The Lions of Olomouc: a CKIII Ironman AAR (Duchy of Moravia, 867)

[Revan86]

THREE
Not Lightly Does One Scold a Viking
7 September 1394 – 28 June 1396
​

Even with Drahomír safely in custody and the Moderský letopis complete, Kráľ Ostromír still was faced with the task of retaining the loyalty of his vassals from the other four Slavic nations (and the Kíllt Sámit) under his rule. (With the exception of Knieža Teodotii Koceľuk, naturally, whose political devotion was proven and whose friendship had been one of the bright points of Ostromír’s rule so far.) Civil wars and intimidation were a costly and bloody business; it was much more efficient and effective to do win the other vassals’ loyalty by hosting them in the feasting-hall of Kráľ Tomáš.

Or so he thought. He hadn’t quite been counting on a penchant for wild antics from his newest vassal.

The birth of a new daughter to the king’s niece Živana seemed as good a pretext as any for throwing a celebration. Messengers were despatched from Olomouc to Praha, to Opole, to Nitra, to Užhorod, to Siget and even to Tuoppajärvi to invite all the vassals of the realm to this feast, which promised to be a grander and more lavish one than any which had been hosted in Olomouc in two hundred years.

Not only the finest Bohemian crystal for drinkware, but even magnificent white glazed porcelains coming all the way from Taugats by way of Constantinople, were provided for the guests. The castle cooks and kitchen help were also put through their paces for this occasion. Whole roast pigs and goats were provided as the centrepieces of the feast, but there were also: quails; ducks; capons; sparrows, delicately stuffed and roasted; trenchers laden down with spiced game meats and sauerkraut; various head meats and sausages, sliced thinly and served chilled; great wheels of aged yellow cheese; halušky dumplings sprinkled with bacon and filled with cottage cheese; delicate fried pastries made from pâté à choux and filled with sweet apricot and sour plum compotes; and egg noodles covered in a sweet glaze of beet sugar and black poppy-seeds.

For refreshment of a liquid kind, there was of course the traditional Moravian damson wine in pin casks. There were also barrels of a full-bodied white wine from south Morava; sweet and more lightly-alcoholic burčiak; hard apple cider; elderflower cordial; and light-coloured Bohemian hops beers from Budějovice and Žatec and Praha. The entire spread could rightly be described as ‘kingly’.

The feast opened well enough, and the guests were shown in to their tables. The festivities were underway, and the king was giving the opening toasts, when all of a sudden there were the sounds of alarm and commotion in the courtyard, along with the clopping of the hooves of horses. The guests began to glance back to the doors of the hall as the sounds grew louder and nearer.

It was then that the king noticed, belatedly, that Wizlaw Rychnovský-Žíč was nowhere to be seen in the hall. Neither was Burgomistress Ľubica. And neither was Dušana. Where they had been, was to become clear in the moment to follow.

There was an almighty slam. In burst the black-avised Sorb, on the back of an equally-dark stallion which pawed the air in the space where the trammelled doors to the feasting-hall had swung wide. Wizlaw let out a wild whoop as the horse charged in, followed by Burgomistress Ľubica on a dapple-grey. Several other stable animals, some of them exhilarated at this sudden opportunity of freedom and others of them near a state of stampeding panic, followed into the hall. Most of them were riderless, but there was a poor goat among them that had to deal with the ponderous heft of Dušana on its spine!

The king stood aghast at the spectacle of confusion and mayhem that followed. All of his careful preparations were being splattered and shattered to pieces before his eyes. The crash and tinkle of broken glass and porcelain resounded and echoed off the walls, which were quickly adorned with bits of meat, egg and cheese and flecked with dark speckles of wine. Whinnies and brays and bleats mingled with human hails and curses, as some of the guests stood from their seats and fled for the corners of the hall; others lifted their vessels and cheered both animals and riders as they flooded in. Horseshoes trod the tablecloths, and the furniture groaned under the weight.

When he came to his senses, Ostromír signalled to his son.

‘Vojta, gather the ostlers,’ he raised his voice above the din. ‘Assist them as you can. See if they can’t sort out some of this mess!’

Vojtech answered with a firm nod, and he and his new bride both left to find the stable-hands and direct them to the hall. By that time, animal and human were both thoroughly enjoying themselves in the hall, the king was chuckling and sipping wine from a still-unbroken crystal goblet as the hullabaloo continued, and even Imma cracked a smile at the goings-on.

Vojtech and Adriana arrived with as much of the ostlery as they could, and the girl herself set to tidying the hall with an admirable diligence. To the Kráľ’s surprise, despite the delicacy of her looks, the lowborn Moravian girl his son had married turned out to have a remarkable way with beasts. Even the wildest of the unbroken horses she strode up to without a trace of fear, and calmed them with gentle words and a firm but steady hand. Ostromír noticed that Adriana’s stammer disappeared: she spoke more fluently and with greater ease to animals than she did to people.

‘Well, well,’ the king mused. ‘Perhaps Father hadn’t chosen as poorly for Vojta as I’d thought.’

In the end, despite the wreckage and mess that the rampage in the hall had caused, the total cost of the mucking and cleaning and repairs still turned out to be less than a war. And the guests had all left in high spirits indeed. Ostromír and Imma bade them all farewell, and the king promised to hold another feast soon… though next time he’d have someone keep a closer eye on the stables, and on Wizlaw.

~~~

It was roughly a fortnight after the feast, when a haughty Norse herald from the north appeared at the Moravian king’s court. He strode forward with an air of affront, and he gave the king only the briefest and most cursory of courtesies before declaiming, in a loud voice:

‘King! I bear from his Grace Sigbjörn Ásbjarnarson the Grand Prince of Garðaríki a complaint of a most grievous nature. I trust that you will hear it and let justice be done upon the wrongful party!’

The name of Ásbjörn of Garðaríki rang a bell to the king. That had been the prince who had sent the poems to Radomír 4. when he was alive. Ostromír was taken a bit aback by the severan’s brazen presumption and insistence, but he answered:

‘Make your lord’s complaint, sir. I will hear.’

‘While he was in attendance in Sigbjörn’s mead-hall, that man—’ the herald levelled a finger at Knieža Teodotii, ‘had the effrontery to scold and offer tunguníð to my liege in the open, within the hearing of all the guests and kin gathered there!’

The severan elements of Ostromír’s ancestry were rather distant. The half-English Queen Bohumila had been five generations back; the Anglo-Faroese Queen Alswit, nine; and the Norman-French Queen Dolz, thirteen. And Norse culture had been his father Radomír’s interest, not his own. As such, he had no idea what tunguníð was, but could fathom by the herald’s anger and insouciant attitude that some grave manner of insult had taken place.

‘Please speak plainly,’ the king said. ‘Precisely what speech did Knieža Teodotii utter that was so offensive to your lord?’

‘I shall not repeat the exact words here,’ the herald jutted out his chin. ‘Suffice it to say that this scoundrel held his Grace in utmost contempt, and cast gross aspersions on his maternal lineage.’

Ostromír had to raise his hand to his beard in order to hide the smirk that was close to forming there. Was the king of Garðaríki truly sending this man to make a formal complaint to Olomouc on account of Teodotii playing the dozens? He caught his friend’s eye across the hall, and between them was shared a mischievous twinkle of amusement.

‘I now understand the severity of your lord’s complaint, and you may rest assured that I shall consider it under advisement,’ said the king. ‘If there is no further business from Garðaríki, however, you may go with God’s peace.’

~~~​

In answer to the King’s memorable New Year’s feast of 6904, Vojvoda Chrabroš of Silesia decided to host a feast of his own upon the following Pentecost, and invite the King to join. It wasn’t done out of a sense of competition, and that could easily be seen from the decidedly more modest spread of dishes that graced the Rychnovský-Nisa table. Rather, it was meant as a genuine show of gratitude. Chrabroš was neither of an envious nature nor of a gluttonous one—he had, however, weaknesses of another sort.

When Ostromír Rychnovský and his party arrived in Nisa to join the revelries, the feast had yet to get underway in earnest. One of those most displeased with the pace of the preparations was the lady of the hall herself, who contented herself with shouting herself hoarse at the servants to get everything prepared. She was in high dudgeon all evening, and Ostromír, Imma, Vojtech and Adriana learned quite quickly to steer clear of her path well in advance.

Her husband, however, was much more agreeable. ‘Welcome, milord! Welcome, friends! Come, please take your seats; have a glass of wine!’

The Kráľ found himself seated at the place of honour, and seated just at the corner nearest him was a woman with an earnest and open face, chatting animatedly with everyone seated near her. Ostromír felt slightly unsettled at first by the intense, nearly manic gleam in her eyes—and by the tendencies she showed toward repeating herself and making outrageous exclamations at inappropriate places. But he quickly found himself fascinated by the story she was telling, and listened to it eagerly.

‘The shifting sands of the desert, when I was in that camel train—oh, dear me!—the stuff got everywhere. It was quite unpleasant! And you could barely see the path in front of you! Our guide—he was a Hagarene, you know, very swarthy skinned, with a turban round his head—even he needed to seek help from the local fellahs who lived close by. I tell you, I was parched! Never thought I’d see a drop of water again, let alone wine! This is wonderful stuff, by the way! Wonderful! Anyway, whenever we got near a canyon, the whole line of us would ride in the shade, the way the sun beat down… it was a solid two weeks before we actually reached the caves. It was there that we learned the way to Saint Anthony’s from one of the hermits who lived there…’

Ostromír very quickly picked up on the thread of her conversation. He asked her many questions about her visit to Egypt which she was more than delighted to answer, though more than once Ostromír got the suspicion that what he was hearing was as much the result of her fancies or some garbled strand of memory that had gotten tangled up inside a mind that wasn’t too good at sorting them out. Whether or not what she was saying was true, though, she certainly expressed it with conviction. And Ostromír found himself seized with a desire to go and see the place for himself.

But then Živoslava (who was, Ostromír had learned, was the burgomistress of the town of Hrabóv), suddenly turned the topic of conversation around close to home.

‘Kráľ,’ Živoslava addressed him directly, ‘do you think this situation with the peasantry around Brassel, and in Bohemia as well, can be resolved peaceably? Prices are simply dreadful these days! Do you think the Crown and the nobles can bring them down?’

After engaging in a bit of back-and-forth with her on the subject, Ostromír quickly realised that although her understanding of matters of trade was a bit cursory, she cottoned on readily to the positions and interests of the various major players in the area, and her understanding of the political situation was much deeper than of the economic one. As a burgomistress, though, her sympathies were engaged wholly on the side of the poor and starving townsfolk. Despite her quirks of character and unsteadiness of mind, Ostromír couldn’t help but feel a kind of cautious fondness for Živoslava.

The festivities came to a screeching halt, however, when a young nobleman whose name was Vlastislav burst into the feast-hall in a rage, dragging behind him a tousled woman in a compromising state of undress, and flung her roughly in front of the king.

‘Take this—’ he gestured roughly at the woman in front of him, ‘into your custody, Kráľ. I will have nothing more to do with this adulterous lamprey.’

Over Vlastislav’s shoulder, Ostromír caught sight of their host, Vojvoda Chrabroš—clad only in a rumpled bedshirt and making his way a bit abashedly toward the rear of the hall, trying to escape notice. So that was the way of things, was it? Best to assuage the anger of the cuckolded husband now, and also spare their amorous host any further approbation. Ostromír had seen Jarmila: Chrabroš would be in for enough punishment at her hands as it was.

‘Very well,’ Ostromír told Vlastislav gently. ‘We shall take her back with us for now. Take some time for yourself to clear your head.’

Vlastislav’s veins were still throbbing in his head, but he managed to jerk a rough nod toward the king before storming out of the hall. Thus the feast here ended on a rather sour note.

~~~​

Ostromír’s imagination had taken fire at Živoslava’s tale of her pilgrimage in Egypt. He at once began making plans to undertake his own pilgrimage to the holy places of the Thebaid and the Wâdî al-Naṭrûn – as much to satisfy his worldly curiosity as out of any genuine devotion to God.

The pilgrimage went largely without incident, save for some rather saucy companions on the road who gabbled and gossiped past their store of knowledge, and for a sudden and unexpected downpour during an outdoor homily given when Ostromír made port in Alexandria. And the rest of his journey was one of wonder and holy silence.

Živoslava’s mind might wander or get mixed up, but it was easy enough for the Moravian king to tell the kind of impact that it must have had on her. The ancient exposed stones of this place, the quietude, the nearness that it brought one to the eternal struggle of the human soul between the light of the Creator and the forces of the Wicked One… these all became clear to the Kráľ as he journeyed through the valley of the hermits. When he returned from this pilgrimage, he was no longer the same man. He was humbler, quieter, perhaps a tad more driven… as if he had heard a whisper out there in the desert, and longed to catch the sweetness of the unearthly strain once more.

 

[Revan86]

FOUR
Revelries
8 September 1396 – 27 June 1398

On the banks of the Koutajoki, the old ways still held purchase. Even though to the south and to the west of them, the settled peoples had cut and cleared with their forged iron tools, and grew rye and oats and barley upon the burn, here the people still respected the land and lived according to the ways that the elders had taught. Even though yellow-bearded marauders with a strange tongue had come from the west, by river and by sea, with the fires of war and the wild eyes of greed, and stolen and enslaved and despoiled wherever they went—here on the Koutajoki the yellow-haired girji had not yet managed to conquer.

The Kíllt still respected and paid the due tribute to the spirits who dwelt in the earth, in the air—the souls which resided in every tree, every lake, every fish and every deer. The steady elder matron who watches the fire within the walls of birch and hide, and her sporting younger sister who gives chase in the woods—Uksáhkká and Juoksáhkká—still walked among them, and their names still bore power. But in addition to these, now they worshipped the Creator of whom their settled Finnish neighbours spoke, Whose great Shaman and beloved Son Jesus Christ redeemed all souls from death and woe by descending into the realm of the dead—not just with His Spirit but with His whole Body—and then returning in the body from there! Never before Him had another shaman done this! But still they strove to live, as their wise elders had taught them, in harmony with the seasons, with the blooming and fall of leaves, with the swimming of the fish and the roaming of the reindeer.

It had been a hundred great wheels of the sun, since the man named Ruslav had come to these shores, from far away to the south. This Ruslav was the nephew of a woman one of the great fishermen and orators among them had taken to wife, and it was he who had come to speak on behalf of her kin when she died. There was, in those regions from which Ruslav had come, a great siidameahttun to whom Ruslav was somehow beholden: a protector.

Ruslav’s ways and tongue and clothing had all been strange, but at least he followed Christ with his deeds and not merely with his mouth. He had not come with fire and iron to work evil for selfish gain. And he had helped the Sámi in various ways to protect themselves both from the marauding girji, and from the settled Finns who sometimes tried to cheat them. Ruslav had been loyal the whole time to ‘Moravia’ (wherever that was), and after having earned the trust of the local siida, the men and women of the siida had also unanimously acknowledged ‘Moravia’ as a this-worldly protective force. Since Ruslav, several generations of men had come from ‘Moravia’ to sit on the siida and speak their piece in council. Some of them had been good. Some of them had been bad. The latest of them, a fellow named Wizlaw who came already with a bride from among the people, promised to be a mixture of both.

No siidameahttun from this ‘Moravia’ had ever visited Koutajoki. At least, not until Ostromír.

When Ostromír Rychnovský came within view of the shores of Tuoppajärvi in early spring, before the clans struck out northward to follow the reindeer for the summer, he was struck at once by a peculiar sight. The houses here seemed to be sprouting like small hillocks out of the earth. They were covered in turf and greenery, and could be distinguished from the ground only by their neatly-shaven, square front doors made from birch, by the ring of ends of birch-poles around which these hillocks were raised, and by the plumes of smoke which emerged from the peak of each hillock.

There was shockingly little of the land under field cultivation. The Sámi did grow some of what they needed when the seasons allowed. However, they didn’t slash and burn in order to make room for the food they grew. Many souls, including ancient and powerful ones, lived in the forests and along the rivers. The forest provides game and shelter. In return for these gifts, the souls of the forest would ask on occasion for small favours. These were things that every Sámi knew. To them, the settled Finnish way of torching the forest and clearing it for crops was an inhuman arrogance bordering on madness.

The people who gave greeting to the Moravian king—people clad in the traditional blue and red hues with carefully-embroidered hems brightly interwoven with white tin—showed him and his sizeable retinue no deference whatsoever. There were no distinctions in rank among the Sámi. Those who knew who he was, took Ostromír only to be a highly successful and prosperous herder of animals and orator among men. But they did display goodwill and friendly help, and showed him the way toward Wizlaw’s dwelling-place on the lakeshore.

Wizlaw and Giste came out of their own (slightly larger) birch-and-turf hillock-house to greet the royal party as they rode into view. Giste, Ostromír was delighted to see, wore her red girdle high. Below it, the reindeer hide of her gákti stretched and ballooned outward, testifying to the new life beneath. Wizlaw would likely be a father well before the clan he’d married into broke camp this summer.

Several other guests from the main of the realm had arrived with Ostromír: a handful of Rychnovský-Vyšehrads from Praha, a Mojmírov or two from the Slovak lands, and Jadwiga Rychnovská-Nisa from Silesia. Giste looked over this veritable bevy of Slavic-tongued strangers with more than a hint of disapprobation. But Wizlaw greeted them all with open arms and a broad smile.

‘Come within, come within! We mustn’t keep you outside—the days aren’t long yet enough for that!’

In through the small square birch door filed the Slavic guests. Giste gave to each of the guests as they came in a cup of fragrant herbal tea, and a piece of dense unleavened flatbread, which despite its homely appearance smelled quite appetising. Ostromír, having been briefed on the expectations of guestship among his northernmost subjects, in turn offered Giste a small silver ring suitable for a woman’s hand. This small exchange was repeated for each of the guests in turn until they were all seated and comfortable, and soon Giste was busy putting away not only a ring but also some useful sets of baby clothes, hides, rolls of birchbark (sacred to Beaivi and Maderakka), as well as Christian crosses to bless her child.

Wizlaw showed Ostromír to the place of honour on his right hand, and sat the other guests in a circle around the central hearth. The main dish of the repast available to them was a tantalising stew of game meat and retired reindeer (as Wizlaw explained to them, the Sámi do not, outside of essential needs, slaughter the selfless animals with whom they have a deep spiritual connexion), mixed with slices of bitter melon and savoury herbs. This was served out hot into earthenware bowls for each of the guests. There was plenty of fish—expertly filleted and grilled, also with the piquant local herbs. And there was also a tart, rich-tasting compote made from lúúm’ – a delicacy reserved only for special occasions.

Ostromír had heard about guompa from the tales passed down from his great-grandfather’s time—and so was slightly better-prepared for it than poor Jadwiga, who coughed and spluttered on her first unsuspecting mouthful of the drink. He was slightly wary of the fizzy concoction of lightly-fermented reindeer milk infused with angelica—its taste was not agreeable to him at all. At least at first. After the first few polite sips it started to grow on him.

As the conversation progressed—mostly in Moravian, Sámi being a foreign tongue to the majority of those gathered—Ostromír noticed that Giste looked distinctly uncomfortable. A bit more so than the usual discomforts associated with late pregnancy, or the weary boredom that accompanies conversation in a foreign tongue. Ostromír had always had a shy streak, and he recognised shyness when he saw it in someone else. The king turned to his host.

‘Wizlaw, mind if I take the air a bit?’ he asked. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

‘Not at all, not at all, liege! Our home is your home; you may go and come as you like.’

‘Giste, would you mind showing me about? You know this place best.’

Giste picked up on the hint that the king was offering, and gratefully seized the opportunity for a bit of solitude and quiet. She showed him to the door, and then followed him out. Ostromír saw that once she was outside, it was like a massive weight was lifted from Giste’s shoulders, and she could breathe far easier. Ostromír ambled a loose circuit around the house, toward the lake and then back away from it. Giste stayed put. On the second time the king came around, Giste spoke. Her voice was soft, and for a moment, it was unclear to the king that she was speaking to him.

‘Hard to be in a strange place.’

Giste had spent time in Moravia. Ostromír knew she was sympathising. He answered her with a nod of understanding. They shared no other words; there was no need.

~~~​

By the time Ostromír had again crossed the border into Bohemia, it was already the middle of May. His hosts would already have moved. The reindeer at Koutajoki would have already begun their yearly trek northward, and the Sámi there would have broken camp and followed them into the tundra to the north. The birch-walled goahti along the lakeshore would be traded in for lavvu (reindeer-hide tents), until fall came and they returned once more to Koutajoki.

For Ostromír, returning to Bohemia ought to have felt like coming home, because it was. But as Ostromír crossed the threshold of Knieža Ruslav 2. Rychnovský-Vyšehrad’s hall in Praha (his brother Drahomír having died under house arrest in Olomouc earlier that year), he felt a certain wistfulness toward the far-northern camp in which he’d just spent the Paschal season.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It jarred him, that the Sámit didn’t bow to him or address him as ‘Kráľ’. The rituals and customs of the Sámit struck him as… doctrinally questionable. The house had felt cramped and the food had been strange. But despite all of that, having seen how the Sámit lived, and how close they were to their forest and their lake and their river, had made an impression on the Kráľ. Now coming back to Prague, the Kráľ stepped into a proper feasting-hall with throngs of Slavs who bowed and saluted him as he entered the room, who gave real toasts with proper lager, and who ate from great fat roasted centrepieces. All was familiar and agreeable to him… but it seemed now somehow a touch artificial.

Here too, though, he found himself compelled to aid a woman who struggled with being in crowds—in this case, Miloslava Rychnovská-Vyšehrad. And here too he found himself in deep conversation with another kinswoman, Krásnoroda Rychnovská-Žíč, on the topic of friendship. Ostromír later found himself pondering both the similarities of the Sámit to his own people in reason and sentiment, and the clear differences of habit and ways of living. He came to no real conclusions, but the experiences would stay with him for a long time.

When he had left Olomouc for the north, Adriana had been heavily pregnant. Now, Vojta was the proud father of a little redhead with a serious, chubby face. Vojta and Adriana had decided to name Ostromír’s new grandson Róbert… and Adriana had already given him the nickname of ‘Bertík’ in his absence. But to his royal grandfather, the redness of the infant’s hair and the darkness of his eyes suggested rather the appearance of a červienka, and so Róbert also gained the nickname of Červeník.

 

[Revan86]

FIVE
Elisabet Totilsdotter
12 October 1398 – 9 September 1401

The War of the Apostle’s Nativity: that was what Ostromír’s first engagement of Moravian troops in Asia would come to be called. At issue was the town of Tarsos in Kilikia, from which the Chief of the Apostles hailed, and where many other holy martyrs of the Christian faith had shed their blood: Saint Pelagia, Saint Diomēdē the Physician, Saint Vonifatios (commemorated with his lover Saint Aglaïa of Rome), and Saints Ioulitta and Kērykos. Many Orthodox churches had been set up there for hundreds of years, and it was considered one of the holiest places in Asia Minor.

The dispute had arisen first between Eustratios Radenos, the Christian epitropos of Tarsos; and the quasi-independent regional governor Matthaios the Lucanian, who had ‘gone to the Turks’—that is, converted to Islâm. The issue arose when Matthaios had attempted to evict the priests and monks from one of the churches in Tarsos with the intent of turning it into a mosque. At this the people of Tarsos had rioted and driven Matthaios out; and Eustratios Radenos had refused to let him back in. The Lucanian had raised an army with the assistance of the neighbouring Šayḵ Waḥîd ibn Ḍuḥâ ibn Baššâr, and laid siege to Tarsos. The situation had escalated from there. (Making the issue even more confusing was that most of Kilikia, where much of the fighting took place, was ruled instead by the ’Amîr Îsâ of Ḥimṣ, who had no desire to assist either side. And a further complicating factor was that the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre had somehow managed to secure a lease of the coastal city of Mallos from ’Amîr Îsâ himself! The War of the Apostle’s Nativity was by no means a simple and straightforward confrontation between Christianity and Islâm.)

But when Despot Lēon had decided to intervene on the side of Epitropos Eustratios by attacking the Lucanian, naturally he called upon his ally, the Kráľ of Moravia.

Kráľ Ostromír marched his armies eastward and set sail with them from the port of Kjustendža on the Black Sea coast, southward through the Bosporos and all the way down along the coast of Asia Minor. Very soon the Moravian armies had decamped at the mouth of the River Kalukadnos and set up their bombards against the walls of Seleukeia. The shots rang out through many months. Kráľ Ostromír had taken personal command of the siege, while he directed Knieža Ruslav to command the perimeter watch.

Šayḵ Waḥîd ibn Ḍuḥâ’s armies arrived far too late to do much good against the Moravian siege. The Budějovice-bored weapons fired by Taugats black powder made relatively quick work, not only of the walls but of the morale of the Muslim defenders of the town. However, they were given reluctant leave by the ’Amîr of Ḥimṣ to march through his territory. Thus, while Kráľ Ostromír’s command was parading through the city gates and running up a Christian banner over Seleukeia, Knieža Ruslav was heading off in the eastward direction to intercept Waḥîd. Going with Ruslav was Vojvoda Chrabroš Rychnovský-Nisa.

‘Will you be alright?’ asked Ostromír of his Silesian vassal as he prepared to leave, with some concern.

‘Of course I’ll be alright. Why shouldn’t I be?’

Well, for one thing—the woman with whom he had been caught in flagrante delicto by the aggrieved husband had, precisely forty weeks later, borne a child in her sequestration: Jaromil. There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Jaromil was Chrabroš’s bastard. Kráľ Ostromír had felt it unjust to punish Jaromil for his mother’s sins, and so he had released Jaromil over to freedom of a sort, back to the house of Hrabě Zobor of Bethen. But life would not be easy for a bastard anywhere, and Chrabroš himself, adulterer and cad though he was, was not a man thoroughly lost to sympathies of blood. Ostromír could tell that he worried for the fate of his forlorn son.

The two armies met at ‘Ain Zarbah on the Kilikian Plain, in the territory of ’Amîr Îsâ. The Brothers of the Holy Sepulchre had—belatedly—marched north in support of their patron, and joined the battle on Ruslav’s side, while Despot Leōn’s troops were still across in Kappadokia, and would not arrive in time to be effective. Ruslav engaged Šayḵ Waḥîd with several standard manoeuvres, but he wasn’t quite counting on Vojvoda Chrabroš in that battle.

Chrabroš made a mad charge with one flank of the Moravian cavalry at the vane of one of Šayḵ Waḥîd’s commanders at the centre. A daring stroke—but one he had made entirely without orders from Ruslav. The Bohemian nobleman clutched and tugged at his beard in horror as he watched the Silesians fly out with lances couched against the Hagarenes.

The commander of that division of Šayḵ Waḥîd’s men at whom Chrabroš was driving with such self-disregarding fury, was a veteran of the north African deserts named Bad Tiefo. Tiefo was making a valiant effort at defending his position from the Brothers of the Holy Sepulchre when he took notice of Chrabroš’s unplanned lateral charge. He formed up his men into a wedge, in order to hold off the brunt of the cavalry charge, but his ranks were by then too thin. The Silesian husáry ploughed into the enemy line, and Bad Tiefo himself was trampled beneath a destrier’s hooves.

Vojvoda Chrabroš had little to say in his own defence to Ruslav after that battle. But the rout of Šayḵ Waḥîd at ‘Ain Zarbah was at any rate decisive. Matthaios the Lucarian was on his own—and without an army, he could do little to resist Despot Leōn when the Thessalian armies flooded through the passes of the Tauros Mountains and demanded his surrender.

Leōn took direct control of Seleukeia and Issos, and restored Eustratios Radenos to his office as administrator of Tauros. The churches’ rights were upheld and the priests and monks were restored to their former parishes and monasteries. All of the land between Tauros and Issos, though, still owed fealty to an Islâmic suzerain who had been wise enough to stand aside and stay out of the fighting. As for Vojvoda Chrabroš, although no one disputed his bravery, it was a long while before the other lords of Moravia trusted him again.

~~~​

Kráľ Ostromír had no easy cross to bear by any stretch of the imagination. A man naturally withdrawn and taciturn from his youth, he was called upon to play the good host and diplomat at each turn. This took its toll on his health. He found that his inward doubts and insecurities found occasion to surface more and more frequently as time passed.

The King of Epiros, a Pole by ancestry and tongue named Władysław, sent an epistle to Olomouc with a proposal for Vojta and his own daughter Róza to meet. It was much to Ostromír’s disadvantage that he did not choose to host Róza in Olomouc, because the entire meeting turned out to be an underwhelming disappointment on all sides. Vojtech returned from Giannena with no very favourable impression either of his hostess or of her father, and also was not given much opportunity to observe much of Epiros which could be of use to Ostromír.

Thus, when it came to arranging a suitable match for little Róbert, Ostromír resolved to be more careful and observant… however much discomfort he must bear from the effort. He also resolved not to look to Epiros for a prospective granddaughter-in-law.

Instead, he looked to the north.

It could well be said that Ostromír’s visit to Koutajoki, and his rather tense earlier interactions with Sigbjörn Konung of Garðaríki, had coloured his view of northern Europe and its political importance. Ostromír had no particular liking for the severané or their culture: his impression of them as violent heathen brutes had not really altered with greater familiarity. But he understood well that they were a necessary counterbalance to the power of the Rus’ in the east and to the power of the Byzantines in the south. And so he despatched a messenger to Sjælland to issue an invitation to the lord there.

Soon enough, in the Olomouc courtyard, there appeared two men of rank with braided beards—one dark of hair, and one fair of hair—and several attendants and retainers in tow. Many heads turned as they strode by. Kráľ Ostromír soon understood why: the lamellar cuirasses and mail shirts they wore, the round helmets and axes, were the marks of the Varangian guardsmen of Constantinople. Their round shields also bore upon them the emblems of Constantine as well as their family devices.

Of these two heavily-armed and –armoured noblemen, the dark-haired and -bearded one stepped forward to address the king. He gave a curt bow and spoke:

‘Ostromír konung, to God be the glory at this meeting. My name is Bryniulf, son of Dagh, burggreve of Roskilde. This is my brother Totil.’

‘God greet you, Bryniulf and Totil. You are most welcome here. I pray that your journey was safe and without trouble.’

‘We are well and whole,’ said Bryniulf simply.

Ostromír beckoned the two of them into the hall with his hand, and the attendants took their axes and other armaments (apart from their eating-knives) as they entered. They were followed by their own retinue, who were likewise shown into the hall. He noted that these two were fairly quiet and mild-mannered individuals—most unlike the severané he’d encountered before. This piqued his curiosity. He sat them down near to him and tried to engage them in conversation.

‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me about yourselves. From where do you hail?’

It was Totil who answered this time. ‘Well, our father Dagh—he is not from Sjælland. He was a Swede. He held office at Tre Kronor. Both of us were born in Stockholm.’

‘And… you have travelled to many places since then, clearly,’ Ostromír said. ‘I’d imagine you have many tales to tell!’

There was a short stretch of uncomfortable silence as Bryniulf exchanged a meaningful glance with Totil. He then spoke: ‘Forgive me, konung. But before we came here we tried to learn what we could of Moravian ways. It is our way, upon introducing ourselves, to formally declaim the great honour of our ancestry and the mighty deeds which we have done in battle. Slavs are very family-minded—much more so than we are, I think—but from what I was given to understand, are also not given to boasting. I do not wish to cause offence by speaking of my fathers or myself or my brother too highly.’

Ostromír shook his head. ‘There is no offence! I had wondered why the two of you were so quiet.’

At that Bryniulf and Totil both let out great uproarious laughs at this bit of cultural misunderstanding, and the two of them became considerably more at ease with their host.

‘Our father is of the hathel Vasa line,’ Bryniulf said. ‘Several Vasas have served as hirdmen in the ranks of the Swedish kings, where they heaped great honour and wealth upon themselves and upon their descendants. But our fathers’ true glory lay in Miklagard. I was named for my grandfather, Bryniulf Wheat-Sheaf, who served as a mighty captain of the Guard, and fought and slew many dozens of Cretans in the naval wars waged by the Greek King Athanasios. Our father Dagh Bryniulfsson was cut from the same cloth: while in the service of Queen Philippa he traversed the length and width of the Euxine Sea, and fed wolves and crows on every shore—over a hundred and twenty among the enemies of Philippa he himself sent into the ground or into the sea.’

‘No, it was a hundred and forty,’ Totil objected. ‘Elder brother is too modest even in his boasts!’

‘Anyway, Dagh also took a Taurican Greek wife while living there, named Martha Mourtzouphlia, or “Hairy-Brows”. It was from her womb that we two sprang.’

That explained the differences in their complexions! Swart Bryniulf clearly took after his Greek mother more, and the fairer Totil after his Swedish father.

‘And like our father and grandfather before us,’ Totil went on, ‘both of us sojourned in the Middle Sea, fighting for Greek gold and for the honour of our line. Among us, Bryniulf was the luckier of us two. He nipped a nice little Frenchwoman into bed while we were awaiting our ships in Venice; she’s borne him two little girls since.’

Bryniulf shook his head. ‘My Adelaide was a pretty thing when I met her, I grant you, but Totte was the wiser one. He wasn’t in Kerch two weeks before one of the lusty Gothic wenches there let him dock his longship in her brine. She’s a right whip-sharp lass, and an enterprising one at that—followed him all the way back to Sjælland; and birthed his daughter on the road. Amalafriþa Þiudareikanija still earns her keep in Roskilde as my finder of secrets and bane of nithings.’

Ostromír pressed his advantage while the opportunity was fresh. ‘And your daughters—are they spoken for?’

Bryniulf answered readily. ‘My elder, Asta, is a proper ale-willow back in Roskilde with two little ones of her own. I’m still looking to settle my younger, Marta, with a morganatic match to keep my line going.’

Ostromír mouthed an ‘ah’.

‘Totil’s daughter, though, she’s free enough. And she’s nearly as clever as her mother! Ilse! Come!’

Ilse Totilsdotter strode forward, and Ostromír found himself face-to-face with a round-faced, cherub-cheeked, snub-nosed, wheat-blonde lassie of perhaps twelve or thirteen years. Ostromír (whose tastes in women had been shaped by his own classically-handsome consort) reflected a bit ruefully that she had probably gotten the short stick in terms of looks. But the cornflower eyes which peered up at him from beneath that heavy sheaf of maidenly wheat-gold glimmered with a sharpness that belied her babyish face.

‘Make your greeting to the king, girl!’ Totil laughed.

‘God grant your Majesty frith and health, est and length of days.’ Her bell-like voice pealed clear and polite, so that all could hear it. ‘I, Elisabet Totilsdotter of the house of Vasa, stand your ready servant.’

‘And God greet you, child,’ Ostromír said, amused.

‘Are you not curious to know why the king wishes to speak to you?’ asked her father.

‘Why, it’s obvious, is it not?’ Ilse’s already-wide blue eyes widened further. ‘Why else would you take an unwed daughter along with you on a trip to a foreign court, Father? Pardon my forwardness, Konung, but I take it that I’m being judged on my suitability as a bride for one of your Majesty’s kinsmen.’

Ostromír let out a chuckle of surprise. If this was the level of insight that the daughter possessed, imagine what her Crimean Gothic mother must be like! He suddenly felt a surge of sympathy for Totil; very likely he never got his own way at home, caught between such a mastermind for a wife and a budding wunderkind for a daughter. But the girl wasn’t done.

‘Moravia already has pacts with Thessalia and with Rusland,’ she went on. ‘Konung, I would be wary of wedding one of your kin to me, if I were you. You naturally have greater forces and a more strategic position than Sjælland does. My uncle stands to gain far more from an alliance than you do.’

‘Now you’re overstepping your stride, girl. Hold your tongue,’ snapped Bryniulf.

‘No, no, let her speak,’ the king bade his guest. ‘And what would your will be in the matter, Ilse, daughter of Totil?’

Ilse dipped her head, and her fleshy cheeks dimpled charmingly. ‘Given the likings of Moravian men, I’d imagine you want to betroth me to someone my junior. Speaking for myself, of course, I wouldn’t object to keeping myself maiden for a younger husband of your family’s stature.’

‘Ilse, please don’t make me rue bringing you here!’ Totil gasped at her, mortified.

‘But, Father, given how loudly you and Uncle have been boasting, I should think the Konung would appreciate forthrightness from me as well.’

She’d taken his measure well. Ostromír was indeed impressed. In just her brief addresses to him, this Elisabet had not only proven alert, aware and quick on the uptake. She had also shown herself to be a fair judge of character, objective, and open to other perspectives. And if there was ever so much a touch of cheek and cynicism in her speech, that could surely be excused by her youth. Her cherubic looks and wide baby-blue eyes, he suddenly realised, had the added effect of putting others off their guard—an advantage of which she was surely cognisant. Ostromír could see numerous benefits to betrothing Róbert to this precocious severanka.

But he also wasn’t going to stand in the way of Totil’s parenting. He allowed the father to lead his daughter aside and send her off to play with the other children in the hall—though he was sure that whatever chidings or scoldings she got from Totil would be heard, noted and duly ignored.

The rest of the Vasas’ visit passed without incident, though there was much raucous laughter and drinking and boasting to go around. Ostromír found the Vasas to be considerably more personable and pleasant than the previous severané he’d dealt with. Totil was a trifle surprised when Ostromír formally asked to betroth Róbert to Elisabet.

‘I’m never going to say no to a proposal like that,’ Totil answered, shaking his head. ‘It’s a far better match for my Ilse than I could have hoped. But you saw what she’s like. Best to have your Róbert well and fully prepared when that day comes.’

Totil needn’t have worried. Ostromír asked his grandson what he’d thought of Ilse after she’d left.

‘Sh—sh—she wasn’t t—t—too bad,’ Róbert answered his grandfather laboriously. ‘She sh—sha—shared what she h—had f—fuh—fairly with all of us. And she duh—di—di—didn’t ever make f—fuh—fun of the w—w—way I… w—way I t—ta—t—talk.’

Ostromír was more than a trifle dismayed at how Róbert had picked up his mother’s thickness of the tongue. Indeed, with him the stammering was much worse, and he didn’t know how to correct it, other than being patient and understanding with the lad. But: that was all the more reason for him to have a help-meet who was herself not only fair and compassionate, but also well-spoken. Elisabet promised to be all three of those things, and more.

 

[Midnite Duke]

At only years older than Robin, Elisabet may be a trifle young to be a Rychnovský bride. Thank you for the many updates.

 

[Revan86]

At only years older than Robin, Elisabet may be a trifle young to be a Rychnovský bride. Thank you for the many updates.

Yes. Ilse is a little bit closer in years to Robin than Adriana is to Vojtech. But there's no arguing with that inheritable intelligent trait! (And yes, her Crimean Gothic mother is a genius, and Count Bryniulf would be a fool not to employ his sister-in-law as a Spymaster.)

 

[Revan86]

SIX
Mourning Breaks
16 January 1402 – 16 September 1405
​

A great throng had gathered in the square at Prague, even in the wintry chill of 6911, to listen to a certain young priestmonk there give a homily. This was no ordinary street preacher. This young man of perhaps thirty years, named Ján, had grown up in poverty in the south of Bohemia—and he had come of age during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1388.

Although his preaching was solidly and dogmatically Orthodox, and he defended Orthodox doctrines (such as the Chalice, the use of Slavonic in the Liturgy, the holding of single offices by bishops), he was wont to give voice to some rather radical opinions—this was one reason why Priestmonk Ján’s homilies were so popular. He spoke of updating the Liturgical rubrics so that the common man could understand them. He called monks to embrace a holy voluntary poverty, and to divest themselves of their great landholdings in Moravia and Bohemia. And he was not above lambasting the sins of bishops in public when they had committed them publicly.

‘—and what, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, are we to say to His Holiness? “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no!” Would it not be proper, my dear ones, for us to go unto the monk who took the name of Elisei, and brotherly recall him to the vows that he first took together with that name? “The eye is the lamp of the body,” says our Lord. “If your eyes be good, then your whole body shall be full of light! But if your eyes be bad, then your whole body shall be full of darkness.” Thus, a bishop who represents the Body of Christ, who lets his eyes be drawn by a youthful face or by plaits of long hair, or who allows lust to inflame him for the flesh of a high-born lady, imperils not only himself, but he becomes a stumbling-block to all who look to him. It is not only His Holiness’s body which is infected by his eye! My dear ones, each and every one of us is affected. Unto Olomouc, we cry and we groan together with great lamentation: let the man whom God has chosen to watch over us, repent and purify himself!’

Such sermons he gave were enough to cause some among the bishops to suspect him of spreading the Lollards’ heresy. And he was certainly not at all well-liked by the great lords of Bohemia. (It was perhaps somewhat lucky for the young preacher that Knieža Ruslav had taken this occasion to give up the ghost.) At another time, perhaps, the king also might have been more deeply troubled by this popular young homilist, Father Ján Hus. But at the moment his attention was once again directed elsewhere—to the Middle Sea.

~~~​

Despot Leōn of Thessalia had once again acted upon his ambitions in Asia. This time, he was making a bid for the city of ‘Ûrfah, and the lands which surrounded it, against the Salṭân ‘Adnân ibn Mas’ûd of aš-Šâm. Naturally, he called upon Kráľ Ostromír to fulfil his duty to their pact, and lead the armies of Moravia again into the Levant. Vojtech gave his wife the traditional farewell of a departing soldier, and Adriana came, with a fond gleam still in her eyes, to see him off.

With Ostromír, this time, went not only his armies and men, but also his thirty-five-year-old eldest daughter, Milomíra. She too had a duty to fulfil, for it was by her and through her that the pact between these two rulers had been sealed. Leōn’s half-brother Nikodēmos had come of age, and the time had come for he and Milomíra to wed.

The armies of Ostromír once again departed from Kjustandža, and sailed southward until they reached the seat of Leōn’s honour in Thessalonikē. There they disembarked, and standing at the docks awaiting them was a tall, olive-skinned youth in helm and lamellar, who gave a sharp salute to the Moravian king as he stepped onto the docks. He made a gracious bow as well to the lady behind him, the one with the red braids, and extended a hand to help her to earth.

‘You will be Milomíra, I take it?’ asked the Greek youth.

‘That I am,’ said the woman, looking over the tall, strapping youngster and approving of his gallantry.

‘Then I am for you, with all that I hold,’ said the young man in a low and tender voice. ‘I am Nikodēmos Gerontas, brother to the Archon of this city and the Greek-speaking lands here and to the south.’

Milomíra blushed in pleasant surprise. She’d been bracing herself for a sullen, pouting, spoiled teenage boy to take for a husband, and was now confronted with a young man of discipline and proper manners. Were all Greek men like this, she wondered, or was this just a stroke of luck on her part? Nikodēmos’s frank gaze and kind concern—not to mention his firm jawline and strong Adam’s-apple, were doing things to her heart that she’d thought she’d long resigned it to not feeling.

‘Well, well,’ Ostromír beckoned to them, ‘let’s not be all day. Your brother has an urgent appointment which I still have to keep.’

The Kráľ of Moravia led the two of them—his daughter and his prospective son-in-law—to the nearest church for their union to be blessed. He then took his leave of his eldest daughter, who seemed far more pleased with her lot than she had been when she was betrothed, and set off again with the armies of Moravia for the Levantine coast.

Teodotii Koceľuk was taken ill on the voyage. He shook with chills and burned with fever, and in the delirium of his affliction he raved and called out for his Jás—who of course was hundreds of miles away. A priest was brought in to anoint Teodotii, and to comfort him, and to administer to him the Eucharist. Somewhat miraculously, Teodotii’s illness of the mind subsided long enough for him to make confession and to partake of the Gifts. But once the unction was concluded, Teodotii fell into a faint, and never recovered from it. He died upon the voyage, and was taken ashore at Seleukeia to be buried. Ostromír barely had time to say proper farewells to his friend before he was compelled to set sail again.

And then there was worse news. When they arrived at Antioch, the Moravians found that the armies of Salṭân ‘Adnân were ready and waiting for them. The Moravians had to fight their way to shore, and struggled even to set up a beachhead from which they could hold against the men of Syria. They were beaten long before they could even begin.

Many Moravians were slain all up and down that beach, and many others were driven out to sea and drowned. Ostromír did his level best to beat a fighting retreat back to the ships, but he knew at once that he would not get another chance to come to Despot Leōn’s aid this time. He hoped only that the loss of so many of his men had bought time enough for the Thessalian ruler to take ‘Ûrfah.

~~~​

It was a beaten, demoralised army which returned to Moravia. And Teodotii was no longer with them, having died not in glorious battle but from some seaborne illness, and being laid to rest upon a foreign shore. Jároslava was disconsolate. Eventually she retired from earthly life and lived out the rest of her days as a nun in Siget. Her son with Teodotii, Sjätopolk, took rule in Podkarpatská.

Adriana had given birth not a week before their arrival in Olomouc. Thus she was able to present her husband with a very personable, auburn-headed little daughter: Blahomíra. And he had retired with gratitude and affection to Adriana’s bed, where she gave him a welcome to equal her prior farewell.

But Imma would not so much as come out to greet her husband on his return. The same old argument that had been between them ever since he’d come wounded from the front in his father’s army resurfaced. She cloistered herself away, and used wine for her consolation. Once again it was Eudoxie who had to come down to greet her father.

‘Come in and take your ease, Papa,’ Eudoxie told him gently, seeing him to a chair and handing him a crystal glass of mulled wine. Then she knelt down beside him, serving him every way she could think of.

Ostromír looked aside to his daughter. Her eyes were glistening at him in loyal admiration. Why, why did Imma have to be so perverse with him? Why couldn’t she answer his feelings? In the firelight Ostromír saw the shadows of Imma’s face in that of his daughter. Before he knew what he was doing, he leaned forward and kissed Eudoxie—not a fond father’s kiss, but the kiss of a lover. Eudoxie, far from recoiling, answered him enthusiastically. Ostromír lost himself in the incestuous kiss—gripped his daughter firmly behind the neck and traced her hair. It had been too long since he’d felt anything like this from Imma.

But when they broke off, the reasoning part of Ostromír’s mind fought its way heroically back to the surface. He put his hands on each of his daughter’s arms, and set himself off from her with a long sigh.

‘No, Doxie,’ he murmured. ‘No… I love you dearly. I do. But I should be a father to you.’

‘But it’s not a daughter you need right now,’ Eudoxie told him. ‘You need a woman’s comfort. Let me be your woman tonight.’

Ostromír stroked his daughter’s face fondly. ‘I know,’ he told her. ‘And I value that deeply. You were always my most loyal child. But I do not wish to be a stumbling-block to you, or drag you down to the hell I surely belong in. Be happy, my daughter. Marry well. That must be comfort enough for me.’

~~~​

Queen Ermessinde of Moravia died on the thirteenth of September, in the Year of the World 6915. She was sixty-four years old. It was a bitter irony indeed, that Imma had so long dreaded that her husband would predecease her on account of his foolhardy bravery… but then would succumb herself to that dread in drink before him.

This loss truly pushed Ostromír over the edge. He wept, and wept, and wept without control, for three full days. Imma and he had quarrelled and fought and misunderstood each other their whole lives, it seemed—they hadn’t loved each other as deeply as Kulin and Taimi had… or as Ostromír’s parents had. But she had been his wife, and he had been her husband. And now, suddenly facing down the rest of his life seemed twice as hard.

 

[Revan86]

SEVEN
Robin Goodfellow
16 January 1406 – 14 December 1407​

Practice sparring in the courtyard that afternoon was hard. It was freezing out there, and honestly I just wanted to be back inside the castle, near the hearth with a nice mug of mulled cider and a pack of playing-cards, with the other children. But Budivoj insisted that I train, even in the snow.

‘Move your feet!’ Budivoj shouted at me. ‘Don’t overstep! Make me come to you!’

My feet were numb, and my calves were sore. I don’t know what he expected from me. But I held my wooden sword in front of me with both hands, and did my best to tread with care on the balls of my feet, as I’d been trained. Still, when Budivoj came at me with his own practice weapon, it was all I could do to keep him from battering me about the shoulders and head. That was what he called ‘training’.

‘Move faster, idiot boy!’ Budivoj snarled at me.

‘I’m tuh—I—I’m tuh—t—t—trying!’

I always hate the way my words come out. I can never make my mouth keep up with my head.

‘“I’m tuh-tuh-tuh-trying!”’ Budivoj put on a mock whimper. ‘Is that how you’ll plead the enemy’s mercy? What, you think you’ll snivel and stammer a Saracen to death in a one-on-one fight? Move your feet!’

Despite the cold my blood boiled in me, and I let out a scream as I lunged forward. I swung my mock sword like a wild man, just wanting to get in one good shot at the bastard’s face. Naturally, as happened all too often, I got a thwack on the side and got sent reeling sideways into the snow, skidding a good foot across the ground.

‘You’ll never make a soldier like that, boy,’ Budivoj gave a grim smirk. ‘There’s a war on, and the Hagarenes won’t show you any mercy. We lost many good men in Antioch. If you’re ever going to be king, you need to be stronger than that. Better.’

War. That was what they were ‘training’ me for, Dedko and Ocko and Budivoj. They wanted to put a bit of steel in my hand and make me kill other men.

I knew why. With a dumb tongue like mine, there’s no way I could be a diplomat like Dedko. And I never really had the patience for deep reading or balancing columns. I had to be tough—tougher than the other boys. Stammering gets you picked on. I learned that lesson early on. I guess the grown-ups must have heard from the shitheads who bullied me—and then got black eyes from me. So now they were trying to give me ‘discipline’, and make a zbrojnoš out of me.

But isn’t that kind of different? I mean, it’s one thing to give a jerk what he’s asking for, if he’s disrespecting you. But to kill another human being—? I didn’t think I could do that. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t giving it my all during ‘training’ recently.

Budivoj held off when the Greek messenger came in through the portcullis. I could tell he was Greek because of his complexion, and also because of his armour. He had important news, you could tell.

‘News from Thessaly,’ the messenger declaimed. He went through the courtyard, and into the castle through the front door. Budivoj followed, leaving me behind. I got up, dusted the snow off my clothes, and followed him in. No way was I being left out of this. Also, it was cold out. Wasn’t spending my time staying out in this weather, not if I could help it. I made my way into the hall, where the Greek messenger was speaking to Dedko. I caught the tail end of his news.

‘… have moved off from Edessa. In celebration, the Œcumenical Patriarch brought out the Holy Mandylion from the archives, travelled in state to the liberated territory, and processed with it around the city, blessing the Despot’s reign there. Already ancient churches are being renovated. The sacrifice of so many brave Moravians has not been in vain, and you may rest assured of the Despot’s gratitude!’

Edessa. Wasn’t that where the war was going on?

‘That is good to hear,’ came Dedko’s voice. ‘Then the war is over?’

‘There may still be some skirmishes with the Saracen,’ said the Greek messenger, ‘but the real fighting is done and past. The Salṭân will not be retaking Edessa any time soon.’

The war is over! Was I ever glad at that news. I looked to where Mamka was sitting. I could tell she was feeling the same way, the way she was beaming at Ocko. I don’t think she wanted Ocko to leave her side again. My own reasons were maybe a bit more selfish. This meant—I hoped—that I wouldn’t have to spend hours outside freezing my arse off while being battered around by Budivoj.

But then I looked to Dedko. Once, his hair had been redder than mine. Now there wasn’t a trace of red to be seen. It was all white. He wasn’t yet sixty, but he looked well over seventy. He breathed a sigh of relief at hearing that the war was over. But still, he looked like he didn’t expect to ever be happy again.

~~~​

I asked Mamka about it later, after she’d put Blahomíra to bed.

‘Well, my son,’ she told me, ‘your g—grandfather bears a g—great weight on his shoulders. Moravia is n—not an easy realm to rule right now.’

‘Yet I—I—I sh—shall h—ha—have to rule it s—suh—someday?’

‘Hopefully n—not for a long time yet,’ Mamka told me. ‘But your reign shall be d—different, I’m sure.’

‘Tha—that poem tha—th—that m—messenger read al—al—aloud in c—court,’ I gibbered my way through another one of my thoughts that came too sudden for my mouth, ‘d—di—didn’t seem to m—make D—Ded—Ded—Dedko h—happy at—at all.’

Mamka sighed and shrugged. ‘I’m n—not sure it was meant to.’

‘Bu—but why d—do you say Mo—Moravia isn’t—t easy to r—rule now?’

‘Lots of reasons,’ Mamka shrugged again. She pooched her lips a little bit. She always does that when she’s trying to decide what to tell me, whether I’m old enough to handle it. I guess she must have decided I could handle it, because she went on: ‘There are some preachers in B—Bohemia who d—draw large crowds by cond—d—demning the noblemen. Peasants listen: they think that the n—nobles take too much in tax from them. Also, food is so d—dear now. Many of them can’t even afford t—to feed their families.’

My anger boiled hot in me again. How could my grandfather do this to those poor people? ‘Wh—why c—can’t we bri—bring d—d—down the p—prices? Or the damn t—ta—taxes?! Sh—shh—surely w—we don’t w—wa—want the p—peasants—s—ts to st—sta—starve?!’

Mamka gave me a sad smile. ‘Sometimes these things aren’t so simple, Bertík. Your grandfather d—did open some new emergency g—granaries on Bohemian land, to off—offer emergency relief. But that only helps so much. And th—that’s not the only thing on your g—grandfather’s plate.’

‘Wh—what else?’

‘He’s trying to learn the Sámi language,’ Mamka told me sympathetically. ‘It c—can’t be easy. I remember what it was like when I was learning G—Greek. And he’s already old. Learning g—gets harder when you’re older.’

~~~​

It was true. I’d sometimes pass by Dedko’s study on my way to or from the kitchens, and I’d hear him making sounds like I do, stammering his way through sentences in a tongue I certainly didn’t know… and then breaking into storms of rage and curses, flinging books and sheets of vellum all over the room, hurling things… and then slumping in his seat and weeping hopelessly. Dedko wept more and more these days, especially after Babička died.

I wished there was something I could do to help him. But, so far from knowing even a word of Sámi, God only knows I couldn’t speak any language that well. Not even my own.

I’ll never forget the day that I passed the study… and it was quiet. Real quiet.

‘D—Dedko?’

He didn’t answer me.

I tried the door to the study. It pushed open. I went inside. There was Dedko, slumped over at his work. For a moment I thought he was sleeping deeply. But his back wasn’t rising or falling.

I knew what that meant. My heart froze.

‘T—Ta—Ta—T—Ta—Tat—Tatíííí—!!’

I flung myself away from the door. My eyes were burning. I couldn’t help it. Tears were running down my face. Dedko couldn’t be dead! He couldn’t be! He wasn’t even sixty yet!

But there was nothing anyone could do, not even Nîjâr. By the time she arrived, there was little anyone could do other than the priest. I was there when they carried him out. But it was all a blur to me.

~~~​

‘Your father’s the K—King,’ Mamka was telling me. ‘He may not have as much t—time for you now.’

‘I kn—I know.’

‘But I want you to know also,’ she told me gently, ‘that we’ll always love you. We’ll always watch out for you, and be with you. D—Dedko loves you too, still. And he will always be here with us.’

‘H—He’s in h—heaven, r—right, Mamka?’

‘I hope so,’ said Mamka, stroking my hair. ‘I d—dearly hope so.’

 

[filcat]

Not going to cover forty-seven chapters in one-go; no space, no time.

But in the mean time;

‘I’m tuh—I—I’m tuh—t—t—trying!’

You have been waited for, for so long.

Hello Robin, nice to finally meet you.

 

[Midnite Duke]

God bless Ostromir, he is now with Ermessinde again. She is chastising him for making her wait and he is accepting with a broad smile. Was this the first chapter not from the ruler's pov? God bless Robin, hopefully Vojtech will have a lengthy reign. Thanks

 

[Revan86]

Not going to cover forty-seven chapters in one-go; no space, no time.

But in the mean time;

You have been waited for, for so long.

Hello Robin, nice to finally meet you.

He's here, and he's clearly going to stick around! Somebody had to make it into Thin Wedge!

God bless Ostromir, he is now with Ermessinde again. She is chastising him for making her wait and he is accepting with a broad smile. Was this the first chapter not from the ruler's pov? God bless Robin, hopefully Vojtech will have a lengthy reign. Thanks

I have done third-person limited narration from non-ruler perspectives before (like the intro to 'Wolf and Boar', or the seduction of Radomír hrozny by Kvetoslava). I have never done first-person narration before now. And it's probably going to be a one-off, at least for this AAR.

But I did want to inhabit for a little while the perspective of a nine-year-old boy with a speech disorder. It seemed to me like he would have a unique set of perspectives and struggles that my other characters couldn't have.

 

[Revan86]

PSA: Good readers, good lurkers and good commenters--go and vote in the ACAs this quarter! Do it now, while the doing's good!

The Reign of Vojtech 3. Rychnovský, Kráľ of Veľká Morava

EIGHT
She’s a Master of the Blade
14 December 1407 – 2 July 1410

The new Kráľ Vojtech 3. was something of a rarity among the Rychnovský dynasts: a common-sense nuts-and-bolts ruler. Most of the royal Rychnovských had been scholars and diplomats—the last (and, before Vojtech 3., only) real administrator among the Kings of Moravia had been Eustach the Church-Builder. In some ways, the vassals of the Moravian realm found this refreshing. At last they had a king who understood the flow of silver. There was at last a real hope that the long-standing inflation crisis that had begun with Radomír 4. would be competently and equitably addressed.

As such, there was no real political crisis that accompanied Vojtech’s coronation… unless a surfeit of feasting could be counted as a crisis. Instead of demands for lowered taxes and increased autonomy for the vassals, Vojtech was instead peppered with invitations to eat, drink and be merry. The three most important of these invitations came from Siidalávlut Wizlaw of Tuoppajärvi; from Vojvoda Drahoslav Rychnovský-Nisa of Sliezsko; and from Knieža Drahomír Rychnovský-Vyšehrad of Česko.

‘Are you s—sure it’s wise, husband,’ asked Queen Adriana, ‘to g—go to all of these feasts when the p—peasantry are still struggling so much? Esp—p—pecially in Bo—Bohemia?’

Vojtech had to own that his wife was correct. The whole enterprise sat rather ill with him, as well. His instinct had always been to moderate his own wants and be content with what he had—which had been the main reason why his penchants for saving and reinvesting had flourished so much under his grandmother’s tutelage. And he had always detested his grandfather’s lavishness.

‘I tell you what, my dear. I shall dedicate, in God’s name, a half-portion of whatever I am allowed to partake at each feast and give it to the local bowers and paupers who do not have enough.’

‘That would b—be proper, I think,’ Adriana approved.

Vojtech was good to his word. He ate only modestly himself at each of the feasts he attended, and gave liberally of what was there to those who needed it. In this way, he attracted the positive attention of the Orthodox Church. Surprisingly even the firebrand populist homilist, Priestmonk Ján Hus, found a word or two to say in the new King’s favour. Vojtech made one far voyage to Tuoppajärvi in Paschaltide and Bright Week of 6917; and a nearer circuit of Praha and Nisa on Christmas of 6918 and Pascha of 6918.

At the feast at Tuoppajärvi, Vojtech came off with a rather mixed impression of his host, Wizlaw. The man had thoroughly adopted Sámi ways—speech, dress, gastronomical habits, reverence toward the spirits of nature and the goddesses of hearth and hunt. He and Giste were evidently quite close. He also clearly cared deeply for the people he lived with. But at the same time, there was a thoroughgoing lack of family feeling and filial piety in Wizlaw’s choice to so thoroughly embrace the Sámit, which privately rubbed Vojtech the wrong way.

He wasn’t, however, the only one. He caught only a portion of the conversation in Sorbian between Wizlaw and his sister Ewa. But he could certainly pick up on the gist. Ewa was wondering why he had forsaken all ties with his kin and parentage in order to consort with these barbarians; and she was also mystified by the veneration which he gave to ‘idols’. She ultimately turned to Kráľ Vojtech in a rather ill mood, and Vojtech inclined a sympathetic ear.

‘What do you think, Kráľ? Does Saint John’s defence of the veneration of images apply to images of the Sámi spirits, or is that akin to demon-worship?’

‘I’m fairly certain that Saint John did not mean at all to encourage idolatry. From what I understand, if I recall my Three Treatises correctly, the reason that icons are allowed in Orthodox churches in the first place, is that Our Lord Himself became incarnate; what was before then forbidden to Israel, the Being that was beyond the grasp of the human senses, became flesh and bone for us.’

‘And so icons are not the same as idols,’ Ewa nodded approvingly.

After speaking together more and more in the goahti, Ewa Rychnovská-Žič and the new Kráľ discovered that they had a number of interests in common. Ewa was particularly interested in Adriana and her upbringing, and how it came to be that Vojtech had met her. The visit to Koutajoki had not held nearly the same appeal for Vojtech that it had for his father—but it couldn’t be said to have been without its graces, either. By the time he left Koutajoki, he had found a fast friend in Ewa.

When Vojtech made the circuits of Praha and Nisa the following year, he likewise but modestly partook of the food offered to him, but he gladly loaded up several carts in each holding with the delights offered within, wheeled them out into their respective towns, and gave without reserve to the poor as they had need, without asking questions of those who came, and without making a great display of his charity. In each city, the word still got out, though. Many flocked to the king’s carts and took back to their families what they needed. Vojtech was in this way likened to the ‘good kings’ of old, the Slavs who had first converted to Orthodoxy and made names for themselves by their giving.

At the feast in Nisa, he had the chance to speak with one hraběnka named Kostislava, whose interests were similar to the king’s. She too wanted to hear the new king’s opinions on how to address the economic problems currently facing the realm’s less-fortunate. King and vassal wrangled over the best ways to address the problem—how to control the amount of minted silver, how to organise parish tax rolls, and how to assess and collect the tax monies. It was an enriching conversation, and Vojtech began to make a more educated approach to the problem. In addition, he was on a much better footing with his vassal.

~~~​

Not all of his vassals, however, were so obliging or fair-minded. Indeed, there were some in his realm who seemed to take positive delight in wringing their bowers. Vojtech managed to come face-to-face with some of these on one particular occasion.

He was visiting one of the Rychnovský manors at an estate called Kvetná, which had been in the family at least since the days of Kráľ Tomáš. As he looked around the estate, though, he saw a number of people there who had a ragged, careworn look—and they didn’t seem to belong to any of the bower families from the nearby village. He asked the manor caretaker about these strangers.

‘They are bowers,’ answered the caretaker. ‘However, they have all fled from the various estates to which they were attached, pleading starvation and the cruelty of a tyrannical mistress. They gave me their names, but for the life of me I don’t recognise any of them. Probably they are from afar off: Silica, Bretka, Čoltova?’

These names meant nothing to the caretaker here; nor should they have. But Vojtech recognised to his chagrin the names of all of these honours. And the mistress to whom they belonged. Well indeed might she be called a tyrant, and the bowers’ tale thus bore the ring of truth to him.

‘Shall I have them rounded up, milord?’ asked the caretaker. ‘Sent back where they came from?’

Vojtech shook his head hurriedly. It was true that under the law, he was obligated to return these runaway bowers to the estates they came from, no matter who held them. But the king baulked at the prospect of handing so much as a mangy dog back into the care of Bohumila Mikulčicková of Gömör.

‘No,’ Vojtech said. ‘Come up with some suitable story and tell it broadly among the help here. If anyone asks, their kin have lived in Kvetná for the past… five generations.’

‘Very good, milord,’ bowed the caretaker.

The move wouldn’t make him any friends among the Nitran nobility… but it would allow him to sleep a little better at night than if he’d simply turned them over.

~~~

Vojtech 3. followed his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps in seeking an alliance with Great Rus’. He offered to renew the blood-ties through his twin sister which united him to Knyaz’ Kirill Enikeev. Needless to say, this was a proposal to which said Kirill readily agreed.

Another little venture that paid off for him in the short run was the negotiations he entered into with the relatively new stonecutters’ guild in Opava. Like most brotherhoods of its kind, the stonecutters’ guild was a rather insular, parochial organisation, jealous of its own standards of quality as well as of its exclusivity and of its rights. The Kráľ was fighting an uphill battle even in his efforts to make contact with them, let alone to do business with them. Even so, if he could undertake to negotiate exclusive contracts between the Opava stonecutters and the Crown, it would significantly ease the costs of construction of royal projects—as well as add a bit of cachet and mystique to any such endeavours.

There was always the option to delegate this task to his šafár—the ceremonial role of which fell to the Knieža of Česko. But this was the sort of dealing which Vojtech preferred to undertake in person. He took the journey himself to Opava, and went to see the new guildhall for himself.

The Merry Hall of the Fraternity of Upright and God-Fearing Stonecarvers wasn’t exactly easy to miss. The steep, swooping roof and the half-timber upper façade, built in the East Frankish style, had a large emblem out front consisting of a crossed chisel, trowel and punch-hammer. Vojtech arrived on horseback, but not in state—he was still new enough yet that his face would not be generally known, and he used this to his advantage when he entered. He was greeted at once by a young journeyman who, upon hearing that he had business with the guild elder, left him in the foyer. The Kráľ was not kept waiting long. He was led by the same journeyman through the cosy-looking and well-appointed hall toward a back room, which resembled nothing so much as a study.

The guild elder was a well-fleshed Silesian man with a short, well-trimmed beard. Dressed in a warm and sumptuous fashion, only the solidity of his shoulders and upper arms and the remnants of calluses on his hands would indicate to anyone that he was a master mason. He stood and bowed to the king as he entered.

‘Ahh, your Majesty. I’ve been expecting you.’

‘I took pains not to announce myself,’ Vojtech noted, more in amusement than in annoyance or fear.

‘Of course, liege,’ the Silesian guild elder waved a meaty hand. ‘But the Fraternity takes care to be well-informed about its guests, and it isn’t often we entertain guests of your exalted stature. Please, sit! Have some wine!’

Vojtech did sit—the chair looked, and was, remarkably comfy—and took the glass of wine that was offered. Vojtech’s palate for wine was not as developed as his mother’s had been, but he could tell that this was a fine vintage indeed: a fifteen-year dry white. This was a gesture clearly meant to put him off his guard, or else to soften a blow. Vojtech beat him to the punch.

‘I understand that the Fraternity has been having some issues with solvency lately,’ the king said. ‘There could be some… consideration made for you, if you’d agree to a set of exclusive contracts.’

The guild elder raised his eyebrows and smiled softly. ‘Would that the king were as well-informed about us as we are about him! Who says we’ve got issues with solvency?’

‘Who isn’t having issues with solvency, these days?’ Vojtech riposted. ‘Your position among the men of the town isn’t as secure as you’d like—otherwise you wouldn’t try to present such ostentation to your own guildsmen. And Opava isn’t that far removed from Brassel as you’d like, that much I know. You wouldn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of a mob.’

The little glimmer in the guild elder’s eyes told Vojtech that he’d scored a touch. ‘Those exclusive contracts you mentioned. They’d better includes some provisions for… security contingencies. If not, then we’re just wasting our time here.’

‘Security contingencies can be arranged,’ Vojtech told the elder. ‘I’m even willing to lend some of my own zbrojnoši on high-value consignments, or as a personal escort.’

‘I want it in writing,’ the elder said.

‘You’ll have it.’

‘In that case,’ came the answer after a long pause, ‘I think the Upright and God-fearing Stonecutters may be able to work out a deal with the Crown, after all. Expect me in person at the castle within a fortnight.’

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ said the king.

~~~​

‘Deep b—bends at the knees, Bertík.’

‘Li—like this?’ asked Robin.

‘Just so,’ said his mother, examining her son’s posture. ‘You want t—to t—take small steps—just in and just out of range of your f—foe. Swordsmanship is a sport of inches, not wild lunges.’

Robin’s performance in swordplay had improved by leaps and bounds since the Kráľovná had personally taken charge from Budivoj of that particular piece of his education. Adriana was no mean hand with a sword-hilt herself. Even though it wasn’t considered the most ladylike of sports, she’d still taken it up as a means of gaining respect where her tongue would fail her.

‘N—now. Strike.’

Róbert Rychnovský took a half-step forward and pushed the wooden mock-blade forward with his hands. He could tell how it came within range of his mother, who turned the blow aside with the expected block. He then moved right back as he came, out of range, as Adriana parried. The blade fell just shy of his face and chest.

‘G—good!’ Adriana laughed. ‘Little steps in and out! That’s what will m—make you a master!’

Adriana was glowingly proud of her son. Not for his growing skill with the sword alone, but also for his nobility of spirit, his strictness with himself, and his willingness to engage fairly. He still had a definite ‘eye-for-an-eye’ mentality which seemed somewhat an unavoidable flaw in him given his earlier childhood. But under Adriana’s watch, that had been tempered with a družinnik’s sense of proportion, magnanimity and protectiveness toward those who were weaker than him. She could tell he’d been taking pointers from, among other people, his father—as well as some of the zbrojnoši in the King’s personal retinue.

‘W—what’s the d—d—deal with K—Kiev, anyway?’ asked Róbert of his mother. ‘W—why do the G—Great R—Russians and Belar—r—rusians and G—Galicians all f—fuh—fight over it so muh—much?’

Adriana took her time in considering. ‘Pride, I suppose, has a lot to d—do with it. Great Rus’ and Belarus and Galician Rus’ all c—came up there. It was their sh—shared capital once upon a time. And it’s a holy city. Many saints hailed from th—there as well.’

‘And wh—who—whose cl—claim do you th—think is the truer?’

Adriana smiled. ‘Y—You’re asking a M—Moravian woman what she thinks of Ru—Russian politics. Not a smart choice. You can’t expect me to b—be fair to the G—Galicians, can you?’

Robin let out a chuckle at that. Adriana sighed.

‘I hope one d—day all the R—Rus’ will be gathered together again. That will be a g—great day.’

‘W—when will that happen?’

‘In G—God’s time, Bertík.’

 

[Midnite Duke]

Good interaction between Robin and his mother. Do you roleplay your characters or take best option? Does the stress system help with roleplaying? Would Kiev come under Ruthenia or would it remain independent with the count taking his county with him? Thanks

 

[Revan86]

Good interaction between Robin and his mother. Do you roleplay your characters or take best option? Does the stress system help with roleplaying? Would Kiev come under Ruthenia or would it remain independent with the count taking his county with him? Thanks

Good questions, @Midnite Duke. In general I try to RP my characters, even when they're jerks, like Radomír hrozný. But the stress system in CK3 certainly helps with that. If you force a character to act in a way he or she normally wouldn't, those stress points and levels add up fast. Also, as I found in this game of mine, there are some traits (like diligent and paranoid) that simply rack up stress faster than usual for the characters that have them, and before you know it? Heart attack. Or psychotic episode. I do my best not to power-game it, but there are definitely stress-killing traits (like generous or calm) that I try to go for if at all possible.

As for Kiev, I think that was a count already under Kirill's rule. If it had been successful, Kirill would have become the overlord of Kiev after that war.

Okay, last plug to all my readers for Q1 ACAs for this year!! Get in your votes!

NINE
Nîjâr’s Last Miracle
16 August 1410 – 2 August 1413
​

The Syrian physician who had taken up residence in Olomouc during Radomír 4.’s reign had become something of an institution there. Nîjâr had been on hand at the birth of the current king, and it was no exaggeration to say that it was in large part owing to her that the royal lineage had survived in the main male line. She was an elderly woman now—and age takes its toll even on those who take care of themselves well throughout their lives. The winter chill bit her more harshly than it had, and she could no longer walk great distances to make calls.

Adriana was certainly thankful to have her on hand, however. At the age of forty-two she didn’t think she would have another child after Blahomíra, but she and Vojtech were blessed. Nîjâr’s brisk, sensible but at the same time warm-hearted advice to her, caring for her throughout her pregnancy, had been key to Adriana keeping fit and strong until it came time for her to deliver. And deliver she did, with Nîjâr’s help, to a baby brother for Robin and Blahomíra, whom she insisted upon naming after his father.

Nîjâr did, truth be told, rather miss her childhood home in Damascus at times. More than once she was stricken with the wistful desire to return there. However, given the state of things there, and the constant back-and-forth battling between the various Islâmic emirates of the Levant and the Eastern Roman Empire and its loosely-affiliated despotates, she was far from sure if she ever could.

Still, she did her level best to keep up with the news from home. Visitors from the south, or pilgrims on their return journeys, were far from uncommon in the court at Olomouc, and she was rarely ever wanting for ready tongues to provide her with the latest.

The biggest news of the past two decades, in fact, had been the forging of a new realm in the south—a true rival to Moravia’s place as kingmaker in Eastern Europe. The crowns of Moldavia and Wallachia had been united under a single ruler: named Marko Sărcerazbivačnik. Although he was of an Árpád lineage—the Detvanský cadet branch, to be specific—his speech and his manners belonged to the majority Bulgarian culture. The traditional lands of the Bulgarians, the Vlachs, the Magyars, the Serbs, the Pannonian Slavs and the Dobrogean Greeks had all been gathered under his rule—and received the name of Kárpátok Birodalma: the Empire of Carpathia.

The Detvanských were yet, however, a rather fractious and quarrelsome bunch. Despite Marko Sărcerazbivačnik’s reputation as a seducer and a rake, he had died without leaving any legitimate male issue. This had left the field wide open for various uncles, cousins, nephews and Detvanský in-laws, as well as powerful nobles from around his newly-fashioned realm, to hastily draw up provenances and present their lawful claims to the crown he had forged. The current occupant of the Carpathian throne, Nitrabor Detvanský, was a son of King Vladimil 3. of Moldavia and a second cousin of Emperor Marko. And Nitrabor himself had several younger brothers waiting in the wings, either with private retinues on the build, court alliances in the offing, or daggers sharpened behind their backs.

Nîjâr took only a passing interest in the rise of Carpathia… at least at first. One of Emperor Nitrabor’s recent attempts at shoring up his own support in the Church, and at fending off challenges to his authority from within, was to found an Eastern Orthodox militant order: the Knights of the First Gospel. This rather more closely touched on Nîjâr’s interests, as the Knights of the First Gospel had already been called upon by the Despotate of Thessaly in their wars with their neighbours.

‘And d—d—does this make you happy? Or—or anxious?’ asked Adriana of her physician.

Nîjâr considered long before she answered. ‘Both, I would say. In different ways.’

‘H—how?’

The sixty-seven-year-old physician considered the open, guileless face of the Queen—the third one in Moravia she had served, after Katarína and Ermessinde. How could Adriana understand the situation of the Arab Christian? And—a more important question—how could Nîjâr herself understand it?

Her father and her brothers in the Salṭânat al-Qâhirah (confusingly named after the city in Egypt even though its capital was in Damascus) had all been scholars, going back to the days of the ’Umawîyûn. The ‘people of the Book’ in Muslim lands were often relegated to the tasks of translation and recension of classical texts—her own kin had been no exception. She had imbibed her love of learning from them. For most of her life, she had only known the dusty narrow streets of Bâb Tûmâ in the old City, and heard the mu’aḏḏin’s daily calls to prayer only from afar; the bells of the ancient Maryamîyah Cathedral where she went to pray were always much closer and dearer to her.

It was only after she had come of age and had married that she began to understand the burdens that Muslim rule had placed upon the Christians who spoke as their own the language of the Qur’ân. There was always the scepticism—sometimes polite, sometimes less so, sometimes downright hostile—from their neighbours that they were in fact agents of the Byzantines… or worse, of the Franks. There were the limits on what they couldn’t do, where they couldn’t go. There was the jizyah, which could be light or unbearably heavy depending on the moods of the Salṭân and of the public. And then there was conscription. Boys would become men, sometimes disappear, and then these disappeared would sometimes reappear in armour and with blades, praying the Muslim prayers. Boys with education were less likely to be taken for soldiers… and so the right-believing parents encouraged their boys to study hard and be literate.

But these were all known quantities. A sedate life under a Salṭân or even a Ḵalîfah, despite these evils, was in many ways preferable to an uncertain life on the run, a life where every day could bring death or separation or loss of limb, a life where cities could run up the flag of one faith one day and another the next. It was just such a life that Nîjâr had fled when she’d first come to Olomouc.

Was she unhappy with the lot of her fellow-believers under the Salṭânat? Was she worried for them? Of course she was. Submission was never as pleasant as it could be made to sound.

But it seemed a far worse fate, to her, that the wars all along the border with Thessaly and Eastern Rome were bringing upon her people. She had treated the casualties of war as they had returned from the shores she had once called her own. She doubted whether any of the men and boys whose wounds she’d nursed back to health had understood what they were fighting for, or the lives their fighting wounded and scarred. Now, Queen Adriana was a sweet and kind woman, a woman of good faith, and Nîjâr respected and loved her. But unlike Nîjâr, she had never understood what it was like to be caught in the middle between faith and language, riven in loyalties to a place she’d been exiled from for years.

‘It’s… complicated,’ Nîjâr managed. ‘If you’d like, I could discuss it with you at length sometime. I have some more good news for you, though, in the meantime. You’re a healthy nine weeks along.’

Adriana glowed. She was good at that.

‘So, you know the advice I’m about to give you, yâ Malakatî,’ Nîjâr advised her. ‘Drink plenty of fluids—but keep clear of strong drink. Sleep in the positions you practised last time. But continue exercising, by all means—don’t let the menfolk keep you unnecessarily confined, as they sometimes like to do to women in your state.’

Adriana went away from her consultation buoyant. Pregnant again at the age of four-and-forty! It was a blessing beyond what she had ever expected or felt she deserved.

That was in December. By March, however, Nîjâr was called upon for a task much direr.

‘Is she within?’ asked Nîjâr.

‘She is,’ said the guard, crossing himself. ‘I’m under orders to keep her separate from the rest of the castle for now.’

‘A wise precaution,’ said the physician. ‘But I have to go in to examine her.’

The guard stood aside from the door as Nîjâr went in. Eudoxie lay upon the bed, too weak to move, her face red from the fever she was in. Nîjâr went to her, said the usual calming words that went with being at a bedside, and began to examine her. Pulse, breathing, eyes and ears and nose.

‘Open your mouth,’ said Nîjâr.

Eudoxie did so. Nîjâr noted grimly the presence of the telltale red lesions on her tongue and lips. She knew the signs even before she examined the back of her throat. She set Eudoxie at ease, refreshed the water by her bedside, and went immediately to inform the king.

‘It’s the red plague,’ she confirmed to Vojtech. ‘Eudoxie must indeed be kept sequestered. Please give me leave to variolate the healthy inside the castle to slow the spread.’

Thanks to Nîjâr’s quick diagnosis and prompt action, the spread of the smallpox within Olomouc was contained to several dozen cases… only three of them fatal. Eudoxie herself made a full recovery, even though her skin remained marked from the infection for the rest of her days.

Nîjâr, however, spent most of those months between March and August of 6922 in a state of strenuous activity that never seemed to let up. She always took very careful precautions for herself—regularly washing her hands, and using alcohol to disinfect her clothes and instruments between each use—but she barely got any sleep. Whenever she wasn’t administering variolation to the members and the guests of the castle, she was tending to her patients and praying to God for their recovery.

She was present, however, for the birth of Kráľ Vojtech’s and Kráľovná Adriana’s fourth child, however. It was another healthy baby boy. This time, Vojtech made the final call—choosing to name the child Ostromír after his own father.

Even though she proudly made her report on the second of August that the red plague had been contained and gone into remission among everyone infected, Nîjâr herself became its last indirect victim. In the end, Nîjâr simply gave out. She went to bed at last for the night—and never again arose. She was buried with the full rites of the Church and given a place of honour in the mausoleum in Olomouc, for having served three generations of the Rychnovských with such selfless loyalty.

 

[Midnite Duke]

Negar did her duty and that of two more persons. Two late life successful pregnancies for Adriana. I hope that the boys do not create problems for Robin. Thank you

 

[Revan86]

Negar did her duty and that of two more persons. Two late life successful pregnancies for Adriana. I hope that the boys do not create problems for Robin. Thank you

It's one of those CK3 mechanics that I wonder about: reigning rulers seem to have a much higher chance of begetting children than their unlanded family, even when they're older and closer to the age of infertility. But shouldn't it be the other way around? Thanks as always for the comments, @Midnite Duke!

TEN
Fake Healer
24 February 1414 – 19 December 1414​

The death of Kráľ Vojtech 3. was, even at the time, accounted a great public loss. The inhabitants of Olomouc felt his loss particularly keenly, because his death was partially their own fault. Would the third Kráľ Vojtech have been glorified as an Orthodox saint as readily as he was otherwise? Perhaps not. But there is little doubt that he died the victim of injustice, and that he went to his death in a manner that our Lord Jesus Christ would almost assuredly have approved.

Vojtech was not an impatient man by any means. But upon Nîjâr’s death, he exhibited a haste which would come to have some grim repercussions for him personally. He wanted to find a replacement for her at once. His son had lately come of age, and would soon be marrying that frighteningly-intelligent niece of the burggreve of Roskilde. It is possible, as well, that he had been influenced by the recent death of his aunt, Svietlana, with whom he had been quite close. But whatever his motivations, he wanted a leech on hand to assist in any case that might befall—and he wanted that assistance immediately.

He had messengers sent out to scour the land for suitable candidates for the position.

The two men they brought back were two brown-bearded, middle-aged Slavs named Radomír and Ladomír. Ladomír Videnský in particular hailed from a village of Slovaks who lived in a forested valley among the rakúsy—the population that would come to be called the Lesní Slovaks. Vojtech remembered thinking that Ladomír had a keen and observant look about him that could be admirable in a physician, and so Ladomír had been the one to get the position.

Vojtech’s first impressions of Ladomír Videnský, and his judgement of the physician’s character, would soon be proven fatally mistaken.

It was several months later, just after the Liturgical New Year, as the king was going out through the town on an inspection, that an angry buzz snagged the edge of his hearing, as a jagged nail might the hem of a carelessly misplaced bit of cloth. Vojtech gave the signal to his entourage to halt, and then proceeded in the direction from which the swarming buzz came. Soon the sound unravelled, and broke into a hubbub of numerous voices. Agitated, angry shouts. A hoarse hue. There was also something animalistic in it… like a triumphant predator when it pads toward its cornered prey.

As Vojtech neared, he saw the makings of an angry mob, at the head of which came a phalanx of townsmen hauling before them a middle-aged woman who looked frightened out of her wits. The shouts had something of an ugly cast to them now—and the atmosphere was almost carnivalesque, gleefully savouring the brutality it was about to mete out upon this object of its anger.

Vojtech approached the crowd.

‘What is the meaning of this rabble?’ he asked.

‘This one,’ said one of the townsmen who had laid his hands upon the woman, ‘we found in the act of spreading the plague that’s been afflicting us all. She’s used her unnatural arts and congress with the devils to curse us and send upon us this sickness. We have the proof of it.’

Vojtech listened to this townsman at the front as he presented Olomouc’s complaints against this woman—whose name, he learned, was Živana of Tematín. Looking her over, Vojtech guessed her to be about of Adriana’s years. There was that to her features and general manner which suggested some book-learning… a trait which would clearly render her the more suspicious in the eyes of those of the town who did not have such.

It was to Olomouc’s credit that witch-hunts like this one were relatively rare. But even in Olomouc, it could be hard to account for years of economic hardship, broken by a sudden and inexplicable outbreak of smallpox. The reasoning mind has to have something to latch onto. And that which is strange and unfamiliar is seen as the source of any anomalies found elsewhere. So it was in this case.

Vojtech, hearing the proofs put forward to him, was unconvinced. (As well he might be, given that Nîjâr had stopped the rampage of the disease in its tracks up at the castle while it was still raging unchecked in the town outside.) With ceremony, the righteously-angry townsfolk made their presentations of wrappings from patients afflicted with the variola, as well as strange-smelling concoctions and various masques made from items ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous—all effects of this Živana of Tematín. At length, the Kráľ made his decision.

‘This woman will be brought to the castle for careful cross-examination, and for safekeeping until either her innocence or her guilt can be proven,’ he told the crowd. ‘Go back to your shops and to your homes. Leave matters of justice to those best fit to administer it!’

From all that anyone among the king’s retinue could tell, the townsfolk who had brought Živana forward were convinced and making ready to leave peaceably, as instructed. But crowds are not always reasonable, and there was more than a bit of muttering and dudgeon at being robbed of this chance to indulge in justified violence. From somewhere off to the right of the street, a heavy piece of brick came hurtling through the air. Later, none could be found who would admit to having thrown it.

The brick missed its intended target—the accused woman, Živana—and instead hit the king.

Vojtech fell; his scalp was broken open. Blood oozed out into a puddle on the street. The zbrojnoši who were with him at once stepped into a solid line in front of and around him, and sheltered him until he could be brought away from the scene. The throng of angry townsmen immediately broke into two as most of them made to flee and some fewer of them made to fight. The mob was little match for the trained zbrojnoši, who made quick work of anyone who came any close to the king. Whether or not Živana of Tematín survived is a matter on which all subsequent established history is silent.

Vojtech 3. was brought back to Olomouc Castle on a litter. By that time he had already lost a great amount of blood. Adriana and Róbert between them saw to it that the Kráľ was made as comfortable as possible, and that he was bandaged up as well as could be managed. But he remained senseless and unmoving throughout.

Ladomír Videnský was brought in, and left alone with the Kráľ.

A little under an hour later, though, a blood-curdling shriek echoed through the halls of the castle. It was one of the servants, who had gone in to attend the physician. At once Adriana and Róbert came running to see what had happened.

Vojtech lay motionless on his bed. One of his eyes had been completely put out, and that part of his head was an unrecognisable mass of pulp and blood. That of his flesh that had not been destroyed, had taken on an unmistakeable pallor. The king was indeed dead. And still in the room with him was the quack healer, with his hands drenched in the king’s blood.

Several long and speechless moments passed before Róbert issued two words.

‘Take him.’

Ladomír Videnský was led away under guard. Only after he was out of earshot did Adriana sink down at her departed husband’s side and weep freely. Róbert knelt beside his disconsolate mother and placed an arm around her shoulders.

The tall, stern and scholarly Archbishop of Moravia, Prokop, performed the last rites over the king’s body, and once all had been made as neat and proper with him as possible, the Archbishop made a point of having his body borne in the open through the streets of Olomouc on the road to Velehrad for his burial. At Archbishop Prokop’s word, the procession went in utter, solemn silence.

There could have been no more effective rebuke or chastisement laid upon the townsfolk of Olomouc. Olomouc had received a king of undoubted goodness and fairness—and Olomouc had slain him. Not one soul who lined the streets as the procession with Kráľ Vojtech went by dared to raise his head. Many of them wept and moaned freely.

It was not until the procession reached Velehrad that Archbishop Prokop let loose his tongue.

‘Upon the very Passover,’ thundered Prokop, ‘a mob which should have been observing the solemn remembrance came out of their homes and began baying for the blood of an innocent man. “His blood be upon us,” they cried. “We have no king but Caesar.” Moravians—what excuse do we have? How are we any different? Are we not more lawless than they, for they said “but Caesar”, and we destroyed the life of even our own king! How will we escape the greater condemnation before the Dread Judgement Seat? For here before us was a man blameless of any crime! And one among us, in a spirit of unholy anger and judgement, picked up a stone and cast it at him. Do not doubt but that this was a work of the Evil One, brothers and sisters. For who else beheld this anger and this judgement written upon our hearts and drew out of it such bitter hatred and violence! Now is the time of repentance, Moravia. You stand before the Cross now; and some of you shall depart from here chastened and justified, and others of you shall depart from here with great weeping and gnashing of teeth before the Just Judge…’

The coronation of Róbert Rychnovský—but barely turned eighteen—took place after this homily.

Despite the chastisement which had been laid upon the whole of the realm by the Archbishop for the death of the previous king, there was still substantive speculative murmuring among the ranks of the nobility there. Róbert Rychnovský was still but a youth—and a diminutive youth with a thick, slow tongue at that. He was not a figure who could command respect, and he received precious little from the lords of Bohemia and Silesia as he stammered his way through his oaths of office.

It boded not at all well for the stability of the realm, already reeling from plague and poverty, that its king should be someone so young, and with so little ability to articulate himself clearly. And yet, the greatest triumphs are forged by those who suffer adversity, for they are the ones best tempered by losses and setbacks. So it was for the new Kráľ Róbert.

Kráľ Róbert was to be the last of the medieval Moravian monarchs. He was to be the last knight-errant. And he was also to be the first of Moravia’s Renaissance men. His personal legacy as Moravia’s ruler would, in the fullness of time, come to be compared only with that of Kaloján chrabrý.

 

[Midnite Duke]

Go in peace, King Vojtech III. This had to be a shocker. What is the war? May all of Olomouc's guardians watch over King Robin. Thank you

 

[Revan86]

The Reign of Róbert Rychnovský, Kráľ of Veľká Morava

ELEVEN
The Crown and the Ring (Lament of the Kings)
19 December 1414 – 23 October 1415

Róbert looked to the crown jewels, which stood on a small pedestal in one corner of the great hall, after all the Zhromaždenie had left. Soon the guard would arrive to take them back to the Cathedral in Velehrad for safekeeping. He cast a particular glare at the crown. He had worn the thing only twice so far: once during the coronation ceremony in Velehrad, and once in court. Both times it had seemed far too heavy for his head… both in the literal and in the figurative sense.

The Crown of Great Moravia consisted of a velvet-lined cap with a 22-carat gold band and arch, with three cross-patés and the emblem of state around the band, studded with pearls, tourmalines, sapphires and spinels. The thing had been designed for Kráľ Vojtech 2. by a master goldsmith in Přerov; its every feature was embedded with some deep symbolic meaning. The three-bar cross at the apex of the arch stood for the piety which was expected of a Moravian monarch; and the emblem of the eagle in front stood for the monarch’s power; the pearls were meant to mirror the ‘pearl of great price’, the gift of the Holy Spirit; while the wine-dark spinels were the images of the blood of Christ, shed at his Crucifixion—meant to remind the king to Whom he owed his ultimate allegiance. The crown seemed something entirely forbidding to Róbert: a burden for which he was not yet ready. Róbert Rychnovský had always known that the rule of Veľká Morava would fall to him. But he hadn’t been expecting it to come to him so soon.

Why, why had his father died in such a sudden and brutal way, so shortly after his grandfather had? How had the blind malice of a mob in the town, combined with the criminal incompetence of the new physician he’d chosen, so conspired together to rob Moravia of a true paragon as its king, and Robin of the father who had cared for him and loved him? What was the reason for having taken him so soon?

He knew what Archbishop Prokop would say, and would intend as words of comfort. Death is not the end. This current life, among such great distresses and turmoils, is but a preparation for the next. The expectation of a place of blessedness and repose, from whence all sickness, sighing and sorrow have fled completely away—this is the end which one should look to. What we see on this side of the veil is but a broken and incomplete fragment of a much greater and much more wondrous whole.

Words of wisdom, all. Even so, right now, Robin had but a limited space for them. He loved Christ, and he sang each Pascha that Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by His death—and that He bestows new life, and life in its fullness, upon those who are in the tomb. But that didn’t rob the present moment of its mourning. Robin rubbed his face, which was already covered over with a fuzzy growth of rusty red curls. He would let his them grow out for the traditional forty days, and then… he would see. His father had never sported a beard—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.

With a sudden shock of realisation, Robin stood to his feet. Elisabet the daughter of Totil was to be arriving today! Róbert flung on his cape and went down through the courtyard and castle gates into the town, bound alone for the waterfront on the northern bend.

When visiting dignitaries called, it was common for them to come up to the castle to present themselves, but this time Róbert broke with the reigning custom and went out to meet his intended bride in person as she came in. For one thing, he found himself a trifle curious about how the chubby, pudgy blond girl he but half-remembered from his early childhood had turned out. And for another thing, she had departed from Sjælland long before the attack on his father, let alone hearing about his death. For all he knew, she would be expecting him to wed her once she arrived. So if he was going to insist on making her wait to marry him until the forty days were over, he wanted to be there to tell her of that contingency himself. It seemed only fair.

Róbert Rychnovský waited by the northern docks as the river barges pulled in from upstream. At last, on one such barge, there came a retinue which could only be a noble bridal party, as the hirdmen among the severané hauled ashore large lockers’ worth of treasure for a dower, and several rather formidable-looking maids stepped onto the wooden planks of the riverside quay accompanying their lady.

There was no mistaking her. That was indeed Elisabet Totilsdotter. But Robin was struck straight in the heart and in the loins, as he beheld how God’s providence had favoured the mature flower in her growth from the rather fleshy bud he remembered. Elisabet still possessed the same wheat-gold sheaf, arrayed loose in maiden fashion. The face that it framed, though, was now a shapely oval, with a glossy pair of apple-wedge lips and high arch brows. The ovoid shape of the girl who had come to Olomouc thirteen years ago, had matured into a delightful hourglass, with a slender waist and generous hips.

Elisabet’s eyes lit upon Robin, and despite his new growth of facial hair, it was clear that she recognised him at once. There was a joy in the recognition, but that joy was tempered with a look of earnest empathy. So she’d heard. She came forward to him.

‘Your Majesty,’ she courtesied. ‘I heard of your loss; my heart hurts as well. I hope I’m not overstepping my stride here. But if you need someone to speak to… a friend to listen to you, or maybe someone to take care of things around you, so you can mourn fully… I want you to know I’m here for you. I… I’d reckon a wedding-feast right now is likely the last thing on your mind.’

Robin gazed into those forthright, limpid blue pools. There wasn’t a trace of deceit or manipulation to be beheld there: she meant every word.

‘I—ah—a—I wuh—w—w—w. I wuh. W—w—wou—w—w—rrrrrgh—w—wou—’

Robin was even less fluent than usual at meeting her. He blushed with shame and irritation at himself. But Elisabeth did not even titter, or show even the merest hint of impatience. She waited with admirable composure for him to collect himself and try again.

‘Th—thank you,’ Robin managed. ‘Y—y—you’re v—very kind.’

‘Not at all,’ Elisabet told him. ‘I’m to be your wife. Your sorrows should also be mine. In truth, I’m happy you came down here to meet me yourself. I’d thought to go up to the fastness with my father’s hirdmen.’

Elisabet stepped forward and slid her hand into the crook of Robin’s elbow. A polite but decided gesture. Her hand was light and soft and cool, but it made Robin tingle all over. Thus the two of them walked arm-in-arm back to the castle. Elisabet did not tax her betrothed’s speech as they walked, but the silence she kept was a warm one. This was a consideration on her part which Róbert Rychnovský valued deeply. Instead, she rested a bit more of her weight on his arm as they walked, bringing their bodies closer together. The teenage Robin felt his heart booming like a bombard within his breast.

Robin brought her up the road to the castle, and showed her where everything was, and also showed her to the great guest house which the lords of Moravia reserved for high state officials and visiting sovereigns themselves.

‘I h—huh—hope you’ll be c—comfortable here,’ Robin told her.

‘I’m sure I shall,’ Elisabet said briskly, as she directed the hirdmen to bring in her things, ‘but it will be a while yet before I retire. What were you planning to do after seeing me comfortably settled?’

‘I must p—ppf—plan f—for the war f—f—for Kiev.’

‘Ahh!’ Elisabet’s eyes suddenly took light. ‘You will be discussing strategy?’

Robin nodded.

‘Let me come with you!’ she requested. ‘If it won’t be too much on you, that is. I’ve been known to make a manoeuvre or two myself.’

Although she clearly didn’t intend it as a double entendre, Róbert blushed nevertheless. Still, he allowed Elisabet to accompany him to the other side of the bailey and into the keep, where he would be meeting with his old (and none too warmly-regarded) blademaster, Knieža Budivoj Mikulčický. To be honest, the addition of an outside voice in this particular conference was welcome to Róbert as well.

On the table in front of Budivoj was spread a map of the Rus’ lands. Robin could make out along the southern edge of the map the marches of Moravian Podkarpatská as well as Sadec and Sliezsko. Northwards of that were arrayed the realms of Galicia, White Rus’ and Great Rus’. There were markers set up on the map which represented the armies of each of Moravia, White Rus’ and Great Rus’. At present, Budivoj was frowning over the features of the map.

‘Wh—what’s wr—r—wrong, Budivoj?’ asked Róbert.

‘The city is too well-defended,’ said the lord of Užhorod grimly. ‘Quite honestly, with our armies the way they are now, we’d be in for a chancy siege—and it would likely take over a year. Also, I don’t like that we would be reliant on lines of supply that extend through Galician territory—even if we set out through Podkarpatská. Our wagons would be easy marks for the Červeny. Also…’ Budivoj tilted his head to the side to indicate Elisabet, ‘are you sure it’s wise to have an outsider here, my liege? And a woman?’

‘Shh—sh—shh—she is my g—g—guest,’ Robin stammered. But he crossed his arms stubbornly.

Budivoj sighed. ‘Fine. Suit yourself.’

‘I s—s—still think, Budivoj, that our a—armies would be better off m—making their own l—lines of supply,’ Robin said. ‘It’s not like the Kievan lands are l—lacking in provisions.’

‘You still take the tack that petty theft and plunder can support a siege of this scale, do you?’

The Swede had been looking over the table-top map this whole time, though she didn’t miss any part of Budivoj’s situation assessment or his comment directed at her. She also noted that Robin wasn’t stammering as much now. Evidently strategy was an area in which he had confidence! ‘To be blunt, milord, in a situation like yours, an outside perspective is probably exactly what you need. Look. Your siege doesn’t even need to be this big in scale.’

‘Like hell it doesn’t,’ said Budivoj. ‘Kiev is a tough nut to crack.’

‘So it is,’ said Elisabet seriously, ‘but if you’re looking forward to besetting it for over a year anyway, truly all you need to do is block up the Dniepr and make sure to watch the gates, so that food and weapons can’t find their way to the enemy. You don’t need all your bombards, even—and iwis you don’t need all your riders set up around the town like this!’

Budivoj crossed his arms, with a condescending look coming over his face. ‘And how, milady, will reducing the number of men around Kiev shorten the siege?’

‘It wouldn’t shorten it,’ owned Elisabet frankly. ‘But freeing up more men to fend for themselves and live off the land will make it far less dear to you. In the long run, it might even save lives from sickness and hunger.’

‘Th—th—there, you see?’ Robin said to Budivoj, flashing Elisabet a smile. ‘We d—don’t have to spend so much on the siege; just enough to hole them up. We can then fuh—focus on plundering the countryside so that we don’t have to risk sending as many w—wagons through Galicia.’

‘It’s a common enough tactic on the steppes, anyway,’ Elisabet added. ‘Quite similar, in fact, to the way my own folk used to conduct war, especially along the coastlines and along rivers.’

Budivoj sighed. ‘How barbaric. And here I was thinking that, with our new tactics, we’d gotten past the need for raiding. Very well my liege, we’ll try it your way.’

‘You have a bigger worry, though, I think,’ said Elisabet.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why are Bohemia and Silesia holding their troops back?’

‘Holding them back?’

‘It seems to me from this,’ Elisabet deduced darkly, ‘that you’ve been making ready for this faring against Könugard for some time already. But I saw no gathering vanes. I fared by no troops from Bohemia or Silesia, on the river just now, coming in. They’re withholding them for something else. I think, Konung, you may have to start thinking of keeping your weapons much nearer home.’

The conversation from that point took a rather sharp turn, and Budivoj and the king began discussing how they would fend off a possible uprising from the north and west—with Elisabet again making astute comments and offering useful suggestions. By the time she left, Budivoj had grown immensely in respect for this redoubtable young Swede.

‘I’m sorry—it looks like you still won’t have the time to mourn rightly,’ Elisabet laid her hand on Róbert’s shoulder. ‘You may not get your forty days. But I will still be here.’

She leaned in and planted a kiss upon his lips, then traced the edge of his new growth of beard with one appreciative finger. For his part, Róbert was enchanted with Elisabet. Not only did she look the part of a lady, but she was also unflappably kind and fair… as well as being a solid strategist with a firm, realistic grasp of situations and the need for tactical flexibility. He would still take as many days’ grace as he could manage to mourn his father. But at the end of them he thought he could now look forward to taking a wife who promised very much to be a worthy consort and comrade as well as a bed-mate.

~~~​

‘S—sorry you had to wait for me.’

‘No, none of that, Robin. You were worth waiting for. Isn’t that the sort of thing men like to hear?’

Robin chuckled a bit. ‘You’re quite a bit d—different than I thought you’d be,’ Robin told her.

‘Different in a good way, I expect?’

‘All the good ways.’

Elisabet beamed at her new husband as she drew close to him under the sheets. The two of them were quite cosy and warm together—just the thing to be on an early January wedding-night, forty-five days into Róbert Rychnovský’s reign. She was happy. But her face still held a thoughtful look.

‘Moravia’s unlike how I thought it would be, too,’ she mused. ‘There are challenges around every corner. Untruthful lords, restless townsfolk, bower uprisings, an outland war… but I’d reckon that’s what it would be like for any lord’s wife, in any land.’

‘I didn’t r—realise it was this difficult for you,’ Robin said, stroking his wife’s cheek. ‘You could tuh—take it easier, if you wanted.’

Elisabet gave her bridegroom a playful swat. ‘You don’t know me that well yet, Robin, so I’ll forgive you for that. But for the future, you should know already that I enjoy a good challenge—provided there’s someone beside me to enjoy it with.’

Robin held her for a little while, and then let out an ‘ah’. He reached aside for a small silk bag with a drawstring, and presented it to the new queen. Elisabet took it and opened it. Inside there were two very precious things—a delicately-filigreed golden bracelet that fit her wrist just right, and also a ring: gold inlaid with silver. It was wrought in the shape of three beasts: a dragon, an eagle and a lion. The three of them sported with each other around the band, clearly in playful rather than deadly intent.

‘They’re lovely,’ she breathed.

Robin had had them commissioned for her specially prior to their wedding.

‘A m—morning-gift,’ Robin told her. ‘I thought I’d observe one of your father’s severan customs for you here.’

Elisabet hugged her husband closer. ‘I’ll hold them dear.’

 

[Midnite Duke]

Robin and Elisabet shows promise of being a marriage that Hallmark would reject as too sweet. Even though she is a genius, her stats are not that much better than Robin's. Neither are great at intrigue, but in a straight-ahead fight, Watch Out. Thank You

 

[Revan86]

TWELVE
Battle Hymn
7 November 1415 – 11 December 1417

I.
7 November 1415 – 11 December 1415

The situation in Bohemia finally exploded in the Year of the World 6925, and Moravia quickly became embroiled in a civil war that changed the face of warfare across Europe, permanently.

The hammer-stroke fell after the birth of Robin and Elisabet’s firstborn, a pretty little blonde girl named Helene. On the seventh of November that year, a messenger from Knieža Drahomír 2. of Česko appeared in court with a list of demands upon the king, including the usual complaints about taxes and the impingement upon the traditional rights of the nobility. Robin had answered those demands with a stern refusal, and not only Bohemia, but also Sliezsko, the Sámi and (surprisingly) Podkarpatská also rose up against him.

At least the nobles did. For the commoners it was a somewhat different matter.

The first to answer the summons to Robin’s aid were his uncle, Veliky Knyaz’ Kirill of Great Ruthenia; as well as Despot Ioustinianos of Thessalia, who had been betrothed to Robin’s younger sister Blahomíra. In addition, the Varangian Host was called upon to provide their aid. These traditional noble alliances still formed the backbone of Robin’s support in this civil war, at least to start with. But they would not prove to be the decisive factor.

It was at the very tail end of November, as they were just settling into the Nativity Fast, that three men came to the castle at Olomouc and presented themselves. They were welcomed inside out of the cold, and entered the hall before Kráľ Róbert. Even as they knelt before him, it was clear that two of the men were commoners. The third had a noble bearing, and was clearly a seasoned fighter—one of his eyes had been put out; it had been covered over with an eyepatch—but he was clearly subservient to the foremost one. They bore with them two vanes. One of them Kráľ Róbert recognised: the black-and-white lozengy field which belonged to the Nositelia Viery. The other was a completely new one. It bore upon it the sign of a white swan upon a field gules, with the words Правда Витязи blazoned across the top: ‘Truth prevails’.

‘W—w—well, sirs,’ Robin addressed them, ‘h—how may w—we be of ass—s—sistance to you?’

The first of the three men stood respectfully. He was a tall, big, broad-shouldered man with a stern brow and a hard, jutting jaw—clearly conditioned to a life of fighting, and probably a dab hand at outdoor blood-sport as well. His brows and beard were white, but he moved with the vigour and grace of a man twenty years younger than his face appeared to be.

‘Perhaps it is we who might be of assistance to you, lord king,’ he spoke. It was the voice of a career soldier—seasoned, used to command. But there was something in it of insouciance; he was addressing the king like an equal! ‘My name is Svätopluk Velehradský. I represent the Nositelia Viery, an ancient and righteous brotherhood of fighting men. We’re here to offer our services to you in the present struggle, in return for certain considerations.’

‘What? A mercenary company, coming to us with an offer?’ Budivoj Mikulčický stepped forward, his voice menacingly soft. ‘I hardly know what to call such impudence, but certainly it calls for a suitable reply. A toss in the muck-pile of the stables, perhaps?’

The eighteen-year-old king turned to Budivoj, a bit bewildered.

‘W—wha—what harm c—can there be in l—letting the man sp—ppf—p—pp—speak?’

‘What harm, Majesty?’ Budivoj spoke. ‘The harm is to your honour, to the good name of this whole court. What are we, beggars and cowards, that the mercenaries come to us and offer help?’

Robin looked from Budivoj to Svätopluk, and back. Eventually he sighed, and stammered out: ‘I th—th—thank you, but we all—we all—already ha—have enough mercenaries.’

Svätopluk, however, sensing the king’s indecision, pressed his advantage. ‘I don’t believe your kingship rightly understands the difficulty you’re in. This is no ordinary uprising. Both Bohemia and Silesia have fought intense battles of late against popular uprisings. Not only are their forces hardened, but they’re also flexible, and open to considerations of new tactics. They won’t observe the niceties that “noble” warfare was wont to exercise before. You need the assistance of those of us who do understand them.’

‘Wretch!’ Budivoj spat. ‘The king dismissed you, and you still have the temerity to speak? The muck-pile is too good for you.’ He motioned to the zbrojnoši. ‘Seize these men. Have them horsewhipped.’

‘St—stay where you are!’ the king shouted to the zbrojnoši. He then rounded on Budivoj. ‘If you are s—so c—cuh—concerned about my honour,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘then you will n—not order about my puh—personal ret—t—tainer!’

The zbronjoši stopped in their tracks, then returned to their posts. Budivoj bowed his head and withdrew. Robin was the king by right—he might not be used to authority, but it was his to have. This done, Robin turned to the three kneeling men.

‘N—n—new tactics, you s—say,’ Robin told them. ‘Speak up! I’m l—listening.’

‘Most of the Nositelia Viery,’ remarked Svätopluk Velehradský, ‘are Bohemian-born—like Jan Žižka here,’ he nodded to the older of the two men, the noble-looking one, with a carefully-trimmed beard, ‘and Prokop,’ he nodded here to the younger man, who had a shaven head. ‘We too are veterans of the Bohemian unrest—though some of us fell foul of the local nobles. They spread charges against us of banditry, and heresy.’

At this Jan Žižka spoke up defiantly: ‘All because we follow the teachings of Father Jan of Prague!’

That was a name that Robin recognised: Jan Hus, the priestmonk of Praha who inveighed against the depredations of the nobility.

Jan Hus (l) and Jan Žižka (r)​

‘I will be blunt with you, king,’ said Svätopluk. ‘Business is good for me, a mercenary captain. Stout men, men of towns and villages, have filled my ranks—the duties they owe to their land-owning masters being too onerous, even as they yelp and howl for lower taxes on themselves. They think us fools. But we know they step beyond their rights with us, and with you.’

‘Th—tha—that exp—pff—plains your p—pp—position quite well,’ Robin remarked coldly. ‘B—but it d—doesn’t answer my k—k—question.’

‘But it does,’ said Jan Žižka, stepping up. ‘The nobles of Bohemia learned from us. They won’t fight you in the open if they can help it. They’ll use small, harrying strikes. Hit-and-run tactics. They’ll bleed you by a thousand cuts while you’re setting up the siege.’

‘And,’ Svätopluk added darkly, ‘they may have some other nasty tricks up their sleeves. Bear in mind that Budějovice retains the most advanced knowledge in the forging of bombardy. They have also developed a “handgonne” with a serpentine lock, which fires lead shot. It’s like a smaller, narrower bombarda, but it can be used in pitched battles against personnel.’

‘You h—h—have exp—pp—perience with these w—weapons?’

‘Limited,’ grimaced Svätopluk. ‘The Bohemians among my troop are mostly townsmen and former peasants. The townsmen have experience with using crossbows—the “handgonne” sounds like a similar weapon. The blacksmiths were the ones who apprised me of the appearance of these things in battle.’

Róbert looked over to Budivoj, who gave a small, rather contemptuous shrug. He also looked aside to Kvetoslava Mikulčicková, who had been sitting back and keeping her own counsel all this time. She raised her brows expressively: the message seemed to be, ‘better these guys facing the new weapons than our people’.

Róbert turned back to Svätopluk. ‘W—what kind of c—c—considerations are you ththth—thinking of?’

Svätopluk exchanged meaningful glances with Jan Žižka and shaven-headed Prokop. Žižka gave a slow nod. Svätopluk cleared his throat and spoke. ‘We desire to set up a free town in Hradiště, in the south of Bohemia, upon the principles that are espoused by Father Jan. The Nositelia Viery already have an encampment there. Control of the local mines shall belong exclusively to us. This free town will pay a small duty in cash directly to the Kráľ—no more than two and a half percent. No other taxes shall be levied. And all members of the town will share all land and all productive holdings in common, where, as the first Christians did in the Book of Acts, each man brought what he had to the feet of the Apostles, and all was distributed as each man had need.’

‘You far overstep your mark now!’ growled Budivoj again. ‘What you are suggesting is no less than anarchy! And dare you implicate the Church in this madness of yours?’

This time Robin had to agree with Budivoj. ‘Wh—what you are pr—pp—proposing has n—never been t—tried before.’

‘No blame shall light upon your Majesty for its success or failure,’ Svätopluk answered. ‘We trust to God in heaven, in Our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the wisdom of His Apostles in this undertaking. This is merely our price: one town, in exchange for protecting the whole realm.’

Róbert knew which way his sole faithful vassals would fall on the issue, but he made his decision all the same. He nodded to Svätopluk, Jan Žižka and Prokop.

‘It sh—shh—shall be as you r—request,’ Robin said. ‘I h—hope for your s—s—sakes that you know what you’re d—doing.’

~~~​

The Nositelia Viery, when Róbert went to examine them, were a far cry indeed from the rough, dirty band of heathen cutthroats that had once faced Kráľ (then merely Princ) Jakub the Black Lion in battle. They were men of the town, most of them. Polite, well-heeled, disciplined, ready to take orders—and clearly God-fearing Orthodox, despite the rather radical opinions of their captain and his lieutenant. Most of them did indeed carry crossbows strapped to their backs, dressed in mail, carried leather quivers with quarrels and bore small side-arms like long-knives or hand-axes.

There were also with them, however, crews that manned long mobile barricades, as well as peculiar weapons that Róbert observed being wheeled into position in the courtyard. The young Kráľ inspected one of them. It looked like a smaller, lighter version of a bombarda, but it was strapped tightly to a narrow wagon-frame which in turn was mounted on a single axle with two wide wheels, one on each side. Behind the gunstock and firing-pan was something which resembled a long wagon-tongue. These things were not nearly as ponderous as bombardy, as one man could pick up the tongue and wheel the weapon forward, as well as adjust the height of fire from straight on up to nearly a sixty-degree angle, by sliding the tongue in and out along the length of the wagon-frame.

‘Wh—what are these?’ asked Róbert of Jan Žižka.

‘A nice little surprise for the nobles,’ the one-eyed Žižka smiled, jutting out his cleanly-trimmed beard. ‘Some of the Budějovice blacksmiths specialising in gonnes are sympathetic to our cause; these are their latest innovation. They’re mobile gonnes which can be used either to besiege fortresses or to fire into formations of personnel. I’m thinking of calling them houfnice.’

Róbert traced an appreciative finger over the gunstock. He couldn’t deny that he was eager to see them in action. Soon enough he would get that opportunity he wished for.

The troops under Róbert’s command, including the Nositelia Viery and the Varangians under Captain Igor as well as the Moravian regulars, marched northward from Čáslav through the November chill, into the very heart of the recent peasant rebellion against the Bohemian nobles—Hradec. It was clear to see that the lozengy field of the Nositelia was welcome among the locals here, even if the king’s men weren’t particularly. Local village women would come out to give food and snacks and beer to the Bohemian mercenaries, who were considered to carry with them the hopes of the peasantry.

Knieža Budimír Mikulčický, as his liege’s maršal, was placed in charge of the entire contingent. He rode the mercenaries hard at first, sparing not one occasion to berate them or upbraid them for faults, no matter how venial. But with a couple of exceptions, the mercenaries seemed to take it in stride. They kept up with Budimír’s demands. Robin came up to Budimír on the road while they were at rest.

‘What d—d—do you th—think of them, Budimír? The N—N—Nositelia.’

‘They’re… competent,’ Budimír allowed, grudgingly. ‘If not for the presumption and insouciance of their captain and his unit commanders, I’d consider hiring them in my own troop.’

They marched until they came to the village of Jaroměr, on the second of December. There they noted the camp of Drahomír and his assembled uprisen noblemen. The Nositelia made to wheel up the armoured barricades in front of their lines of gonnes. The man in charge of the deployment of houfnice was a half-Bohemian, half-Silesian of burgher stock named Tadeáš of Přemkóv. Young, burly, ruddy-faced and brown-bearded, Tadeáš was one of Jan Žižka’s trusted lieutenants—and it soon became clear why. Tadeáš was a solid, calming presence among the Nositelia, and he exuded a gruff competence. Here as before, the Nositelia were particularly welcome among the villagers of Jaroměr, such that even the bowers and young men of Jaroměr pitched in to help set up the barricades and wheel houfnice into the proper position.

The loyalist side relied heavily on the mercenary footmen and crossbowmen; there were only four družinniki and a handful of horse-riders besides. The Bohemian nobles brought far more in terms of champions, as well as of numbers. Robin saw easily from the size of the enemy camp that the Bohemian nobles had them outnumbered by a margin of over ten thousand men.

But as soon as they came within range, Tadeáš of Přemkóv barked an order from behind the barricades, and there was a great clap of thunder and plumes of smoke trailed upward from between the sections of barricade. A split second later, the forward charge of the enemy infantry was thrown into confusion as sprays of earth erupted up among them. Bodies and pieces of bodies went flying. Robin knew the wreckage that bombardy could do against masonry and earthworks… but this was his first time seeing a barrage of artillery fire ploughing into a line of advancing infantry. It was horrible to countenance, but at the same time there was a kind of grim majesty to it. The thunder of black powder was the hymn of battle for the Moravian line as the houfnice killed with power.

It wouldn’t be enough, though. Robin could see that straightaway. The Bohemian infantry opposing them were simply too many, and there were still standards around which the advancing troops could rally and recoup strength to gain further ground. It would take the gunners some time to reload for the next volley, and the gun officers were holding off the order until another round of fire could be set off all down the line.

Svätopluk Velehradský approached the king. ‘I think we may be in luck, king. I recognise the enemy commander’s device: he’s from the northeastern Silesian marches, Záviš of Kladsko. He is advanced in years, but his battlefield experience is… modest at best. He may have the superior numbers, but if we can keep him engaged, we should be able to hold out here until reinforcements arrive.’

‘I sh—shall lead the horse r—r—riders ou—out,’ the king gave a stiff nod.

The hardened mercenary looked the young king up and down; his expression was caught somewhere between tolerant scepticism and admiration. ‘A fine gesture, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘But—if you’ll pardon me—a frontal cavalry charge now, right into the houfnice’s line-of-fire, would be ill-advised. Better to shore up the defences and afford the barricades as much additional cover as possible. Do you have reinforcements coming?’

‘Th—they should b—b—be here in a m—matter of days.’

‘Well, then,’ the mercenary captain said, ‘let’s do our best to hold out until then.’

Záviš of Kladsko made little forrader against Robin’s men during the rest of that day. On the day after that, as well, he was held off by the Nositelia’s defences. But on the third day Záviš managed to find a vulnerability in the houfnice’s field. The barricades had been set on an incline, and below a certain angle they couldn’t fire. The nobles filed their troops beneath the incline, where the mobile artillery couldn’t keep blasting at them.

Jan Žižka cursed volubly. Robin could see the problem at once—if the noblemen were able to mount the incline and storm the barricades, the mobile cannonry would be all but defenceless and useless, save for the handful of foot soldiers that had been left guarding the gun crews. Róbert ordered an infantry charge down the incline. He gripped his hammer and accompanied them. The same problem had been foreseen by Tadeáš of Přemkóv. He formed up his men into a tight wedge and made to catch the nobles’ advance in a pincer together with the king’s infantry charge. But he was far closer than Robin was. The two armies clashed.

Tadeáš held his wedge of the incline bravely. But sheer numbers were not on his side; he was outnumbered three-to-one. Still, the nobles were not able to advance any closer to where the houfnice were on his account. Robin had just made it to the line of contact when he saw Tadeáš himself fall beneath the enemy’s spear-points.

It was then that the reinforcements showed up—including the bulk of the Moravian družinniki. Záviš of Kladsko was forced to abandon the engagement taking place on the hill slope to avoid being completely overrun. But to a certain extent, it was too late. One of the Moravian gentry, Ludovít, had already stormed the banners of the nobles’ right flank, and though he came off the worse for wear, it was still better than what became of Boleslav on that flank, who was skewered and trampled by the Moravian flanking action.

They had held. And Tadeáš had sacrificed himself to keep the houfnice from falling into enemy hands.

The battle of Jaroměr was won. And Robin himself took special care to note the new tactics that the use of these mobile gonnes demanded: by themselves, the artillery were vulnerable; they needed a line of infantry alongside and in front of them. But the effects of the houfnice shot were terrible and mighty indeed.

 

[Midnite Duke]

Four centuries later, the lessons of charging embedded artillery would not be learned. I am already having withdrawal pains as Robin is our last character. Thanks