‘You need not come arrayed for war,’ Barwon muttered.He rode a black courser, taller at the shoulder than Ynyr’s rouncy.A slight man with dark hair, pale skin and no gifts of the gods to speak of—two arms, two eyes, no horns or tail.Plain, but handsome, and good with words.Ynyr had known his mother well.A bricklayer who had helped to build the keep to defend against those petty bandits who would have made themselves the kings and lords of Glascoed.But the youth had left the Greenwood, spurred by the itch of curiosity.Now he had returned, Abal’s message in hand, apparently some kind of courtier to the freshly made king of Parwys and would-be master of all its neighbours.
‘I’ve dealt with violent men, lad,’ Ynyr said, playing a finger on the antlered pommel of his sword.A gift from the smiths of Caer Palu for leading the charge against that bastard Neulin and chasing him back to his little holdfast in the northern wood.A sword for cutting the legs out from would-be kings, with a core of raw iron to protect against glamour and sorcery.‘Arms help to clarify things.Show that we won’t be taken easily, should he have a mind to take us.’
Barwon shook his head, tossing his black curls, and the courser whickered beneath him.‘A couple of hundred half-armed men won’t dissuade Abal if he means violence.You’ll only put him in a sour mood.’
‘He’s already put me in one,’ Ynyr growled.‘Your mother would be ashamed to hear you suggest we ought to meet this man on our knees.’
‘I might be young, Ynyr,’ Barwon said sharply, ‘but I have seen more of the world than you.There are kings already in Galca and Alberon.This is how things are, and will be.No more villages clinging to survival.No more councils of old men and fools deciding how best to deal with the monsters that roam the wood.After two hundred years of hemming and hawing and cringing at the shadows the gods left behind, better men than you have taken on the burden of rebuilding civilisation.We need efficiency and leadership —realleadership—to make the world safe for mortalkind.’
‘I don’t know anything about that, boy,’ Ynyr cut back.‘Maybe we don’t want to be civilised.Maybe we like our hemming and hawing.Maybe our cringing isn’t from fear of the gods, but from a wisdom that warns against meddling with their leavings.We have our ways, and they are good ways, and we mean to defend them if we must.’
‘You will see, old man,’ Barwon said.‘The world is changing.There are empires already in the far corners.We must change with it or be swept aside.’
Before Ynyr could answer, Barwon spurred his courser to canter a few paces forward, to ride with the young folk who led the column with their bows at the ready.On the off chance of game, they had said, but also to scout against an ambush.
Ynyr shifted in his saddle, uncertain.He often was.Others had said this was what made him a natural leader, needing neither crown nor threat of force to move people in the right direction.A willingness to question, and to think, and to reconsider.
These were the things he knew.Once, in his great-great-grandfather’s time, mortalkind had lived in the shadows of the gods.Towering beings, at once terrible and wondrous, whose affairs had defined the boundaries of the world.Whose wonders had brought health and plenty; whose horrors had cast folk down into disease and death.The road beneath him, straight and true through the grassy hills on the west bank of the Afoneang (not yet a marshland, Fola noted, and the road followed the natural slopes of the hills instead of twisting above and against them) was one of their lesser works.The bark-skinned monsters that plagued the Greenwood, and against which he had first led folk in arms, were a lesser horror.
Many such gifts and horrors had been left behind when the gods departed for their new world.The crystal globe was another: an object of fascination and worship for the people of Glascoed, which Ynyr had built his keep to protect and defend.He was not so certain of the thing’s importance, but knew that placing it behind heavy walls would dissuade those who might do violence—whether to desecrate it, or to destroy it, or in some mad act of veneration.That had been his decision, and he had mustered hundreds of men across seven years to raise the keep.Was that not the act of a king, of sorts?Was not his mobilisation of an army, first against the fae monsters and then against the bandits, not likewise the act of a king?
Ynyr could see the reasoning that had brought Barwon into line behind Abal.To make sense of the world, to rebuild it in their own image rather than limping along, reacting to what the gods had abandoned, would require organisation.The greater the scale of that organisation, the more sense could be made, the more rebuilding done, but the more complex and difficult it would be.Visiting villages, appealing to councils, swaying people one by one, could only accomplish so much so quickly.Ynyr had to admit his own frustrations.He wasted so much time in pointless arguments with the foolish and ill informed who nonetheless thought their perspectives as valuable and needed as those of folk who bloody well knew their business.The way of kings was faster, more efficient, more powerful at scale.Better, then, to manage a vast domain.
But that was not the only thing that mattered.Ynyr knew well the tales of his great-great-grandfather’s time.The last days of the gods.Mortalkind had been subject to them, little more than playthings with lives shaped by their whims.As kings became more efficient in the execution of their will, they would become more and more difficult to resist.Mortalkind would find itself once again subject to the distant whims of these new, would-be gods, empowered by crowns and coins and armies rather than divinity.
Not a world he wished to live in.One whose borders he would stop from enfolding his home, if he could.
A youngster appeared from the shadowed edge of the forest—thin, sharp-featured and dark-furred.Lynog, god-gifted and one of Glascoed’s better hunters.Ynyr had asked her to come and serve as a scout, for none moved through the forest with more skill.
‘Did you find them?’Ynyr asked quietly as Lynog crossed to him.
The youngster nodded, a twitch at her eye betraying anger and fear.‘Half a day further at your current pace, on the far side of the next hill.Ynyr, they are arrayed for war.Carrying spears and dressed in iron mail.Thousands of them.’
Ynyr scowled.He knew how Abal had taken the throne, the violence he had unleashed in Forgard.Knew, also, how little hope his scant few hundred had against Abal’s army.The conqueror had offered to parley rather than hunt Ynyr and his people in the forest, as the hounds hunt the foxes in their holes.Ynyr suspected his demands would be extreme and unacceptable.Suspected, too, that Abal meant to begin his war the moment negotiations broke down.Hence the spears and mail.
Yet this was the only chance the people of the Greenwood had for peace.There was the possibility, however slight, that something might be arranged.A payment of tribute, or a gift of land to seal a truce.Ynyr did not well understand the minds of kings, but could little imagine someone going to the trouble of announcing his presence and arranging a parley without some good faith intent to reach agreement.But if cause for violence could be found, he did not doubt that Abal would lower spears and charge.
(‘I was foolish,’ Ynyr’s ghostly voice whispered to Fola.‘I had felt the sting of unkindness, and known the small greed of common folk, but though I feared it, I did not yet understand the cruel, all-consuming ambition of kings.’)
‘Keep eyes on young Barwon,’ Ynyr told Lynog.‘See that he does not ride off.’
The fox-furred youngster nodded, then slunk back into the forest.Ynyr fell back, spreading word to gather the elders and representatives of the villages at the back of the column.There, he made his proposal, and after some discussion—largely to debate who would remain with him, and who would be in charge of the second, larger contingent of their party—all agreed.
So it was that the bulk of their force left the road.Three hundred folk at arms, the best fighters in the Greenwood, most blooded either against fae or bandits.
‘We did not come here to fight,’ Ynyr reminded those who would lead them.‘Only to show our willingness to do so.Don’t risk your lives for ours, but be ready at arms should the need arise.If we can secure something like freedom for the Greenwood, we will.Else, you will be needed in the days to come.’
Sombre words, but how else ought one speak in the hours before the onset of violence?The larger group marched into a wooded valley between two hills, near enough to charge the road in the case of Abal’s treachery, but far enough to flee, hidden, back to the Greenwood if that proved the more prudent course.Ynyr selected only a dozen to remain.Large men, some with the strength of boars, or lithe and six-armed and each hand ready with a knife.It was a balancing act—show enough strength to dissuade Abal from violence, but not enough to provoke him.
Barwon pleaded to be included in their number, but Ynyr insisted he remain with the larger group who would wait in the valley.The youth was already under Abal’s sway, and knew their strength and their plans.He reminded Lynog, and several others, to keep close eyes on the lad and not let him flee to Abal.To hurt him, if necessary, to prevent that.When this day was done, he would be free as anyone to associate with whom he willed, but there was too much danger in letting him roam until after the parley.
(‘You may think I should have had him killed,’ Ynyr’s ghost murmured.‘Or left him behind in chains.That may be.But he was one of us, and I was too naive to see the thorns of ambition wrapped around his soul.’)
Thus the stage was set for Abal’s arrival, at the very heart of what would one day be the kingdom of Parwys.The grassy hills and fertile plain between Bryngodre and Miggenbrot sprawled to the east, not yet swallowed by marshland.The first peaks of the Windwall soared to the north.To the west, Abal rode at the head of his two thousand men upon the First Folk Road—distant silhouettes drawing nearer by the hoof beat.
(‘Bloody Stones…’ Ifan’s voice echoed.‘Look where we are… Look where they’ve gone!’)
At the base of the hill the army came to a halt, its banners limp in the humid air.There they held for a time, figures milling about, some going into the forest.Taking stock, checking for themselves that Ynyr and the folk of the Greenwood had left no ambush, presumably.Making their own plans in case the parley collapsed into sudden war.At last Abal—marked by his banner of the crowned bear—broke off from the bulk of his forces, accompanied by a contingent of twenty fighters.
