12. Children of My Father

Hormud heard a gabble of voices, the whisper as his words were translated, and Ostromo’s pleading before the bear throne. He ignored it all, kept his eyes focused above Aosoka’s head, until one of the red guards returned with such a whip as he demanded. The spear points ringed him in and Hormud was marched away again through the perfumed court where the priest of ears laughed his senseless laughter beside the pyramid, then through the fur hung antechamber and out into the broad avenue before the palace. Despite his efforts his feet stumbled where there was nothing to trip him, and the hand which he forced to grip the whip almost lost its hold a dozen times. Beside him, Ostromo scuttled and danced ahead to peer up into the cracked and bloodied darkness that was Hormud’s face. His voice was a constant thin complaint.

“You do not trust me, Hormud, yet I have done what is necessary. Had I not ordered you bound they would have killed you where you lay, stricken on the road by the magic of the Tinsunchi. Had I not spoken the language of their masters, they would not have obeyed even me. So, master, you have me to thank for this chance your magic will surely seize.”

“So you believe in my magic.”

“Have I not linked my fate with yours?”

Hormud snorted. “Or the throne ordered it against your will. Best for him that he doesn’t swallow that ruby.” Hormud’s gaze ranged the throngs of the avenue and the eyes of its people were bright and coquettish upon him. Overhead, the sun bore down on them all, and the pricks of spears turned Hormud in through a columned facade and down a flight of stone stairs so that he confronted a narrow door of bronze. At his side Ostromo yelped in Tinsunchi.

Leaning in close and low, the wizard said “I have gained you some moments for your spells, master, weave them strongly or we both will die.”

Hormud grunted and took the whip in both of his awkward hands, and felt his blunt fingers without power.

“Tie this about my wrist with the knot I will teach you. As you love you worthless life make it strong. Then, in the other end, but close to that knot, make a loop as the horsemen do. I shall weave my own spells—” He threw back his head and begun to roar out in a great voice, a mocking song once used to taunt his people:

“On Chorazin Rock lives the coward,

Whose cowardly lord teaches them

“Do not hesitate, pull off quickly,

While their decedents riddle the ground——”

The spear guards eyed him suspiciously and made curious signs with their hands as they warded off his spells. His voice deepened and he chanted on, pausing only to admonish Ostromo.

“Tighter or the Heaven-Bear will bite you off at the shin.”

Hormud took the loop in the hand to which it was bound. It was a small loop, not big enough to fit around a man’s head, and Ostromo stared at it with reverent eyes.

“I shall weave more spells for you, master, while you fight,” he said softly, still looking at the knot. “Together, our might of magic—”

Hormud snorted, shook the leather loop above his head and picked up his chant, now in the language of the southern cities, letting the chirruping lilt further confound his guards.

“See me, you men of my father. See Hormud fight your battle for you. See him crush the Heaven Bear as only a true horse son can. See him shake the roots of the bear throne.”

He finished and spat upon the earth. “I am ready”.

Instantly, above him, trumpets blared and the narrow door before him swung wide— Hormud stalked through with Ostromo scuttling at his side, mumbling his charms, but keeping close. Inside the arena Hormud halted and heard the roar of a myriad voices beat down upon him, and his beard thrust fiercely. How many times in far lands had he heard the roar that greeted the gladiators? Yet he stared not up at the sea of waiting faces, but swiftly eyed the narrow circuit of the arena. It was no more than a pit among banked seats, but the barriers were high and for this moment he was alone with the wizard-priest beside him. Almost, he had reached out to wring that wry, treacherous neck, but Ostromo began to scrawl cabalistic figures in the sand and Hormud shrugged and went on in springing strides, feeling the good stretch and pull of muscles in his thighs— and stumbling with his wooden feet. He cursed, paused on braced legs, to press his forearm against the amulet about his throat.

“Now, Father,” said Hormud reasonably, “I know that my vow lacks fulfilment. A hundred thousands to bow before you, I promised, if needs be I must slit all their throats to bring them to reason. Fifty thousands I gave you at Turghol, and here, Father, are another fifty thousand. But they will be stubborn, you understand, and unless I conquer this Heaven-Bear they send against me, these idolators will never see the light of reason.” He grinned and his dry lips cracked with fresh blood as he smiled. “So, Father, if you want a kingdom that will praise your name carved out of this heathen land, lend a little help now.”

Hormud rolled his shoulders and his arms swung at his sides, one with the leather thong knotted hard about his forearm and carrying the loop, his other flexing with slow tension. A murmur rose from the banked throng above and he saw that a bronze door had swung open and through it, ponderously, shuffled the very grandfather of bears. Though massive, his sides were gaunt, his small eyes vicious with hunger and, when he saw Hormud, he reared on his hind legs and so towered above the barbarian’s head, letting him see the great girth of the beast’s chest, the power of the short, massive forelegs with their sabre claws.

Hormud delayed a moment there in the middle of the arena. “As you see Father.”

He looked down at the loop of woven leather on his wrist and then at the bear across the arena. Slowly then, on his stumbling feet, he marched toward the bear that sat on its haunches like a man, fanning the air with his paws to suck in the scent of this man that came towards him so boldly. And the bear uttered a roar that drowned all other sound.

The barbarian did not waver in his forward stride. He heard the thin chanting of Ostromo’s spells, louder since the murmur of the spectators above him had ceased, replaced with the breathless blood-hungry wait. Eyes never shifting from the bear, now mere feet away, Hormud gathered his strength as a man might suck in a great breath and leaped. With a shout that rivalled that of the beast he hurled himself squarely into the embrace of the great Heaven-Bear.

11. Aosoka

They dragged Hormud though a hall draped in the same patterned cloth of the city, and came to a courtyard that was cool beneath the high reach of green trees and the spray of perfumed fountains. In its midst was a small white pyramid and from it mounted a slim pillar with a golden ladder, on top of which was a light with all the blinding agony of the sun. He was forced to turn away and instead rest his eyes upon a man in a long scarlet robe who knelt over a small fire burning on the step of the pyramid. Attached to the mans head were huge, tufted fans, which gave the impressions of ears. The man coughed and laughed by turn but there was no mirth or humanity there.

“Surely they mean those ears for an ass.”

No one answered him, but the red warriors shuffled uneasily as if expecting something for a long moment. When this moment did not come, and the strange man ignored Hormuds remark, they quickly took up the lance once more and continued to drag him, causing him to clench his eyes at the wet pain of his raw back. They left the courtyard and, through high bronze doors, entered a hall where the drapes were a gauze of gold. His captors now alternatively crawled flat on their stomachs or paused to bump their heads with a dull thud against the stone, dragging Hormud now flat along the floor, feet first. And thus he came before the throne of the Heaven-Bear.

The man who sat upon it was obscenely fat with painted red lips and black grease about his eyes, he toyed with his hair, hung in long, oiled ringlets falling about his shoulders. He wore a curious smile as he looked up to see the injured Hormud, as if expectant. And following his gaze, turning from beating his face upon the floor, was Ostromo. Hormud sent his hoarse laughter upward towards the golden beams of the ceiling.

“Not even the marble can beat brains into your skull.”

A shout of anger burst from the guards about the bear throne, their shields clashed against golden armour and they started forward with spear points flicking out, but the man on the throne lifted a ringed hand, clattering like some shamans chimes, and the guards fell back. Hormud tried to spit in their direction but it came out as nothing but a dry hiss. He felt the dull touch of metal against his swollen hands and feet before they fell limply to the ground, the eager blood pressing into them was agony beyond bearing. His lips shrank back from grinding teeth and he bent his stiff knees and drove his body to lift itself upon them. With pain wracked fingers he rolled onto the bend of his his elbow the lance that had carried him so long. He took the butt in the grip of his two elbows and by that crutch, he began to lift himself, hands flapping uselessly. The flat broad muscles quivered on his shoulders and the cords of his neck gouged out hollows in the flesh while darkness wheeled and the throne room blotted out but slowly he brought himself upward, forcing his limp feet under him while his wounds burst with the effort leaving dark bloody smears on the white marble. Slowly, while his elbows held their grip upon the lance, the bowed power of his shoulders straightened. His limp head lifted, ragged but dauntless, and put his eyes directly upon the king.

Hormud let his crutch clatter to the floor and laughed. Though twisted and broken, his voice carried mockery, “Come, vast one, pass judgement on your simple subject.”

A shivering moan lifted from the guards, they understood his defiance but not his words. Ostromo twisted his face from its place against the marble so he could see the barbarian to make grimaces of pleading silence. The Heaven Bear twirled his thick fingers through his oiled hair, gently touching the circlet around his head, working his fingers along to touch the giant red ruby serving as its centre piece, carved in the likeness of an upright bear.

Silence fell as the ruby was plucked free, so that all the was left was the sound of Hormud’s breathing, too heavy and wheezing, and the distant tinkling music and a womans voice in a language he did not understand. The air was sweet with incense, warm and sickly. The king nodded gently and his eyes went lingeringly over the thews of Hormud’s now sagging body and he clapped his hands tightly together.

Behind the throne the curtains of golden gauze swayed and three creatures appeared. The first was all black, so much as to be a hole in space, with the head of a bear, stars glinting distantly in his unfathomable night. The second had the head of a snake and his robe was a crystal green in whose depths a black smoke swirled. But the third wore scarlet, and was clearly a man, though his face was obscured by a head dress of vast golden ears that shone with a blinding light.

At their entrance, one of the guards prodded the kneeling Ostromo with his spear point and the little wizard began to babble feverishly in the tongue that Hormud did not understand, except that the often repeated sound presently told him that the king was Aosoka. When Ostromo fell silent, Aosoka lifted the fillet from his brow and put the gleaming ruby into his mouth and pronounced judgement in a lisping voice. Ostromo knocked his head three times upon the floor and faced Hormud with triumph baring his rotted teeth.

“Know, slave,” he said, “that because of tyour boasting, and because Aosoka is the all merciful and all knowing, the compassionate—”

“Your tongue is too long”, Hormud said softly, “presently I shall shorten it.”

Ostromo’s face twitched. “Get of wind devils,” he spat, “You have won through me, your friend even in this hour, a chance for your life! You will match your strength with the Heaven Bear— but without weapons.”

Hormud looked down at his swollen, useless wrists, at the oozing ankles and at knees that he kept from quivering only with a will greater than his strength.

“Why, surely my friend. Why, surely. Lead me to this Heavan Bear of yours and I will shake the throne on which Aosoka sits so that he topples from it and bruises his fat body. I ask only this, friend, that you should enter with me. I will need your mighty magics.”

Ostromo’s yellow skin turned ivory and his voice became a whine in his throat. “Already, Hormud, master, Aosoka has ordered this thing. I will work my small spells. One more thing I have gained you, you need not meet the monster until-”

Cymbals clanged and from the walls horns wailed dimly while Ostromo shivered and cast his eyes down. “That, master, is the Hour of the Dog. In one hour, when the trumpets sound again-”

Hormud’s great shaggy head was thrust forward and his shoulders arched. He looked down at his hands, of which his utmost will contrived merely to crook the fingers a little. Soon they would stiffen and the hours of torture would drain his racked body.

“It is too long,” he said, his hand before his face extending and contracting, “My magic wants but short space and needs one thing for its working. Find me a braided whip with a tip that has often tasted the flesh of these red jackals about me, and at once will conquer this Heavan Bear. I have spoken.” He folded his arms to hide the growing tremors. “See to it, slave.”

He stood on braced legs, with a proud head tipped back so that his eyes lifted above Aosoka on his golden throne, and hummed through his nose in the tuneless drone of his mothers.

10. A City on the Fulgren Sea

The moon was pale and the stars were gone. He had slept and it was almost dawn. At last the shuffle of tired feet sounded more closely in his ears as they now marched on a road, stone and all, raised above the devil grass to the height of a tall man. Ahead he could see the shimmer of white walls in the wet morning heat. The challenge of a guard, the sounds of people living busy lives, shadows of buildings and the mocking laughter of children. Short buildings with rich cloth hanging from every window and streaming between houses to form a squat, shaded corridor for thew procession to march under. A tall man could reach up and touch the patterns on the silken roof as no building stood higher than two men. Hormud grinned his sour approval, this was why no one talked of a city on the Fulgren Sea.

The paved street ended and his captor’s boots lifted clouds of dust that tasted of cattle as the houses were left behind. They passed through another walled gate and Hormud was in a city of tents. Skins of animals formed roofs and walls, hides of horses and wolfs, and there was one larger than the rest and it was covered with the rich furs of the black fox.

Before this tent, just as the sky turned rose with morning, the red men carrying him staggered to a halt, hefting the lance carrying him onto the forks of two upright posts where he continued to dangle limply while the tent city woke up. Their women and children came out to poke and gawk at this strange new visitor while the sun brightened until it was a brassy sword that pierced his very brain. But Hormud clamped his broken lips beneath his beard and spoke no word to these new people. As hours passed through his pain and weariness the world swirled into unreality.

Only the jerk of his tortured limbs told him he was moving again, and he called fiercely on the reserves of his dwindling strength for he knew that the end of his travails was near and that another, sharper test lay ahead. He forced up his throbbing head and saw that the arched gate through which he travelled bore human gargoyles, with the severed torsos and heads of these red warriors tightly forced into stone alcoves to give the illusion of having the limbs of bears rearing in defiance or salute, though their slack faces and sagging flesh didn’t seem triumphant. Above them, arrayed along the wall in such a way that he had assumed them to be ornate crenellations, stood small men no taller than a boy, looking at him incuriously.

Soon there were more of these small men, as they passed through a bazaar where vendors shrieked from booths of brass and silk, forcing their goods under the noses of passing men and women, uniformly with long free hair and dressed in the most extraordinary colours Hormud had seen since leaving the arenas and seraglios of the Empire. Their children pelted Hormud with fruit payed for by smiling parents, the sharp husks of the peculiar fruits left him bloodied and bruised until the soldiers absently shooed them away.

The crooked streets of the market gave way to a broad avenue, where cedar and larch threw pools of shadow on ranks of stone statues whose pediments bore the graven figure of a bear standing as a man, not triumphant as the gargoyles before, but waiting. Among these they came to the steps of a pillared palace whose low facade stretched off further than Hormud’s limited view in each direction. The men who bore him fell down on their knees to shuffle up the steps. Hormud felt the hot marble scrape the skin from his back and he knew they approached the ruler of these people, and he laughed, though it could barely be recognised as one.

“Thank you friends. It is a rest for my ankles.”

9. The Quiet Blackness

After some time in the quiet blackness Hormud swam back to a consciousness broken by torchlight in a swaying night. He could hear the thunk and crash of marching, armoured feet and felt his body sway with the rhythm, yet he was not marching. His wrists and ankles had been bound together and between them had been thrust a lance so that he hung limply like a stuck pig. He lifted his dangling head and saw a litter carried on the shoulders of red haired men, the only thing paying him any heed was the grinning face of Ostromo, above their heads as he was, being carried in state like an emperor. Life still pounded strongly though his veins so that he wrenched savagely at his bonds, causing the men carrying him to stagger and slow their stride. One turned a pleading face, pale in the red glare of torches, and from the darkness strode another, striking him in the teeth with the hilt of his dagger. He spat blood and put his gaze on the man, framed by a leopard helmet as if eating his head.

“I’ll remember you when I form my legions. You will serve me as my concubine and dance for the soldiers when I get tired of your fumbling embrace.”

This time he struck across his cheek, he felt the crack of bone. The man muttered and turned back into the darkness to leave Hormud, and alone he allowed his head to sag, and his hair to drag through the mud in matted tails. The familiar clank and thud of a marching army beat into his ears, he sucked in the sweet smells of sweat and campfires, fighting unconsciousness as he travelled. Most often he would wake with his head sagged backward so that his inverted gaze rested unwaveringly on the silks that hung from Ostromo. Ho Hormud, where are your legions of gold?

******

The further into the work I get the further I need to range ahead as my changes have deeper and deeper repercussions. Simple things like changing the timing of events so they actually make sense now change things quite a way ahead, slowing down the whole process. It's getting to a point where I need to seriously consider how much I am willing to change the work to make it good/less bad as things start to get tempting to change in quite profound ways. For now I will stick to my original intent of re-working this novel to bring out the good in it and see how that goes.

8. Where is the wizard?

He took long slow strides forward, bounding from tuft to tuft into the metallic whispering of the reeds, avoiding where the earth opened its wet mouth to drag back his feet. As they travelled the fog lifted leaving a black sheen to his bare skin that shone iridescent in the returning sunlight. Ostromo scuttled close at his side, moving like a deranged crab.

“There is only death ahead. The Fulgren Sea stretches to the edge of the world and is filled with unspeakable monsters ready to topple the unwary off into the aether. The Heaven Bear lies in wait to devour us. There is only death, even if we escape the demon grass.”

Hormud spat from dry lips, “In Om they told me the edge of the world was beyond Krakorum, in Krakorum they said beyond Phin, and in Phin they said the great sea beyond Yelo poured into a cavern beneath the earth. Beyond this sea of grass we will find people who will say the edge is yet further.”

They walked in silence for what he hoped was miles but with no landmarks it was impossible to tell. With the pain filling his mind it was becoming difficult to be sure if they were even keeping a straight course.

Upon finding a partially submerged boulder, large enough to allow him to sit and see above the grass, he concluded he would stop and attend to his wound, rest, and think a while.

Movement, there is movement everywhere. He strains his eyes at the thin green walls. Reeds behind reeds and between reeds, little corridors that inch off just when the eye is beginning to reach. From a thick clump a patch of fog creeps. The rot in his side spreads quickly in this fetid swamp, the gobi powder doesn’t help any more, take it by the fistfuls, just numbs the mouth. The wizard, where is the wizard? More fog, tendrils filtering through the grass in fingers curling against the ground and up to reach for him. The wizard calmly walks past and into their hands. For a moment they are confused, as if consulting each other on this new creature, touching each other and him gently, tentatively, and then they grab him. Twisting around him like snakes, squeezing and thrashing as a wail erupts from the grass behind them, dragging the thrashing form off faster than Hormud can see. He can’t shout or he would, he would cough but he can’t. Flicking the sheath off the sword into the mud he dived from his rock hacked at the grass until covered in it’s green juices. The grass twists and grabs as he rushes through to follow the fog, twisting in his arms and hair, thicker and thicker, slowing him down intolerably. There are shouts behind him as he runs, but they are given no heed. This is no madness, no thoughtless fury, they have arms so they must have bodies.

Ahead is a clearing two men might lay side by side and think. The white peak of a horesman’s cap is plain through the grass. Bursting through the verge of the clearing he sees, sitting cross legged on the small mound, an Onjen head turned back, eyes popping, the grass all about creating a collar for him, twisted around his neck from outside the clearing to make a flared disk of reeds. The rider looks unsurprised. He cuts him free and the grass falls to form a dress for the sitting man. Now clear, a second figure is obvious. Ostromo is wrapped in the skin of a tiger and stares up at the panting warrior.

“The wind devils have told you secret things. Do they tell you where to find safety?”

“At the edge of the world.”

“And there will be wealth at the end of the world?”

“Yes.”

“You shall win three kingdoms and before you shall march ten generals of gold and behind each shall follow ten thousand horsemen and a hundred thousand men. Your name will outlive a hundred hundred years.”

“I am more interested in tomorrow.”

The little wizard pulls the skin tightly around him, hiding him, laughing as he disapears until all that’s left if a shacking tiger, cackling with prophecy.

“You keep something from me Ostormo. You saw more than that.”

His head, balder and older than it ever was, is dripping and wet.

“Why yes you empty headed goat herder,” with great effort he gets to his feet, letting the tiger skin hang like a robe, “I keep something back.”

He falls backwards through the reeds as a call comes up as from an arena crowd, aye aye, grass devils, here is the man you seek.

He grasps at their treachery but the arms are already around him.

7. Dust

Skeletal knuckles whitened griping the dagger, shaking with anger.

“Do it or don’t. We haven’t the time for your indecision.”

“Ong values our choices, and I wouldn’t choose you if you were the last chattel in Turgohl. Your filthy barbarian blood flows thin and cheaply.”

The knife had disappeared among the folds of his robes and he moved to return to his chanting.

“Gods. I need more than one, and they make offerings to me.”

Hormud had brought out his pouch and, sprinkling its contents into his mouth, set his head back against the soft earth breathing deep and contentedly.

“Other wizards fight my spells. I can smell it in the air.”

“It’s you own goat-stink,” Hormud mumbled, staring vacantly at the sky.

As he spoke, darkness gathered above the tops of the grass, pressing down on their heads like a dry, black fog

“Flee Onjen! Flee from the spirits of the devil grass, flee before the Great Bear of Heavan devours you.” Still staring where the sky once was, Hormud could hear the little splashes as the wizard jumped about in delight at his success. He swore and felt around for his sword, finding it he used it to force himself to his feet. The dust had reduced the pain, leaving only a faint tearing sensation in his side. A high wail came from the distant shore where the Onjen waited, soon followed by the hard, fast pounding of hooves dwindling into the distance and back to the Black Sands. Ostromo giggled in the new darkness.

“I could slit your belly now, you hulk.” He whispered. “Mock my spells will you?”

“Lift this damned fog before the grass devils come up on us unaware.”

“No, my magic is too strong to be dismissed so quickly. Let us just leave and return to the friendly hills. The Onjen won’t return, the Heaven Bear chases them to your Queen’s door. I don’t like this grass, I can smell demons.”

“I have smelt better smells but there are no friendly hills for us. The Onjen will return, the Bitch of Turghol will send her sword-bladed lances to find us and give us to the Priests Gigantic. So it is forward, little Ostromo, before my wounds stiffen and rot my bones.”

The sorcerer made a sound like a sick dog.

6. Flames & Gold

The wailing chant of Ostromo was scarcely audible above the rustle of grass. The Palace Gigantic, towers of flames and gold, loomed in the small sky he could see through the grass, growing closer to block out the sun, becoming brighter until he had to squint and roll over to protect his eyes, so great was the majesty of it. He would not go back to the Princess, he had nothing left to give and he was not ready, but she wanted him, she came for him even here. The march of ordered feet, of her men, were in the marsh, coming for him, where was his sword? She had taken everything, defend yourself.

The chanting stopped and the light subsided, replaced by the shade of the demon grass and the choking pleadings of the old wizard. Realising his hands were around his neck, Hormud released him and rolled off into the mud.

“How long?” They were both breathing heavily.

Hormud looked down, ignoring the scowling sorceror. His side had a compact of mud and grass neatly applied and still surrounded by dried blood. His wound would heal.

“So you had enough courage to weave a spell eh? You tiger among men.”

Onjun’s head twisted sharply and his eyes had recovered their usual venom.

“You are free with your insults barbarian.” The dagger he had given him was in his hand, pointing at Hormud’s throat.

“My little apeling still has teeth.”

“A Pontiff of the Palace belongs to no one but the Warpope, and the Warpope is dead. My neck is my own since I left with you.”

“Maybe I was saving your worthless neck to split on my own steel.”

“See to your own.”

For the time it takes a high arrow to meet its mark the men glared at each other, the sorcerer poised as he was in times not long gone as a priest above his offering. But instead of fear Hormud looked as though satisfied and rolled onto his good side.

“Hurry with your spells Ostromo,” he grumbled, “the grass devils are waiting for us and I am not a man to disappoint when expected for battle.”

5. You Lion of Valour

Ahead the shrivelled sorcerer fled in desperate leaps, his shredded finery and flapping limbs made his terror almost comical. Hormud considered shouting to let him know it was him and not the Onjen chasing after him, but the irony of his lineage stopped him. Just as the lush, rank greenness of the grass proper absorbed them he lifted the little Ostromo by his battered hood, boosting the wizard along in great soaring bounds with his voice wailing high, chattering a litany of gods and spirits, beseeching Hormud, cursing his family upon the cruel alters of the Palace Gigantic. Hormud laughed and heard the wet thud of arrow into flesh, felt the start of muscles giving between his knees as iron struck the pony. Hormud leaped clear, landed running and still he boosted the sorcerer along so that his flailing feet scarcely touched the ground.

“Up, mighty warrior,” he bellowed over the rushing of reeds, “cover the earth with your magics, ten mile strides, a death to horses and the bastards that ride them. Spit your prayers to the demon grass.”

The grass now passed above his head but the whining arrows were all about him, plucking past to flick out of sight in the green wall ahead. A red flower leaped high under the slash of his sword and dropped limply. The grass thrashed and wavered like a living, suffering thing as he cut a path— and pain slashed through him. An arrow. His feet plunged deep into the slimy cold of the earth and he fell forward, the pain and exhaustion of days of chasing and hiding fully caught up. His mind darkened as he looked out on Ostromo, huddled on his knees, muddy hands clasping a bald head staring wildly at the fallen barbarian.

“Come, you lion of valour…”

4. Farewell Brothers

They were close behind him as he ran, two riders charging side by side, lances dipped, whipping through the tall grass, tracing hungry lines. No time to notch another arrow, the tiger bow flew from his hands as he leapt from the thorns and above the rushing spears, his sword singing hungrily from its sheath. The confusion of the barbarian’s unexpected charge gave him the time he needed to batter the rider screaming from his saddle. The momentum of the charge still unbroken and unstoppable, the second rider beside him snarling through a face yellow with horse fat, cursing his line as his arms desperately pulled to make room to draw his sword.

“Leave it in it’s sheath brother. It will do you no good.”

The rider cried high and voiceless with despair as Hormud’s curved blade twisted up through his chest— the scream died mid note as the rider hit the ground, head rolling separately through the mire.

Hormud swung a hand high in salute to the riders following, “Hail and farewell brothers”, his fist twisted into the pony’s mane as he kicked it into a mad charge for the tall grass.

3. A Magic of Sorts

“My brothers make a magic of sorts, and being sorcerers will not tread the devil grass.”

The wizard scurried from the barbarians side as far as their cover would allow.

“No, I left the Palace Gigantic with you but I will not enter that devil grass.”

“Then die here.” Hormud laughed, “As for me it doesn’t matter whether it be my kins’ arrows or demon magic. Though I’ve bested a few devils in my time I’ve never stood well against a cavalry charge.”

As though answering a challenge the horsemen crashed their cymbals along to a throaty song like rocks falling down a deep gorge.

“Here, my dagger.”

The wizard took it with trembling hands, “Better to die here under the merciful lances than fight and run. Even animal tracks turn from the edge of the devil grass.”

Hormud plucked a handful of grass, chewed, and jabbed it into into his ragged wound.

“Well then, little animal, find yourself a burrow and dig in. I’ll sharpening my steel on some ungrateful bellies and then see how far it takes me against the High Air. Off with you to make peace with the spirits, maybe they’ll welcome you as their own.”

He leapt to his feet, bow in hand, strung with the gut of a tiger and bound in its skin, shouting the Demarcation of Heritage and singing his challenge as the first arrow flew. The riders flattened against their ponies necks only to be pinned together, screaming in their dying. He was wise to their tricks.

“Howl for us, though I think your horse has a sweeter voice.”

The arrows flew two heart beats apart, made faster by the rumble of charging hooves.

2. A Thorn's Curse

Hormud crouched behind the dense thicket and swore into a week’s thickness of beard.

“Ape-thing,” he snapped at the twisted man crawling feebly through the water beside him, “ are your monkey hands too weak to snap off an arrow?”

He held out his arm, making the arrow head pushing through the flesh of his shoulder apparent.

“No. What use is pulling the arrow?”, he whined into the muck, “Your shit-eating kin are behind us-”

“A thorn’s curse upon the treacherous animals, I hold an empty hand in friendship and they answer me by biting it.”

“-and in front of us,” he pulled himself into a ball, pressing against the sharp thicket as arrows whisked through the grass, “the High Air.”

The young barbarian hissed through his teeth and sat down beside the man “You sorcerers are a pitiful breed to fear the magic you make.”

He set his mud caked fingers upon the arrow head, “I make my own magic”, the arrow tore through him and out in a spatter of gore, his eyes never leaving the sorcerer’s, “and I do not fear it.”.

The Palace Gigantic

The seven towers of the Palace Gigantic were silent except for the pak pak pak of bare feet on wet stone.
"Little monkey wizard, you have run out of tricks and Hormud is here."
Exhaustion sounded in his voice, but it served to break the tension of walking through the fresh offerings of the Tower of Awesome Carnage. He almost missed the distant screams of sacrifice, replaced by the lap and splash  of their blood running in lazy streams down the stairs and walls. The entire city had turned out to offer anyone they could spare in their efforts to silence the gods.
A new sound, movement, from a nearby offering.
"The priests must be getting sloppy in their hurry, for you to survive their sacred mysteries."
After a moment of thought Hormud hacked at the source of this noise, "No good will find you after today, so I offer you a shorter future."
The body, head cleaved from neck, was pushed aside as a beaked priest launched himself from under it, gripping his side and screaming obscene secrets even as his blood spread and mingled with his congregation.
"Your little birds should hide better or they risk dulling my sword to uselessness on their hollow bones."
Running his thumb along the edge of his blade, it was indeed dull. Instinctively he went to wipe the blood away until realising the pointlessness of it in that place.
"Wizard, I'll still have my hands, and I will take your heart regardless."

Hormud

He walked as he would to the noose, the snow blinding him to his destination yet he would find it with dignity.
Her voice came from behind the cutting storm, "You will lay with me", carried along the wind and over the roar.
"I have too far to go before I sleep."
The storm died, parting the snow as a curtain pushed aside by her cold hand as she came to him, "I believe you, there is nothing to prove, least of all to me. Save this and future pain."
The sun, hidden for so long, was low but its heat found him. She walked beside him in silence for so long, her arm in his, walking towards the meagre sun. The warmth opened his eyes but the cold was in his bones.
"Lay with me," Her hand cool against his cheek, her breath, the last frost of winter on the hills of home.
Stopping for the first time since entering the frozen desert, he gripped her shoulders, "I wish nothing greater, but I am not ready. Come for me when I am a man, pull me from the sword of my conqueror and I will lay with you."
And he left her there as the curtain came down.