Dennitza

The star Zoria is an F8 sun, a third again as luminous as Sol. The terrestroid planet Dennitza is half covered by ocean. Axial tilt and rotation period cause extreme weather and climate. Less than a million years ago, a shower of giant meteoroids caused an ice age. Now, sea levels rise in the Great Spring.

Terrestrial human beings colonized Dennitza about 2450. About 200 years later, Merseian immigrants arrived and in 3047 comprise 10% of the population. Their self-designation is "ychani," seekers. The human Dennitzan term, possibly contemptuous in origin, is "zmayi." Displaced by political conflicts at home, ychani provided labor for new Dennitzan industries. Able to endure cold better than humans, they mainly live on the Obala, the east coast of Rodna, the main continent in the northern hemisphere, where they specialize in fishing and pelagiculture. The legendary ychan hero Gwyth dared the storms and sea beasts of the Black Ocean.

In Dubina Dolyina province, Danilo Vymezal is both the voivode (hereditary aristocrat) and the nachalnik (governor chosen both by the Gospodar {planetary head of state} and by the popular assembly).
 
Cultural influences: Vymezal's bugle call is an immemorial Merseian war song; his wife sings an Eriau lullaby to their daughter, Kossara: Dwynafor, dwynafor, odhal tiv.

Religions: human Dennitzans, Orthochristians worshiping in St Clement's Cathedral, later canonize Kossara Vymezal, who has a large tomb on Founders' Hill. Some ychani of the Black Ocean remain pagans referring not to "the God" of Merseian religion but to Afherdi of the Deeps, Blyn of the Winds and Haawan who lairs on the reefs.  

Yovan Matavuly led the human pioneers who, like other emigrant groups at the time, wanted to preserve traditions, customs, language, race etc. They speak Serbic and Imperial Anglic while the ychani/zmayi speak archaic mutated Eriau. 

Dennitza, still in its ice age, has limited habitable areas. Mahovina turf and woodland duff are soft and springy. Evergreen equivalents are low and gnarled with blue-black plumes. Firebush burns spontaneously to ripen and scatter its seeds. There are no ornithoids but orliks are winged theroids. Flocks of yegyupka fly south; guslars trill; a horned bull leads a herd of yelen; riba caught from the Lyubisha River can be fried to eat. 

The original colonists, having to survive without sophisticated technology, developed a baronial clan system which persisted under industrialization. The Shkola, university and research center, preserved learning almost from the beginning of the colony. Lake Stoyan and the capital Zorkagrad are in the center of the Kazan, an astrobleme containing woods, farms and rivers, on Rodna. In Zorkagrad, the fountain before the Capitol in Constitution Square contains bronze statues of the hero Toman Obilich in combat with wild Vladimir. On a rock hill beyond the Square are the battlements of the Zamok or Castle, the executive center.

The Gospodar, elected out of the Miyatovich family by the plemichi, clan heads and barons, has supreme executive authority subject to Grand Court rulings on constitutionality. Court verdicts are reversible by the Shkoptsina, a Parliament with chambers for plemichi, commons and zmayi, although more than once in history a demonstration of zmayi has marched into the House of the Zmayi and been heard. One demonstration in 3047 carries the white star on blue standard of Yovan Matavuly and the red axe on gold of Gwyth. A militia, the Noradna Voyska, has been basic to Dennitzan society since the Troubles.

The nachalniki, i.e., heads of okruzhi (baronies or prefectures), are hereditary or elected by resident clans or appointed by the Gospodar depending on ancient usage. Towns and rural districts have elected councils. Ychani have preserved the Merseian organizational form, Vachs. For example, Ywod is Hand of the Vach Anochrin as well as steadcaptain of the fishing village of Nanteiwon on the Obala. Kyrwhedin is Hand of the Vach Mannoch, a member of the House of the Zmayi and moot-lord of the Obala steadcaptains. In this third capacity, he presides when the steadcaptains meet around a table made from timbers of Gwyth's ship in Council Hall at Novi Aferoch at the Elena River mouth.

Gospodar Bodin Miyatovich, having supported the Imperial usurper Hans Molitor, was rewarded with governorship of the Taurian Sector which faces the Merseian Rhoidunate. Ychani, not wanting Merseian rule, are loyal to Gospodar and Emperor. The Dennitzan poet Andrei Simich celebrated the deeds of the Founder and other ancestors but, in the absence of Simich, we must make do with a prose account of Bodin's raid into Merseian space.

Source: Anderson, Poul, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, London, 1978.

(For convenience, dates are as given in Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization but see here.)

The Obala III

Rereading Poul Anderson's A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, I want to post about the Obala but find already on the blog:

Dennitza;
The Obala;
The Obala II;
Khyrwedhin;
The Kazan.

Dennitza is a human-colonized extrasolar planet with a Merseian minority;

Dennitzan Merseians mainly inhabit the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent;

Khywedhin is moot-lord of the steadcaptains of the Obala;

the Elena River flows from the Kazan to the Obala.

I will carefully reread A Knight..., Chapter XVI, in search of any information not already summarized in the above posts.

See The Obala IV.

The Fishers Of The Obala

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVI.

The zmayi fishers of the Obala on the east coast of the Rodna continent on Dennitza can find some of the truth. See the previous post.

Kyrwedhin is:

moot-lord of the steadcaptains of the Obala;

Hand of the Vach Mannoch;

the owner of a fleet;

a graduate of the Shkola;

a member of the House of the Zmayi in the Shkoptsina;

a correspondent with Korvash, Hand of the Vach Rueth on Merseia;

an acquaintance of Lazar Ristich, voivode of Kom Kutchi and member of the House of the Lords.

For what it is worth, the tone of Korvash's letters gives no indication of any imminent attack by Merseia. Lazar Ristich, who has close contact with Terra, says that a person of Kossara's rank, the Gospodar's niece, could only have been enslaved as a deliberate provocation which the present Imperium would not do. When Ristich tries to speak to Gospodar Bodin about this, he is stalled by aides, something which Bodin would not knowingly allow to happen. Then Terran officers arrest Bodin for treason. Many Dennitzans have settled in nearby planetary systems and one special assistant to the Gospodar, born in another system, has become the ranking Imperial in the Zorian System and thus the Emperor's representative, the first important person in the Zamok that the Terrans had managed to contact.

The Obala fishers discern the course of the conspiracy.

The Obala IV

See The Obala III.

"Clouds and a loud raw wind had blown in across the ocean."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), Chapter XVI, pp. 339-606 AT p. 539.

Obalans see clouds move over ocean and hear and feel wind.

"Morning along the Obala, the east coast of Rodna, was winterlike, sky the color of lead, sea the colors of iron and gunmetal. But neither sky nor sea was quiet. Beneath the overcast a thin smoky wrack went flying; surf cannonaded and exploded on reefs and beaches." (pp. 539-540)

There is also a fourth sense:

"The air smelled of salt and distance." (p. 540)

Salt, yes. Distance? The air smelled as if it had blown a long way?

Indoors, there are again four senses:

"Inside the home of Ywodh were warmth, sun-imitating fluorescents, musky odor of bodies, growls to drown out the piping at the windows." (ibid.)

We learn that Obalan fishers sometimes net "'...flailfish.'" (p. 541)

Ywodh is Hand of the Vach Anochrin on the Obala;

Kyrwedhin is Hand of the Vach Mannoch on the Obala and a member of the House of the Zmayi;

Korvash is Hand of the Vach Rueth on Merseia;

Lazar Ristich is voivode of Kom Kutchi and a member of the House of the Lords;

Bodin Miyatovich is Gospodar of Dennitza.

 

A wealth of details, both geographical and political.

The Obala

The Obala is the east coast of the Rodna continent on the colonized planet, Dennitza. Nanteiwon is a fishing village where ychan families live in long, wide houses of tarred black timber, brightly painted ancestral symbols carved on supporting pillars, built to withstand hurricanes. Behind are cultivated fields and the Kazan ringwall.

Males wear brightly colored tunics with knuckleduster knives at their belts. The house of Ywod, Hand of the Vach Anochrin and steadcaptain of Nanteiwon, contains the frescoed mootroom. When Ywod and two visitors address a meeting from the honor-dais, the narrative point of view is, oddly, collective. The visitors:

"...were human. One they knew well, Kossara Vymezal. She used to come here with Trohdwyr, brother to Kwent, Yffal, drowned Qythwy...How weary she looked. The other was a tall man..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 540.

Ywod says:

"'Between dawn, when I asked you to keep ashore today, and our meeting here, I was in phonetalk up and down the Obala. Not an ychan leader but swore us aid. We know what Merseian rule would bring.'" (p. 541)

What would it bring to the ychani, who are Merseian by species? It would bring slavery for their fellow Dennitzans and it is good that the ychani oppose that. There will be more on the Obala but right now on the western coast of the Eurasian continent, where I type in bed, breakfast beckons.

The Obala II

I wondered about the safety of the fishing village, Nanteiwon, having read:

"In her own brief lifespan, Kossara had seen coastal towns abandoned before a rising sea."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 499.

This climatic factor is reflected in a later scene from the Obala. At low tide, the ruins of the inundated Stari Aferoch are visible from the hill of Novi Aferoch. So does "Novi" mean "Nova"? The docks of Novi Aferoch are at the mouth of the Elena River.

Kyrwedhin, Hand of the Vach Mannoch, presides when the steadcaptains of the Obala meet around a three hundred year old table made from the timbers of Gwyth's ship in the main chamber of the slate-roofed, timbered Council Hall which is carved with water monsters. Gwyth, who sailed the stormy Black Ocean, was an ychan hero celebrated by the human poet, Andrei Simich. The steadcaptains are said to perch because, of course, they sit on their tails, not on furniture. They also make the air blue and acrid by smoking pipes. Appropriately, there is a storm outside. The pathetic fallacy again.

Once again, there are two human guests. Both are fluent in Eriau so Kyrwedhin can use that language without having to translate into Serbic or Anglic. Ychani Eriau is archaic and mutated but still possible for Flandry, who has been on Merseia and worked with Merseians on Talwin, to understand. Does Flandry's world sometimes seem more real than our own?

Kyrwedhin

(The problem with writing Eriau names is knowing where to write the "h.")

Kyrwedhin is:

Hand of the Vach Mannoch;

moot-lord of the steadcaptains of the Obala;

the wealthy owner of seareaping and mercant fleets;

a graduate of the Skhola;

a member of the House of the Zmayi in the Schkopstina;

a correspondent with Korvash, Hand of the Vach Rueth on Merseia;

a confidante of Lazar Eistich, voivode of Kom Kutchki and member of the House of the Lords, who has friends on Terra.

As often in such cases, when I started to list facts about Kyrwedhin, I did not realize how long the list would be.

Kyrwedhin's career might count as a measure of the extent of ychan-human integration on Dennitza:

Vach organization, with its symbolic Handships instead of Headships, came from Merseia;

"moot-lord" is an ychan title;

Skhola (University) and Schkopstina (Parliament) are human institutions;

Merseian immigrants arrived four centuries ago to be labourers in new industries but this descendant of theirs is a wealthy owner of fleets;

he has direct contact with Merseia and indirect contact with Terra.

Thus, Krywedhin has intelligence on whether the imperial powers are likely to go to war and can advise the Obala steadcaptains at a time of crisis. He says:

"'...I never doubted [the Roidhunate's] masters wish us harm...'"
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 545.

This view seems to be unanimous among the ychani: not a happy relationship with their home planet, but it is also an informed view:

"'...we have always kept a special interest in our mother world, many of us have gone there to visit, some to study, and the inhabitants are of our species.'" (ibid.)

Disaffection from the mother world is not of the ychani's choosing but a result of the Wilwidh culture that became dominant there.

Protective Merseians

There are two occasions in Dominic Flandry's career when he is protected by a group of Merseians.

On Talwin, it can be dangerous to disturb the hibernating Domrath:

"The scientists formed up with a precision learned in their military service. Flandry joined. They hadn't issued him weapons, though otherwise they had treated him pretty much as an equal; but he could duck inside their square if violence broke loose."
-Poul Anderson, A Circus Of Hells IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 193-365 AT CHAPTER FIFTEEN, p. 310.

On Dennitza, Flandry and Kossara march on Parliament with Merseians:

"The ychans closed in around the humans. They numbered a good four hundred, chosen by their stead captains as bold, cool-headed, skilled with the knives, tridents, harpoons, and firearms they bore. Ywod of Nanteiwon, appointed their leader by Krywedhin before the parliamentarian returned here, put them in battle-ready order. They spoke little and showed scant outward excitement, at least to human eyes or nostrils; such was the way of the Obala."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT XVII, p. 552.

I have never taken part in an armed demonstration although someone with experience in other continents said that he had once traveled to a demonstration seated on the front of a tank, I can't remember where. The Merseians of the Roidhunate, even the scientists, have all received military training. The ychani of the Obala are easily militarized. We are a disorganized rabble. Two people carry the banner of Lancaster National Union of Teachers but are not followed by orderly ranks of NUT members. At most, they are accompanied by a few individuals, walking at different rates, who had traveled on the same coach from Lancaster and want to stay near a recognizable banner. I have seen hopelessly inauthentic demonstrations in screen dramas - but also others that were just right, as if filmed right in the midst of things. Once at the cinema, there were trailers for Star Wars etc, then one for a film about Margaret Thatcher. Suddenly, our lives were on the screen with scenes both inside and outside the House of Commons. Next, I want to see, on the cinema screen, Flandry, Kossara and the ychani marching through Zorkagrad to the Shkoptsina.

The Kazan

"...the Kazan, Cauldron, huge astrobleme on the continent Rodna, a bowl filled with woods, farmlands, rivers, at its middle Lake Stoyan and the capital Zorkagrad. Her father was voivode of Dubina Dolyina province, named for the gorge that the Lyubisha River had cut through the ringwall on its way south from the dying snows."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Domininc Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 499.

The snows are dying because, although human beings had colonized Dennitza six hundred years ago during an Ice Age, there is currently a Great Spring, causing storms, floods, extinctions, ecological changes, migrations and rising sea levels. The Kazan is not far inland but sheltered by its walls from the northerly winds. Gospodar Bodin Miyatovich keeps a hunting lodge on the tundra far north of the Kazan.

In Zorkagrad, the executive center is the Zamok, a creeper-covered ancestral stone castle with turrets, battlements and banners above the steep tile roofs of Old Town and also above twisting lanes, broad boulevards and the docks on the Lake which stretches west over the horizon. The surrounding country has both Terran and native foliage. From the Zamok, both the Lyubisha River flowing from the north and the Elena flowing to the east are visible. The latter enters the ocean on the Obala, the east coast of Rodna.

Vysochina And Captain Flandry

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, II.

I am fascinated by Dennitzan geography. Much is already on the blog, e.g.:

the Kazan

The Obala 

Zorkagrad

 

On p. 365, we read that the huge crater of the Kazan bites an arc from the Vysochina so what is the latter? First, it is named after a region of the Czech Republic. Secondly, further down p. 365, there is a reference to "...Vysochina hills." We read elsewhere that Kossara wants to show Flandry an overlook in the Vysochina highlands. And that is it, at least so far. There are three previous references on the blog (see here; scroll down) but all say much the same.

 

Hopefully, this is the last attempt to put the Captain Flandry sub-sub-series in the right order in hypothetical new editions:

Volume I

Two diptychs:

"Tiger By The Tail" and "Honorable Enemies"

"Message in Secret" and "The Plague of Masters"

Volume II

One trilogy:

"The Game of Glory," "Hunters of the Sky Cave" and "The Warriors from Nowhere"

Volume III

One novel:

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows

 

As a rule, each installment refers back to the previous one but "The Game of Glory" refers back to "Honorable Enemies" and the second diptych can fit between them.

From The Ice Cliff To The Black Ocean

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

In imagination, we might follow a single drop of water through Dennitzan geography. 

In the far north, there are glaciers and a two-kilometers-high ice cliff. A river from the melting cliff flows fast past Bodin Miyatovich's hunting lodge.

The "Melt-begotten...Lyubisha River..." (XIV, p. 524) flows through a canyon in the northern ringwall of the Kazan and eventually enters Lake Stolyan, site of the planetary capital city, Zorkagrad, at the centre of the Kazan.

The Elena River flows east from Lake Stoyan, cuts through the eastern ringwall and enters the Black Ocean where the ychani hero, Gwyth, dared climactic storms three hundred years ago. There are:

"...docks at the Elena River mouth..." (XVI, p. 544)

- and the Kazan ringwall is visible on the horizon, from the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent.

But our main focus here and now is on a single drop of water making its way from the ice wall to the Black Ocean.  

Who Replaces The Gospodar?

 

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, XVI.

When the Gospodar of Dennitza is arrested for high treason, a Terran officer demands that Dennitza and its armed forces give immediate total obedience to Admiral da Costa who, as the ranking Imperial in the Zorian System, is the Emperor's representative. At the same time, in the Gospodar's absence, the Chief Justice will preside in the Shkoptsina/Parliament when it meets the following day. A perfect recipe for a vote for secession, as conspirators have planned. Dennitza is on the marches of the Merseian Roidhunate and outsiders might suppose that Merseian Dennitzans would favour incorporation into that rival interstellar empire. However, not only are these ychani("seekers" in Eriau)/zmayi ("dragons" in Serbic) opposed to rule from Merseia but the fishers from the Obala are prepared to march to and into the Shkoptsina, hiding Dominic Flandry and Kossara Vymezal among their ranks, in order to expose the conspiracy. The result is violence in the Shkoptsina and the murder/martyrdom of (St.) Kossara but the conspiracy is broken due to mass action by Dennitzan/Imperial citizens of Merseian descent. Flandry plays a key role but as part of a social movement, not as a clandestine individual operative.

Untold Tales Of The Technic History II

Continued from here.

(xiii) The Chaos, the transition to Technic Civilization and the origin of the Jerusalem Catholic Church.

(xiv) More about the Breakup and the Grand Surveys.

(xv) The early careers both of Nicholas van Rijn and of Max Abrams.

(xvi) Everyday life on Earth in the Solar Commonwealth, then in the Terran Empire.

(xvii) The fates of various planetary populations, both human and nonhuman, after the Fall of the Empire.

(xviii) On Dennitza, tales of the Merseian fisherfolk of the Obala and of human devotees of St. Kossara.

Do you get the impression that, long and dense though it is, the Technic History series merely scratches the surface? However, if we are invited to contemplate the lives of populations for millenia, then it can only be like this.

Fictional Universes II

Fictional universes contain not only persons but also places that take on a life of their own. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, the Virgilian System includes the planets, Dido and Aeneas. The latter, lighter and dryer than Earth, kind of like a Mars with a breathable atmosphere, would have been more suitable for colonization by the nearby Ythrians. However, human scientists, wanting to study the tripartite inhabitants of the even less hospitable Dido, established a base, which became a University, on Aeneas. The Rebel Worlds, set mainly on Dido, has one chapter set on Aeneas. Its sequel, The Day Of Their Return, is, except for a single early flashback, set entirely on the surface of Aeneas. 

Hermes, important as the home planet both of David Falkayn and of Sandra Tamarin, remains off-stage until it becomes a major setting in Mirkheim and is again visited in A Stone In Heaven.

Avalon, is shown at four different stages of development in three short stories and one novel. Its notable locations include the Weathermother mountain range and the cities of Gray and Centauri, the latter containing Livewell Street named after a local flower.

Dennitza appears only in A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows where, however, it imparts a real sense of place to the Kazan, the Obala and Zorkagrad.

Returning again to another author in another medium and genre, Alan Moore fully exploits the connotations and implications of the familiar place name, "Gotham City," before bringing on stage its most notorious inhabitant.

In The Dennitzan Parliament

Four hundred armed zmayi, claiming to represent the whole Obala, enter the Shkoptsina chamber where the parliament is in joint session. The Chief Justice, presiding in the absence of the arrested Gospodar, has been informed of their approach.

"On gilt mural panels were painted the saints and heroes of Dennitza."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT Chapter XVII, p. 559.

Lords wear rainbow robes, Folk tunics or gowns, Zmayi leather and metal. A majority of Zmayi vote to hear the demonstrators' leaders who can be trusted to be good mannered and to speak briefly. Surely impossible in a human gathering.

The Chief Justice greets the demonstrators in Serbic, "Zdravo," and Eriau, "Hydhref." (ibid.) Flandry, concealed among the demonstrators, realizes that the only member of Parliament whom he knows is the ychan/zmay/Merseian, Kyrwedhin. History plays strange tricks on its main protagonists. Since the session is televized, Ywodh addresses his audience, "'Worthies and world...'" (p. 560) When Kossara emerges from between the demonstrators, human beings moan and zmayi rumble. We must continually remember that two rational species are represented here.

Then, at last, the shooting starts, not from the demonstrators, and Kossara takes her first step towards canonization - martyrdom.

Dennitzan Geography

Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

In the far north, there is a two-kilometer high ice cliff. A river of melt water flows from the cliff through the tundra past Bodin Miyatovitch's hunting lodge. Further south, the Lyubisha River, also melt water, flows through taiga and has cut through the northern wall of the Kazan into the Dubina Dolyine province where Kossara's father is both voivode and nachalnik.

The Lyubisha flows into Lake Stoyan where the planetary capital, Zorkagrad, is located at the center of the Kazan. The Elena river flows east out of Lake Stoyan and enters the Black Ocean on the Obala, the east coast of the Rodna continent, where most of the zmayi live.

There may be a few more details to round up.

Perfect Metaphors

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows, XVII.

When Kossara Vymezal emerges from among the ychan delegation to address the Shkoptsina:

"A moan lifted out of the benched humans, as if the fall wind had made entry; the zmayi uttered a surflike rumble." (p. 560)

("Ychani" and "zmayi" are, respectively, the Serbic and Eriau names for the Dennitzan Merseians.)

Perfect. Our old friend, the autumn wind, which had accompanied the march through Zorkagrad, seems to have entered the parliament building. We know that zmay voices can be described as rumbling and most of the zmayi/ychani live on the Obala, the east coast of the colonized continent.

Every syllable of the text resonates with significance.

Fast Action

A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows.

Events move quickly in troubled times. Flandry has a single conversation with Danilo Vymezal, voivode and nachalnik, Kossara's father. Flandry and Kossara have a single night, day and following evening in Vymezal's cabin by the Northrim. Then:

Danilo Vymezal and all his household are murdered with a tactical nuke;

Gospodar Bodin Miyatovich is arrested for high treason;

Chives is wanted dead or alive;

Flandry and Kossara fly to the Obala...

 

Endgame time. We expect Flandry to defeat the conspiracy but also know that he can lose much:

 

in Ensign Flandry, he lost his innocence;

in A Circus Of Hells, he earned the enmity of Djana;

in The Rebel Worlds, he loved Kathryn but she stayed with Hugh McCormac.

 

Flandry suppressing suspicion of his son echoes Gratillonius in denial about his daughter. 

 

Two dramatic potential turning points in the Technic History are Falkayn's confrontation of van Rijn at Mirkheim and Aycharaych's appeal to Flandry on Chereion. After what has happened with Flandry's son and fiancee, Aycharaych asks him to make further betrayals. That was probably already impossible but has certainly become so.

 

We parallel Flandry and Aycharaych with Bond and Blofeld:

 

at the end of Thunderball, Bond learns that someone called Blofeld had been the top man in SPECTRE;

 

in The Spy Who Loved Me and again at the beginning of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond knows of a criminal called Blofeld but there has been no personal contact as yet;

 

at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with the murder of Tracy, the conflict between Bond and Blofeld becomes personal...

 

Similarly, by the end of A Knight..., Flandry has lost both his son and fiancee. How can Aycharaych possibly ask him:

 

"'What are a few more lives to you? What is Terra?'" (XX, p. 600)

 

A few more lives!

 

In this final dialogue, Aycharaych addresses Flandry as "'Dominic...'" and confirms again that he has been engaged in "'...an art, a sport...'" (ibid.)

 

Finally, we fully understand both of these "Honorable Enemies."

More Merseians On Dennitza

A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, IV.

"Day of Burning" and A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows are linked across several centuries. Life was hard on Merseia because the planet was modernizing and moving into space at the same time as it had to be protected from supernova radiation and there was a three-sided struggle for power between Vachs, Gethfennu and nations like the Republic of Lafdigu. Merseian immigrants were welcome on the human colony planet, Dennitza. Able to stand cold better than human beings, they do most of the fishing and pelagiculture, especially on the eastern seaboard of the main continent, Rodna. They are organized in Vachs and have their own House in the Shkoptsina, Parliament. Kossara remembers a gruff welcome at the campfire of great green hunters and is overcome by emotion. After Abrams' and Flandry's (fully justified) hostility to the Roidhunate, Anderson's account of inter-species harmony on Dennitza is welcome indeed. It is hard to choose but I think that Dennitza is my favourite planet in the Technic History. Its place names are resonant:

the Kazan

the Obala

Zorkagrad

I would not participate in Orthochristian prayers or sacraments but would meditate in a side chapel of St Clement's Cathedral. I would also learn how to recite Eriau prayers with Trohdwyr. Paganism encourages ritual observance but does not insist on credal assent.

Hunting In The Kazan II

See Hunting In The Kazan.

Before killing the dyavo, Kossara had clear shots at a soaring orlik and a bull yelen poised on a crag but let them live. Indeed, why go out and kill anything? Manse Everard had hunted in the Pleistocene but Wanda Tamberly taught him to take a camera instead of a gun.

Kossara and Trohdwyr make camp:

"...high in the bowl of the Kazan, where that huge crater bit an arc from the Vysochina."
-Poul Anderson, A Knight Of Ghosts And Shadows IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 339-606 AT II, p. 365.

Trohdwyr was born in a fishing village, presumably on the Obala.

Dense purple mahovina, springy to walk on and spicy to smell, is studded by white and gold wildflowers. To the east, the ringwall slopes down to trees and yellow evening light falls on misty forest.