The War of the Realms

by C Steven Meldrum

  A week later, on a warm and cloudless morning, I watched from the doorway as a score of young men gathered in a hunting party, as they did regularly, and set off to roam the sandy wastes. Looking at the endless expanse of sun-reddened sand I could not believe they could have caught anything out here. With very little fuss or fanfare, the hunting party headed off down the defile and out onto the sandy wastes.

  I could see that I would not be waited on hand and foot forever and in the days that followed I made myself busy helping with small jobs, carrying bits and pieces, and with odd repairs. The cave structure was massive but I was not allowed to explore it all. Guards would wave me away from certain areas which only made me more curious. Who were these people? What was this place? A hot, red planet with two suns? But with air that I could breathe and a human population. How far had the swirling doorway flung us from our beloved Irth? Where exactly in the multiverse was I?

  I continued my chores and worked with them as much as they would let me. I perceived an impediment to my being accepted by these people that had nothing to do with my inability to converse with them. I picked up words here and there but pointing and drawing in the sand seemed to be the only way I could effectively communicate with these people.

  Outside of the menial tasks, I found enjoyment showing the children many of the fighting techniques I had mastered, both my own and what I had learned from the black-robes. I set them up in pairs to practice the techniques I taught them and was surprised how quickly they learnt. And when I could find some moments to myself, I wandered out of the village and sat with crossed legs upon the cliff-top, looking out over the endless sanguine dunes, praying and calling for anyone who would hear me.

  “Dorje, Rogel, Vajra, Master Panuaru, Abbot Tomas, anyone?” There was no sound but the wind as it meandered across the dusty dunes and bare rocks. I had called for the sisters often, but to no effect, and I had tried to focus on the vortex in my mind, but no doorways opened, no deities appeared and no answers presented themselves. I was very much alone.

  It was in the third week that I felt that I could probably help these people more if I hunted with them. My health had improved greatly and indeed there was hardly a scar to be seen on my chest. I had picked up a few more words of their language by then and with a combination of broken speech and signs I asked thetribe’s hetman if I could go hunting with the young men.

  “ Coutamantsani?” he asked me, laughing and turning to his fellows. I thought I understood. “Coota …mang .. ti-zani,” I repeated. One of the younger hunters, large, strong looking and clearly the leader

  of the hunting party, walked up to me, a scowl on his face. I recognised him as the one who had been in the hut with the old man when I first awoke. “ Inu ndinthu ofooka!” he said, and poked me hard in the chest. I stepped backward and he advanced and spoke again. “Mwamuna kulire wachi!”

  I did not understand but knew that the only way to show these people that I could hold my own was to fight. Sighing, I pointed to myself, and then pointed in an arc to all of the young men gathered around us.

  “Dnung …zamen…iyana,” I said, pointing to myself again, “I will fight … ummmm, nonsenu … will fight … all of you.”

  The elderly hetman looked at me beseechingly, “Kahore, koa mi puni. Ka patua ikoe.”

  Before I knew it, I was held and dragged to the centre of the village amongst much whooping and cheering. I was thrown down on the bare ground and stood to see a circle of people half a chain across.

  The leader of the hunting party stepped forward into the circle and began a rhythmic chanting. Looking very fearsome, he stamped the ground and slapped his thighs with his hands. He wore a fierce expression on his face and poked out his tongue. Amidst bulging eyes, grunts and cries, he waved a spear in one hand and a small shield in the other. I had never previously seen a tribal war dance but before I was to farewell these people I would see it many times, and perform it myself, invoking the god of war to frighten the enemy.

  For now though, he came to the end of the dance and rushed at me. He was young and fit, broad and muscle-bound and incredibly fast. As I engaged him, a strange sensation of what I can only called a temporal luxation hit me, like a disconnection. I don’t know whether it was a consequence of this place, the draining heat, some natural or enhanced physical attribute of these people or some other factor but as we fought, I found that my perception of the physical speed with which he moved was different to my own, as though we fought in two different time streams. His speed was incredible and similar to what I’d seen from Tetsuko in the hut in the village of Muru.

  A normal person would have been overcome very quickly. But I had trained in advanced combat for my entire life. I countered his extraordinary speed and strength at every turn. I did not want to hurt the man who was the leader of the hunters as this man and his troop were responsible for providing for these people. I parried and blocked and with some well-placed kicks and chops had him time and again on the ground. He did not give up and to his credit learned much about how to hold his more zealous attacks at bay and to drive towards me with purposeful lunges and sweeps. But as the contest wore on he became more desperate. He could see that I was merely turning him aside and he felt foolish. What began as an opportunity to show these people I could add to their fighting force was degenerating into a personal struggle for the leader’s honour.

  He attacked with renewed lustre, screaming and thrusting the spear towards my heart.

  “Zimud zabana!” he screamed, “Imfa!”

  There was finality in that last word and I knew a fey wrath and a blood lust had taken him. I could see that this was not going to end well and responded with a brutal and complicated series of kicks and punches, feints and parries until I had stripped him of his shield and spear and then knocked him to the ground where he did not rise.

  A younger tribesman in the crowd who looked very much like him screamed loudly and rushed at me and then almost immediately four others followed him. I leaped and blocked, using every ounce of my training and my energy and in a short amount of time these five had joined the first, either unconscious, or at least temporarily disabled, on the dirt floor of the arena.

  “Koolou isht imani!”

  The old hetman burst into the circle then to ensure that none of his other over-zealous huntsmen were going to further embarrass him. I knelt, looking down and placed my hands above me in prayer.

  “Musiye kupusku usu!” he said to me. I looked up and saw a look of incredulity etched on his face. He then turned to the stunned tribespeople.

  “Siyani!” He waved his arms at the assembled crowd and they reluctantly began to disperse. He then turned back to me and knelt by me, asking, “Koku nthinu lumungu ghweni?”

  I looked back, not understanding. A small boy who had not gone with the others stood beside the hetman and pointed to the sky.

  “Iye ndi lumungu yenthe bwera chokera anawamba!” he said excitedly. He held his right hand bunched into a fist up above his head and then whistled as his hand descended until it hit the palm of his other hand.

  “Pahu!” he exclaimed and with his hands pantomimed something hitting the ground and dust flying everywhere. He pointed tome, “Dharka dahabka!”

  The hetman looked at him askance and decided he was being silly. He yelled at him but I could see the boy truly believed his version of events and with voices raised they argued more until the boy quickly skipped out of range of thehetman’s attempted backhand and ran back to cave entrance.

  I looked at the hetman who had just turned back to me.

  “Dharka dahabka?” I asked.

  He looked at me and sighed. He thought for a moment and then grasped a golden pendant he carried about his neck and held it aloft for me to see, its golden shine lucid against the dark skin of his throat. “Dhar-ka,” he said. Then, releasing the pendant he looked up into the sky and when he couldn’t see what he searched for grunted and held his hands like two outstretched wings with his thumbs forming
what might be the head and beak of a bird. In an almost comical mimicry of the boy, he stood and waved his hands through the air, the wings flapping and giving a very good vocal impression of a screeching bird.

  “Gold… ummmm goldenbird?” I said, trying to understand. Right at that moment, a magnificent hawk soared overhead, screeching as it headed for its nest in the nearby mountain range, the flaccid shape of some desert dweller held firmly in its claws. He pointed to it and said excitedly, “dahabka… dahabka!”

  I had observed these people for many weeks now and had come to the conclusion that they were not mere hunters, but rather warriors all. Their children had a spear or knife in their hands almost as soon as they could grasp one and many of the younger hunters were little more than children, both male and female. When they hunted, they would return with food, but much of the time would also return with weapons, tools and sometimes either emissaries or captives from other tribes. It seemed that while the hetman was the spiritual and secular leader of the tribe, the young captain of the hunter-warriors was its war leader. He and his younger brother held a lot of sway and regardless of the kindnesses shown by the hetman and his people, I was not allowed to go with the hunters. There did not seem to be any unresolved animosity but the message was clear. In a feudal society like this, only the strongest and most skilled could carry the mantle of leader. He had been bested but it was not going to change anything. It had not been a fair fight. I was a god; an avatar of their sky-god it seemed, and for whatever reason I had chosen to come down from the sky (or plummet from the sky if I understood the boy’s description adequately), it was not to hunt with the war party.

  That was, until shortly after, when the hunting party returned missing a third of its number, and most of those that did return carried varying degrees of injury. They had brought the leader back, bloodied and near death. The tribe crowded about them, the women wailing and the hetman trying to push everyone back to give him some room. He was delirious, and with words I could not understand tried to describe what he had seen. I pushed my way through the crowd and came to stand before him. I did not need to understand him to know what had happened. The burn marks on his face, arms and chest betrayed the energy weapon that had been used and more worryingly I could see five thin parallel lines running diagonally from shoulder to waist. My hand went of its own accord to my own chest in remembrance.

  With a line of blood running down from the corner of his mouth, he looked at me with a mixture of defiance and pain– thinking that I sought to harm him now that he was defenceless. Instead, I felt my power return and knelt by him, praying. And all that were there witnessed the blinding light of silver and jade that poured forth from the amulet around my neck. My hands, infused with the power of the Golden Goddess, poured energies of healing into his body. Men and women alike screamed and ran but I did not move. I chanted and prayed and in moments it was over.

  I stood outside looking up at the blackness. It dawned on me that I had never once seen the moon rise through the night sky since arriving here and it drove home to me that this place was not the home of my youth. There the beryl ambience of the mighty Lüun betrays the gleaming towers and mechanical fortresses of the homeland of mechkind. I traced what would have been the path of the moon across the sky and marked the stars that were consumed in its passage. They, at least, seemed familiar. The giant red star known as Jyeshthā, and in another tongue as Kak-shisa, the god of prosperity, passed slowly through the constellation of Scorpius. Instead, it seemed this world, like many I had studied in the holo-projections and ancient books piled high in the Master Archivist’s library, had a thin ring of obviously ice and rock that could be seen at night. This was indeed a strange place. I wondered if it was one of the nine Navagrahas, perhaps Shani. A sudden breeze whipped up the sand that covered this rocky cliff. I pulled my worn robes more tightly around me.

  A young woman came to stand beside me, tall and quite beautiful, with an athletic frame and long black hair. She was quite tanned (as anyone living under this harsh sun would be) but seemed much lighter than the people of this village. I continued staring out into the desert and, without thinking, asked her in my speech how the leader fared.

  “He is fine,” she answered with a heavy accent. “You have saved his life.”

  I was more shocked than I could say and turned to look at her. She looked sideways at me.

  “Yes, I know your tongue. I am not of these people. I am not from here.”

  “What is your name?” She turned to face me.

  “They call me Irirangi,which means ‘spirit voice’, because I can speak in many different tongues, including yours, which they think is the tongue of the gods. My real name I hardly remember anymore.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be with your own people?” I asked.

  “Of course, but where to go? My home is not near here. There is nothing here. Just theGreat Desert.”

  I looked out over the moonlit dunes that stretched to eternity.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “The gods of once have gone,” she answered, to herself. “If you do not know then we are truly lost and the children of men will tear apart this place.”

  “You think me a god?”

  “No, but they do.” She indicated with her eyes the light and noise behind us. “You are the Dharka dahabka, the god of the golden hawk personified. You came down from the sky to lead these people in righteous and victorious jihad against the otembereredwa aydalamabmeto, the ‘silver warriors’, or more correctly, the ‘cursed ones’ which I call Hiriwa. You showed that when you brought Taiaro back.Are you a god?”

  “No.”

  “But you are something more than human and you look strange, with your paler, yellow complexion and narrow eyes, what we call asiya. When I first saw you, your head was shaved. Now you can almost tie your hair back. They, with their tight black curls find long hair amazing. They thought we might be from the same tribe.

  “The elders have been talking all day. They want to learn how you fight. They want you to teach their people to fight like you do. They intend to send you with the akalihondo, the war party,to the camp of the Kāwharu, the famous giant warrior ofGhnāti Whatua, who has sent out the call for all ablebodied warriors to join them in counsel. His son, Te Waharoa, is War Chief of the Waikato and we hear is planning something big against the Hiriwa.”

  It was all too much. First of all, I wanted to go hunting with them, and now I was being sent to their war chief. I started to talk but she continued on.

  “He has expressed much interest in you. The black spear you had was sent to him as proof of the coming of the Golden Hawk.”

  My hand went to my chest with the remembered pain. She saw me and asked to see the scar. I pulled my robe down to show her. To my surprise she turned towards me and gently ran a finger down the length of the scar and then looked up at me.

  “It’s nothing but a scratch. I have more myself that are worse than that. They said you were impaled upon it but seeing your scar I think they were lying. If it was through you like they said you’d be dead.”

  I said nothing in return, lost for a moment in the pleasant memory of her touch. I looked towards darkening horizon which was at times illuminated by the intermittent phosphorous glare of lightening strikes and from the distance the low booming and rumbling of thunder grew louder. I looked out across the starlit undulations of the dune sea and heard the approaching roar.

  “A storm is coming.” I said.

  “I know,” she said. And those two words spoke of something entirely different.

  Chapter 15: Irirangi

  “Death is the end of every worldly pain.”

  The Knight’s Tale, from The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) The storm raged for two weeks. I could understand why these people lived in caves rather than out on the dunes. The coriolis winds violently drove thousands of tons of desert sand against the cliffs with incredible force.

  Due to the effects of wind erosion over what
must have been millions of years, (I had been with these people for some time now and had never seen rain) many natural caves existed. Some were small while others were quite large and deep. By their arts, these people had extended these caves into a massive subterranean network where a rocky sky encased a land many miles wide and long. Seeing the ferocity of the storm when it hit, I understood the economy and efficiency these people needed to live in this place. What I didn’t immediately understand was their militaristic nature. I assumed only from what I had seen that the tribes were warlike and preyed upon each other.

  As if to prove it to me, the ngutu or cave entrance was always carefully concealed and well-guarded. It was only whenKāwharu lay dying in my arms a second time, and told me everything he could of the past seventy years, that I really understood.

  Once it was known by the elders that Irirangi could converse with me, she was my constant companion. During council she would sit beside me and, after her fashion, not only translate everything for me but also would impart her wisdom on the etiquette of the council and life in the caves in general. As such I learned that to interrupt or to talk louder than one of the elders was frowned upon. I learned other such courtesies as sitting cross legged rather than kneeling, looking people in the eye when you spoke to them and always eating food with the right hand,as the left hand was used for cleaning one’s self after toileting (in fact it was one of the gravest insults to handle food with the left hand and was also seen as a severe indictment of the quality of the host’s cooking).