Part Five
Oleander
Oleander
The world of 1257 ER felt a long cry away from the panic that had gripped Europe a mere decade earlier. Although the great Mongolian horde still technically held sway over gigantic swaths of land from Ukraine to Persia, it had become increasingly clear that they were an unsustainable power, and the great Khan's many sons already wrestled with each other over bites and nibbles, with the Khagan Nakhu seemingly helpless to stop them. Russia had stayed unified for exactly as long as they believed the Mongols to be a serious threat, and yet even as the Russian dukes fought amongst themselves openly, no great Eastern army again appeared over the Urals. Europe's attention shifted to more pressing matters.
For the Union, that attention fell towards Holland; the Northerner's oldest and only real ally. The Frisian conversion had been born out of belief in the sprawling Union's ability to protect Frisian trade, so to allow upstart French nobility to run incursions into the low countries was utterly unacceptable. Clearly, the southerners had forgotten the weight behind an Imperial guarantee - a reminder was in order.
Although Felix II held only fifteen years under his belt as he led Imperial troops into Holland, few were particularly concerned. The Duke of Orleans had overstepped his bounds by raiding Frisia, and although his levies and mercenaries could well match the forces of Holland, they were pitiful when compared to the massive armies of the Union; just the Leidangr that Felix commanded with him into the low countries more than doubled the Duke's assembled forces.
The Union's overwhelming advantage may have harmed Felix's development; none expected him to lead the charge against such a clearly inferior foe, and as such the Imperium's young Emperor gladly kept far away from the fray. It was a long way from the days of Sigurdr and Elisa, where leaders had been expected to stand at the front of their men in battle, and Felix settled comfortably into the role of tent commander. Perhaps too comfortably. Even with such an overwhelming advantage, the brutality and weight of war seemed anathema to the young man. Many saw Felix's evolving tendencies - although few commented, and never directly to him.
Imperial armies made short work of the Duke's forces, even with Felix's hesitation to commit to the field of battle. Before the end of the year the French had been violently routed out of Holland, and with no sign of support from Paris, the Duke of Orleans somberly resigned to reparations. An example had been well and thoroughly made, and Frisia's loyalty to the Union had been quite firmly reassured.
Felix was in no hurry to enter into more wars. While this would become aggravating for the nationalists and revanchists in the Grand Assembly who demanded reconquest against France and the League to take back the Union's ancient lands, to merchant life - and the common people - breaks from the seemingly neverending cycles of wars and conscription were always welcome. Besides, the great Mongol horde still loomed to the East, and, unstable or not, their armies were larger than most of the other great powers of the world put together.
Or - at least - they had been.
In 1258 ER, the Horde finally broke. The tipping point came from Khan Kutan - or, as he was known in the East, the Great Dragon.
Kutan had been perhaps Buri's greatest general, second only to the first two Khagans themselves in terms of brilliance and aggression. Despite his competence and the blood-bonds between his Clan, the Kimaks - the first allies of the Great Khagan throughout his unification of Mongolia - and Buri, he was no son of the Khan, and thus had been passed over after Buri's death. Years of watching Nakhu whittle away the resources and Empire that so many had worked so hard to build stroked the fires of the Dragon's legendary temper to the tipping point; although a patient man by nature, to sit idly by while the idiot Nakhu drove Mongolia to the slow death was intolerable. Perhaps in another life, he may have been kin to the dragon of an earlier age, Sigurdr Kynlingr; Dragons, regardless of their origin, tend to be the ones to shake the earth. On April the 25th of 1258 ER, Kutan beheaded the representative of Nakhu at his court and sent the Khagan the severed head, along with a challenge to single combat for the title of Khagan. When Nakhu failed to respond, Kutan branded him a coward and claimed the title of Khagan for himself - along with the Western warlords who had fallen under his command.
Word of Kutan's declaration fell like wildfire. A few, mostly those in the northwestern corner of the Empire, chose to join the Dragon's cause. Some held their loyalties to Nakhu even in the face of collapse - but most split off on their own path, separate from Kutan and Nakhu both.
The only other major figure to claim the title of Khagan would be Bedugan. Although significantly younger than both of his competitors and not nearly as respected as Kutan, Bedugan's court was located just beneath Kutan's territory. An opportunist at heart, Bedugan was quick to realize that if he split off himself instead of joining Kutan, he could force an ultimatum upon the southernmost territories of the Empire - pledge their loyalty to him as the new Khagan, or be crushed and executed before his armies. Giving them little choice, Bedugan forced a massive swath of the central Asian tribes under his hand, positioning himself between Kutan and Nakhu both as a third competitor for the grand title of Khagan above all others.
Only one of the great southern tribes refused Bedugan's pressure - the Khwarezmid of a freshly-conquered Persia.
The Persians had been Nakhu's latest and only conquest, if you could call finalizing Buri's almost-finished conquest his. Bulend, a Turk, had been Nakhu's choice for control of most of the region; a thoroughly unpopular, but brutally efficient man who could keep the unruly and zealous local population in line. Bulend made no claim to the Khaganate in the wake of Bedugan's ultimatum, instead declaring Persia an independent Khaganate of Khwarezemid. Although foreign and unpopular, Bulend was Muslim instead of the Mongol's strange steppe religion, and certainly less of a foreigner than the horse-tribes of the far east. Conquering Persia the first time had been a difficult task. To do it a second time could well prove near-impossible - particularly if men with such an iron fist as Buelend's held the region.
In the wake of this earth-shattering revolution, life went on elsewhere.
The Byzantines and Arabs were at each other's throats yet again scarcely months after Kutan declared himself the true successor of Buri. It took nearly a full year for information on the Horde's collapse to reach the ears of the furthest courts in England and Iceland, and by then, the looming threat that had come within a hair's breath of global conquest had been all but forgotten. People tend to move on shockingly quickly when provoked.
In the Union, the greatest problem of the day became simple domestic strife. Felix's young wife was unceremoniously divorced and banished after a scandalous affair was uncovered; perhaps a mark of the Union's progress, as mere centuries ago she would have surely been equally unceremoniously executed without a further thought. More likely, it was simply a mark of Felix's timid temperament.
Although the livid affair between Felix and the Hertug of Vestergotland, Knut (who would be imprisoned and executed a few years later) occupied the nation's attention for a time, particularly to split opinions on whether the Emperor should have such authority to imprison and execute a noble based off charges of adultery. Most agreed that to knowingly seduce and sleep with the Emperor's wife was well deserving of execution, but the voices that raised in opposition were not insignificant, particularly among the ranks of the lower nobility in the Grand Assembly. It was, to be certain, a serious breach of power, and an overstepping of legal precedent for emotional charge. But ultimately, the matter left little lasting imprint on the national culture or identity of the Union, and the years that followed were quiet and pleasant.
In this unassuming time of peace and prosperity, a small handful of educated middle-class craftsmen across Western and Central Europe began to experiment with the strange black powders the Mongols had brought with them from the far East. These men left profoundly few records - what little we know of them comes from court recordkeeping about displays of 'terrifyingly loud explosive powders' and a single presentation of a 'great bronze-cast device' that was touted briefly around some European courts around 1263 ER. Even though some European powers had fought against the cannon-wielding Mongols themselves, few seemed to fully grasp the complete, radicalizing power that was being almost languidly developed in independent corners of the world. It's suspected that the first use of cannons by any European power came in the next decade, most notably in the Altmark Bread Riots of 1271. While similar to many other trivial plebeian revolts over mercantalist price-shifts and short-term famines due to poor and disparate logistics, the Riots in Altmark were put down with an overwhelming and uncommon display of force - and what few accounts survive testify of strange, thunderous fire-spitting casts.
Undoubtedly, these first cannons were laughably pitiful in force, perhaps even weaker than the nearly-worthless Mongolian and Chinese early cannons. Yet they were astoundingly powerful devices of terror for their terrifying noise and ability to dramatically and viscerally crush an individual within the ranks of the enemy - assuming they were within spitting range, and didn't misfire or explode into themselves. Regardless, the Altmark Bread Riots were scattered and routed within minutes of the battle commencing - undoubtedly by the raw force presented, and almost certainly through the Union's earliest productions of the weapon that would change the world. The first time these new terrors would truly see use came from the second War of Orkney - Britain's second attempt to finish the job they had started some time ago and drive the Union out of Britain once and for all.
Few could have predicted what dramatic consequences such a small and insignificant piece of land would have - Orkney was to be the meeting ground for Europe's first gunpowder weapons, underwhelming and mediocre as they might have been. Their effects, even then, were not.
