1.2: The Gathering Storm
1.2: The Gathering Storm
“I may seem to be an unlikely person to be advocating this alliance so vigorously,” Nena-ongebi[1] orated. “After all, what have these ‘Haudenosaunee’ or their constituent powers ever done to
my people? The Thunderbird Clan do not live south of Lake Erie, so why should I care if the Six Nations decides to ban the sale of weapons to those who do?
“Simply, the answer is that it’s not what the Haudenosaunee
have done, but rather what they’re
planning to do. The goal of the Haudenosaunee is nothing less than total domination of everything. That no doubt seems like melodrama on my part, but bear with me.
“The stated goal of the confederacy is to bring peace to the world. A lofty goal, no doubt, but how does one go about it, practically speaking? Treaties and alliances are all well and good, but they’re also fragile, temporary things, and there is not much you can do if one party is not negotiating in good faith. So if peace is one’s goal, long-lasting and enforceable peace, how
does one go about getting it in a practical matter? The answer is obvious. Peace is had at the end of a spear. If you truly want peace with everyone, the only logical solution is to have so much military and economic might that no one dares to defy you.
“But that is, of course, conceptual, right? I did of course take the stated goal of the Haudenosaunee and take it so far to the furthest logical extreme that it came back around the other side, after all. Even assuming the Haudenosaunee aren’t exaggerating or trying to make themselves look more noble than they are, there’s a difference in what people say and what they do, and people rarely ever take their own moral stances to the logical conclusion, to the point where the logical conclusion is almost a logical fallacy. So let us look at that confederacy’s actions, then.
“The first thing the Haudenosaunee did when they consolidated was to force New Vinland into their fold. Why would they do this? None of the other five nations have any shared cultural heritage with the Norse, after all. They did it simply because the Norse had valuable resources—ironmongery, longboats, trade routes, livestock, wheat—and were too weak to put up much of a fight.
The first action of the Haudenosaunee upon coming into existence was to imperialistically expand their territory and power base!
“And now there is this resolution to ban the sale of iron weapons to those nations which live south of Lake Erie. Which, I’ll have you know, breaks the very Great Law that these people hold so dear.” Nena-ongebi produced a scroll and handed it to the Kandoucho Chief Souharissen[1], pointing out a few lines. “The Great Law
is admirable in that it puts as much effort into denoting what the Great Council
can’t do as well as what it
can—and what it can’t do is dictate the internal affairs of its constituent nations, essentially. So that makes it particularly jarring that they would do such a thing as curtail the actions of Norse merchants. One would
hope that a nation would last more than three months before selling out its highest ideals, so what in the world prompted this action?
“Is the answer not obvious? They want to ensure that their neighbors remain weak while they become strong, so that when the time comes—perhaps in ten years’ time, perhaps in five, I do not know—they can overrun them, take their lands and scatter their people. And this brings us back to our original question—why should
we care? Neither your people nor mine are proscribed, after all. But think—once the Haudenosaunee control the southern coasts of Lakes Ontario and Erie, what is the next logical thing for them to do? Where do they go next? What would
you do if you were them? I’ll tell you what I’d do—I’d go north. And with a monopoly on iron weapons and Norse shipping, who could stop them?”
Nena-ongebi watched Souharissen visibly think with a vague feeling of dread. Thusfar in his quest he had gotten only vague commitments of the “I’ll join if so-and-so joins” persuasion, and did not expect this day to prove any different. Everyone wanted an anti-Haudenosaunee coalition, but nobody wanted to be the first to join.
“Perhaps,” Souharissen said. “If you can gather more allies and convince me that your army has a chance of winning the war you propose, I would be willing to join. But until then, needful as the cause might be, I’m not willing to sacrifice my own people in vain.”
Nena-ongebi bowed, said a few polite formalities, and left the longhouse cursing under his breath in his own hopefully-incomprehensible-to-the-locals language as he passed tables full of Kandoucho warriors. Having a gift for languages, he could speak all the major dialects of the Great Lakes region, and had made it a point to address Souharissen in his own tongue rather than the de facto trade language of Norse so that these warriors would have an easier time understanding him. Hopefully, if a large number of them ended up deciding they shared his concerns, they could speak to Souharissen and get him to change his mind. All Nena-ongebi needed was a few nations to agree to his alliance, and the rest would quickly follow suit.
He stepped out into the biting cold winter night, shivered and pulled his clothes tight around him, and then walked to his pony, checked his saddlebag to make sure nothing was missing, stashed the copy of the Great Law of Peace he’d gotten from a Seneca scribe for a few shavings of gold, and—
“Nena-ongebi,” a young-sounding, Norse-accented voice asked, except that it wasn’t a question. He turned and saw that the speaker was indeed a Norseman barely old enough to grow a few scraggly chin-hairs.
“Yes?” the man from the Thunderbird Clan asked.
“I am Athalráthr Athalbrandsson, sent on behalf of my father, Athalbrandr Ádámsson, Chieftain of Buffalo[2],” the straw-haired boy said. “My father would be very interested in speaking with you. Tomorrow morning.”
“We’d have to ride most of the night,” Nena-ongebi protested before thinking. “Oh, right. So that no one sees Nena-ongebi leave Kandoucho land with a Norse boy matching your description and then Athalráthr Athalbrandsson entering Buffalo with a Skraeling matching my description.”
Athalráthr nodded. “Shall we go?”
Niagara Falls was the end of the line for any ship coming in from the ocean and Buffalo was the only Norse port on Lake Erie, and so was a major hub of action—since it started shipping iron in from Lake Superior about a decade ago, it had begun to shape up to become
the major Norse settlement on Turtle Island. During the day, the noise from smithies and shipyards was deafening, but even Buffalo was quiet and dark at night.
Nena-ongebi and Athalráthr approached the palisade gates from the East Road—which was extremely well-kept, being the major artery to Lake Onterio—and Nena-ongebi drew in breath to shout.
“No,” Athalráthr whispered.
“How are we going to let the guards know to open the gate?” Nena-ongebi asked.
“Wait here.” With that Athalráthr lead his horse around the palisade and out of the Skraeling’s view. A few minutes later, the gates were quietly opening and Athalráthr stood in the path.
Nena-ongebi rode up to him and dismounted. “How did you do that?”
“Magic.”
Nena-ongebi was led to the chieftain’s hall, which was unsurprisingly of the Norse design rather than the Iroquoian, and into the dining hall. A stout bear of a man was seated at the end of the table, and stood when the Skraeling entered.
“Nena-ongebi, I presume? I am Athalbrandr Ádámsson, Chieftain of Buffalo. Welcome to my hall; I apologize for there being no meal prepared yet and for not allowing you to rest after your journey, but we must discuss things of a sensitive nature.”
“Indeed I am Nena-ongebi of the Thunderbird Clan. And I admit to being rather curious as to why you asked me here.”
“It can be hard, to unify people against a common foe, I imagine. Even when the foe is extremely threatening—nay,
especially when this is the case, for who would volunteer to lead the charge? Yours is not a task I am envious of,” Athalbrandr said.
“He gave quite a speech in Kandoucho, but the fools did not heed it,” Athalráthr supplied helpfully.
“And how do you know that?” Nena-ongebi asked.
“Magic.”
“Yes, well, perhaps the fools would be more willing to listen of you had an armory to offer the war effort,” Athalbrandr said. “I wish to make a gift.”
“Indeed. What sort of gift?”
“Two thousand swords, three thousand spears, five thousand shields, a thousand helmets, five hundred axes, and about a dozen suits of chainmail, by the time of the spring thaw.”
This shocked Nena-ongebi out of his fatigue. “That is…quite the gift.” It was enough to make him convert to Christianity, in fact.
“Lake Superior seems to have iron coming out of the ass recently. Don’t ask me how they do it, but we’ve built more than a dozen smithies in the last decade.”
“Even so. You are quite correct in your estimation that this would help my cause, but I have to ask…
why?”
Athalbrandr chuckled. “Looking a gift horse in the mouth, are you?” He held up a hand to cut him off. “No, you have every right to your suspicion—I would expect nothing less, in fact! The truth is that I understand why Thorkill did what he did—as you are so fond of telling everyone, he did not have a choice. The Haudenosaunee had us exactly where they wanted us.
Have us exactly where they want us, rather. There aren’t enough of us in Turtle Island to take them on. But if your side were to prove victorious in the upcoming war, it would give us an excuse to make a clean break of it.”
“Yes, I do say that, and for all I say I confesss that I am still surprised about your vehemence,” Nena-ongebi admitted. “What few impositions on your culture is made by the structure of the Great Council—sachems being chosen by clan matriarchs and whatnot—can easily be manipulated and don’t very much affect your daily lives in any case, and in return you are protected by an alliance of five nations that were major players in regional politics even before they unified, and is now the most powerful nation I know of.”
“Yes, yes. But then they broke their own Great Law and restricted our trade,” Athalbrandr said. “As much as we have a reputation for being fearsome warriors, it wasn’t our swords which earned us a place on Turtle Island—well, in a sense it was, I suppose, but you know what I mean—it was our mercantile skill. My ancestors have been visiting Turtle Island ever since some Skraelings realized that by panning in a river for gold and trading what they earned with a passing longboat they could gain iron tools and spearheads. After all, this is a much easier way to make a living than hunting the great white bears of the north, as Thorkill’s grandfather could tell you, which is how he happened to be in the right place at the right time for Agetshahnit to offer to dump a homestead in his lap provided he could collect some warriors for him. What I am saying is, first and foremost we are traders. And the Haudenosaunee are restricting our trade.”
Nena-ongebi nodded. Christian, pagan, or even the odd convertee to a Skraeling faith, the true god of the Norse was gold. “I see. I would very much like to talk about this armory of yours.”
[1] Yes, yes, I know, I know—I’m sorry.
[2] Athalbrandr Ádámsson’s village being built on more-or-less the same exact spot as Buffalo NY is a stark coincidence; this will not stop me from using that is its English name, however.
I should probably explain the first footnote, especially considering the fact that I used my own Romanizing scheme for Nena-ongebi’s name (the Fiero orthography version has, like, seven “a”s in a row)—it’s pronounced “Nay-naw-ong-gay-be”. If you think that sounds vaguely Algonquian, you have good ears (I think). I wanted Nena to be something of the flip side of the same coin as Deganawidah, so he is likewise foreign. If you recognize Nena’s namesake as Hanging Cloud’s father, well, now you know
what I was profusely apologizing for. Likewise, Chief Souharissen of the Kandoucho is named after a supposed chieftain of the Attawandaron village of Kandoucho (according to the Wikipedia).
Anyway, you’ve just learned quite a bit about the events leading up to the Norse settling in future-Haudenosaunee territory. Possibly. I do not guarantee the accuracy of Athalbrandr’s account, and I sure as hell don’t endorse its completeness. There is at least one gaping plot hole you ought to be wondering about—how the whole thing with Indians panning for gold came about. I mean, it certainly requires a pretty big leap of logic, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, I know how it happened, though. And maybe one day I’ll even tell you. Mwuh-ha-ha.
If it is drawing in part from the assistance, alliance, and membership from local Skjaldpadder Catholic powers, and only partially dependent on a stream of acolytes from footloose European noble younger sons and the like, it might well sustain itself and grow--possibly to the eventual regret of whatever local power called for its foundation and fostered it, as the Polish kings soon found the Teutonic Order wearing out its welcome!
