by Lazlo Ferran
3. ‘A History of the Supernatural and Mythical Beasts and Customs of Central and Southern Europe’ by Edgar de Boulon is a fictional book.
4. ‘De Secretis Scientia Occultis’ is a fictional book.
For those interested in learning more about Ordo Lupus, go back and decode the chapter headings. They were written on scraps of paper by the story teller and are steps on the road to secret and esoteric wisdom for Ordo Lupus members.
* * *
Chapter One of Ordo Lupus II: The Devil's Own Dice is right after the introductory chapter to The Chronicles of Baltrath and Chapter 1 of Iron I: Too Bright the Sun.
Read The Chronicles of Baltrath, a novel by Gary Kuyper, another writer in The Inkubator group.
Following is an excerpt from the Epic Heroic Fantasy:
The Chronicles of Baltrath
The
Dark
Wizards
By Gary Kuyper
Prologue
‘Death to the enemies of Kith!
May their blood further temper the metal of our swords!
Death to the enemies of the Empire!
May Dakur grant us victory or suffer us to die with honour!’
Kithian War Chant
Since the beginning of time, fear of the unknown persisted amongst all inhabitants of the savage and unpredictable world of Baltrath.
Death, the greatest unknown of all, being a state or condition that all living creatures must eventually succumb to, contributed to being the greatest cause of fear.
It was ages ago that the first of the great warriors dared to crawl forth from the mire of fear, and spat defiantly into the face of death.
To him, tempting death was tasting the fruits of life. The more daring he became, the more flavourful and meaningful became that short existence between the cradle and the grave.
Through this perverted, symbiotic relationship, he learned to understand and control the great power that fear was to bestow upon him.
With fear and death to command, he was soon to carve his name into the flesh and minds of all those who dared to challenge his will.
This warrior was Kith, father of the Kithian nation, ancestor of Baltrath’s mightiest empire.
CHAPTER ONE
Golden Dreams
Groad kicked his heels all the more harder into the sides of the mighty, tawny-coloured stallion. For the first time he cursed the fact that the Kithian war-horses were bred for their incredible strength and not for speed. Bred to carry the enormous weight of a fully armoured warrior into the glorious throes of battle.
Such were the Kithians themselves, a race bred and refined for the sole purpose of wondrous war and destruction.
The sound of sword upon sword is the sweetest music to a Kithian warrior. The foe’s screams the loveliest of songs. The saltiness of perspiration, blood and leather mingled with the delicate aroma of fear, hatred and anger are heady and intoxicating, like that of a bouquet of freshly picked lavender.
The battle is the dance itself, a palpable sensation surrounding and filling the senses like too much good wine; coaxing the participants of its macabre drunken revelry into absolute ecstasy.
Truly a magnificent banquet of death.
Groad was one of the finest warriors to come out of the Kithian Empire. If he were able to stand erect (a difficult and uncomfortable feat for all Kithians due to their ape-like anatomy which causes their head and shoulders to slouch forward), he would stand approximately seven and a half feet tall.
He was not considered enormous in stature as the average height of the Kithian male was considered to be about nine feet tall.
In fact, Groad was considered to be rather short by his peers, but what he lacked in height he certainly made up for in sheer ferocity, skill, cunningness and, a trait most sorely lacking amongst most of the inhabitants of Kith, namely intelligence.
It was by choice and not some sort of genetic impedance that Groad, apart from his dark eyebrows, had no other hair upon his entire head. He had found that the long locks and beards displayed by many of the Kithians were merely a hindrance in battle and required too much attention to keep properly groomed.
Out of nothing but the purest of respect was Groad nicknamed Gu Tibor by his fellow warriors.
Although Groad considered the name degrading and an insult to both his physical and mental personality, for some inexplicable reason, he thought it best to remain silent about the matter.
The fact that Groad had survived the Ten Cyclan War against the Artanian barbarians with only so much as a small scar above his left nipple was proof enough of his prowess on the battlefields.
Unfortunately, he was not pleased with his situation. After all, were scars not the marks of battles fought? Were scars not the true signs of a great warrior?
The solace he received from fellow warriors sporting their limps, stumps and eye-patches was of utterly no comfort at all.
Groad saw only a dim future where his gruntlings sat in a circle, the campfire reflecting from their eager, expectant faces, begging for their father to tell them tales of his military exploits. But in how many ways can the tale of a single, small cicatrix be told?
When the war had finally ended, the Artanians forced back across their borders, Groad had returned to his home village in Bryntha. His brave and daring accomplishments had preceded him, making him a legend in his own time. A living legend to be respected and feared.
The expected hero’s welcome awaited him, as well as a selection of beautiful young nubile maidens vying with each other for the attentions of the handsome warrior.
It is important at this point to note that the human concept of female beauty and male handsomeness, as opposed to the Kithian concepts, differ rather profusely.
For example, the male is primarily attracted to the female by the size and shape of her eyeteeth. The larger the fangs, the greater the attraction. Good strong teeth are a sign of a good strong healthy gruntling-bearing body.
Most females keep their persuasive talents hidden behind closed lips, displaying them only, and ever so subtly, in the company of fair game. Compared to the female, the eyeteeth of the male are relatively small.
Under extreme emotional conditions a Kithians tear-ducts excrete small droplets of blood. This gives the eye a glistening red tinge.
In anger or pain it adds a terrifying ferociousness to the facial expression; in joy or passion it evokes, in other Kithian onlookers, a certain stimulus that promotes sympathy or physical attraction.
Marriage and gruntlings were soon to follow, but Groad being Groad, and Groad being a warrior born and bred soon felt the insatiable call to adventure. The homely life had begun to squeeze its fist on his physical and mental well-being.
His wife and gruntlings became the constant scapegoat to his frequent outbursts of physical and verbal abuse.
Groad knowing all too well that the fault lay solely in himself, arose early one morning, strapped his battle-armour onto his horse’s saddle and without looking back rode off into the rising sun.
It took him the best part of two moons to lose his unsightly paunch. It had been an unforeseen necessity due to the fact that he had experienced difficulty donning the custom-made battle-armour.
It had taken even longer before he was able to move about in the armour without feeling faint or winded from its enormous weight.
But it had taken no time at all before he was able to wield his sword again like the true warrior he had once been.
Even Zarkas, the weapons-master, who had been Groad’s trainer and mentor, was amazed and impressed at his uncanny ability to adapt most weapons to become a natural extension of himself.
Groad was truly the ultimate warrior; a death-dealing machine made of flesh and bone.
Four times the snows had come and gone since he had left his family in Bryntha. He at last felt that his appetite for adventure had been appeased, at least for the time being.
He sincerely longed for the company of his wife Lorra and
their three gruntlings, Zemth, Groadlid and Lorralel.
Lorralel, literally meaning daughter of Lorra, was Groad’s youngest gruntling.
She would be six cyclans now, but even at two, the evidence was clear that she was going to be the spitting image of her mother. Groad often smiled, thinking about how the young warriors of Bryntha and beyond, would one day flock to his door with gifts of tibor skulls and mollok sap. Adolescent female Kithians regarded the extent of their tibor skull collections and jars of mollok sap as extremely serious status symbols. These were, after all, a reflection of the owner’s popularity and physical attractiveness. It was a rare occurrence for a young Kithian warrior to court a female purely because she had a stunning personality.
Quite often the fathers of the less attractive females were obliged to please their daughters by undertaking the arduous task of obtaining these coveted symbols of vanity.
Lorralel would pose no such threat to her father. Instead, the male that wished to marry her would fill Groad’s purse with many golden pieces according to the ancient custom of loballa.
The price of the loballa is generally in proportion to the size of the daughter’s tibor skull and mollok sap collections, which in turn is usually in proportion to the size of the daughter’s eyeteeth.
Groad with wishful foresight had arrayed the walls of Lorralel’s sleeping quarters with crude wooden shelves that he hoped would one day be filled with an abundance of perfume and putrescence.
Groadlid, literally meaning son of Groad, was the younger of two sons. But younger by only minutes. Lorra had blessed Groad with one of the finest gifts in the Empire. It was a known fact that one of the greatest honours that the elder gods could bestow upon a Kithian couple was the parturition of identical twins. They would be seventeen cyclans old when the next season of warm mists arrived. There were certain physical traits about them that resembled Groad, but already they were showing the natural signs of rapid Kithian growth.
Groad was pleased that they would not have to face the humiliating jeers and taunts about diminutiveness, which he himself had once been subjected to many cyclans ago by the other village gruntlings.
The twins were energetic and stalwartly gruntlings who would have little trouble passing the grueling initiation into savden. The initiation, also commonly known as the Ana Iram, consists of three dangerous and trying tasks.
Firstly, the youth to be tested, is taken by raft and under safe escort to the centre of the great Ana Weezi, a vast swamp lying on the northern border of Kith. Here he would be left alone, weaponless and stripped completely naked. He would then have to find and fend his own way back to the outskirts of the swamp, where the escort would set up camp to wait a quarter cycle of the moon for the young warrior’s return. Should the youth fail to return within this set period, the escort would return to their home village. It is against Kithian law to send out a search party to retrieve any stripling undergoing the trials of savden.
The second task is to procure two large feathers from the aerie of an ana-rod noc. This fowl, although remarkably large, is rather docile by nature. Its domicile, on the other hand, is not quite as friendly. Having an enormous wingspan, ana-rod nocs are able to soar to great heights and so have a partiality for building their nests upon steep mountain crags; especially on the cliffs of the treacherous Chaxer-ran.
The magnificent spectacle of the Chaxer-ran mountain range rises abruptly and awesomely above the plains and valleys of central Kith. Only on a clear day is it possible to view the plateau’s ridge, which is more often than not, hidden in the low-lying cloud formations.
Ana-rod nocs have a preference to build their nests where, for someone trying to negotiate the sheer rockface, it would be a similar experience to that of ascending the side of a steep wall.
It is strictly forbidden for a competitor, under penalty of death, to remove more than two feathers from a nest. The price of obtaining these feathers could literally cost an arm and a leg. Many times it has cost more.
The third and final task is for the youth to hunt and slay an ana desh-gla.
These beasts’ habitat are chiefly amongst the close stifling foliage of the humid and oppressive Kriti Dakur. The ana desh-glas are primarily nocturnal hunters, making the task of finding, capturing and slaying these powerful predators the most difficult feat of the Ana Iram.
Once the final task of savden is passed, an honourary feast and ceremony is held, wherein the young warrior discards all possessions related to his past into a raging pyre.
This is considered an outward symbol of bidding farewell to the weaknesses of youth and gruntlinghood.
The stripling next presents the pelt of the ana desh-gla to his father as a token of gratitude for past services rendered and as a symbol that he is no longer dependent upon his parents for advice or security.
In return, the family of the new warrior gives honour by presenting him with a number of gifts. These gifts are mainly in the form of weapons that the young warrior can use in battle or hunting excursions.
Finally the father presents the young warrior with a necklace made from the ana-rod noc’s feathers and the teeth of the ana desh-gla. The two large fangs of the ana desh-gla are considered to contain mystical properties that can enhance the virility of the wearer. In the centre of the necklace is hung a small scroll, fashioned from thinly beaten metal, onto which the father is obliged to engrave a written blessing concerning the future of his son. The small metal page is then rolled into a tube that is sealed at both ends with molten metal.
Not is it only against Kithian law, but it is also considered to be extremely unlucky to ever break these seals. This makes it possible, for any father harbouring a contemptuous attitude towards his son, to engrave instead of a blessing, a curse upon the beaten metal. This practice is not too uncommon amongst Kithian fathers who have suffered constant regret in the wake of a son’s overegotistical behaviour (A practice not too uncommon amongst Kithian sons).
The feathers of the ana-rod noc are believed to produce pleasant dreams. It is also alleged that these feathers, symbolic of flight, will carry the warrior’s spirit form to the other side in the event of his demise.
All Kithian warriors wear their Ana Iram necklaces with exceptional pride and possessiveness.
The most convenient opportunity to safely remove this hard-earned symbol of savden from a Kithian warrior’s neck is only after being absolutely certain that he is entirely deceased.
With the completion of the feast and ceremony, the lid part, should there be one in the warriors name, would fall away. Groadlid, for example, would then become Groad.
It was just shortly after Groad himself had passed the Ana Iram that he experienced a great tragedy that would haunt him for a very long time.
Zarkas, the weaponsmaster, who had become Groad’s best friend, had decided to take him along on his annual hunting trip. A journey which Zarkas normally endeavoured alone, enjoying the solitariness of the rugged Kithian panoramas.
It was said that Zarkas was proficient not only in the use of over thirty different types of weapons, but also in five different forms of martial arts, which he had studied in his many travels around Baltrath.
He had also painstakingly constructed a unique suit of armour for himself. The armour had long metal spikes that were strategically placed on the helmet, shoulders, elbows, gloves, waist, knees and boots. This enabled him, when in battle, to not only use his sword as a weapon, but his entire body as well.
To allow himself to become one with the armour, he would wear it as often as possible, removing it only to bathe or sleep.
He too received a nickname from the other warriors of Bryntha. They called him Gu Shora.
Once a cyclan Zarkas went on a major hunting expedition. The walls of his enormous log cabin in Bryntha were decorated with the heads of many of the most dangerous beasts that roamed the world of Baltrath.
This time he had decided to take his protégé along, not only for the learning experience
, but also for the sheer adventure as well.
Their travels took them to the northwesterly quarter of Kith, half a day’s ride from an area known as Grimwald forest.
The forest had become notorious as the domicile of the zin-zas.
The zin-zas are renowned for their ferocity as well as their stupidity. They are not partial or prejudice about who or what they eat. It is their lifestyle. Simple, yet effective.
They get hungry. They eat whatever is available. They get tired. They sleep. They wake up. They get hungry. So on and so forth.
Whether their prey is dumb or intelligent makes no difference. The zin-zas themselves are too dimwitted to make any distinction. All they are interested in doing is appeasing the anger of their primeval god, the rumbling in their bellies that frequently wake them from their serious and laborious slumber.
The fact that these creatures are able to procreate is a mystery to many of the learned biologists of Baltrath.
“Why do you not have a zin-za’s head on your wall?” Groad had asked staring into the campfire.
Their journey so far had been rather fruitless. Apart from the few animals that they had killed for sustenance, there had been no real challenges. No prize worth taking back to Bryntha as a victory trophy.
“I would not waste the time or the effort on one of those useless beasts!” Zarkas had answered with a sneer. “We hunt only dangerous game. For it to be dangerous, it has to be intelligent.”
“I do not agree with that. When a creature’s actions are motivated by pure unthinking rage, then it is more unpredictable and therefore more dangerous.”
“So then, you believe those dumb beasts to be dangerous?”
“Yes!”
“And you would not mind hanging a zin-za’s head upon your wall?”
“A head would be too big to haul all the way back to Bryntha, but I would proudly hang its horn over my fireplace.”