The life and Times of Maks Part I1

Kosaky

After the parole, Andrzej and I retuned via The Netherlands, to his old troop. We were not breaking 
our parole, for it was not to fight, but to pick up those who were left of the old guard, and most of 
all, my wife, Zobiana. Our ragtag group made our way across a wasteland that had been once the 
German states. There were scenes of mayhem and brutality that made even the old war hounds 
shudder. The world of kings and glory now held no sway over those who still had heart enough 
to feel pain for human, animal or earth.

The gold taken from so many now retuned too many in the old town of Schleuter, Prussia. The old 
manor was restored, fields planted, hopes renewed, life began again anew. The only problem with this 
new Eden of the North was it was in Poland, and the freedoms given by Maks were hated by his 
neighbor petty nobles. Lawsuits arose, at first petty ones such as the brewing and distilling rights 
Maks had restored. Soon there would be far worse, an attempted murder of a peasant girl, heavy 
with child by a noblemen’s lackey. First brawling, then a duel, then open war erupted, peace could 
not be found by the band of war. With the courts and noble’s war parties, hard on his heels, Maks 
gave a pledge to all his peoples, of war and of the land, to find a land that was free to all, a place 
that was to be a land of equals, no lords or priests.

So it was that Maks, the once Imperialist officer of horse, Nobleman, led a troop, no, a people 
South to an old acquaintance, Bohdan Khmelnitsky. His Rebellion as just starting, the rebellion 
that was fast becoming a revolution. It was thus that a new story started in the Ukraine, the story 
of Maks the Banita…the Steppe Wolf.