This is what happens when you read too much Glorantha and Robert Graves.
Off to Storm the Summer Country, the Golden Company A-went. |
How Dalibor and Luboš Became Twin-Rays
One and fifteen score years ago it came
to pass in the vale of Velky Rajetz that two identical twins, Dalibor
and Luboš, were born to Eliška Vu-Krašny, the ostensibly virginal
daughter of the Voivod of that place. Though to her father she spun
a magnificent tale of being embraced by the armor-gleamed Sun Lord
himself in the sun-dappled meadows beyond the blood-apricot orchards,
the straight-necked Voivod was inclined to believe that her lover was
no other than his own wayward, sorcery-addled half-brother,
František.
Fearing his wrath Eliška fled down the
road to the market-village of Marlinko (now the city of Marlank). The
Voivod's bond-knights gave pursuit and near the time-weathered shrine
of the Horned Oracle, Luboš fell from her arms. Wretched with grief
and guilt—and knowing that her own death was near--the fair Eliška
swaddled her remaining son and left him in the offering box of the
nearby monastery of the Brothers of the Other Mother. It was none too
soon as her pursuers were quickly on her trampling the poor maiden
under their cruel hooves.
Now it came to pass that Luboš instead
of dying on that cold hill-slope was found by the shade Xatis, a
castrato-being worshiped in times long past by a forgettable pagan
people who lacked all panache and verve. While shorn of both his
manhood and sense of divine purpose, Xatis was not a bad sort and
raised the bawling lad as his own son in a vast cave called Raustuun
in the wilds of the south.
Fierce-eyed Dalibor spent his early
childhood in the company of kindly monks who made use of his nimble
hands in the monastery cobbler shop. On reaching his seventh birthday
the loving, doting monks sold the child to Lord-General Hartung
Hellabrecht for a sack of turnips. While in the service of that
stern, erudite general, whose campaigns in the Corelands are
almost-remembered to this day, Dalibor became inured to both the
soldierly life and the the life of the mind.
Though they both led separate lives
Dalibor and Luboš they grew up feeling a great yawning hole in their
psyches.
On his 18th birthday Luboš
proclaimed to his guardian, “today I am a man and I yearn to travel
the world and deal with my abandonment issues by a perhaps diverting
and self-medicating life of heroic action and drunken wanton.”
Xatis in his shrill, yet not unkindly voice gave him leave along with
three gifts of magic most potent.
Setting forth from Raustuun on the road
to Nowhere [a reference cryptic to modern historians] Luboš espied a
great company of landsknechts and war-wagons coming up the road.
Raised feral and proud the boy refused to give ground. A young
sallet-helmed officer in the van of the host gave challenge to a
wrestling match [a common contest of jurisprudence in that time].
During that scuffle in which neither could get the advantage of the
other, the helmet rolled off the officer revealing no other than his
lost twin brother, Dalibor.
“By the Sun Lord's sweaty balls,”
exclaimed Dalibor. “Sweet screaming Mistress of the Mountains,”
countered Luboš. The two brothers, once convinced that the other was
not just conjured by the sheer will of their respective
vanities—which were indeed immense by all accounts—became fast
and inseperable companions.
The deeds of the civilized, yet violent
Dalibor and the wild, but delicate Luboš following their reunion
are too numberable and on occasion too-contradictory (such as the
varying accounts of either a bittersweet rapprochement with their
father or a terrible siege/slaying before belatedly recognizing their
dear old dad) to mention with much detailed justice in this account.
But we all know the Major Deeds: the bearding of the Circle Mistress
of Habeka, the great heist (and abandonment) of the four cursed
brother-blades, the routing of the Horsehead Host, and most of all that
final last great expedition where they raised the Golden Company and
stormed the Summer Country itself for the glory of our most beloved
Sun before disappearing to the heavens.
I like it! Also, I admire your dedication in doing diatrics in blogger.
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