Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

The sorcerer looked up at the zar. There was a curious fire in his milky blue eyes. “You must pledge,” he said.

  A smile ignited on Karthos’ face. Down the slope, his men saw it, and started cheering and whooping even before he could relate the news.

  Well-fed on goat meat, they broke camp and rode into the rising day. There was now an eagerness to the band that Karthos could feel. Sometimes a band dragged and lingered, unwilling, unfocused. But now they were fierce, and fired with a purpose. They were to pledge. Tchar had seen between the moons and licensed them. Lokas Longham and Ffornesh the Dreamer began to sing a war-song, full-voiced into the winter day.

  This was how any zar wanted his warrior-pack. Vital, willing, indifferent to danger. Karthos was forced to gallop his steed hard to keep at the head of the charging group. He laughed into the cold wind.

  They would follow him. Nothing would stand in his way. They would follow him to eternity.

  At the next valley top, they reined in. Below, across a league of gorse heathland, lay the gathering place, staining the white sky with its smudges of smoke.

  Zar Karthos raised his left hand, fingers splayed, the sign that meant, “Let us ride.”

  And down they went.

  Around the ancient lightning tree that marked the gathering place, the horse clans had assembled in great numbers. Karthos had led his band to gatherings before, but the scale of this meeting took his breath away. He had not known so many men lived upon the plate of the world.

  Perimeter fires had been set around the site, around the edges of the old circular ditch that had stood since before men had memories. Within, vast camps had sprung up. He saw the pitched standards of a score of warbands. Some he knew. That was Zar Herfil’s, that was Zar Tzagz’s, that Zar Uldin’s. Kettle drums beat. Near to the lightning tree, the war tents of the High Zar’s pavilion had been raised.

  It was war then. That much was clear. Not just the seasonal rising of the clans, the annual gathering for raids down into the bloodless South.

  The rumours and auguries had been true. Archaon had come, the deliverer, the striker-down of thrones and worlds. He had sent out his word, to transfix the hearts of the warrior bands, to make their very hairs stand up on end, to fire them for slaughter.

  When had a High Zar last come forth for a gathering? When had a High Zar commended his clans unto himself for a spring driving? Not in Karthos’ lifetime, nor in his worthy father’s age either.

  Zar Karthos felt his heartbeat rise, in time with the incessant drums. At long last, the promised age of conquest had come. The tempest of fire. The ending-of-times. The Storm of Chaos.

  All along the borderlands now, as winter slackened its bite upon the world, high zars were marshalling their clans around them like this. Enra Deathsword, Valmir Aesling, Sven Bloody Hand, Okkodai Tarsus, Zaros Bladeback, all answering the bidding of the strange and marvellous daemon-that-is-also-a-man Archaon.

  The greatest of all Archaon’s high zars, Karthos believed, was Surtha Lenk, about whom this gathering now swelled. If any warlord might break open the boundaries of the feeble “Empire” and strike down the tawdry crown of its so-called Emperor… what was given as his name now? Karl-Franz? If any might strike down his crown and dash out his brains, it would be the great and malevolent Lenk.

  Karthos’ warband rode in through the gathering place. Koros Kyr held the skull standard high. Warriors turned to watch them pass by. Kul, Kurgan, Dolgan, Hastling… all manner of men, all manner of standards. Alien faces in strange wargears watched them go past.

  “Be warned,” Odek muttered suddenly. Karthos had already seen the trouble. The banner of the bloody sword-blade on a red field. Zar Blayda’s standard.

  It was not true to say that no blood was lost between the zars. Far too much had been lost in their lingering clan-war.

  Blayda, gaunt and tall in his pitched-black plate armour, etched with the details of his many victories, strode out onto the trackway into Karthos’ path. Blayda’s sorcerer, a capering, naked fool named Ons Olker, scampered around his master’s heels.

  Karthos dismounted and tossed his reins to Bereng. He marched through the trail’s slush to face the black-armoured chieftain. Blayda drew his pallasz, the long tongue of the sword flashing in the rising sun.

  Karthos did not reciprocate, though he heard Odek slide out his sword behind him.

  “You know the law here,” Karthos said, staring at the visor slits of Blayda’s ink-black helm.

  “Do you need me to remind you?” Karthos added. “In the gathering space of the High Zar, no clan shall fight with clan.”

  Blayda lowered his sword. “You are dung-eating scum, Karthos.”

  He was being deliberately provocative. Karthos merely shrugged.

  “I will wet my blade with your gut-blood and make you a notch upon my helm,” Blayda added, pointing at a part of his barbute that was not yet marked with an incised gash.

  “Maybe. But not here,” Karthos replied.

  Blayda raised his visor far enough to spit on Karthos’ toes, then strode away, his leaping and cursing sorcerer in tow.

  Karthos looked back at his clan. He raised his left hand, fingers splayed.

  Koros Kyr planted the spike of their standard into a patch of free ground and the warband settled. They were encamped not far from the pavilions of the High Zar. Water and burning wood was brought to them by the gathering’s stewards, along with meat for cooking, wine, and grain for simmering. Karthos had Odek, who was charged with the band’s purse, pay them in decent gold.

  Tnash came to the zar, suggesting they might also buy a decent fighter from the slavelord Skarkeetah so that they might undo Zar Blayda in formal combat.

  Karthos shook his head. There were more important things afoot now.

  The men of the warband were drinking wine as their food roasted and night fell. Attended by two of his band, Zar Skolt came to their camp site. He embraced Karthos like a brother, and they drank wine for a while, having many old victories to remember.

  “Will you not fight Blayda?” asked Skolt. “He yearns for it.”

  Karthos shook his head. “No, he may wait.”

  “Besides,” said Odek. “We are to be pledged.”

  Zar Skolt sat up as if he had been stung. “Is that true? Are you pledging?”

  “The signs were good. My sorcerer has said it so. Not you?” Skolt shook his head. “My sorcerer saw no such good omens. Great Tchar, I envy you. Such an honour no warband could deny.”

  “Who else may pledge?” Karthos asked.

  Skolt shrugged. “Uldin, I know. Herfil, Kreyya and Logar. And also Blayda.”

  “Blayda?” mused Karthos. “Indeed.”

  All through the first part of the night, despite a drizzling sleet that came in from the west, slaves worked in processions to build up the bonfires around the lightning tree at the heart of the gathering place.

  Great flames leapt up, so fierce that the sleet could not douse them. The hissing of steam filled the sacred place, like unseen snakes. The glow from the fires lit the tree from below, casting a moving amber light up its bald trunk and skeletal limbs. It illuminated the iron cages and gibbets hanging from the branches: offerings, sacrifices and the cadavers of enemies.

  Gongs were struck to announce midnight and the time of pledging. Karthos went down to the ring of fire around the altar tree, where a great number of other zars and chieftains were assembling. None brought weapons to that hallowed earth. Herbs and seeds flung onto the fires filled the air with incense and heady smoke. Karthos felt his flesh sweat from the extreme heat. He saw Uldin, also Logar, and others he did not know. Blayda’s grim black form was a shadow on the far side of the fire ring.

  A hush fell. The High Zar had emerged from his pavilion, escorted by twenty white-robed warriors with horsehair crests. They carried bright lamps on long poles that bobbed like marsh fire as the procession approached.

  Surtha Lenk was a monstrous giant of a man, clad in crimson armour. Karthos shud
dered at the sight of him. Two goat-headed dwarfs scurried along at his heels. Karthos could not tell if they were children wearing goat-masks, or beastfolk enslaved to the High Zar’s power. One carried a casket of jade and gold, the other carried Lenk’s war sword. It was so large and heavy, the goat-thing was all but dragging it.

  The zars parted, so that their master could reach the fire ring. Surtha Lenk stopped. The brass visor of his horned helm appeared to regard them all, yet to Karthos there seemed to be no eyeslits cut into it.

  Lenk raised his massive arms, his huge hands outspread, cased in mail and thorny steel.

  “You are to make the pledge,” he said. It was the first time Karthos had heard the High Zar’s voice, and his guts turned to ice. It was slight and tiny, like a child’s, yet it seemed to come from all around and drown out the crackle of the fire more easily than a bellowing roar.

  “Tchar looks to you, warriors. This is holy change you undertake, beautiful to the Eye of Tzeen. Do you understand this pledge?”

  “Lord seh!” the zars called out obediently.

  One of the goat-things opened the casket and took something from it. Surtha Lenk received it and held it up for them all to see. It was a great claw of frightening dimensions, polished bone-white.

  “Look upon it,” the High Zar whispered. “The zar who brings its like back to me will be called shyi-zar, and he and his warrior band will be accorded the full honours of that title.”

  The claw was put away again in its reliquary box. Surtha Lenk took his sword then, and held it upright before himself in one hand.

  “Pledge!” he said.

  One by one, the zars came to him, and slid their bared right hands down the edge of his warblade without any show of pain. Then each one turned and let the blood drip from their sliced palms into the fire.

  Karthos did so in turn, not daring to show any pride by looking up at his master’s hooked metal visage. He watched his own blood well up, black in the firelight, and heard the drops of it sizzle in the flames.

  Dawn came, grey and sunless, with sheeting rain and a savage wind that shook the hide tents and made the great lightning tree creak and moan. Karthos stretched out his left hand, fingers splayed. The warband left the gathering place.

  They were not the first to depart. Some pledged bands, anxious to begin the task, had quit the camp before first light. Odek told his zar of the standards that were missing, Blayda’s amongst them.

  They crossed the heathlands to the west, into the driving rain, and then turned north, advancing into the haunted hills and miasmal valleys beyond. Here, the crests were granite, and the land suddenly shelved away into steep pine brakes of mist and darkness where the sun never touched, even in summer. They sighted another warband on a trail over to the west, but they were too far off to hail or identify.

  Karthos had described the claw to his men, and much debate had followed as to its nature or origin. Tnash insisted it was in fact the tusk of a doombull, but the others shouted him down. It was the talon of a predator beast, a dragon’s horn, a sliver fallen off the late moon and all other manner of things.

  The sorcerer offered the soundest council. “Let us not waste effort in fruitless searching, zar seh,” he ventured. “Let us get truth, and use it.”

  So they rode for Tehun Dhudek.

  Tehun Dhudek was a fastness in the lonely hills that many men shunned for they feared it was cursed. But Ygdran Ygra, who knew more of the world’s secrets than most men, had been there himself, and scoffed at the common rumours. “A clan of sorcerers dwells there,” he informed the warband, “and they have in them great powers of divination. If we please them with our offerings, they will tell us the true nature of the claw, and where we may find it.”

  “But the curse…?” Aulkor said.

  “Just stories spread by men who have been there to question the oracle and not liked the truth they have learned. To some men, the truth is a curse.”

  Karthos hoped that would not be so for them.

  That part of the hills was indeed lonely. The track wound up through the dismal cliffs of splintered granite, and along deep-cut ravines and narrow gorges. Their only company was a few bird flocks in the pale sky.

  “Someone’s been this way,” Odek said. There was horse dung on the scree of the trail, and it was not more than a day old. “A lone rider?”

  “No, zar seh. Look there, the soil of more than one animal. A warband, perhaps?”

  “One with the same notion as us?”

  They rode on a little way further, to the mouth of the sloping gorge that the sorcerer said led right to the fastness itself.

  Odek looked round at Karthos sharply, but the zar had heard it too. Hooves, the shouts of men, carried down the gorge by the chill wind. And there, amongst it, the clash of blades.

  Karthos drew his pallasz. Gripping it made pain flare in his hand, for though Ygdran Ygra had dressed his pledge-wound, his palm still throbbed.

  His men needed no orders. Their weapons came out. Pallasz mostly: long, straight-bladed cleaver-swords. Lokas Longham had a horse-spear, and Gwul Gehar the waraxe he favoured. Zbetz Red-fletch and Aulkmar took out their recurve horse-bows and slipped on the bone rings of their thumb-guards.

  Karthos raised his left hand, fingers splayed.

  At a firm gallop, Karthos led the way up the track and into Tehun Dhudek. The mouth of the ravine formed a gateway in a high ring-wall of dry stone construction that surrounded a flagged courtyard built upon a shelf in the cliff. The three longhouses of the fastness, along with an ancient and ragged tower, overlooked the courtyard from a promontory shelf, with stone steps running down to the floor of the yard itself.

  Murder was underway here. Karthos counted at least nine Dolgan riders assaulting the place, hacking down the defenders with their hooked swords and adzes. The defenders were not warriors. They were shaman, acolytes and slaves, armed with poles and staves. The bodies of many, leaking blood, lay scattered around the gate-mouth and across the courtyard. A number of riderless horses milled around the yard.

  “Bereng!” Karthos thundered, and the hornblower at his left side unloosed a mighty blast upon his carnyx that howled around the walled yard like a boom of echoing thunder.

  The Dolgan warriors turned, amazed, enraged. Karthos saw their chieftain, a bearded and maned brute with arms wholly covered in warrior rings. Karthos did not know his name, or the name of his warband, for Kurgan and Dolgan were often strangers if not bitter foes except at times of gathering, but he knew the man’s face. He had been at the fire-ring at midnight, pledging to the High Zar.

  The Dolgans swept around to meet the Kurgan charge, kicking and slashing the fastness’ defenders out of their way.

  “Into them!” Karthos yelled.

  The packs of riders met. Karthos’ band had the advantage of surprise and momentum. Reins clamped between their teeth, Zbetz and Aulkmar loosed their first arrows. The shafts went buzzing across the walled yard. Aulkmar’s struck a Dolgan through the chest and slammed him off his saddle. Zbetz sent another raider to his doom, a red-feathered arrow through his side.

  Lokas Longham’s spear shattered a Dolgan shield and transfixed the warrior holding it so that he was torn up out of his seat and off his horse. The spear went with him, wedged through his body, and Lokas let it go, reaching over to sweep his saddle-sword out of its long, leather scabbard as the next Dolgan flew at him.

  Odek crossed blades with a particularly large Dolgan warrior, and they ripped their swords at one another, their terrified horses circling and stamping. Tnash He-Wolf felled one man cleanly, his pallasz windmilling, and then turned his steed’s head hard to engage another.

  Karthos, with Gwul Gehar at his right hand, went for the chieftain, but he had two heavy warriors in ringmail and over-plate as body guards. Their wild eyes flashed under the slits of their tusked helmets. They had swords and short, stabbing spears.

  Karthos clashed with one, driving his pallasz at the Dolgan’s badly timed sword s
wing, but the man’s left hand came around to jab the stabbing spear at the Kurgan zar. Its iron tip glanced painfully off the banding of warrior rings around Karthos’ right arm. Karthos, struggling to restrain his frantic horse with the power of his left arm, hacked backwards, and succeeded in breaking the spear haft and severing the thumb from the hand grasping it.

  The Dolgan squealed, his maimed hand coming up in dismay, blood squirting from the wound. Better balanced in the saddle now, Karthos struck again, and the man barely got his sword up to block the blade.

  From the corner of his eye, Karthos saw that the chieftain was coming for him too now, sword out, moving in from the left flank. Gwul was engaged with the other bodyguard, fighting the awkward, laboured rally that accompanied a duel of sword against axe.

  Karthos snarled. He could not break from the bodyguard because the man, due to the pain and outrage of his hand wound, was hacking with a berserk frenzy. The zar could not disengage his blade in time to fend off the chieftain’s attack.

  The only option left was to avoid it. Karthos threw himself out of his saddle, crashing head-on into the injured bodyguard and tipping him and his horse right over. Men and horse sprawled on the cold flagstones of the yard, winded and stunned. Karthos heard Odagidor cry out his name, fearing his zar had fallen to a blade wound.

  Wrestling, Karthos managed to pull free of the frantic bodyguard and regain his feet. The bodyguard had lost his sword, and clawed at Karthos’ legs, painting him with crimson blood from his ruined hand. Karthos kicked him away and turned just in time to meet the downstroke of the bellowing Dolgan chief.

  The Dolgan’s hooked broadsword resounded off Karthos’ pallasz with jarring force. The chieftain’s bulky horse backed off a pace or two in alarm, and then came in again, and Karthos was forced to leap back to avoid the whistling blade. He was almost slammed off his feet by the tackling charge of the wounded bodyguard, who attacking him, screaming, with a bear-hug. Karthos’ left hand was free, so he smacked it round and caught the bodyguard across the face with the iron rings of his warrior bands, breaking the enemy’s nose in a spatter of blood. The Dolgan let go. Karthos grabbed him as he staggered, blinded by blood, and pulled him close as a shield, left arm locked around his throat.