Tales Before Tolkien (52 page)

Kilikash meanwhile began determined efforts to capture Miltain. Against the advice of everyone, Alwina went back to Miltain, and her coming raised a flame in the hard-pressed defenders. It also had another effect, upon which she perhaps counted—news of her plight came to the hesitant, dour, but amorous Tor. A personal call was needed to move that dweller in a land still largely of clans. He set sail when news came to him, with no other intent than to destroy every Karain ship he could find, but the later were too wary. Their whole fleet withdrew into the mouth of the Haly River, and Tor, being no fool, did not venture to attack them there but watched them from his base at Toobey Harbor. There was no decisive action that year, but the queen had accomplished her task: the Winder fleet was brought into use to its full extent at last.

   

Matters became darker. Large parts of the city of Miltain were captured. The Demiji irrupted again into Islandia. Troops crossed the river and raided Deen and Brome. Worst of all, Cabing was killed in a skirmish and there seemed no one fit to take his place. Kilikash made a reasonable offer: the cession of Miltain, which he occupied in fact, parts of Brome and Deen, and the dispersal of the Winder fleet, which was a thorn in his side. In fact he made separate offers to Tor, who dallied with them. The Islandians lost heart—all but their queen and Mora, who undertook the command of the army. There was a deadlock. Another winter came. The war had now lasted four years and seemingly the Karain were firmly the masters of Miltain. The Demiji were more of a curse every year. The Winder fleet, fearing the bad weather, sailed north to the better harbor of Ardan. The queen was not idle. She escaped a second time from the beleagered city and she travelled all over her realm, seeking to stir her people to a great effort in the coming year. She visited the fleet at Ardan, where Tor for the first time had remained. Her conquest of him progressed.

In spring the perennial siege of Miltain was renewed, but this was not Kilikash's main objective. A great fleet set sail from Mobono with the Sultan himself in charge. The ships in the Haly joined him and the whole force set out for the south with the object of rounding Stornsea and falling upon The City [the capital of Islandia] itself. Delayed by baffling winds, they put in at Beal, captured and sacked the town. Tor, learning of their advance, quitted Ardan, not to be caught in a trap. The weather grew more favorable as day by day the southeast winds lessened and Kilikash started on his way, his ships blackening the ocean for miles with Bant slaves at the oars. The Winder fleet boldly went out to sea for room to manoevre. Unwilling to attack so vast a force, they kept to windward and harried the wing. Nevertheless Kilikash progressed steadily. Off the rocks of Stornsea there was something of a fight, but the advance was not checked. The cape was rounded. Terror spread through Islandia. The army was concentrated at Miltain. Hordes of Dimiji were sweeping through the center. To withdraw to protect The City meant laying open Deen and Brome.

Then abruptly the balance swung.

There came up a gale from the southeast on the fifth of Maya. The Karain became terrified. Tor seized this opportunity and his ships sailed before the wind into the heart of the Karain fleet; the whole great force was scattered in a few hours. Weatherly handled, Tor's ships suffered little danger, while many of the Karain vessels were sunk. Others were rendered prey to the wind and were blown on the unhospitable shores of Niven and Alban. Discouraged, the Karain were defeated in several battles before Miltain, and their hold on that province became insecure. The Islandians, however, had not strength enough to route them on land, and towards the end of Sorn the scales turned the other way again. The Demiji were never more ferocious or bold. They burned the unwalled town of Bostia to the ground, and invested Reeves.

   

The queen had her problems that Windorn. An ill-timed exultation possessed her people. The sea victory was magnified far beyond its real significance. There was a slackening of energy that promised evil results. Alwina, now a woman of twenty-five, showed her true greatness: The four years of war had convinced her that the way to victory lay not upon land but upon the sea; her policy of building ships was beginning to bear fruit. Hitherto the Winder fleet had been indispensable; now, without recourse to Tor, she could send to sea a substantial fleet of larger vessels than those he commanded. She had not been wholly pleased with his behaviour after his relief of The City. He had not kept his ships together and returned, as she wished, to the East coast. She could not afford to disregard him entirely, but she was in a position to treat him with a higher hand. She had before her four great tasks: the defeat of the Karain, the solution of the Demiji riddle, the annexation of Winder and Storn, and the continuation of her line. So far she had not perceptibly advanced to the solution of any. She might well have been discouraged, but if she was she did not show it. In this momentous year, in many ways as dark as any, she set in train the forces that solved all four.

   

So far, Alwina had shown no particular aptitude in the choice of leaders. Cabing was an inheritance and he was gone. Names shifted across her record not worthy of mention. The gentle Mora X was not a leader, though he was a trusted friend to whom she unburdened herself. Tor, the unruly, was not yet in her control. Most of the provincial nobles were men of little mark; Dorn XI still sulked over his defeat as to her succession. In this year she found the first of her three great followers—a young man from Hoe Bay, of an old Winder family that had long been at odds with the reigning dynasty of Tors. He had been employed in connection with the building of ships, and was largely responsible for the excellence of the growing Islandian fleet. The queen imposed more and more trust in him and in 1326 made him “Marriner,” commander in chief of all Islandian vessels. Tor protested, but the queen retorted with his failure to follow up his victory. It was a dangerous game for her to play, but she risked it, reading her man well. The controversy spread dread through Islandia—coming after Tor's victory it boded ill in the eyes of most people. In Winder the adherents of Tor suspected that Alwina was scheming to supplant him. A great deal of discontent spread over the two nations, and her old opponents came to the fore again.

Then the queen electrified everyone. When the snow was still crisp and frozen she went to Reeves, and visiting Ingo, its lord and lord of the most ancient province of Islandia, shamed him publicly for allowing the Demiji to overrun his land year after year. Were the Demiji super-human? she asked. They were men and must come by human paths. She pointed to the mountains, saying “You fear these barrier friends, and they return your fear with contempt and punish you. Let us not dread the mountain but treat him as our brother. He will reveal his secrets if we seek them, and if we aid ourselves he will aid us.” Gathering a small retinue, she set out up the Islandia River, following its West Fork, and on foot crossed over into the frozen valley of the Upper Doring. No one ever ventured into these regions in winter! The queen showed that it was not impossible. Guided by instinct, or perhaps by knowledge she professed not to have in order to make her discovery more striking, she went straight to the hitherto unknown Lor pass, singularly concealed from the Doring valley. It was ascended, and for the first time Islandians looked down from their own mountains on the vast Karain basin, and below them, visible to their eyes, were the piedmont lands occupied by the Karain and Demiji, whose settlements were visible. The secret was explained; the answer was to seize and fortify the pass. The queen had shown the way. A later party, ascending the Doring, discovered the Doring pass, and both were strongly held in Spring. The Demiji were bloodily repulsed when their hordes advanced, confident that they would find the back door into Islandia open as usual.

The queen's daring or good fortune or intelligence had its reward—when the story of her courageous venturing into unknown and terrifying places spread over the country she regained most of her lost ground. Her people prepared for the coming season of fighting with confidence in her, and trusted her to be successful with her new fleet, even without the aid of Tor. On land things went much as before, there was the inevitable deadlock, but at sea Alwina had reason to be proud of herself. Marriner kept the coast clear. The Islandians showed that they could fight at sea without the aid of Winder. There were no decisive battles, but there were many engagements and when Windorn came again, no Karain ship dared venture as far north as Tire Island.

   

Alwina returned to her capital, the idol of her people. Perhaps her successes turned her head a little; she showed signs of a certain wildness of character that later manifested itself more strongly. Politically she took no pains to conceal her attitude towards Tor and Winder. She had called them to her aid, and they had not come. She talked openly of divesting them of everything they had gotten from Islandia, and to a certain extent she was justified, but it seems to us now a path of folly from which she was extricated by marvellous good fortune rather than the intelligent course of a wise queen. Winder could do Islandia incalculable harm, and she apparently widened the breach deliberately. Her ships would be no match for Tor's, and without him no match for the new fleet she must have known that Kilikash would have ready the next year. But perhaps she knew better than this outer semblance—the end ultimately justified her.

If she was not guilty of political indiscretion, it is less easy to absolve her for her private conduct. She attracted to herself a group of young men, including Marriner, a popular hero, and another, Strale, a young officer in her army. It seems hardly safe, not only on what historical evidence we have but also on our knowledge of her character, to assume that she was deliberately reckless with these lovers—for such they were. It seems unwarranted to call her their mistress. The sounder view seems to be that after all she was a young and beautiful woman as well as a queen, indulging in dangerous but innocent amusements.

The end of Windorn found her on the alert again, and adopting a less haughty mood towards Tor. Her letters to him are not those of an enemy, but rather of a woman who has quarrelled with her lover. She feels wronged, but she needs his aid, and she writes to him anxiously and is generously willing to forgive, somewhat repentant, and herself in love. Tor, in his answers, showed an inclination to bargain. The advancement of Marriner rankled bitterly. But he, too, showed the lover in his jealousy, the anger of the man obscuring the fear of the leader. There is an insistent personal note in the relations of these two. Whether or not Alwina ever loved Tor is a question—she pretended that she did, and perhaps persuaded herself that her pretense was the truth. That he was a man in love is unmistakable, but he was also a wily chief who was not going to marry without securing something for himself and his people. In their correspondence we see the very first signs on his part of a willingness to give without getting; he professed not to be satisfied but he promised to have his fleet in readiness.

   

Spring found Marriner prepared for the onrush of the Karain fleet with Tor still hesitating. Kilikash was once more at sea, once more ambitious to sweep it clean. Circumstances were in his favor. The forces of his enemy were separated. This was a year of sea fighting—it was also the year of greatest effort on the part of the Karain. Their armies swept up to the Haly River and crossed the Miltain near Dole. Marriner avoided being shut up in the River and sailed south pursued by Kilikash. There was a running fight all along the coast. News came to Tor, and still he hesitated. Kilikash, intent on crushing the Islandians before he arrived, pressed harder and harder. Then happened one of the finest actions in Islandian history: Marriner, realizing that Kilikash was so hot that he would follow regardless of danger, put to sea in terrible weather off Ailsea, with shortened sail so as to draw Kilikash among his vessels. There was a desperate engagement with more losses from marine perils than from the perils of war. Both fleets were badly depleted, but it was an Islandian victory. The queen was wild with delight. Many supposed that she meant to marry the hero.

Though the year's campaigning was not over, Alwina left the front, contrary to her usual custom, and went to The City, sending for Tor. He came grudgingly. Their roles were reversed. His own people were angry at him for suffering the Islandians to win all the glory with the inevitable menace to themselves. Here he and the queen stayed during the summer in negotiation broken by quarrels but steadily tending to an agreement. The year ended with new glory for Marriner, and very nearly with defeat for the Islandian army, though late in Austus the Karain were driven back across the Haly at Branly where they had forced a crossing, in a bloody fight which established Strale as the coming man on land.

The agreement which Alwina and Tor reached eventually was not generally known until the next year, but it bore fruit as soon as the snows melted. Kilikash made yet another attempt, and again it was by sea. His fleet, greatly augmented, rendezvoused at Carran but by the time it was ready to sail, Tor, with the full force of Winder ships, was at Ardan, and Marriner was ready to slip cables from Raisby at a moment's notice. Tor and Marriner, who hated each other passionately, temporarily settled their differences in the face of a desperate situation. News came that Miltain was about to fall. Kilikash went south with all speed while the calm lasted, and rounded Bealsea with the Islandians to seaward and behind him, making no effort to win either Beal or Ardan. He ran into a region of stronger winds—it is rare that eastern Storn is ever calm. Skirting the barren coast south of Ailsea on June 10th, he saw the Islandian fleet bearing down before a strong southeast wind from rearwards. The fight began in a small gale that prevented the long oared ships from turning. Tor, whose plan it was to attack, had taken advantage of the elements to the utmost. Weatherly with the wind over the quarter, the three hundred Islandian ships could be handled easily. The Karain ships were much strung out; those ahead could not return at once. The Islandian ships each aimed to shear off the oars of as many enemy vessels as possible before laying aboard. The Karain, manoeuvring to face their own foes, got into the roll of the sea. One after another they were crippled. Then the boarding began. The most crippled vessels were let go; many were swept upon the rocks. Those of the Karain who escaped among the rocks of Ailsea were hunted to death by the people of Storn.