Excerpt from Volume 9 of the Conquest of the East – by Aximan Salmongate Starcrown[1]
[1] Compiler’s Commentary: Aximan’s exhaustive (and exhausting) history of the eastern annexations always contend some moral quality to one or another of the sides in any conflict. Of those he condemns and lauds only one oscillates between these two impressions. The despot Ulthan who tamed the horses, refused to drink anything but rain and slew every lion in the forest. So many attributes are linked back to Ulthan that most accounts of his deeds mustn’t be thought credible. Aximan is at least realistic in terms of the deeds of Ulthan though he gives slight credit to a few of the unbelievable claims made by Ulthan’s contemporaries. Of all the claims the two most persistent, that he tamed the horse and that he drank only rain are sufficiently acclaimed that two of the Kannylte of the Empire are named for his exploits. No other individual has such a distinction, and while we of the West are curious and often delighted by the Raindrinker’s exploits, they are by all evidence a cult rite of the East, in which Ulthan is considered a spiritual, and thus superior ruler of the world. Aximan’s account, here, of the Raindrinker’s duel with the Kannyl Nightcandle is replicated in many of his histories as he is rather preoccupied with the concept of rivals.
The foresight of Ulthan had raised obstacles worthy of such an antagonist. Ninety cubits below the castle, at the widest part of the river, he linked the two banks by joining boats with heavy rope in the form of a bridge, on which he erected two lofty platforms, from where the bravest of his Euye could command the crossing by the overwhelming force of their bows. Within the boats there were held vast stores of ammunition for the Euye shoulderbows, which weapons could pierce the skull of imperial elephants. The approach of the bridge guarded, on the opposite sides of the Euyhmer, by a numerous and select detachment of riders. But the enterprise of forcing these barriers, and conquering Draylbuhn, displays a shining example of the boldness and genius of Ettissoer. Her cavalry advanced from the hills along the long road from Klial for she requested the assets of the Kannyltine himself. This train cowed the natives of all the kannylte through which they crossed, and were awesome enough to ward off even the Yoyue raiders of the hills, which caravan served to diminish and distract the attention of the Euye enemy. Her infantry and provisions were distributed in two thousand wagons pulled by two thousand and each wagon was shielded by a high rampart of thick planks, pierced with many small holes for the discharge of bolts. In the van, two large wagons were linked together to sustain a rolling castle, which commanded the towers of the other engines of the war, and contained a magazine of firesalt, rockshot and burning sulfur. The whole convoy, which the Kannyl led in person, was laboriously moved against the sorties of the forest peoples. The bridge succumbed to their onslaught, and the enemies who guarded the banks were either slain or captured. As soon as they touched the principal barrier, the boats serving as the crossing were scattered upon the river instantly dispersing the bridge; one of the towers, with two hundred Euye archers, was consumed by the waters; the assailants shouted victory; and Klial was expanded, as the wisdom of Ettissoer had been advanced by the obedience of her warcourt. Her own foresight in the matter of war granted her preparation sufficient that she had brought with her the sacred timbers of the first bridges overpassing the Weft. These were transported by the wagons in her train and comprised the previously mentioned ramparts. She had previously sent orders to her Rinkannyl Fradosius to second her operations by a timely construction of a kliali bridge; and she had fixed her Tunkannyl, Ostor, by a peremptory command, to the fore of this bridge. But ambition rendered Fradosius’ efforts futile for the Euyhmer proved too wide to bridge by any means save Ulthan’s technique; while the youthful ardor of Ostor delivered him into the grip of a superior enemy. The exaggerated rumor of his defeat was hastily carried to the ears of Ettissoer: she halted her assault; betrayed in that single moment of her life by her emotions of surprise and grief; and reluctantly sounded a retreat to save the remnants of the Weftish bridge, her own treasures, and the only town of Klial’s upon the western Euyhmer. The vexation of her mind produced an ardent and almost mortal fever; and Klial was left without protection for a time to the indignation of Ulthan’s authority. The continuance of hostilities had imbittered the Kliali’s hatred: the Bridge Faith’s clergy was ignominiously driven from Klial; Jisshir, the demagogue, fled without success from an embassy to the Euye camp.
Famine had relaxed the strength and discipline of the garrison of Draylbuhn. They could derive no effectual service from a dying people; and the inhuman ambition of the horsetamer at length absorbed the vigilance of the tribes. Four Yoyue sentinels, while their companions slept, and their officers were absent, descended by a rope from the wall, and secretly proposed to Kannyl Ettissoer to introduce her troops into the bastion. The offer was entertained with disinterest and mistrust; they returned in safety; they twice again repeated their visit; the plan was twice examined; the conspiracy was taken up and closely regarded; and no sooner had Ettissoer consented to the conspiracy, than they unbarred the Stargazer gate, and gave admittance to the Klialis. Till the dusk of night, they halted in order of battle, apprehensive of treachery or ambush; but the troops of Ulthan, with their leader, had already escaped; and when the kannyl was pressed to disturb their retreat, she prudently replied, that no sight could be more grateful than that of a fleeing enemy. The talans, who were still possessed of horses, Korron, Sillit, &c. accompanied the Rinkannyl; their master, among whom none are named by the annals, took refuge in the house of the Horse: but the assertion, that only five hundred persons remained in Draylbuhn, inspires some doubt of the fidelity either of the narrative. As soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Klialis, their kannyl devoutly visited the tomb of the Dry Bones; but while she prayed at the altar, twenty-five captives, and sixty Euye, were put to the sword in the vestibule of the tomb.
The loss of Draylbuhn proved consequential to all Ulthan’s latter actions. After his departure, the Klialis created it the capitol of Nightcandle, their easternmost possession. Its prior inhabitants were further imbittered by the Kliali’s claim when the conquerors elected to rename their acquisition Eastern River Castle. The Euye were thrice repulsed from the walls in the following year. Each time Ulthan drove his foresters to the walls while putting to torch the surrounding lands. Through the grey season of that year the forest surrounding Draylbuhn burned intensely. Fortifying the castle became the principal occupation of Ettissoer who’s domestic situations speedily collapsed; Nightcandle was near to falling owing to the ambitions of Fradosius who sought to supplant his mother Etissoer as the Kannyl of the territory. This treachery cut deep the heart of the Kannyl’s occupation, all the more because in her haste to conquer she forever lost the relics of the first bridge. The White season led to famine and the Kannyl’s hasty retreat to address the controversies in the heart of her possessions. Such retreat was only possible given the Euyhmer had frozen over and though her desperate departure was the first of the season it was not the final, for Ettis and his foresters retook the castle of Draylbuhn not by force but through canny application of siege techniques. For the entirety of the Kliali’s campaign the horsetamer’s canny presumptions had saved his legacy; as the Klialis marched to his river he had withdrawn all the provisions held in Draylbuhn to caverns hidden beneath the woods long known to the Euye and utilized in times of struggle. Now in the last season of the year the Euye partisans held provisions to sustain themselves all the while destroying the produce of the castle’s conquerors. The frozen river then became a highway upon which all the Nightcandle conquerors fled in humiliating retreat. Thereafter Kannyl Ettissoer sued for truce between herself and the stormer Ulthan, which party acceded to the peace granted only that his own possession be recognized by the Empire and that the Yoyue conspirators who had betrayed him be returned to his hands. These concessions were granted in haste by the Kannyl who had been driven to recklessness by betrayal within her own dominions. Thereafter as a show of compassion Ulthan returned the timbers of the first bridge which had been recovered from the river as war trophies by his own. The Yoyue conspirators were executed in public performance while Ulthan paid respects in the tomb of dry bones himself. Thus the Euye considered the desecration of Draylbuhn answered and dissipated themselves as a united force. From that reconquest of their castle the Euye have ever been a divided people, along the lines of their totemic allies; the Horse, the Lion, the Trout or the Frog and others less well known split the immense forest into their own kyu that fell to their former contention over esoteric matters of dominance or ownership. These conflicts burgeoned through the following year during which the barbarous woodsmen not observing the ordinary construction of the military season soon drove to conquer Draylbuhn themselves…
…During the White season that followed Ulthan was compelled by his own misadventure in contention with the Lion that he sought and was granted refuge among the Klialis, Kannyl Ettisoer had prevailed in that intervening span against her infidelitous sons, and having recalled the compassion Ettis had displayed by returning to her the beams of the first bridge, granted him solace. During this exile the Horsetamer contended that he would not drink from any river that flowed to his old dominion and would drink only rain while enduring exile.