At the time of the conquest of Northern Karaleenos by the Confederation, all land had belonged either to the king or the great nobles, who had resided only in the cities. Those who had lived on and worked the land had been accounted as much a part of it as the animals and crops; nor had their lives and well-being been considered of much importance by their owners, save as a source of revenue. Even then, over a hundred years agone, had they been a people of mixed antecedents-part Ehleen, part indigenous native.
With the settlements of the Horseclansmen, the old order had been drastically changed. The Kindred had been nomadic herdsmen for hundreds of years, and though in Karaleenos then- felt-and-leather lodges were become stone halls, farming was to them an alien and despised oc-cupation. They remained herdsmen, breeders of horses, cattle, goats, and sheep, taking what lands they needed for pasturage or for the sites of their halls. What was left was freely given to those who wished to farm as their own property, to use or dispose of as they should desire.
What few of the Ehleen nobility as were left slavishly copied this practice-indeed, copied any practice, no mat-ter how barbaric in their own eyes, that would allow them to retain the remainder of their much reduced lands and stations. Things were more or less chaotic for a decade or two, until the former land slaves became adapted to the new order and their unaccustomed role of landowners, responsible only to themselves.
So had it been for over a hundred years. And as generations of the younger sons of Kindred Houses had wed the daughters of merchants, tradesmen, and farmers, while their titled brethren were blending their own blood and genes with scionesses of the houses of the surviving Ehleenoee nobility, there became less and ever less distinction between Kindred herder and Ehleenoe farmer stocks.
To Komees Djeen and most of the other so-called Kindred Nobles, it seemed incomprehensible-and smacked strongly of sorcery-that so large a proportion of the nonnoble classes should be involved in what had become an open revolt supposedly directed against the Kindred, for many of these very rebels had fully as much or even more Kindred blood than did the bulk of the nobles!
One did not, of course, have to sympathize with Vahrohnos Myros of Kehnooryos Deskati to understand at least some of the reasoning which underlay his treason. Before the defeat of Karaleenos and its forced merger with the Confederation, his ancestors had been overlords of three cities and three-quarters of the lands which now made up the Duchy of Morguhn, as well as parts of the neighboring Duchy of Vawn. This was not the first revolt spawned by the broodings of Ehleenoee minor nobility on past grandeurs, but it was the first in this part of Karaleenos in nearly a hundred years, as well as but the second in all of the Confederation to have such wide backing of the common sorts.
While the House of Deskatios had produced many highly intelligent men of rare talents and value to the Duchy and Confederation, it had also produced more than its share of scions who had been considered at least “odd” by their contemporaries. Indeed, Myros himself had once been a brilliant and promising officer in the Army of the Confederation until after over ten years of exemplary service, he had been suddenly relieved of his command, stripped of his military rank, and forbidden ever again to display his Fourth Class Silver Cat.
No one in all the Duchy ever admitted to knowing the truth in the matter, but there were rumors . . . one of them that had he not already succeeded to and been confirmed in his title, his neck would surely have made the short, sharp acquaintance of an Army executioner’s sword, so grave had been his offense.
So Myros had scant reason to love the Confederation and at least some reason to envy the Thoheeks of Morguhn and Strahteegos Komees Djeen and even Substrahteegos-to-be Vaskos Daiviz, since all three held titles of which he felt himself to have been cheated. A return to the ancient order would therefore place him squarely in the very lap of his dreams.