In the sols when the power of Cypheria began to ease from the western seas, a harbor was founded upon the northern shore of Lakmana. Between 580 and 560 in the Ancient Era, merchants of Cypheria constructed stone quays, raised storehouses, and drew ships from many coasts into a narrow bay. Grain, timber, glass, and cloth passed through its markets, and the harbor grew into a city whose life depended upon the sea.
Some claimed it was the crown jewel of the empire.
Initially, the governors of Cypheria Vesturia appointed its rulers and adjudicated its disputes. Yet as the authority of the empire weakened, the people of Tyrus began to order their own affairs. Families of influence rose, chief among them the house of Marcellii, whose wealth came from shipyards, contracts, and the steady favor of the harbor guilds. Their counsel drew smaller cities into alliance, and their word became the measure of trade in the Byring Sea.
In the sol 466, the nobles, guildmasters, captains, and common folk assembled upon Aardwulf’s Hill. They chose Arturius Prodius Marcellus as King and bound his heirs to follow him. His rule was to guard the city, keep the sea-lanes, and speak for all who lived under the banner of Tyrus.
From that day, the crown rested in the house of Marcellii.
The strength of Tyrus lay upon the water. The fleet was built to one standard, its hulls of equal length and beam, its masts cut to the same measure. Oarsmen, whether citizen or conscript, trained in a common discipline. The war-galleys bore a blue livery that was known in every port of the Byring, and their captains were versed in the seasons of wind and the courses between isles. The Tyrean navy was swift to gather, quick to strike, and disciplined in withdrawal.
On land, the King ruled a league of cities and princes bound by treaty.
From them came the greater part of his soldiers—spearmen from the plains, archers from the valleys, horsemen from the steppe. They fought in the manner of their own lands and spoke in many tongues. At the center stood the Tyrean citizen phalanx, trained in the hoplite style, numbering seven thousand in lean sols and eighteen thousand at its height. Their bronze shields bore the mark of the wave, their ranks held firm, and their discipline was a model for the allies who fought beside them.
Under the Marcellii, the city prospered.
Harbor dues filled the treasury, wages were paid on time, and disputes were judged in the open. The shrine of Anaius crowned the upper hill, its priests kept the feast-days, and the people offered incense and poured clean water upon the altar. Tyrus commanded the sea routes of the Byring and held the respect of the cities of Lakmana. In those sols it stood secure in its alliances, firm in its wealth, and confident in the skill of its captains.
But the Kraztuk Dwarves of Lakmana looked upon Tyrus with envy, and soon, would desire its wealth.
The Wars of Kazak
In the third century of the Ancient Era, the mines of Kraztuk swelled with iron and gold, and the forges along the mountain roads glowed through winter and summer. Kazak Dorae I set his claim upon the coasts of Lakmana and the sea-roads of the Byring. Tribute from the lowlands, rule over harbors, and the humbling of the blue-prowed galleys of Tyrus formed the measure of his purpose, and many seasons carried that purpose across the marches and market towns.
His successors held the course.
Ore filled their smelters, grain sustained their ranks, armorers hammered mail and axe to a high temper, and the mustering stones saw the gathering of clans.
In due time, Malum, third of his name, took the high seat. He called the captains, pressed the seals, and promised a border made straight, a quiet coast under Kraztuk watch, and an end to Tyrean command upon the water.
He would make it so.
Tyrus rebuked Malum’s ambitions. They would trust in their own strength to preserve their beloved city.
Tyrean princes renewed their oaths, granaries opened for the levy, guilds confirmed their measures, and the council named Prince Octavus to command the host. Thirty-one thousand answered the roll: the Tyrean phalanx at the center in bronze; horse upon the right from the grasslands; archers upon the left out of the reed-vales; city levies and league allies in files behind, each in the manner of his own land.
They met upon the fields of Jebbah, where the road from the hills broadens toward the sea and the soil bears the weight of armies.
Octavus set his line with care. The citizen ranks formed a firm wall of shields; the horse stood angled for a turning stroke; the bowmen opened clear lanes; the allied wings dressed to their captains.
Across the plain, the Kraztuk ordered their depth by drum, iron helms in measured files, wide shields locked, long-hafted axes poised, reserve columns marked for the hour of decision.
The morning began with volleys that shook the first ranks, then shield pressed upon shield, and the field turned to bloodshed.
The Tyrean center held to its cadence, pushing the lines where they could and carefully retreating in areas where they were weakest. The horse upon the right drove once into the Kraztuk flank and cut a path that soon closed. The left wing bent beneath a chosen wedge of axemen who advanced in cadence beneath a roof of shields, and the allied files gave ground under that weight. Arrows from the archers found great purchase, yet the wedge climbed through splinters and dust.
Octavus walked the line with his standard-bearer, seeing what needed to be done. He sent fresh ranks into thinning places, drew the hinge inward, carried the steadiness of the center toward the failing quarter, and signaled the horse to cover the turn. The host yielded the field in formed bodies, the shields facing, the files answering the call of the trumpets, and the captains carrying their remnants to the rally.
Through these measures, the army preserved its banner.
When the sun rose, the counts stood bleak for Tyrus.
Of the thirty-one thousand who stood at dawn, twenty-three thousand lay upon the ground; the Kraztuk lists marked three thousand and five hundred fallen and four thousand wounded. The standard of Octavus rose upon a low rise near the road, the call for gathering carried across the stubble, and the survivors came to the prince. He set the march toward Tyrus, where they would make their last stand.
Malum raised his sign upon the field he had taken. He named the captains who bore the press at the wedge and ordered the tending of the wounded. Once recovered, he sent riders along the roads to the sea, measured provisions for a long siege, and fixed his camp upon the way to Aardwulf’s Hill.
Tyrus gathered within its walls, dreading the slow death that was to come.
The Girding of Tyrus
Malum set his camp upon the road to the sea and held his line for a season. Seventy miles lay between his banners and the walls, and he measured his wounded, counted his grain, and heard the counsel of his captains.
One month and seven days passed in this posture.
Tyrus used those days with a fierce clarity. Harvesters brought in the fields and then set fire to the stubble; storehouses near the roads were emptied and burned; wells were sealed; orchards cut to stumps; every mile within thirty of the city turned into a ring of ash.
Men and women of craft raised a layered belt of defenses about the walls: pits hidden with grass and palm, trenches seeded with stakes and nails. Beyond them, a broad moat was cut in a full circuit, fifteen feet in depth and twice that in breadth. It was filled with dark water, sharpened timbers, coiled serpents, and the scaled deraki that coil near the marsh edges.
Upon the ramparts, engineers mounted scorpions and stone-throwers, and the watch kept the lanterns of the harbor burning through the night for signals of the enemy.
Malum advanced when his tally pleased him. He brought his host to the western approaches of the city and set his siege with measured hands. The Kraztuk built towers for the walls, laid rams for the gates, rolled onagers to their marks, and began a covered sap toward the foundations.
The first assaults came a month later. Much to the Tyreans’ prayers, the walls held.
A week passed, and a thousand Tyrean horse went out by night, rode through the outer camps, and set seven onagers and three siege towers to flame. Octavus, son of the King, rode at their head with the lantern hooded at his saddle, counted the engines by their shadows, marked the gap between the pickets, loosed the fire at a single word, and called the return before the watchfires fully brightened the tents.
The sap crept forward despite the loss. Yet Tyrean diggers found its line, undermined it, and brought it down in a roar of timbers and dust. Another month was required to rebuild what was lost.
Malum had brought grain for three months and meat for as much, yet the land around him no longer offered its strength. Instead, he cast his hope toward the sea, though the Tyrean captains broke that hope. The Blues ships (Cyruvenari) ranged beyond the harbor mouth, light upon the wind, and joined in signal, and they took or scattered coasters and supply hulls that sought the Kraztuk tents.
Thus, Malum withdrew his ships from that unequal reach and stilled his assaults until a steadier line of bread and iron could be secured.
In this delay, the Tyrean council read his quiet and sent raiders through the winter roads to tear at pack-trains and to fire way-stations. The cost grew heavy in coin and in the patience of the Dwarven ranks.
To cage the sorties, Malum ordered a wall of wood around the city. Ten miles of palisade rose in three weeks from felled pine and cedar, ditches before and behind, gates barred and watched. The raids lessened as a result.
Through the frost and into early spring, the siege settled into endurance.
Seven months passed in this hold. Yet Malum labored beyond the snowline. He sent envoys over the passes to Meldanon, and he bent his knee at council to Belzarah, King among the Elves of that coast.
Through that winter, an alliance gathered its clauses: coin and favor from Kraztuk, a sealed oath from Meldanon, and a command that the black-prowed fleet of Belzarah would close the harbor of Tyrus against all relief. In those nights the King’s camp lifted great fires and set full bowls upon the boards, drums carried through the frost, wagers passed from palm to palm, and young lieutenants bore seals with faces bright from praise; among them Borrus, kin to Malum, carried messages between the royal pavilion and the shore, his step warm from the cup and his promise quick at the tongue, and the host leaned toward ease while the city endured its vigil.
On the seventeenth day of Valqyr, the city woke to a line of shadow upon the water. Seventy Elven warships lay off the mouth of the port in ordered ranks, their hulls dark, their sails drawn low against the morning mist. From that hour, the blockade held the throat of the city.
A sol and four months followed beneath this pressure. The granaries thinned. Quarter rations were measured at the temple gates. Sailors stripped tarred rope for fuel. Children learned to count the days by the turning of the ration bells.
The council held the line, yet the harbor waited upon a single chance.
On the ninth day of Aldurauber, the Tyrean captains took that chance. Fifty Blues cleared the harbor with oars set hard, and forty-five smaller craft, cut down and braced for war, followed their wake.
The Meldanon line answered late, for the darkness and the crowded anchorages dulled the first signal. The Blues drove at the center and broke it for a breath. Ramming prows bit into black hulls; grapnels found rails; boards rose; steel rang along wet decks. The press of the smaller craft closed the lanes the Blues required, and the fight turned from rush to frenzy.
But what began as success for Tyrus ended in total disaster, as their movements became choked by their civilian crafts that crowded them.
The Tyreans brought home thirty-three Blues and twenty-four of the smaller craft; seventeen war-galleys and twenty-one lesser ships sank or burned. Two thousand and two hundred Tyreans fell, and three hundred and forty were taken; Meldanon lost sixteen warships upon the water, seven hundred and thirteen slain, and five hundred and ninety-one wounded upon their rolls.
Malum read the smoke from the shore, called his columns to motion, and reached the works when the last boards ceased to grind.
The city still held, yet the noose lay true upon the sea.
The Day of Breaking
After the failed push upon the water, Malum judged that the city leaned toward hunger and fear. He offered life under bondage, and a gate opened by submission. Each dawn, he set ten Tyrean captives upon the circuit of the walls and tormented them upon the rack in hopes of breaking the Tyrean will. Twenty-two days measured that cruelty. But Tyrus answered with silence, rations divided at the temple steps, watches kept through the night, and hands laid steady upon spear and oar.
Then, in the deep hour of the twenty-third night of Thade, an old shepherd came to the Kraztuk lines. His name was Ephiliamos, and he yearned not to die, and so he revealed the city’s weakness. He spoke of the toll within the walls: seven hundred dead by famine, a quarter of the fighting men fallen since the first assault, a quarter more weakened by want, and a thinning of the northern watch whenever the western wall called for aid.
Malum received this word as the key to the gate and gave Ephiliamos clemency. Malum was overjoyed at the prospect of ending this costly siege, for even if the city were taken, the profit would not equally measure the expenditures of taking it. However, over time, Tyrus could become a very prosperous city again and a great asset to Malum, but at this time, all he wanted was to see it razed.
The King and his generals spared not a single moment in planning the final attack.
On the eve of the thirteenth day, he gave his host meat and bread in fullness, poured libations upon the altars of his fathers, and kept the sacred fires until the stars paled. He placed the word for the fleet in the hand of Borrus, son of his cousin, and charged him to rouse the admiral at first light, and Borrus bowed with eager assent as the cups made their circle and the songs climbed above the embers.
The assault began an hour before dawn.
Thirty thousand Dwarves drove upon the western wall along the southern stretch, towers rumbling into place and rams moving in cadence. Behind the hills to the north, a chosen five thousand crouched in silence, ladders laid flat, helms laced, shields bound with cords for climbing.
When the first light lifted, five hundred from the northern force ran low across the broken ground and came to the gateward in the shadow of the parapet. Only fifty gaunt defenders held that length of stone. The first clash ended quickly, and the shouted alarm carried across the battlements. The ladders rose, the hinges gave under the bars, and the wide way opened. The remaining companies poured through the mouth of the city while the western press held every summoned reserve upon the opposite side. Trumpets cried from tower to tower, captains ran to make a second line from market to shrine, and the citizen ranks turned from the walls to the streets.
The city entered its last hour.
Fires climbed from roof to roof, storehouses blew their doors upon sudden flame, and the alleys filled with the roar of Dwarves who saw an end to long labor.
Those who carried arms gathered to guard the flight of others. Mothers lifted children to cart-beds. Priests of Anaius called the people into the high court and kindled incense for mercy.
Kraztuk cohorts broke the lanes in ordered files, shields locked and swords forward, and the press widened at each crossing. The market square fell, the mint fell, the granaries fell, and the steps of the Mother’s house darkened beneath the weight of the crowd that knelt there in prayer.
Dioclesios Avilla, who stood later upon a tower beside the King of the Kraztuk, later recounted the events in Tales of the Tyrean Wars, saying,
“The King of Kraztuk had only given one instruction to his Dwarves for when the walls were breached:
‘No Mercy!’
What I witnessed from that tower was nothing short of Abishx.
The city was engulfed in smoke and flame. And I saw at once a horde of the King’s soldiers flood through the streets like a raging river. Cries of sorrow and madness and anger, great as I had ever heard, filled the air. The men of Tyrus gave the last of their strength in defense of the defenseless; It was not enough.
Women and men, young and old, were ravaged not for pleasure but in furious anger, for the Dwarven comrades lost in the siege. Any babes that were discovered were torn from their mothers’ arms to be either bashed on stones, thrown over the walls, or cast into the Byring.
Hundreds fell to Kraztukite blades every minute. Even the holy places were unprotected from their bloodlust. Over two thousand Tyreans had gathered in the holy temple of Anaius, where they knelt, pleading for the Mother’s mercy.
It was not bestowed.
I did not see what happened with my own eyes, but I did not have to know that Malum’s orders had not been disobeyed. A deep red pool, two fingers deep, decorated with the dead, painted the floor. They lay upon each other there with no space but at most a step in between them. I am told they did not resist their executioners but only wept. The aroma of fire, human excrement, and sickly sweet blood had filled the city’s air.
In a matter of hours, I had seen a city murdered, although not entirely.
In the ensuing carnage, many thousands had fled to the port in a desperate attempt to escape the city’s ruin. With Kraztukite soldiers nipping at their heels, King Regulus rallied what men-at-arms he could spare at the harbor gate and set himself there acting as the rearguard. Regulus sent his eldest son to take as many as he could onto the ships and flee, but Octavus tried to resist the King’s command.
Their words were thus,
‘Father! Let me stay with you to defend the way.’
‘No, my son! Go forth and flee with haste. Save our people while there is still hope. Malum and his dogs will soon be upon us, and we cannot hold them for long.’
‘But—’
‘No! I will soon be dead, and you will be King. Go now, Octavus! Take your mother and your sisters, and as many of the people as you can manage onto the ships and flee! And remember, Octavus, all that I have taught you. Tyrus is a city, but a people and an ideal also. So long as they live, there can be a future. Tell your mother I love her and your sisters, too. I love you, my son. Now Go!’
‘Goodbye, father.’
“Once Regulus had sent his son away, he turned and spoke to the men who had volunteered to hold the gate against the oncoming invaders, saying,
‘Good men of Tyrus! I do not command you to hold, for verily I say unto you that any man who stands with us will surely perish here under Aardwulf’s Gate. But you will not do so alone. I have resigned myself unto death and have found this to be as good a place as any to quit living.
‘Indeed, I count myself blessed for the honor to fight and die for such a just cause as this and with such excellent fellows.
‘Tyreans! Will you die with me?’
‘YES!’
‘Then let us hold! They’ve waited an eternity to take this city. I say we let them wait a little longer!’”
Regulus took the gate at Aardwulf with those who offered themselves for a rearward stand. Two hundred and two gathered to him, and there they set their shields upon the narrow arch where stone funnels the wind.
Malum pressed for the breach. He spent a thousand lives to open that throat and counted as many wounded in the hour that followed.
The Tyreans held for two hours, much to Malum’s displeasure. Each Tyrean kept his place. Each stroke paid for space.
When the line at last gave way, the King fell upon the stones among his chosen. He was missing two fingers on his left hand, had an arrow in his chest and abdomen, slashes across the cheek and forearm, and had indications of thirteen piercing wounds. His sword lay next to him, embedded in the chest of a Dwarven officer.
Only one man lived by swoon and was captured. His name was Iliotarus, and in later sols he carried this tale through the slave-mines of Kraztuk, where he told Dioclesios Avilla of what had transpired that fateful day. Iliotarus would later die in a slave revolt under the earth seven sols after sharing the story.
The Veil of Byring - Velae Byrinthael
Upon the thirteenth day of Thade, as dawn crept over the harbor of Tyrus, a thin smoke drifted above the masts, and the waters lay heavy with the scent of tar and salt. The Blues, those proud warships of the Tyrean fleet, rested in their berths with oars already run out and decks cleared for the long pull ahead, while the lesser craft clustered within the inner roads, their rails crowded with families pressed close in the gray light.
Beyond the channel, the black hulls of Meldanon kept their vigil, their line diminished from the seventy ships of the first winter to but fifty-four after the slaughter in the Bay. On this morning, only thirty-six remained to guard the mouth, for eight lay upon the beach in repair and ten upon the timbers for scraping.
Malum had charged a young kinsman, Lieutenant Borrus, with the simple task of sending word to Admiral N’Akira to bring those squadrons to readiness. Yet Borrus abandoned his duty for wine and the comfort of his bed, and in that failure, his name passed into the speech of Kraztuk as a curse upon sloth, drink, and unreliability. Among Dwarves, it became a word of warning and insult alike—“He lives like Borrus” for the idle, or “Deliver this letter with honor, and be no Borrus” for those charged with trust.
Thus, the Tyreans were given a hope of deliverance.
Prince Octavus, seeing the moment, gave command for the breakout. Thirty three Blues took the charge, their hulls gleaming faintly in the pale light, and behind them ninety two smaller craft bore the remnant of the city: men at arms in lean companies, shields stacked high along the rails; women with infants bound to their breastboards; elders cloaked in faded festival dyes; boys and girls with salt in their hair and the shadow of ash in their eyes.
The call of trumpets rang from quay to quay as the fleet began to move, oars striking the water in deep unison, and the morning wind filled torn canvas, pressing the prows forward into the open tide.
From the outer line, N’Akira saw their surge and moved to form his defense. Anchors came up, sails steadied, and crews took to their stations with haste.
But the Blues drove hard at the center, their beaked prows splintering black hulls, their boarding planks crashing down, the clash of steel ringing across the water. The press of merchant craft behind them narrowed the lanes, and the battle ground itself into a close and bitter struggle.
For two hours, the fleets locked in that press, each thrust and counter met by another, until the Tyreans forced open a seam in the Meldanon line. Through that gap, the civilian column poured into open water, while behind them six Blues and seven smaller vessels slipped beneath the waves.
N’Akira counted six of his own lost in the fray. Seeing the numbers now against him, he pulled his line away from the harbor mouth, for thirty sails could not hold the flood while the city burned beyond.
From the shore, the beached squadrons at last slid from their timbers, nineteen fresh hulls joining the chase so that forty-nine sails now bent eastward after the fleeing column.
The Tyreans kept close to the Privian coast, their oars rising and falling in a single measured beat, captains standing fixed at their tillers as the hours passed. In the third hour, the wind shifted, and a thick fog rose from the sea, rolling across both fleets at twenty-five miles from shore until the water lay hidden beneath a gray shroud.
N’Akira steered by soundings and the reckoning of his pilots, pressing on through the dim light, yet when the fog at last thinned after the space of half an hour, the sea before him lay empty. For fourteen days, the Meldanon searched the Byring, yet no trace of the Tyrean ships was found.
Among sailors, this moment came to be called the Veil of Byring, or Velae Byrinthael, and the name endured in story. When the hush settled upon the decks, Octavus set his hand upon the rail and swore by the Mother’s hill that the people preserved upon those hulls would raise their city wherever the sea granted haven, and the captains carried the vow from prow to stern until the oars found again their steady beat.
Furious at their escape, Malum entered the city he had claimed and granted his host six days to take what spoils they could carry—gold and silver from vaults, stores from the merchant halls, vessels from the harbor, and all manner of ornament from the houses of the great. In those days of sack eighty thousand of the city’s people perished in the streets, in the courts, and upon the temple steps. The seventeen thousand who survived were bound in chains and sold across Privia, scattered among many ports.
On the seventh day, the twentieth of Thade, Malum gave command for the destruction of Tyrus, saying,
“Oh, wicked city of Tyrus, long hast thou been Malum’s bane!
One hundred seasons past didst thine armies withstand Me, and ten more didst thine stubborn walls vex My every labor. Yet now, I shall take from thee everything. Thine spoils art Mine. Thine sons & daughters art Mine. The very soil and sea where upon which thou liest is Mine.
And so, in measure of Malum’s mercy, I find thee wanting. Be then razed to the earth and let all Scissalan know what befalls those who defy King Malum the Great!”
And so axes bit into beams, fires rose along the roofs, and the towers fell one after another until the city stood as ruin. Upon the northern hill, the craftsmen of Kraztuk raised a statue of the King, thirty feet high and plated in gold, and at its base they set a bronze tablet inscribed with his judgment upon Tyrus, a warning to all who might measure defiance in their hearts.
Tyrus, once a beautiful city—a place of culture, science, and many wonders—became rubble and ruin.
Of the fleet that passed beyond the blockade, Octavus guided them towards paradise. The oars beat their rhythm to the low murmur of prayers, each dawn marked by the mast’s shadow upon the deck, each night by the same stars that had looked down upon the Mother’s hill. Though the city had fallen in fire upon Lakmana, it endured in the charge laid upon the living.
The crown of the Marcellii passed from stone to deck, from deck to an unseen harbor, and from that harbor toward a new shore where the work of founding would begin again.