Demontech: Onslaught (15 page)

The roll of the landscape increased until its steepness allowed for fewer vegetable plots and grazing areas. The patches of old-growth forest were larger and closer. After some hours Spinner’s horse-riding muscles were back to proper trim and he was certain his leg wound was fully healed. Haft was beginning to act like he’d spent his entire life on horseback. But the mare still looked over her shoulder at him from time to time and snorted as though she were still thinking, Amateur.

It was late afternoon when they came to an inn, which wasn’t marked on Sergeant Pilco’s map.

by Scholar Munch Mu’sk
Professor of Far Western Studies
University of the Great Rift
(excerpted from
The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures
, Vol. 57, No. 7)

Until the past few years, Jokapcul was known throughout the two continents, where it was known at all, for two things: the multiplicity of its volcanic islands, and the combative nature of its people. All the peoples of the two continents—at least those who knew of Jokapcul and lived on the western part of Nunimar—were content with the Jokapcul fighting constantly among themselves. That kept them so busy through the ages that they hardly ever bothered to cross the Jokapcul Sea or to sail south to the Turquoise Sea or to invade anyone else. For as long as anyone could remember, they had conducted only minor coastal raids.

According to legend, the Jokapcul Islands were first populated by coastal fishermen who were blown away from western Nunimar in storms. The islands of the chain are craggy and steep, with much barren rock. At first glance the islands seemed to be inhospitable in the extreme. However, during the time it took those first castaways to make their boats seaworthy again, to build new boats, and—perhaps most important—to build up their courage to recross the Jokapcul Sea, they discovered that fishing was much richer in the island waters than in the coastal waters from which they came. Even more remarkable to the fishermen was the ease of hunting land animals. On their western side, the islands were washed by a cold sea current that brought with it frequent fogs and rains, so the islands were much wetter than the continent, and fruit trees and other edibles grew in abundance in the islands’ valleys and flatlands. In short, life was much easier in the islands than it had been along the continental coast. So the fishermen resolved to stay. There was only one problem with their resolution: the fishermen had no women among them.

Legend says some of the fishermen made their boats seaworthy, built up their courage, and sailed east to bring their women back to their new homes. But a very serious problem arose: some men had women, some men didn’t; men who didn’t have women raided those who did for the purpose of stealing away their women. Legends describe the shortage of women as the origin of the warlike spirit of the Jokapcul people.

And those legends are probably true, as stealing women has remained a staple of warfare on the Jokapcul Islands up to the present. There is some doubt, however, about the truth of the legend about the origin of the first Jokapcul settlers. That doubt arises from a simple fact: with their saffron skin and almond eyes, the Jokapcul don’t look at all like any of the peoples of Nunimar. On the other hand, their improbable language seems to be derived at least in some small part from the same root language as many of the languages of western Nunimar.

Other legends say some of the earliest fishermen to inhabit the islands were blown there from the Kondive Islands by storms, and that the first wars were fought between Kondive Island fishermen and far-ranging Nunimar coastal fishermen. Those legends too have the ring of truth about them; only in recent times have the Kondivers become purveyors of luxurious trade goods. Before then, the people of the Kondive Islands were known and feared as pirates. Still, the appearance of the Jokapcul people is unlike the appearance of the Kondive Islanders, and there is no common root to their languages. In fact, nobody knows where the original Jokapcul came from.

Even though they constantly warred among themselves, as their population grew wildly and their culture matured the Jokapcul agreed on one thing: foreigners must be kept out. Life in the islands was too rich and too easy—when the islanders weren’t warring among themselves—to share with anyone from the mainland or from other archipelagos. The fisher-boats all went out armed, and none hesitated to attack any alien craft, Jokapcul or foreign, that entered their waters.

Thus, over the centuries a culture grew. Each island had its own clan that warred against neighboring islands’ clans, and the winners always stole young women from the losers. Sometimes the clans of two or more nearby islands would make truce with each other and combine forces to conquer another, larger and more powerful, island clan, but such alliances almost never lasted longer than it took to achieve the immediate goal. Most often they didn’t even last that long. Some islands were too small to support a clan large enough to defend them against their neighbors, so they became dependent fiefdoms, though to whom they were in thrall changed from time to time as the island clans warred with one another. More than one clan grew on a few of the larger islands, so unremitting war took place on them.

At the top of each clan is an individual who calls himself the “shoton,” a term that may be fairly accurately translated as “baron,” or “count,” though most who claim the title would give it a more grandiose translation, such as duke, earl, or prince. A few, usually those who have conquered their neighbors, claim that the proper translation is “king.” Some three centuries ago there was even one who, having conquered all the other islands within two days’ sail, announced that the proper translation was “emperor.”

Directly beneath the shotons are the kamazai. In the military forces of Jokapcul, kamazai hold positions similar to those held by the highest ranking generals in the armies of the two continents, albeit with some significant differences. The kamazai are not men who enter an army and, through diligence, skill, and increasing knowledge of warfare, advance through the officer ranks until they achieve generalship. Instead, they are men who, through force of arms, power of personality, and—most frequently—treachery, are able to assemble an army of their own, which they then offer in service to the local shoton. Kamazai are ranked as higher advisers to the shoton than any other advisers. They are always to be seen at the right shoulder of their shoton, and they are always in deep consultation with their shoton for the purposes of planning wars, invasions, and conquests. No kamazai worthy of the name ever overtly plans a defense; defensive planning is seen as a sign of weakness, to be done only by those who can’t attack. Any kamazai who is thought unable to attack is promptly attacked himself.

The Jokapcul word for “knight” is a garble of barks and growls totally impossible for any nonspeaker of the language to pronounce, so knight is the only word ever used to name the third rank of the Jokapcul hierarchy.

The knights correspond, roughly, to the officers of civilized armies. Like the kamazai, however, they do not lead through skill, force of personality, and learning. They lead by the simple expedients of brutality and intimidation. Their subordinates are beneath them in all ways and are treated as less than fully human. Higher ranking knights treat subordinate knights in the same manner. A proper knight is nearly as happy fighting his peers and superiors as he is fighting the army of an opposing clan. After all, once he has won enough battles and acquired a great enough reputation as a fighter, he may have the opportunity and means to raise an army of his own and become a kamazai himself.

Everybody else is below the knights and have as their sole reason for existence the support of the shoton, the kamazai, and the knights. The “people” may be fishermen, herders, farmers, craftsmen, merchants, priests, or anything else. They are subordinate and subject; subject not only to having all their belongings and other worldly goods taken by shoton, kamazai, or knight, but to be called upon to serve in the army as common soldiers.

One might think that an island nation such as the Jokapcul would have a strongly developed naval tradition, but it doesn’t. Perhaps this is because their progenitors were coastal, not deep-water, fishermen.

For more centuries than anyone knows, Jokapcul armies fought each other, Jokapcul stole each other’s women, Jokapcul developed newer weapons and fighting tactics, and Jokapcul kept foreigners away from their shores. Until twenty or so years ago.

Then a new man became shoton of one of the more obscure island clans. Nobody outside of Jokapcul is quite sure which island he started out on. Even his birth name is unknown to the outside world. The dominant legend of his early rise says that one day he simply walked into the courtyard of the local shoton, dressed in rough leather armor of homemade manufacture and carrying a sword that had long since seen its best days, and unceremoniously slew the shoton’s kamazai while that worthy was reviewing the palace guard. This audacious act so shocked the palace guard that before any of them could react, the stranger wrenched the helmet from the dead kamazai and placed it on his own head. He then announced to the palace guard that
he
was the new kamazai, and dared anyone who disagreed to face him in single combat. None did, and he instantly became the shoton’s first councilor. Then, before even a season passed, the new kamazai, in full sight of the army and populace during a festive ceremony, drew his sword, lopped off the head of the shoton, and elevated himself to that position.

At that point there could have been a rebellion, for the deposed shoton was, as shotons go, kindly and therefore popular with the army and the people. But the new shoton allowed no time for a rebellion to foment. Within days he led his army in an invasion of a neighboring island. His army won that war. In living memory, it was the first successful invasion conducted by the obscure island clan. That invasion cemented him in the hearts of the knights, and the knights didn’t care what the people thought. That invasion was followed by another and another and another until every island within a day’s sail was conquered. Each conquest was followed by a brief consolidation, a simple two-step process: (1) the conquered shoton was publicly beheaded; (2) the kamazai were offered a choice of joining the old shoton in death or of joining the new shoton in conquest of the world. Personal loyalty not being a notable strength of the Jokapcul, nearly every kamazai pledged his loyalty to the new shoton.

In order to successfully carry out the conquest of all the islands, the new shoton took a step never taken before by any shoton. He promoted his best kamazai to the new rank of subshoton and promised them regency over large sections of the rest of the islands—provided they conquered and held those islands. The newly appointed subshotons set to work with a diligence that would have been admirable had it been applied to a pursuit other than invasion and conquest.

Ten years after the unknown man in homemade armor slew his first kamazai, all the Jokapcul Islands were held under his rule. He styled himself the High Shoton of Jokapcul and established his capital on Kokudo, the largest and richest island of the archipelago. The next several years were spent in consolidating his rule. As one of the steps in the consolidation, he took to wife the most beautiful daughter or sister of each clan chief—except for his victorious kamazai, there were no other shotons. Soon, because the warlike Jokapcul were no longer allowed to war among themselves, it was necessary to find a new way of making war. And so it came about that what had once been occasional raids on the mainland increased both in frequency and ferocity.

But the Jokapcul had no true deep-sea craft or deep-sea skills, and many of the raiding fisher boats were lost in the rough seas between the islands and the mainland. Moreover, because the Jokapcul had early stripped their islands of forests to clear them for settlements and farmland, they no longer had the resources to construct ships. Further, since the isolated Jokapcul had little more knowledge of the mainland than the mainlanders have of the Jokapcul—and there is a great deal more of the mainland to be ignorant of—the raids were not very successful. And that lack of success bred a measure of discontent.

To further complicate matters for the High Shoton, there are enough islands and clans that he had not even a passing acquaintance with many of his wives. The clan leaders and kamazai whose daughters and sisters were taken to wife by the High Shoton had expected some measure of influence with him. Such influence could not come through wives who were unacquainted with their husband. That bred more discontent.

The High Shoton was facing rebellion. He had too many wives to become acquainted with all of them, so he could not forestall rebellion by granting influence through them. The only other distraction he had was raids on the mainland, which weren’t very successful, and he had no way of immediately gaining deep-sea capability or knowledge of the geography of the mainland.

That was when, fortuitously for him, Lord Lackland, half bastard fourth son of Good King Honritu of Matilda, self-styled the Dark Prince, requested parlay.

The road topped a ridge and a valley opened before them. Spinner stopped, and Haft, peering into the trees, would have ridden his horse into the back of the gelding if the mare hadn’t stopped on her own. The road they were on ran almost straight across the valley. The slopes of the ridges flanking the valley were wooded, and the forest came down the valley from the north as far as the road. From the road south, the valley had been cleared for several hundred paces. Directly ahead of them, alongside the road and a hundred paces beyond the end of the trees, a wooden fence formed a corral next to a stable. Several horses stood quietly in the corral while a stableman saw that the food and water troughs were properly filled. Thirty paces beyond the stable stood the largest building they’d seen since leaving New Bally. Farther away, set back from the road, was another building, bigger than the stable but smaller than the main building. That outbuilding had no windows they could see and its door was strongly barred. It looked more like a fortress than a barn to Spinner, except that he couldn’t see any embrasures to fight from in its sides, or crenellations on its top.