Great King Kalvan looked down from the small window in his war room, at the top of the Tarr-Hostigos keep, watching a company of Queen Rylla's Lifeguard marching in formation. The Lifeguard was an elite bodyguard of riflemen who were supposed to serve as bodyguards for the Great Queen and their daughter, Demia, but Rylla was already talking about the role they would soon be playing in spearheading the spring campaigns. This year, her pregnancy had kept Rylla out of the battle line; next year, Kalvan wondered how he would keep her castle-bound.
Ever since Kalvan's arrival, here-and-now, when he was picked up by some kind of time-traveling flying saucer from a small farm outside State College, Pennsylvania-Kalvan, formerly Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police, had been reacting to events beyond his control. First, he'd had to shoot his way off the flying saucer, or whatever it was, then survive by his wits in an alternate Pennsylvania where time had stood still. The local inhabitants of the Princedom of Hostigos, about to be conquered by their neighbors, welcomed any help they could get. Kalvan, with some knowledge-both academic and practical, having fought in Korea-was able to win several crucial battles. After this initial success, Hostigos seceded from Hos-Harphax, forming the new Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos. Kalvan crowned himself Great King and prepared to defend his new kingdom with everything but the proverbial kitchen sink.
The following spring, luck again-and stupidity on his opponent's part-had allowed Kalvan to defeat the more numerous Holy Host at the Battle Of Phyrax. So far, the defeat of their best troops, the fall rains and the illness of Great King Kaiphranos, ruler of Hos-Harphax, had conspired to keep the forces of Styphon at home. Now, he had to learn everything that was known about the history of here-and-now if he was going to find some angle that could help his fledgling new kingdom survive against the wealth, political influence and all the military might Styphon's House's gold could buy.
From what Kalvan had been able to piece together from oral history, a few old parchments from Tarr-Beshta and local legends, a large group of Indo-Aryans had migrated east into China, rather than south and west into Macedonia, Greece and the Anatolian peninsula. After crossing the Asian land mass, some of the migrating tribes had built small ships and sailed their way along the Kuriles and the Aleutians, down the coast of Alaska and Canada, bringing with them their foods, horses and cattle, their iron-making skills, and their weapons, the battle ax and the sword.
From ancient parchments recently discovered amongst the rat's-nest of former Prince Balthames' treasury-which included everything from gold ingots to the former Prince's baby teeth-Kalvan had learned new information about these early migrations. There hadn't been just one big migration, but a series of smaller ones. The first Indo-Aryan invaders had landed in the Pacific Northwest. Some tribes remained in the northern forests, while others broke off and moved into the Upper Plains. The majority continued along the Pacific Coast, the women and children in boats and the men following along on shore, much like the movement of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean after the eruption of Thera on Crete. Along the way, they subdued the coastal Indian tribes, while settling in their former habitats.
The majority of these migrants settled along the coast of California, primarily around the harbors of San Francisco and San Diego, while building others at Long Beach and San Pedro. There they established colonies of sea trading city-states along the lines of the early Minoan civilization. The Ros-Zarthani, as they called themselves, exterminated and enslaved the primitive local Indians and began to send out fishing and trading ships. They quickly established trade with their northern cousins, who lived a more tribal and agrarian life. The southern cities traded manufactured products and grains for lumber, smoked salmon and furs.
A thousand years later, a second series of Indo-Aryan migrations followed in the footsteps of the earlier settlers. These new invaders-unlike the Ros-Zarthani, who spoke an early proto Greek dialect-spoke a very early Germanic tongue. Centuries of inter-action and inter-marriage had changed both languages, but the Urgothi still had a separate language.
Discovering the Pacific seacoast already populated and well-defended, the Urgothi peoples moved east and south, some drifting into the Great Plains, known here-and-now as the Sea of Grass, while other Urgothi followed the tributaries of the Missouri and Mississippi into the Great Lakes area and Mississippi Valley, where they founded what were known as the Middle Kingdoms. Following what Kalvan's world had called the Marius Trail, the Urgothi had established trade routes with the major city-states along the Pacific coast. Trade was sporadic until the Great Lakes iron ore deposits were discovered in Grefftscharr about fifteen hundred years ago. Within a century, the Great Trail became a major trade link between the gold hungry Middle Kingdoms and the iron poor Pacific Coast city-states. The Middle Kingdom kings had made treaties with some of the Plains Indian tribes, conquered others and paid tribute only when necessary. Some of the great trade caravans that Kalvan read about numbered hundreds of wagons guarded by small armies of guards and soldiers.
The most recent migration wasn't from Euro-Asia, but began six hundred years ago, when the Pacific Coast civilization, in flux due to a war between north and south, began to crumble. Tens of thousands of migrants poured over the Iron Trail. Not wanting these heavily armed and desperate invaders settling within the Middle Kingdoms, King Chaldorec had decided to help them move into the Atlantic Seaboard. His plan was to use the migrating Ros-Zarthani as a buffer to the quickly expanding Iroquois Alliance in the east. The migrations, which started as a trickle, soon turned into a flood. The war with the Eastern Ruthani, or Redmen, became a war to the death as both peoples realized they could not live in peace. The conflict ran almost a century and didn't end until the Iroquois were virtually exterminated, with the survivors escaping into Newfoundland and Labrador.
The final migration occurred after the destruction of the Ruthani, and the Ros-Zarthani settlement of the Eastern Seaboard. The latest refugees from the war-ravaged Pacific Coast were forced to make their way down the Potomac into Maryland and Virginia, to what would later become Hos-Ktemnos. The mid-Atlantic Ruthani were far less warlike and organized than their eastern cousins and were quickly exterminated or displaced to the south. It was during the settlement of Hos-Ktemnos that a temple priest of a minor healer god named Styphon discovered the formula for gunpowder, or fireseed, as it was called here-and-now. The temple hierarchy had immediately grasped the political implications of this new discovery and made it a church secret. Over the next centuries, they dispensed gunpowder to their allies and withheld it from their enemies, using the revenue and their military might to consolidate political dominion over Hos-Ktemnos. They were in the process of moving their tentacles into Hos-Harphax, when Kalvan had taken his cross-time ride and been dropped off into the middle of a war between the independent Princedom of Hostigos and the neighboring minions of Styphon's House.
Kalvan's sudden appearance had turned a sure thing into a donnybrook! Thanks to an improved gunpowder formula and advanced military tactics introduced by Kalvan, the Princedom of Hostigos not only survived the first few rounds with Styphon's House, but had grown to become the nucleus of the new Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos with Great King Kalvan at its helm. No sooner was the dynasty founded than it was embroiled in the fight for its life with Styphon's House and its pawns. Primary among these foes was Hos-Harphax, from where the new Great Kingdom has sprung unbidden.
In the last few months, Kalvan had learned that some rather nasty Mesoamericans-related to the ancient Aztecs back home-were stirring things up in the Lower Sastragath, Mississippi Valley, and pushing the southern tribes north into the Appalachians, or Trygath as they called Kentucky and Tennessee here-and-now. If he could find a way to turn their migration to the southeast, against the Zarthani Knights-the martial arm of Styphon's House and one of the most effective military forces here-and-now-Kalvan might just be able to get a jump on Styphon's House and its allies, keep one step ahead of the headman's ax, and save his family and adopted new home, Hos-Hostigos.
There was a knock at the door and he sighed, pulling his hands away from his face. "Come in." It was probably Cleon with his hot roasted barley, the best coffee substitute he could come up with here-and-now. He didn't like the taste much, but it was better than the sassafras tea everyone else drank. He encouraged his soldiers to drink tea; even if he was convinced that it was the boiling, not the tea, that kept cholera to a minimum in the Royal Army.
A handsomely attired Duke Skranga attempted a grand entrance into the room that was defeated by the way his bony shoulders poked up his ermine cape, like tent poles. Skranga used two fingers to brush a few red strands over his balding head, before bowing and saying, "Your, Majesty."
"At ease, Duke."
While Skranga eased himself into the high-backed chair Kalvan reserved for company, Kalvan put some tobacco-at least, that was the same here-and-now-into his pipe, tamped it and used a flintlock tinder-box to light up. It used the same back acting flintlock mechanism that the Zarthani used on their muskets.
"What's the news from Harphax City?" Kalvan asked, since Skranga as Hostigos head spymaster had a number of agents there.
The Duke shook his balding head sorrowfully. "Old Great King Kaiphranos is still lying on his deathbed; the one he mounted when his son led that suicide charge with his lancers and died so gloriously. Ha! It's been going on for moons now. The whole capital is holding it's breath, waiting either for the old fool to draw his last lung full, or the Daemon Kalvan to blow down the city walls. Meanwhile, his younger brother Grand Duke Lysandros grinds his teeth down to their gums with impatience, paying off one Elector after another."
"What of his son, Prince Selestros?"
"Visiting fleshpots and gambling dens as though they might all disappear if he lets them leave his sight! No one, including his father, wants him sitting on the Iron Throne."
"What are Lysandros's chances of becoming the new Great King?" Lysandros was one of the few effective rulers and military leaders left in Hos-Harphax.
"The princes of Hos-Harphax have become accustomed to a light hand on their harnesses. Few of them will welcome Lysandros, who's been known to whip his horses on occasion. On the other hand, he has had some military success and is the only Harphaxi leader capable of corralling and leading that gaggle of fools, or turning them into an effective fighting force.
"Is there anything we can do to slow his ambitions?"
"Not directly, Your Majesty, but I've got a few ideas."
Kalvan was sure the former horse trader did. Just as sure as Kalvan was that these 'ideas' were going to cost the Royal Treasury more than a few purses of gold.