08 - Bastion

In the years before Naeldric ruled over Fael, it was best known for fish and smell of salt. Merchants tied up in the harbor, embraced by the umber cliffs, safe from the winds and tempers of the sea. The only thing they unloaded were tired sailors and sore rowers. Their wares stayed onboard, bound for richer ports further to the south. Fael was poor.

The people of Fael read tides to avoid storms. Farms tamed tangled hillsides with neat rows of turned soil high above the banks of the river and its floods. Small canals and locks siphoned off the water needed for the harvest. Orchards lined up trees. They also broke the winds. The people of Fael were poor, industrious and sheltered.

There was little to plunder other than the people and the livestock. And even that was deterred by the ancient walls. While these stout, moss covered walls had crumbled in places, they still provided enough trouble to outweigh the spoils of a raid.

Fael stood apart from the other two chief cities of the Sterich. Rich Veinheim farmed the great valley but had her back against the Uest Veld and the Shenjun. Threats from under shadowy boughs pinned Veinheim and her spears in place. By the blood and backs of her slaves, Neeklow fed Sterich with her mines. Yet, Neeklow remained poor, even poorer than Fael. In the dark crevices and cracks of the hills, threats bred and grew sinister. Monsters from dim times lurked in caves and the ping and crack of the miner's picks summoned them out from the shadows. The slaves of Neeklow conspired behind closed lips and furtive glances. All about Neeklow a grim fate surrounded them. Neeklow glared out across *Sterich, but couldn't reach out.

Only Fael, with little to desire, was left with little to worry for. In the days before Naeldric, that was a point of pride. They had no need, or coin to feed ambition. That flame had snuffed out and left a smokeless cold pile of welcome resignation.

Yet, history likes a spark. It canonizes those whose intensity ignites dormant hungers. When that happens, the spirit reemerges from that dust, a bright searing flame. The fates are stoked and a people are propelled forward to a fate which thereafter seemed inevitable. Naeldric was one such spark.

Prins Naeldric was like most youths, he thought an idea was something firm, easy to grasp. His ideas sparkled for him in an undeniable way. They felt eternal, obvious, truthful. And he beheld his ideas in the blinding light of certainty. His ideas were ambitious. When he shared them he received no rebuttals, just blank, respectful responses. But when he listened carefully, he heard the whispers behind his back. He learned how others looked at him when they thought he wasn't looking.

Only his brother mocked him openly. Naeldric wasn't bothered. His brother had weaknesses. He liked women and the spike (the pipe used to smoke moonsticks). And his brother was trusting. He confided these things in Naeldric, who quickly saw how he could exploit them. Naeldric didn't have a motivation to exploit him, he just knew he could and his curiosity propelled him. He procured moonsticks and snuck women into the Aechtung. His brother became reliant upon him. And his brother's weaknesses manifested in his appearance and behavior. He grew thin. His clothes hung on him in a way that made him look insubstantial. He struggled to focus. His attention sailed on the wisps of smoke from the spike. This lowered how others thought of Naeldric's brother and had the side effect of raising Naeldric's standing. Despite his audacious views, Naeldric became the more favored. He was the lesser of two evils in the eyes of Fael's courts.

Prins Naeldric feared the demise of Fael. He saw weakness where others saw identity, even security. Over and over he heard how, "We are fishermen, farmers and friends. We are not hill people. We aren't born with a spear in our hands, sanguineous dreams and savage means." This wasn't how Naeldric saw it. He saw Fael like a fat lamb in a green pasture, not caring what lurks within the shadows of the tree line. And Naeldric knew how weaknesses could be exploited. His brother's daily stupor in the moonstick dens was his proof.

18 Cloudtide 1051

Naeldric was crowned Dux on an overcast autumn morning in a quiet ceremony attended by just a few. He stood on the highest step and still the priest who laid the crown on his head, standing two steps lower, was at the same height. His brother had died the day after his father passed. No one mourned his death. Even those that harbored suspicions about the circumstances wouldn't allow themselves to voice it privately. Everyone agreed, Naeldric was the better of the two.

An unsettling sense clouded the days following his coronation. Like air that smells of rain when there are no clouds. Naeldric was not like his father. Outside the walls of the Aechtung, Fael was still what it had always been. Inside, the flame of history kindled.

Naeldric shifted uneasily on the throne still warm from his father. He itched to elevate his homeland but found few shared his goals and even fewer took him seriously. He cut the ceremonies short and called a Duxhalle. He boldly proclaimed that Fael must awake to a new dawn, one threatened by change. He wanted an army. His meisteurs looked uneasily at each other and reminded Naeldric that Fael was poor, and an army required silver. Within a week he replaced all but one meisteur. He retained Ilwin. Naeldric couldn't figure him out. And he had a gnawing sense that a need for Ilwin would become apparent in time.

The turning point came a few days later. Back and forth, Egon and Lothar appeared to argue, but in a loud way were mostly agreeing with each other. They repeated the various ways in which Fael was poor and that Naeldric's plans, whether they were to attract trade, or levy new taxes, all crumbled due to the poverty that was characteristic of Fael. "And more than that, Fael was born with a fish hook and hoe in hand, not a spear and shield."

Ilwin sat quietly. He was dressed in a sloppy grey tunic with a black cape lined with fur. The fur was at one point was white, but had soiled to a shade of sweat and brown whose smell was more recognizable than the name of the color. He slouched in his chair. He appeared bored. He toyed with the binding of his ledger. Internally, he was restless and tiring. He spoke over the other meisteurs, "Yes, yes, yes. You know what I hear? Tired boys quipping about chickens, eggs, and what comes first. And thinking they sound smart doing so. Huh? We know we're poor. And you know? No one cares for the poor. That's especially true of the people in this room. The only way not to be poor is not to be poor. There's our problem. Let's solve that." Ilwin crossed his arms. He looked finished. He thought he was finished. Then he jerked up in his seat. "And fuck that fishhook talk. We weren't born with a fishhook. OR a spear! No one is born with anything. When the fish jump, we fish. When the enemy is at the gates, we spear. We answer calls. That's who we are. Poor, responsive people."

A silence followed as the two younger meisteurs parsed Ilwin's words seeking the meaning behind them. They both hoped he was agreeing with them but weren't quite sure. The silence was broken when Naeldric said, "Right." He slammed his palms on the table and then rushed out of the room. A determined look on his face. Egon and Lothar looked at each other searching for an explanation. Ilwin was pale.

Before dawn, while night still peaked into the day and it seemed that shadows cast light, the gates of the Aechtung opened to let out the Dux and his personal guard. Twenty soldiers in fur lined cloaks, worn breastplates and spears bobbled atop horses. The hard winter ground softened into a cold mud. Overhead, trees squeezed out buds from brittle branches. The birds had yet to begin their morning songs. Hot breath burst forth in plumes from the broad nostrils of horses.

A magu roused Ilwin. He whispered to him, "The Dux is marching." Ilwin rushed out, still in his sleeping gown. His bare feet slapped against the cold, stone parapet. Breathless he peered into the weakening shadow of night. He heard them before he saw them. Twenty spears held upright scratched at the faded sky. "Is that all? No wagons?" The magu told Ilwin what he knew, that was it. The Dux left with his men and little else. Ilwin sighed.

Naeldric had learned the difference between leading and commanding. He judged that he could lead Fael to greatness, but he couldn't command it. He needed to touch the people of Fael with his spark if he were to ignite their spirits. Later he would tell Ilwin, "They refused to go to war, so I had to bring the war to them. What's inside me," and he had pounded his chest, "Is inside us all."

Naeldric raided farms and villages in the Blada (the Plate, the word translates closer to blade of a leaf, but was used to describe flat, arable land that rises above its surrounding area). They burned farms, razed villages, slept in ditches, stolen homes. They ate what they found. When their spears broke, they fashioned weapons from farm tools or stole from the dead. For 90 days, they ravaged the settlements of the Blada careful to avoid Huesrode, the strongest settlement in the Blada. Naeldric kept up the raids even after he lost half his guard. He only turned back when word reached him that Huesrode was mustering an army from all across the Blada to strike at Fael.

3 Planting 1051

Naeldric returned two weeks before the army arrived. He sounded the alarm, "Our neighbors have unified and aim to take our homes. We won't let them do that. We will meet them in the fields." Rumors swirled about what prompted the raids but only a few bothered to clamor up the steep and slippery sides of the moral high ground. The vast majority of Fael knew the battle would be fought in the lowlands of spears and swords. Fael won easily. They vastly outnumbered the Blada farmers and miners who arrived at the gates tired and hungry. Winter had cut into their stores and the weather made supplying their army difficult. They had marched on indignation, they had filled their stomachs with fire, their mouths with the taste of revenge. Battles are a soup of emotion, wars are quite different. When done well, they are a coldly calculated affair.

The victory ignited a defiant spirit in Fael not seen in generations. Naeldric addressed his people not from the walls of the Aechtung but from atop a stool in a tavern, from atop a wall along the Wagaz Ada (River Way). He fed the flame he lit, and tended it like a hellfire in a forge. His message was the same, "We will not ride out for revenge. We will ride out to protect Fael. Threats abound around us. Envious peoples. We won't wait for them to show up at our gates again. We will ride after the spring rains." Later, at Egon's urging, he wove in fears of the fay. Privately, Naeldric didn't see the fay as a threat, but he appreciated the utility in presenting them as one.

Three years of raids commenced. The Blada was brought to heel. The Nein Angraz came next. Plunder in the form of slaves, silver and lands to tax transformed Fael's coffers from hollow drums of empty hopes to heavy, glittering casks of promising futures. Fael identified with the spear. Naeldric proved to be a diabolical strategist. Even with an army without a military tradition, Naeldric had the pulse of where and how to press. Who to count on.

Fael grew beyond its harbors. It reached into the hills, the valleys, the plains. With each conquest calculations were made by the survivors and those in nearby villages and thorps who fell under the cold shadow of the Aechtung. Wait to be raided or offer their tribute to avoid the spear? Men with little hope for security and their own flames in their hearts, felt the call of Fael. If they had a spear and a shield, they were called volunteers. If they didn't, they were called refugees and quickly sent to farms to work or boats to fish. Both sorts streamed into Fael. Better to be placed into bondage than to be left cold in their fields while their farms were plundered.

Ilwin warned that not all those streaming into Fael were to be trusted. Egon argued they had a system to safeguard the, as he put it, purity of Fael. "Slavery or the sceidwael (shield wall). Slaves are always unhappy. No surprises there," he said with a chuckle. "And the sceidwael is its own form of justice. We separate them, you see. You don't serve with anyone you know. Assimilate or isolate." Egon was proud of his system. Ilwin smirked. "Right. You know after you tame a wolf, it's still a wolf?"

12 Firedawn 1054

It was in a train of refugees that Raban came to Fael. He held a spear. He was placed in the sceidwael.