Fiction: Unhistorical Fiction (Part 1)

Fiction is a novel that happened; fiction is a history that might have happened

In the fourth year of the war, Andrion, having negotiated a truce with Vyron and Tauri, returned to the City to replenish his armies and advertise his success. Vyron was all too happy to acquiesce, the alliance with Tauri growing ever more tenuous by the day as the two armies glowered at one another across encampment fires close-kindled within the valley walls. Through a thousand small measures Vyron and his Veronides had taken care to ensure that Tauri and the Taurians knew they were tolerated, but they had taken great care not to let the two armies commingle with one another overmuch, and at the end of the season both halves of the side had had their fill of one another. 

The three men came together at the mouth of the valley to sign the treaty, standing together under a canopy with open sides to mark the truce. The wind that moved the brozing leaves carried a deep streak of cold within it, and before the ink had dried Tauri bowed to Andrion, turned on his heel, leapt onto his horse shot away to the north. By sunset the Taurians had vanished, smoke-like, into the hills, their passage barely visible as moving texture on the slopes, making for the high Ochlopithian terrain before it became impassable. The next time Tauri and Andrion would meet would be the last. 

Sensing opportunity, Andrion moved the court to the City for the winter. The events that befell Andrion upon his return to the City after the fourth year campaign will be recounted in due course, and there are grounds to argue that these events proved a turning point for the City. During the following years the City was to emerge as the vibrant “axis mundi” yielding the tales of surprise and wonder that we know it from today, springing forth seemingly out of nowhere into full bloom. With the return of Andrion the priests and mystery cults were, if not effectively demoted, certainly curtailed in their influence, and for the long season they were displaced and often openly ignored. 

Testion Quincunx, whose late Renaissance texts drew from early sources, has argued that this winter, of the fourth-year truce, was a time where a deep gestation took place as the city drowsed, woolgathered, and dreamed to itself. A mild winter, swift storms filled the valley with powdery snow and made way for deep gold sunsets and nights of dazzling stars. Despite the truce there was a wary edge to the nights, and distant riders might be the aloof horses of Tauri’s fierce bands, or wayward troops of Vyron out to raid and pillage; caution was required. This edge of hazard tempered with possibility make this time the source of many of the legends we think of as emblematic of Andrion’s reign as emperor: the theft of the mirror, the lovers’ venture into the forre, the tales of transformation, the taming of the stars, all had their origins in this interlude between the height of the war and it’s turning.

The events of this season were, of course, the first meeting of Andrion and Syneidia.

Fortescue asserts that Andrion had planted the design of this winter in the end of the first year, when he confronted the reality that the war was going to last more than a single season. By allowing Erid to persist as regent at the City, Fortescue argues, Andrion gambled on the strength of Erid’s ties to the Tryggr; that they may last one year, perhaps two, but that with enough distance and time, the Trygg would find some method of forcing a confrontation between the two, and that this confrontation would present precisely what Andrion desired: an opportunity to swiftly and decisively subdue the Trygg.

Andrion arrived in the City as the first snow sugared the valleys. He greeted Erid warmly, and, set on edge by Erid’s aloof manner, determined to discover the cause. While Andrion attended to the various matters of justice and provision awaiting him, Ondros was dispatched to seek out the truth of it, and through his network of spies and scouts brought news that the Tryggr forces were gathering at the edges of the valley.

Andrion moved decisively. Ordering Erid to be confined to his chamber by the traveling force loyal to himself, Andrion gathered his Chrysosseans to him and rode out into the blue night. Centuries later, Yfantis Riza’s casting of Andrion’s horoscope has him born under Aldebaran, the herald of the east, a star of the nature of Mars that gives honor, intelligence, eloquence, steadfastness, ferocity— all qualities notable to Andrion— and, in consequence of its excellent aspect to the rest of his chart, promised as a style of velocity and momentum that he was to display over and over again. This night raid on the Tryggr troops was of that condition. Andrion’s forces moved swiftly, discovered the Tryggr troops lurking in their position, and by the time the first gout of pink dawn touched the peaks, had captured the Trygg himself, who had been so confident of his triumph he had ridden out with a retinue that included his uncle and daughter, Syneidia.