Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  The Doralan of Doralan glanced up at the sky. It was not Earth’s sky, but it was more familiar to Robert Cleve now than Earth’s. The men of Andor, without compasses, had good reason to know the stars in their triple-mooned sky.

  “It isn’t too late. Call the algrof,” he said, adding the Andran plural prefix “al” to the word for clan leader.

  “Andrah … Lord … ”

  “I am fine, Biyah. Stop worrying and nagging. But — send me Stek first.” The young Grof of Doralan smiled. “Armed.”

  Biyah nodded, cheered that his lord and friend would at least have at his side the biggest and most loyal of Doralan warriors. He hurried into the darkness.

  Robert Cleve’s mind directed Doralan Andrah’s body to take several paces forward. He peered down the escarpment to the dark camp. There stood the scattered tents of the clans, beneath the little mesa on which their chief’s tent rested. Andrah gazed down at them, remembering how they had chosen him allied leader after his father’s death. He had had to best Khoramor Shant in the Three Trials, no mean feat considering the arcane powers of Shant’s sister. Then Shant had challenged, and had desisted only at the urging of Starinor Zerdah and Molderan Kishen, although Kishen, too, questioned the leadership of the young Doralan.

  But unity was necessary at least for the time. Thran of Eth, warlord of Mor, had murdered Mor’s King Neren. To be certain of his security, Thran had then proceeded to a bloody pogrom, wiping out most of Neren’s clan, the Solanans. The other clans of Elgain refused to swear allegiance, much less fealty, to the new ruler in Mor. Thran promised to bend their knees with fire and sword — and sent for mercenaries from his own land of Eth. At once, the secret meeting of the Elgain clans was called. But on the night before, Andrah’s father suffered his last attack of the Grof Sickness, and the meeting became a lengthier one than planned. There was the funeral for the old warrior, and the flame dances before his bier. Daron would return him to Andor in a new body; he had not merited retirement with his god by dying a warrior’s death. Then came the business of Andrah’s official ascension; eschewing pageantry, he had merely assumed his father’s cloak and chair, shield and ax. But still, plans could not be made to move against Thran before his foreign troops arrived. First there was the matter of choosing the leader of the temporary alliance against him.

  Kishen of Molderan claimed the post, by right of age and family; his was the oldest clan in all Elgain and perhaps the world. But so did young Shant of Khoramor claim the high honor, and all knew he was backed by his sister with her Starpowers. Starinor Zerdah nominated Andrah, and persuaded Kishen to join him in backing the son of the man they had acknowledged leader. And so Shant challenged.

  The Three Trials; the challenge; its withdrawal, in a hot moment of hands on hilts. Then Doralan Andrah had swung his father’s mantle about him and ascended to the chair and accepted, one by one, the patches of the other clans from the hands of their chieftains — even Shant’s. And at last the planning began. They had begun to gather here, in the Mountains of Mist above Mor, as slowly as they dared in order not to arouse Thran’s suspicion or attract his attention — now directed in the main to wenching, and elevating Ethites to powerful posts in Mor. And then the new clansleader, a mightily thewed man in his mid-twenties, had been struck down, seemingly by the same Grof Sickness that had always plagued — and finally killed — his father.

  Now the body of Doralan Andrah stood looking down at the many tents of the allied clans. But Doralan Andrah was dying, perhaps dead, and within his big warrior’s body was the Earthman Robert Cleve, who had answered an advertisement promising high adventure, excitement, danger, and challenge.

  The danger and the excitement, he thought, begin at once! He smiled. High adventure, indeed! A foreign ruler to overthrow, before his foreign troops arrived to make the task harder or impossible. A witch’s ensorcelments to avoid, and, Gordon had assured him, to fear. For on Andor, sorcery was real, not myth and fairy tale and priest talk. Two men wanted the power he held. And he in a body weakened by eleven days abed!

  Flapping, the black cloak furled about him in the pale light of three of Andor’s moons. His leather harness and abbreviated kilt gleamed in that same silvery light. The sword called “bhur” hung heavy at his side. He stood, waiting for the approach of the other leaders who called him leader. And Robert Cleve smiled.

  2 - The Clans of Elgain

  “We are agreed, then,” Doralan said. “We attack tomorrow and a day, from within. Stek, send riders down to the city at dawn, to prepare our allies and the clans-kin inside. We — Grof Starinor?”

  The Starinor of Starinor rose, throwing back his cloak to show his fellow chieftains that he’d come armed to this moonlight meeting before the Doralan tent. His bristly gray mane seemed silver in the moonlight; his darker beard jutted from his warrior’s chin. Deep-set eyes blazed about at his peers from beneath heavy brows.

  “Pai, I came here sword-girt, beneath my cloak. Now we have agreed — and right calmly, too, as befits warrior chiefs — to mount our attack two days hence, I rise to tell you why. Perhaps it would be more politic to refrain. We have here acknowledged once more the leadership of the Doralan, and no treachery has marred our meeting. But never have I been known for my manners or for politic behavior. Here and now I accuse the Khoramor of Khoramor of plotting against our chief of chieftains, and of gaining the assistance of his Starpowered sister!” His arm, bare but for the copper brassard near his shoulder, swept out and extended to Khoramor Shant. Starinor Zerdah’s ringless finger pointed.

  “I make charge formally, in the presence of the clans, and name my demand here and now that Khoramor Shansi be brought here to answer in company with her brother.”

  “Zerdah — ”

  Zerdah’s eyes snapped to the speaker. “Make no demurrers, Doralan Andrah! I speak in accord with our law, and demand group judgment. The Khoramor would undoubtedly fear your judgment to be prejudiced, because his would. I, too, fear the same, but in the opposite direction. You’d listen carefully and acquit them both, even if they confessed to a plot and my suspicion: that Khoramor Shansi sent upon you, by her Starpower, the sickness that has laid you low.” He turned back to the others. “A sickness, my lords, that I have fought with all the power I could muster: that of my cousin, Witch of Starinor! Since the moment Andrah fell ill, I have had her hard at work in weaving spells to counteract the evil in his body — or mind, since no sign was found upon him but since he suffered from fever and delirium.”

  Zerdah’s big, gnarled hand, minus its third finger, lay curled loosely about the pommel of his sword. His eyes swept them all, including Andrah. Then they returned to stare implacably, malignantly at the young Khoramor.

  Shant, Khoramor of Khoramor, was on his feet. Hurling back his purple cloak, he spread wide his arms. He wore an ungirt sleep tunic of white homespun.

  “Not afflicted with the suspicious mind of the Starinor of Starinor, and with no such malice in my heart as his tongue seeks to place there, I show that I came unarmed and unarmored.” His hands clutched at the slanted closure of the tunic, jerked it open so that it flapped loosely about him. Beneath, his strong body was naked. He turned, again extending his arms, showing them all he spoke truth. Then he spoke on:

  “I acknowledge the legality of the Starinor’s accusation, but not its truth. It is wholly false. It is little more than I might expect, I admit, from a warrior forced to defend his keep against marauders. But that, Starinor Zerdah, was ten years past. Cannot your mind accustom itself to peace and trust of your peers? It was not one of us that attacked you in Starinor Keep, but the men from eastern Valnyra, starved from crop failure.” Shant swung to Andrah. “I challenged you, Andrah. I have deferred that challenge until after we have won, in concert, over Thran. But … I have not ‘plotted against you.’ Nor has my sister, within my knowledge, sent spells upon you. She offered to fight for your life! I hail your miraculous recovery from what we all assumed was the Grof Sickness that killed you
r father in bed, that mighty Daron might have to send him back thus in a new body and a new life, seeking again his warrior’s death.”

  “Swear,” Molderan Kishen said quietly, in a voice like the crackling leaves of autumn. And Zerdah nodded, chewing at his fierce moustache.

  Shant dropped one hand to where his bhur hilt would have been at his left hip; his right he raised to cover the patch of Khoramor on his left shoulder. “In the presence of my peers, in the eyes of Daron and in fear of His anger, and on the patch and honor of all generations of Khoramor, I swear.”

  Andrah glanced at Zerdah. Zerdah was still glowering at Shant. “You swear what, Khoramor?”

  Shant lifted his chin without looking at Zerdah. “I swear that I have made no plots against the life of Grof Doralan Andrah, nor — to my knowledge — has my sister, Shansi.”

  Andrah nodded. “I am satisfied.”

  Kishen nodded his white-fringed, balding head. “I am satisfied.”

  “I am satisfied,” Starinor Zerdah said, “that I wrongly accused the Khoramor of Khoramor, and I make open apology and bow my head to challenge and invective.”

  “I forego challenge and invective and accept the Starinor’s apology, nobly put,” Shant said.

  Andrah sighed and passed a finger across his brow with a little smile. “Good, then. Now, my lords — ”

  “But I am not satisfied of the innocence of the witch Shansi,” Zerdah’s deep voice broke in, as if he’d never ceased speaking. His thumbs were hooked into his copper-bossed swordbelt. “My lord Khoramor has acquitted himself; no one knows of a grof who has foresworn himself since the days of the sixth clan” — he spat — “a century ago. But I accused Khoramor Shansi, and I demand her presence here, and I do not retract.”

  “Well spoke.”

  The soft voice came from the darkness. Eyes swiveled and heads jerked. She came upon them then, swathed in a purple cloak bearing the Khoramor patch, a cloth-of-gold shield with two broken arrows, purple. Her eyes were the golden green of the lors that roamed these same mountain heights, descending at times to stare fire and hate out of the darkness at the world of men. Her hair was the deep red-brown of mahogany, though only Andrah thought so; only Robert Cleve had seen mahogany. Her brow was wide and high and pale, her cheeks gaunt beneath prominent bones, her nose thin and straight as a sword blade. Her mouth was wide, thin-lipped, and pink. Her features, Robert Cleve thought, were not beautiful, none of them. Yet she was more than pretty, this so-slender girl with the back-drawn mahogany hair and the wide mouth. But all of her features, and, he was certain, even all her body, were she to appear nude, were as if in shadow; it was her eyes that drew a man’s attention, clouded his mind, brought a frown to his brow.

  “Well spoke,” the woman in the purple cloak said again, and walked among them as if she, too, were a grof. “I need tell you none that I am Khoramor Shansi. I need remind you none that a woman’s word is as naught, and that my swearing is meaningless in your eyes. Nevertheless” — the golden-green eyes seemed to flicker as they gazed into Andrah’s own gray eyes, pale and lifeless by comparison — “nevertheless, I swear to you, Andrah of Doralan, Grof of Elgain Grofs, that I have spoken no words, burned no candles, looked into no fires, consulted no wine-marc concerning you. Nor have I sent or attempted to send spells against you.”

  She stepped to her brother’s side and placed her left hand on his heart, while her right covered the patch of Khoramor on her cloak. “This I swear in the presence of my lords, in the eyes of Daron and in peril of His anger, and on the patch and honor of all generations of Khoramor.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “And on my brother’s life.”

  They all gasped, Shant included. He stepped back a pace, staring at her. His hair contained less red, his eyes less gold, though there was green there, in their brown.

  The Witch of Khoramor smiled. “Surprised, my noble lords? Shocked? Even you, my brother?” She laughed softly, in her throat, her slender throat that Andrah could have broken with one squeeze of his left hand. “I offer myself to whatever trial my lords suggest or demand. But — if you can wait until sunrise, you will see that I have not plotted or spelled. Well you know the power of a witch; well you know that if I have lied I have called down demon-death upon my own beloved brother, a death that will strike before dawn.”

  She turned, purple cloak whispering, to face the tall Zerdah with his gray mane. For a moment she gazed at him, their eyes meeting.

  “Can you, will you wait, my lord of Starinor?”

  Zerdah nodded. “I am satisfied. I wrongly accused the sister of the Khoramor, and I bow my head to invective.”

  Her laughter bubbled up again from her throat, like a fast-running river chuckling over little rocks in a shallow bed. “But not to ensorcelment?” she asked in her soft voice, and Doralan Andrah’s nape prickled. He felt gooseflesh race up his arms, and his groin tightened.

  Zerdah’s head snapped up. He slapped hands to pommel and patch, in the gesture of swearing; it was also the ward sign against sorcery.

  Again the gaunt-cheeked girl chuckled. “Save your poor cousin from her labors this time, Starinor of Starinor,” she said. “I shall not graem against you.” She turned, glancing at Andrah, and he saw that her eyes could be semi-concealed beneath magnificent long lashes that made him want to leap from the stone on which he sat and seize her with no thought save of his own pleasure.

  “We have need of each other,” she told them, “all of us. We must remain united. Together we can crush Thran and his Ethite lap pets.” A slender arm, unbejeweled and pale, leaped from within the cloak she held about her from within. She pointed down the hill and to the west, where Mor lay, just out of sight around a rocky spur. “There is the enemy,” she said. “There is him we all accuse. There is him against whom I spell. There is him against whom the Witch of Starinor should be weaving her sorcery, not wasting her time and power trying to protect Andrah from the Grof Sickness that marks him for greatness!” Her eyes returned to Andrah; again she veiled them. “My apologies, lord. The birth name of the Doralan slipped from my woman’s lips.”

  And she smiled at him, and bowed her head, and turned, and went away again into the night. Her feet made no sound; her cloak whispered.

  “My sister speaks truth,” Shant said.

  “Your sister speaks truth,” Andrah said, rising to his feet. “The day after tomorrow, my lords.”

  They left him, returning down the declivity to their own tents among their own clansmen.

  In the tent of Khoramor the young clan lord slept fitfully and restlessly, muttering and sheened with sweat. Nearby, his witch-sister Shansi did not sleep, all that night. She murmured, she swore quietly, she cajoled, she burned candle and watched flame and gestured and hurled droplets from her pierced finger into the flame, talking on and on, weaving a long and difficult graem: spell.

  A shadow hovered in the tent with her, a nigh-formless and yet nearly formed wraith that swirled above the sleeping Shant, and Shansi’s eyes were upon it. Just before sunrise the shadow swirled as if in anger, and then there was an Otherworld moan and it streamed from the tent. Through the camp it went, riding the fog, and somewhere a young clansman screamed as he died a sudden and terrible death. Panting, covered with perspiration, Shansi fell down into a sleep from which she could not be wakened for twenty hours. She had saved her brother from the demon-death to which she’d doomed him.

  3 - The Throne of Mor

  The market of Mor seemed suddenly to go insane. There was little warning. One moment the scene was perfectly normal; the noisy, color-splashed crowd that daily made a beehive appear drab, aimless, otiose by comparison. Then someone — no one was ever sure who — yelled at someone else. Why, no one was certain. A fine example of Kiran pottery got itself broken into several-score pieces. Someone else howled, and a beautifully cured ham arced through the air to fall into a trio of matrons who looked as though their spouses possessed wealth too large, and authority — perhaps whips — too small.
Someone knocked someone else flailing backward into a bright yellow-and-red-and-royal-blue bazaar. Stall, poles, and awning came down with a terrific crash. A jonquil-robed man dodged desperately away — and smashed into a beautifully executed pyramid of glazed urns. Not one survived. People began screaming; many, at once.

  The market appeared suddenly to go insane. Shrieks and jeers, threats and counterthreats rose mingling with ever-bluer invective to sunder the air. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once in a diaphanous cacophony of ear-menacing sound. And then everyone seemed to be fighting. Crockery and fruits, pots and vegetables, vases and cuts of meat, plain and fancy, whirled through the air in an endless stream.

  A helmeted guardsman, one of Thran’s Ethite imports, jerked apart two screeching women, managing to rip the dress of the more bosomy one. She screamed and shrank back, essaying — futilely — to cover her abundance with her hands. The other woman swung a wild blow at the guardsman; it failed to land as he backed a pace. Suddenly concerned, he put out a hand for the billhook he’d left leaning against the stucco wall. It was not there.

  And the picaresque aspect of the scene came to a sudden end.

  Before the guardsman could turn in search of his billhook, it burst into his back and passed through his body, to emerge dark-stained from his belly.

  Across the agora two other guardsmen, Thran’s men in their resplendent cranberry-and-silver tunics, cracked a cursing merchant’s skull and shoved his wife violently. She staggered whimpering back into the nearby stall of a silversmith. A moment later she emerged from the clattering wreckage swinging an ornate candlestick such as could be afforded only by wealthier nobles. It jellied the face of one guard; the other ran her through. As he yanked his sword free of her twitching body, a running man snatched up the first guard’s halberd. With it he skewered the second soldier.