Hill Cantons Myths Part Two

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 18^th 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.