The Treatise of Pall, C1

Chapter One

The Treatise of Pall

“His Kind”

12 ad the erth brought forth herbe and grasse sowenge seed every one in his kynde and trees berynge frute and havynge their seed in the selves every one in his kynde. And God sawe that it was good:

Genesis 1:12, Tyndale Bible

It was a simple, little village surrounded by a simple, little town and part of a city that lie there, beneath the Camerra mountains so tall.

There was not that much to the area, really. Not that much at all.

Its demesne was that of East Barrettsville located at the breach of the lovely, rolling Panske range of foothills, named for the famed boar hunter of legend and old.

The boar still roamed there in his day…and thrived! To this day even, Martin Panske’s children’s-children’s-children’s-children hunt the beast and feed the oncoming brood, up in the deep, deep hollow of Panskier Crik (which you will hear more of later in the tale).

Barrettsville was a quaint town whose history dated back to the founding of the very nation itself.

The village of Eaglestown had been there from almost the very beginning. It was once an outpost of Fort Barrett during the great war that founded the great nation-state, and it was the home of a one, Mairnger Jehoshaphat Whitt.

Mairnger, (or Jho, to most who knew him), was an average man in most ways. He had a job at the local factory where he loaded wagon-carts full of scrap lumber from the mill and delivered them to the chopper, where they would be ground into mulch that the local farmers would use on their gardens.

Jho Whitt came from a line of great men. His own Great-Grandfather was a hero from the war between Ariance and that dastard nation from over the sea, Wabahance, where there they worshiped according to the master in charge, and the harvest of their spirits was a vast and utter destruction.

A truce had been called between Ariance, EüUnyen, and the Abars, great Father to the Waba itself. This prevented Jho’s own Father, Lancer, from being drafted into serving that war and its great machine of death. The Waba had been dispersed, and they (as they would always do) went beneath the ground and hid in every corner of the world to be heard only at times when bombs would explode in the markets of Greater EüUnyen (pronounced “yew-yew-neon”, which is a local word meaning literally, “the siblings of”).

The factory where Jho worked, Leyton Lumber, cut the great fir and pine from the mountains, to be used the Nation over for the building of homes. Times were good, and new housing was the norm.

The time of the second quartrennial was a time of feast, especially in the West.

While he did not have the claim-to-fame that did all his ancestry, he always told himself that they too started out working with their backs.

It was an honest job for an honest man, and one who believed deeply that honor was all. That, of course, only beneath his reverence for God, his creator, and his church, and his family, of course.

But in honor, he would serve them all, for anything less would be dishonor.

He’d seen men of the village ruined by association with the characters who frequented the beer halls and bars in the outskirts of town, up in the foothills where the clear water ran, along with the crazy juices that coursed in the veins of men and made them (and their women) wild.

As a young man, Jho once diverted from the simple life of the village, and found himself immersed in that culture that was the hillock. There, they had a different way about them.

Oh, they were in church every Sunday, but you can bet that their Friday’s and Saturday’s gave them ample reason for repent.

Luckily Jho was rescued from the life by a friend from his scout den from when they were kids.

Still, he had some good memories that would bring a chuckle to his heart.

He got back in church, however, and his life was again renewed.

He met Peg, they married and he moved from a life of raising Cain, to a life of raising children.

Jho was not at all unlike most of the fellows from the village. And in truth, even those from the higher stratas of Barrettsville, even they knew once of the life in the village.

It was a good place…it was a proud place. For Jho, and those like him, it was home.

Most everyone in Barrettsville respected Eaglestown.

Who would have ever guessed it would be the place where worlds would soon collide.