Foundling

by Cornish, D. M.

  G

  Gainway, the ~ very old road and the main way between Winstermill and High Vesting. It continues farther north beyond Winstermill, heading far into Sulk and eventually finding its way to Proud Sulking. These days the southern stretch of the Gainway is often considered a part of the Wormway. As the Gainway approaches High Vesting, it becomes a beautiful broad avenue lined with tall ancient oaks and a marvel of the region in autumn, when people might travel just to see the red and golden glory.

  Gallows Night traditional night for many executions by hanging, prisoners being kept specially for then. A great public spectacle, it is not to the taste of some.

  gander slang for a guise, the smallest denomination of money in the Soutlands, and used mostly in Brandenbrass and its neighboring areas. A play on words: guise sounds just like “geese,” while gander is a male goose.

  gastrine(s) engines that turn the screws (propellers) of rams and other vessels. A gastrine is a big box of wood bound with metal, inside of which great musclelike organs (called gastorids) have been grown about a metal section of treadle-shaft (what we would call a “camshaft”) or shaft-section within the box. On the organ deck of a vessel these boxes are put in a row, their shaft-sections connected by great pins, making a whole treadle-shaft that runs the length of the vessel. Each line of gastrines (know as a “gastrine pull” or just a “pull,” which includes its accompanying limbers) is attached to a set of gears and great levers called a dog-box, which allows the gastrineer to determine the level of power of each pull and where it is used: all on one screw or two screws, or even three for the biggest rams and cargoes. The muscles of a gastrine are made by learned people known as viscautorists (“gut-growers”) especially for this purpose. They are raised inside each gastrine box from basic living matter, like a kind of senseless animal. Inside the box are many wooden protrusions called bones, onto which the muscles fix as anchor- and leverage-points. Once a gastrine is “fully grown,” the muscles inside and the whole box itself are one complete organ. To open the box is tantamount to surgery. In this fully grown state the gastrine is taken from the test-mills (“laboratory-factories”) to the dockyards to be lowered into the bowels of the receiving vessel. There its shaft-section is fixed to those of the gastrines on either side as each is integrated into the pull. When stimulated by their limbers, the gastrines’ muscles begin to move, gaining momentum until they work on their own to push and pull at the treadle-shaft, which turns the gears, which turn the screw and so moves the ship. Like ships themselves, gastrines are often referred to as “her” and “she.” Through special chutes and hatches a gastrine is fed a series of “meals” each day, comprising a nutritious, lumpy soup called pabulum. Beneath the pull is a sluice-way that allows the waste expelled from the gastrines by discrete pipes to wash down the middle of the vessel into the bilge to be pumped out into the sea.With all this pabulum soup and waste sloshing about, the organ deck can smell almost like a butcher’s shop. Nadderers (sea-monsters) love the taste of gastrines and are attracted by the slick of grime and effluent that trails in the wake of a gastrine-run vessel. A large part of a vessel’s crew is devoted to the care of the gastrines, their limbers and the pull they are a part of. In fact gastrines and the rest have precedence over the men serving them, being fed first and cared for first; without your gastrines the crew quickly becomes irrelevant. In the course of its working life a gastrine might die from disease, old age or from damage sustained in a fight or a storm. Sometimes when this happens, the gastrine seizes up, interfering or even stopping the movement of the screw. This is known as clearing, and when it occurs the gastrineer’s mates grab great axes hanging from the walls, chop into the side or top of the gastrine box and, up to their armpits in ichor, hack the stiffened muscles away from their part of the treadle-shaft to allow free movement of the screw again. As you would expect, this is to the ruin of the gastrine itself, which must be replaced as soon as possible. It is best to replace all the gastrines of a pull at once, but this is expensive both in money and time; it is far more usual for single gastrines to be replaced as needed. When this happens, the remaining gastrines behave sluggishly for a while. Some say it is because they are mourning the loss of a fellow. Others say this is daft. The longest a gastrine will live is about twenty years, if its life is easy and its work even and steady—like a cromster on the river Humour. A gastrine working in the pull of a vessel like a drag-mauler—speeding up, slowing down, stopping abruptly as something is rammed, enduring mountainous seas, taking shocks as the vessel is hit by cannon balls or assaulted by sea-monsters—such a gastrine will survive only about five years before needing to be replaced. There is almost no sound made by a working gastrine, more a silent pound-pound-pound that throbs right through a person’s body. When a gastrine vessel such as a ram passes you by, all you will hear is the hiss of the water parted by the bow and running down either broadside, and feel a faint throbbing in the air about. Just as a vessel under the power of sails is said to be “sailing,” so a vessel under the power of gastrines is said to be “treading,” the past tense being “trod.” When a vessel is at anchor, it will usually have its gastrines treading over slowly without the screw being engaged, keeping them ready for a quick start if a threat or startling news makes it necessary. See gastrineer and limbers.

  gastrineer petty officer on a vessel, of the same rank as a boatswain and in charge of the healthy running of the gastrines and limbers. On large vessels the gastrineer will have a sizable crew under his command, the most senior of these being the gastrineer’s mates, all working to make sure the gastrines are fed, healthy and working well. Even a half-decent gastrineer will be well aware of the strange quirks of his gastrines, even naming them, knowing for example that No. 3 is sluggish on extremely cold days, that “Lillith” (No. 6) is inclined to work too hard, making Nos. 5 and 7 lazy, and so on. He passes this knowledge on to his mates so that they might learn the ways of a gastrine pull and go on to serve their own vessels. A gastrineer earns about fifty to seventy sous a year, not including prize money.

  gastriner any vessel powered by gastrines.

  gater or gatekeeper; person who guards and watches a gate, allowing or refusing people thoroughfare.

  Gates, Battle of the ~ considered the great battle of the current age, fought in HIR 1395 (the last year of the Sceptic Dynasty) between the armies of the Empire, the Soutland City-states and the Turkemen. The battle forms part of a time known as the Dissolutia, where one dynasty fell and another rose to take its place. At the time the southern city-states, known as the Soutlands, had gained such power and relative independence that they formed a league, the Stately League, to petition the Emperor, Moribund Scepticus III, for greater say in the running of the Empire. This petition was denied and consequently the Stately League or Leaguesmen determined to gather a grande army, march the dangerous miles north and force a “yes” from the old stinker. Moribund Scepticus III caught wind of this and knew his own army of eighty thousand, though tough and experienced, was no match for the League’s army of several hundred thousand citizen-soldiers and mercenaries. So, as the peers and marshals and soldiers of the Stately League started on their great enterprise, the Sceptic Emperor called for help from the only source of sufficient strength, his great rival the Püshtän, the Lord of the Omdür and Emperor of the Turkemen. The Turkeman Emperor eagerly took the chance to aid his anxious cousin and rapidly mobilized a grande army of his own, conveniently camped on the northern border of the wildlands dividing the two powers. This duly arrived, ahead of the Leaguesarmy—as the Stately League forces were being called. With gratitude and rejoicing the terrified people of Clementine lowered the gates of the great bridges that guard the crossings of the Marrow, the mighty drain that protects the northern borders of the Empire, and let the Turkemen across. It was a great day for the Püshtän, for no Turkeman army had ever won across the Marrow, and now they were being invited like so many guests. No sooner had his soldiers completed the daylong crossing of the bridg
es (such was the size of his army) than they immediately stormed the outer walls and districts of Clementine and put the middle and inner city under siege. The battle raged all night in the suburbs and along the walls as Turkemen infantry and their horrifying bolbogis, giant monsters bred for war, wrestled from street to desperate street with the Empire’s elite regiments. Moribund Scepticus III had been betrayed. Heralds were sent by the dozen to the approaching Leaguesarmy, though only three made it through alive to tell them of the Emperor’s distress and the threat of defeat by the hated Turkemen. What had begun as an expedition of conquest had now become a quest of salvation, not just of the Imperial Capital but of all the Stately League held to be distinctly their own. Without rest the Leaguesarmy night-marched the final miles. By the dour, gray afternoon of the next day they were deploying their first battalions for assault upon the rear of the Turkemen force. With Clementine skillfully invested, the confident marshals of the Püshtän turned their attention to defending themselves against the arrival of the Leaguesarmy. Moribund Scepticus III, his family and attendants watched from the highest minarets as the two great armies faced each other across the field before Clementine’s famous gates. Both he and the Turkemen marshals below were amazed at the size of the Leaguesarmy. Almost half a million soldiers of the proud Soutlands had arrived, and before their trailing columns had even arrived upon the field, the Leaguesman marshals began the attack. The massive artillery parks of the Turkemen roared, sending hundreds of Leaguesmen to an immediate end. The terrible bolbogis were sent forth bellowing, barely restrained by their panicking beast-handlers, musket ball and cannon shot of the Leaguesarmy stopping only a meager few. Strutting proudly behind these gudgeon beasts came the Turkeman infantry—the heavy-armored ghirkis and musket-wielding infantis. To meet them strode two hundred thousand haubardiers and troubardiers, hundreds of skolds and scourges and with them a company of lahzars, only recently arrived in society and used for the first time in war. Wherever the Turkemen bolbogis were left unchallenged by scourge or lahzar they prevailed, destroying whole battalions of their enemy. But where they met a knot of scourges or a lone lahzar, there they ultimately met their end. The Emperor watched in horrified wonder as the first deadly bolts of lightning stuck down, summoned by the fulgars, startling everyone but the fulgars themselves. And though the scourge Haroldus is credited as the great hero of the day, it was these newcomers, the fulgars, who most quickly bested the bolbogis, while the wits dismayed whole companies of Turkemen under the agony of their frission.When the two armies were fully engaged, the Emperor’s survivors, who had remained quiet till then, stormed from sally ports with Haroldus at their head, besetting the besiegers and attacking the right flank of the Turkeman army. Surrounded, the hard-pressed Turkemen fought valiantly on. Their most mighty bolbogis, the Slothog, still stood and shattered one hundred men with every blow. The Leaguesarmy line began to falter where the Slothog raged. The few lahzars that remained were not near enough to help, the rest all gone to their dooms and with them all the scourges and any skold who could make a stand. Even as the right and center of the Leaguesarmy began to crush their enemy, the left was on the verge of crumbling. In the nick of time Haroldus and the Clementine elites struck home, rolling up the Turkeman right flank and driving them in on the center in a rout. Though the legend has it that the “great skold” challenged the Slothog alone, he was in fact supported by the doughty battalions of both Clementine and the Stately League. There, after a grisly struggle, Haroldus sent the Slothog to its doom, losing his own life in the process. But the deed was done and with the death of the Slothog, the Leaguesmen pushed forward and the Turkemen, their last gambit played and ruined, ran headlong into the ravine of the Marrow or fled into the wildlands that surround the capital, and few ever made it back to their homes or the smiles of loved ones. The Empire had won—or had it? The original order of business had not been settled, the League had not had its demands heard. Their marshals conferred with their ministers and their peers and offered parley to the Emperor if he would just hear them out. Here now was an opportunity for Moribund Scepticus III to save himself and his own dynasty, to share some of his power and remain on the three thrones. For no matter what reformations the Stately League would force, the Empire would survive. But, with his remnant army looking to him to be still strong in the flush of first victory, while the Leaguesarmy seemed exhausted, at an end, Moribund became obstinate. He was not going to be some lapdog to the states, bending and twisting to their whims: he was the Emperor Supreme, as his sires had been before him. He ordered his troops to the attack, shut the gates and went to the baths in a glow of false security.With surprise in their favor the Emperor’s army prevailed for a time, but as they pushed the Leaguesmen back, they encountered a third of the Leaguesarmy’s strength, including twenty battalions of troubardiers, held in reserve. With a rataplan of drums and the cry of war these reserves pressed into the fight, the Imperial Army breaking against them like so many waves. With their force on the brink of annihilation, the Imperial marshals quickly capitulated and their entire weary army, still forty thousand strong, were taken captive. They did not stay captive for very long. The next day, and unknown to the Emperor, a delegation did arrive at the tents of the lords and marshals of the Stately League. In its number were many disaffected and jealous ministers and peers who, either fed up with the flaccid corruption of their incumbent master or wishing to rule for power’s sake alone, had formed an uneasy alliance against their Imperial master. They received the complaints of their southern brothers and a compact was quickly made: if the Leaguesmen backed their cause and their candidate for a new dynasty, then their new Emperor, once safely installed, would make sure their needs were answered. Till all this was accomplished, the southerners would remain as Clementine’s and the new Emperor’s guard. Thinking he was loved by all his subjects, convinced of the unfailing loyalty of his ministers, Moribund Scepticus III sat secure in his inner palace, confident of the impregnability of Clementine’s ancient walls. Yet that very night, as the Leaguesmen upstarts were let tamely into the city, he was violently slain by agents of the new compact, and their chosen replacement, the conniving Menangës of the family Haacobin, thrust into his place. Moribund Scepticus III’s sons and daughters, granddaughters and grandsons, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews and distant cousins too were arrested, to be either slaughtered, imprisoned in the deepest dungeons and so forgotten or sent into distant exile. Over two hundred people suffered or died that night, each one of them of the same family line. So began the reign of the Haacobin Dynasty. So ended the line of the Sceptics.

  gauld, gaulding chemicals and processes that make many different kinds of cloth and other organic materials highly resistant to tearing, cutting or puncturing—“bulletproof” if you wish—yet not much heavier than the original fiber and still almost as flexible. Any garment like this is called proofing or, less commonly, gaulding or gauld-cloth. Each gaulder has his own secret recipe, inherited and vigilantly guarded, and, though some recipes are more effective than others, the end result is much the same: cloth, leather and such once soaked, boiled, baked, dried and resoaked and so on in a series of solutions will by the end of the process be extraordinarily toughened. Combined with panels of multilayered gauld-leather or plates of steel, and backed with pokeweed padding, proofing can keep the wearer very safe indeed. Another of the advantages of gaulded clothing is that it is incredibly hardwearing—even the cheaper kinds. Consequently, the uniforms of soldiers on campaign and wayfarers out on the road typically last for years rather than months. In fact it has become more common for those who can afford it to wear proofing more than day-clothes. While proofing will stop a sword thrust or a musket ball, it cannot, unfortunately, stop bruising or bones being broken beneath it as they take the shock of a blow, or internal ruptures from heavy hits to the chest or abdomen. This is why blunt and heavy weapons like cudgels are so popular. And all gaulded cloth will eventually wear out. Fibers being struck repeatedly begin to cr
ush and tear till the proofing is useless. Damage like this appears slightly darker and scuffed, and the cheaper the gaulding is, the quicker this “wearing out” in battle occurs. Small areas of light scuffing can be re-treated and “healed” by a gaulder who knows his business, but once the damage to your proofing goes beyond this, you know it will soon be time to replace your harness. Gaulded clothing that is new and in good repair is said to be “bright,” a term left over from the days when metal armor was the norm.

  gaulded treated with the gaulding process.

  gaulder craftsperson who makes gauld and uses it to make proofing.

  Gauldsman Five one of the best gaulders in Boschenberg; he has been supplying high-quality proofing to most of the city’s wealthiest peers and magnates for over four decades. With a good reputation comes high prices, though even Gauldsman Five’s cheapest garments offer excellent protection for the money.