Bright Swords of Serena

Prologue & Chapter 1

"Against Deterrents"
(Martin Robertson)

We must, if we would have our children live,
Do more than understand, more than forgive,
More than love our enemies: trust them:
"Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them."

Prologue

The world had a name, but its people had forgotten it. They had come in sleek faster-than-light ships from another world, which lay in a faraway star system. The ships landed colonists, equipment, materials, seed stocks, breeding animals. Then they flew away, with every intention of returning.

They never came back.

For a high-technology settlement, this would have been disaster. But the colony planted on the world called Serena had been planned otherwise. Instead of prefabricated housing, mechanical industry, medicines already made, the settlers had brought with them only two things: a bare minimum of technology, and the desire to live in a simpler fashion. They wanted no spaceships of their own, no flight vessels, no powered vehicles, no automation. Instead, they hungered for "machinery" powered by wind and water, things made by skilled hands instead of robots, horses and oxen and wooden carts for transportation, food grown by farmers, clothes handsewn of cloth handwoven from wool and linen. Their ships were to grace the waters propelled by sail and wind; their fastest communication was to be transmitted by homing pigeon or the best horses. They brought plans with them, to be sure—plans for everything from brickmaking to shipbuilding—but every bit of work involved in making these things was to be done by hand.

Serena never knew about the war that broke out in the surrounding galaxy. They had no electronics, no radios, no landing equipment for the starships that never came back. They only knew that the ships didn't come back. And in time they forgot to wait for them, and still later they forgot about them altogether. Only the oldest settlers remembered; and eventually they died. So no one was left who knew the story of the world's origins.

Time passed, and there were two nations, each coterminous with the islands they sat upon. Aethir in the south had been the site of the first landings from space; Tymar in the north had in turn been settled by people from Aethir, looking for freedom from the strict rulers of the only country they knew. Two island nations, alone in the seas of the world, separated physically by a mere strait of ocean, but spiritually by a vast gulf of difference.

For they had fundamentally different mindsets. To the monarchs of Aethir, power and control and the rights to resources belonged in their hands and only a few others'. Their royal counterparts across the Channel believed rather that strength and goods and responsibility were to be shared. Conflict was inevitable; and it came to be.

Resources were limited, or so the people of the two nations believed. So they fought each other, constantly and unendingly, for power and control. They fought over fishing rights, passage through the Channel, trade, little things and large, how to handle relations during the short rare times when they were not at active war. What Aethir had—fertile soil and open country—Tymar wanted; what Tymar had—tall forests and better ships—Aethir reached out for with grasping hands. Tymar subsisted on fish, Aethir on grain and meat, and each hated the other.

The idea of cooperating in looking for better solutions never occurred to anyone, or if it did, they kept it to themselves. No one wanted to be laughed at. Some did long for something other than intermittent if unending war—even for of days of actual peace—but the warships were needed for, well, war, and could not be spared on errands of diplomacy. No vessel could be spared at all.

In the spring of a certain year, centuries after the forgotten first landing, both nations had internal troubles as well as external ones.

In Tymar, the aging King Raidon had as heir only a single son, a recent widower who himself had no living children. The law gave Prince Calvan time to mourn his wife, but no laws spoke of such an uncertain succession, and people had begun to look elsewhere for continuity of the royal line. They had few choices. The king's banished sister was dead, and her proscribed offspring were ineligible for the throne. Some eyed them anyway, but that gave the nation no real hope, and storms were brewing over what might be done.