Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the first book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Former King.
© 1981 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. The license is included as an appendix to this work.
The Dead Child
FROM THAT MOMENT ONWARD, the chief and the stranger were inseparable. Ara-Karn left Kuln-Holn’s small hut and went to stay at the guest hall, the merchants having completed the last of their trading and slunk off to Gerso. Gundoen bade Ara-Karn eat at the chief’s hall for every one of the five meals, and at every meal he insisted Ara-Karn take the high seat of honor opposite to his own. One was never seen out-of-doors without the other – usually with the faithful Kuln-Holn following them at some distance. The chief still disliked Kuln-Holn, whom he had dubbed the ‘Little Prophet,’ but for the sake of his guest he put up with him.
He even went so far as to offer Ara-Karn the pick of his concubines, the most desirable women in the tribe. The stranger refused. So the chief asked him if he saw any other woman in the tribe he fancied. Again the stranger said no. ‘Will you have no one to warm your dim place and tend to you then?’ asked the chief.
‘No one,’ replied the stranger. ‘Not even the queen of the world.’
And he was true to his words: for no one ever saw him take any woman of the tribe during all his stay there. Gundoen was amazed at this; it was many passes before he could finally understand that Ara-Karn had meant what he said. ‘Perhaps Kuln-Holn was right all along,’ was all he could murmur, shaking his massive head.
The change in the chief’s heart amazed the people of the tribe. Never had they seen anything like it; but then, they had seen many new things since the dead man had come among them. Gundoen, who had never before been able to refer to the stranger without using the words ‘barge-robber,’ now treated Ara-Karn with such respect that he even consulted him on matters of tribal rule. And the stranger’s advice, which he was not slow to give, showed a wisdom far beyond his apparent years.
The chief was now completely sincere in his admiration for the newcomer, just as he had been completely sincere in his former dislike for him. It was no deception, no pattern of deep guile – nor did anyone think of it as such. Such sophisticated falsehood was beyond the capabilities of any of the tribe, let alone Gundoen, who had never been known for such subtlety. Moreover, what would have been the point of such guile? The stranger was fully in the chief’s power. Though he would have been censured for doing so, Gundoen could easily have ordered the stranger’s death on any pretext. Hero of the Hunt or not, he was not of the tribe, nor did he have any kin to avenge his blood. It would have been a simple matter for Gundoen to kill him with his own sword.
Instead, he fawned upon the stranger. And the people, who found such a transformation beyond belief, credited it to the magical powers of the stranger. The man who had been washed up on the beach dead and naked had in only a few weeks’ time become the Hero of the Hunt, slaying more bandar than any other hunter ever; traded so skillfully with the foreign merchants that the tribe was now one of the most wealthy in all the far North; and crushed Gundoen, the greatest wrestler in all the North, in a battle far beyond all his apparent strength. Was it any wonder, then, that the people took some heed of Kuln-Holn’s insistences and began to look now upon Ara-Karn not with the contempt for a foreigner but with instead the awe for a god?
Kuln-Holn was ecstatic over the change. Though now he saw far less of Ara-Karn than he had in the past, he had always grieved that the messenger of the Goddess should have been so alone among those who should be his servants in his divine mission. Now people offered gifts to Kuln-Holn, asking to be commended in Ara-Karn’s eyes; and the Pious One came to be almost an important figure of the tribe. People went to Ara-Karn to ask his advice on all matters, and not a few were those who asked him to bless their babes or their new weapons. It seemed to be the confirmation of all Kuln-Holn’s past visions and dreams.
To Hertha-Toll the newfound respect for the stranger was vaguely disturbing. She saw, deeply buried in the people’s attitude, a trace of awe bordering on fear. Even in Gundoen she seemed to sense this. When he had drunkenly challenged the stranger, it had unfolded before her eyes exactly as she had seen it happening in her dream. She had gone into the silence of her dim place in her husband’s hall sure of how it would all turn out. She had known that her husband would be defeated, even though it was clear that Gundoen’s strength of limb was far beyond that of Ara-Karn. That it had ended just as she had seen only served to confirm her in the truth of her other, far more terrifying dreams.
Yet she treated the terrible wounds of both men in silence. She was quite skilled at the healing arts; yet as she gazed upon the bruised, burned body of her husband, the sight blended with another sight from her dreams until in the end she was forced to look away.
Once she tried to speak to Gundoen of her fears and warn him, but he would not listen. He only grew very angry and thought she meant to say that he was only afraid of the stranger.
‘Woman of ill fortune,’ he swore at her, ‘was it not you who counseled me to spare this man’s life and take him along on the hunt? Your words blow with the winds. You may have the Sight, wife, but not all your predictions have come true. I remember many rosy prophecies concerning our children – and what happened then?’
This hurt Hertha-Toll deeply, so that the tears started to her wrinkled eyes. It was the greatest tragedy of the tribe that the chief had no children to carry on his name and avenge his death. Many times had Hertha-Toll borne for him – two girls and five fat boys. Yet in every instance death had taken them back. One of the girls and one of the boys had died before weaning of cold and disease. This was not unusual, for some years two babes died in the cradle for every three born. The other four boys and girl, however, had given every sign of health and grown past the dangerous age. Yet one of the boys drowned, the girl was slain in a raid by the Korlas, two boys died while daring each other to see how far they could jump from a nearby cliff, and the last boy had gone to fight Korlas to avenge his sister and had never been seen again, though his pony returned with a bloody saddle-blanket.
Now Hertha-Toll was old beyond the childbearing age and had fallen into Gundoen’s disdain. So she wept bitter tears. ‘I know that now you have every right to cast me off as a luckless bedmate and wed another,’ she said. ‘And I am always thankful that you have not done so. Once, remember, I was young, and many of the warriors sought my favors, but I submitted to none – not even on the feast-times, when all is permitted. For I had set my heart on you, the nephew of the chief. I loved you, Gundoen, and love you still for all the years; and when I tell you these things, it is not with any mind to hurt, you, but only to warn you and arm you with truth against adversity.’
The chief took her in his great hairy arms and comforted her. ‘I know, wife. Nor do I place all the blame upon you for what happened to our children. Perhaps, after all,’ he joked, ‘I am the cursed one – who can see into the minds of the gods? And I value your wisdom greatly. What other great chief so listens to the words of his woman? Yet you only anger me when you speak against Ara-Karn.’
She dried her tears and promised to speak to him of Ara-Karn no more. And she kept her promise as best she could, even though, with the dreams she was later to have, it proved a difficult vow to keep.
One of Gundoen’s earliest demands upon his new friendship was that Ara-Karn teach the tribe the secrets of the strange weapon he called ‘bow,’ and fashion others of them for the hunters of the tribe. Ara-Karn smiled and brought forth an armful of bows, the fruit of his labors on Kaari-Moldole. ‘Truly, then, you have never seen such a weapon?’ he asked them.
‘Not we or any of the tribes of the North,’ they answered. ‘Nor any of the lands to the South we now deal with. If they had such marvels, the merchants would have sold them to us long ago.’
‘Incredible,’ murmured Ara-Karn. So he showed them what woods were best for bows and how to fashion the gut strings for the greatest strength and fewest breaks. Also he instructed them on how to craft good, straight arrows, as he called the darting death-birds, and how to feather the notched ends for sure, straight flights. And finally he showed them how to brew the deadly poison he used to tip the points.
With the wealth of the great Hunt the tribe quickly restored their village and replanted all the crops. The crops were late now, and would not bear as much grain or fruit. But the women planted three more fields of late seeds to make up the differences and still had gold enough to purchase fine clothes of delicate weavery, new, bright-bladed weaponry, and golden ornaments from the merchants who sailed up to the bay from Arpane on the Sea, the only city on the Ocean of the Dead. And Ara-Karn, out of his share as the Hero of the Hunt, bought much iron, with which the village metalworkers formed the iron points for the feathered death-birds. And as God passed overhead, the weather was so fine, with such a good mixture of sunshine and rain, that the crops grew almost as great as if they had been planted on time; and the village was as it had ever been, only richer, fatter, and more powerful.
There was no more trouble with the Korlas. Once indeed the women of the tribe found a Korla spy lurking in the forests about the fields. They stripped him naked and whipped him through the muddy streets, cheering and laughing as if it were a festival; the whole tribe turned out for the event. In the end they painted him red and green and tied him backward on his pony, without weapons, pack, or clothing, and sent him riding back to his own lands. Many were the ribaldries exchanged concerning what would happen if he appeared first among the women of his tribe. Yet beyond this one incident it was as if the Korlas lived beyond the Spine for all they were heard of.
The hunters grew increasingly skillful with their new weapons. At first they had difficulties – most of all, the chief himself. His strength was so great he kept breaking his bow. So Ara-Karn made a special black bow for him, twice as large and three times as powerful as any of the others. ‘Try your strength upon this,’ he said, handing Gundoen the bow.
The chief took it in his massive hands. He strained against the string, pulled back the long arrow, and let it fly. It shot forth with the speed of a blinking eye. High it sped, over hut and tree – almost too fast for the eye to follow. And it curved gracefully in the blue-green sky and fell away, so distant it seemed a mere speck falling over the end of the world.
Gundoen looked after it, amazed. ‘Why,’ he breathed, ‘with such a weapon as this, what might I not be capable of? I could sit upon my back step and hunt bandar from here, if only I knew where to aim!’
Thereafter he redoubled his efforts at mastering the fine weapon and at firing arrows with all the speed and smoothness of Ara-Karn himself. And the other hunters, seeing the chief’s patience and marveling thereat, ceased their last complaints. Soon they grew so skilled they began holding contests, and with each new contest the marks of all were higher. And they hunted the game of the deeps of stream, air, and wood, and brought to the village so much game that all the storage-holes were soon chock full. Alli jested that it was too much food and that soon everyone in the tribe would be as fat as Southrons.
This became a popular joke, often repeated toward the end of meals.
The hunters went farther afield than was customary, for the game about the village was growing scarce, and they were so excellent with their bows that Ara-Karn praised them as fine marksmen all, for only five arrows were lost of all that were shot. And Gundoen laughed for sheer joyousness; and they went back loaded down with game to a blackened, burned-out village. The triumphant shouts of the hunters vanished when they heard the sobbing of the women and the cries of the children.
They rode the entire length of the village. The crops were cut down, trampled underfoot; the boats of the fishermen were stove in or set adrift on the currents; and many of the huts were burning still.
They got down off their ponies and strove to quench the fires still blazing. Luckily it had rained only recently and the logs had still been damp, so they were successful in saving many of the huts. But only a few fields of the harvest could be saved.
And oftentimes, as the men ran with the heavy buckets of slopping water, they would stumble over something in the earth and, looking down, would see the body of some murdered child. One man found the spear still in the body of an old graybeard who had foolishly tried to combat the raiders. The man pulled the spear free, examining its markings and the fashion of its make. And he said only one word: ‘Korlas.’
§
WHEN THE LAST of the fires had finally been turned to hissing smoke, Gundoen sought out his wife. The chief’s hall had not been torched, so that it was whole and strong still. But upon entering the chief could see that the invaders had been there, for many of the valued trophies were gone and the bones of the foreign champions had been shattered on the earthen floor. And missing, too, was the hilt of the sword of Tont-Ornoth, which had tasted the blood even of Elna, first Emperor of the South.
Gundoen found Hertha-Toll sitting in the dimness of the hall, bestrewn with ashes from the silent hearth-fire. Barely could he see her at first, for though without Goddess shined brightly, within all was darkness. The winter shutters had been battened over the broad portals in the defense of the hall.
When his sight had grown in the darkness, Gundoen saw that his wife was huddled over some object in her lap, weeping bitterly. Then Gundoen stopped; he had recognized what the thing in her lap was. It was the body of a child some four winters old, and it was plain that the body had been trampled to death. There was little enough to guess who it had been, but the chief knew it. It was the body of young Ord-Bal, Alli’s son.
Gundoen did not speak to Hertha-Toll. The wise woman wept on as if she were unaware of his presence. The chief gazed upon the little body for a while in silence. Then he turned and left the hall. He walked slowly out of the village and went alone into the woods.
The women and oldsters told the tale to the hunters. Almost as soon as the dust of the hunters’ ponies had fallen, the Korlas had swept down out of the woods, wild savage cries upon their lips. They must have been waiting concealed in the forest, watching for the hunters’ departure.
They had swept the streets, killing all who stood in their way, throwing torches upon huts right and left. They had smashed the boats upon the shore and trampled the green crops in the fields. Fortunately not all the boats had been upon the beach, for many of the fishermen had been, and were still, out upon the deep. Many of the old men had buckled on their swords and taken spear against the invaders. The Korlas had only laughed, and struck them down. Some women had been violated in the village streets. Many others had been carried off to the village of the Korlas; among these were Turin Tim and Alli. The raiders had taken all the gold and pelts they could, and even the sacred hilt of the sword of Tont-Ornoth.
Alli’s young son had rushed from the chief’s hall and defied the invaders. When the Korlas had sacked the hall, the women had hidden themselves and the boy, but in the confusion he had managed to squirm free. He had taken his little toy sword, which Gundoen had carved for him out of wood. He had run into the square crying challenges to the Korlas in his piping voice.
The Korlas had seen him and laughed hatefully. They had kicked the flanks of their ponies and trampled the toddler down. Hertha-Toll had run out into the square in an effort to save the child; she might well have been slain herself, but she gave no heed to that.
She had arrived too late. The hooves of the war-ponies reached the boy first; and when she came up to the spot, all that remained for Hertha-Toll were the mangled little remains that Gundoen had seen her holding.
The hunters were outraged at this tale. This raid of the Korlas had gone far beyond anything else they had ever attempted. Though the hostilities between the tribes were real, both tribes had obeyed certain rules of custom – until now. Loud were the cries for vengeance and the shouts for Gundoen. Yet the chief was not to be found in all the village.
Hertha-Toll went into the woods after him. She sought him out in a place that was a favorite of his: a rock by a wide and lazy stream in a clearing in the forest. He was sitting, staring into his reflection on the water, saying nothing. But the great tears rolled silently down his weather-roughened cheeks and soaked his short sandy beard.
Hertha-Toll approached him, making enough noise so that he would surely hear her. But he did not turn about. She gently put her hands upon his massive shoulder.
‘I tried to save him,’ she said softly. ‘I ran after him but could not reach him in time. He died like a little warrior, Gundoen.’
He covered her hands in one of his, but did not turn around still. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘I did you wrong. You are not the one Goddess put Her curse upon.’
They remained thus for some time, and she gave him what comfort she could. But he told her it was enough, and to leave him. When she turned back at the first bend in the path, she saw him still sitting on the rock, gazing down at his own murky reflection.
§
LATER they took the bodies of the dead down to the side of the sea and set them lovingly into the death-barges. Gundoen himself brought down Alli’s young son. Around the shattered little body he spread sweetmeats, candies of dried sugar, milk, and thinned beer in stoppered clay jugs. These were the things the boy had liked best. And in the place where warriors would have had their weapons and armor of war, Gundoen put the little wooden sword, which had been broken in two by the hooves of the Korlas’ pony.
Every one of the tribe who could walk went to see the barges off. Even those who had not lost a friend or relative were as touched as if it were their own mother or son lying in the gray state. This had been a raid not on families or individuals but an assault upon the very tribe itself. And it had gone against all custom, for the Korlas had waged war only upon the helpless of the tribe.
So every boat that could hold water was filled with folk. There were not enough boats for all; the others hurried out to the ends of the arms of the bay and waved their last farewells to the dead as they went past the foaming waves.
Gundoen and Ara-Karn rode in Kuln-Holn’s fishing boat. It was barely large enough to hold the three of them. The boat had not been touched because it had lain in its customary place far up the beach, away from the other boats. The Pious One sailed now before the others, because he knew best how to reach the side of the currents of the dead.
When they reached that place where none of the fishermen set their nets, no matter how teeming the game might be, Gundoen rose on unsteady land legs and spoke words for all the dead.
He spoke in faltering tones, and his voice broke several times. Everyone could see that he no longer held his shoulders as he was used. He seemed like a man whose spirit had gone on before his body.
They cast off the lines and held to the tillers, and Kuln-Holn invoked the blessing of the Goddess for the dead, even as he had done alone for Oron – Oron whom none had loved. They watched the many death-barges sliding softly away. When the swells had cut off the last of them from sight, the people sighed heavily. And they sailed back to the land where silent, burned, and mournful huts awaited them.
§
THE WARRIORS held war-council in the chief’s hall shortly after the voyaging. They were all there, from the lowliest youth to Gundoen himself. They filled the hall, elbow to elbow and back to back. The air of the hall was close and tense even with the sea breezes coming through the long open portals. The warriors were distraught and expectant. They looked to Gundoen for leadership; he was their chief.
But the broad-chested hunter was subdued and silent. He ate no food and supped no ale. He had spoken hardly a word, outside of the oration for the dead, since they had returned from their hunting. Some of his concubines went up and down the tables, serving bowls of ale cooled in the underground storage-holes. Yet Alli was not there to lead them.
‘We must strike swiftly!’ said one of the younger warriors. ‘Our women are among them and we must take them back. When they decide the shares of the raid, they’ll parcel out the women. We must attack before then lest we find our wives bearing Korla brats!’
‘The Korlas never could stand up against us in an equal encounter,’ said another, older man. ‘Did they not wait until we were all out of the village before they attacked? They fear us with good cause. We should attack them with all our forces and teach them a lesson.’
‘More than a lesson,’ said another warrior. ‘This was no ordinary raid, but butchery of babes and women. The Korlas should be attacked and slain wholesale, and their huts burned as ours were!’ Many others cheered this idea.
At the sound, the chief roused himself. He looked from man to man with bloodshot eyes until they were silent once more.
‘Korlas,’ he said sadly. ‘Do you think the Korlas would have the courage to do this thing? If Korlas were all we had to face, we should be able to slay them all easily, even to the last warrior. But Korlas are not our foe.’
‘But the spear!’ they shouted. ‘It was a Korla spear!’
Gundoen spat upon the earth beside his chair. ‘So they are clever,’ he shrugged. ‘All the more reason to be wary. Mark you now, I do not say there were no Korlas on that raid. Perhaps, indeed, they were all Korlas. But if so, the ones who stirred them up, and the ones who planned this, were anything but Korlas. Do you not think the Korlas would realize that such an attack would only bring destruction on many of them?’
‘Who then?’ they cried with one voice. ‘Who has done it?’
Gundoen looked down at the table. ‘Men of the Orn tribe,’ he muttered. ‘Gen-Karn.’
They fell silent again. As soon as the chief had said them, the truth of his words became evident. The Korlas were at best poor fighters, not brutal madmen. To destroy the village yet leave the warriors unharmed was only to incur the death of every Korla who had participated in the raid; and the Korlas were not such fools that they would not realize it. No Korla would have enough of the rutting-madness to do this. But the Orns would, and Gen-Karn would – especially if they were clever enough to dress as Korlas or goad the Korlas to enough madness to do the thing for them. And Gen-Karn, Warlord of the far North, was indeed clever enough for that. Yet why had he done it?
‘To trap us,’ said Gundoen sadly. ‘And he has done so. Now we are caught just where he desired. The destruction of our tribe is now unavoidable. In another year, after the next Assembly of the Tribes, Gen-Karn will rule the chief of every tribe in the North.’
Shouts were hurled at the chief denying his words, especially from those who were young or who had had a good deal of ale. But the older, wiser warriors held their tongues and pondered.
‘You deny it, but it is truth,’ said the chief. ‘I could not have dreamed such a thing, but I can see it when it springs. Can we refuse to avenge this raid? Then we would lose heart, and the other tribes would rightly call us cowards. None would follow our lead then. And without our strength against him, Gen-Karn will swiftly gather all the remaining tribes into his hands. Then, even if we did battle against him, we would be doomed. Not even you, the warriors of Gundoen, could withstand the braves of all the other tribes.
‘Yet if we do fight now, what then?’ he went on, sadly, relentlessly. ‘The Korlas will be expecting our attack. We would not catch them unawares as they did us. They will not set foot beyond the log barrier they hide their huts behind now. You can be assured they have ample stores of food and water – enough to last them quite a while. When we attack, the fighting will be hard. There will be Orn warriors among them – perhaps even Gen-Karn himself, though I think not. He is too wily to set himself in our path thus.
‘Many of our warriors would die. Many others would be wounded. Perhaps we would succeed – nay, I know it: we would get our women back, and put the Korlas to the sword, and regain the hilt of the sword of Tont-Ornoth. Yet even so we would be weakened. We would have food enough, thanks to the bows of Ara-Karn. Yet the rebuilding of our village will be hard, harder than after the Storm. We would be vulnerable to attacks by Orn warriors. And if we could withstand those attacks, they would press suit against us at the Tribal Assembly.’
‘No, they would not!’ cried the youths. But their hearts were not in that cry.
Gundoen shook his head, still looking down at the wooden table. ‘He will press suit against us. He will do so in the name of the Korla tribe. He will say, that we hunted bandar on the Korlas’ land, that we attacked and slew a band of Korlas in the sacred forests where warfare is prohibited. He will say that the Korlas attacked us only in token of these offenses, and that our raid was simple blood-thirstiness – a violence when we should have gone to the Assembly with whatever grievances we might have claimed. He will call for us to be put forth from the North. He will demand our destruction unless we submit to whatever punishment he decrees.
‘Now you might say some of these charges we could refute – that all of them are false lies and slanders. You would speak truth then. But what does that matter? The other tribes will see that we are weak, wounded, and poor, and that Gen-Karn is mightier than ever. They will fear to go against his words lest they suffer what we have. Even those who spurn Gen-Karn and sympathize with us may say that it is a private matter not worth risking their own heads over.’
‘Yet can we not charge the Korlas for this raid?’ suggested one man. ‘If we do not attack, all the evidence will be upon our side. We could make it a private quarrel, our men against the Korlas. It need not be the final stand regarding Gen-Karn’s overlordship on this Assembly, does it?’
‘It need not be, but it will be,’ answered the chief. ‘I know Gen-Karn. He is tired of waiting. What his plans are I know not; but he wishes to rule all the North, and only we stand in his way. If we do not attack the Korlas, we shall lose more esteem than if we fought them and lost half our warriors. We might attack the Orns directly; I have considered it. But Orn lies too far away, and we would have to travel through several tribes friendly to Gen-Karn. That way, too, lies destruction. Besides, it were a great pity not to kill some Korlas for this affront to us. In the end, I know of only two courses that would leave our tribe alive at the end. But they are courses you would not follow.’
‘Tell us!’
‘We could pack up all our belongings, and our women too. We could make a last raid upon the Korlas, put them to death, and take back our women, gold, and the hilt of Tont-Ornoth’s sword. We could travel down the coast to the South, to Arpane on the Sea, before Gen-Karn could strike at us. Then we could become landworkers among the Southrons, or we could fight them for territory. Those civilized men could never stand against the swords of the North.’
‘And run from Gen-Karn?’ they cried, outraged. ‘Never, never!’
The chief smiled bitterly, sadly. ‘Perhaps this would appeal to you better,’ he murmured. ‘We could send a special embassy to Orn – I myself will go, if you desire. We could reach a secret agreement with Gen-Karn. We will get him to take his protection from the Korlas and let us raid them. In return all we would need to do is swear to serve Gen-Karn.’
‘Never!’ they cried again. ‘Never, never!’
The chief stood to his feet suddenly, sweepingly. The great carved high seat fell away behind his legs; a fire lighted up his blue eyes. He was suddenly Gundoen again. ‘Well, then, what do you say to this!’ he roared. ‘We could go to destroy these stinking Korlas and burn their village to the dark earth. And when we had done that, we could set our backs to the sea and Goddess, and march toward the dark horizon – to Orn. Those who stood against us we would fight and slay. And we would attempt the death of crafty Gen-Karn before the last of us lay dead on red soil! What say you to that?’
They were silent a moment, stunned. Then, as with a single, lusty voice, they cheered their chief’s wild plan. They slammed their bowls on the boards and stamped the earth with their feet. Gundoen grinned a wild wolf’s-grin, and sat back in his high seat. He took a bowl of dark ale and drank it down in tremendous gulps.
Yet, in the seat of honor across from the chief, Ara-Karn was silent.
When the clamor had died down, he began to speak. Gundoen immediately signed for silence.
‘O Chief,’ he said softly, ‘there is yet another way, if you would hear me.’
The chief frowned. ‘What way is that, my guest?’
‘You should attack the Korlas, because you must. But not the Orns. There will be no need. Your warriors will not be weakened or slain. You will still be a powerful tribe and even more honored than before. Did I teach you all for nothing, then?
‘O Chief, a man can hunt more things than the beasts of the wood with a bow.’
