Our country bleeds. Invaders from both north and south have burned, pillaged and murdered their way through it. A puppet duke sits on the throne while our liege, the true ruler of this land, is forced to hide in the grass. How could this have come about you might ask? For that we will have to go back ten years.

I was there, waiting in the high grass along with the other of the Duke’s men when we heard the trumpet. It was not our horn. Not our signal to attack. The men were worried. Worry turned into dread when the shrill trumpet blast was followed by the clattering of hooves. Within moments the Maecktian cavalry crashed into our ranks. Panic erupted. The few who stood and fought were quickly slaughtered. The rest routed. Regrettably I was also among those who ran. I was still a boy then, lacking courage and experience. If I was there today, I would have stood and died bravely for my duke and country. Yet these hypotheticals are useless now.

The point is that the duke’s army was broken by the Maecktian cavalry and scattered in the four winds. Most importantly it was believed that duke Oskar was dead. In the month after the battle most of the Rieve lords surrendered their castles to the invader. I was hiding in the grass at this time with a band of other former soldiers. We ambushed Maecktian supply wagons and to my shame extorted villages to feed ourselves.

We were bandits... I was a bandit. As Bergar, the puppet, marched into Rieve with the Coalition army to throw out the Maecktian invader, I was drinking and stealing behind the front lines. I enjoyed that life, taking whatever I wanted and killing anyone who stood in the way. I was lost then. Not even when news reached us that the Duke had survived the battle and was leading a band of men in a guerrilla war against the Maecktians did I remember my duty to Rieve.

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I carried on robbing and killing until one day we ran into an ambush. Arrows flew everywhere, killing my comrades left and right. Armed men jumped out of the high grass surrounding us completely. It was clear to me that this was the end, so I threw down my sword and prayed for the gods to be merciful. Luckily for me, they were. A man with an iron mask stepped forward. Instead of butchering us like we deserved, he was here to make us an offer, he announced to us. To join him in the fight for his dukedom or to die in the dirt for nothing. Needless to say the choice was easy. I, along with the others, kneeled before him and swore our loyalty to him.

From that day on I was a Dukeman. I was put in the commando of Ser Harald, one of the few nobles who had not pledged his sword to the false duke. Our commando was no more than forty men but still we wreacked havoc in the Maecktian rear. Raiding supply lines, killing messengers and sabotaging roads, we became notorious. At the end of the war we spent many days tracking and killing the survivors of Baaker and Wateren that had made it across the river.

We did our part in the war and foolishly expected a reward for it. When the peace negotiations started duke Oskar rode to Rieve to take part in them, only to be imprisoned. The Coalition wanted to put their little puppet, the duke’s half-brother Bergar, on the throne so they could control Rieve. When the Duke arrived at Rieve he was immediately captured by Coalition soldiers. The kings claimed he was merely an impersonator, not the real Duke Oskar as he had perished on the battlefield.

A blatant lie of course, but a lie backed with thousands of swords, so the Duke was slated for execution when the peace talks were over. What the kings nor Bergar did not foresee, was that the Duke would escape before any treaty was signed. How he did it I do not know. He arrived at our fortress in Kaeront hill as a hero and the fight went on. This time not against Maecktians but against Deveernians, Vidanians, Meteizians, Kraggians and our own country men.

Blood still flows and it will flow until the Duke returns to his rightful throne.

Aryan, Dukeman Commando, 1657