Chieftain of Andor

by Andrew J Offutt

  Word spread fast: Riot! Through the streets of Mor hurried the City Watch, a uniformed police force. They entered the central marketplace with lowered heads and leveled pikes. Behind them came militiamen, peering over the tops of their green-and-yellow shields.

  Word spread fast: Throughout the walled city all knew of the riot in the marketplace.

  The organized force that took the barracks of the City Watch was hardly noticed; all of them had covered or left elsewhere their Clan Doralan patches. Now other groups of uniformed men came a-running as smoke billowed from the barracks, black and thick and fearsome.

  Within an hour of that first shout in the marketplace, the city on Sky River resembled nothing more than a gigantic madhouse.

  Orders were issued and reissued; Watchmen and militia were dispatched to one quarter, only to be recalled to somewhere else. A detachment of men in the red-leather harness of Thran’s archers trotted through the noisy streets to the tall gates facing the towering Mountains of Mist. They clanked and rattled to the gate, unshouldering their bows and shouting to the gate sentries; these trod a platform four feet below the top of the wall.

  It was then that the clans attacked. They streamed out of the mountains like a rolling tidal wave of steel.

  One of the gatemen shouted, pointing at the charging mass of warriors. Then he jerked, stiffened, and fell forward against the wall. He bounced back to fall backward onto the ground, driving deeper the arrow between his shoulder blades. The other gatemen fell, too, as the Doralans in the red-leather harness loosed their shafts.

  Then they opened the gates. The clansmen rushed in. Above their helmeted heads bobbed the bright pennons of Molderan, of Starinor, of Khoramor, of Doralan, of Solanan.

  Gradually the marketplace emptied of all but now-confused Watchmen and soldiery. The people vanished, leaving behind dead and dying and injured, amid the wreckage of the brightly colored stalls.

  In the mouths of the dozen streets leading into the agora appeared warriors with naked swords: black-patched Doralans, and Khoramors with their gold-and-purple patches; black-helmed Starinors wearing silver patches shaped like four-pointed stars; the russet-clad archers of Clan Molderan, their harnesses jingling. What followed then was little less than a massacre.

  “Up, men, follow me to the market!” an Ethite commander bawled, and his adjutant spitted him as one gaffs a fish.

  “Up, men, follow me to the palace!” the adjutant bawled. “Down with Thran the usurper!”

  The defending followers of Thran soon found that most of the citizenry of Mor was against them — and those not, were not taking sides at all.

  Soon Doralan Andrah was trading parries and ringing blows with two of the inner palace guardsmen. He bloodied his blade in the belly of one and grinned at the other. Abruptly the bedlam hushed. Andrah took a pace back and looked past his opponent; the man turned cautiously to follow his gaze.

  Crimson-robed, crowned with the six-pointed chaplet of Elgain, Thran of Eth, formerly warlord and now King of Mor by virtue of having murdered his predecessor, stood tall and straight at the top of the six steps to his dais. His eyes stared down at the arrow quivering in his chest. Then his mouth bubbled scarlet and he leaned like a hewn tree. He tumbled down the dais steps. A Starinor warrior leaped forward. His saw-edged sword glittered in a descending arc of deadly steel. It rang from the floor, and from its edge sparks flew — and the bright crimson gush of the juice of Thran’s life. His staring head rolled away from his body like a grotesque red-and-white ball.

  The man facing Andrah of Doralan dropped his bhur with a clang and a clatter. The thud of his knee to the floor followed close after.

  “Corpses, captives, or loyal followers, Doralan! Whichever you choose for us to be!”

  “Up,” Doralan Andrah said, and strode past him. Up the gleaming floor of cream-colored tiles he strode, a fighting man in naught but boots and baldric, his loins covered by the short leather kilt that left bare his right thigh. There was blood on his bhur, and on the arm that wielded it, and on his leg, and splashed upon his black-and-silver shield. He tossed off his dented helm with its blue-black lor horns, sending it clattering to the floor. Ahead lay Thran’s headless body, and beyond that, the six steps and the dais, and beyond that, the tall blood-wood throne of Mor with its silver chasing.

  A dozen paces away he halted, his gray eyes fixed on the other man whose steps carried him toward the same destination. Khoramor Shant stared back. Both men’s knuckles whitened about the teardrop hilts of their red-smeared swords. The gray eyes of Doralan gazed into the green-flecked ones of Khoramor.

  “Doralan!”

  The half-crouching clan chieftains turned at the shouted cry. It was Starinor Zerdah, smiling, his sawtoothed sword raised high. “Doralan!” he bawled again.

  “Doralan!” another voice shouted, and eyes rolled to Molderan Kishen. “Pai! I, the Molderan of Molderan, eldest clan of Elgain, say again: Doralan! He who led us hence, he whose planning brought us to Mor and our high throne with the loss of so few lives — and with Mor’s walls intact. Doralan, worthy successor to his father, worthy successor to King Neren!”

  And they took up the shout, the others crowding the throne room, and Doralan Andrah ascended the steps to the tall, hard chair. He turned and stood there a moment, gazing down at them. Then he sat. Doralan Andrah, Robert Cleve, the first Earthman on Andor, was Grof of Grofs, King of Mor and Elgain, and thus Mor-grof of Elgain.

  4 - The Morgrof of Elgain

  Ledni of Starinor shook her head with its tight brown curls.

  “No, Doralan,” she said, for witches call no man king; indeed, none of the families called the new Morgrof of Elgain aught else but Doralan. He was the Doralan of Doralan; what higher title was there? They’d elected him chief of chiefs, Grof of Grofs. But Doralan Andrah did not rule them. They remained his peers, they and the curly-headed cousin of Starinor Zerdah: Ledni, Witch of Starinor.

  “No, Doralan,” she repeated, “it was not my doing, nor any other’s save yours and that of the Morgrof of Eth. ’Twas he who honored the old agreement and called back the Ethites sent for by Thran. Under pain of attack by his own army, he recalled them, and back they went all, grumbling. Mor is safe, Doralan. Elgain is safe.” Her eyes darkened and her head bent, the round head with its curly mop so unlike what one might expect in a Starpowered One.

  “But ye, Doralan, you’re only as safe as ye keep yourself. Powerful spells I’ve wove about ye. But spears and arrows, pai, and even swords — these move faster than protecting spells and the forces they call forth.” She glanced about, round-faced, rosy-cheeked, a girl of less than twenty years with bright eyes beneath perennially tousled hair. Her snubbed nose was tiny above a puckered little mouth shaped like the short bow of a mountain herder. But she was Starpowered, and of Starinor, oldest of families. Down to her had come centuries of generations of Andorite witchery. Now she’d taken on her square little shoulders the protection of the new Morgrof of Elgain.

  “I can protect myself against bhurs, Ledni, and spears and arrows too,” the bare-chested young king said.

  “So ye can. But ye’ve no power, Doralan Andrah, against the powers given some few by the twinkling stars themselves. I have, for I have the power in me from my grandmother and my mother before me. Not in the Starinor ring I wear, nor in this four-pointed bauble so cold, always so cold with its starfire, between my breasts. It’s in here,” she said, touching her heart beneath a tiny round hillock, “and here. Pai, mostly here.” And she tapped her curl-straggled forehead. “Listen to me!”

  “Why listen, Ledni? It’s I to my business and you to yours. I’ll thank you, and put matters dark and sorcerous out of my head.”

  Her black eyes flashed and her bosom heaved as she bent fierily toward him. Her fingertip touched his bare chest without regard for his rank or care for his sex. She tapped, once, twice, three times, just beside the broad, padded baldric he wore, even lounging on his couch of dark velvet.

  “P
ut them from your mind, indeed! More fool you, Doralan Andrah! No, shy not away, and don’t bother to pretend anger or act kingly with me, Andrah of Doralan Keep! Look here. Listen close, and in Daron’s name take heed: Place no trust in the sister of the Khoramor!”

  “Ledni — ”

  “Hush a moment, Ando,” she said, using the name he’d heard from no one save his father for many years; not even Biyah dared use the childhood diminutive. “Hush I say, and listen.”

  He uncrossed a bare leg and swung it down to the floor, bending toward her. He touched his fingers to her lips.

  “No, witchgirl, you listen. We’ve dissolved our quarrel and made our peace, Shant and I, and Shansi and I. Shant acknowledges me morgrof. And his enchantress-sister — why, she’s his sister! We’ve become friends, these past fifteen days since we retook Mor. Shant wishes me no ill, and Shansi is subject to him.”

  Slowly, Ledni’s little mouth rounded into a shocked O. Her eyes were wide and incredulous as she stared at him. She rose slowly without taking her eyes from his face, a short, plumpish girl in a carelessly sewn, carelessly chosen tunic of medium brown that was too long to flatter her thighs and too short to enhance her knees. It rippled, the tunic whose shade could flatter no woman, as she trembled.

  “Oh, Andrah! Why must a warrior so strong in the thews be so weak in the head! He hates you, Andrah, he seethes and bubbles and boils with it! Oh, if I could lend you my power, my feelings for but a moment! Then you could know what I feel from him, radiating from him like heat from a torturer’s brazier! He wants the power they voted to you, Andrah, and he wants more. He wants your life, he wants you on your knees, Andrah. And you must understand that it isn’t Shansi who is subject to him. She is the strength of Khoramor, Andrah, it’s she should have been the male! But she is a woman, and her only hope for the power she wants is through her brother. He wants the clanpatches you hold, and she wants him to have them — so that she herself will possess more power.”

  Andrah first smiled, then laughed. He bent to pluck a cluster of blue grapes from a green-glazed bowl.

  Her face twisting, Ledni slapped it from him. Grapes plopped and rolled as the bowl crashed to the floor. He jerked his face up angrily, big fists clenching. Then he saw the hot tears in her eyes, glistening on her cheeks, and he frowned. Slowly his hands relaxed, opened. And Ledni hurled herself against his breast, her arms about him. She squeezed him to her, and he felt her tears on his chest.

  “Oh, Ando! Why won’t you see! Why won’t you protect yourself! Take the love at hand — and the protection. I’ll watch over you always, I’ll — ”

  And then she released him and drew back quickly, embarrassedly, a boyish girl with a boyish figure and curly, unruly hair.

  “Make me one promise, Doralan of Doralan. Make me one promise, I beg you. On your patch.”

  Frowning a little, he nodded. He laid hand to hip where his sword would be, wore he one, and with his other palm he covered the Doralan clanpatch on his chest strap. He nodded again. “By the patch of Doralan, I promise.”

  “Give to Shansi, Witch of Khoramor,” she said, eyes and voice intense, “nothing of yourself. Do you understand? Give her nothing of yourself. Not a drop of blood, not a fingernail paring or a hair from your head, not a drop of sweat from your body. With that precaution, perhaps I can protect you. Promise, Andrah.”

  He promised, and she nodded and gazed at him a long moment with soft, troubled eyes, and then she turned and left him. She ran, ran boyishly and in a manner ill-befitting a witch and a Starinor and the cousin of the Starinor of Starinor.

  And in another place:

  The fire flickered and danced, casting a fleeting, eerie glow of gold and crimson on the features of the thin-faced woman staring into the flames. Her eyes returned its glow, flashing golden green like the eyes of the lors that roamed the upper Mountains of Mist. In the wraithlike witchfire she watched Starinor Ledni extract her promise and flee the draped room, watched Doralan Andrah gazed after the awkwardly running girl, saw him shake his head and bend to pick up a grape.

  From the bowl by her naked right hip Khoramor Shansi drew a pinch of herbs; from the bowl on her left she scooped a handful of strange vermilion dust. Her lips moved as she raised her arms, then threw herbs and dust into the flames. The fire sprang up with a whooshing sound. Orange smoke boiled and writhed, seemingly striving to assume some shape it could not quite manage. Shansi’s eyes gleamed and emitted a xanthic glow as she watched the amorphous twisting of the smoke, the lips of her wide mouth moving, moving.

  On the eighteenth day after his ascension to the unpadded throne of Mor, Doralan Andrah was presented with a strange gift.

  “Burn it, my noble lord,” the Witch of Khoramor said, as he peered into the black bowl she held out to him, cradled between her two hands. “You must not be so careless, I cannot always be on the watch.”

  He frowned, pinching from the bowl its contents readily visible against the black, baked clay: a single fingernail paring. Holding it betwixt thumb and forefinger, he looked questioningly at her.

  She lowered her head. The bodice of her chrysoprase gown was loose, and low, and it gaped as she bent forward, standing on the third step to his dais. She seemed unaware of the display she made of herself as she watched him from beneath those long, dark lashes.

  “Burn it,” she repeated in her throaty voice, “or eat it, Doralan of Doralan.”

  Mechanically he nodded, closing his palm on it “Thank you, Shansi.”

  “Anything,” she said, and her voice was soft. Hair the color of bloodwood swished forward to caress his knee as she inclined her head. And she backed down the steps, still bowing. He watched the sinuous sway of her slender hips beneath the straight gown as she left the hall, her feet scarce seeming to touch the floor. He watched, and his temples throbbed.

  On the second-and-twentieth day of his reign, the Morgrof of Elgain sat in the verdant garden behind his palace. He was surrounded by blossoms of many shapes and colors and sizes — heliotrope and henna and cerulean and butter yellow — and by trees that towered six times the length of his body before sprouting broad-sweeping branches heavy with mauve fruits amid emerald leaves thick as hair on a man’s head. Peridot ferns with leaves like a ball gown’s fringed border nodded and stirred in the ghost of a breeze, whispering their secrets as they caressed one another. Biyah had left him, hustling the barber who’d begged to loosen my lord’s warrior’s knot and curl his straight-growing hair, since now he wore the scarlet robe.

  He heard the rustle in the saffron ferns growing close to his bench, and the morgrof laid hand to dagger hilt.

  Her voice was soft and throaty as always: “Not necessary, my lord. No enemy approaches, though I offer apology for coming so quietly I aroused your warrior instinct. It is good to know that the Morgrof of Elgain possesses a warrior’s ears and reflexes.”

  She swayed into his sight, reed-slim and intensely desirable in a soft-draped gown of palest green that clung to her slenderness as if aware of its enviable task. Her lips quirked slightly in her little hint of a smile. Then her eyes dropped to his feet and widened, and she gasped before she bent swiftly. Again he saw that the low round neck of her gown was loose, and that she was warm and alive and whitely bare within it. His throat went dry and he willed his eyes elsewhere, but they were as if entranced.

  On one knee at his feet, Shansi plucked an invisible something from among the olive blades of grass and held it up before her eyes. She extended it to him, and he saw that her nails were long and precisely the color of her hair.

  “Oh my lord! A hair from your head — please! I beg of you, be more careful. If you are sure of Biyah, be certain he catches and collects and burns all such as this. Here.”

  He opened his palm and waited, watching her fingers move gently. Then he saw it, a black hair from the recent trimming of his head, lying on his palm. Frowning, gazing into the golden green of her eyes, he closed his hand upon it. She gazed up at him with an expression of
great concern, remaining on her knees.

  “He did well, my lord,” she said at last. “You are more handsome than ever.”

  And she laid a hand on his bare knee to assist her in swaying lithely to her feet. He reached for the soft, cool hand with its long fingers, but he touched only his own knee as she withdrew and moved away, the pale-green gown clinging and caressing. Andrah watched, clenching his fist about the forgotten hair. Unusually, he called for wine.

  The pipes wailed and tootled, wailing and keening in the banquet hall of the palace of the city called High: Mor. Tambours rattled, dainty ankle bells tinkled, muffled tympani rumbled and throbbed. The girl who danced was perhaps sixteen, the product of constant training as a dancing girl since her birth in far Shivshor. Thin earrings of great diameter danced and sparkled as she moved, just brushing her bare shoulders. Her hair was a rippling cascade of blue-black down her back to her tiny round rump. Silver bells gleamed and tinkled from her wrists and ankles as her bare feet became a coppery blur in the ever-increasing tempo of her dance. She wore but precious little, and that diaphanous and flesh-colored, high-cut and low-slung.

  Stek, a giant warrior of Clan Doralan, grasped a passing maidslave and drew her down to him, the contents of her fruit bowl and of her halter spilling all over him. Her giggle was drowned by his deep-throated laughter. Farther down the great hall, wearing blue so dark it was nearly black, the Witch of Starinor lounged on a divan beside her cousin Zerdah. His larger couch was occupied by both himself and the blond slave who fed him azure grapes, one by one, from her azure lips. The Starinor saw no one; his witch-cousin Ledni saw only the muscular young lord at the head of the room.

  Across from her, ignoring her lordly brother’s constant ringing of the ankle bells of the girl on his couch, the Witch of Khoramor watched Starinor Ledni watching Doralan Andrah. A tiny smile tugged at Shansi’s wide mouth.