Chapter 6
Late 1828-1829
The Christian’s hospital was very simple and plain- whitewashed stone with exposed timber framing, weathered by exposure, kept warm by fireplaces and space heaters hooked up to one of the generators in the attached shed at the back of the building. The floors were stone as well, with a hypocaust system installed underneath that served double as the hot water system.
Piitros figured that they had to have brought the bedding with them or had it shipped up, because Sarmatians didn’t have bleached-white sheets, or blankets in soft blue or green. He was currently up for watch duty on the soldier they’d rescued from the train, on the basis that he’d probably understand the man better than a Sarmatian. Rasim had been the first to sit with the patient, after Maraaja had finished replacing the arm the man had lost with arm they’d amputated with the silvery sheen of her gods-power construct. The way it looked- not insubstantial, exactly, but… not entirely real- was nagging at something in Piitros’ mind, like he’d seen it before in Finland. He wouldn’t be surprised, but medical work hadn’t been one of the things he’d been interested in.
He’d stopped Doctor Conochvars, whom Gwen had agreed to loan to the Christians on the basis of his medical experience, to ask about it.
“I never saw anything like it in Alexandria,” he’d told Piitros with a shake of his head. “Or in Byzantium, but I wouldn’t be surprised if your people could do something similar.”
So, while he tried to remember if he’d seen it before or not, Piitros was reading through the book the Christians had left in the bedside table under the cross mounted on the wall.
There were books like this in each of the patient rooms in the hospital, which were split mirror-image down the middle by a curtain, so they would hold two patients. The other side of this room was currently unoccupied, but Piitros had gotten up and checked and there was an identical book-table-cross setup. The title on the front, Tà Tría Biblía tou Christoú, was in Greek, which was very strange. If you wanted someone to read something, usually you wrote it in Hebrew.
But maybe it wasn’t so strange. The Christians seemed like the sort of people who would be prepared for every spiritual eventuality, and it made some sense that the people most likely to be able to read in this part of the world would actually know Greek. The border with Byzantium wasn’t very far away, after all; even if you’d find the turbulent, violent mix of the Haemou groups’ ethnic conflicts before you found any Hellenic Greeks. It was nearly as unsettled as Sarmatia, in those mountains between the Adriatic Sea and the Axenios.
He’d made it through the first two sections of the first book of the Tría Biblía, Ágia Graphí- Didaskalíes, which, was far as Piitros could tell, was just the Torah with a new and unnecessary name; and Prophítes, which was confusingly not all of the Hebrew prophets- and was now in the third section, Euangelion, flipping back and forth between Matthaois and Loukas and trying to figure out why anyone would include two different texts saying basically the same thing, attempting to find a difference significant enough that would have warranted the inclusion of both.
Then a Christian doctor came in to check on the soldier and he made the mistake of asking if the reason they had their holy book in Greek was because they expected the Haemou to read Greek.
“Oh, no,” the doctor told him. “We just thought that for the patient rooms we would get the most coverage out of using the Alexandrian Antonian and Greek texts. We have Slavic Biblía for when we spread the word of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Haemos. Do you happen to know what the Sarmatians read?”
To Piitros’ knowledge, the Sarmatians didn’t have a tradition of reading.
“Uhh…. Finnish?” he suggested. “If anything. They don’t really write things down; they have a longstanding oral tradition.”
The doctor nodded somberly.
“Yes, we had that problem with the Slavs, too. So we learned their languages and then helped them make an alphabet so they could read the Word of the Lord in their own tongue and come to a fuller understanding of the gift we have been given in this world. And now we have people in the beginning stages of making copies in Venedan, for the serfs who will be freed of injustice.”
Piitros put on his best diplomacy face and said: “That was nice of you.”
“So we will just have to send people to the Sarmatians and do the same. We were managing with the Haemou Tría Biblía, and I don’t think that anyone in Sarmatia proper will be able to understand that.”
“I think they’ll probably just kill you,” Piitros told her, dropping the diplomacy. Bluntness was likely better in this instance. “Or laugh you off the plains.”
“It is our duty and our joy to tell the world of the coming of Heaven on Earth, and entreat them to love and spiritual familiarity when they are blinded by their habits of sinfulness and the legacy of evil deeds left to humanity from the time before the sacrifice of Christ, for God has brought Heaven to His children but His children are still human, and fallible, and we shall not be able to prevent all acts contrary to His will but we can prevent the greatest of these transgressions, which invite demons into this world from where they have been exiled to pollute the gifts we have been granted, war and murder and abuse and the social deprivations of poverty. And that shall not stand!”
A Christian evangelist worked up into righteousness was intimidating, in their own way.
“Well, good luck to you,” Piitros said, and wondered a little about how people managed to stay so… idealistic, even once they’d left the hills where it was, as Rasim had said, feasible that they could keep such faith. “I hope you manage it.”
And that wasn’t a lie, even if he was trying to get her to leave, because a world without war or murder or abuse or poverty would be a very good world.
The doctor gave him a short blessing in Greek for his well-wishes, and then returned some fifteen minutes later with a copy of the Tría Biblía in Finnish and a copy in what must have been Slavic, because the alphabet it was written in had a vague resemblance to Greek, in the way that the Finnish alphabet kept some Futhark characters basically unchanged; but Piitros couldn’t read any of it.
He’d just given in to her urges to accept them both- so much time with the Sarmatians, and he still had the politeness reflex of a Finn; was he going to become someone who fought like a Sarmatian but couldn’t bear to be impolite to anyone, even while he was disemboweling them?- when the soldier woke up.
The doctor got to work instantly, checking over everything and asking questions. They weren’t answered, and she started to look worried. She spoke more slowly, more loudly; and then switched from Alexandrian to Greek.
Then from Greek to Latin. Then Latin to Hekassir-
“Look, I have no idea what you’re saying,” the soldier interrupted her, in Norse.
Well, Piitros had not been expecting that.
“He speaks Norse,” he told the doctor in Greek.
“I don’t think she speaks Norse,” he told the soldier in his own language. “Why were you fighting under Alexandrian symbols if you don’t know Alexandrian?”
“What?”
“You were in an Alexandrian uniform when you fell of the train,” Piitros told him.
“What?”
“I think we may have a problem,” Piitros told the doctor. “I- uh, I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Damaris.”
“Okay,” he said, and turned back to the soldier. “Damaris just wants to know how hurt you are, she’s a doctor, and she’s going to take care of you. What’s your medical information?”
“Medical information?” the man asked.
“Name, mutation, blood type, pre-existing conditions, special procedures- name, mutation, and allergies are good enough if you don’t know your blood type, we can figure that one out and most pre-existings with a blood test.”
“I… I don’t- my name.”
“We definitely have a problem,” Piitros told Damaris.
-
By the time Gwen, Maraaja, and Jendiik arrived, Piitros and Damaris had managed to figure out that the soldier didn’t remember his name, where he was from, or anything he’d ever done before waking up in the hospital.
“He has to have a name,” Gwen insisted, and Piitros firmly agreed with her. Someone without a name couldn’t be found by their ancestral spirits; and even if it wasn’t the name they’d known him by, having a name would mean he’d be able to be found, someday, and they would be able to help him. And if he died before that, well, he’d be able to enter the soldier on the rolls of those who had no one else and someone would pray for him.
“We could call him Eithan,” Damaris suggested. “It means ‘enduring’, and he is, to survive that fall. And he will need endurance to get through this.”
Piitros thought about that for a moment.
“That’s the Greek of Hebrew, isn’t it? Eytan?” he asked, and nodded to himself when Damaris confirmed it was. “That’s one of the names we Finns took from Judea. Eitaan. I was going to suggest we call him Ahtiin, that’s ‘a sailor lost at sea washed up on shore’. Ahtiinit are called by what they are if they’re found and no one knows who they are.”
“I have space for a given name, a patronymic, matronymic or clan name, and a family name in the records,” Damaris said.
“And he should at least have two of those,” Jendiik said. “What if we called him Eithan Antiin- Duke Piitros, what’s the possessive of Ahtiin?”
“It already is,” Piitros told him. “Ahti is the god of the sea. Ahtiinit are his people.”
“All right, well- what if we put him down as Eithan Ahtiinanai?” the priest suggested, putting the Venedan possessive tribal marker at the end of the word.
“What about the last section?” Piitros asked. “That’s usually a- description, of a person, or a family-”
“A soldier, found in winter,” Maraaja said with a shrug. “It is all he has of himself; his only description.”
She smiled, inscrutably.
“And it would be wrong to rob him of himself, would it not?”
“‘Militatalviin’,” Piitros said. “‘Soldier of winter’.”
“And do how do you feel about this?” Damaris asked the soldier, forgetting they didn’t have any language in common. Piitros had to repeat it for her, in Norse, and added the name they’d discussed.
The soldier just shrugged, and said: “As long as it fits.”
And so the Alexandrian soldier became Eithan Ahtiinanai Militatalviin- just in time for the next major event to hit.
One of the Stasiig warriors came rushing into the room, exclaiming:
“Vanspag, Vanspag- the Oiorpata! They’ve come!”
“The who?” Piitros asked Gwen, when she smiled widely.
“You were never told of the Oiorpata and the Tribe Tagimasiigsaila?” she asked, good-humored teasing evident in her tone. “And here I thought you knew everything, Pitriik!”
“Not everything,” he admitted with a bit of a blush as he started to follow her out. Damaris called for a replacement and started to walk with them, causing Gwen to raise an eyebrow.
“You? Why are you coming?”
“If it’s Tagimasiigsaila, Vanspag Stasiig,” Damaris said in understandable Sarmatian- though it was different than what Piitros was used to, different enough that he thought ‘dialect’ might be appropriate, given the beginnings of the sound shifts. “Then I will know people there, and it would be remiss of me not to come say hello.”
Gwen stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the Christian doctor.
“You know Sarmatian!”
“We preach in the Haemos,” Damaris told her. “Many of the people who listen when we spread the word of the Lord are Haemou. We Christians know the Tagimasiigsaila, though they are resistant to hearing our truth.”
“Your truth is the wishing of weak children,” Gweniig said.
“We are all as children before God,” Damaris replied calmly.
Gwen shook her head and elected to ignore Damaris in favor of enlightening Piitros.
“Some generations ago,” she started to tell him. “Not many. In my mother’s mother’s time, and her mother’s; there were warriors who thought that there was not enough fighting in Sarmatia. They had grown up on tales of their parents’ fights against the Venediiki, and wanted nothing more than to fight foreigners. But no one else wanted to fight the Venediiki, so these warriors- many, from all different tribes, enough to make an entire small tribe themselves- banded together and rode south for the Tagimasiigsaila, what you call the Haemos.”
“So you’re telling me,” Piitros said. “That there’s an entire tribe of Sarmatians in the Haemos.”
“They call themselves after the mountains they now live in,” Gweniig continued. “They fought bandits and the Haemou and anyone who would take up arms against them. They reached some sort of- arrangement, with the settled people there, and now they guard and fight in exchange for food and trade goods for the people in the land they control. They have a smaller warband, very fierce and very famous, all women, called the Oiorpata. They don’t take only from the Tagimasiigsaila, though any who join the Oiorpata become part of the Tagimasiigsaila and leave what tribe they belonged to previously. Tagimasiigsaila is always recruiting from Sarmatia for the warriors who need more. They, the Oiorpata, tried to recruit me, a few years ago, but I didn’t want to leave Stasiig.”
“Really, they came to ask you?” Damaris asked. “The Sarmatians really do think highly of you, to have that invitation and to make you Vanspag of the Vanspagii. They sent Meliza Majić for you, didn’t they?”
“Who?” Gwen asked, but then they were outside and the Oiorpata were right there, and Gwen saw the woman on the lead horse and yelled something at her, and she yelled something back, and then the other woman was on the ground and then they both had their swords out and were going at each other.
Piitros, alarmed, took an involuntary step forwards despite the fact that he knew he couldn’t do anything, but Maraaja grabbed his shoulder to stop him.
“It’s just their way,” she assured him. “Between Gweniig and Meliisa Vainkag Tagimasiigsaila, this is a friendly greeting.”
“So they did send Meliza Majić,” Damaris said, unsurprised.
All Piitros had to do was look at her pleadingly to get her to explain.
“Meliza’s mother was Christian,” Damaris told him. “One of the converts we make among the Haemou. We make the most in Tagimasiigsaila territory, where they live in near-perfect peace. Among the Tagimasiigsaila themselves… well, none yet. But we had hopes for her father, given that he one of them and married one of ours. The Haemou there call themselves Serbs, and marriage between the two groups isn’t uncommon; but usually the Sarmatians don’t marry Christians, or they don’t show any interest in it at all. One day Marija- Meliza’s mother- was killed by a surprise attack while she and her husband and Meliza were out riding. Meliza stayed with her father’s people then, and became the leader of the Oiorpata.”
Piitros nodded absently, his eyes bound to the fight. He could absorb the new information later – right now, he was enthralled by the lethal beauty that was Gwen (and Meliisa) in battle.
-
Organizing the march back to Veneda from the refugee camp in the mountains was the first time in Piitros’ entire life where he’d felt happy about all the years his aunt had kept him in Raajokin, doing paperwork and managing people.
They had to travel from the mountains in the south of Sarmatia to Mazzera, the capital of the Duchy of Fulinia, which the Sarmatians technically owned since the last Venedan war. Piitros ended up doing a lot of delegating, partially because there were so many people to handle, but mostly because for all that he was Gwen’s lover and Gwen was in charge of the Sarmatians; the Sarmatians still, just as he himself did, thought of him as a city-raised Finn. An important city-raised Finn, as the Finns counted such things; and certainly the Finns were the best of the settled peoples- but he wasn’t Sarmatian. He dressed like a Sarmatian, now, and he’d started dyeing his teeth shuriig red since Maraaja had named him ‘Vanapaghavuk’ , ‘spider-warrior’- but he didn’t speak like a Sarmatian and he didn’t ride like a Sarmatian and he certainly didn’t fight like a Sarmatian. He didn’t think like a Sarmatian, and it showed.
Which, given what the Sarmatians and the Venedan serfs and the mercenary squad and a band of variously-skilled refugees and Christian doctors were riding into, was probably a good thing.
“You’re not getting rid of us,” Damaris insisted from her horse. It was the day the Sarmatians were set to move out, and Piitros had convinced Gwen and Maraaja who talked Meliisa and the other Vanspagii to get the Sarmatian warriors and priestesses to make an approximation of forming up in ranks, grouped by tribe. It had been a bit easier with the Venedan serfs, who at least had a passing acquaintance with the idea of professional army, and of course the mercenaries didn’t need any prompting to act like soldiers. Sergeant Rasul had actually been one of the people Piitros had delegated to- he was in charge of Vlypasa, and Vlypasa was the original instigator of the peasant revolt; so, by default, Rasim was now nominally the military commander of the entire ‘infantry’.
He’d thought he had the situation under control, except now there was a third group of riders trying to join the end of the group.
“Why?” Piitros had to ask, looking past Damaris to the group of mounted doctors, most of them Christians from the hospital, and a selection of refugees.
“One, you’re taking my patient,” Damaris said, pointing off behind Piitros at Eithan, who was now out of bed and on a horse himself, next to Maraaja, who was apparently regaling him with a story. “I’m the one in charge of him, and I won’t let you just ride off with him into battle.”
“He remembers how to fight,” Piitros protested. It had been the first thing Gwen had checked when he was allowed back outside. “And when Gweniig told him that he owed her for saving his life, he even volunteered to fight.”
“That doesn’t mean he should be,” Damaris insisted. “Two, there is the good news of Heaven to be spread and people to turn away from war and violence and abuse.”
“So you’re going to ride with an army to convince them not to fight?”
“If we can,” Damaris said. “Though we have experience in knowing that this is not the way to reconcile hearts to the love of God. Where better to bring people to the truth of the gifts of this world when they have the evidence of what letting demons into the Kingdom of God does right in front of them?”
Piitros was trying to decide if it was politic or not to mention that this was an incredibly… opportunistic mindset. Almost mercenary, even; for a group who was supposed to be about love and peace and brotherhood.
“Three, it’s a war. People get hurt in wars. Combatants and non-combatants. You’re going to need doctors. And we know very well how disruptive wars and fighting is to daily life and the structure of society, so-”
She waved a hand back at the refugees accompanying them.
“Here are your civil engineers, and your bureaucrats, and your teachers, and your artists, and your artificers.”
“You really think we’re going to need-”
“It’s a revolt,” Damaris reminded him firmly. “A rebellion. You’re helping to overthrow a government, and a government that wasn’t particularly well-run at that. You need people with experience in doing these things, even small scale, so they can set up the foundation and teach people to do it themselves. To have peace you need something people want to live in, not the wreckage left behind once the armies have finished trampling all over it!”
“Okay, fine,” Piitros said, and was distantly pleased to find that he wasn’t upset about being rude. Maybe it was only a push he needed to abandon it- he’d have to test that further. “If you want to come that badly, come. Just- don’t get hurt.”
“If we are to die it will be in the service of the Lord, and there is no greater cause.”
It had taken a day of riding and walking to get to the mountains from the battleground- and it had been a long day. It took a little more than three to get from the mountains to Mazzera, though it was on the southern edge of the former Barony of Fulinia, now openly called Volhynijzeme by its inhabitants, rather than just in the stories they would tell in the quiet nights, in their own languages, where the Roman arzemniiks couldn’t hear them. When they finally got there, it took the rest of the day to sort out where they were going to put everyone.
“We need a supply line,” Rasim declared over the dinner being served in Mazzera castle, formerly the home of the Barons of Fulinia, and now given over to the Governor the former serfs had appointed from amongst their own ranks after the last Baron had been run out and the Roman-descended freeman class fled or given their individual promises of peace.
“If you give us money,” Governor Aleksandras Vasarvykasy Volhyniavan said. “Then we can arrange for the caravans we contract to come just along the Sarmatian side of the border to bring extra. It will cost you quite a bit more than if you were buying it from Lithuania, though.”
“I doubt the Lithuanians would sell us anything,” Rasim said.
“Why do you think we have to pay the caravans to come through Sarmatia?” the governor asked. “They won’t sell ‘rebellious serfs’ anything, either. Not openly or legally, anyhow.”
“We hunt for our food in Sarmatia,” Gwen said. “We can do it here too.”
“Can you do it without stripping Volhynijzeme bare of game within three day?” Aleksandras challenged. “Because the Volhyniavanai have to eat as well!”
There was an extended argument over the quantity of edible wildlife in Volhynijzeme and the Sarmatians’ general lack of money before Damaris, from her seat at the table, stepped in to remind everyone that Rasim had said ‘supply line’, which rather implied foraging expeditions- and Sarmatia was still right there. The Sarmatians could hunt in Sarmatia; and anyway, how did they think they’d been feeding the refugees? Arrangements could be made with the Haemou traders who operated out of the mountains- they could even go so far as to ask the Tagimasiigsaila who’d been left behind to handle it for them.
“Since you’re all Sarmatian, after all,” she concluded to silence in the room.
Maraaja turned to Gwen.
“Vanspag, I want to keep her,” she pleaded teasingly.
“It’s not my business you want to take to your wagon, Maraaja,” Gwen told her in Sarmatian, completely forgetting that Damaris could understand her.
“Ask me nicely later and we’ll see,” Damaris told Maraaja.
Things settled down after that, and Aleksandras produced maps of Veneda, and Piitros and Gwen and Rasim and Vlypasa gathered around them with Aleksandras at the governor’s large wooden table.
“We’re actually in a very bad position here,” Aleksandras told them, placing his finger on Mazzera. “We’re at the very south of Veneda, with Lithuania right to our east and Drugovia to our west, both of them much bigger than us and their capitals far north. The only good part is that you can stay in Volhynijzeme for most of the way to Menesca or Daniapolis.”
“But it’s a flat ride,” Gwen pointed out, quickly grasping the basics of topographical maps. “We could be there very soon.”
“There’s towns and garrisons and castles in the way, Vanspag,” Rasim told her. “If you were a Venedan messenger- yes, you’d get there fast. But armies are slow and armies with an armed resistance move even slower. They have to rest, and sleep, and eat; and you have to scout ahead and you have to spend time fighting-”
“Fine, fine,” Gwen said. “So we can’t charge them. What, then?”
“Well,” Aleksandras said, very casually, which told Piitros that the governor had been waiting for the perfect moment to spring this on them the whole evening. “The Sudovanai have already taken Bielstokh. You could just ride around Lithuania and catch the Duke of Galinda coming both ways.”
He demonstrated on the map, drawing a sweeping line from Mazzera east through Sarmatia, avoiding the Lithuanian border, and then up into the Duchy of Galinda on the other side to the capital, Burshloz. Beilstokh was Sudovia’s capital, just on the County’s border with the Duchy. Galinda was a small place, and it would be much easier to take.
“And if you don’t go,” the governor added. “Lithuania and Prussia will just crush the Sudovanai instead, from the east and west, and you will have lost a big opportunity. But if you take Galinda, well- you’ve flanked Lithuania. And Lithuania’s the one you have to worry about.”
“It’s hardly a flanking maneuver if you’re blocking less than half the eastern and western borders,” Piitros argued.
“If you don’t go now that the Sudovanai have moved,” Aleksandras said with a tone of assurance that made it clear he knew he was about to win the argument. “You’ll present yourselves as dishonorable allies, not coming to their aid.”
Gweniig got very stiff with indignation at the implication that she or any of the Sarmatians would dare abandon a sworn ally and declared that they were riding for Galinda as soon as possible.
-
Galinda was easier to take than Lithuania or Drugovia would have been, so much easier, but it wasn’t simple and it wasn’t straightforward, and while there were stretches of time where things seemed to be easy- for the most part, it wasn’t.
The ride to Galinda was easy enough, even at a slower pace than the Sarmatians wanted because the serfs had to walk, for the most part.
But they were at Galinda, and they had to establish a base camp, and they had to feed everyone and get them to be in the right place at the right time and there were entire families of Galindian serfs deserting to join their army or to ask for protection and the ones who could and would fight had to be sorted from the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t and then sent further behind the lines for their own protection and they had to set up a biovac camp because the refugee camp was too far to house people who they hoped they’d be returning to their homes soon anyhow and Piitros’ life descended into a nightmare of logistics where he wished that there was paperwork for him to file, because then at least things would be organized.
As the Sarmatian line pushed northwards in Galinda, headed towards Burshloz, Piitros slowly started to maybe get a hold of things. He took unused account ledgers and blank notebooks from the houses of the freeman administrators who had fled in the face of the Sarmatians and serfs or who had stayed and been killed to start keeping records in. It helped, at first just a little, and then a lot after he asked Gwen for the use of Doctor Conochvars, who had been with the Christians the entire campaign so far since Gwen hadn’t told him to do anything else, to sit in on meetings and basically function as his secretary.
By the time they were planning the siege lines around Burshloz- siege lines being a bit of a misnomer for a situation Rasim was assuring them shouldn’t last for more than two or three weeks at the worst if things kept mostly to plan- Gwen was entirely fed up with the attention Piitros was paying to his paperwork.
“Pitriik, if you continue to devote so much of your attention to this ‘bureaucracy’ you say you love so much, I will have to tell everyone that you can’t possibly be the father of my child, because you were too busy trying to help your paper spawn more of itself.”
“What.”
-
When they finally got to the siege lines and met up with the Sudovanai to set them up, which was going to be incredibly uncomfortable given that winter had set in, Gwen was due to have the baby within the next month and a half and Piitros was having a bout of unusually low spirits.
Gwen found him sitting by the fireplace of what passed for the local tavern in the small village some five minute’s ride from the rear of their siege line, staring at the flames.
“This is the fourth winter since I left Finland,” he said. “I never thought I’d be away this long. I never thought I’d end up here. I thought-”
He glanced over at Gwen’s visible pregnancy, and sighed, almost inaudibly.
“You thought that when you would welcome your first child into the world you do it with your family nearby and in the midst of your people,” Gwen supplied, taking one of the only other chairs in the room. She’d gotten somewhat used to them, during their time in Galinda. “But instead you are doing it in a foreign country and your uncle is dead and your aunt is far away and doesn’t even know.”
“When Stephen came to the camp I was worried that he’d tell Aunt Mai that I was alive and she’d do something that would put herself in danger from Ásbjarn,” Piitros told her. “But instead- nothing. I mean, it’s Veneda, and they’re bad at news and there’s a war going on, but when the Finns do something, everyone hears about it. So she just- hasn’t done anything. Hasn’t said anything. She didn’t even make an official announcement about finding me or anything, she-”
He stared morosely at the fire.
“I think she hates me, Gwen,” he admitted quietly. “I think I made her so mad, running away, that she doesn’t want to hear about me and she doesn’t want me to come home. Otherwise she would have said something.”
“You should write her,” Gwen told him. “After we take Burshloz. You’ve been teaching me and Eithan how, anyway, and Finnish is all we’ll know until Damaris and her people finish with the Venedan and the Sarmatian alphabets. Teachers should teach by example- so write to your aunt, and maybe then I will understand about these ‘poetical conventions’ you keep speaking of.”
-
1830
Piitros did not end up writing the letter once they took Burshloz, because things got too busy.
Currently, for instance, Gwen was giving birth in one of the ground level rooms and threatening bodily terror on everyone who had ever thought that giving birth was a good idea and that it should be considered on the same level as being a warrior because this hurt so much worse.
Piitros had insisted that Doctors Conochvars and Damaris be present for the birth, along with Maraaja, just to make sure that everything went well.
“If this kills me Pitriik-” she kept trying to threaten him, but never managed to get to the actual descriptions of what would happen.
“Of course, Gwen,” Piitros agreed, trying to keep her happy and his mind off the fact that she was essentially giving birth in a bare stone room in one of the most technologically-undeveloped places on the planet; and if this killed her, he wouldn’t ever forgive himself for not withstanding his aunt’s wrath and bringing her to Raajokin for care.
But the baby came and no one died, and the baby stayed unnamed for a harrowing twelve hours while Gwen slept off giving birth. Piitros held his new child the entire time, frantically hoping that nothing would go wrong because if the baby died without a name- no. No. Better to speculate about what sort of luohi-noita they could expect.
Gwen woke up just after lunch the next day, and immediately inspected her baby.
“Ah, a son,” she said.
“Are you disappointed?” Piitros asked, thinking it a reasonable question in the face of the value Sarmatians placed on women.
“Of course not,” she told him, and passed the baby back to him. “Here- you are far from home, and he is your son. You name him.”
He didn’t even have to think about it.
“Benhamanaag,” he pronounced.
It took some doing to find an appropriate spot to conduct the rituals that would add the newborn to the family, but finally they found a big, old tree on the grounds of Burshloz Castle near enough to running water to satisfy Gwen. They sat down in the fading afternoon and Gwen took the bowl of blood from the birth and stood with it raised before her, calling to in turn to Tabiti, goddess of growth, Oitosyrig, god of healing, and Agin, god of blood and war, to keep her son strong and healthy and to make him a strong warrior, pouring out a little of the blood to the ground after she finished the prayers to each.
Meanwhile, Piitros built the fire he would need to complete the Finnish side of the rituals and dug the hole at the base of the tree to bury the placenta. He measured carefully with Benham to make sure he’d fit in the hole himself, then dropped the placenta in and plopped the baby down on top of it.
“Hela, this child is known as Benham Pirkkje, and Benhamanaag of Tribe Stasig of the Sarmatians. This child’s parents are Piitros Loistavis Pirkkje, also Pitriik Vanapaghavuk, and Gweniig Vanspag Stasig. Through my line, I, Piitros Loistavis Pirkkje, do claim Benham as a member of the Pirkkje family, and thus descended from your father the Great Prince Loki Laivisi. Accept him into your Court when he comes to you in Tuonela, and tell his ancestors of his birth, so they know to look to his safety and his wellbeing here in Mailjemamme.”
Only with that done, with Hela knowing Benham’s name and family so he would be accepted as a Finn, would he let Gwen take him over to the stream. Intellectually, he knew that the immersion into the stream was similar to what he’d just done- the Stasig way of introducing new members of the tribe to their ancestor, the god of horses and water, Thagimasadaga. But, in Finnish thought, running water was what you put around graveyards to keep the boundary of life and death clear, and ritual immersion into running water felt entirely too much like inviting death to come for you to make Piitros comfortable.
He distracted himself by filling in the hole he’d dug to bury the placenta. By the time that was done, Gwen was finishing up with this last Sarmatian ritual- she had dipped the bowl into the water and was letting the current wash the blood away, revealing the braided necklace she’d made from mane and tail hairs taken from her horses. She fished it out and draped it around Benham’s neck- when it started to get too small, a few years from now, there would be a second ritual where the head priestess of the tribe cut it off with a knife, and he would begin being trained on weapons and horses.
Piitros had a second necklace for Benham, one that was spelled so he couldn’t outgrow it. It had been a lot of work to get Maraaja and Jendiik and the Venedan smiths to put together a taikakeinokaula, even with Raani’s advice and memories of her family getting ones for her younger siblings. They were such simple things in Finland.
Here, he’d had to search for someone who could twist together thick wires of gold and copper, which he’d had to provide to the smith himself from looted artifacts from Burshloz because it was cheaper than buying the gold from someone else. Then he’d had to find someone to cast the gold and iron and copper charms to hang from it- two copper wolves, one for Loki and one for Sikkin, to hang on each end of the charm, facing inwards; then two iron reindeer- he’d had to sketch those for the smith, who’d never even heard of a reindeer- the metal for Seppo Ilmarinen who created the universe and everything in it and the shape for Mielikki, invoked for luck and wishes; and then in the center a golden falcon for Frija to represent her double form as the Frija-bird, who created the sun and the moon and Earth; and as the Frija-mother, who raised Loki and taught him his magic and intervened to save his children.
Each charm was spelled for protection and luck and good health, and the whole thing was enchanted to grow as Benham did. Piitros fastened it on and then held his son over the fire, now large enough to be nicely warm on the backs of his hands and arms, and recited the stories of the creation of the universe, the meeting and rule of Loki and Sikkin, and then the establishment of their own family, the Pirkkjes, from the children of Loki and Sikkin. The first ritual was to introduce a new family member to Hela and the ancestors; but this second one was to introduce the baby to the universe, their membership in the Finns, and their own family.
The whole recitation was designed to take about as long as it did for the fire to burn down to coals- it was a bad omen if it took longer for the stories to finish than it did for the fire to die, and an uncertain but powerful portent if the flames were still going once they’d finished.
The flames were still going when Piitros finished.
“Hmm,” Gwen said, looking at the fire. Piitros had explained to her how this was supposed to go. “So you need a priestess now, yes?”
“There won’t be any clerics of Loki or Frija here,” he said, and pushed away his unease.
-
Maybe he couldn’t push away all his unease, or maybe it was just that keeping to Finnish notions of proper child raising seemed incredibly overbearing in comparison even to him amongst the Sarmatians and Venedans, who let their children have much more autonomy and were a lot looser, generally, about minding even the ones who couldn’t move around on their own yet.
But Piitros found himself taking Benham with him nearly everywhere, which, by extension, meant that he was also taking Eithan with him everywhere.
That had been an unexpected development.
“He’s so little,” Eithan had said after spending a good couple minutes just staring at the newborn the first time they’d been in Gwen’s wagon together. “He can’t defend himself, he could get hurt. And this is a war. It- I just feel right looking out for him.”
So Eithan came along everywhere with Piitros, since Piitros always had Benham, and started turning into sort of an honorary older brother for the baby. It worked out well- whenever Piitros absolutely had to use his hands for something, like taking notes he knew he’d need again soon, he could pass Benham to Eithan and be utterly certain that no harm would come to his son; and when it wasn’t imperative that he take notes himself or have his hands free, he could just listen on meetings or walk about on inspection and have Eithan practice his writing by taking down the notes for him. Piitros had discovered during his lessons to Gwen and Eithan that Eithan had retained some almost unreadable Futhark, but he was managing Vairkhu, the Finnish script, perfectly well for someone of his level of experience, and the constant practice was helping, even though it wasn’t always readable yet. The three of them- Gwen, Piitros, and Eithan- ended up with a sort of late evening ritual, where Piitros consolidate the day’s notes the master book he’d developed and Eithan would read the notes he’d taken aloud while helping Gwen keep Benham occupied or cooking so Piitros could copy them down without having to struggle through the script.
Today was one of the days when Eithan was taking notes for Piitros.
He’d, on Jendiik’s advice, approached Rober from the mercenary squad to ask for his help in the military aspects of resupply. Rober had ridden off for a few weeks, Jendiik and Vlypasa in tow, and came back escorting an entire one of his family’s trading caravans.
“They did one special, just for us,” Rober had told him cheerfully when they all pulled in to Burshloz. “Was there a decision about where to go next while we were gone?”
“We’re pretty sure it’s going to be Daniapolis next,” Piitros had informed him. “We don’t have enough people to take and hold Prussia and if we make a move on Scalovia then Prussia and Corona and Zegalia will stop fighting over it and come at us instead. Drugovia is safer than taking Radmikia and Severa just yet, even though they’re weaker. We’re nowhere near ready to take on the Magyar Lords; and with Sudovia and Galinda and Volhynijzeme we can keep Lithuania off our backs long enough to take Drugovia and Palotia.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rober agreed, and then he and Jendiik went off to find someplace to be by themselves for a while, away from Rober’s family.
If Wilhelm and Magnhild Draka, Rober’s parents and the caravan leaders, were surprised to see that Piitros arrived with a baby and a man who looked scruffy enough to be a vagrant in any European city, they didn’t say anything about it.
They opened, as was customary, with news and refreshments before actually talking about trade.
“It’s what?” Piitros asked, surprised, some minutes later. “It’s over? The war’s finished?”
“Last year,” Wilhelm confirmed. “No one seems to know exactly what happened, but BINYAN made one final raid in Franx and then suddenly it was all over. The news broke in Alexandria five minutes after the peace treaty was signed and within ten minutes everywhere else. No one saw it coming.”
“Huh,” was Piitros’ only answer; and with a bit of trepidation he asked. “So who’s on the throne of Hekassir now?”
“Tankin Gallius of Belgunda.”
And with that Piitros could breathe easier because it was Burgunda who was allied with Franx and Byzantium so that meant Alexandria and Hekassir and the Vikings and, by extension, the Finns, had won.
“How did you not already know that the war was over?” Eithan asked him, sounding skeptical. “Where did you think all of our new non-combatants were coming from? Did you think they were springing spontaneously out of the ground somewhere? It was the refugees who didn’t want to stay in the mountains coming to make a new home for themselves.”
“Why didn’t they go back to wherever they came from?” Piitros asked to cover up the fact that he hadn’t actually noticed that there were more non-coms around at all. He’d been too busy worrying about the army and the siege and Gwen and setting up government and civil order behind the lines to pay attention to how many people were doing it with him.
“They left their homes for Sarmatia,” Eithan reminded him. Maybe he didn’t remember any life outside of Sarmatia that would give him real reference for how much of an extreme that measure would be, but he’d learned enough from the Venedans and mercenaries to know how unthinkable that was to most people. “They don’t have anything left to go back to.”
From there the conversation turned to matters of the guns and ammunition and raw materials- metal, wood, tools, seed grain, young animals for breeding and milking and shearing- that the Draka had brought; and the negotiations went apace.
The Draka caravan went back to Hekassir with wagons stuffed with looted royal Venedan wealth- gold, silver, furnishings, paintings, flatware and silverware and light fixtures and rugs and all manner of household items that weren’t divisible and that no one in left in Veneda had the resources to swap for hard money- accompanied by Rober and Jendiik and Raani and Jyeleny bearing the contracts to secure and return usable goods worth the value of the riches. They also came with a guard of Oiorpata, to ensure security from any marauding Venedans or bandits, and to encourage the best prices in Vudhe.
As soon as the caravan returned and proved themselves to have made very good on their promises, the army moved on Drugovia.
-
Drugovia would have been hard to take, but the Sarmatians had the serfs on their side. Nominally.
It always took a while for the already-freed Venedans to convince their cousin-peoples that the Sarmatians really were there to help them fight, and not just to raid and then disappear into the sunset. But after they brought Vlypasa, who from this Barony originally, out to talk, the villages opened up and let them in.
The towns were a different story, but- well.
The serfs were on their side. The mutant serfs were on their side. And they were angry.
So, so angry.
This was where Rasim really got into his element. The mercenary squad and their associates would split up into pairs- Surayya and Vlypasa, Rohit and Chanpala, Kiều and Thayendanegea, Raani and Jyeleny, and Kati and Pytras, with Rasim in overall command- and divide the serfs up between them. One would take over instruction of the purely militant in nature- fighting hand to hand, fighting in formation, guerilla tactics- and the other would focus on mutant abilities. Many of the serfs needed training up, given that they hadn’t been allowed to use their powers unless under intense supervision by the knights. Any strong powers were sent with Rober and Jendiik over to Maraaja and the priestesses to train there.
In that manner, in about two weeks the entire squad could turn over a village to the established infantry army, which was now properly organized and somewhat-regularly outfitted, to complete their training under more experienced troops and start to see some action. And the training was set up to accommodate entry at any point, so really, within a given two-week span the squad had the people of between ten and fifteen villages to train, and was ‘graduating’ five to seven of them. By the time they got to Daniapolis, they’d have to let new recruits go straight to the army for training, because there would just be too many people that needed processing and by then the army would be ready for them- but until then, it was working well, and the squad had enough time to drill the infantry along with the Sarmatian ‘cavalry’. It would never be a regular cavalry- it would always favor skirmisher tactics and scouting runs over the direct approach of the knights- but they were training most of the Sarmatians out of charging knights head-on and instead letting the infantry deal with them, or to operate in groups and take down fleeing knights, or to mount a priestess or powerful mutant infantry soldier onto the backs of their saddles and then doing a direct charge to break a line of knights; though the open-field assault of the first battle didn’t come up very often any more.
The situation- cutting up north through Drugovia, near the eastern border with Radmikia, and then sweeping west towards the Lithuanian border and Volhynijzeme- was actually favorable to the Sarmatians, the mostly-peaceful claiming of villages and the street-and-hinterland skirmishes of taking towns and the smaller cities suiting their traditional style of fighting individually or in small groups. It was hard to get a horse down city streets, but some Sarmatians saw no problem in dismounting to run in and fight from the ground; and those who preferred to stay mounted found the gallops across the flat hinterlands surrounding the settlements to be both good exercise and good tactics.
Venedan free townsmen on foot couldn’t outrun a Sarmatian rider, after all.
-
1831
The army stalled at the walls of Daniapolis for three months.
It was the muddy end of Laammetakuu, the Warming Moon, when what Piitros had come to think of as ‘High Command’- Gwen, Maraaja, Rasim, Vlypasa, himself, and, awkwardly, Damaris, who was always a voice for the earliest and least-bloody resolutions- decided that they couldn’t continue the siege any longer without inflicting undue suffering on the army and a strike team was sent into the city one night.
Piitros found his new powers very useful then, though not quite enough so to think anything kindly of Heimrikh Ásbjarn or his father. He, Chanpala, Surayya, Kati, Jyeleny, and Eithan- who’d proved to be the equal of a Sarmatian in terms of eagerness for war and ferocity in fighting but not so much in direct attacks- snuck in using their combination of powers and opened the city gates for the army, who came in as quietly as they could, which was not very much, as the others moved on to the castle itself and broke it open for the very noisy advance strike team made up of Oiorpata, some of the other mercenaries, and priestesses under the command of Maraaja, all of them with someone from the infantry mounted behind them and ready to slip off once they passed into the castle courtyard.
Daniapolis fell within six hours.
-
They’d had Daniapolis under their control for about a week, and were using it as a base to secure what little was left of the Barony to take, when the messenger arrived.
“She says her name is Feliksya Merész.”
“Never heard of her.”
“She has safe-conduct papers from Governor Volhyniavan.”
Piitros sighed and gestured for the Eithan to let her in.
Feliksya Merész turned out to be a surprise. He’d known by her name that she was Hungarian, but when she handed him her message- after the papers from Aleksandras- it was written in triple, first Greek, then Finnish, then Hungarian.
To the General of the Venedan Army, or whomsoever may be the equivalent-
Greetings from Lady Elektra Natchios, Duchess-Apparent of Palotia. I extend to you a hand of friendship and aide in any attempt you may make to restore Polokijzeme to its rightful owners.
Piitros looked up from the letter, eyebrows raised.
“Why don’t you sit down?”
-
“No, I don’t know if we can trust it,” Piitros told High Command later that day. Eithan was still watching Feliksya, who had been moved into one of the small upper rooms in the castle until they decided what to do. “But she told me that Elektra Natchios wants to be rid of her father the Duke so she can do as pleases, and it doesn’t matter to her if she’s Duchess at the end of it or not. I got the feeling she doesn’t really want to be Duchess, anyway.”
Damaris was the one who currently held the letter.
“Who is ‘Matiyos Megryvykasy Drujavan’? He countersigned the letter.”
“Feliksya said we’d know him better as Lord Mathiou Mikhael Kyrios. He’s the current Seneschal. Apparently there’s some story about his father Ionathos buying a serf from one of the Drugovian knights and marrying her. Big scandal.”
“Oh,” Vlypasa said. “That Lord Kyrios. Megriya was from my village, but I’m too young to have actually known her. The adults talked about her, sometimes. They were always scared something like that would happen to their daughters. Ionathos Kyrios just wanted to avoid marrying any of the daughters of the other knights. He thought Megriya was pretty, so he paid the knight who claimed to rule us right there in the road, rode into the field, carried her off, raped her in the castle, and declared her his wife. When we heard that the son was born blind, we called it Gabija’s vengeance.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment.
“And if he’s backing a coup to destroy the arzemniik’s power in Polokijzeme, I suppose he really is.”
“Well,” Piitros said after a long moment of uncomfortable silence on everyone else’s parts. “Elektra Natchios says that besides helping us get rid of Konstantinos Natchios, her brother Orestes is one of the Magyar Lords’ husbands, so she can get us leverage there, too.”
“If we can take Palotia, we should do it now,” Gwen said. “I don’t want to sit around waiting and spend so many more months in siege lines. We should use our enemy’s internal disputes to our advantage.”
“We can trust this,” Maraaja announced. Somehow she’d ended up with the letter without anyone noticing.
Gwen narrowed her eyes.
“Are you-”
“We can trust this,” Maraaja repeated, with more steel. “Are you doubting me? It is truth; and we will be better for going now than later.”
-
Maraaja turned out to be right, and no one was that surprised.
Palotia fairly threw open the doors to let them in- Feliksya, who was riding back to Desnopolis with the army, explained it as they went.
“The post of Seneschal is hereditary through the Kyrios male line. Ionathos was just as bad as any other knight, but Lord Matiyos’ mother raised him in her ways, not the arzemniik’s. The Polokians he rules over think well of him, and don’t run away. Sometimes he hides serfs from his neighbors in his villages. He sent word that if they saw you, you weren’t to be stopped. They’ll open the towns for us, too, even if the townsfolk don’t like it.”
The townsfolk didn’t like it much, but given that the Kyrios family seemed to own a good half of Palotia, the Sarmatians and Venedan serfs had essentially conquered the entire Duchy before they even got near Desnopolis. On Feliksya’s advice, passed to them from Elektra, they actually avoided Desnopolis entirely and made a fishhook movement around the country, entering from the northern part of the border with Drugovia and keeping north until they hit the far border, then turning around to sweep the southern part of the country, coming at Desnopolis- which was actually near the border with Drugovia- from the northwest, rather than the southeasternly approach they would have taken otherwise.
The army didn’t even really have to be involved, here. Feliksya used her position as personal maid to Elektra to ride straight into the castle with Eithan in tow, disguised- though it wasn’t technically disguised, given that he’d just walked along behind her horse carrying what they said was one of her bags- as a serf she’d been loaned by Lord Matiyos for her errands. They had hidden a long-distance rifle, Eithan’s surprising personal weapon of choice, in the pack he’d been carrying, and Feliksya just got him set up at window overlooking the castle courtyard and locked him in for an hour or two.
While she was gone, Elektra Natchios assassinated her father with a stiletto over their private dinner. Then she called the captain of the guard, crying poison, and killed him too. From there she went to hide in Matiyos’ office, where he called in a procession of generals and knights fled from their lands ahead of the advancing army- and then she and Feliksya killed them, too.
Then Elektra pretended to flee the barracks where the rest of the knights were housed, to feed them the lie that the rebellious serfs had managed to sneak assassins into the castle and had killed her father and his advisors. She begged the knights to come to her defense.
They did. When Feliksya confirmed to Eithan that they were all in the courtyard, he opened fire.
Elektra Natchios and Matiyos Megryvykasy Drujavan walked down to the gates of the city and opened them for the invaders personally.
-
No one had expected this astonishing bout of good luck to last, but then Elektra made better than promised on the other portion of her offer, and as soon as they’d gotten the basics of the government for Polokijzeme settled- Elektra officially voided the debt-contracts of every serf in the Duchy, declared the lands they lived on and farmed to be their legal property, awarded the contents of the knights’ castles to the army ‘in the interests of their continued struggle for freedom’, appointed Matiyos Governor, and then renounced all her titles. Matiyos declared the Duchy of Palotia extinct and the nation of Polokijzeme to be hereafter in existence as a wedding gift for Elektra and Feliksya, who had their ceremony immediately after Elektra’s abdication- Orestes Natchios turned up outside Desnopolis with the Magyar Lords in tow.
There was a general rattling of swords and half-serious shouted taunts between the Magyars and the Sarmatians, which was how everyone knew they’d arrived. The Magyar Lords were hurried into the city, and a secret treaty was made.
The Magyar Lords would side with the Sarmatians and the serfs against the other Venedans. All the serfs on Magyar lands would be, from the moment of signing of the treaty, free, and able to leave their lands to join the army along with the levies of knights the Lords were sending, mostly younger children waiting for their parents to die so they could come into their inheritance.
“Why would you give up your power?” Piitros asked suspiciously, in the midst of the negotiations.
“It’s limiting,” Orestes’ wife, the Marcher Lord of Viyanetia, told him. “We’re powerful, yes, and that’s nice- but we have to follow the laws of the other Venedan nobility, and we don’t care for that much. We’d much rather stay the rulers of lands and people and let the Gabijanép have Gabijanépország on their own terms while we collect taxes and fight if we want to, where we want to, against who we want to.”
Piitros spared a moment to thank Loki that, with that mindset, this alliance would stay strong indeed.
“Well, I can see that you and the Sarmatians will get along splendidly.”