The Chromatic Chord

The Leeward-Windscar Terms

The first lasting meeting ground of Halflings and Orcs, c. 160,000-c. 145,000 BR: escorted parties are owed an answer at fold markets and cistern halls, because the Pacts could close the Lee Road, but reception is not entry, and the folds stay shut behind them. See The Folds, the Scarps, and the Shore.

Overview

The reserve-keeping Foldward Commons and the far-travelling Windscar Pacts made the first lasting Halfling-Orc terms on Caeldon, and they made them over graves.

It opens late in The Founding of the Windscar Pacts, when Orc escort-bands first cross the dry country of the Windscar Expanse often enough to reach the sheltered Leeward Folds year after year.

Spears at the Fold Gate

The first meetings are not trade between willing neighbours. They are thirsty, armed parties coming down off the saddles with dun dogs on their line and wound flies in their sores, at the gate of a valley where the orchards are in fruit and the cisterns full.

The Orcs carry more spears; the Halflings hold the water and the stores. In the early seasons some folds are plundered, their terrace walls broken and their reserve cisterns drunk dry in a week, and some caravans are left to die outside shut gates with the water in plain sight. Fold grandmothers still bar the door a second time on the anniversary of the night the Windscar came over the Lee Wall; Orc kindreds name, at every treaty-ground, the gates that did not open. Raiders of both peoples learn the saddle paths, and for a generation no caravan crosses them without a fight somewhere along the way.

A Bounded Welcome

The killing ends in a bargain, because both sides can count their dead and see where the feud is going: a plundered fold feeds no one next season, and a betrayed caravan's kin come back with more spears.

Escorted parties may claim a welcome at named fold markets, cistern halls, and terrace-edge trading grounds. A welcome is not free entry, and a party that raids a market forfeits it for every fold on the saddle. How much water, food, and room a party gets depends on the season, the stores, and what the fold says it can spare; and the fold elders keep the right to tell trade from rest, rest from shelter, and shelter from a place inside the walls. Hospitality is real, but it is the fold's to give.

Terms into Habit

With use, the bargain becomes custom. The same markets and meeting grounds grow familiar to both peoples, and so do their dangers: scorpions on the saddles, bandits waiting for a laden caravan on the way out, and in a locust year a welcome that shrinks to almost nothing. Fold elders learn to say plainly how much they can give; escort-leaders learn to tell an honest lean year from a fold hoarding behind its walls. A quarrel can now be shouted out at the gate before it is fought.

The words of the bargain come in pairs, its own and no one else's: reserve and passage, bounded welcome and sworn escort, fold stores and caravan conduct.

Historical Significance

These are the far side's first terms between two peoples, and they are remembered as bought: not handed down by a wise council, but forced on both sides by the dead.

After them, the Windscar Pacts carry a sworn bargain with outsiders as well as their own oaths, and the Foldward Commons learn that their plenty will be tested from outside every dry year. Later raids on the folds, escort betrayals, and every great quarrel at a cistern gate start from these terms. The plundered folds of the first seasons were never all rebuilt. Their broken terraces still stand on the outer slopes, and the dry cisterns under them are said to hide what the fold-folk buried when they saw the dust of the war-bands on the saddle: seed-silver, store-tallies, and the old keys of the vaults.

In the Writers’ Guide

See Also