946 – 964 ASF

The first night on the herthe, Newke died.

Nobody had actually seen him go overboard. The captain’s best guess was that, at some point in the night, he’d got up to piss and had accidentally toppled over the edge of the herthe.

The whole affair set my already unsettled nerves ajitter. Newke had been a new crewman, just like me. Was I next? I couldn’t imagine how Newke had lost his balance, even while tipsy. The herthe, a merchant ship named Conquest, with a dark squarish hull designed for carrying cargo, was like a turtle in the water: slow, but steady. Which was all the more impressive when I realized the herthe was being pulled upriver.

Two creatures were harnessed to the bow of the Conquest, like horses with a carriage. They spent most of their time underwater, trundling along the riverbed as they tugged the herthe against the gentle current. I jumped and gawped the first time I saw them surface. Twice as big as bulls. A pudgy, powerful body covered in slick, blackish-brown fur. A giant, flippered tail. Round ears, whiskers, and massive rodent teeth that could split floating tree trunks in two—something they seemed to enjoy doing whenever one floated by.

These were hershon, who naturally spend half their lives pushing up Rivona’s rivers, where they mate, birth offspring, and die. The other half of their lives they float lazily back down the rivers, seemingly just for the hells of it, only to do their aquatic hike all over again. Some smart Rivonan figured out how to convince them into pulling a boat while they did so, and here we were today.

So how had Newke tumbled off a stable, slow-moving barge? Rumors abounded, and I soon learned that a herthe was a pit of gossip deeper than a Rivonan village. But why? Well, the herthe held about two dozen crew. When navigating around tight corners, through whitewater, or across other hazards, every hand was needed. But the river wasn’t like this most of the time, so the crew filled the time by drinking, gambling, and, of course, gossiping.

Some people blamed Newke’s death on the man himself. His ill luck in life had followed him aboard, some claimed. Others thought it was because he hadn’t waved to riverbirds the herthe had passed on the riverbank, or simply because he didn’t know how to swim. A whispering minority thought it was because of the captain and the route she’d chosen—up through Crosswater, between Willowmere and Mistmire, long believed to be regular haunts of the Raven.

This was the same place, according to Kerraguard Exemplar, that the Raven raised Relga Craythe, the last of Rivona’s royal line. After the Raven’s revelations, this wilderness became her training grounds. The man and woman who had visited her before were Kerraguard-Captain Harland and the White Crow, respectively—the last vestiges of her royal court. Over many years, over many visits, they helped shape Relga into a queen ready for war.

Harland’s lessons started first with combat. First with dulled swords. First with how to defend herself. When Relga could dance circles around the old captain, he progressed her to offense—how to disarm, how to cripple, and finally how to claim a life. When she had mastered herself, Harland taught her how to master her surroundings, from the deck of a ship to the haze of a battlefield.

The White Crow, in contrast, fed Relga a steady supply of knowledge and intrigue—how Rivona had ended up in its current state. It had all started with Rugon, whose brutal conquest had united most of the riverland tribes into a single kingdom. Not all tribes, though. Some had escaped out of Rugon’s reach, siphoning off rebels, dissenters, and those unsatisfied with Craythe supremacy. Rugon’s descendants had tried to conquer these rogue peoples again and again, but this had only hammered them into something stronger. The stuff of states. Khorven, in the mountainous west; Faela, in the forested east.

Naturally, the people of Khorven and Faela had bonded over their shared hatred of Rivona. So much, in fact, they’d married over it. In 893 ASF, a Faelan princess wedded a Khorven prince—remembered by history as the Bear and Doe—together forming a political and military alliance between their states. The Vengeful Marriage, it was called, for the moment they finished their vows, the Bear and Doe began their scheming.

It was they who were responsible for assassinating many of the Craythes, including Relga’s own family, her parents and her infant siblings. It was they who had combined their armies, pushing into Rivona from the east and west in a pincer formation, chipping away at the borders year after year. It was they Relga had to destroy if she ever wanted to see her country restored.

And yet, from Relga’s perspective, it was all academic. She was being told to care and fight for a world she had never lived in, a world that felt distant and so unlike the wilds of her childhood. She trained and learned as much as she could, but doubt and apathy plagued her thoughts. Why her? What did she want to do?

I wondered similar thoughts one night on the Conquest, sitting at the bow of the ship. What the hells was I doing out here? Where was I going, really? No answers came to me, and I stared down into the water, clear in the moonlight. Along the riverbed, I could make out the dark, slumbering shapes of the hershon. At dusk every day, they sank into a watery sleep and would not move until dawn—as good an anchor as any. I’d been watching them for what felt like hours at this point while flipping through some pages of Kerraguard Exemplar.

On my way back to my hammock, I passed by a gaggle of gossipers on the deck, yammering and arguing about why Newke had died. Hearing this, the captain—leaning over the railing nearby, puffing from a pipe—stormed over and declared she would have no more fear mongering on her ship. Newke had been stumbling drunk, according to the first mate, and had toppled over the edge when walking along the deck.

This quieted the gossipers, but made something tingle down my spine. I’d heard Newke’s life story on the docks yesterday. The man was a gambler and a cheat, but not a drunk. It seemed odd that Newke would drink to such excess. Or, perhaps, the captain—a Faelan woman named Meskani, I had gathered from the rumor mill—wasn’t telling the full truth.

I was beginning to think Newke’s slip had been no accident after all.

Just like Relga’s childhood. After the assassination of her family, Harland and the Crow had spirited her away into the wilds. Somehow (historians argue to this day) they’d found the Raven of the Willows and convinced her to raise Relga in secret. The Raven continued to do this well into Relga’s adulthood, but her lessons became increasingly about watercraft, how to build them and navigate them, how to read the stars. Often the Raven and Relga would hide amongst willows, studying vessels as they drifted by.

It all led to one penultimate task. If Relga wished to reclaim her kingdom, the Raven said, she needed a powerful weapon—one that lay far out in Lake Liron, the sea-sized lake north of Rivona. To obtain it, she would have to sail there herself on a boat of her own making. Not exactly a quick or easy errand. While navigating rivers was simple enough for Relga, the open lake was a different beast entirely, home to sharp winds, roiling waves, deepwater monsters, and storms that swallowed ships whole. It was why few dared to venture out into the Lake. And perhaps why a legendary weapon lay at its heart.

At this point in her life, Relga was a woman grown, and could build a single-person vessel with her own two hands. Over many years and many attempts, she sailed her watercraft out onto the Lake, venturing a little further each time before returning home and refining her ship’s design. Again and again she braved the open waters, until at last she committed fully to the journey, sailing so far out that she lost sight of the coastline.

What Relga saw on that night out at sea, we do not know for sure. Did she fight off waves of deeplake monstrosities while lightning flashed overhead? Some songs would have you believe this. But dark waters, treacherous winds, utter isolation? Most certainly. In the end, that wasn’t what was important. When dawn broke over the Lake, Relga looked around and saw nothing but water in all directions. Where was the mythical weapon? That was when it struck her: her ship was the weapon. She had built a vessel that had withstood the Lake. A vessel that could get around the armies of Khorven and Faela in the east and west, sailing into waters other ships could not follow, beyond the sight of scouts. A vessel that could change the tide of war.

Relga sailed back to the shore to Harland, who had waited patiently for her return while watching a court of tirkerra drift around nearby. She shared her revelation with him, and together they went back home—only to find the hut in flames. The Raven was nowhere to be found. As Relga surveyed the wreckage, three assassins leapt out of the shadows. One of their blades was aimed at Relga—but instead it found Harland, when the Kerraguard-Captain pushed her out of the way.

His sacrifice bought Relga a chance to collect herself and strike out. Back to back with Harland, they battled the assassins, striking them down one by one until it was just them two standing—and then just Relga, when Harland toppled over. Relga rushed to his side, frantically trying to save him, but the old captain smiled a bloody smile and said all was well.

At long last, he had done his duty. His final words.

Relga reeled from the death of Harland, but when she looked up from his body, and saw the charred swamp the assassins had set aflame, something finally sent her over the edge. Not only had the Bear and the Doe’s assassins taken her only father figure in life, they had taken her beloved home. The willows, the reeds, all that swam and crawled amongst the riverlands. If left unchecked, the Bear and Doe would see all Rivona reduced to this.

Now Relga had her reason for going to war. Now Relga knew what she wanted. And now, she had a weapon to smash the Vengeful Marriage to pieces.