Chapter 2
I awoke in the middle of the night, my heart racing and covered in sweat, still seeing images of Aztecs chasing me with their stone knives, and running toward my mother's open arms only to see the gaping hole in her chest. I sat up breathing, half gasps and half sobs.
" I am safe, I am safe ' I told myself, "I'm in the cabin of the White Gull, a Hansa trading ship that's taking me to Wales."
As I calmed myself, I continued to focus on that, I was safe. I was safe because of three people. The life of a Scottish Duchess had been saved by a Dane, a Greek, and an Irishman.
First was my mother and Regent, Maren Ulfsdatter, a Dane. It made sense that she expected the worst and had planned for it. She was a Ylving Princess from a kingdom that no longer existed. I had been 4 when she received word that Fyn had fallen to King Jon of Norway, taking with it the Kingdom of Denmark and her father's crown. I remember her weeping, it was the first time I had ever seen her cry, but not the last.
My mother was the smartest person I knew, much smarter than my father and even knew more than Iliya. Most nights after dinner, when my father was still alive, the four of us would retire to the library after dinner and while Father would tell me stories of the Dunbars and Scotland, my mother and Iliya would talk for hours, often in different languages, about books and poetry.
The times in the library were when my mother was the happiest Outside the library, she had to deal with suspicion, fear and sometimes outright hatred. Not only was she a foreigner, but many of the less educated servants and courtiers and even the more educated priests feared my mother was possessed.
My mother had suffered from the falling sickness. It had started a couple of years after my birth when she had been thrown from a horse and hit her head. Since that time she was plagued by fits that left her on the ground shaking. Her maid Inga always carried a vial of white onion juice, the drops seemed to help abate the fits, though Inga also crossed herself and prayed to St Paul and St Valentine in case my mother was really possessed rather than just ill.
The fits had become more frequent since my father had died and my mother had had to take on more responsibilities and duties as Regent. But once the fits passed, she was as smart as ever. She recognized that if the Aztecs came for Scotland, we would stand no more chance than England or France had. Scotland had been attacked once before by the Aztecs and had been able to do nothing to slow down their seizure of Ireland. So with Iliya and the Earl of Penthievre and my Uncle Artie and the rest of the Council, she had put plans in place for when Aztecs turned their attention back to Scotland. However, the speed of the Aztec attack and the fact the Lothian Army was in Wales when the Aztecs declared war had thrown those plans into disarray. My mother didn't live to see that at least a portion of her plan had succeeded.
Hypatios was the youngest son of the late Gerasimos Phokas, a Greek expatriate who had come to Stirling with his nephew and squire, Gennadios, during my grandfather's reign. The two elder Greeks were both brilliant soldiers who had led Lothian's armies ever since their arrival. They had made Stirling their home and raised families who continued to serve the Dunbars. Gennadios was the current Lord Marshal of Lothian, taking over following the death of his uncle. Hypatios's elder brothers, Evangelos and Basileios, had served as my mother's personal guards and they had shared her fate on the Aztec altars.
Hypatios had been entrusted with escorting the caravan containing the bulk of the Lothian treasury to the Hansa trading post in Dunbar and seeing it safely stowed away in the White Gull. He had met up with Uncle Artie in Dunbar and together they decided to return to Lothian even though it had already fallen and they had no idea if I, my mother, or anyone else still lived.
Hypatios had volunteered to sneak into the castle and search for any news of survivors because his darker complexion from his Greek heritage would make it easier to pass as an Aztec. Though Hypatios freely admitted he was craven and would never match his kinsmen's prowess on the battlefield, his shaving of his beard and searching the occupied castle disguised as an Aztec was the bravest thing I'd ever seen.
Earl Art of Powys was not really my uncle, he was a distant kinsman, an Irish Dunbar who had served as chancellor of the Duchy of Lothian since my grandfather's day. He had been instrumental in securing are claims in Wales and helping the Duchy prosper. My grandfather had bestowed the County of Powys on him as reward for his service and loyalty. I had known him all my life, he had always been there for me and was still.
After he had secured the help of the Hansa to transport the Lothian refugees and treasury. He had lead Hypatios and a small number of other soldiers back into Lothian. He was the one who had gotten Hypatios into the castle and it was this 63-old statesman who had been the one to wield the knife that had removed the few guards that had stood between the prisoners and freedom.
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By the time I arrived in Gwynedd, my new capital, in August of 1271, the Scottish throne was as empty as the English one. My grandmother , Elspeth the Chaste, Queen of Scotland, who had been comatose for years, died during the sack of Lanark, whether the Aztecs killed her outright or just never bothered to care for her isn't known. My cousin, Ioustinos Doukas, the Greek prince who had had my father murdered to claim his inheritance, had gotten to enjoy his stolen crown for two months before it was taken away by the Aztecs. The fact that he still lived, ruling Caithness as a vassal to the Aztecs, while my mother and father were dead, would need to be set right. But more pressing was what to do next.
I was now independent, as the Kingdom I owed fealty to was no more. I was still Duchess of Lothian, but that was now an empty title, as all the de jure lands were now under Aztec rule. I controlled all of Wales, but it would take a years before a 12-year old girl would be deemed pious and mature enough for the Pope to sanction my coronation as Queen of Wales. My kinsman Gilcolm Dunbar, Earl of Northumberland, was still my vassal, but he was cut off and alone on the far side of England. I was Duchess of Brittany, but only held two of those counties as vassals, the remaining 4 de jure counties made up all that remained of the Kingdom of Navarra. The Aztecs had driven King Briac, my uncle (married to my aunt, Helen Dunbar), from his traditional lands in Iberia, leaving only his lands in Brittany to rule over.
Ashild, the Norwegian Duchess of Albany (and Galloway and Strangfjord) had also survived the fall of Scotland, driven to her last holding in Tyrconnell where she was all alone, the sole independent ruler left in Ireland. She had married a Dunbar and her son was my vassal, the Earl of Northumberland. He would one day inherit her titles and lands. If I was not Queen before then, I would lose him as a vassal and he would be only a potential ally, one who was weak and utterly exposed.
The only other allies I might be able to call on were seven landed blood relatives, fellow members of the Dunbar dynasty. However, three of those were already my vassals, Art of Powys, Gilcolm of Northumberland, and Aufrica of Penthievre, the daughter of Neil Dunbar, my former steward who had been sacrificed in Stirling. Three others had already been taken by the Aztecs. Julia, the Duchess of the Isles, and my former vassal Waldeve, the Earl of Dunbar, if they had survived the fall of Scotland, would have had to bend knee to the Aztecs. A third kinsman had served the Aztecs for over a decade since the fall of France, holding Albarracin in Iberia. That left only Count Gillespic of Malta, a vassal to the Serene Doge of Venice as the only ally who would not already be involved in any conflict with the Aztec Empire. He was the older half-brother of the late Neil of Penthievre and the younger half-brother of my Great-great-grandfather (My Great-great-great-grandfather had lived 89 years and his last child had been born in his 89th year which made our family tree quite complicated.) So I was basically on my own.
I did still have a functioning military because the Lothian army and retinues had survived the fall of Scotland, mainly because they weren't in the path of the main Aztec advance. The army had been in Wales fighting the Lothian war for Dyfed. The last Welsh county had fallen at about the time the Aztec Empire declared war on Scotland. My mother had received word of Philippa the Just's formal surrender to General Gennadios Phokas just days before Lanark was taken. The Lothian army had raced back across a now hostile England from Wales, but they were too late, their 12,000 men could do little against the 200,000 men that had already entered Lothian. General Phokas could do nothing for us still in the Castle, so he collected as many refugees as he could and lead them back toward Wales.
This exodus would become legend.
Losing only 4,000 of his men, the 62-year old general and his son Megistros managed to lead close 20,000 Scots refugees over 300 miles across Aztec England to the relative safety of my lands in Wales, cutting through 3 separate Aztec armies. (The only victories by any Scottish army during the entire conquest of Scotland).
The 8,000 surviving soldiers camped outside the capitol consisted of the 3,500 soldiers of my retinue and the rest made up of levees. Some of those levees were raised from my former holdings in Scotland and once I released them I feared many of these would try to return to Scotland to look for their families and be lost.
But the unfortunate fact was that all of my lands bordered on the Aztec Empire either in England or Scotland or France, and it came down to when, not if, the Aztecs would decide annex the next piece of my holdings. My retinue and levees would only give me some 11,000 once they recovered from their losses. Compared to the 250,000 or more troops available to the Aztecs. So the most pressing question of all was .. when that time comes, do we fight and probably die? or kneel to these pagan monsters who had butchered my mother and so many others?
Europe in August of 1271
