SHYI-ZAR

Dan Abnett

 

 

As High Zar Surtha Lenk gathers his Kurgan horde for their advance into south, the zars of his warbands compete with one another to gain the honoured and most prestigious rank of Shyi-Zar.

 

It was dawn in late winter. The sky was a blur of mauve darkness, broken in the east by a rind of approaching daylight, and the twin moons, like discs of fire-lit bone, were sinking to their setting places. A dawn like any other, thought Karthos, a cold and unforgiving sunrise, but his sorcerer said otherwise. This was an auspicious daybreak. A special time. A time that heralded the future.

Dutifully then, Karthos had woken the men early, kicking away their furs and growling their names. Sullen, they rose, and saw to the fire, which had sunk down to glowing embers in the last part of the night. Karthos took a swig of spirits to warm his belly. The warrior rings around his broad arms were as cold as ice upon his skin.

“What is he doing?” asked Odek. The sorcerer was now on the headland overlooking the camp, walking in slow circles around the goat he had brought with them from Kherdheg, murmuring words they couldn’t hear. The goat, its headrope staked to the ground, was bleating.

“He’s walking around that goat,” Karthos said. “And talking to it.”

Odek grinned. “With these eyes of mine, I see that much,” he said. He had ridden with the zar for nine seasons, and it was as much Karthos’ phlegmatic humour and unfailing dryness that kept him loyal as it was the zar’s potency in battle. He knew many Kurgan who followed their zars out of fear and duty, but he followed his out of respect and kinship. It was a bond that got as close to friendship as it was possible to get in the blighted North.

“I wondered… why?”

“I know you did,” nodded Karthos.

“So… why?”

Zar Karthos turned to his second-in-command. “The sorcerer tells me this is a special time. Moonset.”

“The moons set every day.”

“Indeed. But this is a day amongst days. One moon sets, then the sun itself rises before the second moon can fall to its rest behind the plate of the world.”

“This he says?”

“This he says, and I doubt him not. It makes this time sacred. The light of the sun, he tells me, lets him see between the moons on this rare day. There are answers to be read there.”

“Including the answer that we want?”

“That,” replied the zar, “is what I hope.”

The roused men had gathered by then, all ten of them. Koros Kyr, the standard bearer; Bereng, the horn-blower; Tnash He-Wolf; Odagidor; Lokas Longham; Aulkor; his brother Aulkmar; Gwul Gehar; Zbetz Red-fletch and Ffornesh the Dreamer. Furs and cloaks about their wide shoulders, they stood by the warmth of the spitting fire and watched the sorcerer at his rite.

One moon had set, its disc turning pale ivory then smoked silver as it slid down into the haze until it was out of sight. Then a band of flame lit the horizon, and the sun rose, heavy and copper, as if its furnaces had not yet been stoked up.

All of the warband knew the significance. This was Tchar’s time. A time of change.

From the headland, the remaining moon behind his head like a halo, the sorcerer called to Karthos, and the zar hurried up the slope.

The sorcerer was called Ygdran Ygra. He was the oldest man Karthos had ever known, thin-limbed and spidery, his skin lined with age. He had been sorcerer to Karthos’ father when Karthos’ father had been zar.

“Take the blade,” Ygdran Ygra told Karthos. The proffered knife was a sharpened curve of moonstone instead of the sorcerer’s usual silver dagger.

“Where must I strike?” asked Karthos. The goat bleated again, more shrill now.

Ygdran Ygra pinched at his own slack dewlap, and for a moment the zar thought he was being asked to butcher his sorcerer.

“The throat, zar, the throat,” the sorcerer instructed.

Karthos did as he was told. The goat ceased its noise. Ygdran Ygra had powdered the grass with chalk, and when the hot blood came out, steaming in the cold air, it ran and blotted amongst the white stalks.

“Good, good,” the sorcerer said, taking the slick blade back. He bent to read.

“Well?”

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 shuddered 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 swing, 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.

The chieftain hacked again and disembowelled his own man. Karthos let the ruptured body topple away and ran across the flagstones to retrieve his horse.

Bereng’s horn blew again. A few paces short of his twitchy steed, Karthos looked round. Nearly a dozen more Dolgan warriors were pouring down the steps on foot from the longhouses. That explained the riderless horses.

Karthos ran to meet them. Ffornash and Aulkor leapt from their horses to join with him. Odagidor remained in his saddle and came in close to the steps, scattering the foot soldiers with his hooves. There was a hissing sound, and one of the Dolgans coming down the steps sprawled backwards with a red-feathered arrow in his brow.

Karthos reached the lower steps, and swung his pallasz at the nearest Dolgan. This warrior had a long-hafted adze, and drove it down at the zar like a woodsman with a timber axe. Karthos side-stepped, and the man overbalanced from his desperate strike. Karthos’ pallasz opened him from the hip to the armpit and scattered broken links of ringmail across the flagstones. The man fell onto the courtyard floor with bone-cracking force.

Ffornash the Dreamer had famed skill with the long-blade. He was a tall, lithe man who shunned armour because it slowed his limbs.

Both fists around his sword grip, he danced up the steps, ducking an axe and sidestepping a stabbing spear, and sliced his silver sword back and forth, ripping through a neck and opening a Dolgan belly.

Aulkor broke a Dolgan sword against his heavy pallasz, and cut the man through to the breastbone with a side swing. But his blade was wedged. He tried to wrench it free as another Dolgan came down at him with an adze. Karthos flew forward with a howl, and ran the adze-wielder through before his blow could land. The Dolgan thumped away down the steps, his adze spinning free into the air as the dead hands released it.

“My thanks, zar seh,” Aulkor gasped, extracting his bloody sword at last.

Karthos did not reply. The fight was far from done. Now Odek, Odagidor and Gwul Gehar had joined them on foot, battling up the steps into the thick of the Dolgan pack. Another enemy fell and rolled heavily down the stone risers, hit by one of Aulkmar’s arrows this time. The steps themselves had become slippery with blood. Dying men clawed at their ankles and shins. Karthos broke a shield away and then cut through the haft of an adze, then a forearm, then a throat. He was changing lives into death. Tchar would approve.

Fighting clear, he reached the top of the staircase. The only Dolgans there were corpses, transfixed by red and grey feathered arrows. He turned and looked back, in time to see the act that finished the fight.

Koros Kyr, still holding the warband’s standard high, rode in hard and killed a Dolgan horseman with a wide blow of his pallasz. Then he reined hard around and removed the head of the Dolgan chief. It was a superb cut, all the power of the standard bearer’s arm behind it. The brute’s helmed head flew off in a mist of blood, and bounced and rolled like a cannonball on the flags. His horse took off, and carried the headless corpse out through the gate and away down the ravine.

Broken, the remaining Dolgans tried to flee, but there were Kurgan swords all around them. Gwul Gehar’s waraxe finished two more. The few that made it to the gateway, wailing and screaming, were dropped hard by Zbetz and Aulkmar, who sat astride their tight-circling horses, loosing arrow after arrow.

Zar Karthos, spattered head to toe in gore, lowered his dripping pallasz and smiled. They had destroyed the Dolgan warband, and with no loss to themselves.

Tchar was evidently with them.

 

The sorcerer clan of Tehun Dhudek had numbered sixteen, an extended family of sons and fathers and uncles. A further twenty acolytes had dwelt within the high stone walls, along with some thirty slaves and womenfolk. Now only thirty lives remained all told, most of them the women, who had been hidden in the fastness caves when the raid began. The Dolgans had sought to learn the truths of the talon from the oracle by force of arms.

Ygdran Ygra had been right. The truth was sometimes a curse, for the Dolgans had found only death at Tehun Dhudek.

The survivors of the fastness clan regarded Karthos’ warband with some wariness, fearing that they had exchanged one murdering pack for another. With his sorcerer, Karthos went to meet with the most senior of the surviving hetmen.

“We came to make fair offering in return for answers,” he told the old man squarely. “We would not have resorted to violence. You need not fear us now.”

The old hetman sat on a clammy stone chair in the draughty hall of one of the longhouses. He had insisted on wearing a golden mask so that the Kurgan would not see his grief.

“What would you have given us, zar, as an offering?” one of his younger acolytes asked. This young man had a bandaged stump where his right hand had been struck off by the Dolgans. He clutched it against his chest like a newborn babe.

“Gold, fine stones from my war chest, salt-meat and wine. Whatever else pleased you that I could provide,” Karthos said.

“But now we have given you more than that,” said Ygdran Ygra. “By force of arms and the sweat of toil, we have given you salvation from the Dolgans. What is that worth?”

 

Answers, it seemed. For two nights, Karthos’ sorcerer was shut away in the furthest longhouse, probing the secrets of the clan’s oracle. A great storm came up during that time, and hammered upon the doors and shutters. The warband sheltered in the first longhouse, their food and drink provided by the grateful clansfolk. The storm’s rain put out the pyre of Dolgan bodies heaped in the yard before they were even half burned.

 

The storm cleared. A pale yellow light filled the sky above the fastness peaks. The mountain air was alive with the gurgle of water draining and running down the cliffs into the valleys far below.

Ygdran Ygra came out of seclusion, tired and hungry. He refused to speak until he had eaten a platter of pigs’ feet and drunk some watered ale besides. Karthos had never seen him so exhausted. For the first time, he looked his years, haggard and worn out.

“It will be quite a thing to do,” he said at last, his voice soft. He dabbed shiny spots of pig grease off his chin with a kerchief.

“How so?” Karthos asked, unplugging a wine flask and pouring himself a beakerful.

“I know where it is and what it is,” Ygdran Ygra replied. “But now finding it is not the burden. Killing it is.” He shook his old head and tut-tutted. “Even your father, Kelim Karthos, he who was zar before you, even he would have shrunk from this task.”

“Just tell me of it,” Karthos said.

“A heralder,” said the old sorcerer. “Tchar wants us to take a heralder.”

 

Karthos feared that if he told the men, they would revolt and ride away. But they begged to know, and he could not keep it from them. So he sighed, sat down amongst them in the draughty longhouse, and blurted it out.

For a long moment, there was no sound except the moaning of the wind and no movement except the drift of the sunlight on the floor as clouds passed across the sky.

Then Ffornash the Dreamer let slip a low, sad chuckle, and Gwul Gehar spat in the hearth, and the brothers Aulkor and Aulkmar looked at one another and shuddered.

“So, not a doombull then?” asked Tnash He-Wolf.

Koros Kyr slapped him for his question, and the warband broke into laughter.

“You will ride with me?” Karthos asked.

“We are pledged, zar seh,” said Odek simply. “Riding with you is what we do.”

 

It took four days to reach the Wastes. Four days’ hard ride, and all of them fatigued and aching from the battle that, they were sure, only Tchar’s will had seen them win so thoroughly. Odagidor suspected that Tchar had wanted them to crush the Dolgans because they were the ones who were destined to meet the pledge and take the shyi honour.

But Bereng muttered that they had been spared and granted victory only to give the heralder more blood to spill.

None of them had ever seen a heralder, except for Zbetz Red-fletch, who had been a child when one savaged his home village. He remembered little of it, except its ravening beak that had rent his father in two. He had been a young child. It had haunted his dreams ever since.

Lokas Longham said he thought he might once have seen one, circling in the heavens, high up, above Zamak Spayenya, many years before, when he had been riding with the warband of Zar Shevras. An eagle, the others said.

“With the body of a lion?” he replied.

“How could you tell if it was so far away?” asked Odagidor.

“Maybe it was an eagle,” Lokas said resignedly.

 

The Wastes were cold and empty. Nothing living seemed to grow or thrive there. At all sides, the dry plains rolled away to the limits of the world, broken only by ridges of crusted rock and scattered boulders. The soil was as dry as dust, as white as a sorcerer’s sacrificial chalk. The sky was dark, washed purple by the poisoned light. Thunder rumbled throughout the day, and around the hem of the horizon, slashes of lightning grazed the air and bit into the earth like bright and slender fangs.

The air smelled of decay. Wailing sounds echoed over the desolation, from no obvious source. Amongst the white dust, every few miles, gnawed bones protruded. Horse, man, man-beast.

 

On the fifth day out from Tehun Dhudek, Ygdran Ygra rose in his saddle and pointed.

“There! As the insight was given to me. An outfall of rock, spiked in three places, like the front part of a crown. Before it, a steep slope of rocks and stones. In the sky of the west, a crescent of clouds. This is the place.”

Karthos felt fear then, the turning of a long-standing worry into true fear. He sensed it settle upon his men too.

He drew a deep breath and raised his left hand out, fingers splayed.

 

They rode up into the flinty slope of stones. All of them carried long lances now, fashioned from the cold forests they had passed through to reach the open wastes. Swords would not be enough to do this deed.

According to Ygdran Ygra—and the lore of the Northlands—a heralder was a most feral beast, twisted from nature and combined by the mutable touch of Tchar into a chimera. It was in part a lion, but more massive than even the greatest hunting cats of the Taiga, but its head was that of an eagle or vicious prey bird, hugely beaked. It possessed wings. In the oldest of times, such animals had been plentiful and common, plaguing the realms of man, but they had faded away into the remote corners of the world. Some said the wizards and lords of the Empire had such creatures tamed as war-steeds.

They were called heralders, because their appearance was said to herald great events and moments of history. Ygdran Ygra feared the gods were playing with them. He had read the signs that they should pledge at a special dawn, a heralding moment. It was as if their path had been set from the start. Their doom too, perhaps.

In the language of the tribes, these rare beasts were called ghur-phaon, the essence of all beasts.

The warband moved up through the litter of rock, their horses’ hooves causing stones to slip and patter away down the jumbled slope. Thunder rolled, distantly. There was an increased stench of death in the air, as if meat rotted close by. Karthos saw the rocks were splashed with great deposits of white dung, like birdlime, but far more prodigious. “Caves,” said Odek.

His second-in-command was pointing to dark holes in the cliff face above them. Roosts indeed. This place felt like a lair.

Karthos lowered his lance and was about to call back to the band when a shrill cry cut the world apart. It was piercing, as loud as if an eagle had been perched upon his shoulder.

The ghur-phaon showed itself.

It had scented them, located them with its beady eyes perhaps. It came out of one of the deep caves and spread its fearful wings. They were mottled black and white, the lead feathers as long as a horse’s back. It took to the air.

Zbetz Red-fletch screamed despite himself, his childhood horrors made flesh. All the horses reared, terrified, smelling the predator coming down upon them. Gwul Gehar was thrown down onto the stones, Lokas too, so hard his neck snapped like a twig. Aulkor’s horse broke and ran, despite his best efforts to control it, and carried him away down the long scree slope.

“In Tchar’s name…” Karthos heard Odek stammer.

The beast was huge. Its body massed the weight of six horses at least. It leapt into the air on lithe feline back limbs, its hide a mangy grey. A tail the length of the slave master’s finest gang-lash whipped out behind it.

Karthos couldn’t decide what was most terrifying: the width of the massive, beating wings or the horror of the ghur-phaon’s foreparts. Its head, massive and distended, disproportionate to the limber body behind it, was the head of a vulture: a massive ivory beak like an ogre’s waraxe, at the crest of which tiny, wild eyes gleamed. The beak clacked like swords striking together, and he saw a glimpse of a thin white tongue.

Around the head and back along the throat, the monster was fletched in black and white down, which became quite shaggy around its breast. Its forelimbs were not the nimble things of a cat. They were scaled bird’s feet, huge and armoured in silver. Each of the three scale-encrusted toes on the forelimbs sported a long claw.

Just like the talon Karthos had seen the High Zar lift out of his box.

It came down upon them, keening into the dark sky, beak opened to rake them apart.

Zbetz Red-fletch fired off two arrows before it came upon them, but his darts seemed like tiny red flecks amongst its feathered breast. Aulkmar loosed one arrow of his own before his horse threw him. He broke his left forearm on the stones as he landed.

Odek, Ffornash and Bereng hurled their lances at it. All bounced off.

The creature landed amongst them, crashing out a blizzard of loose stones and chips in all directions. Koros Kyr and his horse were spilled over, and Tnash too, his horse ripped open by the ghur-phaon’s talons. It lunged at Gwul Gehar’s horse and bit it in two with a savage slash of its monstrous beak. The slope reeked of hot blood.

Odagidor charged into the side of it, the tip of his lance digging deep. It recoiled and lashed out. Odagidor’s horse lost its head from the muzzle to the eyes and toppled. Odagidor had his spear shattered and his left arm removed at the elbow. Gwul tried to drag him clear, both of them sprayed with the blood pumping from Odagidor’s stump.

Odek tried to recover his spear, but the vast, flapping wings smashed him over. Zbetz fired an arrow that struck the ghur-phaon in the throat. Enraged, it surged forward across the loose stones and seized Zbetz by the right hand and forearm, lifting him off his horse and shaking him in its beak. Screaming in pain, Zbetz flew through the air, his arm shredded.

Karthos raised his lance and spurred his horse on, keeping the tip of his weapon low. The monster’s claws had just ripped Aulkor in half at the waist.

Karthos plunged the lance into the beast’s upper body from the side, pushing it in with all the force he could muster. The ghur-phaon started to bleat and wail, its body thrashing. It almost tore the lance out of Karthos’ hands.

Odek ran to him, and Tnash and Koros Kyr, and they all put their muscles into it, grabbing the shaft and pushing it home.

The ghur-phaon screamed.

“Hold it here!” Karthos yelled, and let go of the lance. He drew his pallasz and ran towards the snapping head of the monster. Double-handed, above his head, he swung the sword down and cut wide its neck, casting scads of blood down into the air. Blood engulfed him like a mountain torrent.

He sank to his knees.

“Zar seh… it’s dead,” Odek said.

Karthos nodded, and went to one of the outstretched forepaws. With a cry, he struck at it, and then raised the bloody claw in his hand.

 

Aulkor, Odagidor, Zbetz and Lokas were dead. Their mangled and twisted bodies were bound up and thrown across the backs of riderless horses. Almost every warrior was bruised and hurt. Aulkmar’s arm was shattered, but he complained only for his dead brother.

 

* * *

 

The moons were setting. They rode back along the trackway towards the gathering place. Flies buzzed around the dead strung from their spare horses.

Twenty-strong, Zar Blayda’s warband rode out into their path. Their swords were drawn.

Karthos simply raised the talon in his hand. Dried blood clotted its thickness.

“Want to try for it?” he hissed.

Blayda turned his band back and rode away.

 

The ring fire around the tree was lit. The bands had gathered.

Karthos led his warband up to the pavilion to claim his honour. Drums beat all around them.

“Have you fulfilled the deed?” Surtha Lenk said as he emerged from his tent.

Karthos showed the High Zar the talon.

“You know what this means?”

“It means that my warband and I have done what is necessary. We have made your pledge. We must be granted with the honour of shyi-zar.”

“Shyi-zar. Death zar. You understand what it is I want from you?”

“Yes, lord seh. You ride to war. Should you fall there, you need the best warriors to ride ahead of you into the afterworld, to prepare your place and guard you when you arrive. This is the duty of the shyi-zar. This honour amongst honours I claim for my warband.”

Surtha Lenk nodded.

“Thank you. Ride on to battle, Shyi-zar Karthos,” he said. And with the ghur-phaon talon, he cut Karthos’ throat, and Odek’s, and those of all the others, every single soul of them willing.

 

Slaves and sorcerers banked the ring fires up until the lightning tree was awash with firelight. Slaughtered, gutted and stuffed, the warsteeds were set upon poles, facing east, and the riders of the warband placed upon them, similarly supported.

They had achieved the highest honour, the duty of preparing the way for their High Zar in the afterworld.

Karthos, Odek, Koros Kyr with his standard, Bereng with his carnyx, Tnash, Odagidor and the rest of them.

They would ride into eternity and make it ready.

Karthos’ left arm was splinted up on a pole. Raised, outstretched.

Fingers splayed.