Ronan the Barbarian

by Bibby, James

  Deciding to give Belladon the benefit of the doubt he sheathed his dagger, and then thinking that it would be a friendly gesture to talk shop with the guy for a moment, he drew his massive sword. But the mere sight of five foot of razor-sharp blade had a strange effect on Belladon. Shaking like an elf the morning after a sea voyage, he bared his teeth in that rictus of a smile people use when they want to look terribly, terribly friendly and began to babble desperately.

  "Don't! No, don't! I can help! Look, you want to know about Nekros? He was the leader of the Tribe of Fallon, right, the ones who went on the rampage a few years ago. Well, I heard that they came from the northeast, somewhere between Setel and Goblin City, on the other side of the Plains. You could try there."

  Ronan stared at the terrified salesman. There was something a little odd about this, but it was the first sniff of a hint of a breath of a clue that he had found all year, and the guy's voice held the desperate ring of truth. He might as well act on it. He sheathed his sword, and Belladon sagged with relief and fell back into a chair. His legs were shaking so much that you couldn't see them through the resulting cloud of dus

  Ronan reached out for his beer, but then he thought better of it. The night was still young and he could cover a good few miles before sleeping. The alternative was to stand here, drinking Whitebeard's Flagon and talking to a highly dubious sales rep covered in pigeon crap. Quickly he strode to the door and was gone.

  Behind him, the landlord called out "Goodnight, sir. Walk safely now.", then started to wipe down the bar, which had got a little smeary. In the corner one of the elves was suddenly sick. But Belladon said nothing. He just sat staring blankly into space...

  In a darkened room in a southern city, six smartly dressed men were seated at an expensive table, watching a flickering image that moved on the wall in front of them. It was a view of the Tavern at the Edge of Darkness, seen through Belladon's eyes. As the door shut behind Ronan the scene seemed to freeze, and then the lights of the room came on and the six men looked at one another.

  "So that is the warrior who could destroy us," said one. "Are we sure on this?"

  "Anthrax was quite definite in his prediction," replied another.

  "Then we must take steps. Can he not be bought?"

  "No. Acquisitions are testing this, but again Anthrax was quite definite."

  "A pity. He would have been most useful." The first man thought for a moment. "We had best warn Nekros. And I think we could give him Belladon. The man is of no further use..."

  He gestured to a wizened old woman who was fussing over a small cauldron that bubbled on top of a fire in the grate. She muttered something and sprinkled a foul-smelling purple powder into the cauldron, and the image on the wall vanished as if turned off by a switch.

  Belladon sat up and rubbed his eyes, and then stared round at the tavern. He couldn't seem to remember anything that had happened since he walked through the door. He must have blacked out again. He shook his head to clear the fuzzy feeling. It was a bit worrying - he'd been having these attacks quite often recently, ever since the sales conference last year. Still, no point in fretting. He had more important things to worry him, such as what to do about his poor sales figures for the month.

  And there, right at the front of his brain, was the answer to this problem. Of course! Nekros! The guy was rumoured to be the leader of a tribe of rampaging psychopaths. Leaders make decisions, and rampaging psychopaths need swords. He was exactly the sort of person an enterprising sales rep should be targeting.

  With a smile on his lips and pigeon crap all over his clothes, Belladon (Sales Executive, South Frundor Region) set off to meet his doom.

  MEETING

  We have heard already of the wasteland known as the Nevacom Plains... By the time Ronan entered manhood, this was a barren, tortured place. No longer were men able to scratch a living in the arid soil, and few were the creatures that could survive the burning sun. Thus was it fit only for Holiday Village developments, and few who entered this wild and savage place returned to tell of the horrors of Time-sharing Flatlets...

  THE PINK BOOK OF ULAY

  In a hollow in one of the most desolate parts of the Nevacom Plains, a small and rather scared man sat by a campfire, staring nervously into the night. His name was Tarl (unless you happened to be a debt-collector, an irate husband, or the police), and he was wondering whether it might be a good idea to get pissed. He was staring nervously because he felt about as at home out here as a fish would in a brick. His natural environment was the city - and preferably a noisy, dirty, crowded city with an awful lot of booze, women, casinos, and illicit substances.

  When he'd set up camp at dusk, there had been no sign of life anywhere - just an awful lot of broken, jagged rocks, as far as the eye could see. Then, as darkness fell, a dank, creeping mist that smelt of decay had settled gently around him, and all sorts of strange noises had started up. Snuffling noises, howling noises, snarling noises, and screeching noises. The sort of noises made by Things That Eat Tarls. And some of them were getting closer.

  Quickly, he grabbed a handful of the dead wood that he'd painstakingly gathered and flung it on the fire. A few more hesitant flames staggered into life. In the distance a demented braying started up - the sort of noise that might be made by the Donkey from Hell. Tarl, deciding that if there were going to be a lot of noises, they might as well be noises he was familiar with, started to chat out loud to himself.

  "You must be mad. Sitting out here in the middle of the wilderness, miles from anywhere, surrounded by things you wouldn't even play cards with. Well, it's your own fault. You knew what would happen if those orcs caught you with your hand in the till." He jumped as something screeched loudly almost overhead, and small coruscating sparks began to skitter around his fingertips. Damn! That always happened at moments of extreme stress, and he hated it. The only way to stop it quickly was to have a few drinks. He sighed and reached out for the wineskin that was lying on the ground beside his backpack. At that moment, the distant braying reached a crescendo, and was answered by the low whinny of a horse. A low whinny that was close. Very close.

  Slowly, quietly, Tarl drew himself up to his full five feet, and rested his hand on his sword-hilt. Horses don't go wandering round in the wilderness by themselves. They've got too much sense. That meant a rider. And whoever it was wouldn't pass by a fire without investigating. A friendly traveller would be glad of the company, and an unfriendly traveller would... Tarl gritted his teeth, and then nearly stopped breathing. It had suddenly gone very quiet. Every single animal noise had stopped.

  "OK, who's there?" Tarl's voice filled the silence like a raindrop filling a swimming pool. Red and green sparks seeped from his fingertips and fell crackling to the ground. "Come on, I know you're there. Say something." He listened again. Not a sound - then the clink of one stone against another as someone moved. "Come on, whoever you are! Say something, otherwise there's going to be a nasty accident! I'm not joking... my bowels scare easily!"

  There was a moment's silence, and then a massive and rather frightening warrior strolled out of the darkness. He was leading a large horse and holding the biggest sword that Tarl had ever seen. Around his neck he wore a leather thong, from which dangled a teddy bear's head. For some reason, this childish object made him seem more threatening. He paused, and then challenged Tarl. "I am Ronan, Vanquisher of Evil. Will you aid me or thwart me? Choose quickly!"

  Tarl didn't need more than an instant to make up his mind. Vanquishers of Evil tend to be good guys, and this Bozo had Good written in every noble line of his face. And good guys don't usually stick swords in you if you're nice to them. Tarl held up a welcoming hand, and grinned from ear to ear.

  "Oh, aid you! Definitely, aid you! By the Gods, you scared me then! I thought you might have been something malevolent and vicious creeping up on me. The police or something. Here, pull up a rock and warm yourself by the fire!"

  Ronan stuck his sword point-first into the dry soil and
sat down, leaving his horse standing untethered in the shadows. (Such horses seldom need to be tethered. When you belong to a warrior, you quickly learn to behave, or you end up as a burger in some seedy orc take-away). Tarl, rigorously following his policy of being nice, carried on babbling away.

  "I'm Tarl, by the way. Ronan, Vanquisher of Evil, eh? Good name! Says it all, really. I've always fancied something like that for myself. Something with a bit of style. Tarl the Mixer of Cocktails, maybe. Or Tarl the Thrower of Parties."

  Ronan looked at him quizzically. "How about Tarl the Crasher of Gates?" he suggested.

  Tarl stared in surprise. "Here, have we met before?" he asked, worriedly. Ronan smiled and shook his head, and Tarl picked up the wineskin and unstoppered it thoughtfully. Despite the fact that he had a teddy-bear head hanging round his neck, this guy was no idiot. Tarl took a long gulp of wine, then remembered his Nice Guy policy and offered the skin to Ronan, who took it and raised it to his lips. He swallowed, and his eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead with an audible thump. Ye Gods! He'd expected the wine to be a little on the rough side, but it felt as though someone had sand-papered his throat and blow-torched his stomach! And the aftertaste! He'd drunk a fair bit of wine in the past two years, and become quite knowledgeable, but this was like nothing he'd ever experienced.

  Tarl, who firmly believed that you could tell the quality of a wine by the size of the lumps in it, grinned proudly. "Good, eh? That'll put hairs on your chest! My pet rat used to go round beating up cats after a glass of this stuff!"

  "You have a pet rat?" Ronan smiled to himself as he handed the wineskin back. Tarl looked more likely to be a pet rat than own one.

  "Yeah. He's called William.... well, I don't actually own him, we shared a cellar together. He was great, I'd taught him all sorts of tricks. I taught him to play dead, and to sit up and beg, and to fetch, and to carry..."

  "That's pretty clever. What did he carry?"

  "Bubonic plague, mostly." Tarl smiled at the memory of his pet, then a frown crossed his face. "I hope he's all right. I had to leave him behind when I slipped out of Orcville. I was in a bit of a hurry. Didn't have time to say goodbye."

  "Orcville? That's one dangerous town!"

  "You're telling me! I was a Gambling Chip for three weeks when I first went there. I was pretty desperate, I can tell you. Then I got a safer job, working in the Blue Balrog Club. I used to take the money at the door."

  "Why did you leave?"

  "They caught me doing it. So I thought I'd better get out before I ended up in a casserole. You know what orcs are like. One minute its "we must do lunch sometime", the next moment you are lunch. Here, have some more wine." He handed the skin over to Ronan, who looked at it for a moment, then took a deep breath, and had another drink. It was probably the bravest thing he'd done for many a long year.

  Orcville, in the Northern Mountains, is a city famed for its relaxed attitude to life. (In fact, most people there have a very relaxed attitude indeed, especially when it comes to other people's lives.) Orcville is also famous for its casinos. It was the birthplace of legalised gambling. For many years, people happily gambled with money, but after a while, the excitement began to pall. So you'd won a small fortune, or you'd lost one. So what? It was only money.

  As business slumped, the casinos tried gambling with other commodities in an attempt to reintroduce the old excitement and bring the punters back. And of course, what provides more excitement than gambling with your life? For a while, the Life and Death Stud Poker Game at Gashnik's Palace was the biggest game in town. And then people began to realise that maybe it was a bit too dangerous. It was fine if you won. You'd had a real evening's excitement. But what if you lost? That was it. Finito. You lost your life. End of story - and end of you.

  Then someone hit on the idea of gambling with other people's lives. Anyone who was foolhardy or desperate enough could hire themselves out as a Gambling Chip. If your employer won, he paid you a sizeable fee. If he lost... well, that was life. Or rather, death. Your death, of course, not your employer's.

  Habitually lucky gamblers would usually find a host of Gambling Chips clamouring for employment at the casino door. Notoriously bad gamblers had an unfortunate way of ending up with a knife in their back down some dark alley on the way to the casino. Well, the odds were stacked against the Gambling Chips, so it wasn't surprising if they wanted to increase their chances of survival slightly...

  In the hollow on the Nevacom Plains, the fire was dying down. Ronan and Tarl had swapped a lot of stories, and drunk a lot of wine. Ronan, bathed in that rosy glow of well-being that comes after a few drinks, had decided that Tarl was a Good Guy. A bit lacking in the Ethics and Morals Department, perhaps. Well, OK, completely lacking. But otherwise, a Good Guy. Slowly, he raised the nearly empty wineskin to his mouth. He'd almost got used to the taste now, and you had to admit it gave you a lovely warm glow in the stomach. Just the thing for cold nights in the middle of nowhere.

  On the other side of the fire, Tarl was slumped against a rock, with a silly grin on his face. Spending a night in the middle of the wilderness miles from the pleasures of civilisation was not his idea of a good time - but if he had to do so, to do it with a skin-full of wine in the company of a guy who liked him, and who could have kicked sand in a dragon's face with impunity, was definitely the best way. Happily, he watched Ronan swig from the wineskin.

  "Great wine, isn't it?" he said proudly. "Wonderful vintage."

  Vintage? Ronan found that surprising. "What vintage is it?"

  "Thursday."

  "What?"

  "I made it last Thursday, the day before I ran off."

  "I wouldn't have thought you could get grapes that far north."

  "Oh, you don't need grapes! My Gran taught me how to make wine. Elderberries, dandelions, nettles... you can use just about anything you find lying around in the countryside."

  "So what's this one made out of?" Ronan took another swig, savouring the flavour and trying to decide what it could have come from.

  "Sheep shit."

  Tarl sat up in concern as a spray of wine jetted from Ronan's mouth. It hit the embers of the fire and ignited with a loud "whuff", burning with a weird blue flame. Tarl went to speak, and then stopped. Something a little strange was happening. The blue flame grew to a height of three feet, burning brightly, yet seeming to suck in heat rather than throw it out. Deep within it something was moving. Something dark but tenuous, which slowly coalesced into a recognizable human shape, a moving image barely two foot high.

  Ronan was staring in disbelief. "Father!" he gasped. In the flame, an image of the Smith seemed to be arguing with someone out of vision. As Ronan spoke it turned and looked out at him with pride, and he was shocked to see his father's face disfigured by a livid half-healed slash where Nekros's sword had struck.

  "Listen, my son. I haven't got much time!" The voice was faint, not whispered, but like someone speaking normally fifty yards away. "Your path lies through the city of Welbug, but beware! Your enemies are everywhere! Trust no man."

  Ronan looked across at Tarl with suspicious eyes. The image of the Smith turned to follow his gaze, and peered at Tarl for a moment. "Oh, don't worry about him!" it said, dismissively. "He's harmless." For a moment, it reconsidered. "Well, relatively harmless. Just don't go to any parties with him. Now listen." The image searched its pockets and produced a scrap of paper. It took a deep breath, then turned and snapped "Alright, alright!" at someone unseen, before starting to read from the paper.

  "Dwarfish chart and magic potion,

  Sword of Myth shall sing again.

  No man's hand shall aid the son

  Who would destroy his father's bane."

  The image looked up, and seemed to be rather embarrassed. "I'm sorry about the crappy verse. I had to write it myself. There aren't any professional writers up here. They're all down in the other place."

  "But what does it mean?" Ronan asked.

  "I can't tel
l you that. Apparently it's against the rules." The image of the Smith looked daggers at the unseen person. "You wouldn't believe how many stupid bloody rules the DHSS have."

  "The what?"

  "The DHSS. Department of Haunting, Spirits and Spectres. I've done nothing but fill in forms for two years, just for this one short appearance." Suddenly the image began to fade. It yelled "That was never two minutes, you bastard!" at the unseen person, before turning back to Ronan with a look that was half desperation, half love. "Go to Welbug, Ronan. You can succeed, but don't forget the rhyme!" It was very faint now. "Love you, son! Goodbye!" Then it was gone, and the blue flame died as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving just the red glow of the dying campfire.

  Ronan sat staring into the embers as a wave of sadness and homesickness washed over him. Memories and feelings that he had carefully buried five years ago had suddenly erupted and were sloshing about in his mind. Tarl, respecting his mood, kept silent. He hadn't followed much of what had been said, but he realised that they had just seen an image of Ronan's father. Not that he really understood this father/son relationship thing - his own Dad had buggered off while Tarl was still a spermatozoon - but everyone seemed to place great importance on it. And so, quietly, respectfully, he drained the wineskin.