Butt the Second

Butt the Second,

Last King of Bagnisko

Bagnisko was not what any would call a magic kingdom, or even a place of fairies. It was not rich, it was not powerful, it was not feared. In fact, its neighbors did not know it existed. Well they knew geographically something was there...a fenland they thought...reputedly inhabited by simple people of the marshes.

Bagnisko was admirably protected by its topography. A wide belt of fenlands crisscrossed by hidden channels known only to the denizens of the Fen. The Bagnisko fens bordered the wastelands of their neighbors. Few of the herders of Stepy went that far into the wilderness...there was no grazing for their animals.

Of course, there was always the brave, young bryknięcie who would test the boundaries of this world. After days in the parched lands...they would stumble thirsty to the fetid edges of the fenlands and sicken on the brackish waters. If their horses survived and carried their vomiting carcass back to the camp, and if they survived the hetman's beating for being foolish and disobedient; they had little inclination to repeat the adventure.

On the extremely rare (once a generation) occasion that a Stypian made it to the fenlands...they never returned to Stypia. Usually worn out...starving...they had finished off the last of their horse; they were easy captures for the Folk of the Fen. The Folk of the Fen were not proper subjects of Bagnisko...they were not subject to anyone.

They traded with the 'uplanders' as they called the Bagniskites.

More explanation of the topography of Bagnisko is needed at this point. The term 'uplanders' would be greeted with derision by anyone but the Fen Folk. The fertile upland was barely meters above the fenlands in altitude...the fertile lands sloped very gradually from the coastal mountains. The coastal mountains trapped the rain clouds brought by the prevailing winds...the runoff flows through the upland irrigation system...finally draining into the fenlands...as the poor soil of the Stypian frontier rose away from the fenlands, the water was trapped there to stagnate and grow unhealthy.

The rare capture of a Stypian bryknięcie was a windfall for the poor Fen Folk. Although slight in stature, the young, mature Stypian males were highly prized by the Bagnisko wise women.

The gene pool of Bagnisko was as stagnant as the outer reaches of the Fen. Bagnisko was not on the way to anywhere, it was not even a dead end. The fenlands that protected Bagnisko also isolated it from the rest of the world. No new people, no new ideas ever penetrated Bagnisko.

Each season. Yes, the women of Bagnisko were seasonally fertile, a thing unknown for the rest of humanity. Fewer and fewer gave birth to live children.

The women's seasonal fertility perversely came in the dead of the Bagnisko winter. The event was the cause of a great celebration, days of feasting, drinking and religious devotion. Bagnisko's men were tied to this cycle of fertility. Copulation with females, even male arousal, was unknown outside of the 'proper season'. Females were known to be sexually active at other times, but were not fertile. As the males were impotent and uninterested out of proper season, it was the custom for the women to pair bond for companionship and sexual fulfilment. The men lived in bachelor groups barracked together for work in the fields, and only had regular contact with women during the 'mating season'. Their social life consisted of male-centered group activities outside of work, sport and large drunken gatherings.

During the planting and harvest seasons, the men were out in the fields as long as the sun was up. There was little aristocracy. The men's groups had natural leaders who organized the field workers. The harvest was kept in common for all Bagniskos. A very large portion of the harvest went to the breweries and distilleries...these were the property of the kingdom, and their managers were the only elite in the land.

The women were busy with the production of clothing for all the people. The growing, harvesting and processing of flax into linen, the care and shearing of sheep for their wool, and the manufacture of warm clothes for the damp winters.

The bonded women cooked for each other, the men ate in the barracks, the cooking was done by those chosen by lot every week. Naturally, there were favored and not-so-favored cooks. "Oh damn...did you see? Adek cooks this week...we all may die!" or "We eat well for a change, Felek is cooking!"

It was forbidden to have too many specialists, so the men mostly accepted the varying quality of their rations. The work week for both sexes was, by law, no more than four consecutive days...it could be fewer, if there was a holiday. The idea of a 'week' did not exist...one day flowed into another. At most, four days of work and then rest, and mostly during the waking times of rest...drunkenness.

All drank...the women in their pair-bonded homes, the men in their barrack groups.

And what of the children? The birth rate of the Bagniskites was very low. Their lifespan was very long...and the women were fertile after fashion...most of their long lives. Both sexes took eighteen years to mature to the point they were capable of breeding, thereafter followed by sixty years of possible breeding. Very few were physically able, in any sense, after their breeding days were done. They accepted that fact from the time they understood it as a youth. The ones past breeding, quietly departed...walking off into the fenlands. It was rumored that the Fen people had their origin in 'exiled' over-age Bagniskos. It made sense...what little contact the Bagniskos had with the Fen people was always with elderly examples.

The few live births were rare gifts to the people, but not gifts without tears...most of those live births were imperfect and sometimes horribly so... Although desperately poor, the People never practiced infanticide...any life, no matter how imperfect, was precious and rare. The imperfect were loved as perfect, as long as they lived...their imperfections doomed them to a short life. Small wonder that both mothers and fathers deadened their pain with ale and spirits.

Still, every breeding season, the adults came together in hope. Their hope was bolstered by the legend...the word whispered for days before the season began that they had a new king. The new king appeared only rarely...some years he never appeared, but the year he did appear, brought forth more and more perfect children.

Few knew why this was...it was a mystery of their religion, of their culture, of their desperation. That was why the truth of the new king was known only to few and shared not at all. His very existence was only whispered...in hushed tones...beyond that the secret was safe...but you, foreign reader, shall know it because nothing ever returns to Bagnisko.

For all the celebration at the season of breeding; the breeding itself, does not always go well. The males were raised without women for most of their lives...even as adults they only served as breeders...the ancient customs lacked any way of courtship...the males especially, the young ones, lacked any knowledge except the often-bad advice they got from the 'more experienced' male. Having had no interest in matters relating to the breeding until the season was upon them, they were given some cursory instruction by the gray beards just before the season.

When the gray beards described how their bodies must be transformed for the breeding, the young ones listened stoically...they then studied their parts of generation on a subsequent trip to the privy, and could not fathom how their member so shrunken from the winter cold could become the swollen monster of their elders' memories.

In partial remedy to the almost universal male ignorance of breeding, the rites of the season decreed that, chosen by lot, each breeding male was to be assigned to the household of a bonded-female couple. Typically, one of the bonded females was older than her partner, sometimes by decades. The breeding male was thus expected to breed both...sleep with both each night.

In season, both sexes were overwrought with the need to breed...but often lacked in knowledge and usually totally lacking in anything remotely approaching skill in the act. The older female usually tried to facilitate the unions. Impotence was common...premature ejaculation universal.

The precious seed, although often quite imperfect because of inbreeding, was still sacred and much was wasted.

Small wonder that among the women, at least the whispered arrival of the new king is greeted with awe.

Dear reader, you alone outside of a few Bagnisko wise women, will come to know the truth of the new king. The new king was always an outsider, a Stypian, a young rebellious man, strong enough to survive the dangers of the Stypian backcountry. Foolish, or brave, enough to attempt the crossing of the fenlands, and lucky enough to survive and be traded by the Fen peoples, for many bags of grain.

He brought in his sacred seed sac, a fresh seed, untainted seed. And a masculinity not tied to the cycle of the seasons. He could breed anytime of the year...which for the purpose of child rearing is unimportant, but his potency was valued by the wise women throughout the year for their own pleasure...although they could not breed out of season, they enjoyed the pleasures of the king out of season...it was important to keep him healthy and tame between breeding times.

The Bagnisko males were tricked into thinking that there were sacred days during the breeding season, where they must depart from their breeding household; this was a different day for each household. That was the day that the king arrived for that household.

The king had grown to manhood outside of Bagnisko, among his people; it was honorable to be with as many females as possible. From them, he learned what pleased a woman. He was young, he was a warrior, he was not in the pitiable state of the Bagnisko male. He was optimistic, virile and very vigorous.

The wise women trained him for his role. He had accepted that he was a special person among these strange people. He was called king, he was catered to, he ate well and was fed meat unknown to the Bagniskos. He was exercised like a racehorse or an expensive stud stallion. He was never very tall; the Stypian males rarely reached two meters in height...he was kept lean and well muscled.

He was fed fish from the clear channels of the Fen, nuts from the mountain trees, fruits and vegetables from the gardens of the wise women. All foods were thought to keep him healthy, and his seed abundant.

This season of the mythical king was followed by a season of joy for many of the women he has bred...they become pregnant and bear a larger proportion of healthy babies. Not all the babies survived, as although the fault of the bad seed belongs to the males, the fault of bad wombs is solely the cost of the long years of inbreeding.

The king after a season, maybe two, often became difficult for the wise women to control. He would become arrogant...believing in power he did not have. Important as he was in season...he was a disruptive influence out of season and difficult to keep secret or, at least, mysterious. Once the wise women lost respect for him and bestowed upon him the disrespectful name that titles this work, his days were numbered.

No one was ever killed in Bagnisko...but some inconvenient, disruptive ones do disappear. So it is for the Last King of Bagnisko. The last...until the NEXT because the idea, the legend of the king, must never die...the legend was the hope of the future.