Scythian Dawn: Book One of a Barbarian Space Opera

by P. K. Lentz

  When Goths or another enemy came with warriors on foot, the Scythian defenders played a deadly game with them, its goal being to choose the time and place of greatest advantage for an attack. But when Khazars came, or Mokhtas or Bakhlo, the two sides played same game against one another.

  Today, it was Captain Ivar’s hope that the Khazars would choose to engage. When and if they did, the Dawn would meet the attack while drawing them deeper west before staging an organized retreat, leaving the Khazars to think themselves victorious. In reality, a fresh attack would come from a second Scythian band waiting to the north.

  Effectively, the Dawn was bait. Often it was when serving in this capacity that war bands took their heaviest casualties. But Arixa’s band had made a name for itself years ago by offering itself up as bait, escaping and then turning the tide to deliver victories. It was largely thanks to the Dawn that the Bakhlo had not set hoof on Scythian land in four years.

  The trick to making good bait was not to look like bait. For that reason, the band only sat on the rise and observed their distant foes, refraining from harassment.

  The same could not be said of the Khazars, who sent arrows sporadically. They always fell short, of course, but they weren’t really meant to harm. They were but a warning and a display of defiance.

  “Come on,” Ivar grumbled. “Don’t you want to attack us, little Khazars? We’re so pretty, sitting up here! Let’s get this done with.”

  “I think they’re on to our tricks by now,” Memnon observed. “We need new ones.”

  “You have any?” Ivar asked. “And don’t tell me your story about the stupid wooden horse.”

  “Look, they’re withdrawing,” observed Plin, Arixa’s younger cousin, the son of Matas.

  “Fuck,” Ivar muttered. “Looks like we dance another day.”

  “Why don’t we just attack?” Dak suggested.

  “They’ll have plenty of bows covering their move.”

  “I’m not saying a few of us won’t get arrows in us.”

  Ivar sighed. “What do you say, Arixa?” He looked over at her. “Bah! Will you stop smiling?”

  “I can’t help it. I’m exactly where I wish to be.”

  “That’s lovely,” Ivar said. “Truly, I am so happy for you. Ecstatic. But may we turn our minds to inconveniencing some Khazars?”

  “It’s your band,” Arixa deferred.

  “Be that as it may, if you were Captain again... what might you choose?”

  Arixa had a ready response: “Given that the Khazars are moving cautiously northeast, I suppose I might move along with them, but faster. And then, if the lay of the land is right, form up spaced to make bad targets for their arrows. Then I might charge them and engage. But I’m not Captain,” she added, “and I’m overeager to fight today. So you may not want to listen to me.”

  Ivar Shieldbreaker scoffed, but he ordered Arixa’s plan followed.

  Three hours later, lined up in two rows with enough open grass on any given side of a rider that six other horses might fit between, they descended upon the enemy.

  * * *

  A horn of alarm sounded among the invaders. Seconds later, the first arrows rained down on the charging Scythians. Most pierced the earth in empty spaces between the attackers’ horses, a few sinking into or clattering on the small, round wooden shields the riders held high. Fewer still grazed bronze helms, leather, scale plates, or flesh. No Scythians fell in the first volley. Or the second. But as the war band plunged on, heavy hooves pounding the tall grass flat, the mounted but stationary Khazar archers began to pick their targets instead of letting the gods decide.

  Then the first Scythians fell. Arixa saw their dark shapes, names yet unknown, slip from their mounts at the left and right extremes of her vision, their riderless beasts subsequently falling out of line.

  The losses would not go unanswered. Arixa unbent her left arm, sacrificing the protection of the small shield strapped to it, to present her short, curved bow. Releasing the reins, thighs tight on Turagetes, boots locked in stirrups, she nocked an arrow from the gorytus on her saddle, drew back, took aim, and released. She would never know whether it struck a target, for as soon as it flew, she set another shaft and sent it right behind.

  It was age-old Scythian wisdom that no one ever won a prize for finishing a battle with the most arrows still left in one’s bowcase.

  A related bit of Scythian wisdom was that holding arrows until they could be collected at battle’s end was the only thing an enemy was good for.

  Only Ivar, the Hellenes, and a few other non-Scythians, having not been raised with bow in hand, didn’t fight in this manner. Instead they charged on covering themselves with shields until the time for close fighting came.

  For now, the sky filled with arrows flying both ways. The Scythian barrage was the more effective, being aimed at more densely packed targets. Still, several more charging Scythian riders slipped from their mounts or fell out of formation, an inevitable consequence of any such attack. Aresh must take his toll.

  Yet the wargod’s toll was greater on the Khazar side. Red-sleeved riders in fur-trimmed helms tumbled to the plain or struggled to control arrow-pierced mounts.

  With less than a hundred yards separating the Scythian charge from the nearest invaders, the Khazars stayed their bowstrings long enough to change their formation. They hadn’t anticipated this attack and might easily have chosen to melt away in the face of it, delaying the confrontation yet again. They should have. Instead, they intended to meet the charge head-on. They had the advantage of numbers, after all.

  It was good for Scythia that Khazars were prone to such mistakes.

  Arixa loosed six more arrows then returned her bow to its threadbare case on Turagetes’ left flank before lifting her war-pick from the sling on the horse’s right. Around her, the tattooed men and women of her band began to stow their own curved bows, close ranks, and draw their weapons of choice for close combat, whether it be the double-edged sword, the long-handled cavalry ax called the sagaris, the skewering lance, the skull-staving mace, or the curved scythe-like spike of the iron-headed war-pick favored by Arixa.

  With a thunderous fall of hooves shaking the plain and war cries on both sides splitting the air, the lines collided. For some, the meeting meant instant death as blades opened throats and faces were split. For others, pain: arms or legs deeply sliced or smashed, body thrown from mount to land hard and be trampled by either side’s hooves.

  For many more, like Arixa, it meant inflicting such wounds on an enemy and then seeking another and another to slash while galloping on through until no more enemy lay ahead. When she ran out of Khazars to attack, she wheeled fearless Turagetes and rode back into what quickly became a cyclone of man and woman and weapon and horse. Wherever Arixa saw red sleeves or fur-trimmed helms, she slashed or stabbed while steering her horse to avoid getting the same. This type of savage, pitched battle was not the warfare Scythians preferred, but it was inevitable sometimes against fellow nomads who might otherwise endlessly maneuver and harass.

  If every year, the Khazars simply gave up and returned to their own lands with few casualties, then they would be back the next year and the next to try again. If, on the other hand, they met a crushing defeat now and then, other Khazars might think twice next season, as the Bakhlo had for the past four.

  And this day Arixa fought with new knowledge. She knew that next year, after the Jir came, Scythia would be vastly weakened and less able to repel traditional foes. If Roxinaki fell, enemies would swoop in like birds of carrion after a fresh slaughter.

  She used her newfound anger at the Jir. The Khazars were her enemies, yes, but they were human. The Jir were the enemy of all humanity

  Out there, humans do not kill humans, Zhi had claimed.

  Here, on the steppe, they did. And Arixa embraced that, as one must if one hoped to see the other side of any battle.

  The Khazars had the numbers, leaving some free to take up positions well outside the th
ick of things and choose targets for their bows. Arixa saw three of her band fall to such fire before hacking down the last Khazar in her path and kicking Turagetes to speed in the archers’ direction.

  Her approach did not go unseen. The Khazar archers nocked fresh arrows and sighted down their shafts at Arixa. She swerved once, twice. Two arrows hissed past her helmet.

  A third didn’t miss, piercing her just above the elbow in her left arm, which exploded with pain. She grit her teeth and rode on. Seconds later, another grazed her neck just below her helm. She felt hot blood pour down under her armor of bronze scale and stiff leather, but still she rode on.

  At the edge of her vision, Arixa saw that she was no longer alone; at least four riders of her band had seen her and fallen in behind. One, easily identified by the ax over his head and blonde braid whipping under helmet rim, was Ivar.

  Just before she reached the line of Khazar archers, who scrambled to slide their bows into cases and draw melee weapons, an arrow from the right pierced Turagetes deeply in his shoulder. He roared, and his ears went flat and his body bucked under Arixa as he twisted away from the wound and away from the Khazar she had been seconds from gutting.

  The horse fought commands from her legs to correct and instead held back while two Khazars closed in with lances. Arixa made a quick decision. Ducking under the first lance and grabbing it, she dove from her horse’s back, pulling the attacker with her to the ground. The Khazar landed first, on his back, and she on her feet astride him. She brought the spike of her pick down into his groin, ending the battle for him.

  Mounted Khazars came furiously upon her now, two and three at a time. And though they didn’t hold back with their slashing long swords and lances, Arixa found it easy to avoid or parry every blow, sending back one of her own which hardly failed to draw blood or else dragging the attacker from his mount to finish him on the ground.

  They came down easily, as if they were children, and they moved so slowly. Her pick seemed to meet scant resistance from armor or bone. Six or seven she killed in this manner, losing count before she had to shift the battle elsewhere to avoid tripping on the piled corpses or their fallen weapons and helms. In her new place, she drove her pick up under the ribs of red-sleeved riders, hacked into poised sword arms, slashed unprotected thighs, and when there was no choice, smashed the throats or forelegs of good horses, sending them crashing into the grass where she could slaughter their unbalanced riders.

  She went on killing and killing Khazars in this way for far longer than she had ever dared to engage in pitched battle alone without seeking respite to regroup with comrades.

  She opened bellies, severed hands, even nearly decapitated a man so that his head hung from but a flap as he toppled from his mount and the horse galloped off.

  After some time, still feeling hardly winded, Arixa whirled and found no more Khazars around her, only the distant backs of a few as they rode away to the east. When a rider next approached, she rounded, ready to fight, but it was only Ivar with astonishment in his expression.

  “Wuotan’s balls, Arixa...” he said.

  She lowered her war-pick and slumped, finally allowing herself to feel weariness. She clamped her left hand, the arm of which had an arrow embedded in it, over the wet gash on her neck.

  “What?”

  “What, she asks!”

  Ivar slid from his mount. All around them on the plain, mounted Scythians were running down wounded Khazars fleeing on foot, finishing off enemy injured or lending assistance to fallen friends.

  “Did you not see yourself?” Ivar asked.

  Others rode up, including Tomiris and Matas, both of whom Arixa was relieved to learn were unharmed. They gazed at her with wide-eyed looks akin to Ivar’s.

  “What are you all looking at? So I fought well. We all did.”

  Ivar came up beside her on foot and pressed a cloth from his saddlebag against her neck wound. Neither that injury nor the arrow in her arm hurt particularly badly.

  “Arixa...” Ivar said. “I couldn’t witness it all... but I would be surprised if you killed less than fifty men today.”

  “More,” Tomiris volunteered. “A hundred!”

  Arixa shook her head. “I only did what I could. What I had to. No different than any day.”

  “Oh, something was different, Arixa,” Ivar swore.

  “You are different,” her uncle Matas observed. “You said so yourself.”

  Arixa looked over the many corpses piled around her and recalled the chaos of the past few minutes.

  “Perhaps,” she concluded. “But never mind that now. There’s the aftermath of battle to attend to.”

  Still, her warriors lingered, staring.

  “Go!” Arixa barked, and off they went to aid friends, strip the dead of arms and gold and wrangle riderless Khazar horses.

  Eight

  By nightfall, the Dawn made camp not far from the site of the battle and sent word of their victory to the second war band waiting in the north.

  Thirty-one warriors of the Dawn had met their deaths in the battle with the Khazars. Another five or six were seriously hurt, with twenty more, including Arixa, bloodied but still able to ride.

  Turagetes would survive in the expert care of the siblings Memnon and Andromache, who warned he could not be ridden hard for some time.

  Two cannabis lodges were erected, differing from other tents in having coverings of hide rather than felt and no opening at the top. Unlike most, these tents were meant to keep smoke in rather than let it out. When the lodges were raised, the coals were heated red-hot and the cured buds spread out that they might release the plant’s healing and mood-altering vapors.

  The smaller lodge would house the most gravely wounded, helping to ease their pain while they either healed or finished dying. Those with less serious wounds were first to occupy the second, larger lodge, where the vapors would also help to ease their pain. But this second tent was foremost a place for celebration. After the exertion of a hard-won day, arms and armor and cares would be shed. Those whose few treasured possessions included musical instruments would play them while others sang. Strange and impractical contests would be held. Insights would be experienced and shared.

  Life itself was to be shared tonight, and embraced. For miles around in the grassland, pointed ears would prick up at the sound of the Dawn’s howls.

  Arixa, being wounded and remaining Captain in all but name, was among the first into the smoke-filled lodge, along with twenty others. That number included Ivar, the nominal leader, even though he had escaped the battle with his white skin unscratched.

  Arixa and Ivar took adjacent cushions. Like everyone, Ivar had shed his armor, but he alone of all the band remained armed. Ever was he Arixa’s protector, even on a day when she had killed fifty men. Or a hundred, depending on the witness. Personally, she doubted even the lower number, but men and women would believe what they wished.

  For now, the lodge was quiet. The night was young, and most of those present were bleeding, after all. Outside camp, the somber work of grave-digging was underway.

  Laying back, Arixa let the fragrant smoke fill a body which was no longer quite the one she knew. It looked the same and felt the same but could do things now that it never had before. Not only lifting stones or beating Dak at arm-wrestling, but killing with greater speed and ease.

  She thought of what a war band would be like if it were comprised entirely of such augmented men and women. No enemy could stand before it. If any of its warriors did fall, as Arixa had fallen and smashed herself on the rocks, this hypothetical band must count in its ranks a man... or dog-man... who could restore the dead, or near-dead to health, keeping the band ever at full strength.

  She giggled hazily at the thought of the funny, irritable little Fizzbik.

  “Are you high already, Arixa?” Ivar asked, reclining with his head by hers.

  “My memories are drug enough.”

  “I don’t suppose with that gash in your neck, toni
ght you will be in the mood for...”

  “No,” Arixa preempted him. She and Ivar had made love a few times in the past under the influence of cannabis vapors, as many had. Unions were even more common when the band was in range of a village or town that brewed beer. Today, it was not.

  There was her wound to consider, though that was not the sole reason to abstain. It barely hurt. Thinking of it now, she peeled back the bandage and touched it. The gash had stopped bleeding and begun to close. So had the hole in her arm left where the arrow had been removed.

  “It’s just as well,” Ivar mused aloud following Arixa’s rejection. “I’m a bit afraid of what you could do to me now.” He paused. “But I’ll admit, also intrigued.”

  She laughed. It was possible that her answer would change as the night progressed and worries fled, but at present, with her head still clear, she was not interested.

  They were quiet again for a while as vapors were absorbed. Lighthearted chatter and laughter began to fill the lodge.

  “I believe you now,” Ivar said at length. “I’m sorry I didn’t at first.”

  “It’s not an easy thing to accept, even for me. Do you believe in the coming threat?”

  “You mean this sky-horde?” Ivar inhaled deeply and answered, “Yes. Tomorrow is for funerals. Day after, we’ll ride for the capital.” He laughed. “You act as if I could steer the Dawn any other way when they know what you want.”

  He was right. If this band was the Dawn, then she was its Sun.

  “You led them well while I was away,” Arixa offered. “The only Norther ever to captain a Scythian war-band, I imagine.”

  “Still, I’ll gladly hand it back to you. I’d as soon not worry about things like how many arrows we have.”