I've posted a bit of this on FB before (I think). A chapter from an unfinished novel. Enjoy?
Old Renki's Tale
“We’ll be there soon. The crest of the valley is not far ahead,” old Renki said.
“Tell me again how you came to be with the Great Horde,” young Carn said.
They were both saddle-tired but unable to stop. They were riding through a place patrolled by fearless Dire wolf packs.
“Don’t you ever tire of that tale?” asked the old Northman.
“Yes. But I’m bored. Tell me again,” the young Nomad said.
“Fine. But listen well. I’m going to tell you in the tongue of the Northmen.”
Not so far away the howl of a wolf broke the night.
**
At eighteen years, Renki had put his father, a proud Northman warrior, upon the funeral pyre. The old man had taken an arrow in his thigh days before, during a raid on a trade caravan from the cities of the West. The wound wouldn’t close and the village healer suspected the arrow's point had been laced with infection.
His mother, a stern yet beautiful woman, followed her husband the following winter. She feigned illness, but her son knew her broken heart had killed her.
That spring, as the stag herds began to wander back up from the Great Valley below, young Renki burned his family’s lodgings and rode his father’s stallion down from the mountains. He passed weary groups of Northmen and their families, people who’d decided to settle the lowlands and forsake the raiding life in favor of a life behind the plow. He went beyond the fertile lands they sought to possess.
He rode over the valley’s rim, and headed across the plains to seek fortune and adventure among the fabled Eastern Kingdoms.
After six days and nights of dodging wolf packs as he made his way across what seemed to him an endless green landscape, Renki saw his first sign of humanity beyond the Great Valley.
He rode low along the opposite side of a short rocky ridge as he watched the Great Horde pass. He’d never seen so many people moving together. So many horses. So much livestock. And the beasts! By the uncaring gods of the mountains! These folk had tamed bulls and cows the size of the village hall back home!
Renki fought the urge to ride down to get a better look. With a curse he let the great traveling village move on without him. He now knew great wonders lay ahead, and he became determined to start making better time. If only he could see beyond the vast green horizon.
After another day of outmaneuvering large packs of scavenging wild dogs and small packs of Dire wolves, he headed his mount in a more northeasterly direction. At the end of the day, as the setting sun began to paint the wide sky red, he saw where the plains met a wall of tall trees along the horizon. The edge of the forest made him feel comfortable, less lost.
As the sky darkened, a splintered moon rose in the east. Ahead, the land along the forest rim rose to a wide, sloped summit. Faint moonlight shone along a wavering causeway of broken marble columns. The ceiling that the pillars had once held had become time-crushed rubble strewn about the slope. Cyclopean blocks of stone, their shattered images of winged beasts and giant warriors half worn away with the winds of time, sat half buried and moss-encrusted. Renki wondered if a whole city lay beneath his horse’s hooves as they passed along the perimeter of the ruins. He knew the world to be ancient but he’d no idea that whole kingdoms had passed beneath the soil.
Light glinted off a trickling spring that bubbled up from beneath a fallen pillar. His stallion snorted at the fresh, wet smell of it.
“Alright old boy,” Renki said as he dismounted. “As good as any place for the night.” The horse bobbed its big brown head and snorted in approval as the young adventurer tied the reigns around the branch of a small dead tree.
He’d learned on his first night out that, unlike mountain wolves, the beasts out here came towards a man’s campfire. He tore a handful of the diminishing chunk of salted venison from his pack and ate. He kept his senses on guard as he tried to rest, his simple woolen cloak fending off the spring night’s soft chill. He leaned his head back against the weathered stone base and closed his eyes.
Renki dreamed the sound of metal and leather rubbing against each other. He awoke to footfalls on the grassy soil. He reached for his sword and found nothing.
Warriors bound in elaborate armor surrounded him. The waning moonlight reflected off the sharp tips of the lances pointing down at his chest. Their dark faces hidden under the deep brows of their horned helms stared down at him. He sat against the pillar base, flanked on all sides by a tight row of tall dark shields.
The warrior before him turned his shield to his armored shoulder and prodded him in the thigh with the tip of his lance. The warrior had Renki’s sword in his hand.
Renki stood and the wall of armor shifted, surrounding him. He and his silent hosts began to follow the warrior who’d taken his sword up towards the summit of the hill where more ruins stood, like a row of giant’s teeth bared at the night sky. His horse snorted in the darkness behind them. It seemed undisturbed by the intruders.
They reached the hill’s summit and entered a ring of shattered columns and stone blocks. All around the ring’s perimeter stood more of the strange warriors, men and women, clad in the same fantastic armor, some at attention, some resting at ease against their shields and lances.
The bite of a lance at his back forced Renki out into the surrounded clearing. The warrior who’d taken his sword pitched it at his feet. It hit the graveled earth with a hollow sound. The warriors about him nodded their helms at each other, some pointing at him, as if in conversation, yet only the whistle of the night breeze through the ruins came to Renki’s ears.
The warriors came to attention.
A child, a boy, wearing a tunic of darkness surrounded with a long cloak of swirling silver and gray mist, came to the edge of the clearing opposite Renki. The strange boy pulled his ethereal cloak about his shoulders and seated himself on a withered stone where the carved face of a lion perpetually roared in silence. The boy’s short curled locks shone deep blue in the meager light. His handsome face shone both dark and pale at once. His eyes glared at Renki and blazed like rubies lit by fire from within his small skull.
Renki swore and lifted his sword. Another painful bite at his back moved him further into the clearing.
The phantom child clapped his hands, a slow blur without sound, and the warriors at his left parted. Something loomed in the darkness beyond the clearing.
Urged on at the silent beckoning motions of the audience, the creature lumbered out of the black behind the surrounding ruins.
It stood twice the height of a man, yet, had the form of a man. Its head, a wiry bramble of matted fur, wet, light-less eyes, and a long drooling grimace loomed above its thick neck. Its huge black shoulders, covered in short gray fur and cracked skin, like uneven scales, came forward before its thick legs and giant feet. It wore an apron of bones, which looked to Renki more human than beast. Its swollen fingers gripped a shaved tree limb, its burled head studded with a forest of sharp obsidian shards.
The ogre roared and Renki heard distant thunder. The monster’s club swung at the air. Lances pointed at it from the surrounding crowd. It gripped its club with both hands and lurched towards Renki.
The flame-eyed boy clapped and smiled in eerie silence.
Renki rolled across the gravel as the club pounded into the ground where he’d stood. The ogre turned and growled. The Northman lowered his stance and balanced his sword, cautious of the lance tips at his back.
The ogre surged towards him. Renki felt the air above his head move his hair as the flint studded club passed over him. He dodged forward and his sword bit into the monster’s furred thigh. The creature screeched and roared, yet the sound seemed distant. Renki bolted away. The ogre’s club lashed down catching Renki’s cloak. The glass shards drew long, jagged slashes down his back, tearing away his cloak and splitting his flesh.
Renki wheeled in pain and drove forward as the ogre pulled the shredded fabric from his club. His sword went into the ogre’s groin, buried to the hilt. Urine and gore flooded down Renki’s arm as he pulled his blade away. The creature lashed down with the back of his open hand. The Northman tumbled across the clearing. He got to his hands and knees, searching for his sword. He spat blood onto the gravel. The torn flesh of his back burned with stinging agony. Behind him, he heard the ogre give a deep, guttural howl.
Then the ground rumbled.
Renki turned to see his death coming.
The ogre lay face down in the clearing. Its huge form shook and shuddered, then became still.
A haystack of deep blue light began to rise in the east. Renki saw the back of the phantom child’s silver cloak fade into the dark as he left the clearing. The warriors left the ruins, filing past Renki and the dead ogre in silence. An explosion of orange light on the horizon expelled the night just as consciousness left him.
Renki awoke to pain. His back throbbed and burned. His head pounded and dried blood caked his swollen mouth.
Water hit his face. Once again strangers surrounded him. The nervous hooves of short-legged horses stammered all around. Wide-faced riders covered in black and gray wools stared down.
One of them, a big man sporting a long mustache inspected his sword. The riders chattered to each other in a tongue that Renki couldn't comprehend.
The big man dismounted and pulled Renki to his feet. The battered Northman stood, too weak to resist. Some of the riders laughed, others stared, uncertain. The big mustached man turned Renki around.
Before him lay the carcass of a huge bear. A giant clawed paw held his shredded cloak.
The big man laughed and with a torrent of strange words sent one of the riders away. A moment later the rider returned with Renki’s stallion and his belongings.
**
“And I’ve been with the Great Horde ever since,” Renki finished.
Soft morning light began to fill the eastern sky.
“The last time you told that tale you fought a dragon, not a ogre,” Carn said.
“The Nomads favor stories about dragons.” The old man said with a smile. “As I just said, I fought a ogre.”
Carn shook his head. “Spirits and ghosts; it was a bear.”
Renki shook his gray locks and pushed his mount to a trot. The young nomad slapped his reigns against his mount’s flanks.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Carn said as he caught up.
The old man unlaced the front of his woolen vest and dropped it to his waist as he turned his mount, revealing his naked back. Seven jagged pale scars ran down from his shoulder, disappearing beneath his belt. “How many claws on a bear's paw boy?”
The young nomad counted the digits on his own hand. “Five.”
Renki kept his gaze ahead as he pulled his vest back up, re-lacing as he rode. “There is more to this world than what we see,” he said. “You would do well to remember this.”
The pair rode on in quiet for a few minutes.
“Will you tell me the story again?” asked young Carn.
Old Renki rolled his eyes, then began the tale again.
The End
© Martin Edward Stephenson 2012
