Chapter III

The Cimbri were an ancient and proud people. They liked to keep to themselves and did not concern themselves much with the world around them. Today they were fewer than they once were, but they went about their daily work as they always had. They tilled their land, tended their gardens, and traded with whoever landed on the shores of the little island they now inhabited; they also built boats themselves and braved the soft waves of the Southern Sea of Islands. Their boats were sturdy and fast, but they were seldom used for anything other than fishing and setting traps to catch the treasured yellow crab. Cimbri were generally slender, with long limbs. They were usually between four and five feet tall, the womenfolk often a little taller than the menfolk. Their hair was bristly, and their eyes were watchful and alert. They were excellent runners and nimble climbers, though they rarely made use of these talents when childhood's play was over.

Cimbri clothing was made from the hides of their beasts and the wool they sheared from their goats in the early spring. With dye they bought from traveling traders they colored their Sunday-wear bright blue and red; their everyday clothes they wasted no dyes on, and these were mostly grey or brown. On their feet the Cimbri wore tightly fitted leather shoes.

Cimbri children were born with piercingly blue eyes that gradually turned dull green over the course of a few months. When the Cimbri grew very old, their eyes turned this piercing blue again. The oldest Cimber who ever lived, Borr son of Buri, were said to have had eyes like deep blue opals when he closed them for the last time.

To a visitor, the Cimbri appeared a little dour as they went about their daily business. They seldom smiled at strangers, and their greetings rarely extended beyond a silent nod. But first impressions were deceiving, and a Cimbri party was not to be missed, for music would be played, a feast would be served, and rich golden mead would be drunk. And with every sip of mead the Cimbri drunk they would become livelier and livelier. Festive songs would be song, tall stories told, and dances danced until the wee hours of the morning. In the summertime, when the days were long and the nights were warm, great parties with large bonfires were held on the shores of their island, and the light from the fires travelled far and wide across the calm summer sea. In the wintertime, when the days were short and the nights were cold and dark, the Cimbri came together in the warm embrace of their wooden houses and exchanged gifts, confident in the knowledge that the sun would soon regain its power against the dark night of winter. But sometimes -- often in the autumn -- the Cimbri would drink their dark meads, become somber and quiet, and sing melancholic songs in the forgotten language of their forefathers.

The Cimbri were distantly related to the tribes of men and would at times allow a fanciful trader to settle among them and marry one of their own. However, the stranger would always remain but a stranger to the Cimbri, and any children of a such a union would be second-generation strangers to the Cimbri; sometimes older Cimbri would even talk of third-generation strangers. A few young Cimbri would from time to time leave their island; some toke hire on passing caravels, while others simply sailed across the strait to the mainland. Most of these adventurous young Cimbri returned home after a few years, but a few settled across the strait and were lost to the Cimbri.

The island the Cimbri inhabited was called Iordo. The name derived from the old Cimbri word for deer, which could also mean 'protector' and these days there were many deer which roam Iordo, for the slowly dwindling Cimbri had abandoned much farmland which had once been under the plow and let the land return to forest and grassland. At dusk and dawn large herds grazed the rolling hills of the eastern coast.

It took about two full days to walk at a leisurely pace from the northernmost tip of Iordo, which was also close to being the easternmost tip of the island, to the southern cliffs. You could walk across the island from east to west at the widest point in a little under a day. And walk you had, for there were no horses on Iordo; the Cimbri preferred their own two feet to the back of a beast. To till the land and pull heavy loads the Cimbri raised small oxen.

Most Cimbri lived in stone or wooden houses, which rarely extended above a single story, with the roofs often reaching down to touch the ground. On most rooftops grass or moss grew, and it was not uncommon to see a grazing goat strutting about on the top of a house. The woodworking of the gables was often quite ornate, for the Cimbri were skillful woodworkers and patient craftsmen, and their houses were warm and cozy in the winter and cool and airy in the summer. The Cimbri in general made a virtue out of adapting their houses to the landscape, and a lone Cimbri house was often not easy to spot at a distance.

In the middle of Iordo lay the main town of Rebild. The town lay in a shallow hollow with soft hills surrounding it. Well-kept fields spread out from the town and up the hills. To call Rebild a town was a bit of an overstatement. It was a village that had grown quite large but had kept its village nature. You would see oxen in even the innermost streets near the mayor's house, and peasants still outnumbered the merchants and craftsmen. Some brick buildings had been erected, but goats still bahed at each other from grassy rooftops inside the town itself. Most visitors were pleasantly surprised by the orderliness of Rebild. The streets were cobbled and the houses tidy. The bustling markets were rich with neatly stacked piles of fruits and vegetables, with fine cuts of meats, and with tough and durable clothes; but visitors would not find many exotic goods, for such things did not interest the Cimbri much. In the center of Rebild stood a white stone building with a red tile roof and a tall bell tower. This was Rebild's white church. The building was austerely decorated and gave little insight into the spiritual lives of the Cimbri. The Cimbri did not practice any kind of magic, and even to the Cimbri themselves the purpose of their worship was hazy. The Cimbri were little bothered by this. Each Sunday the bell of the tall bell tower tolled and called on the Cimbri to come worship, and came they did -- not always, and not many, but often and enough such that visitors were compelled to ponder why.

The seaside village of Asp was the second largest settlement on Iordo. The village lay at the head of the Cimbri Bay. The natural harbor of Asp made it easy for ships to bring wares ashore, but Asp was hardly a busy port. A ship would land once or twice each month, seldom unloading more than could be put on an oxcart or two. Asp lay on the eastern shore of Iordo and faced away from the busy sea-lanes to and from the energetic mercantile city of Foborg on the mainland. A more industrious people would have built their seaport facing northwest, making it easy for the many passing ships to land on their shore, but the Cimbri were quite happy to be left alone by the many strange traders who called at Foborg's overflowing docks.

Asp was about a fourth the size of Rebild. The main street that ran from the harbor through the village and all the way to Rebild was cobbled, but the rest of the village's streets were merely pounded dirt roads. Most of the villagers in Asp made their living as fishermen or farmers. A few worked as harbor traders, buying up goods from all over Iordo and exchanging them for the goods brought by the odd ship that found its way to Asp. Perhaps because of the more outwardly facing nature of life in Asp, most of the young Cimbri who chose to leave the bosom of Iordo were born in Asp. The Cimbri of Asp also had lighter skin than the rest of the Cimbri, and their eyes were less green and more brown. This slight variance was likely the result of generations of foreign traders leaving their mark on the Aspian Cimbri.

The northern village of Dustring was the only other settlement on Iordo worth mentioning in some detail. It was about the same size as Asp but felt distinctly smaller. The village was surrounded by forest on two sides, and the forest seemed poised to swallow up the village at any moment. The village lay on a hill that overlooked the villagers' neat fields and the Cimbri Bay. The lumberyards of Dustring were the closest the Cimbri had gotten to any form of industry. The production was not large, but it was steady, for the lumber of Dustring was sought after by knowing shipwrights. Cimbri oak cut in Dustring seldom rotted, and it bent and yielded to the shipwright without breaking or straining. It was fine wood, and more often than not trading ships found their way to Asp to collect Cimbri oak from Dustring. The Cimbri of Dustring had the darkest skin of all the Cimbri, and their eyes were the most intensely green. It was perhaps the looming shadow of the forest that has made the Dustring Cimbri revert back towards their most ancient form. The difference was slight, and a stranger would be hard pressed to tell an Aspian Cimber from a Dustringer. The Cimbri, however, could tell the difference, and that was what mattered.

Each of the three lesser villages of Iordo -- Borrtop, Pelthill, and Rickum -- was little more than a public square and a collection of houses. On Iordo, Borrtop was famous for its meadmasters, Pelthill for the quality of the wool that left its market, and Rickum for serving worse mead than that of Borrtop and for selling wool inferior to that of Pelthill.

Not much was known of the origin of the Cimbri, for they themselves dwelt little on the past. Their written records stretched back only to the founding of Rebild, and even their proudest families could trace their lineage back no further than the first ships to land on the shores of Iordo.

The Cimbri's oldest legends suggested that they were born as a people in the dark and vast forests of northern Jutlandia in or around what is today known as Himmerland. Here they lived until the end of the Aesirium, when the Cimbri became a wandering people and began their journey southward. This was at the time of the great migrations, and the Cimbri walked with the great tribes of men, the Teutones and the Ambrones.

In the south of Jutlandia the wandering tribes encountered the first grand Kingdom of Alsen and made war on its rich lands in Jutlandia and on the island of Alsen itself. The Cimbri legends of today remember little of this war, and no one now remembered whether they were part of the first invasion or only came into the war later. Whatever the case might be, the first grand Kingdom of Alsen was broken, and the wandering tribes settled on the rich southeastern coast of Jutlandia and on bountiful Alsen itself. It was around this time that the Cimbri began speaking the common tongue and learned the letters of men. From the great tribes of men, they also learned shipbuilding and many other crafts. The Cimbri's settlement on Alsen, however, was not to be enduring. From north more wanderers came each year vying for land, some with gold and others with steel; soon the Cimbri began to see their numbers dwindle. And so, they began building boats and setting sails.

Across the Alsen strait the Cimbri sailed and found empty and rich land stretching far beyond the horizon. It was the island of Fionia -- or Funen, as it is now known among men (the Cimbri simply think of the grand island as the mainland) -- that they had come upon. But the land, though empty, was stained with foul blood and ancient ruin, and the Cimbri thanes (for then there was more than one) of old looked across the empty plains of fertile soil and trembled. Onwards they pushed their people. Their prudence was soon rewarded when out of the Southern Sea of Islands rose virgin Iordo, a lush green island seemingly much too small to interest grander peoples.

The Cimbri made their first new settlement on the middle of the island, as far away from the sea as possible, so they would not be reminded of the long and perilous journey that had brought them there -- so went the legend, at least.

The year of Rebild's founding was the first year in the Cimbri calendar and corresponded to the year 476 of the Vanirium. In the millennium that had passed since then, the Cimbri had lived mostly in peace. The great Merchant Wars saw many of Iordo's sister islands ravaged, but the Cimbri were spared when they put their lot in with the Doge of Foborg and sent nine manned galleys of war made from the hardest Dustring oak ever cut to serve in the doge's victorious fleet. Their efforts were such that Foborgian sailors told tales of the fearsome little tree-men of Iordo for generations. But such tales were long forgotten now, and the few Cimbri shipwrights left today no longer knew how to make ships of war.

Ease and peace were what today's Cimbri knew. No pirate dared enter the Southern Sea of Islands where they might face the might of the doge's fleet, and on Iordo the weather was mild and each harvest bountiful.