Pick a corner of the world...

The Golden Horde was a powerful political body that ruled in the Ukraine, taking over from the kings that came before. They were the Western edge of the Mongolian empire, and re-organized the native Varyngian people there to their liking. For two hundred years, they ruled. Even after their empire began to crumble, and they were merely the Great Horde, they ruled. The Polish and Lithuanian kings pushed back in a deluge that lasted decades, to drive away the Tartarian warlords that nibbled at the edge of their nations.

Before the Golden Horde, was another ruler, and another empire. Before that, they were Byantium, and the Varyngian guards were sworn to the emperor, and feared.

Pick any corner of this planet, and there is the ebb and flow of nations and kings. Before the white men came here, where I live now, the Caddo lived in fear of the Comanche, who were newcomers, just as the Caddo had driven their own former masters south, into Northern Mexico. The Karankawa Indians clung to the coast line, at the edges of rivers, making casseroles out of native bell peppers and the human arms of their enemies. Pick anywhere, at all. The ebb and flow of history drives new kings and pulls them down.

Every time I pass the history section of the store, I wonder if I could just pick one corner of the world, and go back into the dark shadows of the past, when history was being born, and learn everything I could through time, and write everything I could from that knowledge. But, there's just too many fascinating corners. There's so much history in history. There's so much striving and inspiring and amazing.

When I pass on from this life, I hope there is a well where my soul can drink that contains inside of it the knowledge of history - all history. I could spend an eternity at the pool, reinventing the past through my own imagination.

There was a nation once - a powerful and fearsome nation - that was called the Golden Horde. Poland and Lithuania together beat it down into the dust of time.