Gradations of Sartarite Identity

In this piece, Mianmo has provided us with a narrative summary of the different components of identity that would have comprised any given child of the Haraborn clan. More than that, however, she has allowed us to catch her in a snare.

As we know from Six Seasons, the legendary founder of the clan was Jarstakos Forked Spear. Yet initially in the piece, we have his name as Jastakos. This, she scratched out and replaced with Jarstakos-- and then crossed that out and, in a confident hand, returned to Jastakos. Now, it is quite possible that this represents a crisis of memory in the editing process; we may imagine her wracking her brains, trying to remember which was correct. But her familiarity with the clan makes this sort of mistake seem rather difficult to believe. Rather than accuse Usuphus of getting the name wrong (which seems equally unlikely), let us consider whether this was a deliberate change in the narrative she chose to present.

After all, that change brings the name a step closer to the name of the Orlanthi god Mastakos, whose name quite literally means "Traveler Returning" in southern Heortling dialects. With the excision of a consonant, she points the reader towards Jarstakos's mythic antecedent, and may as well be asking the Muse to tell us about a complicated man, one whose myth opens with a past obliterated by his status as a wanderer, who cannot resist the temptation of a home.

Or it is equally possible that her own dialect had trouble with "rst" as a sound, and she simplified the name for her own oral performances. Unfortunately, research into the dialect that would have been native to the White Horse Barrows remains frustratingly slow, so it is likely that the origins of the missing R will continue to vex us for some time.

HHVOCS

During the end of the world, there was a man who had no place to rest his head. He was Jastakos Jarstakos Jastakos Forked Spear, who was Heort's son. In his day, the sun had no heat and the sky was black; in his day, the earth was dead and the winds did not blow. In his day, the monster armies roamed the land. You know their names. His strength and courage meant that when he met someone during the end of the world, they would choose to follow him, hoping for his protection. Even the troll Ungbar Zak Bak followed him for this reason. The warband of Jastakos Forked Spear hunted where they could, and found plunder in the dead villages, but each one of them had an empty stomach and a guttering flame.

Then the golden-haired boy found the place where Deer Run tumbles down the rocks. Jastakos stooped here and cupped the water in his hands, and it was sweet and cold. "Where there is good water there is life," the dancer said then, and they all agreed, so they turned north, between the shield arm of the god Quivin and the sword arm of his brother Kagradus, up into the vale. It was the bull who recognized the smell of pine and cedar, but it was Jastakos who recognized the three good friends of man, which are oak and ash and thorn. "Where there are deep roots there is life," the dancer said then, and they all agreed, so they strung their bows and readied their arrows (which were tipped with bones and stones, because there was no redsmith among them).

It was Jastakos who saw the Martyr Faun moving through the trees, its flanks white as snow. It was Jastakos who bent the bow and sent his sharp death through its neck.

The earth shook, then. Quivin and Kagradus closed their arms, and looking back, the golden-haired boy saw that the way into the vale was shut. "This is because of what I have done," Jastakos said. So they arranged the Matryr Faun as an offering to whatever gods and spirits still lived in the world, and bowed their heads, and waited. And the gods came.

Two there were. The Black Stag came, with his crown of antlers, and he lowered his head to his son's neck. The Running Doe came, and the waters rose, and she wrapped her white arms around her son's neck. They watched Jastakos, and waited.

"I have wronged you," Jastakos said, and broke his bow over his knee.

"You have taken my son," said the Stag, the son of Hykim Beastfather, the son of the Holy Mountain. "Now shall I rule alone?"

"No," Jastakos said. "We shall raise a mound for him here. Then we must go and join the muster of my father; but then we shall come back, and you shall be our father. My children, and the children of my people, shall be your children. We will give you offerings, and tend to your vale, and protect you from the Wolf. We will be the Black Stag People. Do you accept this?"

The Stag assented, but Running Doe moved her hand like this against Jastakos. "You will go, but you will come back on your shield," she said. "Then you will sleep next to my son in his mound for as long as the world rests on the back of the waters."

 

And it was so.

 

We are the people of Jastakos Forked Spear; we are the Black Stag People, the people of the Black Stag Vale. We are the children of the Black Stag, whose son was killed by Jastakos.

The father of Jastakos was King Heort Hardstag. His shadow was a deer. He walked between the forts, and what he saw drove him to despair, so he walked to the end of the world. Only there he met Vingkot's Second Son, who taught him the good secrets of how to live. When he returned, Heort taught all the people that the gods were not dead but that they were returning from the underworld, and he showed the people how to pray again, and how to make pleasing sacrifices. He taught the people how to fight against Chaos without running away. If he had not done these things, then the gods would have returned to a world without people.

We are the people of Heort; we are the Heortlings. We know the proper prayers that please the gods, and we know our duty to fight against Chaos. We walk Heort's road, and after we walk it we are no longer children. We know the great secrets that Heort shared with us. Because we keep his ways, each year the world is reborn and does not end.

Heort was the descendant of Good King Vingkot Orlanthsson. Everything was good in the world when Vingkot was king. His was the Helm and the Sword of Victory, his was the Law Staff that Heort found again. He fought the Sky Bear and was victorious. He was the first king in the whole world, and it was his father Orlanth who placed the crown on his head. If he had not died fighting Chaos, the world would still be like it was in his day. After him were the Summer and Winter people, who Heort united.

We are the people of Vingkot; we are the Vingkotlings. We keep the old laws, and we keep alive the memory of the days before Chaos broke the world. Even the people down in the lowlands who were not saved by Heort remember Good King Vingkot, so we are still distant kin.

Vingkot was the son of Great Orlanth, the son of the Holy Mountain, who rules the upper airs, the winds and the clouds and the storms. Orlanth is the god of heroes, the god of thunder, the god of men. His spear is named Thunderbolt and his sword is named War. Mastakos drives his chariot. He is the husband of Ernalda, who is the Good Green Earth. It was he who stopped the world from ending, who told the gods to weave the net named Time, who brought his wife back from the land of the dead. He is the greatest of the gods.

We are the people of Orlanth; we are the Orlanthi. We worship the good gods and goddesses the way that Heort's priest Hana taught us. We praise the names of Orlanth and Ernalda, and their families, and their tribes. We know the secrets of the Storm and the Earth. We are the best people in the world, and have the best gods; all other peoples envy us.

We have only left the Black Stag Vale once, during the Bad Dragon Rule. That is why we did not die when the dragons killed everyone. During that time, we were the people of Lord Victory Nightbrother; but when he died, Colymar the Explorer led us back to our home. So we are of the Tribe of Colymar, too, and we go to war when the Black Spear of Colymar calls us. We are the thirteenth clan of the Colymar, the clan-in-the-mountains. Because we are Colymar, no other people can threaten us without insulting all of Colymar's people.

When Sartar the Magician came to our land, the tribes did not know peace. That was one of his secrets that he taught us, the King with No Sword. He showed us that he could build, too; he could make good roads and good walls. He made many cities, but the Colymar did not need one, or so we said. That is why our tribe has no city confederation with other tribes. But when Sartar made his kingdom, the Colymar agreed to be a part of the peace that he had made. So we are people of Sartar's kingdom, too. The Black Spear was a strong part of his army, and the armies of his family, for as long as they ruled over us.

These are all the things that we are, the Black Stag People. This is our history; this is our descent. For Jastakos came from Heort, and Heort from Vingkot, and Vingkot from Orlanth, who was the son of the Holy Mountain.

 

All this was as I have told you, unless it was not.