloaked in fog and mist so thick that the sun could only faintly be seen at noon, when the land grew so cold that snow blew even in summer. Crops failed, cattle perished, and men starved.
They abandoned their homes and took to foot, vainly seeking reprieve from the frost and shade, but they found no end to their bitter torment. Once happy farmers and peaceful folk, they became wild thieves and roved the land like criminals, taking what food they could and killing any who denied them.
In desperation, they took counsel with a great sorcerer who claimed he could renew the sun with the blood of men. Fierce battles were fought by the followers of this wizard, and many captives were taken and bled to feed the sun. Much wealth and plunder was taken too, and the army of the wizard was soon rich and well-fed. Many flocked to this victorious magician, for he won many battles; but each success won him many enemies, and these enemies were soon united into a great army. What became of this sorcerer when that army destroyed him in battle, none can say, but his followers were made prisoners and dragged off in shackles and chains. In five great barges they were placed, to be sold in the great slave markets of the far-off cities of the north.
Questions for readers: Why is order the first necessity in times of famine and fear? Was slavery a befitting punishment for the followers of a sorcerer? What are the cases for and against human blood-sacrifice?
Of the Folk-from-across-the-Sea
The barges bearing these many captives left from the frigid homeland of our ancestors by hugging the shore, for they were not vessels fit for the sea, but a sudden and ferocious storm swept the ships far, far out into the Ocean. The great storm crashed upon the ships, terrifying captives and crew alike. Rudders snapped, masts fell, sails tore, and the barges drifted deep into unknown waters.
The captains, it seems, could not keep command, for mutiny spread from ship to ship, and soon the crews had seized control, though they would soon find they could hold it no better than their former commanders.
Drunk in celebration of their success, the crew did not notice when the prisoners aboard one of the ships acquired weapons dropped during the mutiny. Though still in chains, the captives quickly overran the drunken crew and freed themselves by force of arms, spreading from ship to ship, slaughtering their former captors and throwing their corpses to the waiting sharks.
The freed captives decided to break apart their most damaged barge, which had been badly burned in their fight for freedom, and with its timber repair the other four boats. Soon the ships sailed east upon the rocking waves, carried along by fierce winds across the tempestuous Sea.
For a year, it is said, they sailed onward, and a great many died of thirst and hunger as they exhausted their meager supplies. It was then, only after they had lost all hope and had contented themselves that at least they would die free, that they saw the shores of a new land. By tradition, this occurred on the Ide of Lenten, now known to us as Lenten Fool’s Day, and was the start of the ancient calendar of the Thederim, before Wode Arca Law-breaker corrected the calendar and made the Kalend of Wyetenth the first day of the year.
So the Folk had crossed the Sea and arrived at last upon the Werld so that history might now begin.
Questions for readers: When is mutiny against a captain justified? The sailors were easily slaughtered on account of being drunk, what more temperate forms of celebration can you think of? Was killing the drunken sailors excessive or appropriate?
Of the House of Good Hope
As the four barges passed the Ey of First Sight, a small rock not worth remark save for the memorable occasion from which it takes its name, they entered into broad and tranquil waters which they called the Sheltered Sea. Sailing onward, they came into a wide bay which they named the Good Water, for it was so full of salmon that they needed only dip a basket into the waves to draw up more fish than they could consume. Thus did the White Queen, having at last delivered them from bondage and the wrath of the Sea, set before them the first abundance of their new home.
Here the history of the Folk divides as it ever has, even before they had set foot upon the shores of the Werld, for one of the barges turned northward, while the other three turned to the south. Much speculation has in later times been devoted to this separation by men who have preferred conjecture to evidence; yet no known document records its cause, and the honest historian must be content to say so.
The Halvey, a long and narrow peninsula which juts out into the Good Water, ends in a prominent bluff which they called the Hardel, on account of its likeness to the back of a closed hand. At the foot of this bluff rests a great stone, embedded where the sand is churned by the surf, called Landingstone. Since those first days it has been held the frithstow of Good Hope, for it was there that the Folk beached their barges and first stepped upon the shore. Every student ought to remember this well, for from that landing proceeded in time not only the city of Good Hope, but the whole civil order of the Werld.
By this time the Folk had formed a crude pidgin speech, from which descends the magnificent Eyrsh tongue now spoken by us all. For they were made up of many diverse peoples from the Antipodes, and were united into one not by common language, custom, or religion, but by shared suffering and necessity. It was by means of this simple speech that they were able to accomplish the first great labor of the Thederim: the tearing apart of the barges, and from their timber the raising of the great House of Good Hope. Thus we see that even rude language, if rightly used, may serve the beginnings of a great people.
The House of Good Hope, of course, still stands in that city, though it has been much altered over the centuries, and the present structure dates chiefly from the renovations undertaken by Wode Cennera of the Triumphs. Instead of its present broad and magnificent chambers, however, we must picture a far smaller and rougher building, little more than a crude barn. The earliest description of it comes down to us from Oerce, writing almost three hundred years later, who describes a long hall with many small side-chambers and partitions of heavy woven tapestries depicting beasts, monsters, and strange things. Along the walls stood many rows of benches, which at night were covered with furs and rugs to be slept upon. In the center of the hall lay a long and narrow fire-pit, over which many bakestones and spits were tended, and around which, he tells us, three hundred men could comfortably sit. From this constant fire smoke rose into the rafters and thence into the thatched roof, which was patched with pitch and painted with many bright stars. Such, in its simplicity and hardship, was the first home of our forefathers; and from beginnings so humble did our great people rise.
Questions for readers: Why do you think the fourth barge turned north? Why is shared labor often a firmer foundation for a people than shared blood? Imagine all the many tasks required to disassemble the ships and build the House of Good Hope; which would you be best at?
Of Brensa and the Hade
None can say how long the Folk of the southern shore remained as one in their House, if indeed they ever did so at all. Moerceine reports, citing books by Oureophages which now are lost, that not all the Folk took part in the building of the House of Good Hope, but that some splintered away before the barges were ever broken up. Bocaphenece, however, tells us that the sundering of the Folk occurred more dramatically within the halls of that House itself. As previously stated, those first Folk were not of one race, but made up of many peoples, but there was among them one group who were particularly numerous and, Bocaphenece says, still devoted to the customs of the wizard of the Antipodes. These wished to resume their raids for prisoners and to continue the bleeding of captives to feed the sun; but the other Folk rejected this counsel, arguing that their covenant with those practices was now broken, and that, besides, they had endured the Sea for almost a year adrift without sacrifice, and yet in all that time the sun had not perished. A fight broke out in the hall, Bocaphenece says, and the quarrelsome disciples of the sorcerer were banished.
Whatever the case, this great host of people, who called themselves the Hade, departed eastward from the House of Good Hope. Yet they had not gone far before squabbles arose among them, and a division appeared within the Hade, as so often happens among barbarous peoples, who are more apt to passion than to discipline. As the waters of the Flooding Fields began to recede, some desired to make their home there, while others wished instead to press onward, for there were not great numbers of Wels in those parts, and they sought more numerous enemies from whom to take captives in their grisly wars.
Those Hade who remained in the Flooding Fields made their home upon the great butte called Brensa, and from them descend the Brenslings of to-day. Brensa stands upon the banks of the great and broad Gardadamara, which fills with so much water each spring and summer that it spills over its banks and inundates the lands from horizon to horizon, leaving Brensa a small island in a vast and muddy lake. So much silt is borne down from the far-off mountains that the course of the river may change with great frequency, so that at one time Brensa finds itself south of the main channel, and at another year north of it. There they built great stone walls in a ring upon the stony height, and for this reason the ancient Folk called it Well-girt Brensa. Every student should remember this well, for in all its long history the city has never been taken by conquest, but has fallen only through treachery or through its own folly, which are the usual gates by which strong places are lost.
Those Hade who refused to make Brensa their home pressed farther north, crossing the steep Dwarrescarps into a vast and open prairie which lies upon the shores of the Blue, the greatest lake in all the Werld. Some fished along its banks, but the Hade were poor sailors and fearful of deep water, and so made little use of that great lake. Instead they turned to the open plains, where they corralled mustangs and took wild stallions for steeds. These barbarians lived a savage life upon the prairie, taking heads, eating raw flesh, and smoking much hemp. It would, however, be a grave error to think of the Hade as one people. Just as they had broken away from the Folk, and then from the Brenslings, so too did they divide yet again among themselves into many tribes and factions, making endless war upon one another, as is the habit of men who possess courage in greater measure than good sense.
Questions for readers: Were the Folk better off without the barbaric Hade? Which is more pleasurable, fishing or horse-riding? The Hade would smoke hemp until they became foolish; what is the most foolish thing you have done?
Of the Wels
It was not the Folk-from-across-the-Sea who first gave the Werld that name, for the Werld has always been inhabited by peoples of one kind or another. In the far east are the Island Savages; in Wasteland, the Barbadines; in the rugged mountains, what remains of the Kyne—if indeed they may properly be called a people at all, as some assert and others deny; upon the banks of the broad River Oiore is the ancient home of the Ardines; in the dense forests of Orcadia and the Fyrdlands dwell the ancient Elandie; and in the woods and hills of the West live the Wels.
The Wels are much the same in stature as the Folk, though more often given to red hair and blue eyes. Professor Gallien Winter of Blackminster argued that these similarities arose because the Folk and the Wels had once, in the far distant past, sprung from the same regions of the Antipodes, and were thus cousins far removed. The archaeologist Oriel Hirste, however, showed quite conclusively in her research that the success of the Folk was due in no small part to their early assimilation of great numbers of Wels, so that any outward likeness between the two peoples is only to be expected. These two explanations do not disprove one another, and so the consensus has now been broadly established that both are true.
Every student will readily perceive that likeness in feature does not imply likeness in character, for whatever resemblance the two peoples may bear in appearance, the Folk and the Wels were in civilization nothing alike. If we concede that our ancestors the Folk were primitive by modern standards, they at least knew iron and the plough, and were industrious in their ways. The same cannot be said of the Wels, who used rough stone and simple copper for their tools and did not till the field or plant orchards, but instead roved after deer and buffalo while their women gathered roots, herbs, and berries from the woods. They were greatly idle, wasting much of the day in dancing, or else in the smoking of their pipes. It is therefore no surprise that the White Queen led the Folk-from-across-the-Sea to the Werld, wishing to see Her paradise tended by a people more worthy of Her demesne.
The wise men of the Wels came to the Folk with offerings of peace and with a desire to join themselves to their superior civilization. Their own tradition speaks of an age not unlike that of the distant Folk in the Antipodes: a time of ash and strife, when clan battled clan and family battled family for so long that nearly every man of fighting age had perished in combat. Many among the Wels had prophesied that a savior would come across the Sea and deliver them into peace. Thus the Folk needed hardly to coerce them at all in order to make plain that they were the chosen people of the White Queen, appointed to shepherd the Werld into peace and order.
Questions for readers: What is the greatest gift of civilization the Folk gave to the savage Wels? What aspect of Wels life seems most unappealing to you? Were the Wels so primitive due to ignorance or sloth?
Of Twicrownie
Since ancient days the Twicrowners have maintained that it was by the guidance of the Blue Queen that they were conducted to the northern banks of the Good Water when the barges of the Folk-from-across-the-Sea first sailed into that broad and placid bay. Yet this cannot be so. It is absurd to suppose that the Blue Queen would have divided the Folk before ever they had reached the shores of this sacred land; and thus the Twicrowners, in making this claim, show themselves as they have so often shown themselves in later centuries also: proud in invention, careless of doctrine, and not over-scrupulous in matters of truth. Nonetheless, these people gave their land its name from the Twice-crowned Queen of Sky and Water, whose favor they have ever been eager to claim more loudly than they have deserved it.
Whatever the true cause of their separation—whether heavy fog, a broken rudder, some quarrel among the leaders, or some other small incident now lost to time—the people of the northern shore soon founded a settlement in parallel to that of their cousins in the south. Unlike the Folk of Landing, however, they did not build for themselves a single great house, but instead raised many small shelters, or else joined themselves to little Wels fishing villages already standing there. In this way the Welsing influence became much stronger among the Twicrowners than among the Folk of Good Hope, and they adopted many Welsing customs and much of their manner of life. Every student ought to note this well, for the habits of a people are often settled in their earliest days, and from small beginnings proceed consequences of the greatest importance.
Thus, instead of forming a great hall which might in time have become the noble center of an orderly city, the chief seat of the Folkish way of life in Twicrownie was a great temple which they erected at Carsce. There they carved a mighty image of the Blue Queen, and around Her they raised a magnificent façade of stone pillars. Not only did the Folk from the southern shore come there to make offerings at the great altar, but many of the Wels also came to pay homage. This was at first regarded by some as a happy sign, and as proof that the light of the Queens might spread even among rude and wandering peoples. Yet the matter did not long remain so pure.
For before much time had passed, the Wels had placed idols of their own within that same hough and had profaned the sacred space with their pagan usages. Instead of casting down these false images, as piety and good sense alike required, the Twicrowners tolerated them, and soon enough made offerings to those demons and counterfeit gods themselves. Here already may be seen that dangerous softness for which Twicrownie has so often been reproached: a willingness to mingle what ought to be kept separate, and to call corruption breadth of mind. Thus did they plant, even in those first days, the seeds of their own later destruction.
Questions for readers: Should the Twicrowners have migrated south to rejoin the Folk at Good Hope? Do you think the Twicrowners raised the great pillars at Carsce due to piety or their own vanity? Which is more the profane, Twicrownie sloth and indolence or their paganism?
Of the Groundseol
Not long after the Landing, the Folk at Good Hope displayed their great wisdom and set about drawing up a charter by which they might determine how they should live and govern themselves. Moerceine wrote of these events many years later, when only the very oldest still living could have remembered them, and then only from earliest childhood. His writings are now lost to us, and survive only in quotations preserved by Thedeocles, who also recorded a great many oral retellings of that moment. The historian must therefore proceed with caution in interpreting what occurred, vivid though the scene may be in the tradition.
Upon the sands about Landingstone, where the tercenes still meet to this day, the Folk who dwelt within the House of Good Hope gathered in a great ring of stones to settle how they might live together. An old eyrl named Agremothes was chosen, on account of his wisdom, to guide the debate; but he possessed no authority over the other Folk assembled there beyond the force of his persuasion.
A rash youth named Ethotes urged that they appoint a king to rule them, arguing that in the difficult days which were sure to come, as they established themselves in this new land, they would need unity and swift action if they were to survive. A great many were swayed by this reasoning, and they called upon Agremothes to take the vote. But shrewd Agremothes, who had no wish at all to be ruled by any one man, first asked them whom they thought should be their king. At this, each man and woman of that faction declared that it was he or she who ought to be king, and by this answer they greatly discredited themselves. ‘How,’ Agremothes asked, ‘can we expect unity under one king, when no agreement can be found even among those who call for a king?’ This course, he argued, could lead only to division and destruction.
By consensus and common agreement, Agremothes said, they had already accomplished the great labor of raising the House of Good Hope. By that same accord, what other wonders might they not yet make upon this Werld? This argument greatly moved the spirit of the assembled body, and all stood upon that rocky shore and cheered. Then one among them—whom they say was named Eucreaca—carried the matter further still. Slaves they had been, captured and brought to this new land; but by divine providence they had freed themselves. What further sign was needed, she asked, to prove that they had been brought there free and equal, as the chosen of the White Queen. This reasoning so stirred the gathered Folk that they raised aloft their hands and weapons and proclaimed what we now know as the Groundseol:
We the Folk, by our swords, our hands, and our lives, shall hold our freedoms so long as we can keep them. None shall rule us and none shall we rule, for all men and all women were born equal and free. So long as there is justice in this Werld, not one among us shall ever be made a slave.
This founding ideal has ever since remained the true way of the Folk. So long as the Groundseol has been upheld, our people have prospered; and whenever it has been neglected or denied, evil has surely befallen us. Every student ought to remember this well, for no people endure by strength of arms alone, but by fidelity to those first principles which gave them life.
Questions for readers: Why is self-rule always the best form of government? Why is agreement among free people stronger than obedience to one master? What are all the ways the Folk showed their great wisdom?
Of the War of the Carreigh Tree
As the years and decades passed, the Folk-from-across-the-Sea raised new families and new farms, and spread themselves across Landing, settling the once-wild land into a pleasant and orderly country. With such industry and good purpose did they labor that it was almost as though the crude and simple Wels had never dwelt there at all. Yet as new generations came, and those who still remembered the Antipodes grew weary and grey, some part also of the first accord of the Folk passed: cooperation. Thus it was that, in the fiftieth year after the Landing, Earepatre records, the first war among the Folk began.
The full flames of that conflict grew from the small embers of the earliest division among the Folk: namely, the sundering between the Folk of Landing and the Folk of Twicrownie. Upon the northern shores of the Good Water grows the carreigh tree, famed since antiquity for its fragrance, so pure and divine that it alone is thought worthy to be offered to a Queen. The Twicrowners had long made offerings of carreighwood to the Blue Queen at Carsce; and the Landlings, for their part, desired to prepare a great offering of that same wood for the new hough of the Black Queen then being raised at Good Hope. But the impious Twicrowners refused to send the wood, arguing that if the Black Queen had desired carreighwood for Her hough, She would have caused it to be built in Twicrownie, where the carreigh tree grows. This argument, though clever in the manner of blasphemers, greatly incensed the Landlings; and soon they resolved upon war, that they might take for themselves what piety required and Twicrownie, in its arrogance, denied.
The Landlings had by then built two great ships at Good Hope, with clinker-hulls and serpents carved upon their prows. These were stout vessels, originally intended for trade, but it was now agreed that they should instead bear a host of armed men against Twicrownie. Yet word of this design leaked out, as secret counsels are apt to do, and the Twicrowners, learning of the matter, began preparations of their own and fitted out a great ship for battle. Thus, at evening, the two sides set sail; and as a storm began to gather, the three ships met in the midst of the Good Water, that night most ironically named. There the ships grappled one another in darkness and tempest, and by sunrise only one of the vessels from Good Hope still remained afloat. Freye Sefare of Oshithe commemorated the event seven hundred years later in her celebrated poem, The Battle of the Three Wurms:
Then on the whale-road met three ships in wrathful storm and spray,
With serpent-prows and dragon-heads that faced the dying day;
A murky night upon the waves, and hot the blazing brand,
With spear and sword and fire and blood, til dawn lit sea and land.
The Landling warriors who survived that fight marched thereafter toward Carsce, sending horsemen ahead to forage and to scout. These encountered a mounted band of Twicrowners, and there was fought the engagement commonly called to-day the Cnight’s Slaughter. This, however, is a poor and misleading translation, which has unfortunately endured among the less learned. The proper name is the Battle of the Riders, for these men were not armored cnights such as a careless reader might imagine, but only mounted warriors of an earlier and rougher kind. Yet whatever name is given it, the result is the same: the riders of Twicrownie were defeated, and their survivors fled into the forest as the host of the Landlings advanced upon Carsce.
There the Landlings beheld the great statue of the Blue Queen and were struck with awe at its beauty. Yet the solemnity of that place had long since been tainted by the blasphemy of the many pagan idols set up about it. The righteous Landlings therefore seized the image from its base and carried it away, and the profaned sanctuary they set ablaze, leaving it a ruin. To this day only a few stone pillars of that ancient façade still stand, weathered and desolate, as a reminder of the corruption once tolerated there and the judgment which at last fell upon it.
The statue of the Blue Queen was brought in triumph to Good Hope, together with a great stock of carreighwood, and there it was given a worthy place within the halls of Good Hope, where it may be seen to this day. Thus ended the first war among the Folk: born from division, sharpened by impiety, and concluded by the just correction of Twicrownie’s errors. Every student ought to mark this example well. For the Twicrowners, by mingling reverence with falsehood and toleration with blasphemy, brought calamity upon themselves; while the Landlings, though stern in their remedy, acted in correct defense of proper worship and good order. So it has ever been in the history of our people, that where piety and discipline are denied, strife soon follows, and where strife is permitted to fester, correction must at last be made by force.
Questions for readers: The older generations had lived in peace for half a century; why did the youth fail? Were the Twicrowners more arrogant or impious? Were the Landlings justified in their treatment of Twicrownie, or should they have been harsher?
Of King Wiglathe
After the War of the Carreigh Tree there followed for a time a season of peace, and Landing grew prosperous. Fields were widened, orchards planted, roads trodden firm between homestead and hall, and the people of Good Hope increased in number and in confidence. Twicrownie also, though slowly and under some shame, began to recover from the destruction of Carsce. New houses were raised upon the northern shore, and the fisheries were restored. Yet guards from Good Hope remained constantly among them, ostensibly to ensure that the Twicrowners should not again lapse into paganism and the worship of false idols. That such a watch should have been found necessary at all was itself a reproach to Twicrownie, though some later writers have rightly observed that to keep one branch of the Folk in unwilling subjection to another sits uneasily beside the promises of the Groundseol. Thus even in those early days men were already learning how difficult it is to preserve liberty when fear has once made itself the guardian of order.
While the Folk of the southern and northern shores lived in this uneasy peace, the Hade of the interior continued in their accustomed barbarism, making war ceaselessly among themselves. Among these was a youth named Wiglathe, who, after some quarrel now lost to us, was driven out from the lands of his own people and wandered westward alone. In Twicrownie around the year I 75, desperate and hungry, he attempted to steal a sheep, but was discovered in the act and shot through one eye by a guardsman of Good Hope. He was then taken alive, bound, and brought south as a prisoner. Thus did the man who would one day make himself king first enter the history of the Folk, not with trumpet or victory, but with theft, blood, and humiliation, which ought to remind every student that fortune often begins her greatest stories in the lowest manner.
At Good Hope Wiglathe remained in captivity for some years; yet his imprisonment proved more fruitful than his enemies had intended. For he was not dull, as barbarians often are, but possessed of a lively and observant mind. He saw how the Landlings settled the earth into fields and boundaries, how they governed disputes by law and judgment rather than by immediate bloodshed, and how they maintained a small but orderly militia for the defense of their homes and the supervision of Twicrownie. These things greatly impressed him. In later life Moerceine tells us he is said to have remarked that the strength of the Folk did not lie chiefly in the sword, but in the rule by which the sword was restrained. Whether he truly spoke these words none can now say; but the sentiment is worthy of him, and agrees well with what followed.
By reason of his good conduct, and because he showed himself eager to learn rather than merely to brood in resentment, Wiglathe was in his sixteenth year released from captivity and declared a Friend of Good Hope. This title, though modest in appearance, was in those days a mark of some distinction, and signified that even one not born among the Folk might, by discipline and submission to right custom, be admitted in part to their confidence. Both the wisdom and the folly of this policy, as we shall see, was afterwards made plain.
Returned to the prairies of his people, Wiglathe did not resume the old Hade customs unchanged, but began at once to distinguish himself from the other war-leaders. He gathered about himself a warband of hardy followers and won many victories over rival chiefs. Yet where the Hade had formerly been accustomed, after victory, to sacrifice a defeated leader to feed the Sun and to scatter his followers like frightened game, Wiglathe instead spared many of the conquered and drew them beneath his own banner. In this way he did what no Hade before him had accomplished: he turned victory from a momentary gratification into a lasting instrument of rule. Within ten years, it is said, fully half the Hade had been united under his authority.
Upon the shores of the Blue in the year I 98 he then founded the first true settlement of the Hade, called On-the-Blue. This was not merely a camp, as so many barbarian settlements are, but a place of fixed dwellings and regular trade, where men from Twicrownie and Good Hope alike came to bargain for horses, buffalo hides, fish, and the products of the plains. There the Hade first acquired a real taste for wealth not won by plunder, and some among them began to dimly perceive that a market, though less glorious in song than a raid, may enrich a people far more. Every student should note this carefully, for one of the chief marks of civilization is that men learn to desire profit more than havoc, and continuance more than noise.
Farther up the shore Wiglathe built for himself a private fortress called Oaken Twa, twa being the Hadish word for a fort. There he established his seat and there also, in a gesture without precedent among the Hade, he founded a school. Into this place he invited learned men from Good Hope to instruct his son, Wolffolk, in letters, laws, and the usages of settled peoples. Thus Wiglathe showed that he understood what many conquerors only discover too late: that it is not enough to seize power, but one must teach one’s heirs how to hold it. In this, as in much else, he stood midway between the wildness of the Hade and the order of the Folk, borrowing strength from the one and discipline from the other. For this reason he is remembered not merely as a king, but as the first lawmaker among his people.
Questions for readers: Should the Twicrowners be protected by the Groundseol despite not having participated in its creation? Were the Landlings too lax in their punishment of Wiglathe? Which of Wiglathe’s efforts to civilize his people was most important?
Of Kingwife Hyspoeca
Nothing is known of Hyspoeca before her marriage to King Wiglathe, when she enters into the histories of Moerceine. The daughter of an important Elandie lord from the eastern banks of the Blue, she was married to Wiglathe in I 96. Her dowry was neither gold nor milch-cows, but a large band of mounted lancers whose manner of battle impressed Wiglathe so much that they served as the model for the famed Royal Companions.
The ancient records are unanimous that Hyspoeca was a powerful sorceress. This was almost certainly an invention of her rivals, who, being unable to explain her influence in more sensible terms, preferred to attribute it to witchcraft. Yet Hyspoeca was wise enough not to reject a reputation which made lesser men afraid of her, for magic does not have to be real to be effective. She kept always beside her a tiger, dangerous to all but herself, and was said to read the stars so accurately that she predicted deaths, wars, and reversals of fortune before they came. Men were reluctant even to meet her gaze, for it was said that her eyes could turn a man to stone. Such things are plainly absurd; yet it is no less true that those who believed them were often more easily ruled because of it.
Moerceine relates that when certain Hade lords urged Wiglathe to abandon Oaken Twa in a time of danger, Hyspoeca openly rebuked them and called them cowards. She argued that if the king fled once, every rebel would learn that the House of Wiglathe could be driven by fear. In this she showed a firmness not always found among men of far greater reputation. It is from this time that her authority among the Wolfings seems to have greatly increased, for even those who disliked her foreign customs could not deny the force of her will. As so often happens, men first called her unnatural, and afterwards obeyed her.
Nor was her power confined only to moments of danger. Moerceine also records that she kept a large household, received petitions, arranged marriages, and remembered both service and insult with great exactness. In this way she became feared not merely as the wife of the king, but as a power at court in her own right. Many who mocked her in public sought her favor in private. Students should consider that this is no strange thing, for courts have always been places where men condemn loudly what they most fear.
By Hyspoeca, Wiglathe had his son Wolffolk, whose education she guarded with great care. If Wiglathe taught the Hade how to conquer and rule, Hyspoeca taught them majesty, discipline, and fear. Later ages, being fond of marvels and foolish tales, often remembered her more as a witch than as a queen. But the wiser view is that she was a woman of unusual cunning, and that among barbarous peoples such ability is often mistaken for sorcery.
Questions for readers: Which magic power attributed to Hyspoeca is most absurd? Why are formidable women so often called witches by weak men? Not all barbarian peoples are the same; are the Hade or Elandie more savage?
the second wheel
Of Young Wolffolk and his Wolfings
Wolffolk was born in the year I 98. His name, rendered Wolfoc in the Hadish tongue, means Great Wolf. Moerceine records that this name arose from a custom then common among the Hade: not long before the birth of his son, Wiglathe had captured in battle a formidable war-chief known simply as ‘the Wolf,’ whose reputation for savagery was widely feared. When his child was born, Wiglathe had this man beheaded and baptized the infant in his blood, believing that by such means the strength of the dead might pass into the living. By naming the boy Great Wolf, he made plain where that stolen strength was now to reside. Such customs, though barbarous, ought not to surprise us, for among rude peoples symbolism and cruelty are often closely joined.
The later writer Amelsger, however, reports a very different account, namely that Wolffolk was not in truth the son of Wiglathe at all, but of the pagan sun-god worshipped by the Hade. According to this tale, a total eclipse blotted out the sun, and in that moment of unnatural darkness Hyspoeca was miraculously made fully pregnant and at once gave birth to Wolffolk, thereby receiving the full powers of the sun into herself. This story is, of course, plainly absurd, and deserves no credence from any serious student. Yet it was widely believed at the time, and it is not impossible that Wolffolk himself encouraged it, for ambitious men have often found it useful to have marvelous things said of their birth.
Moerceine further tells us that Wolffolk had eyes of two different colors, one almost black from his mother, and the other pale grey, inherited from his father. In all other respects the contemporary descriptions of him are unremarkable, and do not support the grander legends of later generations, which make him into a giant of uncommon size and strength. On the contrary, those who knew him in youth describe him as rather ordinary in appearance. This too is worth remembering. Great men are seldom as impressive to look upon as later poets would have us believe, and posterity is always eager to give heroes the bodies it thinks their deeds require.
At Oaken Twa, Wolffolk was educated together with the boys of Wiglathe’s extended royal house and the sons of his leading generals. These were instructed alongside him in letters, customs, and the arts proper to men of rank. Among them Wolffolk quickly distinguished himself, not by force alone, but by a remarkable power of attraction. He was so charismatic that the other boys followed him everywhere, and this close-knit company was soon called the Wolfings. Moerceine says that even as a child Wolffolk was unusually inquisitive and observant, and that he asked questions of such sharpness that older men were often made uneasy by them. In this way there was already visible in the boy that quality which later made him so dangerous and so admired: namely, that he seemed from his earliest years to expect obedience not as a privilege, but as a thing naturally due to him.
This early fellowship of Wolffolk and his companions deserves the attention of every student, for from it there later grew not merely a household or a court faction, but the ruling spirit of an age. Many kingdoms have been made by laws, many by conquest, and some by accident; but the power of the Wolfings began, as such powers so often do, in the affections and vanities of youth. Boys at play are often kings in rehearsal.
Questions for readers: What are the most important traits of a great leader? Is charisma by itself a virtue, or must it be governed by discipline and law? Why do boys so readily gather around one bold and commanding companion?
Of the Great Eor and the Harrying of Twicrownie
Until it was abolished by the Eyrsh in later centuries, it was a common custom among the Folk to undertake daring cattle-raids known as eor. These were governed by strict rules and customs, and served not only to seize the cattle of rivals, but also to prove the courage and reputation of individual warriors. In the year II 11, however, the Twicrowners were persuaded by a brash young warrior named Rodelbe to undertake an eor unlike any before. Instead of a small raid by a handful of men against a single homestead, this Great Eor was conceived as a full invasion into the lands of Wiglathe himself, for the plundering not only of cattle, but also of the king’s horses and treasure. Such excess showed from the first how far Twicrownie had already declined from lawful custom into arrogance and disorder.
The Twicrowners swept through Wiglathe’s lands with great violence, setting the prairie ablaze and scattering his warriors in all directions. At that time the king was occupied with a revolt in the northern part of his dominions, and the raiders therefore met with little resistance. Pressing their advantage, they advanced as far as Oaken Twa itself and threatened its destruction. Yet here they were checked in a manner both unexpected and much celebrated. Wolffolk, then only thirteen years of age, sallied forth from the fortress together with his Wolfings and fell upon the Twicrowners with such force that they were thrown into confusion and driven back when their leader Rodelbe perished in the fray. Though later songs greatly embellish the feat, there can be no doubt that this was the first occasion on which Wolffolk showed openly the boldness which afterwards made him so feared.
When Wiglathe at last returned south, he quickly gathered his scattered forces and brought the Twicrowners to battle. Already shaken by its repulse at Oaken Twa, the invaders were decisively broken. Yet Wiglathe was not content merely to defeat them. Inflamed by an anger underlying all barbarians, he desired to exact a punishment which would be remembered for generations. He brought his army south into Twicrownie and there undertook what has ever since been known as the Harrying of Twicrownie. Village by village he burned the country, laid waste the fields, and ruined the land so thoroughly that whole districts were left empty. In this he showed both the strength and the cruelty for which the Wolfing kings soon became famous.
The Twicrowners, unable to withstand such force in the open, fled into the dense forests of the Wichtlands, where many survived by hardship who would otherwise have perished by the sword. The noble guard from Good Hope fought bravely against the Hade in a final and futile stand, but courage could not repair the errors that had brought Twicrownie to such a pass. Every student should mark this well. The Great Eor began as a boastful violation of custom and ended, as such follies often do, in devastation beyond all expectation. For there are some rash acts by which a people may enrich themselves, but there are others by which they summon their own ruin.
Questions for readers: At what point does a lawful custom become mere arrogance and plunder? Was the Harrying an appropriate response to the Great Eor? Why are peoples more often ruined by boastfulness than by weakness?
Of the Subjugation of Good Hope and the Flight of the Thede
When the Landlings learned that Wiglathe had slain the guardsmen whom they had placed in Twicrownie, they demanded reparations. Wiglathe himself appears to have been willing enough to make some settlement, for he had no desire at that time to provoke an unnecessary war with Good Hope. His generals, however, who were less moderate than their king, refused to hear of any such payment, holding that no ruler ought to compensate foreigners for men justly killed in a conquered land. Thus the matter, which might perhaps have been settled peaceably, was instead driven toward war. Wiglathe thereupon commandeered the ships of Twicrownie and spent the winter building more, preparing in earnest for an assault upon Landing.
In the spring of II 12 he sailed south and made war upon the men of Good Hope. Yet Good Hope was not easily taken, for as described earlier it stood upon a high bluff at the end of a long peninsula, and the narrow neck by which it might be approached on land was guarded by a stout palisade. Against this defense Wiglathe could make little progress. Thus the siege dragged on for three tenths, during which his men suffered want, exhaustion, flux, and the shame of delay. Every student should note that even the strongest kings are often checked not by valor but by geography, which has humbled more armies than any enemy.
It was during this siege that Wolffolk, then only fourteen years old, displayed the daring for which he was quickly becoming famous. One morning he is said to have noticed the helmet of a Landling soldier fall from the high ground of Good Hope all the way down to the beach below. Observing more closely, he then discovered the narrow and well-hidden path by which the man descended the cliff to recover it. That night Wolffolk took his band of Wolfings and, clad in full armor, swam across the water from the camp to the foot of that secret pass. By this way they climbed unseen into Good Hope itself. Though later songs have embellished the feat beyond all reason, there is no cause to doubt the substance of it, for the result is plain enough.
The Landlings, taken by surprise and thrown into panic, were overcome quickly and Wolffolk opened the gates of the palisade to his father’s host. Wiglathe then surrounded the House of Good Hope and compelled those within to surrender. Yet here he showed a notable restraint. Out of regard for the friendship he had once enjoyed with Good Hope, he forbade his men to burn the great House, though many among them desired to do just that. Instead he compelled the Landlings to rub his oath-ring and swear allegiance to him and to furnish warriors for his service. Thus was Good Hope subjugated, not destroyed; and in this there was wisdom, for a living city may be made useful in ways that ashes cannot.
Not all among the Landlings, however, would bend the knee, citing the freedoms of the Groundseol they enjoyed. These men refused to swear fealty to anyone and fled away by night in what has ever since been called the Flight of the Thede. They scattered themselves across the West into lands they had before avoided, among them Loewe, Twyier, and the Wye, where they established new farms and settlements. In this way defeat brought about expansion, and subjugation unexpectedly spread the Folk more widely than peace had done. Such ironies are common in history, and wise students will remember that the loss of one homeland often becomes the seed of many others.
Questions for readers: Some Landlings chose exile rather than submission; which would you prefer? Was Wiglathe wiser to spare the House of Good Hope than to burn it? How can the loss of one homeland become the seed of many new settlements?
Of the Death of Wiglathe and the crowning of Wolffolk
Wiglathe reigned over the Hade, the Twicrowners, and the Landlings for only three years before his death in II 16, his end as sudden as it was ignoble. As he mounted his horse, a clap of thunder burst overhead and startled the beast. Wiglathe’s foot became caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged helplessly as the frightened animal bolted among the rocks, dashing him to death. Thus ended the remarkable life of a man who had risen from sheep-thief to king, and whose greatness, though real enough, could not preserve him from a death at once absurd and humiliating. Every student should remember that fortune, having raised men high, often takes particular pleasure in casting them down disgracefully.
After Wiglathe’s death, none were certain what ought to be done. Since he had been the first king of his people, there existed no settled custom by which the succession might be determined. Among the Hade it had long been the practice that a war-band should dissolve upon the death of its leader, only to gather itself anew around some other warrior of sufficient strength and reputation. There were many who wished this custom, whether from sincerity or from ambition. Chief among them was one of Wiglathe’s generals, Sgaursgarthe by name, who favored the disbanding of the royal host and no doubt supposed that in the confusion he himself might best position himself to become the next king. Thus, as so often happens when laws are weak and custom uncertain, principle and self-interest marched conveniently together.
Yet Hyspoeca, widow of Wiglathe and mother of Wolffolk, moved more swiftly than her rivals and Sgaursgarthe was soon dead. The vulgar said she had hexed him, and many were eager to believe it, for foolish men are always more ready to credit magic than intelligence in a formidable woman. It is far more likely that poison, not sorcery, removed him. But whatever the means, the result was the same. With Sgaursgarthe gone, the faction most likely to dissolve the kingdom lost its head, and the enemies of Wolffolk were thrown for a time into confusion.
This delay was enough. Wolffolk assembled his Wolfings and, by a prompt and impressive show of force, compelled his rivals to submit before they could muster against him. In this way he preserved the army his father had made and reunited it under his own command at only seventeen years of age. Thus he was crowned king, not because any ancient law required it, but because he was quick enough, bold enough, and feared enough to make it so. This too is worth the attention of every student, for the beginnings of kingdoms are seldom as lawful as their later chroniclers would prefer to pretend.
Questions for readers: Was Hyspoeca justified in removing Sgaursgarthe for the safety of the realm? Why is it dangerous for a kingdom to have no clear law of succession? Why are kingdoms so often founded by force first and law only afterwards?
Of the Champ of Fishcharrow
Though Wolffolk had secured his position among the Hade, the Twicrowners and Landlings soon rose in revolt against him. Tycriece records that an unusually severe winter prevented Wolffolk from marching south at once to put down the rebels, and so gave them time to gather strength and arrange themselves more properly for war. During this delay they drew support also from the scattered Thede, who had spread across the West after their Flight from Good Hope. These united Thederim at last gathered at the Champ of Fishcharrow, believed to have lain somewhere in eastern Twicrownie, though its exact site is now lost.
The core of the Thederim host was formed by the disciplined shieldwall of the Landlings, supported by young Twicrowners armed with bows, slings, and javelins, and by the independent Thede, who rode to battle in small chariots driven by their sons and then dismounted to fight with axes. Opposed to them, the Wolfings held their great wedge of lancers upon one flank, while the warriors of the Hade formed the center, screened by Wels slaves carrying bows and javelins. These Wolfings fought on foot and wore little armor, many going bare-chested and some wholly naked, carrying only a small shield and a heavy ramsword. This they regarded as a display of courage, though wiser ages have generally judged it to be merely a display of vanity.
Moerceine reports that the battle began at dawn in the late spring of II 18, when Wolffolk hurled a javelin toward the rising sun, a symbolic gesture by which he sought the favor of the pagan god of the Hade. Then for some time the two sides exchanged missiles, until at last the main bodies closed in combat. At first the Wolfings, who were fierce and eager for glory, drove the Landling spearmen backward. Yet the Landlings were well-drilled and did not break; recovering themselves, they soon began to press heavily upon the lightly armored Hade and might perhaps have prevailed, had the battle rested there.
But at that moment Wolffolk, commanding his lancers, charged against the Thede and scattered them. Though the greataxes of the Thede were dangerous to horses, the Thede themselves were not men of strict order, but fought rather for individual renown than for common success. For this reason they were easily isolated and ridden down. Seeing their fathers cut apart, the panicked children who drove the chariots pushed forward in confusion to gather the survivors. But the ground was too crowded, and the chariots, lacking space to maneuver, became tangled one against the other. The Wolfings then fell upon them and made a great slaughter. Moerceine, with his usual fondness for magnificent numbers, says that five thousand men were killed there without the loss of a single Wolfing. This, like many such claims, must be received with caution.
With the Thede destroyed, Wolffolk’s lancers wheeled about and struck the Landling shieldwall in the rear. Thus enclosed on all sides, the Landlings were cut down to the last man. Moerceine gives the total Thederim dead as more than twenty thousand; but this figure is surely too high, and many demographers of our own day have judged it to exceed the total number of the descendants of the Folk then living anywhere in the Werld, Hade and Thederim alike. Yet whatever the exact number, the meaning of the battle is plain enough. On the Champ of Fishcharrow the freedom of the Thederim came to an end. Thereafter the scattered peoples of Good Hope, Twicrownie, and the western settlements were no longer rivals of the Wolfings, but subjects.
Questions for readers: Why did Landling discipline fail once the Thede broke and fled? Were the Thede undone more by cowardice, disorder, or vanity? Why does cavalry so often prevail over brave but uncoordinated men?
Of the Wielding of the West
After their defeat at the Champ of Fishcharrow, the men of Good Hope could do nothing to prevent Wolffolk from overrunning Twicrownie and Landing alike. The strength of the Thederim had been broken in a single day, and what remained to them was courage without hope, which has ruined many peoples who mistook stubbornness for strength. Unlike his father Wiglathe, who had once felt some affection toward Good Hope and had restrained his hand for that reason, Wolffolk had no such sentiment. Tycriece says he intended from the first to burn the House of Good Hope to the ground, and thereby to put an end forever to the old pride of the Landlings.
Expecting another siege, Wolffolk advanced upon Good Hope in force. Yet when he arrived in the summer of II 18, he found not a defiant enemy behind stout palisades, but submission already waiting for him. The wall had been torn down, and the House-masters came forth prostrate before him, laying the keys of the House at his feet and begging clemency. Thus was Good Hope spared not by strength, but by abasement. Here Wolffolk displayed that famous mercy for which even his many foes praised him, for he accepted their surrender and spared the House. This was wisely done. To burn such a place would have satisfied anger for a day; to spare it won obedience for a generation.
Yet though he pardoned the Landlings, Wolffolk had no intention of forgiving the many Thede of the West, who he had fought personally at Fishcharrow. For this reason he pressed many Landlings into a company of spearmen and marched with them far beyond the accustomed borders of the civilized Werld. There he made war upon the scattered homesteads of the West, compelling each to submit or else destroying it. Some yielded quickly and gave hostages; others resisted and were burned out; and many, hearing what had become of their neighbors, submitted without awaiting his arrival. Thus did Wolffolk teach the Thede the lesson they had failed to learn at Fishcharrow, namely that defiance without unity is merely a slower road to defeat.
In this way Wolffolk brought all the West beneath his hand. It was from this conquest that later generations said he had Wielded the West, not merely raided it or passed through it. For he left behind not only terror, but obedience. This distinction is no small one. A raid enriches a season, but subjugation enriches an age. Thus the power of the Wolfings, which had begun among the Hade and been proven against the Thederim, now extended over all the western lands of the Werld.
Questions for readers: Was Wolffolk’s mercy toward Good Hope true mercy, or only clever statecraft? Why is a conquered city more useful alive than burned and looted? Why is scattered defiance usually weaker than united submission?
Of the Wels-scourge
Having brought the Thederim beneath his authority, Wolffolk resolved that all the West must likewise submit. To this end he greatly enlarged the body of Landling spearmen to strengthen his lancers and his Wolfings. This new mass of conscripted infantry was called the Mothe, a word which in the tongue of the Wolfings meant thralls. The name was a fitting one, for these men were not companions of the king in the old manner, but a subjected people compelled to fight in wars not of their own choosing. Yet their use was of the highest importance, for by their number Wolffolk was able to hold what he had conquered and conquer still more. Students should observe that kingdoms are seldom built by noble warriors alone, but by great multitudes of lesser men driven where they would not otherwise go.
On Lenten in II 21 Wolffolk first marched south and crossed the ancient Bauh into the Calendian Peninsula, which in our own day is divided between Westremothe and Sisburhie, but which at that time was a wild expanse inhabited chiefly by savage Wels. Their principal city stood at Narcerine, beside a great many-tiered pyramid, and was enclosed by a mighty ring of stone in which the Narcerines placed excessive confidence. Thinking themselves secure, they had neglected to imagine that another people might possess greater ingenuity than themselves. Wolffolk, however, caused great wooden towers to be built, by means of which his men could fight with those atop the walls. Thus were the defenders pressed back in fear, and the city at last forced open. Moerceine describes days of intense fighting in the streets, but the recent excavations of archaeologist Warren Cheeselouis depict the horror of the battle even more vividly. Close around the base of the great pyramid, palaces, temples, and monuments alike were hastily torn down, their polished façades, beautiful frescoes, and marble stones crudely thrown together into a last-ditch defense. Unfortunately for the Narcerines, the inner ring was never closed. Within the gap were found many arrowheads and inside the crude stone wall there lies a thick layer of ash.
After subduing the south of the West, Wolffolk then pressed on into the Wye. Throughout that country stand the great wyestones, ancient standing stones graven with images whose original meaning is now lost. These Wolffolk and his followers defaced, scraping away the earlier carvings and cutting their own inscriptions upon them instead. Thus there survive many examples of crude Wolfing graffiti such as “Thaugrit carved these words” or “Ouslaughthig wrote me here.” Such traces are not noble, but they are instructive, for they show in the plainest way how conquest often first announces itself: not by law or architecture, but by vandalism.
So were the Wels subdued in the West, village by village, as Wolffolk moved through the land compelling all to submit or perish. At the same time his army grew ever larger, for from each defeated people he pressed more men into the Mothe. Those Wels who were able fled northward into the dense forests of the Wichtlands, where they preserved in fearful memory the tale of the Wels-scourge: an evil wolf who roamed the land devouring men and wealth alike until nothing wholesome remained in the Werld. The story is, of course, merely a barbarous way of describing what in sober truth was conquest. Yet even such rude fables may contain a measure of truth, for to the Wels it must indeed have seemed that a beast, and not a man, had passed over their country.
Questions for readers: Graffiti and vandalism are among the worst crimes because they are crimes against beauty, yet barbarian art is usually very ugly; what, if anything, is lost when one barbarian people deface the art of another? Were the Wels more harmed by Wolfing cruelty or by their own lack of unity? Why are great empires built more by unwilling common soldiers than by noble warriors?
Of the Ardine Campaign
Unfortunately, what happened next in the chronology of Wolffolk is not known with certainty, for of the thirty-three chapters of his life recorded by his contemporary biographer Moerceine, chapters twenty-three through twenty-nine are missing. Some inferences may still be made. It is clear, for instance, that he passed through Orcadia at some point near Eyr, owing to the Wolfing graffiti found there. Yet the honest historian must be content to admit the gap, however vexing, and not pretend to a knowledge he does not possess. Students should remember that the past is often broken, and that it is no part of good scholarship to patch it with lies.
When the narrative resumes in II 34, Wolffolk is found far to the east, in the broad and dusty plains of central Ardune, somewhere near modern Marechalcrie, engaged in war with the Ardines. The Ardines, together with the Barbadines, are now generally believed to be the oldest inhabitants of the Werld, if one does not count the Kyne. They dwelt along the River Oiore and its great tributaries, from the Gap of the Marchlandes in the north to the broad Mouth of the Oiore in the south, and had done so from times beyond memory. In appearance they were very unlike either the Wels or the Thederim, being of middling height, broad and compact in build, with swarthy skin, brown eyes and hair, and a bird-like nose with a slanting brow, which gave them a noble appearance for such a barbarous race.
The Ardines were not wanderers like the Wels, but an urban people, dwelling in many city-states strung along the Oiore. Each city ruled only a narrow belt of land beyond its walls, perhaps no more than a few dozen miles in any direction, and beyond that lay another city with its own laws, gods, rivalries, and vanities. Though more advanced than most barbarian peoples in architecture, irrigation, and the arts of settled life, and had a good knowledge of the use of bronze, they were singularly deficient in union. Indeed, they seem to have taken more delight in making war upon one another than in preserving themselves against common enemies.
This defect, which has undone many otherwise capable peoples, Wolffolk was quick to perceive. For rather than falling at once upon the Ardines in a single rash blow, he proceeded more cunningly, cleverly setting city against city, provoking old quarrels, and making use of one faction to weaken another before turning against both. Thus did he avoid the danger of facing all the Ardines at once, and instead defeated them piecemeal, one city after another.
Of the Death of Wolffolk
The many campaigns of Wolffolk’s wars ended not in battle, but in hubris. Though he believed himself ever faithful to his pagan sun-god, whom he fed daily with the blood of captives, it was precisely in the excess of this evil devotion that he met his end. On the Kalend of Mintober in II 38, to celebrate his victory in an especially difficult siege of the Ardine city of Edis, Wolffolk ordered that the noble sons and daughters of the city be brought out at dawn and slaughtered before the rising sun. Their number, Moerceine says, was three hundred. As always, such figures must be received with caution; yet there is no reason to doubt that the massacre was immense.
As the children of the greatest houses of Edis were led out one by one, their throats cut and their bodies thrown into a great copper basin, the horror of the scene grew beyond endurance. The blood soon overflowed the vessel and ran across the ground in streams. It was then that the daughter of the dead king of Edis, watching in terror and fury as her kin were butchered before her, struck at Wolffolk when he approached. She drove her forehead against him with such force that he was stunned, and when he slipped in the blood upon the ground and fell, she struck him again. Wolffolk dropped the sacrificial knife, and the girl, seizing it at once, plunged it first into his armpit and then into his neck. Thus Wolffolk, crying out as he died, was himself offered up to the false god he had served so long. Students should mark well the justice of this end, for men who delight in blood often perish in it.
The Wolfings stood for a moment in silent astonishment, unable to comprehend what they had seen. But amazement soon gave way to ambition. It was Nauthgeir, formerly Wolffolk’s cupbearer, who acted first. Drawing his knife, he slew Feingthaul, Wolffolk’s seneschal, and with that blow the whole company erupted into violence. The Wolfings fell upon one another in a sudden and savage brawl, each striving to become master of the army now that its king lay dead. For Wolffolk, though he had conquered much, had done nothing to secure his succession, whether by producing a worthy heir or by clearly naming a successor. This failing undid in a moment what long years of victory had built.
Nauthgeir succeeded that day in taking the bloody Wolfcrown from Wolffolk’s pale corpse, but possession of the crown did not end the matter. It only began it. The death of Wolffolk did not bring peace to his conquests, but opened the War of the Wolfings, in which the companions of his youth, no longer held together by the force of his character, turned upon one another like wolves over carrion. Thus ended the life of the greatest of the Wolfings: not in triumph, nor in honor, but shrieking in a pool of his own blood.
Of the Wars of the Wolfings
With word of Wolffolk’s death, the holdings he had won by battle quickly came apart into a mosaic of warfare. Good Hope and Twicrownie immediately rose in revolt and destroyed their Wolfing garrisons. Panthagrul, commander of the western garrison, seized control of all the lands south of Landing. Aghlament, who held On-the-Blue, attempted to gather the Hade under his authority. Hyspoeca, former kingwife and mother of Wolffolk, took command of the garrison at Oaken Twa and made her own claim upon the loyalty of the Hade. Nauthgeir, meanwhile, having secured control of the army in Ardune, raced westward in hopes of defeating them all before they could settle their power.
The first of these rivals to meet in battle were Hyspoeca and Aghlament, who fought at a place somewhere in the hills overlooking On-the-Blue in the early spring of II 39. It is said that Hyspoeca rode into battle in a chariot, arrayed in golden armor and holding a magic wand, by which she called down a sudden fog to conceal the movement of her troops. This story is no doubt embroidered by the usual fondness of the vulgar for marvels. Yet whatever the means, the result is plain enough. Hyspoeca, though outnumbered, outmaneuvered Aghlament’s larger force, surrounded it, and won a complete victory. She then had Aghlament stripped naked, yoked like a beast, and made to draw her chariot into On-the-Blue, where he was beheaded in the central square as she was proclaimed the rightful ruler of the Hade. In this, as in much else, Hyspoeca showed that she understood power very well, and mercy hardly at all.
Panthagrul, while these things were happening in the north, first strengthened his control over the wider West and in the summer of II 39 marched against rebellious Good Hope. Unlike Wolffolk, however, he was unable to bring the campaign to a swift conclusion and soon found himself mired in a long siege instead. The Landlings, who had shown themselves to be cowards when surrounded by stronger enemies, appointed a man named Orcen to act as their harrier and rule them with absolute wartime powers. Such measures are always praised as necessary by those who enact them, though they seldom surrender them willingly once the danger has passed.
Hyspoeca next sought to carry her power southward across the Dwarrescarps into Twicrownie. But before she could even begin that campaign, she died abruptly, likely of disease but some say from poison or, more outlandishly, by the demonic powers she consorted with and supposedly took for lovers. Regardless, soon after, a violent and unexpected blizzard blew down from the north in the early summer of II 40 and caught her army leaderless in the bleak northern highlands, where they froze or starved to death.
In late II 40 Nauthgeir had arrived with what had once been Wolffolk’s main army and had fallen upon Panthagrul from the rear. Trapped between Nauthgeir and the defenses of Good Hope, and already losing many men each day to flux, grippe, and a sudden outbreak of the putrid fever, Panthagrul was forced into a hasty battle. He advanced his shieldwall against Nauthgeir’s men with the right flank, resting on the shore, packed far more densely than the left. This stronger wing succeeded in pushing back Nauthgeir’s line and peeled it away from the coast, opening a gap wide enough for Panthagrul to gallop through and save himself, while the remainder of his army was enveloped and destroyed. This cowardice served Panthagrul poorly, as he was stabbed in the throat the next night by a Landling patriot who recognized him at a roadside inn.
Nauthgeir, though victorious, now found himself in the very same difficulty that had frustrated Panthagrul. He could not break the defenses of Good Hope, which continued to supply itself from the fisheries under its control in Twicrownie. So the siege dragged on for almost two years before Nauthgeir himself died of the putrid fever in II 42, and the sickly remnants of Wolffolk’s once-great army were again left leaderless. And so within two years all the Wolfings who had fought alongside Wolffolk had perished and none of them gained what they sought. The empire Wolffolk had built was undone.
Of the Successor Wars and the Wolfyoke
By the death of Nauthgeir, the Thederim had already been fully subjected to the Wolfings under what later ages have called the Wolfyoke. Though the first companions of Wolffolk had destroyed one another, the Wolfings were far from extinguished. Their sons, having come of age amid the later campaigns in Ardune and having already seen much battle, proved capable warriors in their own right. Gathering to themselves the remnants of their fathers’ households, retainers, and mothes, they soon raised fresh armies, reasserted their authority, and continued to hold the West in subjection.
At first these younger Wolfings—Gautheir son of Nauthgeir, Aghrang son of Panthagrul, and Waurgect son of Aghlament—each claimed to seek the restoration of the full dominion of Wolffolk. In this their ambition dressed itself in the language of duty, as it so often does. For though each spoke grandly of unity and inheritance, each plainly intended that such a restored kingdom should be ruled by himself alone. Still, in the early years their claims had some force, and many among the Hade and the subjected peoples believed that one of them might indeed succeed in gathering the shattered empire again into one hand. But as the years lengthened into decades, and the crowns of these first successors passed in turn to their own sons, the hope of a reunited Wolfing realm gradually died away. What began as a struggle for one inheritance settled instead into the division of the West among several rival dynasties, each now ruling its subjects as an absolute king.
None of these kingdoms, however, was strong enough to conquer the others outright. The result was not peace, but a long wasting of the land. Wars followed one upon another without final decision: raids, counter-raids, burnt fields, ruined villages, broken truces, and battles that settled nothing beyond which district should suffer next. Frontiers shifted only to shift back again, and every victory was made barren from the certainty of another campaign to follow it. The mothes, drawn from the subjected Thederim and other conquered peoples, swelled to enormous numbers and were driven out season after season to fight and die in wars from which they had little to gain and much to lose. Students should remember that the burden of dynastic ambition is never borne by princes themselves, but by the masses trodden under their feet.
As time went on, the character of these wars grew stranger and more corrupt. Since no king could destroy his rivals entirely, and since the capture of noble prisoners brought both ransom and prestige, the Wolfing nobility came more and more not to seek decisive victory, but to take men of rank alive. Great efforts were therefore spent on elaborate expeditions, displays of splendor, and carefully staged battles in which the object was as much ceremony as conquest. Yet this pomp was of a hideous kind, for those high-born captives who were taken were often dragged before the altars of their false sun-god and there sacrificed in public. Thus what had once been conquest hardened into a grim custom, and war itself became to the Wolfings at once vile sport and blasphemy.
So the Wolfyoke endured over the West. The old freedom of the Thederim was by then little more than memory, while the Wolfing kings, though fierce enough to oppress, were too divided and foolish to build anything lasting, the inevitable state of all barbarians. They possess strength enough to destroy a civilized order, but not wisdom enough to replace it with one better. Thus the Successor Wars dragged on through generation after generation, devouring men, treasure, and whole provinces, until at last the strain became greater than the Wolfings themselves could bear.
Of the Latrocies and the Mothic Rising
The first rebellions of the mothes, later known collectively as the Latrocies, were at first spontaneous and uncoordinated. Though each mothe rose on its own and under its own leaders, they did so for all the same reasons: endless campaigning, brutal treatment, and the constant fear of being offered up as blood-sacrifice to a pagan god. The first latroce began in the summer of II 92 at Hack-Well, and though it was soon put down, others spread with remarkable speed across the West. By the fall of II 93, nearly all the western lands were in some state of rebellion.
The Wolfings, seeing the precariousness of their position, were driven to do what had previously seemed unthinkable. The rival kingdoms, which had spent generations wasting one another in fruitless war, declared a truce among themselves and coordinated their loyal warriors to suppress the Latrocies. Thus necessity accomplished what prudence had long failed to do. United, the Wolfings proved more than capable of crushing the scattered uprisings. By the beginning of II 97, the West had again been brought to peace, if one wishes to call peace exhaustion and dread.
Yet the Wolfings were merely savages dressed in golden robes, and had no use for peace beyond the short needs of self-preservation. No sooner had the Latrocies been subdued than their old wars for captives and sacrifice began again, as wasteful and as senseless as before. Had they remained united, or had they possessed the wisdom to reform some of the causes of the uprisings, they might perhaps have endured longer. But barbarous peoples seldom learn anything from danger except how to postpone it. Thus the Wolfings, having escaped destruction once, hastened back to it.
In Horninga of II 99 there occurred at last the event which the earlier Latrocies had foreshadowed but failed to accomplish. A conspiracy arose among the mothe of the Aghlamentian Dynasty. Arrayed in battle against the mothe of the Nauthgerians, the Aghlamentian ranks suddenly turned about and fell upon their own Wolfing officers. Seeing what was happening, the Nauthgerian mothe at once did likewise, slaughtering their commanders to a man. Thus, in a single moment, what had been intended as another of the Wolfings’ pointless wars was transformed into a great rising against the masters themselves. The Aghlamentian and Nauthgerian mothes then joined together, no longer as rival armies, but as a common force seeking at last the demise of the Wolfings.
Here began what is properly called the Mothic Rising. Unlike the earlier Latrocies, which were many scattered fires, this was a true conflagration. For now the mothes had learned the lesson that misery had long been teaching them: that so long as the Wolfings endured, neither peace, nor safety, nor dignity were possible for those beneath their yoke. So the very armies by which the Wolfings had ruled the West became the instrument of their ruin, which is a fitting end for all powers that trust too much in fear and too little in justice.
the third wheel
Of the Great Mothe
Having overthrown their masters in the first violence of the Rising, the mothes agreed to combine their strength in order to defeat the remaining Wolfings and liberate all the Thederim from their rule. This new body they called the Great Mothe, and it afterwards proved one of the most influential institutions in the whole history of the Werld. Though in name it was chiefly a great army of conscripted pikes, in reality it was much more than that. Attached to it was a vast train of camp-followers: wives and children, merchants and traders, singers, writers, craftsmen, and all the other persons by whom an army of such size must live. In this way the Great Mothe became, as many later historians have observed, the Werld of the Thederim in miniature.
Since the soldiers of the Great Mothe had been drawn from many peoples, regions, and conditions, the institution had two effects at once, both of great importance. On the one hand, it blended together customs, songs, words, and usages that had once belonged to separate groups and districts. On the other, it gave to those same men a common purpose through shared hardship, common danger, and the daily discipline of camp and march. This is no small matter. A people is often less the product of blood than of suffering endured together.
When the Great Mothe met the Panthagrulic army upon the fields of Eandwater in III 2, the result confirmed what had already been seen in the earlier mutinies. After only a brief engagement, the Panthagrulic mothe turned against their Wolfing commanders and joined the Great Mothe. Thus the strength of the rebellion increased not merely by victory, but by contagion, as one subjected host after another learned from the example of its fellows. In this way the Wolfings discovered too late the danger of ruling through men who had every reason to hate them and none to remain loyal once a better prospect appeared.
By the late summer of III 3, the Great Mothe had entered the homeland of the Hade themselves. There they laid waste the country with the same fire and harrying which the Wolfings had so long inflicted upon others. Villages were burned, storehouses emptied, and the land driven to desolation. At last they came to Oaken Twa, the old seat of Wiglathe and symbol of the first rise of the Wolfings, and burned it to the ground. This was no mere military act, but one of great meaning, for in the destruction of Oaken Twa the Great Mothe declared before all the Werld that the age of the Wolfings was at an end.
Yet the student should observe that liberation and destruction are not the same thing, though they often walk together. The Great Mothe had overthrown the Wolfings, but it had not yet settled what should take their place. This uncertainty, which is common after all great revolutions, mattered little so long as there remained enemies to pursue and symbols to burn. But it would matter a great deal thereafter. For armies are excellent tools for breaking old orders, but much less suited to building new ones.
Of the Sundering
Almost at once the Great Mothe, which had so easily united against a common enemy, began to tear itself apart once that enemy was gone. This ought not to surprise any student of history. Men who have been held together by necessity alone seldom remain united once necessity is removed. By the beginning of III 4, the Great Mothe had already broken into at least five factions, though these were soon reduced by battle, treachery, and absorption into fewer and stronger hands. Thus the body which had overthrown the Wolfings did not long survive its own victory, but instead became the instrument of a new round of confusion and war.
The first decisive struggle of this disorder came at the Battle of Carth’s Mill on the Kalends of Breaktenth III 4. There three mothes, under the command of the generals Earamonda, Beoranicha, and Leidarghasata, met each other in opposition upon the same field. It is one of those battles which later writers delight to recount in great detail, though the only fact of real importance is its result. By the end of the day, only Earamonda remained alive. The other two generals were slain, and their defeated mothes were absorbed into his own. In this way Earamonda emerged from the confusion as the strongest of the successor leaders, and was able thereafter to march through the Wye without opposition.
Yet Earamonda’s advance did not continue unchecked forever. Outside the Flooding Fields, in Frogtenth of III 4, the mothe centered in Good Hope under the command of Estratoberaga at last made a serious stand against him. Several costly skirmishes were fought, followed by a major defeat for Estratoberaga at the Onion River. Even so, Earamonda was unable to turn that victory into complete dominion. His own mothe, weary of constant battle and no doubt uneasy at the price of further advance, compelled him to negotiate rather than continue the struggle. This is worth noting, for the mothes, though often ruled by strong generals, were never so passive as kings would have preferred. They had helped make their commanders, and they could still restrain them.
The settlement which followed, known as the Peace of the Mothes, broadly divided the lands of the Thederim into two great spheres. These are what we now call the Westremothes in the west and the Austrimoths in the east. Neither side received all that it wanted, but both received enough to make continued war less attractive than uneasy peace. Good Hope, Brensa, and Twicrownie, however, remained outside the direct rule of either faction and preserved their independence. Thus the old unity of the Great Mothe came formally to an end, and in its place there arose a divided order which would shape the history of the West for generations. For this reason the conflict is rightly called the Sundering, since it marks not merely a military division, but the breaking apart of the first great common cause of the post-Wolfing age.
Every student should remember that the Sundering was born not from weakness alone, but from success. So long as the Great Mothe had enemies before it, its purpose was plain. Once those enemies were broken, ambition, jealousy, and local loyalty returned at once. It is easy for men to agree on what they hate, and much harder for them to agree on what should follow after victory. In this, as in so many other things, the history of the Mothes offers a sober warning.
Of Millburhs and Stederiches
With the mothes dissolved and the Wolfings contained once more within their prairie about the Blue, the Thederim at last relaxed into peace. Far and wide had they been cast by their wars, like grain scattered from the hand and springing up in new fields. Thus all the West came to be settled by the Thede. In meadows, on the plains, and among the oak-covered hills, the Thederim drove their cattle and planted their potatoes and corn, until lands once wild or ruined were made fruitful again.
In these years they built many fortified mills, which they called burahha and which we now know simply as burhs. Most commonly a frith—that is, an extended family or clan—would gather its wealth together into a common fund for the building of a watermill. This mill soon became the center of the frith: the place where its members met and gathered, where the rites of the seasons were observed, and where disputes were judged and customs upheld. It was also strongly defended, so that in times of war or eor the people of the frith might retreat there for safety. Students should note this well, for the first foundations of a people are often laid not in palaces or temples, but in mills, storehouses, and places of common labor.
Before long, men who did not tend the buffalo found that they preferred to live beside the burh, where grain was ground, goods were traded, and judgments were given. Shops and houses therefore began to gather around these places, and year by year the burhs increased. As they grew, the landscape itself was divided among the various friths, each with its own lands, obligations, and protections. In this way all the West gradually came to be studded with stederiches, that is, city-states, each centered upon its own burh.
Each of these burhs took taxes, guarded its territory, and impressed its own order upon the surrounding land. Thus there arose across the West a new pattern of life: no longer the wandering disorder of the old wars, nor yet the vast dominion of the Wolfings, but a patchwork of small, stubborn, and self-regarding commonwealths. From these would later grow many of the customs, rivalries, and local loyalties which have shaped the history of the West down to our own day. For men who grind together, judge together, and defend the same walls soon come to think themselves a people apart.
Of Holystaine and the Wye
To-day the Wye is often thought of as the very heartland of the Thede, and the place most closely associated with their character and traditions. Yet this was not always so. In earlier times the Wye was foreign to them. The land had been inhabited by Wels, but these were much diminished in the wars of the Wolfings and the Mothes, and so the Thede, when at last they entered it in greater numbers, found much of the country thinly peopled and half-abandoned: a land of foggy downs, broken hills, and lonely pasture roamed chiefly by buffalo. The old legends say that the Wye was then haunted, and that it was not safe for any Thede to walk there after dark. Such tales are, of course, childish in their particulars, but they preserve a real memory of unease, for men are always quick to call haunted any land which is unfamiliar to them and still bears the marks of another people.
Chief among these marks were the great welstanes, which stood scattered throughout the country. The tallest of these is what we now call the Holystaine. It was commonly believed that the welstanes drew in power from the moon and released their evil by night, and from this superstition there arose the well-known tale of Peer Jack. It is said that Peer Jack, who was then only a lad, took up his fiddle and approached the Holystaine in order to challenge the land itself for possession of the Wye. He waited until nightfall, when the osings were thought to be at their strongest, and there called the spirit of the place out to meet him.
The land, so the story goes, agreed to the contest and took up Peer Jack’s own shadow, which leapt upon the stone and stood against him. Then the two dueled with their fiddles for the right to the country. Neither could surpass the other in skill or invention, and so they played with such speed and fury that their bows seemed likely to set the strings aflame. Yet Peer Jack needed only to endure until dawn, for the shadow could hold its place only by night. Thus, when the sun at last broke with a fiery crack over the hills, the shadow vanished, and Peer Jack, still playing, won the duel and secured the Wye forever for the Thede. To ensure that the land could never challenge him again, he then broke his fiddle upon the Holystaine.
This story is plainly untrue. Yet like many false tales, it reveals something true. It shows how the Thede thought of themselves in the Wye: not merely as settlers entering an empty country, but as a people who had contested with the land itself and won it by courage, endurance, and art. This is worth the student’s attention. Conquerors often like to imagine that the country desired them, but settlers of a harsher sort prefer to say that they earned it. In the tale of Peer Jack, the Thede did not inherit the Wye, nor simply seize it; they proved themselves worthy of it.
For this reason the Holystaine remained afterward a place of great reverence, and the Wye itself came to be regarded not as a mere frontier, but as a sacred country of trial, memory, and belonging. Thus what had once been foreign became in time the very emblem of Thedishness. Such changes are common in history. The lands which a people first fear are often those they later claim most passionately as their own.