The Lances of Balduren

Balduren is widely known as the fiercest warrior culture of the Eight Kingdoms. Many of its practices are considered savage and sacrilegious, but they persist despite the edicts of the church and the criticism of learned men. Few would argue that the Balduren methods are not effective as all the Eight Kingdoms rely on the mounted warrior of the Southern Marches for their protection and continued survival.

Balduren citizens have to prove their fitness as a warrior people, even as infants. All Balduren infants are brought before a council of retired Lances and examined for physical defects. Those who are not up to standards will never be citizens, if they are even permitted to live. No citizen will raise a non-citizen, so the so-called defective children are abandoned outside the Fork -- the peninsula on which Balduren is built. Metics may adopt such abandoned children and raise them with trades, but they will never be allowed full inclusion in Balduren society.

Babies who pass their inspection are raised among the horses and bathed in the salt water of the Sea. They sleep on straw and grow up with sparse clothing and thin blankets. They are frequently ignored when they cry and they are derided if they express the common fears of darkness or solitude.

At the age of 7, Balduren boys are removed from their parents’ homes and begin in the Stables of Seafall March -- a training regimen on a island in the middle of the Mourning River. It is run by retired lances and is designed to mold them into skilled warriors and proper citizens. Separated from their families and housed in communal barracks like stables, the young would-be Lances are instructed in horse lore, warfare, stealth, hunting and athletics.

At age 12, the Stable boys are deprived of all clothing save for a horse blanket died red and forced to sleep outside and make their own beds from straw. To ready them for a life in the field, the Stable boys are encouraged to scavenge and to live off the land -- even if that means that they are reduced to theft. During this time, a boy learns to shoe a horse and to do the leatherwork necessary for creating a saddle and stirrups. He is also learning to make a lance and to throw javelins with great accuracy. During that time, he has also seen to the joining of a mare and stallion to produce a colt.

Just as all Balduren men are expected to be Lances, all women are expected to bear children. Balduren girls are allowed to remain with their parents, but they are also subjected to a rigorous education and training program of their own. While the boys are at the Stables, the girls spend most of their mornings at chores and then spend their evenings learning medicine and veterinary skills, plus dance, tumbling and rudimentary training at ranged weapons.

Competition and fighting are encouraged among Balduren children. Life in the Stables is brutish and violent. Many of the lessons and tasks are presented to the boys and games with clear winners and losers. Winners are rewarded lavishly. Losers receive public ridicule, scorn and may even be stripped of the right to continue training. Anyone who shows weakness or complains of hardship receives more of the same. Anyone who evidences timidity is subject to teasing and violence at the hands of his peers.

By his 16th birthday, the last test of a boy's manliness is his Grooming Run. The young male will take a small knife, his blanket and a skin for water. He must run the old sea road from the mouth of the Mourning River to the City of Balduren, fending off wild animals and finding food and water along the way. He has thirty days to complete his task. The journey is long and perilous and will total some 400 miles. After the boy completes the ritual run, he will undergo the Gauntlet and be accepted as a citizen of the city.

Finally, the Lance is ready to meet and raise his mount. The next two years are spent teaching the horse and rider to function together as a team. When the horse is ready, so is the rider. Then both he and his horse will join the Regiments together.

Each and every male citizen of Balduren is an an accomplished warrior and horseman, a competent ferrier and leatherworker, as well as a hunter, scavenger and cook of no mean ability. He can navigate his way across the plains of his homeland. Find water and game for himself and tall grass for his steed.

After joining the Regiment, a Lance will be kept hungry and lean. He will eat communally with his squadron and live in a baracks. Poor fitness will cause him to be subject to public ridicule. Overweight Lances are sometimes rowed out to sea and left to sink or swim back to society.

At age 30, the Balduren male is encouraged to take a wife who is capable of bearing children, with great honor afforded those who marry the widows of fallen Lances. When married, he may choose to leave the squadron barracks, but even those that do end up living in very close proximity to it. The primary purpose of marriage is to produce new Lances for the cavalry. In fact, Balduren law says that only two people may be buried with marked graves: women who die in childbirth and men who die in combat.

If not retired due to wounds before then, at age 60 all Lances are forced to return to civilian life, though they maintain their emeritus rank for the rest of their days. These retired military men make up the government officials in each of the cities. It is they that vote on laws, serve as juries on trials and censure the King (Marshal of the Citadel), if it becomes necessary.

Men too old and feeble to conduct the affairs of the City are often led to senicide. They will be taken to the sea wall of Balduren, there to throw themselves onto the rocks and pounding surf in a ritual called the Leap of Fate. Those who do so with warrior spirit will be buried with a marked grave. Some who choose not to take the Leap of Fate will sometimes bid goodbye to their friends, and once more undertake the Citizen's Run in reverse -- this time from Balduren back to Seafall March.