Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 1 The Former King

by Adam Corby

  Yet they kept behind the wrestlers thereafter. No one dared run around in front of them, lest he suffer the fate of Enna-Born. So when the bodies rolled through the tall beach grasses, over the crest of the dunes, and disappeared from view, none knew what it might portend. They ran to the crest of the dunes, forming a long line parallel to the shore, just as they had done before, at the time of God’s assault upon queenly Goddess. And they looked down onto the pebble-strewn sand of the beach; and the hoarse cries died in their throats, and there was only the sound of the sea waves lightly lapping as the tradespeople looked down.

  The two bodies lay sprawled on the stones, bleeding, begrimed, bruised, battered. Neither moved; neither made a sound. There was not even the movement of breath in either one. They were like corpses lying mangled in the welter of their own drying blood. The folk looked down on them with respectful awe, uncertain whether to cheer or weep or gather up the bodies.

  Kuln-Holn came running up behind. He had been following the crowd at a distance, not wishing to see the battle, afraid of what he might behold, but neither able to walk away as Hertha-Toll had done. Now he had heard the silence, and known that it was done. He ran with a quickening pace and forced a place on the crest of the grassy dunes. And he saw his guest, the messenger of the gods, lying like one dead, the arms and legs twisted into unnatural positions. The Pious One fell to his knees. He put his hands over his eyes and wept tears upon his fingers. The tears were hot and bitter, for to Kuln-Holn more than a man had died.

  On the pebble-strewn sand, a hand moved. It gripped the sand and relaxed. Then the arm above it moved; and slowly, painfully, a body rose. It rolled to its side, got on its knees, and, at last, stood to its feet. It swayed rather unsteadily in the sea breeze, then shook itself and stood firmly by an act of sheer determination. And the body was that of the stranger, the barge-robber, Ara-Karn.

  He gazed upon the faces of the people of the tribe, who looked at him with almost superstitious awe. Not a one of them could have believed that this man might wrestle great-chested Gundoen to death. Now they saw him, bloodied, bruised, the cord fillet torn from his brow and his sweat-and-blood-plastered hair ruffling free in the breeze. The foam had dried about his torn lips, and grime and blood were his only garments. More a beast he looked than a man: a grim specter from some dim, primitive past, unbelievably savage, invested with terrible strength and ruthlessness. And there was not a man there who could have dared to challenge him in any combat whatsoever at that moment. They looked upon him speechless, their eyes wide with fear.

  Kuln-Holn looked up through his wet fingers and saw his master, still alive, though horribly so. He wiped the bitter tears from his eyes, and wanted to leap and laugh; but the sight of the eyes of Ara-Karn stopped him.

  Below on the sand, the body of Gundoen issued forth a ghastly groan and turned a bit. Ara-Karn regarded it, the vivid green shining in those dark eyes.

  Gundoen groaned again through cracked and purple lips. He rolled, feeling the separate agonies of his arms, of his hands, of his back, of his legs, of every part of him. Never before had he been so sorely tried. There was a distant ringing at the back of his skull; some moments passed before he could remember where he was. He wished only to turn upon his side, hold the salt air in his lungs, and painlessly expire.

  Instead, he opened his eyes. The light of Goddess was blinding; he blinked against it, but still it filled the sky. Then a dark form intruded, obliterating the light. The shadow of Ara-Karn fell across the chief’s face. Gundoen saw him standing first, steady on his feet, his hand extended.

  Painfully, Gundoen groped. The outstretched hand covered the sun; he felt and found it. The hand gripped his – gingerly, for both their hands were bent and sore from each other’s fierce grip. Gundoen felt the hand pull at his arm, and he responded. With the stranger’s help he gained his feet. His skull rang like an anvil, and he felt as if he should retch. And he knew that he would not die, but must live on, beaten by Ara-Karn.

  The two stood thus in silence for a space, supporting each other. Then Garin and the other attendants scrambled down to the beach, helping the wracked, grimed men up. Only then did the crowd raise its voice in one tremendous, deafening ululation:

  ‘Ara Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’

  IX

  The Dead Child

  FROM THAT MOMENT ONWARD, the chief and the stranger were inseparable. Ara-Karn left Kuln-Holn’s small hut and went to stay at the guest hall, the merchants having completed the last of their trading and slunk off to Gerso. Gundoen bade Ara-Karn eat at the chief’s hall for every one of the five meals, and at every meal he insisted Ara-Karn take the high seat of honor opposite to his own. One was never seen out-of-doors without the other – usually with the faithful Kuln-Holn following them at some distance. The chief still disliked Kuln-Holn, whom he had dubbed the ‘Little Prophet,’ but for the sake of his guest he put up with him.

  He even went so far as to offer Ara-Karn the pick of his concubines, the most desirable women in the tribe. The stranger refused. So the chief asked him if he saw any other woman in the tribe he fancied. Again the stranger said no. ‘Will you have no one to warm your dim place and tend to you then?’ asked the chief.

  ‘No one,’ replied the stranger. ‘Not even the queen of the world.’

  And he was true to his words: for no one ever saw him take any woman of the tribe during all his stay there. Gundoen was amazed at this; it was many passes before he could finally understand that Ara-Karn had meant what he said. ‘Perhaps Kuln-Holn was right all along,’ was all he could murmur, shaking his massive head.

  The change in the chief’s heart amazed the people of the tribe. Never had they seen anything like it; but then, they had seen many new things since the dead man had come among them. Gundoen, who had never before been able to refer to the stranger without using the words ‘barge-robber,’ now treated Ara-Karn with such respect that he even consulted him on matters of tribal rule. And the stranger’s advice, which he was not slow to give, showed a wisdom far beyond his apparent years.

  The chief was now completely sincere in his admiration for the newcomer, just as he had been completely sincere in his former dislike for him. It was no deception, no pattern of deep guile – nor did anyone think of it as such. Such sophisticated falsehood was beyond the capabilities of any of the tribe, let alone Gundoen, who had never been known for such subtlety. Moreover, what would have been the point of such guile? The stranger was fully in the chief’s power. Though he would have been censured for doing so, Gundoen could easily have ordered the stranger’s death on any pretext. Hero of the Hunt or not, he was not of the tribe, nor did he have any kin to avenge his blood. It would have been a simple matter for Gundoen to kill him with his own sword.

  Instead, he fawned upon the stranger. And the people, who found such a transformation beyond belief, credited it to the magical powers of the stranger. The man who had been washed up on the beach dead and naked had in only a few weeks’ time become the Hero of the Hunt, slaying more bandar than any other hunter ever; traded so skillfully with the foreign merchants that the tribe was now one of the most wealthy in all the far North; and crushed Gundoen, the greatest wrestler in all the North, in a battle far beyond all his apparent strength. Was it any wonder, then, that the people took some heed of Kuln-Holn’s insistences and began to look now upon Ara-Karn not with the contempt for a foreigner but with instead the awe for a god?

  Kuln-Holn was ecstatic over the change. Though now he saw far less of Ara-Karn than he had in the past, he had always grieved that the messenger of the Goddess should have been so alone among those who should be his servants in his divine mission. Now people offered gifts to Kuln-Holn, asking to be commended in Ara-Karn’s eyes; and the Pious One came to be almost an important figure of the tribe. People went to Ara-Karn to ask his advice on all matters, and not a few were those who asked him to bless their babes or their new weapons. It seemed to be the confirmation of all Kuln-Holn’s past visions an
d dreams.

  To Hertha-Toll the newfound respect for the stranger was vaguely disturbing. She saw, deeply buried in the people’s attitude, a trace of awe bordering on fear. Even in Gundoen she seemed to sense this. When he had drunkenly challenged the stranger, it had unfolded before her eyes exactly as she had seen it happening in her dream. She had gone into the silence of her dim place in her husband’s hall sure of how it would all turn out. She had known that her husband would be defeated, even though it was clear that Gundoen’s strength of limb was far beyond that of Ara-Karn. That it had ended just as she had seen only served to confirm her in the truth of her other, far more terrifying dreams.

  Yet she treated the terrible wounds of both men in silence. She was quite skilled at the healing arts; yet as she gazed upon the bruised, burned body of her husband, the sight blended with another sight from her dreams until in the end she was forced to look away.

  Once she tried to speak to Gundoen of her fears and warn him, but he would not listen. He only grew very angry and thought she meant to say that he was only afraid of the stranger.

  ‘Woman of ill fortune,’ he swore at her, ‘was it not you who counseled me to spare this man’s life and take him along on the hunt? Your words blow with the winds. You may have the Sight, wife, but not all your predictions have come true. I remember many rosy prophecies concerning our children – and what happened then?’

  This hurt Hertha-Toll deeply, so that the tears started to her wrinkled eyes. It was the greatest tragedy of the tribe that the chief had no children to carry on his name and avenge his death. Many times had Hertha-Toll borne for him – two girls and five fat boys. Yet in every instance death had taken them back. One of the girls and one of the boys had died before weaning of cold and disease. This was not unusual, for some years two babes died in the cradle for every three born. The other four boys and girl, however, had given every sign of health and grown past the dangerous age. Yet one of the boys drowned, the girl was slain in a raid by the Korlas, two boys died while daring each other to see how far they could jump from a nearby cliff, and the last boy had gone to fight Korlas to avenge his sister and had never been seen again, though his pony returned with a bloody saddle-blanket.

  Now Hertha-Toll was old beyond the childbearing age and had fallen into Gundoen’s disdain. So she wept bitter tears. ‘I know that now you have every right to cast me off as a luckless bedmate and wed another,’ she said. ‘And I am always thankful that you have not done so. Once, remember, I was young, and many of the warriors sought my favors, but I submitted to none – not even on the feast-times, when all is permitted. For I had set my heart on you, the nephew of the chief. I loved you, Gundoen, and love you still for all the years; and when I tell you these things, it is not with any mind to hurt, you, but only to warn you and arm you with truth against adversity.’

  The chief took her in his great hairy arms and comforted her. ‘I know, wife. Nor do I place all the blame upon you for what happened to our children. Perhaps, after all,’ he joked, ‘I am the cursed one – who can see into the minds of the gods? And I value your wisdom greatly. What other great chief so listens to the words of his woman? Yet you only anger me when you speak against Ara-Karn.’

  She dried her tears and promised to speak to him of Ara-Karn no more. And she kept her promise as best she could, even though, with the dreams she was later to have, it proved a difficult vow to keep.

  One of Gundoen’s earliest demands upon his new friendship was that Ara-Karn teach the tribe the secrets of the strange weapon he called ‘bow,’ and fashion others of them for the hunters of the tribe. Ara-Karn smiled and brought forth an armful of bows, the fruit of his labors on Kaari-Moldole. ‘Truly, then, you have never seen such a weapon?’ he asked them.

  ‘Not we or any of the tribes of the North,’ they answered. ‘Nor any of the lands to the South we now deal with. If they had such marvels, the merchants would have sold them to us long ago.’

  ‘Incredible,’ murmured Ara-Karn. So he showed them what woods were best for bows and how to fashion the gut strings for the greatest strength and fewest breaks. Also he instructed them on how to craft good, straight arrows, as he called the darting death-birds, and how to feather the notched ends for sure, straight flights. And finally he showed them how to brew the deadly poison he used to tip the points.

  With the wealth of the great Hunt the tribe quickly restored their village and replanted all the crops. The crops were late now, and would not bear as much grain or fruit. But the women planted three more fields of late seeds to make up the differences and still had gold enough to purchase fine clothes of delicate weavery, new, bright-bladed weaponry, and golden ornaments from the merchants who sailed up to the bay from Arpane on the Sea, the only city on the Ocean of the Dead. And Ara-Karn, out of his share as the Hero of the Hunt, bought much iron, with which the village metalworkers formed the iron points for the feathered death-birds. And as God passed overhead, the weather was so fine, with such a good mixture of sunshine and rain, that the crops grew almost as great as if they had been planted on time; and the village was as it had ever been, only richer, fatter, and more powerful.

  There was no more trouble with the Korlas. Once indeed the women of the tribe found a Korla spy lurking in the forests about the fields. They stripped him naked and whipped him through the muddy streets, cheering and laughing as if it were a festival; the whole tribe turned out for the event. In the end they painted him red and green and tied him backward on his pony, without weapons, pack, or clothing, and sent him riding back to his own lands. Many were the ribaldries exchanged concerning what would happen if he appeared first among the women of his tribe. Yet beyond this one incident it was as if the Korlas lived beyond the Spine for all they were heard of.

  The hunters grew increasingly skillful with their new weapons. At first they had difficulties – most of all, the chief himself. His strength was so great he kept breaking his bow. So Ara-Karn made a special black bow for him, twice as large and three times as powerful as any of the others. ‘Try your strength upon this,’ he said, handing Gundoen the bow.

  The chief took it in his massive hands. He strained against the string, pulled back the long arrow, and let it fly. It shot forth with the speed of a blinking eye. High it sped, over hut and tree – almost too fast for the eye to follow. And it curved gracefully in the blue-green sky and fell away, so distant it seemed a mere speck falling over the end of the world.

  Gundoen looked after it, amazed. ‘Why,’ he breathed, ‘with such a weapon as this, what might I not be capable of? I could sit upon my back step and hunt bandar from here, if only I knew where to aim!’

  Thereafter he redoubled his efforts at mastering the fine weapon and at firing arrows with all the speed and smoothness of Ara-Karn himself. And the other hunters, seeing the chief’s patience and marveling thereat, ceased their last complaints. Soon they grew so skilled they began holding contests, and with each new contest the marks of all were higher. And they hunted the game of the deeps of stream, air, and wood, and brought to the village so much game that all the storage-holes were soon chock full. Alli jested that it was too much food and that soon everyone in the tribe would be as fat as Southrons.

  This became a popular joke, often repeated toward the end of meals.

  The hunters went farther afield than was customary, for the game about the village was growing scarce, and they were so excellent with their bows that Ara-Karn praised them as fine marksmen all, for only five arrows were lost of all that were shot. And Gundoen laughed for sheer joyousness; and they went back loaded down with game to a blackened, burned-out village. The triumphant shouts of the hunters vanished when they heard the sobbing of the women and the cries of the children.

  They rode the entire length of the village. The crops were cut down, trampled underfoot; the boats of the fishermen were stove in or set adrift on the currents; and many of the huts were burning still.

  They got down off their ponies and strove to quench
the fires still blazing. Luckily it had rained only recently and the logs had still been damp, so they were successful in saving many of the huts. But only a few fields of the harvest could be saved.

  And oftentimes, as the men ran with the heavy buckets of slopping water, they would stumble over something in the earth and, looking down, would see the body of some murdered child. One man found the spear still in the body of an old graybeard who had foolishly tried to combat the raiders. The man pulled the spear free, examining its markings and the fashion of its make. And he said only one word: ‘Korlas.’

  * * *

  When the last of the fires had finally been turned to hissing smoke, Gundoen sought out his wife. The chief’s hall had not been torched, so that it was whole and strong still. But upon entering the chief could see that the invaders had been there, for many of the valued trophies were gone and the bones of the foreign champions had been shattered on the earthen floor. And missing, too, was the hilt of the sword of Tont-Ornoth, which had tasted the blood even of Elna, first Emperor of the South.

  Gundoen found Hertha-Toll sitting in the dimness of the hall, bestrewn with ashes from the silent hearth-fire. Barely could he see her at first, for though without Goddess shined brightly, within all was darkness. The winter shutters had been battened over the broad portals in the defense of the hall.

  When his sight had grown in the darkness, Gundoen saw that his wife was huddled over some object in her lap, weeping bitterly. Then Gundoen stopped; he had recognized what the thing in her lap was. It was the body of a child some four winters old, and it was plain that the body had been trampled to death. There was little enough to guess who it had been, but the chief knew it. It was the body of young Ord-Bal, Alli’s son.

  Gundoen did not speak to Hertha-Toll. The wise woman wept on as if she were unaware of his presence. The chief gazed upon the little body for a while in silence. Then he turned and left the hall. He walked slowly out of the village and went alone into the woods.