The Seneschal grew, garnering power to itself, spreading among the poor of the countryside and the hopeless of the cities. The Way of the Plough spread, and so did the fields, until the ringing of the axes at the edges of the forests made both Icarii and Avar flinch.

GoldFlight SunSoar was then Talon over all Tencendor, and he, like the two Talons before him, had tolerated the spread of the Way of the Plough. They either thought it a diverting amusement, suitable to the Acharites and their stolid ways, or they thought it a useful faith, for this strange new invention of the Plough meant that Tencendor's grain crop increased fifteen-fold within only a generation.

They did not see the danger.

The Icarii continued to play amid the skies, and there sought the answers of the stars. The Avar continued to wander the forest paths, seeking nothing but peace and continued goodwill towards the land.

All this the Acharites saw. The Brothers of the Seneschal, spreading among the Acharite communities like the thin, vibrant trickle of disease, told the people that they should covet what the Icarii and Avar enjoyed.

"Do they not inhabit the best places ... the choicest? Is their way of life not one of ease and waste while yours is one of toil and pain? Do the Icarii not eat of the best, and recline amid silks and velvets, while you grind your teeth on coarse bread and lie amid the dust of your hovels? Do not the Avar uselessly inhabit dark forests, places of demons and shadows, that might be better used as grainlands? See ... see ..."

And the Acharites saw, and were increasingly resentful. And, resentful, they hefted their axes and nibbled at the edges of the great forests.

The Avar complained to the Talon, and GoldFlight SunSoar called representatives of the Acharites to meet with him in his palace in the cities of the Minaret Peaks. Among the twelve Acharites who appeared before GoldFlight and his advisers were three brothers of the Seneschal. They were the first Brothers GoldFlight had ever met, and he did not like their cold, flat eyes, nor their refusal to shake his hand.

The meeting did not go well. The Acharites, encouraged by the Brothers of the Seneschal, demanded freedoms and land.

"We would that you cede to us all the land east of the Nordra," shouted their spokesman, "and that we be known no more as bondsmen to the Icarii!"

GoldFlight was shocked. "All the land to the east ... bondsmen? Bondsmen? What do you mean?"

"We are your slaves - "

"No!" GoldFlight leapt to his feet, his wings extended behind him. "Slaves? I - "

"Slaves!" the spokesman screamed, the hand of a Brother firm on his shoulder. "We work only to provide the food for your feasts and the fools for your entertainments! You think nothing of us, save to laugh at our poverty and wretchedness!"

"No," GoldFlight whispered, appalled that he, as the entire Icarii, should be so accused. "No."

"Then give us our freedom, and give us the land east of the Nordra. All of it."

"But that land is forested ... what would you - "

"We would deforest it," one of the Brothers hissed. "We would clear the land of its demons and we would put it into the use of the Acharites and Artor himself, may his name be blessed forever."

GoldFlight, utterly shocked, sank down onto his stool. "No," he managed after a moment. "No. What you speak is foolishness. What you suggest is sacrilege. The forest is the home of the Avar -"

"Witches!" one of the Acharites whispered.

"- and neither you nor I have the right to deprive them of - "

"They are black-hearted wretches who shall feed our axes," a Brother said calmly. "Stay out of our way, birdmen."

At that GoldFlight had them thrown out of his presence. He kept them for a month under close guard, but such were the murmurings among the Acharite populations he eventually let them go.

"They truly could not have meant what they said," GoldFlight remarked to his son. "It must have been ... it must have been ... Oh! They will forget it!"

And with that he turned away.

For some time it appeared as if GoldFlight was correct. Once the twelve men and three brothers of the Seneschal had been released they returned home from the Minaret Peaks and were absorbed silently back into their communities. For eighteen months there was nothing. Axes still occasionally rang at the edges of the forests, but their activity died down somewhat, and GoldFlight allowed himself the luxury of believing the moment of rebellion was over.

And if it did come to armed conflict ... well ... he commanded the Strike Force ... and the Acharites had nothing to counter them.

Except cunning and determination.

The Acharites, as the Skraelings would later strike during Yuletide, struck during Beltide. Beltide was celebrated across Tencendor, although the Acharites, increasingly under the influence of the Seneschal, generally largely ignored it. Not this year. As the Avar and the Icarii followed the pathways chosen them by their lust, as they lay down entwined among the trees and in the glades of the great forests, silent assassins moved among them. Knives struck where love only should have ventured, spears pierced passion, and axes clove couples apart.

Leading the Acharites were a thousand men dressed in grey, their leader in black, twin crossed axes on his breast. Secretly formed by the Seneschal more than two years previously, and trained amid even more secrecy, the Axe-Wielders struck efficiently and without mercy. As other Acharites slaughtered indiscriminately if enthusiastically, the BattleAxe directed his Axe-Wielders against Crest- and Wing-Leaders, and Clan Heads among the Avar.

The Icarii and Avar were decimated ... not only in numbers lost (and legend claims that twenty thousand among them died that Beltide night) but in leadership and courage and heart for the fight. The Strike Force was virtually useless. They did not know how to battle against thieves in the night, nor did they understand how to battle the determination of those determined to clear the skies above ... Achar.

Supported by the now triumphant Seneschal, a baron named Tristian claimed the crown of the new nation of Achar. Buoyed by their Beltide success, thousands of peasants flocked to fight under the direction of the Axe-Wielders and their BattleAxe. The Icarii and the Avar were shell-shocked. None among them could rally their fellows against the insurgency. GoldFlight, reeling from the loss of his wife and daughter at Beltide, ordered the Icarii Strike Force back to protect the cities of the Minaret Peaks. The Avar would have to look after themselves.

"Just for a week or two," GoldFlight promised, "until we cope against the Acharites."

But weeks turned into long impotent months, and the Avar fled north, ever north along the forest paths as the Acharites fell to their axe-wielding with a vengeance. Tens of thousands of Acharites, armed with sharp axes, lined the borders of the forests and hacked their way in. Among them strode Brothers of the Seneschal, shouting, encouraging, their voices spittle-lined with triumph. Behind the lines of axemen marched the peasants and their plough teams, carting away (or burning) the cut timber and ploughing the detritus into the soil.

Only about the Silent Woman Keep did the Acharites encounter determined resistance, and then from the powerful magic of the Keep and the surrounding trees and the wonder of what lay in the depths of Cauldron Lake more than from any members of the Icarii Strike Force. Eventually the Seneschal ordered the axemen away from this stubborn patch of trees.

"They will fall eventually," the Brothers claimed. "We will conquer this pitiful patch some day."

And so they moved north, north, towards the beautiful Minaret Peaks.

 

Icarii cities chiselled into and soaring above the Minaret Peaks were tunnelled and colonnaded in wondrous stones and gems, marbled with beauty, imbued with magic. As the lines of Axemen approached, GoldFlight, his wings drooping with sorrow, ordered the evacuation of his people north. "North to Talon Spike," he whispered, his eyes tracing the approach of fires to the south.

To the Enchanters among them, GoldFlight said, "Do what you can. I could not bear to see these wondrous cities destroyed."

"It will take time," said his brother StarJoy. "Weeks to protect these cities from the evil approaching. Can your ... Strike Force ... protect us in that time?"

GoldFlight took the rebuke unflinchingly. "They will have to, StarJoy."

And they did, but it was almost the destruction of them. As the Icarii Enchanters struggled to drape the Minaret cities in concealing magic, struggled to hide their soaring spires and their treasured domes from the darkened eyes of the Acharites, the Strike Force spent its days and nights in the sky, keeping the enraged axemen at bay. Every day more and more of them dropped from the increasingly accurate arrows of the Acharites, yet they kept attacking and, if not driving the Acharites back, at least throwing a wall of protection around the cities and the Enchanters.

"Sorcery!" screamed the Brothers of the Seneschal as each day saw spires and domes fade from view to be replaced by the bare sweep of bracken-encrusted hills.

More than anything else, this display of power and magic persuaded the Acharites that the Icarii, as their brothers in magic the Avar, were creatures to be feared and, being feared, to be slaughtered without pity.

"How long before they throw that might down upon your wives and children?" the Seneschal cried, and men feared.

"How long before they ensorcel your souls with their blackness?"

And the Acharites redoubled their efforts against the Strike Force until only a pitiful few Wings were left. GoldFlight, who had stayed to the last, watched as the last three Wings, each at only half-strength, limped back to the remaining colonnade on their final night in what had been the pride of the Icarii race.

"We leave during the night," GoldFlight said, and with those words condemned the Icarii to a thousand-year exile. "We skulk away under cover of darkness."

---

 

And this they did. As the Acharites broke through the remaining defences, the Icarii lifted into the night and winged their way north. Some died from exhaustion - many the best Enchanters alive - and others dropped from the sky in sheer sad-heartedness, but most made it across the Fortress Ranges into the forests.

"Soon," GoldFlight said to the Icarii and the Avar about. "Soon we will regroup and fight our way back. Soon."

Far to the rear of the group an Icarii male, copper hair and violet eyes well hid under a concealing hood, turned away and wept. He knew how long it would take for the StarMan to emerge from the ashes of the Icarii pride. Even though WolfStar had known for generations of this horror, the actual sight of it sorrowed him beyond belief.

"Soon," GoldFlight repeated uselessly, and no-one there believed him. No-one.

The Acharites hacked and they burned. Within ten years they had cleared the forests of Achar from the Fortress Ranges to Widewall Bay and from the Nordra in the west to the Widowmaker Sea to the east. Save the stubborn trees surrounding the Silent Woman Keep and Cauldron Lake, and a few scraggles about the Fernbrake Lake, nothing remained. Shadowed walks turned into sun-deadened grasslands, magical glades faded into memory, the Mother moaned and turned away.

The Seneschal spread stories of the mighty battles of the Wars of the Axe. "The Icarii and Avar, the Forbidden Ones, tortured and raped," they said, and all who listened believed the Brothers, even those who had seen the wars first hand. "Women were dragged from their beds to assuage Icarii lust, children slaughtered to appease their dark gods. The trees walked the night, biting and wrenching Artor-fearing people limb from limb, and forest gnomes stole souls and sold them to demons. Fear their return ... Fear ... Only Artor can save you."

So people listened and feared and believed, and the Way of the Plough flourished, and the Seneschal waxed fat on the power of fear, and Artor, the great god Artor, imprisoned the seven revealed Star Gods in an icy barrenness within the interstellar wastes.

And meanwhile the magic at the foot of the Lakes watched and listened and relaxed, for while the battles raged overhead it had feared that the final conflagration had arrived. But not yet ... not yet.