Lands of Red and Gold #74: Flavours of Entanglement
Lands of Red and Gold #74: Flavours of Entanglement
Carl Ashkettle settles into a chair. Experience has quickly taught him that when he asks Mr Clements – the man refuses to give a first name – a question, he had best settle down for a long answer. Fortunately his shorthand is very good.
“For today, I’d like you to tell me what life was like in Yigutji during the Fever War,” Ashkettle says.
Clements raises an eyebrow. “You have been reading some history since we last spoke. I am sure you would not have known that name otherwise. If you had known about it at all, it would have been as Prince Rupert’s War. Or maybe as Windi Bidwadjari.”
Ashkettle holds up a rather thick tome. “McGowan-Smith’s Life of the Matjidi: History and People [1]. Interesting reading.”
“Indeed. McGowan-Smith did a thorough job of finding out what history can record of Yigutji and its predecessors. Although he is wrong to consider Yigutji as being proto-panollidistic, but let us leave that argument for another time.”
Ashkettle wonders, for a moment, whether to pursue that argument instead; even if Clements is running a long-term scam, his views on that topic would still be wonderfully controversial, and therefore sell very well. But it can wait. “Quite. I do have to say that none of your names appeared in McGowan-Smith’s book.”
“Nor would they,” Clements says. “I told you I was no-one of consequence in Yigutji in my youth. Besides, while he did his best to record what history is left, so much has been lost during the sack. Most records were burned or buried.”
As always, Clements’ answers have the ring of plausibility. Yigutji was so badly sacked that it was abandoned. The history book confirmed that. Yet once again, it means that there is no way to independently verify the core of Clements’ tale. “Were you around during the sack?”
“Yes, as it happens. But in the armies outside the city, not those inside. Which is what we called Yigutji during those days, by the way. Just “the city”. The city gave its name to the kingdom, and in doing so it lost its own name.”
“Fine, then, what were you doing in the city during the Fever War?”
“Wondering why we were at war,” Clements says promptly. “Everyone in the city did, for the first part of the war. Nor did we call it the Fever War immediately. At the first outbreak of war, when the Yadji invaded Tjibarr, and Gutjanal declared war on the Yadji and then our king followed, we called it the Musket War. History has forgotten that fact; the name we gave the later part of the war has been applied to all of it.”
“McGowan-Smith mentioned nothing about that name.”
“Why would he?” Clements asks. “The truth is buried in the ruins of Yigutji, if the archaeologists can ever dig out some of the official records for that year, or any of the private letters.” He clears his throat. “We called it the Musket War because everyone knew that the king had only joined the war because Tjibarr was selling muskets and powder to our armies. Declaring war was their price.”
“Why was it so puzzling, then?” asks Ashkettle.
“Because it made no sense, even to a family of poor leatherworkers like mine. Why should the king enter the war? We had no common frontier with the Yadji. Nor would Gutjanal or Tjibarr trust us enough to send our soldiers through their territory to fight the Yadji, even if the king wanted to. So it was a mystery what they hoped to gain from our declaration of war. A proclamation of neutrality should have sufficed; it had always done so before.”
“Did you ever find out the reason?”
“Not during the war. Perhaps I would have found out more if I had been levied into the war, but in those days leatherworkers were too valued for the labour they would perform supplying the armies, not serving in them. Plus, events soon overtook us. We stopped caring about the rationale behind entry into the war, for the same reason that we changed the name of the war.”
* * *
Gutjanal [Albury-Wodonga]. Like its neighbours Tjibarr [Swan Hill] and Yigutji [Wagga Wagga], Gutjanal was the name of both a city and the kingdom which it had created. Along with now-vanished Lopitja [2], the three kingdoms had been formed out of the collapse of the old Empire, but with differences. The old city of Tjibarr had been a kingdom before imperial rule, and retained many of its old traditions even after regaining independence. Gutjanal – and Yigutji – were new cities which grew into prominence during the imperial era, and developed their own customs and practices during that time.
Gutjanal is thus both like and unlike its larger neighbour. Tjibarr is perhaps best-known for its fanatical adherence to its indigenous form of football, whose supporters are divided into eight factions which also dominate political and economic life. The monarch in Tjibarr is about as far from an absolute monarch as it is possible to get; the Tjibarr kings mostly perform the role of umpire between the factions.
While a few people in Gutjanal play a similar form of football, its supporters do not have any wider connection to political and economic life. The monarchy in Gutjanal is based more on the absolutist tradition established under imperial rule, with the kings of the Julanoon dynasty claiming supreme power over all of their subjects. The truth is often far from this claimed ascendancy, depending on both the character of the monarch and the strength of the local aristocracy, but in general the kings of Gutjanal wield far more power than their counterparts in Tjibarr.
The aristocrats in Gutjanal do retain one official power: that of naming the next monarch. The Council of Elders is a body composed of the twenty or so greatest landholders – the number has varied over time – who between them have the authority to name the next monarch. Their choice is by tradition limited to adult males of the Julanoon family. Sometimes this decision is no choice at all, being a mere pro forma anointing of the preferred royal heir, but on many occasions the will of the Council does matter. Yet the Council has power only to choose a monarch; it has no authority to remove one.
In their language, too, the people of Gutjanal are distinct from those of Tjibarr. The two peoples speak distantly related languages – as do most farming peoples in eastern Aururia – but their languages have been divided for more than four thousand years; the linguistic separation is approximately the same as that between modern Irish Gaelic and German.
While there is much which the two nations do not share, they also have much in common. The influence of kunduri is common to both peoples; the drug is grown in both nations and equally valued. Both nations have long traditions of fine and skilled metalworking, in iron and in gold; their arms, armour and jewellery are all of exceptional quality by Aururian standards.
Cuisine is also something which the two nations have much in common, though each nation stereotypes the cuisine of its neighbour. To the Gunnagal people of Tjibarr, the cuisine of Gutjanal relies on the pure heat of sweet peppers, and lacks subtlety. To the Wadang people of Gutjanal, the cuisine of Tjibarr is bland and lacks the pleasing numbness created by sweet peppers, that in turn makes other flavours easier to appreciate. Both of these stereotypes have an element of truth. Sweet peppers are more abundant in Gutjanal because of the higher rainfall and closeness to the highlands where sweet peppers grow even more vigorously. But Gutjanal is further from the main trade routes for the more exotic spices, with these needing to pass through either Tjibarr or Yigutji.
Gutjanal, Tjibarr and even Yigutji also have the same strong medical tradition. Physicians pass freely among all three nations, even when they are at war, and share their knowledge with each other.
Still, of all their traits, perhaps the most notable which Gutjanal and Tjibarr have in common is that they have a long history of warfare with the Yadji to the south. Both nations have been at war with the Yadji for almost as many years as they have been at peace. In both cases, the prize being contested is lucrative border territory. With Tjibarr that means the valuable trade through Jugara [Victor Harbor] and the wealthy coastal strip of land beyond, while with Gutjanal the prize is some fertile agricultural land and the gold mines which lie near the ever-shifting border.
For all that they have the Yadji as a common enemy, Tjibarr and Gutjanal have fought plenty of wars between themselves. The prize there has been the verdant, wealthy lands along the Nyalananga [River Murray] and its branches. The borders between them often shift, too.
The question which now faced the leaders of the two nations was whether fear of the strengthening Yadji realm, and their foreign Inglidj backers, could overcome their own history of mutual warfare.
* * *
To the exalted Regent of the Neverborn [3], from your servant Bidwadjari, Lord of Warmasters: May the days of your reign be long and prosperous. May good health and fortune adhere to you through plague and plenty.
Your servant’s armies continue to push back the armies of Tjibarr. We advance along the Water Mother [Nyalananga] toward Goolrin [Murray Bridge], while Wirringa [Normanville, South Australia] and the towns of the Headland [Fleurieu Peninsula] pay tribute to your glory.
The warmasters have been told of the news that Gutjanal has cowardly declared war on the Regency. Courage and steadfastness remain.
I humbly request that Prince Roo Predj and most of his horseriders be ordered east to fight Gutjanal, retaining only two hundred here. The Prince has great courage in battle, but listens not to any advice. He understands not the ancient customs, and would pillage land that would better serve the Regency’s needs if it were left intact and prosperous.
* * *
22 June 1646
Baringup [Ravenswood, Victoria]
Durigal [Land of the Five Directions]
A circle of men, standing around a circle drawn in the dust. Inside, one man and one animal prepared to give a demonstration of something which Prince Ruprecht had never expected to find in this land of savages: something which was better than its counterpart in Europe.
Boxing was a sport that men fought in England, but here the savages had found a way to make it a more entertaining, exotic spectacle.
The man at one side of the ring was a Yadji, though he called himself a Yotjuwal, whatever that meant. He was donning protection – for a boxing match! Leather that was almost armour, covering chest, stomach, crotch and legs. Gloves covered his hands, too. Not his back, arms, neck or head, though. For that, the man would need to protect himself.
“Is that necessary?” Ruprecht asked.
“Yes. A man who goes bare-stomached into the circle with a gupa will soon know the colour of his own intestines,” said the Yadji prince standing beside him.
The reason for the leather protection stood on the opposite side of the circle. An animal which stood on two legs. Two large, big-footed legs. A gray-furred body ending in a head which resembled a cross between a dog’s head and that of an overgrown rat, topped with equally over-large ears. Two arms that ended in paws now sheathed in gloves, too. The animal stood about as tall as a man, too. It needed no protection for its stomach.
Strange, so wonderfully strange!
Ruprecht had seen a few of these gupa back west, when fighting Tjibarr, but at a distance. Never up close. “How do you persuade an animal to box?”
The Yadji prince laughed. “They box among themselves. We just give them a different opponent.”
Man and gupa entered the circle. The man stepped; the animal hopped. The man circled around; the gupa stayed in more or less the same place but stayed facing the man.
Ruprecht had taken the other prince’s statement about intestines to be a colourful metaphor. Right until he saw the gupa rear up on its tail and kick the man fully in the stomach. The sound of paws on leather carried clearly across the circle. Maybe this animal really could disembowel a man.
The opponents kept circling each other. Both landed blows, though the gupa kicked much more than it punched. In truth, the man did not punch that hard. This boxing match was more about entertainment than a serious fight, from what he could judge. The gupa did not appear to be treating the fight as a matter of any import. Whatever reason those animals had for fighting among themselves, it did not translate well to fighting men.
Of course, whether the fight was a genuine one hardly mattered. The laughter and cheers from the men around the circle was inspiration enough. “I would like to keep this animal,” Ruprecht said.
The Yadji prince said, “Then it shall be given to you.”
“My thanks,” Ruprecht said. That only left the decision of what to call the gupa. The animal’s name, fortunately, suggested itself. “I think I’ll call him Sport.”
* * *
7 July 1646
Outside Goolrin [Murray Bridge]
Kingdom of Tjibarr / Durigal [Land of the Five Directions]
The walls of Goolrin stood in the distance. Gray stony barriers rising all around the city, built on top of the earthen slopes that surrounded Goolrin. The fortifications were the greatest anywhere on the Copper Coast; the city was ancient beyond all memory of man or parchment. On the eastward side of the city’s slopes, the brown waters of the Nyalananga flowed, within bowshot for a good archer.
The defences of Goolrinwere formidable, without doubt. Bidwadjari had made a point of consulting the ancient records of wars between Tjibarr and the Regency. The city had been one of the great prizes in so many wars, and rarely indeed had it fallen to open assault. Usually it took starvation persuading the garrison to surrender, or treachery from within.
Even the thunderous cannon of their Inglidj allies were of little value here. Built on top of those great earthen slopes [4], Goolrin’s walls were all but impossible to bombard even with these magnificent new weapons.
Bidwadjari had thought long and hard about how to make Goolrin yield, and he could find no easy answer. Storming the walls would be a fool’s errand. Bombardment would accomplish little. He had sought to find whether there were any traitors within, but so far without fortune. Tjibarr had held the Copper Coast for too many years now; few of the locals were minded to yield to the Regent’s rule.
Starving the city out was the only option left, and even that was proving difficult. His troops controlled the countryside far around, with the Inglidj horsemen invaluable in patrolling for raiders. But nothing they could do would win them control of the river. Tjibarr could send boats along the Nyalananga at times of their choosing, raiding by night, threatening by day. Some supplies had been delivered that he knew of, and probably more had been brought in by stealth, undetected.
And now... And now, what hope was left?
Two dozen sick soldiers had been brought outside, to grant them the warmth of the noonday sun, to match the warmth that the Neverborn brought within the earth. That also meant that they were within his sight, though he did not venture too close. Quarantine could not be enforced within this army, not now, but he would keep what distance he could.
Two dozen soldiers with spotted chests and a rash that showed against the skins of all but the darkest two men. In some men, the rash had spread beyond their chests, to their stomachs and arms. Two dozen fevered, coughing soldiers, with creeping delirium that meant that they were not sure where they were. Or even who they were, for the worst.
One of the fevered soldiers managed to get some words out to the nearest attendant. The attendant in turn shouted the words out to Bidwadjari, rather than come too close. Alert man. “This man says that the light brings him pain!”
“Take them back inside, then!” Bidwadjari said.
“Fever, spots and rashes, headaches, and men who fear the light. I know this sickness,” said Yogan, the Inglidj commander. The man was much less arrogant than Roo Predj, but had the common Inglidj habit of refusing to speak Junditmara. Fortunately, Bidwadjari was reasonably fluent in the Islander tongue.
“It is camp fever. It often strikes armies while they are besieging towns. I saw it many times back in Djermanee.”
“How many die from it?” Bidwadjari asks.
“Many. More than die in battle, sometimes,” Yogan said.
Blood of the Earth Mother, will these plagues never end? Wave after wave of plagues had swept through the Land. The red breath [tuberculosis], the pox [syphilis], swelling fever [mumps], and the blister-rash [chickenpox]. So many had died, in one wave after another, and the pox still spread.
Now came another great blow. The Firstborn must be truly malevolent, to have brought such a new plague now. The siege was slow, but Goolrin would surely have fallen eventually. It was Tjibarr’s last great bastion, the key to their defences, which protected the rest of the Copper Coast. If the city fell, then he would be so close to presenting the Regent with a won war.
But how could this be done if there was no army left? The previous plagues had been devastating enough, but this latest affliction seemed spitefully designed just to target armies.
“Gather my warmasters,” Bidwadjari said, turning away from the sight of the stricken soldiers being carried back inside. “We must decide how the army can continue to serve the Regent.”
* * *
The entry of Gutjanal changed the dynamics of Prince Rupert’s War. Opening up another front was challenging enough for Yadji strategy. The Yadji knew that they had considerably more soldiers than Tjibarr, and probably more than both nations combined. However, having to divide their forces made it difficult for them to obtain any useful numerical advantage on either front. Troops deployed on one front could not be easily redeployed to the other, because the key roads ran far into the interior of the Yadji realm rather than directly to the other front.
Worse, the Yadji could not afford to concentrate on one front while giving ground on the other. If they gave ground to Gutjanal, they risked losing the gold mines of Djawrit [Bendigo], and gold was now essential for purchasing supplies from the Inglidj. If they gave ground to Tjibarr, they risked losing Jugara and the road to the Nyalananga, which would allow Tjibarr to ship in fresh muskets and powder from the Nedlandj.
Worst of all, the first battles quickly made it clear that Gutjanal, like Tjibarr, had a substantial quantity of muskets, and enough powder to use them. The Yadji war plans had relied on their enemies having only limited numbers of the new weapons. In particular, a cavalry charge was much riskier when some of the waiting troops might have muskets at the ready.
On the western front, Biwdadjari’s tactics were to focus on the siege of Goolrin, while conquering what territory he could further along the coast. Much of the Headland fell quickly, and the Yadji troops continued to press toward Rillaminga [Noarlunga, South Australia]. Consolidating control of that region proved difficult, partly because supplies could not be easily brought in while Goolrin was still unfallen, but mostly because Prince Rupert’s inclination was to sack and burn captured towns. He refused to follow any advice from others, and did not realise the Yadji preference for keeping people in place and collecting tribute, particularly along the valued road between Jugara and Bunara.
Eventually, Bidwadjari successfully manoeuvred to have the Regent order Prince Rupert to take the field against Gutjanal. Bidwadjari did this partly to make managing Prince Rupert someone else’s problem, but also because it meant that most Gutjanal lands he sacked would be those which the Yadji did not particularly wish to rule anyway. The siege of Goolrin continued, but with Tjibarr able to send in supplies and raids along the Nyalananga, the city would not capitulate easily.
In the east, the Yadji were initially driven back under Gutjanal’s unexpected advance, with Djawrit falling into enemy hands, though not before they fired and collapsed most of the mines. The retreat was gradually reversed as more Yadji troops arrived and Prince Rupert brought the bulk of his cavalry to the eastern front.
At least for the first encounters, Prince Rupert worked cooperatively with the local Yadji generals, and deployed his cavalry to support them during two battles which pushed Gutjanal’s forces back out of Djawrit. He made sure that he and his troops collected some gold as part of the plunder during the reconquest. Glory was all very well, but most of all he wanted gold
The Yadji troops were poised to advance further into Gutjanal’s territory, when word came from the west that a new plague had spread from across the Seven Sisters [Eyre Peninsula]. The epidemic was making the Yadji forces outside Goolrin dissolve like salt in water.
Typhus had come to Aururia.
* * *
[1] The Matjidi is the allohistorical name for the Murrumbidgee River, a major tributary of the Nyalananga (River Murray). The kingdom of Yigutji (Wagga Wagga) lay on that river, as did the much older city of Garrkimang which was the capital of the old Watjubaga Empire.
[2] Lopitja [Wilcannia, New South Wales] was a short-lived kingdom along the Anedeli (River Darling), created during a period of aberrantly wet, cool climate which meant that the Anedeli’s environs became fertile. Lopitja was abandoned when the climate reverted to the drier norm. See post #17 for more details.
[3] i.e. Gunya Yadji, Emperor of Durigal. The Yadji prohibition against naming the monarch (the “royal privilege”) also holds in written communication.
[4] Goolrin is built mostly on the ruins of older levels of the town. With the site having been occupied with only a few breaks for more than four thousand years, each new level of the city has been built on the rubble of its predecessors. More recent rulers have supplemented this elevation by moving in further earthworks, both to make the city easier to defend, and as some protection against the regular floods.
* * *
Thoughts?
Carl Ashkettle settles into a chair. Experience has quickly taught him that when he asks Mr Clements – the man refuses to give a first name – a question, he had best settle down for a long answer. Fortunately his shorthand is very good.
“For today, I’d like you to tell me what life was like in Yigutji during the Fever War,” Ashkettle says.
Clements raises an eyebrow. “You have been reading some history since we last spoke. I am sure you would not have known that name otherwise. If you had known about it at all, it would have been as Prince Rupert’s War. Or maybe as Windi Bidwadjari.”
Ashkettle holds up a rather thick tome. “McGowan-Smith’s Life of the Matjidi: History and People [1]. Interesting reading.”
“Indeed. McGowan-Smith did a thorough job of finding out what history can record of Yigutji and its predecessors. Although he is wrong to consider Yigutji as being proto-panollidistic, but let us leave that argument for another time.”
Ashkettle wonders, for a moment, whether to pursue that argument instead; even if Clements is running a long-term scam, his views on that topic would still be wonderfully controversial, and therefore sell very well. But it can wait. “Quite. I do have to say that none of your names appeared in McGowan-Smith’s book.”
“Nor would they,” Clements says. “I told you I was no-one of consequence in Yigutji in my youth. Besides, while he did his best to record what history is left, so much has been lost during the sack. Most records were burned or buried.”
As always, Clements’ answers have the ring of plausibility. Yigutji was so badly sacked that it was abandoned. The history book confirmed that. Yet once again, it means that there is no way to independently verify the core of Clements’ tale. “Were you around during the sack?”
“Yes, as it happens. But in the armies outside the city, not those inside. Which is what we called Yigutji during those days, by the way. Just “the city”. The city gave its name to the kingdom, and in doing so it lost its own name.”
“Fine, then, what were you doing in the city during the Fever War?”
“Wondering why we were at war,” Clements says promptly. “Everyone in the city did, for the first part of the war. Nor did we call it the Fever War immediately. At the first outbreak of war, when the Yadji invaded Tjibarr, and Gutjanal declared war on the Yadji and then our king followed, we called it the Musket War. History has forgotten that fact; the name we gave the later part of the war has been applied to all of it.”
“McGowan-Smith mentioned nothing about that name.”
“Why would he?” Clements asks. “The truth is buried in the ruins of Yigutji, if the archaeologists can ever dig out some of the official records for that year, or any of the private letters.” He clears his throat. “We called it the Musket War because everyone knew that the king had only joined the war because Tjibarr was selling muskets and powder to our armies. Declaring war was their price.”
“Why was it so puzzling, then?” asks Ashkettle.
“Because it made no sense, even to a family of poor leatherworkers like mine. Why should the king enter the war? We had no common frontier with the Yadji. Nor would Gutjanal or Tjibarr trust us enough to send our soldiers through their territory to fight the Yadji, even if the king wanted to. So it was a mystery what they hoped to gain from our declaration of war. A proclamation of neutrality should have sufficed; it had always done so before.”
“Did you ever find out the reason?”
“Not during the war. Perhaps I would have found out more if I had been levied into the war, but in those days leatherworkers were too valued for the labour they would perform supplying the armies, not serving in them. Plus, events soon overtook us. We stopped caring about the rationale behind entry into the war, for the same reason that we changed the name of the war.”
* * *
Gutjanal [Albury-Wodonga]. Like its neighbours Tjibarr [Swan Hill] and Yigutji [Wagga Wagga], Gutjanal was the name of both a city and the kingdom which it had created. Along with now-vanished Lopitja [2], the three kingdoms had been formed out of the collapse of the old Empire, but with differences. The old city of Tjibarr had been a kingdom before imperial rule, and retained many of its old traditions even after regaining independence. Gutjanal – and Yigutji – were new cities which grew into prominence during the imperial era, and developed their own customs and practices during that time.
Gutjanal is thus both like and unlike its larger neighbour. Tjibarr is perhaps best-known for its fanatical adherence to its indigenous form of football, whose supporters are divided into eight factions which also dominate political and economic life. The monarch in Tjibarr is about as far from an absolute monarch as it is possible to get; the Tjibarr kings mostly perform the role of umpire between the factions.
While a few people in Gutjanal play a similar form of football, its supporters do not have any wider connection to political and economic life. The monarchy in Gutjanal is based more on the absolutist tradition established under imperial rule, with the kings of the Julanoon dynasty claiming supreme power over all of their subjects. The truth is often far from this claimed ascendancy, depending on both the character of the monarch and the strength of the local aristocracy, but in general the kings of Gutjanal wield far more power than their counterparts in Tjibarr.
The aristocrats in Gutjanal do retain one official power: that of naming the next monarch. The Council of Elders is a body composed of the twenty or so greatest landholders – the number has varied over time – who between them have the authority to name the next monarch. Their choice is by tradition limited to adult males of the Julanoon family. Sometimes this decision is no choice at all, being a mere pro forma anointing of the preferred royal heir, but on many occasions the will of the Council does matter. Yet the Council has power only to choose a monarch; it has no authority to remove one.
In their language, too, the people of Gutjanal are distinct from those of Tjibarr. The two peoples speak distantly related languages – as do most farming peoples in eastern Aururia – but their languages have been divided for more than four thousand years; the linguistic separation is approximately the same as that between modern Irish Gaelic and German.
While there is much which the two nations do not share, they also have much in common. The influence of kunduri is common to both peoples; the drug is grown in both nations and equally valued. Both nations have long traditions of fine and skilled metalworking, in iron and in gold; their arms, armour and jewellery are all of exceptional quality by Aururian standards.
Cuisine is also something which the two nations have much in common, though each nation stereotypes the cuisine of its neighbour. To the Gunnagal people of Tjibarr, the cuisine of Gutjanal relies on the pure heat of sweet peppers, and lacks subtlety. To the Wadang people of Gutjanal, the cuisine of Tjibarr is bland and lacks the pleasing numbness created by sweet peppers, that in turn makes other flavours easier to appreciate. Both of these stereotypes have an element of truth. Sweet peppers are more abundant in Gutjanal because of the higher rainfall and closeness to the highlands where sweet peppers grow even more vigorously. But Gutjanal is further from the main trade routes for the more exotic spices, with these needing to pass through either Tjibarr or Yigutji.
Gutjanal, Tjibarr and even Yigutji also have the same strong medical tradition. Physicians pass freely among all three nations, even when they are at war, and share their knowledge with each other.
Still, of all their traits, perhaps the most notable which Gutjanal and Tjibarr have in common is that they have a long history of warfare with the Yadji to the south. Both nations have been at war with the Yadji for almost as many years as they have been at peace. In both cases, the prize being contested is lucrative border territory. With Tjibarr that means the valuable trade through Jugara [Victor Harbor] and the wealthy coastal strip of land beyond, while with Gutjanal the prize is some fertile agricultural land and the gold mines which lie near the ever-shifting border.
For all that they have the Yadji as a common enemy, Tjibarr and Gutjanal have fought plenty of wars between themselves. The prize there has been the verdant, wealthy lands along the Nyalananga [River Murray] and its branches. The borders between them often shift, too.
The question which now faced the leaders of the two nations was whether fear of the strengthening Yadji realm, and their foreign Inglidj backers, could overcome their own history of mutual warfare.
* * *
To the exalted Regent of the Neverborn [3], from your servant Bidwadjari, Lord of Warmasters: May the days of your reign be long and prosperous. May good health and fortune adhere to you through plague and plenty.
Your servant’s armies continue to push back the armies of Tjibarr. We advance along the Water Mother [Nyalananga] toward Goolrin [Murray Bridge], while Wirringa [Normanville, South Australia] and the towns of the Headland [Fleurieu Peninsula] pay tribute to your glory.
The warmasters have been told of the news that Gutjanal has cowardly declared war on the Regency. Courage and steadfastness remain.
I humbly request that Prince Roo Predj and most of his horseriders be ordered east to fight Gutjanal, retaining only two hundred here. The Prince has great courage in battle, but listens not to any advice. He understands not the ancient customs, and would pillage land that would better serve the Regency’s needs if it were left intact and prosperous.
* * *
22 June 1646
Baringup [Ravenswood, Victoria]
Durigal [Land of the Five Directions]
A circle of men, standing around a circle drawn in the dust. Inside, one man and one animal prepared to give a demonstration of something which Prince Ruprecht had never expected to find in this land of savages: something which was better than its counterpart in Europe.
Boxing was a sport that men fought in England, but here the savages had found a way to make it a more entertaining, exotic spectacle.
The man at one side of the ring was a Yadji, though he called himself a Yotjuwal, whatever that meant. He was donning protection – for a boxing match! Leather that was almost armour, covering chest, stomach, crotch and legs. Gloves covered his hands, too. Not his back, arms, neck or head, though. For that, the man would need to protect himself.
“Is that necessary?” Ruprecht asked.
“Yes. A man who goes bare-stomached into the circle with a gupa will soon know the colour of his own intestines,” said the Yadji prince standing beside him.
The reason for the leather protection stood on the opposite side of the circle. An animal which stood on two legs. Two large, big-footed legs. A gray-furred body ending in a head which resembled a cross between a dog’s head and that of an overgrown rat, topped with equally over-large ears. Two arms that ended in paws now sheathed in gloves, too. The animal stood about as tall as a man, too. It needed no protection for its stomach.
Strange, so wonderfully strange!
Ruprecht had seen a few of these gupa back west, when fighting Tjibarr, but at a distance. Never up close. “How do you persuade an animal to box?”
The Yadji prince laughed. “They box among themselves. We just give them a different opponent.”
Man and gupa entered the circle. The man stepped; the animal hopped. The man circled around; the gupa stayed in more or less the same place but stayed facing the man.
Ruprecht had taken the other prince’s statement about intestines to be a colourful metaphor. Right until he saw the gupa rear up on its tail and kick the man fully in the stomach. The sound of paws on leather carried clearly across the circle. Maybe this animal really could disembowel a man.
The opponents kept circling each other. Both landed blows, though the gupa kicked much more than it punched. In truth, the man did not punch that hard. This boxing match was more about entertainment than a serious fight, from what he could judge. The gupa did not appear to be treating the fight as a matter of any import. Whatever reason those animals had for fighting among themselves, it did not translate well to fighting men.
Of course, whether the fight was a genuine one hardly mattered. The laughter and cheers from the men around the circle was inspiration enough. “I would like to keep this animal,” Ruprecht said.
The Yadji prince said, “Then it shall be given to you.”
“My thanks,” Ruprecht said. That only left the decision of what to call the gupa. The animal’s name, fortunately, suggested itself. “I think I’ll call him Sport.”
* * *
7 July 1646
Outside Goolrin [Murray Bridge]
Kingdom of Tjibarr / Durigal [Land of the Five Directions]
The walls of Goolrin stood in the distance. Gray stony barriers rising all around the city, built on top of the earthen slopes that surrounded Goolrin. The fortifications were the greatest anywhere on the Copper Coast; the city was ancient beyond all memory of man or parchment. On the eastward side of the city’s slopes, the brown waters of the Nyalananga flowed, within bowshot for a good archer.
The defences of Goolrinwere formidable, without doubt. Bidwadjari had made a point of consulting the ancient records of wars between Tjibarr and the Regency. The city had been one of the great prizes in so many wars, and rarely indeed had it fallen to open assault. Usually it took starvation persuading the garrison to surrender, or treachery from within.
Even the thunderous cannon of their Inglidj allies were of little value here. Built on top of those great earthen slopes [4], Goolrin’s walls were all but impossible to bombard even with these magnificent new weapons.
Bidwadjari had thought long and hard about how to make Goolrin yield, and he could find no easy answer. Storming the walls would be a fool’s errand. Bombardment would accomplish little. He had sought to find whether there were any traitors within, but so far without fortune. Tjibarr had held the Copper Coast for too many years now; few of the locals were minded to yield to the Regent’s rule.
Starving the city out was the only option left, and even that was proving difficult. His troops controlled the countryside far around, with the Inglidj horsemen invaluable in patrolling for raiders. But nothing they could do would win them control of the river. Tjibarr could send boats along the Nyalananga at times of their choosing, raiding by night, threatening by day. Some supplies had been delivered that he knew of, and probably more had been brought in by stealth, undetected.
And now... And now, what hope was left?
Two dozen sick soldiers had been brought outside, to grant them the warmth of the noonday sun, to match the warmth that the Neverborn brought within the earth. That also meant that they were within his sight, though he did not venture too close. Quarantine could not be enforced within this army, not now, but he would keep what distance he could.
Two dozen soldiers with spotted chests and a rash that showed against the skins of all but the darkest two men. In some men, the rash had spread beyond their chests, to their stomachs and arms. Two dozen fevered, coughing soldiers, with creeping delirium that meant that they were not sure where they were. Or even who they were, for the worst.
One of the fevered soldiers managed to get some words out to the nearest attendant. The attendant in turn shouted the words out to Bidwadjari, rather than come too close. Alert man. “This man says that the light brings him pain!”
“Take them back inside, then!” Bidwadjari said.
“Fever, spots and rashes, headaches, and men who fear the light. I know this sickness,” said Yogan, the Inglidj commander. The man was much less arrogant than Roo Predj, but had the common Inglidj habit of refusing to speak Junditmara. Fortunately, Bidwadjari was reasonably fluent in the Islander tongue.
“It is camp fever. It often strikes armies while they are besieging towns. I saw it many times back in Djermanee.”
“How many die from it?” Bidwadjari asks.
“Many. More than die in battle, sometimes,” Yogan said.
Blood of the Earth Mother, will these plagues never end? Wave after wave of plagues had swept through the Land. The red breath [tuberculosis], the pox [syphilis], swelling fever [mumps], and the blister-rash [chickenpox]. So many had died, in one wave after another, and the pox still spread.
Now came another great blow. The Firstborn must be truly malevolent, to have brought such a new plague now. The siege was slow, but Goolrin would surely have fallen eventually. It was Tjibarr’s last great bastion, the key to their defences, which protected the rest of the Copper Coast. If the city fell, then he would be so close to presenting the Regent with a won war.
But how could this be done if there was no army left? The previous plagues had been devastating enough, but this latest affliction seemed spitefully designed just to target armies.
“Gather my warmasters,” Bidwadjari said, turning away from the sight of the stricken soldiers being carried back inside. “We must decide how the army can continue to serve the Regent.”
* * *
The entry of Gutjanal changed the dynamics of Prince Rupert’s War. Opening up another front was challenging enough for Yadji strategy. The Yadji knew that they had considerably more soldiers than Tjibarr, and probably more than both nations combined. However, having to divide their forces made it difficult for them to obtain any useful numerical advantage on either front. Troops deployed on one front could not be easily redeployed to the other, because the key roads ran far into the interior of the Yadji realm rather than directly to the other front.
Worse, the Yadji could not afford to concentrate on one front while giving ground on the other. If they gave ground to Gutjanal, they risked losing the gold mines of Djawrit [Bendigo], and gold was now essential for purchasing supplies from the Inglidj. If they gave ground to Tjibarr, they risked losing Jugara and the road to the Nyalananga, which would allow Tjibarr to ship in fresh muskets and powder from the Nedlandj.
Worst of all, the first battles quickly made it clear that Gutjanal, like Tjibarr, had a substantial quantity of muskets, and enough powder to use them. The Yadji war plans had relied on their enemies having only limited numbers of the new weapons. In particular, a cavalry charge was much riskier when some of the waiting troops might have muskets at the ready.
On the western front, Biwdadjari’s tactics were to focus on the siege of Goolrin, while conquering what territory he could further along the coast. Much of the Headland fell quickly, and the Yadji troops continued to press toward Rillaminga [Noarlunga, South Australia]. Consolidating control of that region proved difficult, partly because supplies could not be easily brought in while Goolrin was still unfallen, but mostly because Prince Rupert’s inclination was to sack and burn captured towns. He refused to follow any advice from others, and did not realise the Yadji preference for keeping people in place and collecting tribute, particularly along the valued road between Jugara and Bunara.
Eventually, Bidwadjari successfully manoeuvred to have the Regent order Prince Rupert to take the field against Gutjanal. Bidwadjari did this partly to make managing Prince Rupert someone else’s problem, but also because it meant that most Gutjanal lands he sacked would be those which the Yadji did not particularly wish to rule anyway. The siege of Goolrin continued, but with Tjibarr able to send in supplies and raids along the Nyalananga, the city would not capitulate easily.
In the east, the Yadji were initially driven back under Gutjanal’s unexpected advance, with Djawrit falling into enemy hands, though not before they fired and collapsed most of the mines. The retreat was gradually reversed as more Yadji troops arrived and Prince Rupert brought the bulk of his cavalry to the eastern front.
At least for the first encounters, Prince Rupert worked cooperatively with the local Yadji generals, and deployed his cavalry to support them during two battles which pushed Gutjanal’s forces back out of Djawrit. He made sure that he and his troops collected some gold as part of the plunder during the reconquest. Glory was all very well, but most of all he wanted gold
The Yadji troops were poised to advance further into Gutjanal’s territory, when word came from the west that a new plague had spread from across the Seven Sisters [Eyre Peninsula]. The epidemic was making the Yadji forces outside Goolrin dissolve like salt in water.
Typhus had come to Aururia.
* * *
[1] The Matjidi is the allohistorical name for the Murrumbidgee River, a major tributary of the Nyalananga (River Murray). The kingdom of Yigutji (Wagga Wagga) lay on that river, as did the much older city of Garrkimang which was the capital of the old Watjubaga Empire.
[2] Lopitja [Wilcannia, New South Wales] was a short-lived kingdom along the Anedeli (River Darling), created during a period of aberrantly wet, cool climate which meant that the Anedeli’s environs became fertile. Lopitja was abandoned when the climate reverted to the drier norm. See post #17 for more details.
[3] i.e. Gunya Yadji, Emperor of Durigal. The Yadji prohibition against naming the monarch (the “royal privilege”) also holds in written communication.
[4] Goolrin is built mostly on the ruins of older levels of the town. With the site having been occupied with only a few breaks for more than four thousand years, each new level of the city has been built on the rubble of its predecessors. More recent rulers have supplemented this elevation by moving in further earthworks, both to make the city easier to defend, and as some protection against the regular floods.
* * *
Thoughts?
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