The Northern Wars

NERO FOREST, AHGLOR

Winter, 1E77

Robin trekked through the rough hilly terrain of the Ahglorian woodlands in pursuit of the caribou herd he’d been pursuing for three days, northeast of his home in Olenor. The land was covered in dense pine and fir tree woods and small ferns and thorny underbrush grew between them. The ground was covered in dead leaves and pine needles and it was flattened where the caribou had run through, sometime late in the night during the storm. He followed the caribou trail as quickly and quietly as an elf- the dead wet leaves gave way without sound beneath the soles of his hemp shoes as he ran along on his northerly course. The path he followed was sunken into the ground and the land rose two and a half feet on either side of the three foot wide path that he traversed. His path was walled-in by the thick growth of trees that surrounded him and the caribou route twisted and turned periodically as he navigated it.

Brambles hung inches above his head like a natural tunnel formed by the trees of the forest and Robin passed through the trail hot on the tail of his prey. The tracks were half a day old and he'd been on the hunt for three; with each step he took he closed the gap between himself and the herd he sought after. The wind was cold and breezy, though there was no snow this far south in Ahglor. He was a day’s journey south of the village of Norwei, though he couldn’t count the leagues between himself and the village straight as the crow flies. The trail continued north towards the village of Norwei and near the end of his day’s journey the herd suddenly diverged from the road entirely. The tracks headed easterly away from the outskirts of the Ahglorian village, taking Robin in the direction of the coast. After some time, Robin came across a rock face that stretched twenty miles out eastwards; further east the sloping lands declined to water level where the rock-face ended as a cliff at the edge of the sea.

Just a few miles away from Robin the tracks led to a pile of crumbled rocks that served as a stairway upon the flat top of the rocky plateau. Robin climbed the stairway and sought out the tracks on the moss eaten rock surface with some difficulty. He could only just make out the tracks, but he saw enough to follow them as they took a sharp turn northwest from the stairway once they'd cleared the perimeter of Norwei, now safely behind them a ways. Robin's home in Olenor was now three hundred miles southwest of him and his prey was roughly an hour ahead. Robin continued to close the distance between himself and the herd; as he tore through the woods he could feel his heart racing, pumping full of adrenaline in the midst of his hunt for the prized caribou at the end of his journey.

He ran deeper into the heart of the forest and as he drew closer to the centre it began to thin out. The land sloped down closer the the centre, forming a punchbowl valley in the clearing filled with dead yellow cord-grass. The caribou herd lazed about in the sunken gulley. There was a little pond full of the rainfall of past night's storms in the area where it had pooled and some of the caribou present drank from it lazily. The weather was cool, but it was good for a midwinter day. Robin grasped his spear in his hand and crept through the valley. Infiltrating the caribou herd, he kept low to the ground under the tall lanky grass that provided him with cover in the small gulley. Marking his target, the huntsman drew a deep breath and took aim before throwing his arm forward and releasing the shaft. The spear flew straight and true; its sharpened granite head embedded into the shoulder of a great eight foot tall caribou. The massive beast staggered and stumbled before falling to the ground.

With the death of one of their own, the herd bolted and fled as the birds of the wood took to the skies. Robin approached the fallen caribou and skinned it before stripping the corpse of as much meat as he could carry, wrapping the hunks of meat in leaf satchels to put in his pack. He left the rest for the brown bears of the North, as well as the foxes and snow wolves that would scavenge the remains as time passed by. He took the fur hide to sell in the Legion marketplace along with the excess meat that he wouldn’t need for the next year. Once everything was gathered up in his leather pack he took a pipe from the pouch he carried at his side and filled the bowl with sticky green cannabis buds.

Once the bowl was packed, Robin struck a match to light the pipe; puffing heavily on the pungent herb that burned within. Upon taking several drags of the crude smoking device, he began the journey back south to his home in Olenor. There he would drop off his year supply of meat and see his son Niko before undertaking the journey south into the Calais marketplace. Niko was Robin’s only son; his wife Marta died giving birth to their child and Robin raised Niko on his own. Never having remarried, he still mourned the loss of his wife- even fourteen years later. Robin was sixteen then, and now he was the wise age of thirty, still as nimble and agile as he was when he was a lad, though he'd grown wiser with the additional years of experience.

Withdrawing a pastry from his pouch, Robin took bites of it between tokes- enjoying the savoury morsel with his smoke on the long walk home. The bowl cached after a while and the pastry was reduced to no more than crumbs shortly thereafter. In his pack there was two hundred pounds of meat, as well as the thick hide that weighed him down heavily. The pack stretched at the seams and Robin hoisted it up every so often when it began to droop from his shoulders. The slings dug into his shoulders on the long and arduous hike home, though he grinned and bore it nonetheless. Eventually he reached the rock face from before and clambered back down the stony stair onto the coastline of the North Sea. Fom there he made his way southwest in a straight track towards the village of Norwei.

Upon reaching Norwei, Robin would proceed south towards his home in Olenor where he would leave his meat to dry and cure before continuing further south to Calais. There he would sell the rest of the meat to the vendors in the high street. He carried one hundred pounds for himself and another hundred for the market. Caribou meat was an expensive delicacy in Legion, though they were rather stingy when it came to paying the hunters of the north for their game. Robin guessed that they would probably pay him one gold coin for each of the ten pound satchels he carried for sale in his pack. That rounded up to one silver piece per pound of meat, which they would probably sell at a gold coin for each pound sold to the people of Calais. The price the imperial merchants paid the northern huntsmen already included the deduction of the sales tax and importation fee from their total payout.

It didn't really matter to Robin or the hunters of Ahglor however; they had little use of gold. They lived off the land, farming and hunting. So it was that they spent their gold on tools and luxuries in the Legion towns with the gold they earned via selling their own excess in the high street markets. Throughout Aerbon gold, silver, and copper were circulated as currency throughout the land; one gold coin was worth ten silver pieces, and a silver piece was of equal value to ten copper pence. The economy was only growing worse in Legion, however; in Avon the Ahglorians there complained of rising taxes while his fellow hunters of the North spoke amongst themselves of the cheap payout for their hunts. The people of Legion were a poverty stricken people, though the merchants and shop-keeps only seemed to be getting richer- filling their pockets with the toils of the working class.

After some time he reached the outer ring of tents and squats that the people of Norwei occupied on the outskirts of the northern village in the east of Ahglor. There were some small log cabins that served as farmhouses surrounded by what would soon be fields of tobacco and cannabis in the Spring and the people wandered about the village. All around meats were being hung to dry out and there were tents spaced far apart in the fields that they occupied. Norwei was a small village, mostly of tobacco farmers and hunters, and they had little to do with the outside world. Robin made his way through the village, greeting passer-bys as he came across them whilst he walked towards the main southern path to Olenor.

The paths of Ahglor were a series of numerous intertwined paths that connected the various tribal communities of the Northland, and there were several variations of the same path due to the migratory nesting of the Northern Hornet- a relative to the Lion Hornet, native to the Ahglorian countryside. The roads diverged from one another to provide alternative routes in instances where the hornets burrowed into the path, sparing travellers the misfortune of becoming a victim to the deadly swarms of nesting hornets. The Northern Hornet was smaller than the Lion Hornet, only three to five centimetres long, about the size of a human thumb, but their sting was extremely painful and caused rapid skin deterioration around the area of the wound.

The path Robin took continued further south into the town of Avon where it turned into a cobblestone road that led into Legion. He would take that road to Calais, and there he would sell his prized goods for gold to spend in the town before he departed the next day. Robin wanted to take a detour however, into the elven lands of Aenor to seek out the news of their country. The reports had been growing darker over the passing years, worsening with each visit Robin made on his annual journeys south in Autumn, occasionally making a second yearly trek in the Winter. Elves had been reported missing all along the eastern coast in the towns of Faen, Arden, and Aenos in the Aryan Forest. Eastern Aenor was the main hub of the elves of Northern Aerbon; the capitol of their lands being the port town of Arden. They were ruled by a chieftain and represented by a council of clan chiefs throughout the country who convened at the capitol to discuss matters of national importance.

Last year Robin heard that the number of missing elves was somewhere in the hundreds, having initially started off with cradle snatchings in the night roughly five years ago. In the Autumn just passed a body had washed up to shore, followed by several more in the ensuing weeks, and the elder council was summoned to convene in Arden to discuss their next course of action. Robin was long gone before the council had even had the chance to convene and so he missed out on the tidings. He generally only made the two annual trips south, travelling to the elvish country of Aenor in Autumn to barter his excess cannabis from the harvest in exchange for the much sought after Aenorean Absinthe whilst making trips to Legion during the winter season to sell the excess of his yearly hunts.

Absinthe was the main export in the country of Aenor and it was considered to be priceless. It was made with the highly hallucinogenic bark of the Groot tree, exclusive to the Aenorean coastline. The elves traded their absinthe solely with the Ahglorian tribesmen in exchange for the premier cannabis of their lands. The men of Legion greatly desired the Ahglorian herb and their king was crazy for the stuff, but the people of Ahglor refused to do business with the stingy people of the Northern Kingdom. The people of Avon paid tax to the Legion king, but they also shared the border-town with the Legionaries and their people often intermarried.

As Robin made his way south a traveler waved to him from ahead, travelling in the opposite direction directly towards him. Robin returned the wave and called out to his fellow kinsman. The tribal shouted back, declaring that the path ahead was infested by a great swarm of hornets a ways ahead. He claimed that it stretched out to encompass two of the outlying alternative routes. He told Robin that he would have to travel at least five or six kilometres out of his way to avoid the nasty pests. Robin cursed his luck but accepted the facts and thanked the fellow traveler. Tribesmen often left warnings behind at the discovery of dangerous conditions, usually in the form of a cloth nailed to a tree post or tied around a branch. When the conditions were discovered to be cleared the signs were removed, but in this case the nest was fresh and Robin marked the trail from his end, though the other end would have to be marked at it was discovered by whoever took the route north.

Robin trekked through the mountainous forested countryside and enjoyed the peaceful walk with a bowl, soon forgetting the detour for what it was. The sun shone bright in the sky and the land was full of life. Birds chirped in the trees, foxes hung around between the great firs and pines that covered the hills of the North, snow hare hopped about through the tall grass that grew in the wood avoiding the keen eye of the fox, and Snow Wolves roamed the forest like kings, hunters in their own right. They were even known to kill lone travellers, though Robin was prepared in the event of a Snow Wolf attack, rare as they were. Robin merrily puffed on his pipe as he travelled south, away from the cold midwinter hills of Norwei and towards the warm summertime fields of the Legion countryside. Legion was closer to the midlands than Ahglor, making it a country with a mildly warm weather climate throughout the year whilst Ahglor experienced more exaggerated diverse seasonal conditions throughout the year.

Upon reaching his home in Olenor, Robin gathered together what he would be taking on his trip into Calais after hanging his own choice meats to dry whilst he was away. He smoked a bowl with his son while going about his business, telling the youth that he would be back soon. The trip to Calais would take him three days if he didn't stop in Avon on the way, and once he sold the meats in Calais he could make the trip to Selene in just two more days, promising to bring his son back a souvenir from the elf realm after a three day journey back up North with the lightened load. Niko asked when he would be able to make the journey South for himself and Robin laughed. After a moment's thought he told his teenage son maybe in the upcoming Autumn after the harvest, but reminded the excited Niko that he had to take care of their plants for there to be anything to harvest.

"It isn't even close to spring-time yet; it's still to early to even think of planting the seeds!" Niko laughed in his turn as he took a long drag on the pipe.

"Before you know it Spring will be upon us, and you're going to have to learn to take up the farm when I'm gone." Robin replied. His son Niko was still just a boy, only fourteen cycles of age, "Soon enough you'll be a man- hunting caribou for yourself."

"Why wait? If a season is nothing then what is another two cycles in comparison?" Niko laughed, rebutting and garnering a laugh from his father, who opted to brush the comment off.

His son shared his dark hair and fair skin, as did the majority of the Northern tribes, some of the Southerners in Avon were mixed between brown haired and brown eyed like their kin in the North, and golden haired with blue eyes like the people of Legion. Some Legionaries married into the tribes and the marriages were commonplace on both sides of the border. Avon was like a border-town between Legion and Ahglor, and the peoples mixed in together in the town freely and there was a universal peace between the citizens of the town. Some of the Legion families and mixed marriages even paid taxes to King Louis Delaunay IV in Legion, whilst the tribesmen of Ahglor paid taxes to none and lived freely off of the lands that sustained them for the meantime.

Niko was reluctant to see his father depart so soon only just after arriving, but he knew that Robin had to make the trek to Calais. His father took the pack filled with the prime ribs and caribou steaks and tenderloin neatly wrapped in leaf satchels tied shut with hemp rope, and the thick fur hide cut clean from the caribou and hoisted it upon his shoulders. The hide would eventually be turned into exquisite fur women's coats to be sold in the Legion marketplace once he sold the hide to a trader who would then sell it to a clothing designer somewhere in the capitol, probably France or Dunkirk, where it would then be crafted into a fashionable fur coat to be sold for hundreds of gold coins. Robin would probably get a fair price for the hide from a trader in Calais; they paid him fifty gold coins for the fur pelt last Winter.

With everything packed Robin was ready to go and he said a final farewell to his son; Niko wrapped his arms around Robin's thick shoulders before his father turned to leave. His son watched behind him for a moment as Robin puffed away on his pipe down the dirt road that led South with his bulky backpack full of meat and a thick fur pelt, humming as he walked down the bright road in the cool morning breeze. There was frost on the ground and not a cloud in the sky; Robin arrived home late last night and slept in his own bed at home with Niko before he awoke that morning to prepare for his journey. Now he was off, trotting down the wide open expanse of land between himself and Avon, which he would cross through without any distractions on his venture to Calais town.

The lands were relatively flat in Southern Ahglor. There were rolling hills, divided by the River Amstrel that split the country in half from north to south, and there were some trees the lined the eastern coast, but there was no major rise or fall in the land at all. Legion was totally flat as far as the eye could see in comparison to the hilly lands of Ahglor in the North; trees dotted the plains sparsely whilst small forts, outposts, and castles bloomed out of the bare grassy grounds. Nature gave way before man in the imperial kingdom; farmlands stretched for miles in any direction and roads separated the land like a visible boundary line. Villages and towns dotted the country and castles stood tall and proud upon the flat lands of the imperials.

Robin tapped the ash out of his pipe and stomped out the embers upon the ground and replaced the bowl to his pouch before returning to the adventure at hand. The caribou meat and hide weighed him down, but it was only a minor drag on him; he took the path quicker than a normal man, though an elf would outrun him still, even if the elf carried the same burden that Robin bore upon his shoulders. Ahglorian men were superior to their fellow man; they were faster, stealthier, and more hardy than normal men, and they were well trained in surviving the harshness of living at one with nature. Robin was thirty cycles old, and he was exceptional even amongst his own people in his physique.

There was little traffic on the southern path to Avon; most of the Southerners took some variation of the north-western path into Amstrel from Avon. Olenor was a small community of hunters and fisherman and there was little of interest to outsiders of the small south-eastern tribe of Ahglor. Avon was a mix between the quiet village life of northern Ahglorian tribesmen and the busy town life of southern Legion citizens that inhabited the border town separating the two countries in a grey border that passed through the city. Robin could see the town on the horizon; smoke lingered in the air above the small black dot that sat on the horizon on the line that split the earth and sky. He was about halfway between Olenor and Avon and at his current pace he would probably close the distance by early evening.

He pulled another pastry out from his travelling pouch and bit into a ready cooked sausage roll baked in Olenor town with the wheat and pigs that thrived in their village. He had a couple pork pies left for supper as he passed through Avon on the cobblestone road that led into Legion where he was heading. The sun was setting when Robin reached the border town; it was growing dark in the winter's early sunset and he did not see any of his friends in the town outside, and so he spoke to no one as he passed through the town. There were log cabins on the northern side of town, and in the town centre they blended in together with the stone houses that comprised the southern half of Avon Town. The town centre was dotted with markets and the stalls of vendors that sold Legion goods imported from the Wine Coast and the Southeast of Legion from places like Lyons and Veinos. The shops were closed for the night however and light poured onto the street from the windows set in the walls of tavern rooms that overlooked the town centre.

Robin ignored the tavern's call to his weary feet as he continued through the town and onto the cobblestone Legion streets. They stretched across the southern lands like veins beneath the skin, connecting the various cities that dotted the countryside. The cobblestone road was wide enough for one horse-drawn wagon to travel on either side of the road and there was even enough room for a man to walk alongside the carriages on both sides. It was the general rule of the land that one walk on the outside of the left-hand side of the road whilst horse-drawn carriages rode on the right side in the middle. This allowed pedestrians on foot to see the carriages coming from in the distance and gave them ample time to get off the path and out of the way if necessary.

As it was, there was no traffic on the road and it was only growing darker in the chill of the night. It wasn't too bad in the northern reaches of Legion; the air was cool and the breeze was just a bit chilly, but overall the weather was nice for that time of night. The same could not be said of Ahglor in the North; there was probably already frost setting upon the ground Robin thought to himself as he walked the road under the light of the moon and stars in the heavens above. The town of Calais loomed in the distance like a small pinprick of light and soon grew in size until it looked like a miniature sunset upon the horizon. Before long Robin found him at the heart of the small town and the lamp posts glowed warm red in greeting.

Wearily, he made his way to a tavern and rented a small room overlooking the town centre for the night. From the window in his candlelit room Robin could see the small myrtle tree that grew in a bed surrounded by a ring of stones in the park that Calais built itself around. The room was rather bare, Robin had only brought five silver pieces with him for the journey; that was all he had left of the last Winter's bounty. Robin spent three silver pieces on the room and he would probably spend the rest in the morning on a breakfast before he sought out the butcher. The room was empty except for a bed. It was a five foot by five foot room and the bed was five feet long and three wide. Upon entering the room dropped his pack on the ground before collapsing on top of the bed where sleep proceeded to envelope him.