The Elder Lands

INTERLUDE

TO WAGE WAR

Grim trod the uneven forest floor with caution that was only known to himself. For he wasn’t as familiar with these woods as his people. From the corner of his eye, he saw the young clansmen marching around him striding through the roots and undergrowth as though they weren’t there. Not him though, for he had not seen this land for decades. After his rite of passage, he’d sailed to the Far East with his father on a doomed trading expedition. They’d made it to those far lands in the end, but they’d learned enough not to tempt fate and try to sail back. They’d learned why the Union’s trade routes through Mer waters were the only ones to ever exist.

Still, being stranded on such a vast land had come with its own benefits. He doubted he would’ve now been a leader among his people if he hadn’t experienced the wars of those distant realms. To become a lieutenant in a renowned mercenary company, one needs a head for warfare, as his captain had told him before elevating him to the post.

In the end, he’d still longed for home, and so he’d left the company where he’d bled beside brothers he wouldn’t trust with a copper. It hadn’t taken long to find a Union ship heading to the Elder Lands. He’d bought passage on it and returned home.

Perhaps he’d been too expectant of his people, for when he’d returned, he’d found everything quite the same. Seasons and eras changed, but the clansmen were ever unchanging. Seasonal raids had continued unabated, since before he’d been born and to this day. Meager gains from pillaging the border settlements were considered victories when twice as many clansmen as enemy soldiers fell in battle. Years and years of strife repeated in an unending cycle of minuscule but real defeats for his people.

Grim didn’t want a decisive victory, for he was not unwise enough to believe there was room for one anymore. The Northerners were too powerful, too entrenched, too expansive to defeat. He simply wanted to redraw the battlefield, so that he may find as big of a victory as his people could carve out. And yet, he’d found his people set in their ways, unwilling to change their senseless beliefs, unwilling to fight for small victories when, instead, they could daydream of major triumphs. The clansmen had settled into an illusion of accomplishment through the trifling scrapes they delivered upon the Northerners every year, much like a man hallucinating grand conquests on moonshine.

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They refused to let go of their grand ambitions of ‘liberating’ the ancestral lands. It was irony itself that their way of refusing was worthless raids that only gave border nobles reason to exist.

So Grim had spent the last two years ranging among the clans for support, studying the enemy, as one ought to. And now he finally had his support, and his study of the enemy was soon to bear its fruit.

He’d once hoped to win the veterans to his side with his experience and attainable pursuits. But the world often made a jest out of one’s hopes. And in the end, he’d earned the support of the younger clansmen. Perhaps they wanted true change, or more likely, this was their rebellion against their elders. He wasn’t without support among the veterans, for he didn’t think one could succeed without it, but his efforts were often hampered by the Priests of the Mountain.

Fortunately, the Bear’s recent failure and fall had won him momentary sway over most of the clansmen. His older rival had supposedly fallen at the blade of a renowned Northern knight while foolishly spearheading the raids he’d incited.

Now the Priests, who’d blessed the Bear’s pursuit, were at a loss, and at last, Grim had his moment.

So he now trudged through the forest, pretending that his tardiness was due to his bearing as a leader instead of his unfamiliarity with the terrain.

Then as suddenly as his thoughts left him, Grim broke through the treeline to the sound of running water. In front of them was the bend of a mighty river. Realms in lands far and near relied on rivers like this one for their survival, as veins from which their lifeblood flowed. Grim walked forward until he came upon the ford in the river and knelt down, cupping the water in his hand.

His predecessors knew how to fight, but they knew not how to wage war. For when one decides to wage war, everything is a weapon.