Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the second book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Divine Queen.
© 1982 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 Spoil of the Barbarian King
AMPEÁNOR LEANED upon the low parapet and shaded his eyes with the flat of his gloved hand. He had been awakened from a doze by the stirrings of the Carftainians. Now he saw what had stirred them. At the end of the road, a small dark speck was crawling. It stretched and grew, and behind it rose pale, earthborn clouds.
The Tezmonian guards muttered among themselves.
‘Courage,’ said the High Charan of Rukor.
Soon the line was manifestly a mass of horsemen. Too distant to be heard, their numbers emerged slowly from the depths of dun-colored clouds, a mute inhuman horde. Ampeánor guessed at their numbers – five thousand, perhaps. Yet he had more men than that just guarding the city walls.
The riders came on. Now their long, unkempt hair could be seen, streaming out beneath the ends of their battered, bloodstained helmets. Their armor glinted in the sunlight, and the swords they held on high were notched and dirtied with the life’s-blood of the thousands they had butchered in their rampaging on the hither side of Gerso. The wind rose slightly, carrying the dust and a faint odor as of a myriad sweating, unbathed bodies, to the walls. With the stench came a distant moaning in the air: the dull thunder of the horses’ approach, and above it the rising howls of savage bloodlust. They came on, growing; and the sounds grew with them. They came on, motley in their looted bits of armor and plundered weaponry. They came on, and in their fists they waved strange instruments of curved wood.
‘Bows,’ growled one of the Carftainians.
Ampeánor looked again. The barbarians were so close now that he could see the things quite clearly. ‘They do not look so fearsome,’ he commented.
‘Wait and watch,’ spat the Carftainian.
Almost as soon as the words were spoken, the barbarians wheeled and rode in long lines parallel to the walls. With undisciplined movements, they came gradually to form close ranks; then began to ride slowly forward once again. They raised the long bows in their mailed fists. From pouches slung at the sides of their saddles they drew the slender shafts: death-birds, as the barbarians had named them. They drew back the bows, taking careful aim. Along the wall the defenders stood still, fascinated by the spectacle of it. It seemed unreal; not a man of them spoke or lifted weapon, not even the Rukorian. The tension and the fear filled the air like a damp mist off the sea, slowly bedewing a traveler’s cloak.
A thousand strings sounded their low notes; a thousand arrows flew.
A dozen guardsmen about Ampeánor uttered choked cries and put their hands to their throats, their breasts, their legs, their loins. Long feathered arrows protruded from their bodies like branches from a coslin tree; but around these branches spurted brown and purple blood. They tottered forward, death-rattle sounding from the backs of their throats; and they pitched forward over the edge of the walls. Ampeánor swung his head to both sides: all along the northern wall the same grisly scene was taking place. The bodies fell like sacks of meal to the rocky ground, and rolled down the slope to before where the barbarians sat astride their steeds. They rode laughing forward, trampling the corpses under hoof, turning what had once been guardsmen of Tezmon into muddy red pulps in armor.
Again the bows sang, and again, and more guards fell screaming to their doom; and yet again it happened. Ghastly death swarmed the long stone walls; and the barbarians laughed like Madpriests at the sight. The guards shivered, their knees swaying in terror; and those who yet lived fell to their bellies, and cowered behind the protection of the low stone parapets. Even the Carftainians sat down, only their helms and hate-ridden eyes showing above the stone. And soon only Ampeánor of Rukor stood above the crimsoned walls.
Up and down the deserted walls he stalked, his shield bristling with forty long-feathered arrows; and he stormed above the barbarians in his wrath. ‘Cowards!’ he yelled at them in their own tongue, which he had learned with Allissál. ‘Put away those things and fight us like men!’
‘Ha!’ came a husky cry.
One of the savages rode forward. The others broke and made way for him. He rode a tremendous black stallion, and his armor glittered with gilt in the autumn sun. He dwarfed all the others: his massive shoulders seemed solid as stones, and his arms like rocky reaches of coastline, the bursting veins like rivulets cutting through the stone. His black mane was grizzled and cut square about his huge corded neck; and his face, for he disdained the wearing of helmet, was a madman’s ill dream. Ampeánor, even the Charan of Rukor, felt his soul quail for a moment at the sight of this demon-sprung man. Could this be the dreaded Ara-Karn? If so, it made all the legends seem plausible.
‘Ha!’ roared the giant. ‘And do you silken bastards fight like men? Come out from behind your little walls, and then we’ll fight with sword and lance! Dogs hiding in their kennels deserve to be slain like dogs.’ He turned back to the ten thousand mounted demons that followed him. A single massive scarred arm rose and fell; a single hoarse shout issued from the bearded mouth:
‘Up the walls, men, and at them!’
Crude ladders were hurled up against the ramparts, and the barbarians clambered up, agile despite their armor. Like an army of great-beetles they seemed, as they swarmed up crumbling walls. Others sowed the walls with arrows for their reaping brethren.
The first of the barbarians reached the summit of the wall, great broadsword in hand; but Ampeánor leapt to meet him, standing so that his foe’s body would serve as a shield against any arrows from below. He drove his ash lance forward; and beneath his mail the corded muscles, so hardened by the weeks of dragging stone and mortar, twisted and bulged. The Raamba steel shot into the body of the savage, flesh burst and bone snapped, the body fell like stone to the blood-soaked rocks. He beat the next man after him, and with a mighty straining hurled back the ladder and the dozen men still clinging to it.
But even Ampeánor of Rukor was but a single man. To either side of him the barbarians overran the walls, killing guardsmen right and left. The guardsmen outnumbered the barbarians, but they could not hope to match their battle frenzy. And still were they trembling for fear of the arrows, which would pick off any man not closely engaged with one of the enemy. Some in their terror leapt from the walls, and ran back into the shadows of the city streets.
Ampeánor reluctantly fell back with them, organizing the retreat as best he could. He knew now that he had blundered terribly, in not realizing the deadly accuracy of those damnable bows.
‘We must fall back into the city,’ he rasped harshly to any who yet retained enough reason to heed him. ‘Fight where the bows will do them no good – around the corners of buildings, in alleyways – wherever you may come upon a few of them in close quarters! Give back, and the victory may yet be ours! Still we outnumber them!’
But few had the wits to heed him. Not even the Carftainians would listen; but leaping upon the rising barbarians with a hatred that knew neither bows nor fear, they came at last to bloody grips with their hated Enemy. Bleeding from a score of wounds would they fall upon the barbarians; cursing, they threw aside shattered weapons and fell fist and knee upon the invaders. The last of them died horribly, mutilated, one-handed, one-footed and driven through with seven arrows. Shrieking he died, with a howl as fearsome as any of the barbarians’.
The savages cried raw victory on the walls now, holding them now alone. They swung down over the gates and swept them open. A surge of black-maned, wild-eyed, demon-horsed men poured through, the giant Ara-Karn at their head. They hacked and slashed with blood-thirsty gusto until there was none to face them; then they laughed, and began to ride the streets of the forced city.
Ampeánor fell back before them through the hushed, shadowed stalls of the deserted bazaar. He could still form a core of resistance in the block of merchants’ houses in the acropolis. There they might give battle at each building, chamber and alleyway, where the bows of the enemy, more suited to open combat, would be of little use. It was still not too late to save the city if only enough stout men could be found.
But before him, all were fleeing. They were running down to the docks, there to ship on whatever sails remained. Already he could see the masses leaping off the stone quays, swimming after ships already out to harbor. Screaming panic ran before him, armed guards thrusting old women from their path in their haste. And behind them came the steady, inexorable thunder of the barbarians swarming through the city.
Ampeánor paused. He was out of breath; his sword weighted his arm as if it had been made of solid gold. He leaned against the side of a building in a darkened alleyway, regaining his breath. Men and women ran past him, but they did not see the man in the shadows – the man who had come to defend their city.
He thrust himself away from the wall. He flexed his muscles, and twisted his neck back beneath the heated metal of his armor. Then it was that the son of the house of the Torvalen and hereditary ruler in the Imperial province of Rukor turned. Not for him was flight. The ancient fighting spirits of his ancestors had been reborn with him: he was no indolent, weak old fool in the thrall of a debauched woman, as his father had been. Unknown generations back, a Torval had fought at Elna’s side in the siege of Urnostardil. That man’s spirit had been reborn in him now; and he would do it justice, even if it meant his death.
He thought of all that he had to live for: young Elnavis, his land of Rukor, the sense-maddening Allissál. He wanted to live; but he would not, could not, flee from his enemies. He began walking back up the street, his strides devouring the cobblestones. His eyes were dark with fatality in the shadow of his visor. He would fight, and kill; and killing, die. He asked no more of fate or God than that.
Three barbarians turning the corner all but ran into him. Their surprise at finding anyone who would still stand up to them made them pause stupidly: before they could collect themselves they lay dead on the cobblestones. Ampeánor wiped his blade of blood, and strode on.
More barbarians came. He fought them all. Not a step did he give back. On the steps of an ancient temple of Goddess, he put his back against the stone pillar, and gave death to all those who dared ascend the steps. The image of the burning, pillaged city and the mad harbor swam before his eyes. He was near madness with battle and death. His limbs moved of their own accord, hacking and thrusting. The bodies began to pile about his feet; he grunted, and kicked them down the steps to gain footroom. His arms were leaden with weariness. The salt sweat, mixed with acrid blood, dripped stingingly into his eyes, and oozed between his lips. He saw Allissál then, in his last moments of life: golden and soft and scented, fresh from her luxurious bath, a great soft towel draped about her glorious body for a moment, then falling tauntingly to the mosaic tiles.
A harsh laugh roused him. He looked up, even as his arms dealt the death-blow to one of the barbarians.
In the street below, the dark-haired giant Ara-Karn was sitting casually upon his stallion, regarding Ampeánor amusedly.
‘Come hither!’ he croaked through mashed and horrible lips. No one in all the lush South, not even Allissál herself, would have recognized the Charan of Rukor in this blood-spattered, sweating, swearing, ferocious swordsman before whom even the fierce barbarians fell back in awe. ‘Come hither, Ara-Karn, and I will give you some of what I give your men!’
The giant on the stallion scowled momentarily, then laughed. He gestured with the iron hand, a casual, insolent gesture.
‘Take him alive,’ the giant said.
The barbarians climbed again those crimsoned, gut-strewn steps.
Ampeánor leaned wearily against the broad, cool pillar, awaiting them.
Driven by fear of their leader and a desperate desire to prove themselves a match for this lone Southron, the barbarians came. They swarmed over him all at once, and his burdened arms fought back with ever lessening speed and strength; but still he began to move and force them back, and work his way achingly toward the giant on the black stallion. Yet in doing so he must needs leave the protection of the pillar of the temple of Goddess. Two engaged him on the right, another on the left; his sword in one hand and a long, murderous dagger in the other, he fought them off. A fourth man stood behind him, bringing a heavy war axe turned flatways. Ampeánor saw it but an instant; then the weapon crashed against his helm, denting it inward, bringing sparks glittering before his eyes. His tongue lolled in his mouth, dry like linen; he could not swallow. Still he fought on, as in a dream: as under water, his limbs waving languidly like seaweed beckoning by the sides of the great white breakwaters.
Again the war axe fell, and again; and with it fell Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor.
