Pawns and Queens--A 15th Century Gwynedd Story--Chapter Fifteen

[Laurna]

Evie, As you may know, I do love a good Haldane Ritual. I must say that this is one of the best I have ever read. Very nicely done. And the events in the days that followed were good. I am glad to hear that Colin's mother is finally learning to accept that she has a grandson, regardless of the marital status of the boy's parents.

[Evie]

Evie, As you may know, I do love a good Haldane Ritual. I must say that this is one of the best I have ever read. Very nicely done. And the events in the days that followed were good. I am glad to hear that Colin's mother is finally learning to accept that she has a grandson, regardless of the marital status of the boy's parents.

Thank you! It's always such a struggle for me to write the ritual scenes, so I'm always glad to know if I've managed to pull it off successfully.

There's nothing like knowing your son is headed off to war and not knowing for certain if you're ever going to see him again that tends to give a mother a clearer sense of perspective. No matter how much Soraya might disagree with some of Colin's choices, she wouldn't want to risk losing him without trying to bridge the rift between them before she misses her chance.

[tmcd]

Oh, Evie.

Anyway.

[Torval] was finally spotted stepping off a barge on the Beldour River along with a force of fighting men of unknown origin.

You're probably amused that I'm commenting on things that were probably addressed last year 2 episodes later. Does this look like the face of someone who cares?

Gwynedd should have some notion of the size of the force, because it was probably substantial -- or why would Torval bind himself in an alliance if he didn't get a good profit out of it right away?

Then the question: where could he get a sizeable force of "unknown origin" and get them through Beldouria? The states south of the Southern Sea are divided and maybe some are weak, but that makes it even more crucial that they keep track of warbands entering their lands -- excuse me, a substantial band of mere peaceful merchants who have scars and watchful eyes, and who clink mysteriously when they march, and who mysteriously don't have much goods to sell.

So marching them through someone else's lands seems riskier than not: they might end up fighting a suspicious land, or at least be noticed when Nur Hallaj (say) suddenly locks down the castles off their main road. It seems likelier that they were gotten in a land directly on the Southern Sea, because they could sail pretty directly.

So the top candidates are Beldouria (if royal control is so lax), Tralia / Orsal (ditto), Bremagne, Jimmy Fallon, Logreine, Vezaire, ... and Joux. One guess for Suspect #1.

Add to that Cecile of Joux being married off in Torval's neighborhood. Eistenmarke is literally the farthest possible realm from Joux. Joux+R'Kassi or Joux+Jimmy Fallon (for example) would at least allow getting troops from one to the other.

For a modern example: it would be like 15th C Finland (if it were sovereign and powerful) allying with the Ottoman Empire in terms of practicality. There would be a long handoff for any payoff. Unless they were attacking the same target: Poland-Lithuania or Russia, in this example. (In reality, Britain supported the Ottomans so they could both hinder the Austrians and Russians; Britain allied with Japan so they could both hinder Russia.)

So I think, even knowing only what Gwynedd knows, they know enough to be giving Joux the hairy eyeball and ringing the alarm bell louder for Orsal right now rather than some indefinite future (against Joux, but also to keep an eye out for some other troop source in case their guess were wrong).

[tmcd]

BTW, what is Cinhil sick from?

[Evie]

Oh, Evie.

Anyway.

[Torval] was finally spotted stepping off a barge on the Beldour River along with a force of fighting men of unknown origin.

You're probably amused that I'm commenting on things that were probably addressed last year 2 episodes later. Does this look like the face of someone who cares?

Gwynedd should have some notion of the size of the force, because it was probably substantial -- or why would Torval bind himself in an alliance if he didn't get a good profit out of it right away?

Then the question: where could he get a sizeable force of "unknown origin" and get them through Beldouria? The states south of the Southern Sea are divided and maybe some are weak, but that makes it even more crucial that they keep track of warbands entering their lands -- excuse me, a substantial band of mere peaceful merchants who have scars and watchful eyes, and who clink mysteriously when they march, and who mysteriously don't have much goods to sell.

So marching them through someone else's lands seems riskier than not: they might end up fighting a suspicious land, or at least be noticed when Nur Hallaj (say) suddenly locks down the castles off their main road. It seems likelier that they were gotten in a land directly on the Southern Sea, because they could sail pretty directly.

So the top candidates are Beldouria (if royal control is so lax), Tralia / Orsal (ditto), Bremagne, Jimmy Fallon, Logreine, Vezaire, ... and Joux. One guess for Suspect #1.

Add to that Cecile of Joux being married off in Torval's neighborhood. Eistenmarke is literally the farthest possible realm from Joux. Joux+R'Kassi or Joux+Jimmy Fallon (for example) would at least allow getting troops from one to the other.

For a modern example: it would be like 15th C Finland (if it were sovereign and powerful) allying with the Ottoman Empire in terms of practicality. There would be a long handoff for any payoff. Unless they were attacking the same target: Poland-Lithuania or Russia, in this example. (In reality, Britain supported the Ottomans so they could both hinder the Austrians and Russians; Britain allied with Japan so they could both hinder Russia.)

So I think, even knowing only what Gwynedd knows, they know enough to be giving Joux the hairy eyeball and ringing the alarm bell louder for Orsal right now rather than some indefinite future (against Joux, but also to keep an eye out for some other troop source in case their guess were wrong).

The barges with the "fighting men of unknown origin" were of course the ones that conveyed Torval, Cecile, Remy, and Remy's men-at-arms up the Beldour River to Nordmarcke. They were traveling upriver in the guise of merchant barges (and IIRC they were flying Beldourian colors at the time), not marching anywhere until they were safely within the borders of Torval's own kingdom, so for the intelligencer in Nordmarcke who happened to be in the right place at the right time to see them disembarking and realize who Torval was and that he had a heck of a lot of unknown armed dudes with him, that's all the info he's got. No one in Joux telegraphed him to say "Yo, you've got some of Renier's soldiers incoming!" because even assuming someone on that end of things knew there would be someone else on his own side in Nordmarcke awaiting that message, the telegraph has not yet been invented.

Uthyr had sent some intelligencers on the enemy side of the border before the winter snows fell and the seas became too stormy for safe travel. For the most part, aside from a few messages that are starting to make their way back across via Beldouria, they are still on that side waiting for a chance to get back into Gwynedd, but the mountain passes are still impassable and handy (known) portals into/out of enemy territory are few and far between. They do exist (you'll see one very soon), but the lack of real-time communication we take for granted nowadays can mean it can take anywhere from days to months for information to get from Place A to Place B in a medieval world. Plus, while Torval might not have much of a choice of routes for transporting Jouvian soldiers into Nordmarcke, I can assure you he's not simply marching them through Beldouria right under King Miklos's watching eyes; hence the need to smuggle them into Nordmarcke in whatever way he can until he can figure out a way to bring them north in larger numbers. (Either by means of those Eistenmarcker ships once the oceans are safer to travel starting in late March, and/or by securing enough of the Western River to allow them to sail from Joux to launch an attack on Corwyn and other parts of Eastern Gwynedd that way.)

[Evie]

BTW, what is Cinhil sick from?

I think in the Middle Ages it would have been considered a form of dropsy. In the modern age, we might think of it as a form of congestive heart failure, though I haven't officially diagnosed him with that because, for the sake of being able to take artistic liberties for story plot purposes, I don't want to be locked into a specific diagnosis with specific symptoms. But congestive heart failure being treated with a combination of digitalis and some (possibly slightly more effective) additional Deryni remedies was what I had in the back of my mind as inspiration when I wrote him. In the case of Cinhil's illness, he's not dealing with edema so much (though that is probably due to the effectiveness of some of those Deryni remedies), but it has similar other effects on his heart and respiration over time.

[tmcd]

Evie, you misunderstand me. I'm not thinking so much of men getting off the barges per se. And apparently they traversed Beldouria on those same barges (unless some river officials in there were thoroughly corrupt). It's tracing them backwards: they had to have gotten on the barges somewhere else. Figuring out the place would be of interest to Gwynedd: that location might be hostile, or took a bribe by someone hostile, or might be careless and a source of future trouble.

Theoretically, they could have been hired anywhere, marched overland to a port, transferred by water. But the shorter the distance, the fewer chances of something going wrong -- a shipwreck, someone gabs, someone notices (like in my thinking, someone wary in southern lands).

Come to think of it, they are repeatedly said to be barges. In modern times, barges are often short-ranged (or stuck on one river or canal network), not particularly maneuverable. The closest way would have been to bring them down the Thuria River, but that would have been brazen indeed. The next further possible source: Joux.

It's not conclusive. For example, the troops might have been hired in the Connait and transshipped onto barges in some unobserved cove or island. But any way to narrow down the candidates to investigate, to see which to look at first, might help. For example, maybe the agent counted 17 barges unloading; ask any Gwyneddan merchant at Orsal whether they saw a bunch of barges leaving northeastward N days earlier (which should be remarkable in winter), or ask in Joux more carefully for a day or two earlier.

For an our-world example: if someone in the 1400s saw from a distance armed men landing in Essex using short-range fishing boats, the obvious first place to look for a source, and thus an unexpected source of danger, would be the Low Countries.