//------------------------------// // Gozzo the archaeologist and the Battle of the Horn of Hakon // Story: Gozzo the archaeologist // by Kujivunia //------------------------------// Gozzo the archaeologist loved to dig into history. Garbage and debris were for him clues and clues to the mysteries hidden in the centuries. For the second season, he and his colleagues have been looking for traces of the battle at the Horn of Hakon. What did he know? About a thousand years ago, Jarl Tryggvi Frode's son, whom we know from the saga of Sindri Whitebeard, conquered the settlement on the site of present-day Baltimare. The settlement grew rapidly, becoming rich in trade and sea fishing. Eight hundred years ago, the settled sea raiders were taken under their wing by the eastern griffins — for a certain bribe. A hundred years later, the merchants of Baltimare increased their fat, got new connections and decided that they needed the withdrawn money themselves. And so, six hundred years ago, griffin transport ships landed on the shores of the Baltimare River. They were brought by Gokhan himself, whose lands were going through hard times at this moment. In the legend of the Gokhan massacre, it is written that twenty thousand griffins rushed into battle. Gozzo knew it was nonsense. Gokhan led a punitive detachment from the state crumbling like a sand castle, and many forces had to be left to maintain order. Worse, Gokhan was sailing across the sea. The drakkar borrowed from the pony could only accommodate a couple of dozen griffins. Grekhan could afford no more than a hundred and fifty good drakkars, which means only about three and a half thousand warriors. Gozzo couldn't tell how many ponies were up against them. In the annals it was said about forty forty lances. But everyone knows that the lance included not only the spearman himself, but also several squires. How many ponies were there? Five thousand? Seven thousand? No one knows. Only excavations could shed light on this mystery. And not only this one — as always, there were immeasurably more questions than answers. Only one thing was clear—the place of the battle. A large narrow field in the bend of the Baltimare River, in the center of which stood a tall sharp stone, a natural spire. The people of Baltimare called him the Horn of Hakon, in honor of Sindri Whitebeard's father, Hakon Longhorn. There really was such a place! It all fits together. The field is in a bend, in the middle of it is a high thin rock. There was one problem — for the last three hundred years, the field has been engaged in giving the local population rich harvests of cereals. At the cost of hundreds of petitions, Gozzo and his newly founded guild of archaeologists were given permission to dig. And he went to dig. The huge field was divided into hundreds of squares, each of which had to be checked with a pit, carefully and carefully removing the earth in thin layers. Met an artifact? Stop, don't touch, don't move! Take a piece of paper and sketch it. Then take off another layer of earth and repeat. And again. And again. The archives were bursting with sketches of plows, buckles, fibulas and even rare coins. There was only one thing missing —military artifacts. Not a single scrap of chain mail, not an arrow tip, not a spear sting. The archives grew, the budget melted, and the enthusiasm evaporated. There were still a dozen pits to make, but everyone had long understood that there had never been any fighting here. But how did it happen? Everyone was asking this question, and first of all Gozzo. He organized all this, and the demand is from him. And not only from tired colleagues, but also from the authorities and farmers suffering monstrous losses. Nergui, the Baltimare, one of the first associates of Gozzo, in his hearts voiced the question that tormented everyone: — But how so?! Couldn't there have been a battle? They couldn't have made her up out of her head, could they? The chronicles of different cities, the legend of the Gokhan massacre, all of course pull a blanket over themselves, but the place is the same everywhere! Long narrow field… — Long, narrow, that's right! — confirmed Gozzo, almost joining his palms and holding them from his face somewhere in the distance. — And Hakon's Horn is in place, here it is! Categorical compliance! A beautiful and elegant unicorn with a very long horn approached them. A Canterlot aristocrat who abandoned the whim of balls and the dust of foundations for the sake of the romanticism of archeology, indestructible even by Gozzo's systematic approach. — The real stallion was Hakon. Six centuries, and the horn is hard! Lucille smiled awkwardly at his silly joke, designed to lighten the atmosphere. — "The rock!" Nergui agreed. — Note, dear colleagues, for the sake of cleanliness, we must work out all the options. There is a similar rock seven versts away. Ours is in a field in a bend, and that one is in the forest near the water. Categorical discrepancy with the texts! —"A discrepancy", Nergui confirmed. — But here we have already mastered the third hundred pits, and we observe a categorical discrepancy with the text! No material remains, no artifacts related to the described battle! Gozzo continued. "A discrepancy," Nergui nodded again, "but the place is straight out of the annals. A long and narrow field, a high narrow rock in the middle, a bend in the end. It doesn 't fit in my head… — What are we going to do, gentlemen? — the unicorn took responsibility and turned the topic to the frightening future of the expedition. — Don't make against us pick, that save your little... ahem, — Nergui tried to raise morale with a bravura slogan, but stopped short. Clearing his throat he added: — Shall we go into the forest? Not that we have any other options, you know. It's harder to dig there, but we won't interfere with anyone. In the evening, at dinner, Gozzo recounted the conversation of the rest of the expedition, and suggested moving on to the forest rock. — Do you all agree, dear colleagues? A young fawn, a representative of a little-known people, stood up and, still confusing the words of the Equestrian language, expressed a common opinion: — Diggin' in thits fyeld is leg of hollow! Everyone laughed wearily. In the next couple of weeks, the expedition finished with this field, handed over the archives and tightly took up the forest around the rock. And on the third day of work, a sketch of a wonderful gilded fragment of a helmet noser appeared in the archives. That day, no one went to bed, and until the morning cheerful folk songs of various Equestrian cultures sounded in the forest. Only our old acquaintance, the unicorn Lucille, walked along the river bank in deep thought. The next day he disappeared. A week later, Gozzo was lost in thought. There were plenty of artifacts, they found presumably the place of the Gokhan massacre, but why here? The thought haunted him. At the same time, strange pegasus began to fly over the excavations. And a couple of weeks later, Lucille returned beaming with joy with a whole suitcase of cards. That evening, he told the fascinated expedition that a completely revolutionary movement had been born in conservative circles of Canterlot geographers dedicated to reconstructing the change of landscapes over time. It turned out that this forest was in the bend of the river, but then the river decided not to loop, but to go directly, and its bed straightened out, forming an oxbow lake. And the rock that stood in the center of the bend suddenly appeared on the shore of a direct current! And the old bend formed an old village, and a forest grew within its borders. A childishly happy Gozzo-archaeologist got a new toy in his tenacious paws.