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  ANIMUS

  A Tale of Ardenia

  By Scott McKay

  To my parents, for a lifetime of love and support.

  And to civilization, which must never be taken for granted.

  Animus is a work of fiction. All names, characters, terms, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously as devices of the story. Any resemblance to real persons either live or dead, events either current or historical, or locales is entirely by coincidence.

  Copyright 2019 by Scott L. McKay.

  All rights reserved.

  (see the Great Continent map in full detail at http://talesofardenia.com)

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  ONE: Hilltop Farm – Morning (first day)

  TWO: The Barley Point Road – Morning (first day)

  THREE: In the South of Dunnan’s Claim – Noon (first day)

  FOUR: Barley Point – Noon (first day)

  FIVE: Dunnansport – Afternoon (First day)

  SIX: Belgarden – Afternoon (First Day)

  SEVEN: Port William – Afternoon (First Day)

  EIGHT: The Camp – Evening (First Day)

  NINE: Barley Point – Evening (First Day)

  TEN: Pelgreen – Evening (First Day)

  ELEVEN: Dunnansport – Evening (First Day)

  TWELVE: Principia – Night (First Day)

  THIRTEEN: Hilltop Farm – Night (First Day)

  FOURTEEN: South of Dunnansport – Early Morning (Second Day)

  FIFTEEN: Elkstrand – Early Morning (Second Day)

  SIXTEEN: The Camp – Early Morning (Second Day)

  SEVENTEEN: Principia – Morning (Second Day)

  EIGHTEEN: The Rendezvous – Morning (Second Day)

  NINETEEN: Cotter’s Point – Morning (Second Day)

  TWENTY: From The Camp, moving southwest – Morning (Second Day)

  TWENTY ONE: On The Small Rise – Noon (Second Day)

  TWENTY TWO: Principia – Afternoon (Second Day)

  TWENTY THREE: Watkins Gulf – Noon (Second Day)

  TWENTY FOUR: Principia – Afternoon (Second Day)

  TWENTY FIVE: Sutton Hill – Noon (Second Day)

  TWENTY SIX: West of Sutton Hill – Afternoon (Second Day)

  TWENTY SEVEN: The Mouth of the Cave – Afternoon (Second Day)

  TWENTY EIGHT: Sutton Hill – Afternoon (Second Day)

  TWENTY NINE: Watkins Gulf – Evening (Second Day)

  THIRTY: The Mouth of the Cave – Evening (Second Day)

  THIRTY ONE: The Ridge – Night (Second Day)

  THIRTY TWO: The Mouth of the Cave – Night (Second Day)

  THIRTY THREE: The Ridge – Midnight (Second Day)

  THIRTY FOUR: The Mouth of the Cave – Midnight (Second Day)

  THIRTY FIVE: Along The Coast – Dawn (Third Day)

  THIRTY SIX: Kawes’kin – Morning (Third Day)

  THIRTY SEVEN: The Beach – Morning (Third Day)

  THIRTY EIGHT: The Beach – Morning (Third Day)

  THIRTY NINE: Belgrave Station – Early Morning (Third Day)

  FORTY: Watkins Gulf – Noon (Third Day)

  FORTY ONE: Dunnansport – Morning (Fourth Day)

  FORTY TWO: Dunnansport – Morning (Fourth Day)

  FORTY THREE: Dunnansport – Morning (Fourth Day)

  FORTY FOUR: Dunnansport – Evening (Fourth Day)

  FORTY FIVE: Dunnansport – Morning (Fifth Day)

  FORTY SIX: Barley Point – Morning (Sixth Day)

  FORTY SEVEN: Principia (Morning, Seventh Day)

  FORTY EIGHT: Hilltop Farm – Morning (Eighth Day)

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  APPENDIX

  (see the Great Continent map in full detail at http://talesofardenia.com)

  PROLOGUE

  Gana’fali

  The old man stood on a high plateau surrounded by mountain peaks, a place to which his aching bones had only just managed to bring him after a full day’s climb. But to be here on this night, lit dimly as it was by a sliver of a moon, was crucial. It was from this place, after all, that the culmination of his life’s work would originate.

  For here his beauties gathered, and soon he would turn them loose to feed on the blood of the Profaners.

  The old man had raised his beauties – his Vitau’hi – from hatchlings, and had tamed and trained them. It was under his tutelage that they had grown not into wild beasts wasting the land and the creatures on it, but rather into obedient and useful servants of the god Ur’akeen. It was that training which would soon deliver Ur’akeen and his followers a holy miracle.

  Tonight the Udar would recapture the sacred shore of Gana’fali from the Profaners, who had seized it a generation hence, erecting a fortress with high stone walls and weapons of evil magic to protect their decadent hordes to the north. Tonight the Vitau’hi would be the tip of the spear through the hearts of the vile enemy.

  After tonight, a Great Holy War would commence, which would finally end 1700 years of blood-struggle and deliver the manifest destiny for the Udar. Ur’akeen demanded it, and so it would be.

  The old man looked over his pupils–three hundred in number. He walked among them, reaching up to gently scratch their breasts and necks, eliciting light cooing noises and the soft thump-thump-thump from their wiggling, excited tails. This activity went on for some time, as the old man insisted on giving loving attention to each before sending them on their mission.

  Finally, he had completed his rounds. The hour had come, and it was time for the Vitau’hi to complete their destiny as servants of Ur’akeen.

  The old man stood some distance from his beauties, who wobbled ahead to form a semi-circle around him, the rustling of feathers and the thump-thump-thump of expectation filling the air.

  “Fefalo!” he called. The three hundred spread their wings. “Tonight you shall cleanse the land with the blood of the Profaner!”

  The old man raised his arms, and the Vitau’hi leapt into the air, flapping their wings to rise into the night.

  Turning to the east, the old man brought his arms forward in that direction. The three hundred began their short journey over the peaks to the sacred shore.

  …

  ONE

  Hilltop Farm – Morning (first day)

  Sarah Stuart awoke before dawn on the morning of the sixth day of the tenth month as she had for most of her teenaged life. As the oldest child remaining in the Stuart household–that had been the case for the past four months–Sarah’s morning chores kept her busy. First she had to light the fire in the kitchen stove and start the kettle for the morning’s coffee, then feed the dogs from the scrap bucket and let them out for their morning haphazard patrol of the family farm. Then, with the help of her younger sisters Tabitha and Hannah, whom she’d awakened before tending to the three four-legged cattle herders, she’d begin milking the cows in the milking shed behind the farmhouse.

  So much work barely before dawn wasn’t unusual in Ardenia. As the third child of the most prominent family in Dunnan’s Claim Sarah had certain standards to uphold, and she took pride in displaying the work ethic and sense of duty that her people, and her family in particular, expected of their children. Her older brothers, Matthew and Robert, had set an example for Sarah before departing for the prestigious military academy at Aldingham, and in Matthew’s case, thereafter for a deployment to the citadel at Strongstead, near the dangerous southern border. That made Sarah the oldest of the Stuart children still at home, and she wouldn’t shirk the responsibility attendant in her status.

  Soon, she knew, she would own a farm not dissimilar to this one with the man she would marry. When that happened, Sarah would become a full-fledged citizen of the Ardenian Republic, in which property ownership and the
taxation it carried were prerequisites for citizenship and voting rights.

  The Stuart farm was one of thousands springing up in the lush, newly-settled lands south of the river Tweade. In the 25 years since the Ardenian army had driven their longtime enemies the Udar far to the south, Ardenia had converted what was a frontier too dangerous for agriculture or any other civilized pursuits into the scene of a land rush of massive proportions. In short notice the influx of investors, homesteaders and military veterans created a thriving agricultural expansion surrounding three bustling new, if thus far small, cities – Battleford (population: 8,000) up the Tweade to the northwest, Barley Point (population: 3,000) just to the north of Sarah’s home, and Dunnansport (population: 5,000) to the east at the river’s mouth.

  That burgeoning expansion included the Stuarts. Sarah’s parents George and Judith were among the early transplants to the area, riding the sternwheeler steamship Fredonia down the Tweade from the bustling city of Trenory to the southern landing across from the river port of Barley Point, then embarking by horse-drawn wagon for the 200-acre parcel ten miles to the south. George had received the land in a grant by the Societam, which was Ardenia’s parliament, in recognition of his military heroism. It was the most desirable land in the territory: lush, verdant savannah dotted with stands of Moss Oak and sweetgum trees. There was a breathtaking vantage from atop the hill where the manor sat, along the newly-cut road from the landing across from Barley Point to the north running south to the wilderness, with several small streams flowing through the land to provide natural irrigation.

  George was just 25 then, a year beyond his five-year term in the Ardenian cavalry which had performed so brilliantly in the war against the Udar. He’d been discharged with the rank of Colonel, earning the Order of the Elk for valor in the Battle of Rogers Rock at the tender age of 20. He’d then served as an adjutant to the great general Henry Dunnan, before emerging as the hero of the great battle of Sutton Hill at only 21, which earned him the Parliamentary Star. In so doing, George earned a priority in the military emoluments which followed Dunnan’s driving out the Udar.

  George and his brother David went into business following the war; moreover, while George claimed double the allotted acreage (half in David’s name) from the spoils of Dunnan’s War, his older brother settled in the newly-founded city of Dunnansport at the mouth of the Tweade to manage a cotton and grain storehouse business the two had borrowed against the land to establish.

  David, four years George’s senior, had lost his left arm below the elbow in the first year of Dunnan’s War courtesy of a well-placed strike from a Udar halberd in the battle at Strongstead. With that injury his talent and taste for agriculture was thus dissolved. So it was George who farmed the land, and those rich 200 acres made for suitable collateral to launch the commercial venture in Dunnansport. David, it turned out, had a brilliant head for business. Soon he wasn’t just storing cotton, wheat, sugar and barley raised on the farms in the new land, but also brokering the commodities to the major exchanges at Port William to the north and Port Excelsior to the east along the seacoast. The profits rolled in.

  Sarah knew the two had also collaborated in speculation in the share markets in the Ardenian capital Principia, with some significant degree of success. The true size of the Stuart holdings, after several stock trades amid what had been a boom market over the past 20 years had in recent years been the source of rumors and tall tales all through the territory. But George and Judith never discussed the stock transactions with the children, so Sarah couldn’t say with any degree of specificity how rich the family was. She had her suspicions, though, that the family was wealthier than anyone knew.

  David and George’s success in business, stock speculation and agriculture quickly paid off the mortgage, and more, and by the time Sarah was born six years after its establishment, Hilltop Farm had expanded from a small log cabin built by George and six hired hands to a tidy stone manor at the center of a state-of-the-art, mechanized Ardenian farm with all the latest technological accoutrements.

  Further, in the last year David had secured a franchise to sell steam tractors shipped down from the Somerset Company factory at Port William, and George was the sales agent for the Barley Point territory. The Somerset Company was the dominant player in the manufacture and sale of farm machinery, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Ardenian economy. Agriculture, moreover, had become a major driver of prosperity as the nation became not just the world’s breadbasket, but also its leading source of agricultural materials from cotton to rubber to hemp and beyond. Having a commercial hand in the mechanization of agriculture in this new territory, which was quickly proving to be the most fertile farmland in all of Ardenia, was a privilege and a blessing few could even dream of, but given George’s reputation as a celebrity and potential figure of political leadership in Dunnan’s Claim, the Stuarts looked upon his appointment as the company’s representative as only natural.

  Hilltop Farm was becoming the envy of the territory. George planned to make sure everyone knew it. That very day the family expected a visit from one H.V. Latham, an architect from Port William, who was to present plans for a total rebuild and major expansion of the manor house, to create the first Great Estate in the new Dunnan’s Claim territory. Construction was to begin in the spring, and the Stuarts planned on spending much of the next year in Dunnansport as guests of Uncle David and his wife Rebecca.

  Sarah was peeved at that, of course, because while all the exciting developments were taking place at Hilltop Farm she would be off at the Waldiver Finishing Academy in Trenory, where her mother had been a student and to which Sarah had recently been accepted. She was set to matriculate in just a few months to learn the finer points of becoming an urbane lady of means: the finer points of how to be a proper hostess at social affairs, the science of running a proper household, fashion and art, culture and philosophy and, of course, the deportment and etiquette of a well-bred Ardenian lady. On the latter two subjects Sarah had been adamant toward her mother that such instruction was anything but necessary. Judith’s response was unfailingly dismissive. “You have the grace of a dyspeptic jackass,” her mother had told her last year during a discussion of Sarah’s refinement.

  A few months later, though, Sarah sat with the admissions officer at Waldiver in the salon at the Hotel Danvers in Barley Point the day after her sixteenth birthday, and impressed the woman enough with her sophistication and erudition to earn her admission. When the letter came she had triumphantly waved it in Judith’s face, earning knowing smiles from both of her parents. At the time Sarah thought nothing of that exchange, but since then, she’d entertained creeping doubts that perhaps her success had been driven more by the family’s contributions to the school’s endowment than her elegance and charisma.

  She’d find out soon enough, she figured. What Sarah knew about herself was that she was pretty. She had her mother’s looks, after all, and Judith had been the queen of the pageant at the Trenory Convivium, one of Ardenia’s most prestigious beauty competitions, some 25 years hence. At sixteen Sarah had grown to 5-foot-9, two inches taller than her mother and the same height as Robert, her brother a year older, which was the source of no small irritation to him. Sarah’s large brown eyes, high cheekbones, graceful neck and shapely legs were features she knew the men in her midst appreciated and the women envied.

  She was also quite intelligent, having passed the standard Ardenian academic aptitude test for fifteen-year-olds with a ninety-two-percentile score at thirteen, and at seventeen having already passed the eighteen-year-old test with an eighty-eight-percentile score. Had Sarah wanted to pursue a position in the scientific or technological trades she had a sure opportunity to do so, but her interests lay elsewhere. Sarah wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and raise a family, and on the side, she fancied herself pursuing a career as a writer of social commentary and fiction, though to date she’d yet to venture into that territory. Sarah had opinions and insights, and peo
ple would want to know about them. If at times she was a bit direct and those who weren’t familiar with her style of expression couldn’t handle it, well…they would get used to her, and when they did, they would understand the brilliance they had been missing.

  Sarah considered that future as she donned a workday attire over her loose cotton shift which looked nothing like what one might associate with the life of the mind: a tie-waist gray cotton skirt falling to mid-calf, a low-cut buttoned-up light brown woolen bodice, a pair of thick wool stockings with ribbon garters tied above the knee, a pair of open-backed clogs, a wide blue cotton shawl draped over her shoulders and tucked into the vest, and a pinned-on cap covering her voluminous dark brown hair.

  In Ardenia, though, or at least here in the new territories, the elite didn’t associate high fashion with good breeding. Though in the throes of a technological revolution that over the past 100 years had transformed it in remarkable ways, this was very much a society built with agriculture at its foundation and forefront. Sarah’s holding the aspirations, values, culture and vestments of a farm girl was still the sign of quality and status despite Ardenia’s modernization.

  Her future intellectual stardom wouldn’t produce milk from those cows, though. Sarah led her younger sisters Tabitha and Hannah, who were similarly dressed, out to the shed in the humid pre-dawn air. Two dozen cows awaited their morning milking, and the three girls would have that chore finished and the milk poured into the bladder in the ice cellar by 7:30. That should be just in time for the girls to join George, Judith and the youngest brother Ethan, whose specialty was harvesting eggs in the hennery when he wasn’t chasing the dogs around the manor house, his little legs only a bit longer than those of the hounds, for a hearty breakfast.

  It was to be a rather light day on the farm, as the harvest labor team contracted from Trenory wasn’t due in for another week, and Mr. and Mrs. Carson, the farm’s foreman and his wife, were away in Port William to visit her family for the next four days. It was just the Stuarts this week at Hilltop Farm, and while George was keeping the girls and Ethan busy with chores, there wasn’t a whole lot of major activity going on. Sarah was looking forward to an afternoon walk with her father, as he imparted to her another of his famous stories; she’d heard most of them already, but the sound of his voice alone was still enough to hold her interest; that hadn’t changed since she was a little girl. Later, she’d have a chance to curl up by the fireside with a novel after the family dinner.