Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn 1 The Former King

by Adam Corby

  The crowds of warriors saw the Warlord’s condition and guessed what Gen-Karn now knew – that Ara-Karn was to be the victor. Fewer and weaker came the cries for Gen-Karn; louder, longer, and more tumultuous arose the shout,

  ‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’

  Blindingly, Ara-Karn moved in response to that cry.

  He struck with such power and suddenness that the Warlord was almost hurled over the icy edge of Urnostardil. Wildly scrambling, Gen-Karn threw away his sword and clutched for the rocks. But it was clearly too late; already his body was toppling over the darkness of the abyss.

  The victory-cry was halfway up Gundoen’s throat when Ara-Karn struck again.

  Double handed, he swung his blade with glittering speed. The edge smashed into the side of Gen-Karn’s head with superhuman force. But because the Warlord was falling and his head twisting to see where to reach out, the blade struck only a glancing blow. No one ever knew for certain whether the blow had fallen where it had been aimed or whether it was but an accident, a freak of the God’s will. The stranger, Ara-Karn, never would say. But what they all saw was the spattering of blood and flesh from the force of the blow, and the bone ripped clean, and the flesh torn, half from Gen-Karn’s right ear, most from his cheek, and the great clump of hair torn from his head.

  With such force did that blow strike that it actually lifted up the great bulk of the Warlord in midair, twisting him about and hurling him with a massive crash to the ground, a full pace away from the edge of the golden crown of Urnostardil.

  And instead of victory-shouts there was only silence.

  Men stood with still tongues looking down on that writhing, bloodied form. In those cuts and gashes, in the sweat and steaming dirt, it was hard to recognize what had once been the Warlord of the far North. And there was nothing left at all of the dark handsomeness in that ripped-open mess of a face.

  From the moaning body on the bloodstained ice, the crowd turned its eyes to the conqueror, standing not exultantly but calmly on the edge of the abyss, the sword leaning casually against one bloodstained hand, the blood smoking, the chest rising and falling rhythmically, but the eyes still ablaze with the madness of combat. The feet were blued by the frozen cold and bleeding between the toes. From a dozen cuts the blood also gelidly flowed. The cord fillet had broken asunder, leaving the clotted hair to hang free about those wild eyes. And those savage men of the hard, far North saw in the victor not a man, not an out-lander barge-robber, nor yet a god or messenger of gods, but a wild beast, whose desperate, destructive fury outdid anything that they in their supposed savagery could match. And there was not a man among them – not even those who loved him best, not Gundoen or Kuln-Holn himself – who did not at that moment feel the fearful awe of him who stood alone amongst them.

  Ara-Karn straightened, and those of the Orn tribe nearest him stepped back a pace, as the gentle animals will do near a predator even when his hunger for blood has been sated. And Gundoen knew that there would be no need for bowmen now. With Gen-Karn dead, none would dare oppose the victor’s will. Cautiously he approached and placed a fur mantle about the naked shoulders of his adopted son.

  The man with the sword seemed not to notice. He glanced down and pointed with his sword at the writhing body and spoke.

  ‘Take it away,’ he said. His shoulders sagged a little with a great onrushing weariness.

  ‘Lord, not yet!’

  Bar-East spoke these words. The Speaker of the Law forced a way between the crowds and confronted the stranger.

  ‘Lord, I have seen the battle; we all have seen it. You have conquered and are the Warlord of the North. Yet one final duty remains before the title is fully yours. Your enemy still lives.’

  ‘What of that?’

  Bar-East blinked his old eyes, as if he had not understood. ‘His death lies upon your hands,’ he answered simply. He pointed to the sword, blood still oozing down to its point. ‘Slay him.’

  But Ara-Karn asked, ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because it is our custom.’

  Ara-Karn shook his head. ‘No. That is not my way.’

  ‘Because he is an evil man who has pressed our necks beneath his toes for too long!’ cried another of the crowd, a Durbar.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Slay him,’ said Bar-East slowly, ‘because if you do not, he will only hate you all the more, and strive and scheme and never give off scheming to murder you for this defeat.’

  But Ara-Karn only smiled, wan as the icy crystals round his ankles. ‘No. That, too, is not my way.’

  ‘Lord, what softness is this? Your mercy is to no avail with this man. He is a chief, and he was the Warlord of the tribes.’ Below them, the great sprawling figure of Gen-Karn writhed and groaned in pain.

  And Ara-Karn looked at the Speaker of the Law with eyes like pebbles washed upon a lonely shore, and he said in tones of pitiless hardness, ‘Old man, you know more of mercy now than I am ever likely to.’

  At this there was only silence from that mass of blood-aroused men – looks of confusion and disbelief and one or two of anger. They had turned upon their former king and now would see his death – or, if not his, another’s. Their lusts demanded to be sated to the full.

  Gundoen, at his side, spoke in low swift tones: ‘My son, he is right. It is customary. If you let Gen-Karn live and he survives, then he will never forget this defeat. I know his nature, lord: ever will he seek a way to destroy you henceforth. Kill him now and have done. It is your right – and your duty.’

  ‘And who are you to speak of my duty?’ Ara-Karn asked, contempt heavy in his voice. He turned and let his gaze fall on all the warriors assembled closely around him. He raised his voice. ‘And why should I wish to rule over you anyway? What are you but unwashed savages?’

  And he started to walk away, his feet leaving little red flowers in the snow. He headed over to where the path came up to the summit of the Table, where the pack-ponies still waited by the huge severed head.

  But the tribes followed after him, dismay in their simple hearts. Already they had fallen under his spell. Not a one of them would have believed he could by any luck defeat Gen-Karn; now they had seen him do so with great ease, scarcely being wounded in the feat. Many remembered the tales that had spread of this man, of his magical powers and his influence with the gods. And now they would have him for their king. They followed after him, leaving the writhing body of Gen-Karn behind. A few of the Orn men picked up their chief and carried him to the great tent by the fallen orange standard; but after that they too followed after the stranger.

  ‘Be our Warlord, Ara-Karn!’ they cried after him. ‘Lead us in battle and protect us with your powers!’

  But he turned and spat upon the ground before their feet. ‘I will not lead you,’ he cried aloud. ‘Why should I wish to rule such mangy dogs as you?’ He turned and walked away again.

  At this insult, there were grumblings among the warriors. There were many men of great pride among them. They had followed this man like beggars, and he had spat at them. Now their dismay turned to anger in their breasts. ‘Who dares to call us dogs?’ they grumbled.

  ‘Many enough of the pampered soft men of the South, I am sure,’ said Ara-Karn over his shoulder. ‘Dogs and worse than dogs they call you.’

  ‘Let them come here and call us that!’ they shouted.

  ‘They have done so!’ shouted Ara-Karn in turn. Again he turned and faced them down. ‘Listen to a tale: A rebellious hound once growled at his master’s table, and the master’s ladies were afraid. So the master took the dog out to the sheds and whipped it a skin’s distance from death and banished the dog from his lands. Yet this dog was a servile dog, a lackey of a dog – for though he was stronger than the master and could have slain him and had his pick of all the rich foods of the table, he went away. And even then he came arunning at the master’s every whistle, hunting many things for the master who had whipped him. And what are you, the tribes of the far North, if not this very dog
?’

  ‘We are not dogs!’ they shouted. And now their anger was very great, so that Gundoen was afraid they might fall upon Ara-Karn and throw him from the cliffs. ‘We are not dogs! We have no masters! Who will tell us that we have masters?’

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘Aye!’ they shouted. They bustled even closer now, teeth gleaming in rage in the firelight. ‘We deny it!’

  Ara-Karn only laughed at them. ‘Then answer me this, if you can: How much do the merchants get for a single bandar skin at the bazaars in Tarendahardil, the City Over the World?’

  This stopped them, and they considered. But none of them could say. And their confusion grew, though their anger did not cool.

  ‘You see, you cannot tell me! Yet you give them these pelts whenever they demand them of you. Your hunters strive and risk all, and many of them die – all so that the Emperor’s lackeys may get their pretty cloaks!’

  ‘We are paid for them!’

  Ara-Karn shrugged. ‘A lackey’s wages – or rather, the table leavings for the master’s dog. And your master – what is he but a pompous swine surfeited with wine and gluttony, sprawling on his bandar rug? And still you serve him!’

  The warriors surged in confusion. No longer were they angry at Ara-Karn; instead their anger was turned toward the soft men of the lush Southlands, who had cheated them on the price of skins.

  ‘Generations and generations ago, or so I am told,’ continued Ara-Karn, ‘the civilized lands beat you into this North. Many were the dead, but you found this Table and held your ground, though there were few tribes and of them many were women, children, and men wounded near to death. And even so they held off all the fierce attacks of a thousand thousand Southron warriors fresh and well fed and clad in expensive armor. They wanted to destroy the tribes utterly, but you laughed and spat in their faces, and in the end they were forced to leave – aye, even so many of them, and so much better men in those times than they are in these!

  ‘And so, it would appear, were the tribesmen of those times better! Those men – ah, they were giants and ravishers in those times! They went where they pleased, striding red-handed over the soft belly of the Southlands; they would not have hid quavering behind the Spines. They grew so great that the Southlands trembled and combined together in numbers beyond imagining, and even then they were victorious only by a slight chance of luck!

  ‘You are not even worthy of their names. That dog I fought’ – he gestured over at the great tent beside the fallen standard – ‘he was the best among you, yet he would be a fearful weakling beside the likes of Tont-Ornoth. You have offered me your lordship. Well, I spit upon it and scorn it utterly! Pick out a blind man or some golden-haired woman to lead you. Perhaps you would make better weavers and bakers than you do warriors!’

  Now there were no grumblings when he had done, no angry gnashing or gestures. They remembered the old tales of their ancestors, and they recalled how the old dream had ever been to be revenged upon the Southlands. And they knew they had forgotten that dream and fallen into content, trading with the perfumed merchants rather than slaying them outright. They could not be angry with Ara-Karn, for the insults he spoke were truth.

  ‘What would you have us do?’ asked one among them.

  ‘Are you children – to be told? I know not, nor care. Do as you will – the choice is yours.’

  ‘Nay, we know what we want!’ shouted Gundoen suddenly. ‘We know! To war upon the Southlands and redeem the heritage of our ancestors! And to have none other for our king than Ara-Karn!’

  And the others cried in echo, ‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’ The chant rose to the heavens in its volume, quickening like some excited heart’s beat, going on and on and on. ‘Ara-Karn! Ara-Karn!’

  ‘Perhaps I misjudged you!’ he shouted, and they laughed to hear him. ‘Perhaps you are not dogs after all, but free warriors! Well, then, if you demand it, then I shall lead you.’

  He paced the snowy ground in the center of their ring while the warriors cheered and hooted.

  Before a slight depression in the ground he halted. He raised his fist. The cheering fell away.

  ‘Wait,’ he told them. ‘You shall have witnesses to your oaths.’

  He raised his other fist. In the faroff light of the drowning Sun his one shadow danced apart from the other shadows the bonfires cast of him. And then a tribesman pointed to the ground by the stranger’s feet – there where the shadows moved, but he did not.

  The shadows moved. They darkened. They joined together, against the light.

  One shadow he cast, black across the snow, black as the sky that opposed Goddess.

  The shadow grew.

  It climbed up his body and loomed into the air above his two raised fists. The tribesmen cowered. Their cheers were dead now in their throats. They witnessed what they had never beheld before, a thing strange and unnatural, and the proof of the wildest claims about this man.

  The shadow rose taller than the tallest hut. It rose up above the mountain like a great tree.

  The arms of Ara-Karn stiffened until the veins stood out and the tendons were rigid leading into the wrists. His arms gleamed with sweat like oil; strange markings mottled the skin, half drawing, half charactery, the like of which no tribesman had ever seen, unless it were perhaps in the dreams his ancestral blood stirred in him, when he lay captive to a bitter sleep.

  He began to mutter words in a tongue so old, the stone of the mountain might still have been forming deep in the bowels of the earth when they were first heard.

  His shadow bent and arched over, and reached its huge arms deep underground.

  ‘You who died here and were buried unvoyaged,’ he breathed, ‘O you brave defenders! Now is the hour of your vengeance! Your kinsmen are here assembled in your name. They await you! Rise up, I command you, seek the light, stretch hands and arms out of the ground. Bear witness to what your sons will swear this waking!’

  And before the eyes of the tribesmen of the far North, something sprouted from the snowy ground.

  Was it a trick of the light, the bending fire-casts, the dim and anxious Goddesslight that reached them from so far away? Or did they truly see the fingers rise up like new shoots, and the hands and arms? Were those truly figures who rose up in their midst, clustered about him but glaring with deep eyes at the tribesmen their last sons?

  They were like men, those shapes, the spectral shapes of the slain. And they were tall – much taller than the warriors there assembled who were still alive –for those were the giants of ancient men, the original defenders of the Urnostardil who died there and were buried there unvoyaged.

  Once they were tall and strong, but now they were thin, gaunt, and hungry from their long flight before the armies of Elna, and the long siege on the mountaintop.

  The tribesmen were struck still at the sight. Some muttered prayers to ward off evil; many made the Sign of Goddess; all felt the hackles of their flesh crawl about their skin.

  The specters did not speak. But Ara-Karn spoke for them.

  ‘The brothers and sons and fathers of these men,’ he said, ‘and the husbands and brothers of these women, and the fathers and mothers of these babes, made one pact among them, and swore one oath. To this oath they joined in the oldest rite of dark God – you all know it, and know it is not to be spoken of in the light of Goddess. They had no beasts to use for sacrifice; all their beasts they had eaten in the long starving siege here. They were their own sacrifice then, and drank their own blood to seal it – these shades looked upon their arms and saw the wounds their last survivors made.

  ‘But they will ask no such pain from you. Rather their own beings will bind you to the oath you now will take.’

  Ara-Karn walked slowly around the circle before the cowed and trembling warriors. No enemy of flesh and blood could have cowed them, gathered there. But the sight of this magical rebirth tore at the very pith of their childhood superstitious hearts.

  ‘Now swear,’ he cried, so that
his voice rang off the stone and echoed into the blackness of the Night beyond, ‘swear by these, your own dead ancestors, to reaffirm your vengeance and your ancient vows, and to ride with me, and not to turn back until the vengeance is accomplished. In return, I swear, I, your Warlord, that these specters will ride with you and fight with you, though unseen. With these ghosts at your side you cannot fail, but woe unto you if you do not carry out your mission to the end – for these very ghosts who have supported you will turn on you and rend you into bits should you fail!’

  He ended.

  Silence struck them when he had done.

  Then one voice cried out. Gundoen from the forefront of his warriors bellowed like the roar of a bandar, ‘I swear it, in the name of Tont-Ornoth!’

  And Ring-Sol cried, ‘I also swear it for all of the Archeros!’

  ‘And I swear!’ laughed Ven-Vin-Van of the Borsos.

  ‘And I,’ roared Ren-Tionan, and at his back all those who yet bore Elrikal’s once-mighty banner swore with him; and at those voices a thousand joined in, until all the tribesmen had sworn and sworn and sworn again, drew out their blades and flashed them in their eyes.

  The chanting rose again. The firelight gleamed off their sweating skins, their avid eyes, their sharp yellowed teeth. They banged their swords on their shields; they stamped the ground with their feet. The rattle and roil of their mail and armor was like the withdrawing of God’s fatal jade sword, which is drawn only for blood and may not be denied.

  The spectral shades wavered at the uproar, rippling like banners in the wind. Ara-Karn stood among them, seeming no more mortal than they. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked upon what he had wrought.

  And finally, after the raucous din had died down somewhat, Ringla of the Eldar tribe cried out, ‘O Ara-Karn! O Warlord, I have a question for you!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How much do the merchants gets for a single bandar skin at the bazaar in Tarendahardil?’