Part IV, Crumbling

"Don’t give me that face
I know when I should live in disgrace
Not dig up the deadwood
I knew this place never for me

And of the years that rolled by
Yeah some were good
But now I know that
You were the coward
The holes in your soul
In tatters for all these years.”
-Dirty Pretty Things, Deadwood

In the end, he lost.

The campaign of war turned northward. In Midgaard, they blamed their deposed Ubar, who fled to the city of Fina for safety. Midgaardians said it was his jealousy and manipulation that drove the armies of the Vosk Delta Alliance to the city walls. The Vosk cities had other explanations. It was Midgaard’s support of Treve that had cost the region so much. It was Midgaard’s strategic location so close to the sea and near the edge of the Northern Forests that made it valuable. Its timber- to build a navy, for expansion, for security. Midgaard was the necessary step for worldwide hegemony. Whatever the reason, it was war. Port Kar, Rovere, Fina, Kyna and others against Midgaard alone. Aashe was tasked with the preparing the city strategy. The task was impossible; they were hopelessly outnumbered and no city wanted to ally with the fearsome Alliance lest they be the next target. Even Treve refused to aid; without their tarns, what good would they be anyway? With no allies and no support, he turned to alternate means. Gold was paid to every mercenary he could find. Deals were struck with outlaws. He was desperate; when forced to choose between life and death, he compromised his ideals. There were things more important than honor, he reasoned.

And he lost. The forces of the Vosk Delta were too strong. They could not be stopped. Wave after wave of ships descended from the coast. The Karians begat the men of Fina, who begat the men of Kyna, and then the men of Rovere. They fought back the first flotilla of ships. The mercenaries were able to repel the advance from the north; but like everything in else, it was simply a matter of time and pressure. The lines of defense faltered and then buckled. For every two advancing warriors that were cut down, four replaced them. There were no such reinforcements for Midgaard. The warriors hacked and slashed until the fields were stained red; their blades eventually dulled from striking bone and leather one too many times. Their strength waned and still the men came. Day and night, night and day. The physicians ran out of bandages, there was nothing more to do. Time and pressure. The walls fell. In the end, he failed.

He was there when Dark Starr himself, Captain of Port Kar, came to Midgaard to sign the “terms of peace.” Failure. Officially, the Karians allowed Midgaard to remain standing. They took the spoils they were after and left. The point had been made: stay away from the politics of the Vosk region and stay away from Treve. When Dark Starr left that day, he did not need to remind the citizens of Midgaard of the one last remainder of city’s connection to failure.

No one asked him to leave. The Council knew it was not his fault. Everyone knew that he had tried. No one could have succeeded against such odds. Perhaps he imagined the stares as he passed by on the streets. Perhaps the whispers on the streets were innocuous. But, fewer people stopped by his house. The turmoil in Midgaard grew. Gabrielle soon left to a safer city; Cecelia was sold to a passing slaver to cover the cost of the war; people in his life began to disappear one by one. The explanations were vague, but he could guess for the reasons. And he could not blame them. But blame had to be placed somewhere. In the end, he placed it on himself.

So he left. There was no words of goodbye. He said nothing. One day, the people looked inside his house to consult him on some trivial matter. They found the place empty, as if no one had ever lived there before. They stood there, puzzled for a moment. But soon enough, another warrior moved into the house and life continued as if nothing had happened at all. Midgaard forgot about him and he too, forgot about Midgaard. It would be a long time before he returned.

* * *

With no place left to turn, he returned to Treve. The situation there was no better than the situation he had left previously. Turmoil, unrest; it was not an easy time. The Ubar Theodoric was planning a campaign and takeover of the Isle of Tyros. Aashe’s father, Malice, was in charge of the campaign. He invited his son to join him at his side as warriors should. Aashe declined; the sting of defeat was too close. Failure changes a person and he knew that he would be a liability on the front lines.

His uncle Oric gave him a more palatable offer: join his band of mercenaries outside the edges of the Semris. He could be a mercenary and Semris was far enough away that their services would not be needed in a war. Occasionally, they would be hired by a merchant to put down an ambitious panther tribe or a group of marauders, but it would be nothing more intensive than that. He could handle that sort of work. So he packed up his things, said goodbye to his family once more and left for the woods.