[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]16 Blink and it’s Gone[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The west and the north had been reconciled by the blunt method of putting northern men on western thrones. Once the new petty kings had earned the trust – or in some cases enforced the trust – of the local fighting men, this method worked, at least for a while. But it did not eliminate the cause of the division: it was not mere jealousy, nor proto-nationalism, that drove western resentment, but the basic fact that the status quo did not appear to benefit them. The west supplied wealth and fighting men to the high king whenever it was demanded, but all that the high king could offer in return was protection – and the west could protect itself. As memories of war faded and passed into folklore, as each new generation of western petty kings identified less and less with their northern kin and more and more with their parents’ adopted subjects, the old grudges began to reappear.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Pridaen needed a strong leader to hold it together. Unfortunately, the high king at this time, called Cadall, is reputed to have been a rather kind, gentle, and above all ineffectual man. His response to conflict was to host a banquet, get rivals and factionalists eating and drinking together, and hope the camaraderie lasted to the morning after. Needless to say this was not always a successful tactic.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]But Cadall persisted all the same. It is a mark of how close Pridaen and Anglia were at this point that when Heilin, one of the scions of the north who now ruled territory on the south coast, became involved in a disagreement with his Anglian neighbour to the east – a minor affair, supposedly over the ownership of a herd of pigs, but the kind of thing that in more fraught times could have fuelled violent confrontation – both Heilin and his rival, the Angle earl Osvin, accepted Cadall’s invitation to a feast at which they could be reconciled. This was a perfectly sensible act of diplomacy, as Osvin was a descendant of the Anglian royal line and his more elevated kin would not take kindly to him being disrespected.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]A feast was held; everyone behaved themselves impeccably; Heilin and Osvin came to terms. Another success for Cadall.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Within a week, the high king was dead. He had been poisoned.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The culprit was obvious. Perhaps if Cadall’s successor had been cut from the same cloth, there might yet have been negotiations and talks and apology; but the electors of the north were not in such a mood. They chose as Diig, and hence as high king, Cadall’s second son, Mehangal, a man so unlike his father that rumour suggested he was not Cadall’s son at all. A doer, not a talker; a man of action. A warrior.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]In a country that had not fought a war for nearly a century, beyond the occasional suppression expedition against Picts on the northern border. No matter: the years of peace had left Pridaen with a larger population of fit, capable young men than at any earlier time in its history. From every town and petty kingdom on the island, regiments were raised to head south to Anglia. The buried tensions of decades came back to the surface, and the Prydeeneg remembered how to hate.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The Anglians had also not fought a war for nearly a century, but they had not been as idle as their rivals. Angle mercenary troops had fought alongside Frank and Saxon on the continent; Pridaen may have had the greater numbers, but it was innocent of the ways of war. The Angles had enough experienced men to make up for their numerical disadvantage. Furthermore, they had benefitted from new developments that had become common on the continent: the throwing spear, or javelin, long used as an auxiliary weapon, had been perfected into a lethally decisive tool; the stirrup and the nailed horseshoe greatly improved the utility of horses in battle. Horsemanship had not been a major part of Anglian culture, but their king, Haelric, did have a small contingent of cavalry in his army that proved a most useful asset.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Long before most of the more remote native regiments had even begun their journey to Anglia, the latter had two armies in Prydeeneg territory. In the west, Cairuint, for centuries the bulwark against the Anglians, was put under siege. Further north, Verlamion was conquered with embarrassing ease.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]In the early days of the barbarian invasions, no quarter had been given on either side. Captured men were slaughtered, as were most women and children. The remainder were enslaved and treated no better than livestock. The spread of Christianity had changed the rules: having massacred those inhabitants of Verlamion who tried to resist the conquest of their home, Haelric permitted the remainder to live, and remain in the town: they would be of low status, of course, and be subject to harsh treatment if they disobeyed Anglian laws, but they were neither slaves nor dead, and that was an improvement. Haelric also renamed the town, which was hardly unprecedented; but rather than give it an Anglian name, he gave it the name of a Prydeeneg martyr who had been killed there in the third century, St Alvaan. The very piety of the move infuriated the natives, who naturally saw it as a disrespectful theft of their culture by the same people who were trying to destroy them.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]To meet the two Anglian armies, Mehangal directed the western regiments to muster at Cairsallog in the west to relieve Cairuint; meanwhile, he would lead the northern regiments to drive the main Anglian force back to the Thames, and hopefully beyond. The Prydeeneg armies were certainly massive, and enthusiastic; but they severely lacked knowledge of battle. Mehangal decided that they should at least get one opportunity to gain experience before meeting the main Anglian host, and headed to Grantacestre – the western outpost of Icasaete that had once been Dirolipons.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]He was but a day’s march away from his target, when he received news that the Angles were not, as expected, heading north on a trajectory that would lead to the two armies meeting near Tragolim, but had pushed northwest into the Prydeeneg interior. It was a sign of how confident Haelric was that he did not bother to crush all the Prydeeneg defences before penetrating the native hinterland; Mehangal abandoned his plan to reduce Grantacestre, and led his army west, to intercept Haelric – hopefully before he could cause too much harm.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]At Cairsallog, with men having arrived from all over the west and south west, Pridaen’s second army was finally ready to march east to Cairuint. News from the beleaguered city had been getting bleaker, so the natives were prepared for the worst; sure enough, the first thing they saw as they approached the old city was a column of smoke. In fact, Cairuint had not quite fallen; the invaders were inside the city walls, but the remaining defenders were still fighting in the streets.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The confusing morass of ruins made a poor battlefield, and so the arrival of the westerners brought the city a reprieve: the Anglians withdrew, in order to prepare themselves to meet the Prydeeneg army. The former held an excellent defensive position, across the river Itchen from the city and atop a hill; but they were there as invaders, not defenders. Nevertheless the natives, lacking any experience or skilful leadership, foolishly attempted to cross the river directly opposite the Anglians and charge their position. They learnt their lesson at a bloody cost, and withdrew to the city in order to reconsider their plan.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]There was thereafter something of a standoff, as the Anglians lacked the numbers to attack the larger Prydeeneg army in and around Cairuint, but the natives lacked the skill, training or imagination to mount a successful assault on their enemies’ position. It was frustrating and dispiriting for both sides; however, after about a week of this, one man’s death would push Prydeeneg morale to new depths.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Heilin, one of the local petty kings, and the man whose dispute with the Angles had led to Cadall’s murder, was mortally wounded defending an Anglian sortie on the edge of the Prydeeneg camp. After the invaders had been fought off, and Heilin lay dying, he called a priest to him, in order to confess; this in itself was quite normal. But in hearing range of all the men around him, Heilin confessed his ghastly secret: fuelled by envy and resentment against the northern stranglehold on power, it was he who had poisoned Cadall. No great exposition of his motives or his reasoning was possible, as shortly afterwards Heilin breathed his last.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]As word spread of Heilin’s confession, the Prydeeneg were stunned. The Anglians, assumed to be savage, murderous barbarians, were quite innocent; it was the Prydeeneg who had caused the collapse of the near-century-old peace. They were the warmongers. They were the oathbreakers. And, as if that were not bad enough, they were losing.[/FONT]