by P D Ceanneir
‘Telmar!’ hissed the king.
‘That’s impossible! How could he have escaped?’ asked Beltane, a wizened man with white hair and a stoop, but for his great age he still possessed a keen intelligence.
The king raised a hand to signal for the captain of the guards to send his men. A small group of six guardsmen carrying spears and standing on the grounds to the left of the Royal Box acknowledged the order and broke into a sprint towards Telmar.
‘We will find out later,’ said Sallen. ‘I want him off the duelling field, the crowd is restless. It would have been better if we had him killed before the games.’
‘With the state of the citadel in general and Joaquin’s rebels at large, it would do no good to create a martyr, your highness,’ said Beltane.
‘Martyrdom be damned!’ cried the king curtly. ‘He is an heir to the throne and the murderer of your grandson to boot. His claim is an affront I can ill afford.’
By this time, the guards had reached the ragged man who was still walking purposefully towards the Royal Box. He never took his eyes off Sallen and smiled at him with a broad grin, but his eyes showed vengeful hate and anger.
The sergeant of the guards levelled his spear at Telmar’s chest and ordered him to halt. Telmar did not break his long legged stride as he nonchalantly waved one hand in the air and all six of the guards burst into white flame, which was so intense that it took a fraction of a second for their empty mail and chest plates, shields and spears to fall to the ground. Telmar walked on through the black embers that were once human flesh. The mud around him was baked hard as moisture within evaporated to become mist around his feet. Those in the Royal Box were utterly amazed at what they had just witnessed. Unknown to them, the baron’s attack on Cormack’s villa and his incarceration over the past month had allowed him to focus his curse and direct it at will.
‘That’s impossible!’ said the king.
Telmar reached the waiting crowd of champions. His white toothy grin did not leave his face as he spoke to them. ‘If you value your existence, then run or you can burn.’ He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference to me. Everyone will burn in the end.’
Some of the champions stepped back, others were unsure of the tall, dirty unarmed man in front of them who had not stopped his approach.
The king shouted down to them, ‘a thousand gold sovereigns to the first man who kills him!’
Four of the champions looked at each other. Telmar saw them shrug and then they rushed him. They got to within six feet of him and then each burst into flames, their screams echoing along the stalls and from the high galleries as the curved shape of the Criab Arena spread the acoustics to everyone’s ears. The other champions backed off and ran just as Telmar stopped in front of the Royal Box.
‘I’m here to claim my prize, highness. There are now none left to fight me,’ he called up to the king.
‘What prize, you gibbering fool?’ replied the king
‘Your crown,’ was the reply.
Sallen stared at him in silence for a time then said, ‘you’re mad!’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Guards, guards, apprehend this man…’ called Duke Cormack looking around him.
Telmar’s voice drowned him out. ‘You are all going to die,’ he shouted. ‘I will cleanse this city by fire.’ There were gasps from all around as everyone noticed the baron’s hands glowing white, a shimmer of heat and then flames enshrouding them in a brilliant nimbus of Pyromantic energy. It grew larger and larger, the sound of it made a crackling noise, which became a roar like the heart of a smith’s furnace, and his arms shook with the strain of holding it in his clawed fingers.
He laughed a laugh that was high-pitched and maddeningly annoying. ‘I will burn it all!’ he yelled, and then he threw the two Pyromantic Fireballs towards the Royal Box.
Duke Cormack and Sallen both tried to use the Rawn Arts to halt or disperse the two missiles of superheat, but to no avail. Everyone sitting in the royal box became one under the torrent of heat as their flesh melted together when the missiles approached. Then, in the next instant, they evaporated into embers. The Fireballs obliterated the Royal Box then the next six rows of stalls of the arena beneath it. The sizzling backwash of energy also ripped apart the whole construction of stands as the explosion sent the north section of the arena skywards. The pressure of the explosion surged outwards and flattened everyone to his or her seats, especially those who sat close to the impact zone. It was as if a giant hand swatted them flat, and few would rise again from the unfathomable pressure that crushed them. The terrible impact boomed across the city and was heard for miles around as it cracked through the sky.
Those people on the, still intact, south and east stalls suddenly panicked and fled for their lives. Even through the sounds of their petrified screams, they could hear the mad laughter of the only person still standing in the centre of the arena.
Telmar laughed until his face felt as if it would freeze into a permanent grin. He clutched his sides, still giggling like a naughty child until reason and a semblance of sanity seeped into his unhinged mind.
He looked around at the damage he had caused and at the empty seats of the arena.
‘By the gods,’ he said, ‘I am now king.’
Then the laughter rose in him again.
The Klingspur Campaign
“Look know, see brave Klingspur strutting like a Peacock. See him roar like a Lion and swoop on Mad Telmar with the stealth of a Dragon”.
Exert from the Tarridun Chase: a poem by the Bard, Elcius
1
Aelfric Cokato of the Hotten Isle Bear Clan walked into the great hall of Dulan-Tiss Castle carrying several rolled maps in both arms.
‘Ah, Aelfric,’ said Telmar without looking around. ‘Put them on the table please.’
Cokato did so and was once more amazed at the baron’s ability to know who approached him from the sound of their footsteps. The Berserker was a hunter and a warrior and knew that such a gift would be the envy of most men. He stepped back from the map table and watched the enigmatic baron as he studied the wall with his back to him.
Telmar was still dressed in his prison clothing, which was still dirty and torn. He had retrieved Basilisk from the dungeon armoury and had its scabbard strapped to his back. His hair and beard was unkempt and he was very thin. Yet his energy and presence filled the room, especially the great hall, which once housed many royal balls and banquets. Now the baron used the long banqueting table for his maps while he planned his next move. The north wall, which he now stood in front of, was covered in his graffiti. Cokato did not understand Skrol, but he knew what it was. The mathematical theorems that also covered the wall were very confusing. However, the list of great cities, about a dozen in all, he recognised.
Cokato was born on Hotten Isle, an island that belonged to the Vallkyte Crown and which formed part of the extensive network of large islands in the South Sea Horn that stretched all the way to the gigantic ice continent of Erndall. His people had arrived there over twenty years before, ending their nomadic existence to live in peace. However, living on Hotten was at the whim of the Vallkytes. The island may have been uninhabited, but the land was not theirs to take. Living in the mountains to hide from the crown’s soldiers was a humbling thing for his people to do, but they had been in hiding since their city’s destruction over a hundred and fifty years previously.
Cokato was descended from the clan of Berserkers that had inhabited the island of Nothgorge, a hundred miles southeast of Hinterland’s mainland. Their city, Hildbern, was destroyed by an unspeakable evil and his people had been refugees from that dark day ever since. The story of its destruction is one of the many famous tales in the Hinterland Sagas, which I read as a child and included wondrous biographies such as: Braden and the Wyvern, Grendal the Wayfarer, Ironhorn, Vorgik the Red and the Tale of Wulf Storrinsonn of the famous Halcyons, the group of elite mercenaries commanded by my distant ancestor, Cromme.
Cokato wat
ched as Telmar scribbled several intelligible names and dates on the wall, his thoughts drifted from the cities on the wall to the baron himself, and to the moments after Telmar released him and his friends from prison.
He had run, as Telmar had ordered. The strange ball of light had opened all of the cells and even the prison armoury, and once armed he and his men promptly flooded the inner bastion of the castle and ran into the castle guard running the opposite way in panic.
Flames and smoke from the Criab Arena blotted the sky to the west and crowds of screaming civilians were flooding the streets in a bid to escape the flames. Cokato and his tiny force only had to deal with a small group of guards in half-armour carrying spears, and then they were inside the castle.
Finding the baron was easy. All they had to do was follow the trail of burnt, smouldering corpses into the throne room to find Telmar sitting on the king’s throne amid several more charred bodies of the King's Guard that were twisted and almost unrecognisable as humans.
‘Ah, Aelfric, your timing is impeccable,’ Telmar had said to him then. ‘Seeing as his royal highness, the king, is now dead along with the rest of the royal family, I am now the only heir to the throne of the Vallkytes. I would like you and your men to round up the parliament and fetch me several nobles of note.’
That was five days ago and things in the citadel had moved on apace.
Cokato and his men had done what the baron had ordered and arrested most of the Lords of Parliament and imprisoned them inside the cell where he and his people had spent the past two years incarcerated. He also managed to find the commander of the City Watch along with several councillors of prominence and brought them to the baron’s presence. The last person he found was the High Steward, Lord Selwin, who was on the top of Telmar’s list of nobles he wished to see.
The throne room was still a mess of littered bodies, Telmar had pulled down several tapestries that depicted Vallkyte kings and heaped them in the middle of the room just as Cokato and his charges walked in.
‘Commander Warren!’ cried the baron. ‘I’m so glad you could make it.’ Cokato had to smile; the commander of the watch had no choice in coming. The old lean commander tried to put on a brave face in front of the baron, but his nose still bled and one eye bloomed black and swollen. Three of the highest-ranking councillors grouped behind him for protection, especially when Telmar pointed a finger at the high heap of tapestries and other pieces of priceless art that were worth a small fortune, and used the Fire Element to set them alight.
‘I wish to augment the City Watch,’ continued Telmar. ‘So I want you and your men to approach the leaders of the rioters and deputise them in my name. I am sure that will stop the riots. Oh, and tell them I will suspend Sallen’s stupid tax laws indefinitely, that should appease the masses.’ He said this in such a jovial way that all there were stunned into jaw dropping surprise. Cokato mentally applauded the baron. The rioting was becoming too fractious since the king’s death. The locals had thronged the city streets chanting Telmar’s name for the past two days, hoping he would step out onto a balcony of the castle and assail them with some inspiring oratory.
‘Deputise them my lord?’ gasped Commander Warren.
Telmar looked up from the fire and nodded innocently. ‘It is my royal command.’
The old commander looked around him at the wild haired Berserkers that guarded the main entrance to the room. They were thin but were well armed with spear, sword and shields, most wore padded jupons over mail shirts. They looked fierce and ready to strike should the baron command it.
He nodded and bowed. ‘It shall be done...highness.’
‘Good man, take the councillors with you for they shall witness and make legal documentation as to the handling of new City Watch, which they will deliver to me by noon tomorrow,’ said Telmar. The three councillors looked pale-faced as they hurriedly followed the commander out of the room.
Telmar turned to Selwin, who looked hunched and weak, a mere shadow of the man he once was. The loss of his daughter had been hard for him to cope with. ‘Uncle, do you know why I have called you here?’
‘Please, Telmar, please. All of this is madness,’ said the High Steward in a thin reedy voice.
The baron approached him, and Selwin shrunk away because he saw the look of anger in his nephews face.
‘Madness!’ shouted Telmar. ‘You talk to me of madness? I was not the one that embroiled his daughter into a scheme that would get her kidnapped, raped and finally killed.’
Selwin flinched as if the baron had physically struck him. Even Cokato, who knew of some of Telmar’s plight, was amazed at the venom in the baron’s voice.
‘Oh, Telmar please...’ whined Selwin.
‘I hold you responsible, Uncle. Think yourself lucky that you are not one of them,’ Telmar pointed to the heap of blackened bodies that had been thrown into the corner of the throne room by Cokato’s men earlier. Some of them were still smoking.
Selwin looked, but turned away quickly. Cokato saw tears in his eyes.
‘You are now promoted to High Chancellor,’ said Telmar. ‘At noon, three days for now, you will crown me before the good people of this city. That is your punishment, uncle.’
‘But, Telmar...I have no noble ranking to crown you...’
‘Seeing as I have killed most of the nobles in the citadel, and the Lords of Parliament will be executed soon, you are now the highest ranking noble in the castle.’
‘Oh, no, no...’ Selwin wailed. Telmar waved a hand to dismiss him. ‘Place him in a comfortable room under guard, Aelfric. Give him food,’ Cokato noted the baron’s leering grin, ‘he needs to keep his strength up for the coronation.’
2
Cokato watched as the baron wrote more words on the walls. Telmar was now dressed in a plain tunic and sturdy pair of boots. He had washed, but had no time to shave in the past two days.
‘The Riots have stopped my lord,’ he said to him, ‘is there anything else you wish?’
Telmar turned from the wall and sifted through the rolls of maps that the Berserker had brought him. He found one and unrolled it, placing an ink pot at the top to act as a paperweight. Cokato saw it was a map of the known world. Erndall and the South Sea Horn Islands lay to the bottom of the map, with Tattoium-Tarridun just north of it. Telmar traced a finger over the larger Plysarus continent. He looked up at Aelfric as if he was surprised to see him there.
‘What? Oh, yes. I need the new City Constabulary to evacuate the Hub after the coronation tomorrow. I don’t want a living soul in here if the fire spreads.’
Cokato nodded. It was an odd request but the young warrior had come to view Telmar with awe and respect and he had grown accustomed to any surprises in his strange orders. Besides, thousands of people had been fleeing the city for the past three days, fearing Telmar’s promise to burn it all around them. Rumours of the madness of the Pyromancer would soon spread to many of the towns and villages of the Dulan Plain. Some areas of the Hub were still aflame, although volunteers were now quenching the fires with a modicum of success.
‘Any word of Joaquin Ri?’ Telmar asked.
Cokato nodded. The baron had sent a messenger the other day to find the Ri’s army in the Temple Woods and recall them to the city. However, the problem was Klingspur. The late king’s uncle had left three detachments of soldiers to aid the City Watch when the rioting was at its peak. Now, with Telmar’s takeover, they were just as much the enemy as the rioters once were, and at this moment were totally outnumbered by the new deputised mob of the City Watch who subsequently hounded them out of the city walls.
Klingspur had heard about the beheading of the one hundred and fourteen Lords of Parliament loyal to the Brethac Ziggurat two days previously. The beheadings were conducted by Cokato and his bondsmen with sharpened axes. The whole act took over an hour to accomplish and, in the end, the hastily constructed wooden execution gantry was awash with blood, which dripped into the damp soil to produce a slick puddle. Telmar wat
ched with a very timid Selwin by his side. Once all of the severed head were accumulated in a large pile, the baron burned them with Rawn flame.
Cokato could still smell the stink of chard flesh even now.
The executions tarnished Telmar’s reputation only slightly with the folk outside of the city, but inside the hungry, and much beleaguered, citizens rejoiced to the change in power that these executions heralded.
Unknown to everyone except a select few, the killing of the Vallkyte politicians greatly diminished the Brethac Ziggurat, who were still a secret order. Apparently Telmar and Joaquin Ri rarely spoke of the order even after they were officially expelled from their ranks as the war progressed. Yet, the repercussions of the executions would take a few months to have any effect, so Telmar planned for war in the meantime.
Klingspur, on the other hand, moved quickly and was said to be marshalling his host somewhere in the Tarridun Mountains, so Telmar needed Joaquin Ri’s army as close as possible. He knew that the late king’s uncle would not let the baron’s coup go uncontested. The fact that Klingspur had a stronger claim to the throne than himself was not lost on Telmar, nor on any of the other nobles in the Klingspur camp.
‘Yes, my lord. Your man found Lord Joaquin,’ answered Cokato to the baron’s question. ‘He is approaching as we speak, and will be here in time for the coronation. He brings Count Talien as well.’
‘Good, good.’ Telmar studied the map and used the quill to circle cities. Cokato looked up at the wall again and frowned. He could read and write, his grandfather had taught him, but his arithmetic was not so good. However, something about the list of cities on the wall disturbed him. Each was arranged in a column, and numbered one to eleven with dates beside them. Even with his poor handle on numbers, he could still make out that a span of one hundred and fifty years separated each city name, though the bottom city, Dulan-Tiss, had no year next to it. However, if the sequence was correct then the date should be about one hundred and fifty years ago.
