If you haven't done so, already, read Chapter 1 first.
Chapter 2
It was one of King Medvelil’s lifelong grievances that the tales of those roguish bards, who held Poynese public opinion in the palm of their hand, had made it impossible to write any accurate history of the realm of which he had been crowned king at the age of thirty, after the simultaneous deaths of his father and elder brother, at the Battle of Roseblood, by the cunning of the traitor Byzernin, and over which, on the day of Anduir’s triumphal entry into Poyn near the end of the Tuvelain war, he had reigned for twenty-three years.
Even in the soberest chronicles, Medvelil could detect the influence of the bards, their compulsive poetic biases decorating and distorting everything, spinning facts into romance. Here, where Medvelil looked for the causes of a war, he would find no policy or legal claims for which wars might be rationally begun, but instead, chroniclers echoing the salacious details of some secret love-affair, which perhaps never occurred but in the fancy of some bard, or if did occur, probably had none of the importance that was imputed to it. There, the facts about an important knight’s quests, the names and the places and the dates, were handed down in the most careless and slapdash fashion, full of inconsistencies which the luckless chroniclers sometimes had, as it were, to throw up their hands in despair of reconciling, yet the most intimate thoughts of the same knight on the eve of some love-tryst, or in the heat of a battle or a chase, were reported word for word, the same chroniclers credulously reiterating the whimsical inventions of a street performer. There were too many strange genealogies, too many foreshadowings, too many magical incidents, too many coincidences, too many incredible feats of arms. All of this made Poyn’s recorded history, what there was of it, much less useful to King Medvelil, who had always studied history not for entertainment, but in order to learn how to reign.
Medvelil also scoured history to find, as it were, friends among his predecessors, men who, had he but met them, might have understood the intolerable weight of worry that had fallen upon his shoulders with the crown. For a throne—he thought—is the loneliest place in the world. He could open his heart to none. He had no friend to share his burden. But perhaps they—his ancestors, the great kings of the past—might have understood, might have known how he felt. If only the old stories had provided a faithful portrait of any of them. But thanks to the bards and their tales, the details that might have rendered the old kings merely human were lost. They were—he felt—as coldly heroic as statues, masked in chivalry and high-mindedness, not men but mere ideals.
So often, it seemed to be Medvelil’s fate to be out of sympathy with his subjects, to have in his heart feelings opposite to all those around him. Today, for example—for it was the day of Anduir’s return, the same day when Braeth entertained the crowds at Bakers’ Square—was, for the people, a day of glory and triumph, but Medvelil’s heart was troubled. Amidst the austerity of war, he had been accustomed to forbid unseasonable celebration, to watch closely, to what use food and drink and all the necessities and conveniences of life were put in the city, and to see that men were occupied with labor as much as their strength allowed, so that the city might do its utmost to furnish supplies to the knights and the army in the hour of the realm’s direst need. Movement in and out of the city was closely controlled, both for fear of spies, and so that fishermen and miners and all manner of workmen might not chatter idly on street corners or gawk at the houses of the great or dangle their feet in the fountains, but work, and work, and work. Now all that hard-won discipline had melted like the winter snow. Poyn was so full of people, who had gathered themselves together from all the towns round about the lake, and from all the isles of the lake, that Medvelil feared there should be no fish caught, nor any deer slain, nor any fruits of the wild picked, nor any bread made, and there should be famine. And the people’s celebration was too soon, for there were still Tuvelain legions within the realm of Poyn, albeit they were now in full retreat and every day nearer to their own borders. But they might turn back.
And for what were they celebrating? Whatever his feats of arms, whatever his services to the realm, a popular celebration so disproportionate to Anduir’s rank was an unlucky affair. However, the king realized, with self-reproach, that what annoyed him most was a matter that he knew to be a trifle and unworthy of so much attention. It was this rumor that “ten years to the day” had passed since Anduir had first returned to Poyn, to be greeted by a similar grand procession. Medvelil, meticulous about dates, indeed about everything, knew this was false. Who, then, had put the rumor about? Doubtless the bards, and this was another of those imaginative lies with which they had shrouded all of Poyn’s previous history, but why? Doubtless they thought it was a good tale—but no, it wasn’t! This particular embellishment of the story, Medvelil knew, was doubly false, false not only in fact, but even more so, as a figure.
For that first grand procession—long ago it seemed now—had been no spontaneous popular celebration, as this was. Medvelil had staged it, quite cynically, in order to impress certain ambassadors of Tuvel, who were present at that time, with a display of popular devotion to the kingdom’s cause, in a desperate hope to intimidate them, and forestall the Tuvelain invasion that the kingdom had long expected and seemed unlike to outlast. He had sent paid soldiers to close the shops of bakers and smiths. He forbade boats to carry anyone out of the city, and paid the ferrymen so that they would bear all who wished to come, without charge, into the capital. He told his ministers and knights and men of parliament to send all their servants and relatives to people the avenue that led from the North Ferrydocks to the Castle, to dress gaily and to cheer and chant. All this was done secretly. How inapt to compare that tawdry pantomime to this riotous festival of popular hero-worship! To Medvelil, who hated untruth of every kind, and hated being reminded of how often he had resorted to it, the echo deepened Medvelil’s sense of foreboding, and loneliness.
How different he was—he wondered afresh—from his father, jolly King Dagorlil, the great red beard and locks. He had never been lonely. He was a friend to all the world. But then, Dagorlil had not been a wise king. Medvelil had tried to be wiser, but had he been, after all?
Medvelil was king by virtue of his ancestor King Donbold, in whose line Medvelil was the tenth, while Donbold himself had the crown of Poyn in the following manner. (What is here recorded is the kingdom’s as best Medvelil through a discriminating perusal of the surviving records.) There were in those days—it was said to have been two hundred years and two before Medvelil’s birth—no great knights or men of war in Poyn. Kingless because in the midst of the waters they were beyond the reach of riders, Poyn was peopled by fisherman, mostly drunkards, and traders, mostly swindlers, of whom the richest mocked an honorable word by calling themselves “barons” although none had prowess with the sword and some could scarcely ride a horse.
There was a constant quarrel between the rich and the poor over who had a right to fish in the waters near the shores of Poyn, and who must row out, laboriously, into deeper waters, where the risk of storm and pirates was greater, lest the near waters be exhausted of fish. So bitter did this quarrel become that the men of that town—it was not then called city and had but a few hundred men, or a thousand at the most—became enemies one to another, and the town was betrayed to pirates, and betrayed again, and made utterly wretched. At last the people and those who called themselves barons agreed among themselves to send representatives to seek out a king who could provide justice and protection for them. And so these representatives, who were deemed men of better judgment than their fellows, traveled far into the mountains and sought out a retired old hero, Sir Donbold the Dragonslayer, where for ten years he had tended sheep amidst the high alpine meadows. And they spoke to him thus:
“Mighty and renowned knight, Sir Donbold, all of us have heard from our youth of your great deeds, and indeed you are spoken of us and praised to the ends of the earth, and we are much honored to have come into your presence. Yet for all your fame, you have no realm and no crown, as have many other men who are your inferiors both in strength, and in wisdom, and in glory. Therefore we beseech you to hear our petition. We come from a town which ought to be rich, for we are, first of all, positioned amidst waters teeming with fish, and second, we are just below great mountain meadows full of wildflowers upon which the bees feast, so that our beekeepers produce the most and finest honey of any of the towns of the lake, and finally, because the slopes of our mountain are the only place where sheep herds can be led from the high mountains down to the shores of the lake to be carried by boat to other towns, so that we can control the sheep trade and tax it as we will. But as there is none to reign over us and settle disputes, our town is full of dissensions and robberies and treachery, and as there is none to command us in battle, we are again and again overrun by raiders and pirates, so that even men who are not yet old can remember the town being plundered ten times, and burnt thrice. But if you come to govern and protect us, we are sure to achieve great prosperity, so that every mead cup will be full, and you will be honored for it.”
From this speech Donbold well understood what manner of men he was dealing with: flatterers and cowards, men without courage who cared not for justice, and who could think of nothing more honorable than full mead cups. He was very sorry to leave the majestic solitude, and in all the years that followed, not a day passed wherein he did not regret the bleating of new lambs or the glare of the sun upon the snow or the landscapes spread out below him, with rank after rank of mountains changing from green to blue in the increasing distance, or the birdsongs at sunrise, or the woolly marmot ducking into his burrow, and the ever-present white glory of the snow-bound summits. Little did they know the ways of a noble heart who thought to entice him by the opportunity to monopolize the sheep trade of the lake! But Donbold knew that women and children must have perished in the piratical raids and fires of which they told him, and that the poor must be oppressed by the robberies and greed of the rich and unjust, and though his hair was white, he was still knight and the years could not still the love of adventure in him. Also, he knew that he might make a great city of these men after all, for the seeds of virtue can sometimes grow in the most unpromising soils. And so he accepted their invitation, and lost the tender fragrance of the mountain meadows for the muddy town streets, where pigs wandered, so that they stank.
The barons of Poyn were to have their full mead cups, for Poyn prospered under King Donbold. His mere name dispelled the threat of pirates, and—so the tales told it—soon his exploits conquered all the isles amidst Lake Shivershine (which but for pirates had been almost unpeopled) and helped bring justice among the lake towns, where again and again the swords of Donbold and his knights helped the weak and wronged against the strong and proud. The barons were to have their full mead cups, but they paid a price of the most intimate kind, for King Donbold won the hearts of their sons, and made them knights, and all enamored of virtue and chivalry and adventure, so that they disdained the indolence and money-lust of their fathers, and some of the old barons grumbled that there were no sensible people left in the town, but everyone was daft with highfalutin jabber. And they lost the respect of the people too, for protected now by the king’s justice, no one feared to laugh at a baron or call him miser or churl. Soon, which was even more painful, the old drones ceased to be spoken of at all.
Great tournaments began to be held then in Poyn, which became the finest and most famous school of arms in the world, as they still were in the time of Dagorlil. King Donbold also liked to punish those who praised him and to reward those who censured him, and by this means he received true counsel, and his court became renowned for the wisdom that was spoken there, so that men called it a “parliament of the wise,” or simply, “parliament.” And though King Donbold taught excellence chiefly to the highborn, yet through them the lowborn also learned it, for they emulated the example that was set them. The courage that the knight displayed in battle, the tradesman and the builder emulated in the ambition of their plans and enterprises. The grace that the knight displayed in the tournament field, the weaver and the artist applied to their own crafts. The eloquence with which the knight spoke in counseling his king or his brother knights was emulated by the common people in speaking beautifully and graciously to one another, and the faithfulness and diligence with which the knights obeyed the king’s orders was emulated by the apprentice laboring for his master. In this fashion, Poyn came to excel the other towns of the lake in every art and industry and endeavor.
The tales told much more than that. They told, in Medvelil’s opinion, far too much, for along with the years the kings of Poyn spent at Maethyr Ammien much later, it was this period in Poyn’s history with which the bards loved to make their sport. Medvelil could well believe that famous knights from all over the world were attracted to the court of a newly-crowned king who was already a famous conqueror and dragonslayer, and wise and good. But too many stories were crowded into a reign that—on this the legends were agreed—had lasted only twelve years. Medvelil thought that many things that had happened later were imputed to Donbold’s times, because the bards preferred to put his name into a tale than that of his son Aurlil or his grandson Hadralil, whose reigns were nearly destitute of legends, though they must have had quests and battles of their own, else how had Poynese chivalry lasted to the present day? There were tales, supposed to be from Donbold’s day, of which certain scenes took place in the Canal District, which was not built until a hundred years before Medvelil’s own time. There were knights, supposed to have sat at table with Donbold, who would have had to live more than a hundred and fifty years to give birth to the grandfathers of living men. There were fathers and sons who both, according to legend, went on Donbold’s quests and won damsels thereby, though twelve years would not suffice for the son of the one rescued damsel to have grown to maturity in time to rescue the second within Donbold’s reign. Absurdly, three generations of knights in one family were said to have served in this fashion in Donbold’s day. There were tales in which a single knight defeated an army of five hundred, or even of a thousand men. There was even a tale in which a knight’s steed overleapt the high wall of a besieged castle. The bards invented such tales in order to flatter knights who, having come lately into the realm, or having inherited wealth gained by trade and then pretended to the profession of arms, wanted for themselves a more honorable lineage than the actual facts provided. And as time passed it became hard to distinguish the true tales from the false, and the currency of legend and of chivalry was debased.
Yet some tales Medvelil thought true, and whether they were true or not, they mattered because in them rested the authority of Poyn’s deepest laws. One of these was the story of the liberation of the slaves. A few of the old barons seem to have had the detestable custom of keeping men in bondage under them merely to labor for them, treating them thus rather as beasts of burden than as men with immortal souls. One day, not long after he was crowned, King Donbold was riding along the water and he saw a man digging a well, whose face was sad and sullen. “What ails you, good man?” said the king, “Your face is full of grief.” And the man told him that he knew no happiness, because his heart yearned for adventure, but he was the slave of one Thunior, and could not go his own way but must labor perpetually for another man’s pleasure. And the king’s heart was troubled. As Thunior was one of Donbold’s chief counselors, he asked him the next day why he kept a man as a slave against his will. And Thunior would once have said frankly that he did it for his own profit and comfort, but now he could not, for Poyn had become full of noble principles and virtue, so he was ashamed. So he said, instead, that that man was by nature a vagabond and wastrel, but that in his, Thunior’s, house, he was well treated, and far happier than he would be in freedom, and he spoke with ingratitude and only half seriously when he complained of his lot, and Donbold need not pay it any heed.
So the next day, King Donbold rose early, and he went on foot through the city, until he saw a man sad and toiling, and questioned him, and learned he was a slave. He asked the man, might he share his labor? And he did everything that the slave did. When the master of that slave came and saw his king toiling in that humble and degrading work, he was so ashamed that he threw himself on the ground and begged the king’s pardon. And the king said, “If you would free me, free him too.” So that master set his slave free. And King Donbold went to the next house where slaves were working, and did the same, and so through the whole city, so that by evening there were no more slaves in Poyn. And then he declared before all the people that as long as the kingdom of Poyn stood, no man should labor for another against his will, but all equally must enjoy the king’s justice, and so it had been ever since.
There was a similar tale from near the end of Donbold’s reign. He was still vigorous, but he had a premonition that he would not live more than a year more, and his mind was preoccupied of what would befall the kingdom in his absence. One day, King Donbold returned to the city in disguise, from a quest in which he had thrice rescued in desperate battle Sir Khunarn, bravest and strongest of the Poynese-born knights. Because Sir Khunarn was overproud, Donbold feared to offend him if he should yield him aid openly in his own person, so he had dressed as a poor ranger of the forest. In the last of these battles, Donbold was wounded twice on the right hand, and his wounds were in the shape of a cross. And as Donbold arrived at the Ferrydocks, he saw a man being driven out of the city with savage beatings, for no crime except that he was a tailor, born in another city, and the tailors born in Poyn were jealous of their control of the city’s trade. Donbold asked them why they were beating a man. And the wicked tailors said that they thought none should work in Poyn but those who were born there. And so the king, grieved by their wickedness, said, “In that case, my friends, you must drive me out as well, for I was not born in this city, but far away among the high towers of Gelth-upon-Tyne, on the shining strand of the eastern ocean, where the seagulls are silver,” and he began to walk towards the mountain to depart. And when they heard this saying, they recognized their king, and ran after him, begging him to remain, but he asked, “Why should I reign over a people who treated their fellow men so unjustly? For it was only because of my disguise did I know what was done here, and perhaps you have been deceiving me all this time! And what will you do when I am gone?” But because of their pleas he delayed his departure, yet he prepared for it inwardly, for he desponded, thinking all his labor had been in vain.
Meanwhile, Sir Khunarn returned victorious from his great quest, the most difficult and dangerous that any knight of Donbold’s court had done, for he had slain three witches and seven giants and a monster in a watery cavern, and liberated four hundred captives who would have been its food. King Donbold, seated on his throne amidst the court, asked him to tell the tale of his quest. Sir Khunarn did so faithfully, except that he did not mention that three times he had been saved from death by a ragged ranger of the wood, pretending that the victories had been his work alone. And tears began to fall from King Donbold’s eyes, when he saw that Sir Khunarn was so eaten up with pride that he would tell lies to gain a little more glory, though he had so much already. When Sir Khunarn saw the tears in Donbold’s eyes, he saw and recognized the cross-shaped wounds upon the king’s right hand, and knew that they were the same that he had seen on the stranger who had aided him. So Sir Khunarn fell on his face in shame and reproached himself. And as Sir Khunarn asked the king’s forgiveness, all the people gathered around, for the tailors had spread word among the people that King Donbold was to depart, and all of the people vowed there with one voice that they would not mistreat any foreigner who dwelt among them. Then King Donbold fell on his knees and thanked God, that although living men even at their best are tainted by pride and lies, yet even at their worst, there is a spark of good in them that can be rekindled. And he raised up Sir Khunarn and did him honor, and said to the people, “It is well, for the king’s justice belongs to you, not as men born in this or that city, but simply as men.” And so it became the law of Poyn, deeper than any decrees or judgments of king or court, that all who should come from any country might dwell in peace among them and enjoy the king’s justice, and some called this the law of hospitality.
Not long after that, an old woman came to the Ferrydocks, and alighted from the boat that bore her, and made as if to enter the city. But two boatswains stood in her way to prevent her, asking her name. And when she told them it was Madam Miroeia, they said she was not to enter, for she was a famous soothsayer, and King Donbold hated magic above all things, and had forbidden it within the city. But she told them that she had forsworn magic, and had come to Poyn to live peacefully and enjoy the king’s justice, as all men might do, by the law. So they had to permit her to enter the city, and soon the rumors began to say that she was soothsaying, and the people came to her by night to hear her. And so one nobleman’s son, who had great enthusiasm for King Donbold’s cause, and who feared for the future of the realm, because Donbold would not live long, and because his son and heir, Aurlil, was but a small boy, went to Madam Miroeia and asked her this question:
“How long will King Donbold sit on the throne of Poyn, and how will his house prosper?”
And she answered him:
“Unto ten generations shall his house wear the crown of Poyn, and they shall reign in lands where no Poynese living has set foot, nay scarcely heard tell.” (This was “the prophecy” which Ravuk Pasha had mentioned to Lord Wender.)
And the nobleman’s son rejoiced in his heart that his beloved king should so prosper, and he began to tell this prophecy to all the court, thinking that the king would not punish him for bringing good news. But when King Donbold heard of this, he was outraged, and he said that great and terrible evils would come of what the nobleman’s son had done, and he stripped him of his rank, and made him a prisoner in the galleys for ten years, hearing none of his father’s pleas at first, though a few months later, on his deathbed, he relented. Yet though Donbold despised Madam Miroeia’s soothsaying, the tales do not say that he contradicted the truth of it.
The prophecy had so far fulfilled itself as the kingdom went from glory to glory, and gained dominion over many lands. But now, the ten generations that had been foretold were nearly complete.
Donbold’s funeral was a great event, and there was an outpouring of grief, not only by the nobles and people of Poyn, but of people from all the towns of the lake, and even from places beyond, places where Donbold had wandered and fought long before he was crowned king, whither no Poynese had traveled, and of which no Poynese had even heard tell. For ten days, priests and knights stood by the graveside as the mourners, in their tens of thousands, came to see the face of the dead king, so that his crowned head (not decaying because of the chill of late autumn, but red leaves fell over his body, so that he seemed wounded though he had died in his bed) was seen perhaps by more people in death than in life.
A great foreboding filled the hearts of the people, for they sensed that Donbold’s death would bring a time of war. Jealousy of Poyn’s strange and sudden greatness under King Donbold motivated conspiracies by kings of the other lake towns against her, now that fear of the famous hero was gone. Yet it seems that far greater causes made that time a dark age, for it was said that the towns had sometimes sought Poyn’s alliance against invading nations, terribly mighty and cruel, whose names were otherwise forgotten: the Juvermairns, the Bixos, the Goudroll. Little was remembered of those battles except the fantastic numbers of the dead. In those times Poyn was led by the “Four Great Captains,” whose names were variously remembered (and perhaps they had had several), but who were all foreign knights, who had known Donbold long before, who served in succession as regents to the young King Aurlil, and who all died in great battles. These grim heroes had never married, but some noble families in Poyn claimed descent from them nonetheless. (Medvelil had emulated the Four Great Captains in seeking to build a great alliance against the Tuvelain Empire.)
As the last of the Great Captains died, Aurlil came of age, and peace was restored. Of the reigns of King Aurlil and his son Hadralil, little was remembered, but it was the glory of King Peterlil, son of Hadralil, to have become suzerain of all the shores of Lake Shivershine without shedding a single drop of blood. That happened in the following manner.
In the last years of King Hadralil peace was established upon the lake, because no town dared to take what belonged to its neighbor, for fear of the kings of Poyn, who were eager to avenge all injustice, and so it continued through thirty years in which King Peterlil sat upon the throne. Poyn itself was impregnable because all ferrymen and boatmen and fishermen and all who dwelt in the islands were subjects of the king of Poyn—by this time pirates were unknown upon the lake—while their city could not be approached on land, but by a narrow road which had been rendered vulnerable to attack from the cliffs above by the defensive works which the citizens of Poyn had by their labor chiseled into the rocks there, in the time of the Four Great Captains. And so, while the knights of Poyn went beyond the mountains to win honor, the kings of the lake towns dispelled their boredom by coming to watch, and sometimes participating in, the great tournaments of Poyn. They also bought the wares of Poyn, which were finer and better in every way than the rude productions of their own towns. Sometimes, after the tournaments, they would stay to listen to the parliaments that advised King Peterlil, and were sometimes allowed to speak. Often they met their own former subjects, who had left the lake towns to come to the great city, with its stone streets and its great houses and churches, its fountains and statues. Some of these emigres had so prospered that they had, in Poyn, finer houses and more gold and silver than their former kings had. They were amazed at the crowds of people who inhabited Poyn’s narrow peninsula, and wondered at the fleets of boats and the herds of sheep that supplied food to such a populace.
They were much surprised at the freedom of speech of the common people of Poyn, who loved to praise prowess in the tournament or eloquence in the parliament, but who showed very little deference to a man merely because he called himself a king, deeming their own king so far above all others that the name applied to any other man could be little more than a joke, and who were not afraid to speak with open disdain of acts by great men which they deemed cowardly or unjust.
Some of these lesser kings began to send their sons to Poyn to be educated, in hopes that they would become capable of the feats both of arms and of oratory which they saw among the knights of Poyn. Often these princes would be reluctant to come home to the dull towns where they were born, and would prefer the title of knight to that of king. In the twentieth year of the reign of Hadralil, a prince of Dericmere was dubbed a knight of Poyn and then, notified of his father’s death, returned home, but refused to be crowned, ruling the tiny kingdom as a mere knight and with no title but “Sir.” This caused confusion, but mattered little, as Dericmere was a mere village of a few hundred residents, in addition to the surrounding mountains with their shepherds and woodsmen.
There was at that same time a king in Dardamund, the greatest of the lake towns after Poyn, with three sons, of which the eldest was vile and cruel, the second, Prince Philip, was wise but timorous, the third, Sir Andrew, strong and bold. This king died. When his eldest son took the crown, Andrew fled to Poyn and became a knight, decorating his name with quests and great deeds and traveling to far countries, while Prince Philip lived in Dardamund in fear for ten years, seeking to mitigate his brother’s tyranny without losing his own life for his pains. At last this villainous king died, and Prince Philip prepared to be crowned, and the people looked forward to a better time, but quietly, for their spirits were much broken by the preceding reign. And when word came to Sir Andrew, he immediately hired boarded a ferry to Dardamund, for he loved his brother Philip greatly, and had not seen him in ten years. And as soon as Sir Andrew stepped off the boat, all the people brightened and began to clap and cheer and exult, and Prince Philip saw how much more honorable was a knight of Poyn in their eyes than a king of Dardamund. Being a wise man, Philip was not jealous of his brother’s honor, but instead felt fresh hatred for the crown he was about to put on, which had been a source of terror when another wore it, and would now be an impediment to honor when he wore it himself. And so he declared that there would be no more kings of Dardamund, and sent a messenger asking the king of Poyn to accept him as a subject and create him duke of Dardamund instead, like unto the dukes of some of Poyn’s islands and colonies. And King Peterlil granted this request.
When the other kings of the lake region heard that Dardamund was now vassal to Poyn, some feared that the king of Poyn was plotting to remove them all from their thrones, and they plotted a secret league against Peterlil with warlike intent. But so that their plot would not be known, they went to the tournament as usual, and saw that Duke Philip was treated with greater honor by the people of Poyn than were any of the kings. And they were angry. Moreover, three other kings, not part of the conspiracy, saw this and likewise asked the king to make them dukes, and offering their crowns in return, to be melted down and coined for the king’s treasury. In the other lake towns, the common people became envious that their neighbors had risen to be free citizens of Poyn while they were still the subjects of petty kings, without rights. So when the secret of their kings’ plans for war with Poyn became known through eavesdropping, the peoples rose up against their kings as one man, filling the streets and jeering:
“Are you not ashamed of your impertinent trumpery in calling yourself a king? Where are your great tournaments, where your hundreds of knights with coats of arms, and heralds to tell of their exploits, jousting bravely with each other, to learn skill in arms and to delight the people? Where are your parliaments, with their learned men and their great speeches and oratory? Where are your wise judges, who judge justly and win the assent of reasonable men by their arguments? Where are your castles, beautiful and siegeworthy, or your architects to build them? Do you imagine that your subjects are so simple that we cannot tell the difference between you and the king of Poyn, and can think you are the equal of him by whose power our peace has been secured these many years? How have you dared to plot war against the benefactor of all the land? Will you force the noble knights whom we admire from afar, and have longed to see in the tournament, to come to raze our town and kill our sons in battle? You shall not! We have called you king long enough. We will have you as dukes if the king of Poyn so commands us, else we will call you enemy and exile.”
Upon hearing this rebuke from their peoples, the kings followed the example of Duke Philip and asked Peterlil to admit them to the number of his chief vassals, and so, by what was called the Constitution of the Lake, the realm of Poyn expanded, and great was the peace and prosperity of Peterlil’s remaining years upon the throne.
It was not to last. Already, Poyn’s knights had long ventured beyond the mountains, and again and again, their exploits created new alliances, and new jealousies. They extended the realm as much in the role of lovers as in that of fighters, for they loved beauty, and easily won the hearts of high-born maidens from ruder lands, through their brave aspect and through their gentle chivalry. And wherever they went, they remembered Poyn, and rode from far away to prove their mettle upon the tournament field. And whenever they were in trouble, first their friends, and then the common people, clamored for the king or his knights to intervene, so that rights and obligations accrued to the kings of Poyn which all the scribes and heralds in the court scarcely sufficed to untangle, and there were limitless pretexts for quests, and some for war.
After Peterlil’s death, one of the kings of Brunnan, then a strong empire of large extent, looked with suspicion upon the rising kingdom of Poyn. He sought to weaken it by controlling the whole extent of the Dasper River, where many Poynese knights and artisans had settled and many Poynese traders did business, and there was already a large Poynese colony at Three Rivers called Little-Poyn-at-Three-Rivers, or simply Little Poyn. King Beledarlil, son of Peterlil, being warned that the capture of these fertile lands by a hostile king would leave Poyn short of bread, and indignant at the cruelties which the king of Brunnan was inflicting on the people of the lands he was conquering, marched forth at the head of the largest host of knights till then seen, though still much outnumbered the foot-soldiers and warriors of lesser rank mustered by the king of Brunnan. But when the king of Poyn’s host faced the armies of Brunnan, the king of Brunnan spoke, saying:
“Knights of Poyn, why do you serve under this poor king, who rules a mountain country where the fields are stony and ungrateful, and where you must be always questing, in hope of rewards of gold and silver, so that you can feed yourselves and your horses? Do you not understand how small is your pay in proportion to your prowess? Do you know not how much more a king like me would give for warriors as famous and strong as yourselves? In my country, the soils are deep and fertile, the winters short and mild, the summers long and hot and fruitful, and tall grows the wheat, and fat the cattle, and sweet the grapes. The lords of my country need not labor and scarcely need to fight, for the peasants who work the land can produce enough for themselves and a host of servants. Fight with me this day and I will make you all lords, for I have wealth enough to do it. You will be preferred to the nobles of my own realm, seeing as you are so much stronger and braver than they are. And in my capital city, Hanajast, you and I will make a new Poyn, with tournaments so much more colorful and famous than those held by the sons of Donbold that posterity will not even remember that stony island upon Lake Shivershine.”
And so half of the knights of Poyn departed from the army of Beledarlil and joined the Brunnanese. Seeing that, Beledarlil felt a tremor of fear in his heart, and because of that—since he thought such fear was little worthy of a descendant of Donbold—he spoke with deliberate bravado and overboldness, and disdained to treat with his enemy, or to retreat and strategize how he might succeed with diminished forces, but was determined to fight at once for all he was worth.
“My friends,” shouted Beledarlil to his departing knights, “glad I am to see you depart, for when we came upon this field, so common and churlish did the army of Brunnan appear, that I thought there could be little honor in our victory. But now, with you on the other side, it will be a great battle, and worthy of bards’ songs. Nonetheless, I am full sorry that it is my lot to slay you, who have been my comrades and have often ridden at my side, and shared my wine and mead. I only hope that some of you will be unhorsed and taken prisoner, and may thus return to us, humbled but living. Let the fight begin!”
From this speech, Beledarlil’s knights thought the king was confident of victory, and merrily charged into the fray, though they were outnumbered ten to one. But many were slain, and when they saw Beledarlil surrounded and then cut down, their courage failed them, and they were scattered before the armies of Brunnan. And the king of Brunnan followed the fleeing knights and chased them back to the mountains, and it seemed that the Constitution of the Lake would be overthrown, and perhaps that Poyn itself, on whose soil no enemy had trod since the coming of Donbold, so that it had come to be called “the virgin city,” might fall.
One Sir Corr, a champion of the tournaments but ugly of face, was elected, in Poyn’s direst hour, to a newly created office, Marshal of the Realm. Beledarlil’s son Stannarlil but a twelve-year-old boy, and the armies of Brunnan, together with many who had been knights of Poyn, were about to invade the territory of the Constitution of the Lake. The Marshal was authorized to command the Poynese army in the king’s stead whenever the king was absent. Corr persuaded the knights who had defected, through ambassadors, to withdraw from Brunnan’s army as long as the king was waging war in the territory of the Constitution of the Lake. He condescended to raise citizen armies as well as to command knights (Medvelil had emulated Marshal Corr’s “muster of the people” in the early days of the war with Tuvel) and he filled the mountain passes with traps and stratagems, and thus slew many Brunnanese soldiers, and frustrated all their plans and advances. So weakened were they by the time they fled the Poynese realm that Corr and the army of Poyn chased them for many days and stopped only at the old borders of Brunnan, so that the king seemed to be abandoning all his recent conquests. And then all the counts and barons and towns of the Dasper River country sent messengers and asked to be vassals of Poyn. Corr said that whether new lands would become part of the kingdom of Poyn could not be his decision, but during the king’s minority they would be considered part of the kingdom, so that when the king came of age he might decide whether to have them or not.
After nine years, King Stannarlil began to rule the realm in his own right, and the question of the new Dasper river dependencies was raised. Stannarlil chose to reject their petition, for he said that King Peterlil had presided over perfect peace upon Lake Shivershine until he accepted a new vassal, which immediately provoked jealousy and led to war. It was better, said Stannarlil, simply to say that the kings of Poyn would stand for justice as they had always done, but to forswear all territorial aggrandizement. When the king of Brunnan heard this, he thought Poyn had abandoned the people of the Dasper river country, and he marched against it to conquer it, and slew many in its towns and laid siege to its castles. At this King Stannarlil was grieved, and he mustered his knights to march against the king of Brunnan. And for a long time he sought battle, but the king of Brunnan evaded him. At last he divided his army into two, placing half of it under himself and half under Marshal Corr. And then the king of Brunnan engaged him in battle, greatly outnumbering him, and nearly slew him, but just in time Sir Corr arrived to reinforce him, and saved the Stannarlil’s life with his own hand, and put the king of Brunnan to flight. And Sir Corr had slain an incredible number of the enemy, and was grievously wounded. And Stannarlil said to him:
“Very grateful I am to you, Sir Corr, for your service, and for my realm, and for my very life, and also for your counsel, which it now grieves me that I did not heed, for I see now that you are in all things wiser than I am, and that my foolish lack of ambition I have brought about the needless deaths of many. Would that I might yield my crown to you, for you are worthier of it than I am, but I cannot thus dishonor my fathers and the memory of my ancestor Donbold. But I shall do my best to obey and help you as long as you live, for I count you my greatest friend.”
Thus he spoke, yet it was not his lot to benefit his friend Corr, for that very day the lady of one of the castles to which the king of Brunnan had laid siege met Stannarlil and Corr in the field and bowed her face to the ground to thank them, and when she lifted it at the king’s bidding, so great was her beauty that Stannarlil and Corr both loved her, but she loved Stannarlil and not Corr, so that his heart was broken, and he whom battle had oft wounded in vain, died of the wounds of love on the very day that the king and she were wed. And for this reason Sir Corr was called by some of the bards the greatest exemplar of chivalry, for he both fought and loved perfectly, with passion and greatness of spirit. This lady was heiress to the greatest of the castles of that country, so that both by her hand and by the request of its people, King Stannarlil of Poyn came to rule all the land up to Little Poyn and the meeting of the Three Rivers, and north and south a day’s ride.
Far larger than the Dasper river country, though less populous, was the region of Ammien, sometimes called Silvanum in Poyn because it had once been covered in mighty, mystic forests, shrouded in shadow, dark and deep, and so was the greater part of it still. In times past, Ammien had been a country of few people but many kings, most of whom were so poor that they were not ashamed to have their sons tend sheep, and the Ammien-folk were a rude and unlettered people, but merry-hearted and brave and lovers of song. Ammienish wanderers had been accustomed to wander into Poyn from the earliest days, as makers of bows, bowstrings and other ropes, harps and musical instruments, and the strong, stupid ones worked as oarsmen in the ferries. Also, the bardic music that now filled Poyn’s streets all day long had come from Ammien, for many bards of Ammien, whose harps and voices could wring the heart like none others living, had first attached themselves to questing knights so as to make poetry from their great deeds, and later learned to make their livings in the streets of Poyn by pleasing the people with tales and songs. Ammien itself was the scene of many a wild knightly adventure.
Ammien remembered a better time long past, a golden age, when above the kings, like a cloud that sails above the tallest trees, there had been a high king, the noblest name in all Ammien. The high kings reigned at a place called Maethyr Ammien, a natural castle of high rocks that rose above the forest, and full of noble halls carved in part by nature and in part by men and connected to one another by torchlit passages, from whose towers all the country could be seen. And the word maethyr was so old its meaning was forgotten, but some said it was a corruption of the ancient druid word mithiria or ‘majesty,’ while others said it came from mei-thear or ‘moon wells,’ after deep wells there into which the moon shone, thus enchanting them so that the face of him who drank thereof would shine with moonlight, which is why the high king’s friends could ride at night without torches, and people could recognize them from far away and prepare to give them due honor; while still others said the name came from maeth-yoria or ‘strong ivy,’ for when no high king was at Maethyr Ammien, the living ivy grew so thick and fierce over it that no man dared to enter that place. And in the golden age, the forests were so full of apples that every man might eat his fill without money and asking leave of none, and the game was abundant, and the bowstrings were taut, and the wine sweet, and the sun shone all night long in summertime, and the nymphs danced in the groves beneath the moon which often descended to dance with them, and the white of winter was not seen but the gold of autumn stretched out to kiss all the soft bright flame of spring flowers, and all damsels were pretty, and the nature of the trees was such that harpstrings grew between their branches and the wind played them so that the forest was full of music, and the beasts spoke, and people lived a hundred and twenty years without seeing fear or treachery or trouble or toil, and every man was a strong king and was loved by every maid he saw. The high kings were chosen every two years in a meeting of all the kings, when many should agree who was most worthy, and if few should agree, no high king should sit at Maethyr Ammien until the kings next met. Two great royal houses generally traded the high kingship between them, with general consent, but when a great hero arose he would be named instead.
But then jealousies arose among the kings, so that it became hard to win the general assent, and more and more often Maethyr Ammien sat ivy-bound and desolate, and the land became drab and bereft and full of war. And as the jealousies heightened, the witches came, the bane of Ammien, and were hired by one king to curse his rival, and because the high kings were most pre-eminent they attracted the greatest envy and witch-curses rained down upon them, so that none dared anymore to seek that honor.
At last, when the fame of the kings of Poyn began to spread abroad, the bards of Ammien began to hope that one of them would be elected high king, and restore the golden age. Many Ammienish kings came to fight in the tournaments of Poyn, and the wealthiest kings sent their sons to learn war among Poyn’s knights, and to fight, not like the blades and archers of Ammien, but to wear armor and fight on horseback and joust. In time the knights of Ammien were second only to those of Poyn itself. And these Ammienish knights complained to the king of Poyn that their land was infested with witches, and that the green magic of the druids had begun to be eclipsed by the black, making their land a poor, fearful, and haunted country, and they begged him for relief. So at last King Laurlil of Poyn, son of Stannarlil, invited the kings of the woodlands to gather near the ruins of Maethyr Ammien to elect a high king, and all agreed that it should be he, and when the victor was proclaimed and the royal ring placed on Laurlil’s finger, the ivy began to recede from Maethyr Ammien with a great rustling sound, and the great gates of the ancient castle, five times the height of a man, opened wide, and the knights of Poyn looked in wonder into the torchlit passages, well swept and clean and decorated with tapestries and fragrant with perfume. The whole court of Poyn entered to the music of invisible harpists and maidens singing, and resided there for two years.
Medvelil wondered how much the celebrating court had drunk, that Maethyr Ammien made that impression on them.
And so began, for Medvelil, the most exasperating period in Poyn’s history, for the tales of Maethyr Ammien in the days of High King Laurlil were even more fabulous and romantic and full of miracles and wonders than the tales of King Donbold were. They were full of shape-shifting, with men turning to birds to escape their enemies, or assuming the form of a woman’s husband for the purpose of a seduction, or witches turning into snakes and spiders to sneak into castles. In one tale, the ivy that grew upon a tower turned into serpents and did battle with a knight sent to rescue a damsel. In another tale, the branches and twigs of trees became hands and fingers and wielded swords.
There was even a story of one knight, nicknamed Sir Rivulet, who was loved by a water-nymph, and consented to be charmed by her so as to bear her own form. As the two embraced in love, though their bed was stony, they rippled with laughter and pleasure. Then they flowed into broad deep streams, where there love became more tranquil and quiet, and mellowed with the passing of time. And finally they flowed together into the salt cold depths of the ocean, where love and hate alike are drowned in timeless forgetfulness—and then the spell was broken. The knight awoke, there in the deep, and mourned for his lost love, and then sadly began his journey home, during which he had many adventures.
Simultaneously with these absurdities, chroniclers in Poyn were beginning to write quite accurately of, say, the decline of the sheep trade, or the construction work in the Canal District. Once, when a guildhall in the canal district burned down, Medvelil was able to estimate quite accurately how much the rebuilding would cost, simply by reading chronicles from the reign of King Laurlil. Medvelil even had a book of speeches from the pre-eminent orator of King Laurlil’s time, admirably rational, plausible, and detailed. Yet that orator mentioned by name, as members of his distinguished audience: one knight whom the tales said had been turned into a tree for nine years by a witch, and after the spell was broken, remained a terribly tall and gangly man with tough skin; and another knight who had won a damsel because a druid changed him into a blackbird so that he watched her bathe, and then when he took his true shape, agreed to marry him so that no two men alive upon the earth at once would have seen her naked. What was one to make of it?
Medvelil’s grandfather, King Neverlil, whom Medvelil had known as a boy, had been at the court in Maethyr Ammien during the high kingship of Laurlil, and had told him tales of people he himself knew, though Medvelil was too young then to ask whether Neverlil had seen any magical happenings himself. Moreover, Medvelil had been to Maethyr Ammien himself… well, almost. He had seen the rising rocks from afar, and had detoured in their direction, but so thick and ivy-tangled were the woods around that abandoned place that it was difficult to pass, and he and his company had turned back. But from afar it seemed like nothing but a heap of rocks, so that it was hard to credit that a king had lived there at all.
(But what a strange rumor he had heard lately. The Swords of Liberty, it was said, of whom Sir Anduir was the ringleader, had made for themselves a sort of woodland encampment and armory which was called the ‘Rock Fortress.’ Its whereabouts had been kept secret in wartime, but from what Medvelil heard of it, the place seemed to have been none other than the old ruins of Maethyr Ammien!)
Monks from the Poynese lake isles had, from olden times, gone into Silvanum (as they called it, for they disliked the old druid name of Ammien), with cassocks as black as the robes of the witches, but faces and hearts full of light. They had gradually dispelled the influence of heathenry, and now, in the last days of Ammien, after the short reign of High King Laurlil (for he said he must not long leave Poyn kingless), druidism faced its final crisis, and some druids followed the monks and became the holy hermits and poets of the forest, while others made league with the witches. Poynese knights continued to marry Ammienish princesses and exert their valor in the service of various Ammienish kings. Poynese traders had come, improving the roads, selling their wares, teaching a new tongue and a new mind. The old country was fading, or changing, forgetting its old myth and magic, for better or worse, forgetting its old frolic and reverence, forgetting how to hope for the return of the golden age.
And it came to pass, years later, in the reign of Neverlil, that two brothers, both brave knights, married daughters of rival Ammienish kings, and were about to go to war with one another on behalf of their fathers-in-law. So their father went to King Neverlil and begged him to march into Ammien to prevent this war. King Neverlil feared the charms and magic of Ammien, whose strangeness he had witnessed in childhood. He had often been urged by the bards to seek election as high king but had always refused. Now, however, thinking it were a shame if not only two Poynese knights, but two sons of one father, should be forced to kill one another, Neverlil summoned his knights and set out for Ammien. And as he marched, his host swelled, for it seemed that all of Ammien, kings and knights and people, wished to see the king of Poyn, and be in his company. At last, Neverlil and his vast host, by now the largest that ever had marched with a Poynese king, reached the battlefield where two petty armies were ready for the slaughter; and he ordered them to halt. The two kings came before Neverlil and said they were at his service, and would fight one another no more.
But Neverlil had done more than he had intended. For the mighty host which followed him had irrevocably eclipsed the old kings of Ammien. Their glory vanished before it, as the stars vanish when the day dawns. Ammien was no more. There was only Silvanum, or the Northwest, a province of Poyn. When Neverlil saw this, he would have done as Peterlil had done before him, and created the former kings dukes, subject to him but retaining some of their exalted rank. And a few of the old Ammienish royal houses did accept ducal rank and join the Poynese nobility. But it was the age-old custom of Ammien that a man might follow whatever king he chose. So the truest of the old kings said that if their subjects now followed the king of Poyn, they were no longer kings of those men, and sought no rank in the new kingdom, but went their way to dwell in the forests, living by their bows in the old fashion, as the forests began to be cut down to build cottages and make way for farmers’ fields. Some of the kings said that, after all, they were still kings, kings of themselves at least, if not of other men, and kings too of any willing to follow them, though at present the number might happen to be none. Some were still heathen, and a few became outlaws. Most, though, were friendly to the kings of Poyn, only they were free spirits, who would not be subjects of anyone. Some went north, out of old Ammien into the taiga, which was still wild and kingless, but there were enough wild forests left in Silvanum for those who remained. And this remnant, or residue, of Ammien, kings and blades and hunters and bards and rogues who preferred the forests to the field, came to be called the rangers. They were still seen in the marketplaces of Silvanum, selling fresh meat and nuts and berries and other wares of the forest to the servants of great houses, speaking the old Ammienish tongue, at once gentle and fierce, wise and foolish, noble and wild.
“What a glorious array! All the knights in all their colors!” exulted Medvelil’s elder brother, Prince Velf. That, too, had been a spring day, when sweet breezes bore the fragrance of wildflowers down the mountain slope, and the aspens danced. He remembered how the wind caught the sand among the stones and made it fly free upon the air—such things had delighted him. But never mind that now! Something great was happening! He heard the trumpets and the cheers and the tramp of hooves, but he was too short to look over the wall at it.
“I can’t see! I can’t see!” he shouted in dismay.
“Up you go, then,” said Velf, turning to him, and Velf turned and hoisted Medvelil onto his shoulders, and wonder filled him. The city had been different then, there was more green space, which had since filled up with market arcades, towers, the mansions of the rich, and the three- and four-story row houses in which tradesmen and laborers lived. One did not need, in those days, to sail to the islands or walk a mile up the shepherds’ road in order to lie in the grass or look up at tall trees. And now, Poyn was going to war. In front, already nearly lost to view, was Father, or King Dagorlil as others called him. First across Kingsbridge, then against the green and gray of the city, flashed the armor of hundreds of knights. Medvelil, from where he sat, with the knights marching away from him, could not see the coats of arms upon their shields. But he saw the banners, whipped and furled by the wind, bright red and gold and blue. Medvelil began counting them, and his brother laughed, and he lost count somewhere after one hundred. The greatest tapestry in the world would be a poor thing next to this. The knights seemed all alike in their flashing armor, which made it the more marvelous that there were so many, moving as one through the city, like a great steel serpent. Strange to say, even familiar things seemed somehow cleaner and freer that day: the sky bluer and higher, the clouds more graceful, the grass greener and softer, and the houses cozier and kinder. It was impossible for the mind to take in all that the eyes could. And long afterwards he kept thinking about it, his mind rehearsing the scene, and still reeling with wonder.
It was Medvelil’s first memory, for he had been only three years old. It had often seemed to him, in childhood, though contrary to reason, that he had suddenly come into existence on that day, and that the unremembered time before it was only a story that nurses told him to make him feel that they knew more than he did. For all his wonder, he did not think it strange, the knights of Poyn marching to war in their shining battle array. It seemed to him a thing necessary, solid, inevitable, as permanent as the sun and the air and the mountains. There would always be damsels and fugitives coming to the court of Poyn and asking for a boon. There would always be knights eager to take on the quests. For would not the great families keep having brave sons, and would not the brave sons compete for honor and glory? There would always be tournaments, for what else was there to do? And no knight would wish to be a mere sportsman, jousting on the tournament field but having no adventures. There would always be bards, looking to tell of great deeds, and helping the knights who did them to win the people’s applause.
Medvelil was thoroughly happy in the world he found himself in, and saw in it only one perplexing flaw. He saw that there must be a king, for how could there be a kingdom without a king? All the love and patriotism and obedience needed a sort of focal point. Yet it seemed like a monstrous anomaly that anyone in particular should have to find himself singled out as the king, when no one else was. He felt this painful oddity keenly because he had had a narrow escape. Fortunately, there was Prince Velf, who for some reason did not seem to mind being destined to be king. So all was well.
Yet soon, what Medvelil had thought so permanent began to fail him.
Twice more, before the age of eleven, he saw the knights of Poyn marching to war, for causes that were mysterious to him, but which he assumed, mistakenly as it turned out, that he would understand when he was older. Then—not for forty years. Not that King Dagorlil’s wars ended. Rather, they had grown more costly and desperate, so that there were always knights at this or that front. There was never time or reason to muster them in the capital. King Dagorlil sometimes came home to reign and see his wife and sons, leaving one of his Marshals (of which there was a long succession) in command. What a joy it was to see him! But then he would go away again.
Princes Velf and Medvelil were being taught to joust and ride and wear armor, for they were to be knights, men of war. They were both happy to do it, but for different reasons: Velf loved fighting and longed for the glory of battle, while Medvelil wanted to see his father more often. Velf joined his father at eighteen, and for the next seventeen years was his father’s companion and one of his chief lieutenants in the kingdom’s almost constant wars. Medvelil, at sixteen, fell from a horse and broke his foot badly, and could not ride for a year. Always in weak health, his military education now seemed ruined, and so he became a sort of secretary and bookkeeper instead, a task for which he turned out to be much better suited. He sat in councils and parliaments as the king’s representative, and soon he knew the affairs of the kingdom inside out. He was diligent, meticulous, tactful, with a head for numbers, and zealous to be fair and just in his dealings. Revenues exceeding outlays became the stuff of his sweetest dreams, and he was as jealous as a miser of the gold and silver in the royal treasury, which to his father was no dearer than water.
He was twenty-two when the nightmare began that would haunt the rest of his life. Messengers arrived with the terrible news that the knights were beaten in battle, and King Dagorlil taken prisoner. That was the first encounter with the legions. Soon an imperial envoy arrived, confirming the news, and asking for 20,000 Poynese ducats—three years’ worth of the kingdom’s ordinary revenue—in return for the release of the king. Medvelil had to impose new taxes on all the guilds and on transactions on every kind, and borrow from merchants and from the neighboring kingdoms of Brunnan and Varannon, making promises he was not sure he could keep. He confiscated outright much of the portable wealth in the city, and made enemies, but at last the funds were raised, and King Dagorlil, dearly bought, returned home.
Poyn forgave the jolly old king with remarkable ease. It still remembered his victories in former days with unsullied pride. It forgave him again when he was taken prisoner five years later, and again ransomed, at an even higher price. They blamed Medvelil for the cunning rapacity of his taxes, which they tried to evade—tales began to be told of treasures buried in the islands by those who did not want to yield them to the crown—but held Dagorlil blameless. If Dagorlil’s reputation suffered, the people put their hopes in Velf, who had evaded capture on both occasions, and in Prince Patrick of Brunnan, whose valor equaled that of the knights of Poyn. Prince Patrick had been allured by the glamor of King Dagorlil’s court and the glory of his wars, had run away from his father, the grasping tyrant King Draco, to fight. Yet he was still the heir of Brunnan, and people looked forward to his kingship, when Poyn would gain a strong ally.
It was through Prince Patrick that Medvelil met his queen, a princess of Brunnan, who came to Poyn against her father’s will when her brother lay wounded and in danger of death. It was her faithful care that saved him, Medvelil thought, though not for long, for he died two years later along with Dagorlil and Velf, at the hands of the legions. She was not beautiful, but Medvelil’s heart was touched by the ardor of her love for her brother. They often saw one another, while her brother lay recovering in the castle, and spoke of… what had they spoken of? Their conversations then had been as intimate and as wandering as his own thoughts. She had seemed to him a beacon of light amidst the gathering gloom. They had understood one another. When he made her an offer, his minds was full of fears, as if he would have to fight Brunnan—so difficult was this moderately brave act for a timorous man. Why had she accepted him? Why had she loved him? She told him it was for his justice, so different from the cruel and capricious King Draco. She became heiress of Brunnan after the deaths of her father and brother, and by her Medvelil became king of Brunnan, united those two sometime enemies into one kingdom, and she bore him a son, Garlil, and a daughter, the princess Emilicia. But she was of soft southern climes, and suffered in Poyn’s winters, and Medvelil was now fifteen years a widower. Sometimes in the night, Medvelil dreamed of her, living and glad in his arms. Would that he might never wake from those dreams!
In the last years of his father’s life, Medvelil bore a secret grudge against him. The perpetual wars seemed to Medvelil a kind of sport, else why did he take defeat so lightly? King Dagorlil fought, if not for his own amusement—Medvelil was not so unjust as that—then for things too vague to be worth such sacrifice: for honor and glory, his own and the kingdom’s, and that the bards might have something to sing of, and that he might be worthy of the legacy of King Donbold. Perhaps he had judged his father unjustly. Perhaps his father had had deeper reasons. Medvelil had learned too late that it was dangerous to let go of the kingdom’s military prestige. And a man might take his cause seriously, and yet grieve little when it was lost, for what was the use of refusing to accept what one could not change?
Yet if King Dagorlil took defeat lately, what dimmed his merry eyes, what greyed his hair, what broke his heart, was the perpetual betrayal. His father’s great fault was not that he was too warlike but that he was too trustful. For Poyn was fighting now beyond the bounds of old Ammien, beyond the Ellilannen River and the Black Hills, in low, fat country, where chivalry was unknown. It was the custom in Poyn to tell the truth. There it was said, as a proverb, that “only the liar survives.” And also, “he who tells what is sweet, the whole world loves, but he who tells the truth, even his own mother will hate him.” Flattery was the coin of that country. Candor was bad manners, barbarous, mad. It was inevitable that Poynese knights should have adventured there after Ammien was purged of witches and at peace. Where else would they go to gain honor? But it was the custom of the knights to impute honor to their adversaries, and in this fashion many of the best of them were trapped and slain. Others adapted to that country all too well. Such were valuable men there: brave, skilled in arms, able to take initiative. They made fortunes. They also learned cunning speech and to keep their loyalties fluid. In Poyn, they bowed to the king, rode on horseback, played gallant with the ladies, and jousted in the tournaments. In Tuvel, they went to the games at the colosseum, kept concubines, were carried in litters by slaves, and paid obeisance to the emperor. Perhaps to those men what they did was not treason. Rather, events had simply revealed a different political combination to be advantageous. But Dagorlil could not understand that. He embraced every comrade-in-arms as a brother, and paid the price.
Such was Byzernin, the childhood friend of the king, who twice betrayed the king, twice was forgiven, and betrayed him a third time, to his death. “Thrice accursed,” everyone called him now, but Medvelil remembered when he was the darling of the court and the city, a guest in all the best houses, everywhere admired and aped and praised. He had a honeyed tongue. He knew what men, and ladies, wanted to hear better than they did. He knew how to insinuate that he had influence, and by this means he really had it. He knew how to evoke confidences. It seemed to Medvelil, in retrospect, that he had from the beginning suspected the smooth and dashing Byzernin, with his serpentine smile, and his soft, fair skin unspoilt by labor or sun. Perhaps he was mistaken. Yet at the end, he had sent Dagorlil a letter, pleading with him that Byzernin was not to be trusted. He did not know whether that letter had ever reached his father. After Dagorlil’s death, Byzernin’s name became a byword and curse in Poyn. But were the curses sincere? Or did some faction secretly remember the flamboyant half-foreign nobleman in a better light, and even prefer him to the drab and bookish new king?
Medvelil’s first act, after his sad coronation, was as bold in its execution as it was called cowardly in its substance. Immediately upon being crowned, he rode with only a small force to the imperial encampment. He sent a messenger to request safe-passage, then rode to the emperor’s tent in person, with ten knights. He presented to the emperor a treaty of peace, and the emperor signed it. He departed the camp half an hour after he had arrived. Because it was evening then, it came to be known as the Twilight Peace. The treaty abandoned everything over which his father had fought for more than twenty years. Poyn would henceforth be bounded by the Ellilannen River and the crest of the Black Hills, and yielded all claims in the lands beyond. This was bitter news for Poyn, and Medvelil’s unpopularity deepened. Some said, though, that he had no choice, after his father’s defeats had left the kingdom so weakened. Medvelil rejoiced to see the last of that country, which he thought did not belong in the kingdom and had never done it any good. Yet many great battles had been fought there, and many famous knights were buried in its soil, and the bards lamented the loss of land hallowed by their memory. And some Poynese had settled there, both knights and commoners, artisans and traders, even a few peasants. What was to become of them? The treaty was silent.
The year that followed was the most contented of Medvelil’s life. The kingdom where he and his queen reigned now had frontiers both natural and historic. In the north and northwest, it was bounded by the taiga; in the west, by two rivers and the Black Hills; in the south and southwest, by the Red Hills and the desert; and in the east, where no frontier was needed with the friendly kingdom of Kyliand, Poyn’s sway tapered off into the high country and the Uruit Mountains, inhabited mostly by shepherds. Freed from the expenses of perpetual war, Medvelil began to reform the kingdom, chartering towns, regularizing the parliament, dredging canals, building bridges, repaving roads, extending docks, erecting fortifications. He lifted the heavy taxes he had earlier imposed. He foresaw a golden age of prosperity and peace. But the illusion was quickly dispelled.
In the court of Tuvel, Byzernin’s star was on the rise. To him, the victory over the pesky Dagorlil was credited. He was now an open enemy of Poyn, or at least of the House of Donbold, agitating perpetually to invade and conquer the kingdom. It was said he hoped to be made king of Poyn himself, by the swords of the legions. People began to listen to him. A succession occurred, and the new emperor, Michael Borvik, who had gained the empire by being a harem favorite and a few assassinations, was worried about his lack of military prestige, which might encourage the revolt of legion commanders in the provinces. The knights of Poyn had never been much esteemed at Tuvel, and Dagorlil’s defeats and Medvelil’s surrender persuaded the emperor that Poyn had little resistance to offer. The new territory would furnish prizes for his favorites and help to consolidate his power base. No grievance or pretext was strictly necessary. Tuvelain emperors had sometimes simply informed a petty ruler that it was inexpedient for him to retain his office, and set the legions marching. But Michael Borvik thought it might be helpful, particularly since there was a very good one at hand. And so he sent a large embassy to Poyn. They arrived on a merchant ship, the most eminent dressed in white togas in the fashion of Tuvelain patricians, and addressed Medvelil thus:
“Your Majesty, it is our duty to convey to you a most serious grievance of the emperor’s against the conduct of your kingdom. Many of our loyal subjects have complained that the kingdom of Poyn has knowingly and systematically harbored runaway slaves from our lands. You have done this in spite of a treaty of peace that you yourself signed, in which you pledged not to interfere with the Tuvelain rule which has been established up to the agreed frontiers. These territories, formerly disputed, now fully accept the supremacy of Tuvelain law. Yet you have deliberately undermined our law. Naturally, the problem has been getting worse, since rumor has spread among the slaves that if any man reaches the borders of your realm, he may securely expect that he will enjoy complete freedom. Our subjects have often asked us for permission to enter your kingdom to recover their property, but we have forbidden them, wishing to avoid war. Yet surely you can see that it is an act of war on us to steal the property of our subjects. Therefore we make the following demands. Tuvelain officials must have full rights to enter your realm in order to enforce our laws. Proconsuls and the usual apparatus of Tuvelain law will be posted in your cities, and will deal with all situations which they deem relevant to the interests of the empire at their own discretion. All Tuvelain officials and representatives of the empire will enjoy immunity from Poynese law. A tribute of 1,000 ducats per year will be paid by Poyn to compensate for the theft of property already perpetrated by your realm. If these conditions are met, a continuation of the peace will be possible, until such time as the emperor shall see fit to alter its terms.”
Medvelil was not surprised. It was true that Poyn harbored escaped slaves from the Tuvelain Empire. The Poynese who had been left behind by the Twilight Peace had enjoyed mixed fortunes. Some, like Byzernin, had become counselors to emperors, or commanders of legions. Others had been imprisoned, or left destitute, or reduced to slavery. Many had not wished to be Tuvelain subjects, and had fled to Poyn. When enslaved Poynese fled to Poyn, the Tuvelains had generally ignored it. But slaves of Poynese birth had told others that there was a land of freedom in the east where everyone would be welcomed. And so slaves had begun to run away to Poyn who were not of Poynese birth or speech, and had been accepted as equals and granted the king’s justice, as the ancient law of Donbold required. Medvelil had developed spy networks in Tuvel, and they told him that slave owners complained to the emperor about this, and that Byzernin had used their complaints to make his case against Poyn. What he had not known is whether Tuvel would merely try, in good faith, to recover runaway slaves, or whether it would use this as a pretext for outright conquest. It seemed now that the ambassadors wished to make the terms of peace so humiliating that he must refuse them, and fight. He was half glad of that. He knew that, had the terms been more reasonable, he would have been tempted to do what he ought not. The speech he made, he had long prepared in his mind, so he was able to speak boldly, though his heart was like melted wax within him.
“Esteemed representatives of the Tuvelain Empire, I am grateful for the respectful and generous tone of your request, and I look forward to the warmest friendship between our two peoples. I hope it will not be disrupted by the minor objections that I must make to your proposals. You see, it is the fundamental law of Poyn that every man must enjoy his freedom, and no one can be forced to labor for anyone else. Moreover, it is the law that anyone who comes into these realms should enjoy equally the king’s justice. I am not authorized to change these laws, which are derived from immemorial practice and from eternal justice and the law of God. We can, if you wish, encourage former slaves to provide compensation to their former masters, if the latter are in want, and Tuvelain officials may, within the framework of Poynese law, be present and advise us about this. Please deliver this answer to the emperor, and I hope that it will be sufficient to avert any unpleasantness.”
The ambassadors promised to convey Medvelil’s response to the emperor. Night fell, and Medvelil was sleepless. He knew he had declared war, perhaps written his own death warrant. How could Poyn fight Tuvel now? Even under his father, the knights had been no match for the legions. Far away, in that august stone city, he knew—it crossed his mind that if he were taken prisoner he might get to see it with his own eyes—the regimental insignia of the legions would soon be raised, and countless ranks of men would stand in their rows and columns, and the trumpet would soon, and they would begin to march. How many of his knights would be loyal? The best had been slain with Dagorlil. Medvelil felt with a horrible certainty that castle after castle would be surrendered without a fight. Soon the message came: the legions were on the march. He must act, but how? How could he decide now, when he had thought of this for five years, had tried to plan, but could decide nothing? In those horrible weeks, he had spent hours in his room, he had summoned counselors and asked questions, he had gone to his bookkeeping, he had taken ill. Questions were asked more forcefully. What message did he have for the count of Ganimy, the duke of Trelaninth, the duke of Vadane? Where were the knights to muster? Merchants were offering to lend the kingdom war funds: would he accept it? Somehow Marshal Mardux—a veteran of Dagorlil’s wars, one of the few who had been loyal and incorruptible—began mustering an army, though Medvelil did not remember ordering it. Popular anxiety seemed to be giving rise to disturbances, and the capital seemed to be on the verge of rioting.
Wild rumors came from the northwest. The emperor’s troops were near the border, would cross it any day, no doubt had crossed it already. He had fifty thousand, no, seventy thousand, no, one hundred thousand. The peasants were fleeing, the roads were clogged with wagons. A few patriots had set their homes and fields on fire so that the Tuvelains should not spoil their goods. The count of Ganimy was preparing for a siege—or had turned traitor—or had killed himself. A strange rumor came that Byzernin, whose swift rise and arrogance had made enemies in the Tuvelain court, had met an assassin’s dagger in Tuvel, just before the army marched. Medvelil did not believe that at first, but it turned out to be true. Later it was said—quite falsely but it may have been to his advantage to be suspected—that he had arranged that. But now it was said that the emperor had definitely crossed the fords of Trelaninth, and knights were fleeing before him, or, no, mustering against him. Suddenly Sir Calillus, duke of Trelaninth, became the topic of excited rumors, which did not seem to agree with each other. Five hundred, no, two thousand, no, four thousand knights had mustered at Trelaninth under his banner. They had fought—that all the rumors agreed—but what was the outcome? They had been beaten, or, no, they had been victorious, had driven back the legions—Medvelil was going mad with fear and hope.
But soon royal scouts returned, and all doubt was at an end. Sir Calillus was dead, and all his comrades, but the imperial advance had halted. Far more terribly, a hideous vengeance had been visited on the household of Trelaninth, the most unchivalrous deed done on Poynese soil in living memory, the slaughter of helpless women and children and infants. It should have been me, Medvelil thought upon hearing the news. The field of Trelaninth was the place for a king of Poyn. What would his father have thought of him? He was sullen and shattered for a week. He began to count the cost. The kingdom was saved, for the moment. But as the names of the dead were collected, he understood that the bravest and best were gone. No such men were left still living in the world. The kingdom would have little strength to resist, if the emperor should decide to march. He was a fool not to.
Fourteen strange years followed. In trade and industry and farming, Poyn had never prospered so. There was “peace”—a fragile, dangerous peace, a peace without security, a peace of fear, yet still, for the time being, peace. Even with light taxes, the treasury was overflowing. Never had the tournaments been so well attended, so colorful, so well supplied with bread and beer and fish and cakes and ale, to make up for the mediocre jousting. Never had the docks been so crowded, never the builders so busy. Medvelil began to travel the kingdom, visiting castles and flourishing towns and passing fields fat with ripening grain. Never so many ships sailing the river up and down, never so busy the marketplaces, never the prices—at least in the capital—so high!
Yet the Tuvelain legions loomed, still occupying the duchy of Trelaninth on Poyn’s side of the river, like a thorn. What could prosperity do to help that? Knights could not be bought. Medvelil tried to cultivate allies. He leant money to Ulmond, to Varannon, to any kingdom or republic or statelet that might possibly aid Poyn against Tuvel. He subsidized any noble or any chartered town who wanted to strengthen his castle or build new fortifications. He had royal armories built, and the swordsmiths and bowyers were kept busier than ever with royal orders. He made plans for a “muster of the people.” He watched the tournaments in hopes to see men of prowess appear, and there were a few. Still, what was the use of that, for no knights since Donbold’s day had been the equals of those who rode with Dagorlil, and the Tuvelain legions had beaten even them?
Meanwhile, he secretly grew full of suspicion, until he trusted no one. It seemed to him now that he saw on every side the same secret superciliousness, the same laughing irony, that he had once sensed in Byzernin. And after all, why not? For Medvelil had never had a subject more loyal than Sir Calillus, and what had he done for him? He had left him to do fight the Tuvelain legions on his own, left him to die, left him to have his family slaughtered. Calillus had chosen the wrong side. Was there a nobleman left in the realm (he wondered) who had not thought that? He noticed bitterly how well Tuvelain envoys and merchants were treated now by the well-to-do in Poyn.
They were knights by blood, these noblemen of Poyn, and they liked to be flattered by having their lineage traced to famous knights of yore. Since olden days, though, a new custom had been introduced, whereby knights were invested with land, so that they might keep themselves horsed and armed and provided for, at their own expense. The new custom seemed to have appeared after King Beledarlil’s time, perhaps so that knights might not be tempted by such promises as the king of Brunnan had made at that fatal battle. Wealth was not always conducive to courage. There were noble families in Poyn now who had not even fought in the tournaments, let alone gone to war, in fifty years. In Dagorlil’s time such men had been few enough that it was possible to scorn them, but since they had survived better than their braver fellows, and since the sons of brave men did not always follow their fathers’ examples, these indolent noblemen had now become the majority. “A crowd of worthless drones, like the ‘barons’ before Donbold,” one angry bard had called them, and approving rumors had spread the word to every corner of the city. “We need a new Donbold to make knights of them again!” But no, that was not fair. They were not illiterate and uncouth like the barons of old. It was thanks to them that Poyn had become an elegant city as never before. They liked to dress fine and ride on well-groomed horses, or in carriages. They knew how to charm when they wished. Did they count on charming the emperor, too? Why not? If Byzernin had done it with such success, why couldn’t they? Medvelil blamed himself for these dark thoughts, and when the time came, some of his suspicions had indeed proved ill-founded. But he was not altogether wrong.
He had to play a game of bluff. He could not let the empire guess Poyn’s weakness. But what hope was there that the emperor would delay long enough for Medvelil to rebuild Poyn’s strength, if he even knew how to do that? He felt hopeless, yet there was no choice but to try. When Anduir arrived, rescued from slavery in Poyn, the opportunity could not be missed. It was not only for the sake of the Tuvelain ambassadors, but for the sake of his own nobles, that he wanted to display the populace greeting the son of a hero. Medvelil became a patron of the arts, commissioning statues and sculptures in the squares, frescoes in the trading arcades and on walls in the Canal District, to remind the people of Poyn’s past glories and victories, to stir patriotism. He was competing with the bards, too. He wanted people to remember the martial virtues of former days, and to remember useful, practical heroes, like Marshal Corr, not fanciful romantic figures like Sir Rivulet. On the underside of Kingsbridge, visible from footpaths along the shore, Medvelil commissioned one great painting of Donbold freeing the slaves, and another of the people’s oath to be just to foreigners, to remind the people of the great and noble laws for the sake of which the kingdom was defying the Tuvelain empire. He even thought the plan was working. It seemed to him that a sober patriotism was growing among the people, a resolve to emulate Poyn’s heroes of old in the face of the new and terrible danger, a new pride in Poyn’s tradition of freedom and justice, a more articulate abhorrence of Tuvelain slavery and heathenry. Medvelil patronized scholarship, too, encouraging the new “university” or scholar and student organization which had begun to occupy buildings on the south shore and was creating some excitement with their new ideas. Parliament was reorganized, granting representation to the chartered towns, and a new building was erected for its use, of wood and stone, where the people could come and listen at will, in hopes that the best orators would fire their patriotism. Yet Medvelil hardly believed that any of this could succeed. He felt as if he was harvesting the glories of a history that was now ending, as if he was writing Poyn’s epitaph.
In the twentieth year of Medvelil’s reign, Tuvel invaded, fifty thousand strong, marching southeast from Trelaninth. A “muster of the people,” long planned, was now carried out. The knights swept through the country like a hand through a grain field, stopping at every hamlet and recruiting. Arms were distributed from the royal armories. Mardux, the wise old veteran, twenty years’ Marshal of the Realm, would lead the force, but he was not to give battle for a time.
Medvelil would not join the army immediately. He wanted to muster a grand alliance, calling in favors, making promises. He expected help from Kyliand, but not much, for Kyliand was poor and had no glory in arms. The republics of Ulmond and Thaplin might provide some help. But most crucial was Varannon, and that was where Medvelil planned to go first. On his way back he would travel through Brunnan, raising an army there. Only when the army of the whole alliance was mustered would they fight the legions.
Except that Mardux was struck down by fever. Weak, pale, trembling, half delirious, Mardux nonetheless rode to the docks, and the army cheered their commander. But the sick old man fell off his horse. By that time, Medvelil was riding south towards Varannon. A messenger pursued the king and told him that Mardux had fallen from his horse. Another came three hours later and told him that the doctors thought Mardux would not live out the month. Medvelil told both that there was a chain of command, and the army was to follow it. But he remembered afterwards the gleam of hope in the messengers’ eyes, hope, he realized, that he himself—the king of Poyn—would return and take command of the army. And he realized that that gleam spoke for the whole people of Poyn. The sense that he had made a mistake haunted him for the next five weeks, as he and a company of knights rode south to the courts of Varannon, then took ship downriver to the ports in south Brunnan.
Medvelil’s mission to Varannon was wholly successful. Among the palms and pyramids and cruel solemnity of Varannon, respecting court protocols, adopting the posture of a supplicant as much as Poyn’s dignity would permit. By the end of it, seven kings with twelve thousand horsemen, the greatest army Varannon had ever mustered, had promised to march to Poyn’s aid.
But when they reached the port towns of south Brunnan, they heard confused rumors of disaster from every side. There had been a great battle at Falloden Field, near Ganimy Castle, and the knights and the popular recruits were utterly defeated and scattered, all their commanders dead or prisoners. The nobles were openly going over to the enemy. They made for Poyn as fast as they could, changing horses at every stables and hardly stopping to eat. In the castles along the Dasper River, Medvelil seemed to find no one who could give him a straight account of what happened, he only heard despair and excuses. “Where was the remnant of the army?” Medvelil kept asking. There was no army, everyone said—but I did my part, the fault lay in the cowardice and ineptitude of others—all else was vague.
Poyn had a stroke of luck. The Tuvelain army was slowed by an early snowstorm, six inches deep, felling trees along the road, and many trees had fallen. Medvelil made a temporary headquarters at Chestler Castle, eighty miles in advance of the troops, one of a chain of castles that was supposed to be preparing to withstand a siege. Chestler Castle, a bastion of the conservative lowland aristocracy, seemed surreally tranquil in the midst of the kingdom’s calamities. A host of servants waited upon Medvelil himself, and the count’s family, and important visitors. Medvelil kept thinking the men-servants would have been more valuable armed and in the front of battle. Medvelil had never had so many servants in Uruit Castle (the royal palace in Poyn) itself. And where the life of the royal court revolved around chivalry and statecraft, Chestler’s life was devoted to ease and elegance. When Medvelil reproached Count Charles with the dilatoriness of the siege preparations, the count replied placidly that after all, they would leave that to the soldiers when the time came, and he and his family would certainly retreat to their house in the capital. Medvelil could not make the urgency of his orders understood at Chestler. He was going mad with impatience.
A sort of ragged, frightened army began to coalesce around Chestler Castle. No specific order to muster had been given, but word had spread that the king was at Chestler, and patriots began to gather, pitching tents in the field or sleeping on the ground, talking, watching what the king would do. This was distressing to the count, whose well-kept grounds were being trampled by rabble and fouled with horse manure. Count Charles was horrified when Medvelil said that he would go out to meet them. He warned of the risk of assassination. Medvelil was aware of it, but his curiosity would not be repressed. He found among them veterans of the battle of Falloden Field, and began to understand it. He heard poignant expressions of devotion to himself and the kingdom, heard more vows of loyalty and courage than he could count, heard tales of atrocities, of villages burned and their people sold into slavery. They were waiting him to lead them, but he did not know how.
In early November, a tall horseman wearing leather and chain mail came riding hard from the southeast. “A big, grave-looking man,” said a watchman, and Medvelil guessed at once—it was Mardux. He met him on the road, amidst the tents of the watching patriots.
“Your Majesty, you are needed in Poyn,” said Mardux, who bowed his head slightly but had not dismounted. “Thousands have people came over the passes in the autumn and came over to the city on the ferries. Some brought money with them, some brought food, some didn’t. Some of them are sleeping on the streets. Some have occupied warehouses in the Canal District. There’s a strange mood in the city. These people are in awe of the capital. Most have never seen it before. And there is sympathy for them among the natives of the city, they’re refugees from the war, but… well, there’s a kind of desperation, an energy. It could turn into patriotic ardor, or it could explode into riots at any minute. The mayor and Convirard”—Convirard was the minister of the treasury—“are the only leaders there, and they don’t have enough influence to make the nobles stop having banquets when people are hungry in the street. Poyn need her king.”
“I’ll go at once,” said Medvelil, relieved to be given a task to which he felt better suited than to military command. “Will you take charge of things here?”
Mardux looked around him, appraising the assembled patriots. There was a sort of hard, resigned, strangely gentle expression on Mardux’s face that Medvelil struggled to interpret. “Yes. Introduce me, give me command, and I’ll make an army of ‘em. Your Majesty, I have heard a rumor that ten thousand Varannian horsemen have been invited by you to ride through the Marches, over the Wolfpath, and into Poyn from the south, before being ferried across the lake to the front. Is this true?”
“Yes, that is the agreement we made.”
“Your Majesty, the Varannians cannot be trusted,” said Mardux, emphasizing every syllable. “The Varannians are opportunist. Their loyalties are as changeable as the wind. Honor to them means a lucrative adventure. If ten thousand Varannian horsemen set foot in Poyn, likelier than not they will sack the city. Send word to them and tell them to come along the river and through Brunnan. That is a shorter and easier way in any case.”
“No,” said Medvelil. “The Varannians are proud, touchy. They would consider the change of plan an insult. They might even side with the emperor. I offered them the chance to ride through Poyn as a way to lure them to see the famously beautiful city, of which they have all heard tell, but which none of the younger kings and few of the older ones have ever seen. I considered the issue of security. You know that there are attack holes along the south road—“
“Yes, your Majesty, Poyn cannot be attacked along the south road because not only does it have a strong gate, but there are tunnels in the cliffs above the road, with attack holes through which oil can be poured onto an enemy. Since the road is along the lake, we can also attack from the side. We could incinerate an invader with oil and flaming arrows. But we cannot do that to the Varannians if we have invited them as allies, it would be treacherous—“
“Wait,” said Medvelil. “You’re right, we cannot attack—unless they attack first. The key is that not all the Varannians will be in Poyn at the same time. They will go through the south gate straight to the south docks, then board a queue of ferries that will be waiting before they arrive. Meanwhile, fishing boats and warships will form a line in the lake alongside the cliff road. They will wave banners, cheer, throw flowers, bring supplies. And from the attack holes we will lower baskets of food and wine and beer and mead, on ropes. We will show them hospitality and do them honor, but at the same time, they will see that they are surrounded. There will be archers on the warships. There will be bows in the boats. If the Varannians who are in the city at any given time were to make an attempt to seize it, their fellows behind would be at the mercy of our archers, and vulnerable to attack from above, unable even to fight back. And any Varannians who were already on the ferries could expect to be abandoned. You see? They will not dare to try anything.”
“Wow,” said Mardux, and then thought for a long time. Finally he said, “It’s risky, but perhaps it’s a risk we need to take, now. We have taught the Varannians to fear Poynese archers.”
“We need the allies we can get.”
“Yes, we do. Will you introduce me to the men?”
“I’ve got to introduce you to the count first.”
“The count?” said Mardux with contempt. “Why is he still here? Please take him with you!”
Afterwards, Medvelil remembered Mardux’s hard, resigned, gentle expression while surveying the men, and he realized what it meant. Mardux was determined to do his duty, to fight for all he was worth, but he had no hope. He had already settled in his mind upon the role he was to play in history. He would be the last Great Captain. His name and his glorious death would be forever remembered as Poyn’s last stand.
But when Medvelil saw Mardux again, a year later, that expression was gone. He looked perhaps bleaker and more desperate, and he was very tired, but Medvelil saw hope in his eyes and heard it in his voice.
In Poyn, weapon making went on day and night. Food was rationed, and nobles were allowed only a little more of the staples than commoners. Some who found the new lifestyle painful had left for the towns on the south lakeshore, or for Brunnan. On the tournament grounds men trained all day, practicing fencing and archery, and the best were sent to the front each month, reinforcing Mardux. Iron mines, lumber mills, and boat makers were busier than ever, and new smitheries were made on the islands because the city was too crowded. To sustain morale, processions for returning heroes were arranged to entertain and inspire the people, and balls for the nobles. Poyn had become a hard-working city, a city of callouses and backaches, always a little hungry, and always tired or exhausted, but the newcomers’ romantic admiration of the storied capital helped the natives, too, to feel a kind of patriotic wonder at the great city.
It was this new and strange patriotic mood of the city that made Medvelil, too, decide to go to the front. It was unprecedented, it was almost a scandal, for a Poynese king fifty years old never to have been to war. Natives of Poyn had gotten used to Medvelil’s character and forgiven him for it, but it still made him unpopular, and the newcomers were bewildered that in the middle of such a great and perilous war, the king was in the city and not with the army. Every day Medvelil felt the pressure of shame. And so he went.
A feeling of military glory filled Medvelil as he left the city, and it mingled with the pleasure of beautiful country as he rode across the lake, up the stony switchback roads, with the views of the lake spreading out ever more grandly beneath him, and up into the mountain passes, in the soft glow of early autumn. When he looked back from Sparrow Pass and saw the towers of Poyn gleaming in the sun far away, he thought he had never felt better in his life. But an hour later, on the other side of the pass, he caught his first glimpse of the legions, a white scar on the green land. A lump of fear appeared in him, and it grew as he rode down the canyons, down the foothills, nearer to the enemy.
Mardux’s headquarters were in a village, a place full of bustle, but with none of the orderliness or martial glamor that Medvelil expected. When he realized where he was, the thought This is war passed through his mind, and he shuddered. The locals seemed to have been recruited willingly as cooks, guides, and supplies managers for the army. It took some time to find Mardux. Medvelil sensed immediately, with horror, that his presence was making people act differently, drawing people away from their work to watch him. He knew suddenly that he ought not to have come.
“The Tuvelains have split their forces,” Mardux explained, once they were in a tent where the conversation could be private. “The larger army, maybe forty thousand, is marching up Maple Canyon. They’ve been led there by a boy named Gench, a simple local boy who has convinced them that he’s a traitor to Poyn had is helping them. We were very fortunate there. Another boy, Bolby or Blibly or something, I’ve forgotten, a fat, stupid boy, had turned himself in to the Tuvelains and offered to act as guide, being paid with candy, and flattered and fawned on. But he was so stupid that he kept making small mistakes. So Gench turned himself in, too, and said he would be a guide, and said that Bolby was telling them lies on purpose, because he was loyal to Poyn. Gench met the emperor himself, and he knew how to flatter him with all the grand phrases of the Tuvelain court, which sounded very sincere and sensible to the emperor. When Blibly saw what was happening, he became so jealous that he attacked Gench, and seems to have tried to kill him. In rescuing Gench, a Tuvelain soldier killed Bobbly. Of course, the attack was taken as proof that Gench was telling the truth, so the whole army has been following his lead these past three weeks. They are pursuing our forces, the Varannians and about ten thousand Poynese, and bottling us up in the canyon. But we can get away. The south ridge of the canyon can be climbed in one place, but there’s no way to get over the mountains towards the east. So the main Tuvelain force will have wasted a month on a fool’s errand.”
Medvelil was amazed that such an important part of the war depended on a boy. “What will happen to Gench when they find out?”
A flash of pain passed over Mardux’s face, which seemed to say, Death by torture, but why do bother saying it? However, he said, “Gench is with the Swords of Liberty. It’s amazing what Anduir can convince men to do. He knows how to kindle men’s courage. Maybe the Swords of Liberty have a plan to save him, I don’t know. Anyway, the other Tuvelain force is about twenty thousand. Of course, there are other forces besieging castles behind the front line. It’s this smaller force that we’re up against, and unfortunately, they seem to be, by luck, striking at just the right place. They’re headed for Sparrow Pass.” That meant they could get over the mountains and hit the lake shore at Floodmeadows. “We can’t give battle, we’d be outnumbered five to one. We’re just skirmishing, harassing, ambushing scouts, trying to keep them nervous and confused, and weaken them a little without weakening ourselves too much.”
“Is that enough to stop them?”
“Well, if we get really lucky, maybe they’ll turn away on their own. We’re keeping them blind, they don’t know they’re going the right way. Or maybe the Swords of Liberty will manage to do something. I’m thinking up a battle for Sparrow Pass itself, if it comes to that, but I haven’t got the details worked out. Hmm… You should see us in action. I’ll send you up to Raven’s Crag with Sir Justin. There may be a skirmish tonight.” Sir Justin was a salt-and-pepper haired old knight, who had served with Mardux in Dagorlil’s wars, one of a group of Mardux’s close confidants.
That evening, about a half-hour before sunset, Medvelil, Sir Justin, and the regularly-stationed watchman were at Raven’s Crag, the rocky summit of a hill otherwise shrouded in force. About five hundred feet below was a road amidst fields, where the Tuvelain legions were advancing in formation, much wider than they were deep. They were dressed in white cloth, with some iron body armor (but far less than the knights wore), and the green fields disappear beneath them as they marched. Their trudging steps resounded through the still country. To the left and right of the legions were lines of mounted warriors.
“Can’t they see us?” asked Medvelil.
“I hope they do,” said Sir Justin. “It makes them nervous to be watched from above like this. And if they were foolish enough to send men to catch us, well, we’ve got the woods full of traps and ambushes. We don’t let them scout out the country. Knowing the land is an advantage we keep to ourselves.”
In front of the legions were three row of Poynese archers. Medvelil thought he saw knights in the shadows of the trees opposite, their lances masked by the forest foliage. The gap was not large and was steadily narrowing.
“There’s a small rise in the ground which is hard to see from here,” explained Sir Justin. “The legions can’t see our archers.”
Just then, from a treetop at the edge of the forest, Medvelil saw a glowing point of orange appear and move from side to side. A torch, he thought, and then, a signal. He heard the thud-twang of bows, soft in the distance, and a cloud of arrows blurred the land. He heard cries of warning amidst the legions, and saw them duck and raise their shields. The arrows thudded and cracked on the shields, and there were some screams of pain. Then, as the rain of arrows thinned, the legions began to run forward. The horsemen charged forward, too, sweeping out in front of the army and closing the distance with the archers quickly.
At that moment, knights charged out of the cover of the forest. There were more than Medvelil thought, but fewer than the opposing horsemen, and only a thin thread of them compared to the solid mass of the legions. The knights smashed into the enemy riders, first with their lances, then with their bodies, and the sound was like thunder; Medvelil heard its echo in far-off hills. The knights and the enemy riders were now fighting furiously, flailing swords and smashing them together. Some had fallen on both sides, in the initial collision or in the struggle that followed. The archers released another barrage of arrows, then turned and began to run. A moment later, the knights, about to be engulfed by the onrushing legions, also turned and began to retreat at full speed.
The enemy horsemen pursued the fleeing archers, but a second thread of knights emerged from the forest, from a place further back, and again, knights and riders crashed like thunder. This time two knights missed the thinned riders and ran their lances into the running legions instead. The lances killed some of the enemy and the charge was disrupted in places, but the two knights were surrounded and brought down. Again the knights turned to retreat, but now the fleeing archers had opened a large distance with the enemy, and darkness was closing in fast.
“Have they no archers to fire back?” asked Medvelil.
“They have,” said Sir Justin. “But ours can outshoot them. They have stronger arms and their bows are better made. Also, they do not wish to put archers in the front of their ranks, lest a charge of knights slay them. So our archers can attack when they are out of range for theirs.”
“Who are the riders on the other side? Are they Tuvelain cavalry?” Medvelil asked this because Tuvel did not have a high reputation for cavalry.
“They are mercenaries from the Jazan steppes,” said Sir Justin.
“They fight bravely, for mercenaries,” said Medvelil. “They seem to have no fear of death.”
“Jazans believe in oaths,” said Sir Justin, as he and Medvelil rode back behind the watchman, who lit the path back with a torch. “They have a saying, that ‘a man who breaks his word is not a man.’ These ones are mostly outcasts from their tribes in the steppes. Some are younger sons of khans, forced to leave so that they do not disturb the peace of the tribe. They promised brave service to the emperor, and will fulfill their promise. In return, he offers them land, gold, and slaves. But you know, Anduir won some of them over. He went to their camp and began to play songs from the Jazan steppes, songs they loved, but had not heard in many years. They came to him, fascinated, and made almost into children by those old songs. Then Anduir began to speak to them of the knights of Poyn, and… well, in short, a whole company of Jazan riders followed him, and he made them part of the Swords of Liberty. They’re credited with some daring raids.”
Night had fallen now, and they rode back by torchlight through the dark woods.
The next ten days were the weariest and most wretched of Medvelil’s life. How could his father have loved war so much? But then, Dagorlil’s wars were different. In those days, the knights of Poyn charged, scattered the enemy, won the field. Now there was only a continual retreat, broken by nerve-wracking skirmishes, which seemed to accomplish nothing, but which each killed a few of the precious men. The knights bore the brunt of it. The scenes Medvelil saw by daylight haunted him all night and he slept little and restlessly. What he especially remembered was the thin line of knights in front of the legions, the legions rising like a great wave of flesh and steel, their shouts piercing the air, their feet making the ground shake, rushing forward, confident and cruel, overwhelming all. How could the knights bear it? And when he met them in the camp, after seeing them charging against the legions, he felt a humble amazement. He knew some them, knew the fathers of others; he had seen most of the them jousting in the tournaments; he had known of those even that he had not seen before; yet the glory of courage seemed to have exalted them above all the biographical details of their lives, so that they seemed like strangers, or like characters from an old story. And he had a glimpse now of his father’s pleasure in war, for if there was a glory in being with such men, what must be the glory of being one of them?
Yes, but Medvelil could not feel it. He was not used to so much riding, and his whole body ached and throbbed. The coarse food of a military camp did not agree with his stomach. He was terrified, not so much of the legions, as that his presence would somehow cause a mistake. He felt that it was a strain on Mardux to entertain him, that he was a poor audience for Mardux’s counsels. As futile as the daily skirmishes and harassment seemed to be, Medvelil learned to admire Mardux as a military tactician. He saw that he was making cunning use of his inferior strength to harass a more powerful enemy. He kept feeling that it was unchivalrous of Mardux never to risk his own person, or that of a few of his old comrades, such as Sir Justin, whom he kept as a kind of entourage, to reminisce with around the campfire at night, for relaxation. Medvelil blamed himself for the thought. Who was Medvelil to blame anyone else for not risking his person? And of course, Medvelil knew that Mardux’s caution was rational. But when Medvelil saw his knights fall, he thought of their fathers, or wives, or sons, he thought of how beautiful they had been as living men, and his eyes flooded with tears. Mardux watched death impassively. Mardux seemed to Medvelil cold and calculating.
As the retreat continued, they entered mountainous country, and the rocks and cliffs served as a kind of natural fortifications from which the Poynese, to whom local mountaineers acted as guides, were able to harass the enemy. Sometimes the enemy had no refuge at all from a rain of arrows fired from a high place, and only marched forward in haste, or even ran, to get out of range. Meanwhile, Mardux was growing more excited. He had planned a great battle just before Sparrow Pass, in a narrow, steep place called Wounded Rock Canyon, after the reddish water stains on its cliffs. Medvelil could not follow his explanations.
It was overcast the day the legions began to ascend Wounded Rock Canyon. Poynese foot-soldiers, including armored knights on foot, stood in a line four deep at the top of the canyon. Along the north rim of the canyon were archers; across the south rim, said Mardux, “irregulars.” Mardux and Medvelil stood on a high rock behind the battle lines, overlooking the whole canyon. Medvelil was struck by the crazy insufficiency of three ranks guarding the top of the canyon against fifty ranks of Tuvelains. Five hundred feet separated the Poynese from the enemy; now two hundred feet; now fifty. Then, suddenly, just as the three ranks of Poynese first engaged the enemy, the archers and irregulars moved. It was no surprise that a furious barrage of arrows rained down from the north rim of the canyon. But Medvelil was amazed at what the irregulars did. Great trees that grew on the south rim were set afire and toppled into the canyon, plunging down with a great crash. Enormous boulders were pushed from the heights above the canyon rim and smashed and thundered down to the canyon floor, crushing crowds of soldiers. Suddenly the canyon echoed with screams of terror. The irregulars hurled barrels of oil and pitch onto the burning trees and they flared up, and the fire spread to the canyon’s native trees. The canyon had been prepared with piles of dry brush beforehand, and these caught fire. Now the canyon was a blazing inferno, yet the Tuvelains kept pushing into it, for those in back knew not what was occurring in front. The irregulars were not finished. They had piles of large stones yet, barrels, trees. The front lines of the Tuvelains had been decimated by the foot soldiers and knights, and they got little reinforcement from behind, as few of their fellows got through the arrows, rocks, and fire. Medvelil felt hope kindled in his heart, even as he felt sick at the scene. Mardux was almost dancing with triumphant merriment.
And then suddenly his face grew pale as snow.
“I must go,” he said, suddenly mounting his horse. “Justin! Bors!...” and with one or two more names he got the attention of his old veterans, a group of ten grizzled knights. “Follow me!” The men mounted and mustered behind Mardux. “Your Majesty, if I don’t come back, retreat to Floodmeadows, signal for ferries, and sail for Poyn!” By the time Medvelil realized with terror that Mardux had given him command of the army, he was gone.
A moment later, Medvelil saw what Mardux had seen by a signal a moment before. Along the narrow south rim of the canyon, a large company of Tuvelain soldiers, perhaps two hundred, were marching. They would soon reach the unarmed and rowdy irregulars, massacre them with ease, and then they could march along the ridge, attacking the thin Poynese lines at the top of the canyon from behind. As Mardux and his veterans galloped along the ridge, the terrified irregulars leaped out of the way. One leaped in the wrong direction and plunged over the edge into the inferno below. The Tuvelain ranks were on a ledge barely wide enough for ten horses, with cliffs above and below, when Mardux and his veterans, their lances lowered, smashed into them. The first ranks were broken in that collision, some tossed over the edge into the flames—but one of the knights fell, too—others lanced or knocked down, but a crowd of soldiers followed. For one awful minute, Medvelil was frozen, unable to turn away from the combat on which all depended, the horses rearing, the swords flashing and cutting, the cliffs and the stormclouds above, the fire below. That image of terrible glory scarred itself on Medvelil’s memory forever: This is Mardux, he thought with wonder. One of the veterans fell, then another. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning smote the mountain, and a crash of thunder rocked the heavens, and Medvelil felt the beginnings of rain. The Tuvelains seemed to take fright at it. Medvelil’s trance was broken and he dashed about wildly, looking for men on horseback and shouting—“Save Mardux! Save Mardux! That way! That way!” There were a few riders left to obey.
By the time Mardux returned, on foot, wounded, and grief-stricken, a furious rain was falling on Sparrow Pass. Medvelil had not seen the end and did not know whether Mardux was alive. He wanted to embrace him for relief, but knew it would not be fitting. The king and the Marshal looked at each other for a long time.
“Did any of the others come back?”
“Only Sir Hareth,” said Mardux. “Sir Justin is alive, too, but I doubt he will last the night.”
“You saved the army,” said Medvelil.
But Mardux could take no pleasure in praise at that moment. The inferno in the canyon was quenched, but the Tuvelains were gone, some slain by swords and arrows, some crushed or burned, some drowned as the rain had quickly flooded the canyon. Half the army had never entered the canyon, however, and was camped below.
“It is as if we lost the battle,” he said. “They have found the other path to the top of the ridge, which we hoped to keep secret. This place cannot be defended now. The rain will make ascent impossible while it lasts. If we’re very lucky, it may last a week. But then they will come. They will find out that the mountains are passable here. They will send word to the larger army. They will occupy Floodmeadows, and then march along the lakeshore. It is not much use to fight them on the way down. They will have the high ground advantage.”
“Is there no way to stop them?”
“My wits are dry,” said Mardux. “This was the only plan I could think of. And now it has failed.”
“Your Excellency… my friend…” said Medvelil. “I have been a burden to you long enough. To have witnessed your skill and courage these ten days is an honor I have little deserved. I will depart.”
Mardux’s face showed no sign either of regret or relief. It was merely numb with grief. “Evacuate the north shore, your Majesty. And make sure the fortifications at Dardamund are as strong as they can be made. If the worst happens, we’ll try to hold them there.”
In the morning, riding back over the same roads where two weeks before he had dreamed of military glory, he felt desperate with shame.
And now, as King Medvelil looked into Sir Anduir’s bright and ardent face, it hit him that for all those twenty-three years, he had been ashamed to be king of Poyn. He read in Anduir’s eyes the simple, stainless patriotism which he, Medvelil, ought to have had, but had not. He had always been inwardly the skeptic, the critic, the unbeliever. He had seen Poyn as the futile, overmatched kingdom, destined to be conquered, destined to play history’s fool. But Anduir’s face pierced Medvelil’s soul like an arrow, called him back, back, to a distant past, first to the time when he had met Sir Calillus, whose face Anduir’s resembled closely in its features and perfectly in its free and innocent courage, and then again back, back, to that oldest memory, when he had sat on his brother Velf’s shoulders and seen the knights of Poyn marching under the clear blue sky long, long, long ago. It seemed to Medvelil that the whole world had been whispering a secret to him then, a secret that could not be written in words, but only in such scenes as that, in the ranks of shining armor and the blue sky, a secret that was more important than anything in the world, a secret that a true king of Poyn must know with every beat of the heart and every throb of the soul. And he had lost that secret long ago, like a careless child who lets his marble fall into a crack, and now he did not know how to recover it. How absurd to be ashamed to be king of Poyn on this day of victory! And yet he could not help it; the habit was too deep. He heard the call now. The whole world was beckoning him to stand tall, to be glad and proud. But he could not.
