Chapter 1: Arrivals (Part 1)

Early Autumn
Year 3
Somewhere along the river Aresh'Erenn

They came, out of the far north, streaming out from the mountain passes and down south, following the eastern bank of the river. The Ardran they had left behind them a long time ago, their ancient city of Mirynium even further back. It was probably burnt to the ground, now; its gold taken away, its stones torn down and crushed, nothing remaining where it stood but a memory and a char.

The two years of wandering had hardened the Erennin. Passing through the southern Kingdoms they had received gifts of food and greetings of peace and goodwill from the people they met. Many joined them, convinced that their own kingdoms had no chance of survival if even the great Erennin army could not defeat the Ismaransi. Their numbers had swelled to almost eight hundred thousand when they reached the mouth of the River Ardran, facing the sea. But the Ardran was within the Old Kingdoms—as the Erennin now called the Thirty-Five—and therefore still open to Ismaransi attack. Better to cross the mountains that insulated the kingdoms from the wildernesses beyond and head further south. And so the column moved on, into the southern Huloram mountain range, in the dead of winter. It was a horrific crossing; thousands lost their lives in the sudden avalanches and blizzards that tore through the passes. Countless were the horses and humans that were plunged screaming into oblivion when the ice hiding crevasses broke underfoot. Few were they who could be saved by ropes from these pits. Many more fell in the bitter cold. Months of agonisingly slow progress through the mountains were borne by the Erennin with stoic patience, Jodias riding stone-faced ahead, walking when his horse was hobbled by a stone, riding where possible to show himself at the head of the people, his banner waving tattered but defiant above him.

When they finally stumbled out of the mountains in the middle of spring, they had lost nearly a hundred and fifty thousand more, a staggering number that convinced Jodias that the Ismaransi would not be following them through the mountains anytime soon. Without any rest the exhausted refugees plodded on further south, the King giving no respite to them, their journey not yet ended.

It was midautumn by the Erennin reckoning, the second anniversary of their leaving Mirynium. The black column seething with men and animals slowly plodded its way down a new river, unexplored, which someone had named the Aresh’erenn. Saviour of the Erennin. It had caught on, and now they were making their slow determined way down the river, and the word was going around that this was to be the lifeline of the new Erennin kingdom. Already the nation, and the remnants joined to it from the other Old Kingdoms, was tied inextricably to it, relying on it for day to day water supply, for washing, for food, for sanitation. It was a strange feeling, knowing they were indebted as much to this river--which was not the Ardran--as they were to the Ardran, indeed, perhaps even more than to the Ardran.

Jodias, at the head of the column, saw nothing ahead of him but hill after hill, and the occasional vast forest or vast plain. To his sides, his horsemen, moving at a slow trot in a long unbroken line, ready to wheel to the side or accelerate into a charge against any enemy in a moment. It was now late afternoon, almost early evening; where were the far-rider scouts he sent out? The column always advanced in a cloud of scout riders who returned in the afternoon to report what lay ahead in the next day’s journey. But they always returned in the middle of the afternoon, their instructions being to ride only a league away at most before turning back. When a pair of riders assigned to a sector did not return, it was usually cause for worry—Jodias remembered the last time scout riders failed to return by sunset. It had turned out one scout team had accidentally been seen by a group of the indigenous Makawai people and had been captured, where they were forced, by torture, to reveal who and where they had come from. Every single day for the next one week, the Erennin exodus suffered multiple attacks by hordes of horsemen whose arrows wreaked havoc among the army and the people boxed up behind it. When they finally left the territories of the Makawai they were less six thousand women and children, a thousand spearmen and two hundred horse.

A mild pang of nervousness gnawed at the heart of the Erennin king and, he knew, in the hearts of those who travelled with him as well. This time the scout team that had not yet returned had been sent out southeast, almost directly ahead of the column, where they were headed the next day. If the worst-case scenario came true, the next day would see the Erennin heading into yet another battle, the twenty-fifth since they had crossed the Korlen mountains to the north, the thirty-first since the Hulorams. The sun was touching the horizon; Jodias called a halt, raising his hand.

“We stop here for the night! Make camp!” The bustle of activity began as the column began to disperse, the soldiers once again forming a perimeter, those who had livestock penning them up, those who did not pitching tents and lighting campfires, bringing out their grain to prepare bread. Small boats appeared on the river as some enterprising Erennin rowed out to net some fish. By the time the stars came out, a hundred thousand merry fires were blazing across the hills in the tent city that seemed to have no end. Like the marching order, the tents were also arranged by clan, one after another, with an almost clear line dividing the clans. Soft sounds of singing and clapping drifted up into the night as the Erennin tried to entertain themselves through the dark night.

At the southeastern corner of the encampment, up on the summit of a hill some five paces high, Jodias sat underneath a tree, the blazing fires below him, the hills of the new country spread out before him dark and shadowy, and the stars blazing gloriously up above in a cloudless, moonless sky. The King sat alone, munching on a piece of flatbread and holding a wooden bowl of grilled fish and lamb. He liked to sit up on high places, in the nights, and imagine he was still on the plateau in Mirynium, up on the palace walls where he often liked to stand and have a chat with the guards posted on the wall in the night just before he slept. Sometimes, he could almost feel that nothing had changed, standing there in the cool night with the wind in his face. Then, annoyingly, a nagging voice within him would tell him that something had changed, that the very air was warmer here than back at Mirynium. Then he would be jerked rudely back in the present, to his vantage point over his nation struggling to survive and find a place to exist anew.
He heard the soft rustle of grass behind him. Turning, he saw the dark figure of Talamioros behind him, about to sit down next to him.

“It has been some time since I saw you, father. Are you still saddened by the loss of Mother?” Queen Bryseini had died in a fall during the crossing of the Korlens, by the will of the gods, once more in winter. Jodias had mourned her for a week after they left the mountains, and all who saw him after that noted that he had aged, seemed tired and worn.

“Sometimes I wonder to the gods why things are destined to be the way they are. Why did the Ismaransi have to come south? Why did they have to live in the northern wastes? And why did she have to die?” Jodias was pensive, his voice calm. Then he bowed his head in silence, and Talamioros regretted bringing up the memories of his adopted mother and queen. He waited in silence for a time before Jodias looked up at him. For a fleeting moment—did his eyes glisten in the reflected light of the fires? Jodias had never wept in the living memory of any man who had seen him. Not even when--so the horsemen who were beside Jodias in that fateful blizzard said--Bryseini had taken her last breaths in Jodias’ arms in the narrow pass in the raging wind and snow, with small avalanches cascading down on them every now and then.

“If the gods intended things to be the way they are, father, then perhaps it is not too good to wonder too much about their affairs.” Talamioros lapsed back into silence, looking at the stars. Across the void of the night the soft, faraway howl of a wolf carried across to their ears, lonely and forlorn.

“Enough of that, Talamioros. Let us not talk about this anymore. What are you doing up here instead of with the Guards and the Voruna clan?” Talamioros had been appointed that clan’s leader after his predecessor fell in one of the many battles the Erennin had fought since they came to the new land.

“I came to watch for the two scouts, and to look at the stars.”

“Then let us watch together, for I also came to wait for them. If they return.”

“If they do not, then tomorrow will see more death.”

“Or tonight.”

In utter silence Jodias finished his dinner and put his bowl by a side, leaning against the tree trunk, his eyes sweeping across the faintly illuminated landscape for any moving figures headed for the camp. It soon appeared that there was no such need. Soon father and son were aware of two bright points of flame appearing from behind one of the hills, headed straight for the encampment. Coming closer it became evident that these were the missing scouts, unscathed and apparently unflustered by anything. As they entered one of the gaps in the makeshift line of pointed wooden stakes that demarcated the encampment, Jodias and Talamioros were hurrying down the hill to meet them, and in no time at all the two scouts were swept into Jodias’ command tent with Talamioros and all the other clan leaders, and there told to give their report and reasons for delay, for “surely they had to have a very good reason for returning so late, past the time stipulated in the king’s orders”.

Some time later Jodias was sitting in disbelief in one of the chairs, Talamioros with one eyebrow raised, one hand propping up his chin at the table, the other clan leaders in various states of surprise and shock. Expectant silence faced the two scouts, still grimy from their day’s travel, as they stood, faintly panting from excitement at the discoveries they had made. Gharun, the bald clan leader of the Teminu, broke the silence.

“Your majesty, if this is true, then it is news of great import that should be told to all the Erennin. This news means our exodus ends tomorrow.”