Call of the Harn Read online

Darkness had veiled the desert valley that lay below, but it was easily broken. Fires of the camp dotted in the blackness.

  There were less than he had thought, a fact which spread some relief over his aching mind. His men, he knew, were of no concern. What was a handful of desert nomads in comparison?

  But something still tugged at his thoughts, nagging and mocking in chattering tones of reminder.

  “When should we move?” Grinvelld asked, coming to stand just to his left.

  Seven days journey into the heart of Corbith-Atar, all for some trader’s goods. It seemed a waste already, and blood had not yet been spilled. But there was this commodity that could be bought only at the highest of prices.

  Reputation.

  The White Wastes, stretching from the southernmost part of the empire, Standing’s Point, to Vraaldes Aldice, the southernmost edge of the world.

  That boy’s body still laid on, out there, somewhere, aimlessly adrift on sandy depths. The spectre of Feilden’s waking nightmare, and he couldn’t shake his mind from it….

  “Sir?”

  “Now, we should go now, while they still sleep.”

  . Broken .

  - Seventh Age, year 718

  “My father, is first and foremost a soldier. He’s never tried to be anything else.”

  “And rightly so,” the dark haired man said to the other, “look at what he’s been doing for the last twenty years. It’s not as if he has any other vocational talents.”

  His friend sighed and shook his head.

  “Besides, you should be grateful he let you come on this mission Aviin. It surprised the rest of us.” The man’s name was Brighton, and he’d been a good friend of Aviin’s ever since they were stationed at the Point. He was a bit older, in years, but Aviin had always been mature for his age, and so they got along.

  “Grateful? Hardly! He allowed that…child to come, and yet he questioned giving his own son the privilege.”

  Brighton eyed him, furrowing his brow. “Yes, a privilege it was indeed,” he agreed, in a manner of speaking, “and now where is he?”

  The question silenced Aviin. There was only one answer that could be proffered to that, and he knew very well where that boy was now. Food for the birds, at least, that’s what he would have said if there weren’t more pressing matters on his mind.

  “Alright, it is true that his decision was, well…rather stupid.”

  “Aye….” Brighton’s face flashed with a sad grimace. How could he make such a choice? The thought never left the recesses of his mind, but he knew that Aviin had been thinking similar things.

  Aviin ran his hand through thick locks of blonde hair, leaning back against the rock. The whole situation had fired up his emotions, when only a few hours before his father, the general, had made him to look a fool in front of the entire regiment. It started out as a simple question of which advance party he should join.

  But Feilden is stubborn. They all knew that.

  He glanced to look at his son. “Aviin, I want you to stay with Kashter and Rili.”

  What? Stay with those two Garps of men on camp duty? He must have lost his mind?

  Dumbfounded by such a request, Aviin let his mouth hang upon a bit, which only served to aggravate his commander, who stated emphatically, “That’s an order.”

  Aviin did not move.

  Many of those who had been tending to their own tasks stopped to watch as the storm began to build. It was not the first time. Nor would it be the last.

  “Did you hear me?”

  He advanced a few steps, deep lines pressing into his brow, all the while his son’s rigid form stayed square, and challenging, but silent.

  A defense, always effective.

  There are those that say a sword can bring an army to its knees. A pen can conquer nations.

  But silence, my friend, is as the Stanciar’s Pearl; priceless.

  “I said, did you hear me?” Feilden’s tone of voice rose with the intensity of the scene. It was thick, malleable.

  Electric.

  Static in essence, but charged and deadly. Just waiting for one, only one, to reach out and touch it.

  But the son still stood his ground, despite the forward push into his territory. Ron-es brathak tain. And he could not be broken, not this time. Not again.

  Hot rushes of anger roiled into Feilden’s features as he stepped directly in front of Aviin, their bodies almost touching. The father came to reclaim what was by nature’s decree his honor and rule. The son’s only purpose was to defy. He knew that this battle was his to win.

  The general, he wasn’t the type to let in or give up. In all his years of fighting the Emperor’s battles for him, he’d never lost. Today, he would be victorious, no matter the cost. And so he broke a cardinal rule of the game.

  “Farshta! Aviin!” He swore, “Look at me when I speak to you!”

  He allowed emotion to come before the code.

  Oh, how I enjoy watching this exchange. To see two, matched in battle, fight to the death. I knew who would win, I always knew.

  But I wanted to see the blood drip from his heart.

  Feilden’s hand exploded from his side, as if a sprung bow, and made hard connection with the tender flesh of Aviin’s cheek. Open handed, stinging as it flew. The sound of it ricocheted off the tent walls and into the emptiness of the desert.

  And now all eyes were riveted to the scene before them.

  It was shocking, to say the least, particularly for Aviin’s face. But something else hurt far more than the sting of his father’s hand.

  . Of Something Called Flame and Smoke .

  - Seventh Age, year 718

  Fire sprouted from the tent as temperatures rose and the oil in the skins succumbed to the heat. Blazes all around lit up the black, burning from the low set, scattered camp to the small clumps of trees that dotted the valley.

  Chaos reigned where just moments before there had only been the sound of silent droning that comes with such an expanse of space.

  Two advance parties had collapsed from the sides, unannounced, wreaking havoc through the village of huts. Men scrambled for anything to defend themselves with, but any that rose up to brace the tide of destroyers that swept upon them were cut down.

  Sounds of blood woke me from my sleep.

  It hit the sanded floor in staining blots. Bright in the night.

  Some order returned as the barbaric men fleeing before them recognized the emblems stitched to their tunics.

  Imperials.

  Soldiers from the empire.

  Recognizing what they were after gave their relatively animal minds a chance to form some sort of strategy. Their women ran to hide the children, though some stayed to fight with their husbands and fathers. Such was the way of these barbarians. Such was the only way. The desert was an unforgiving place.

  Strict orders had come from Feilden that they were not to harm the innocent, but the gender of something that means to kill you becomes less important in the moment of struggle.

  They fell to the earth like blossoms before the spring frost.

  The fighting escalated, and quickly moved to the heart of the tiny oasis. Here the ground was soft and inviting. But Feilden’s men paid no mind. It was not to the rare presence of water that they had come.

  Barbarians seemed to spring from all edges of the blackness, their faces marred from the elements and painted with a sort of glowing ink, dancing before the dark in sharp tones of color. They fought like true animals, seeking for blood and wielding tooth and claw the same.

  But it was all for naught.

  When the blare of a horn sounded, the main body of Feilden’s small force rose from the southern side of the oasis to cut off the last retreat and secure their long awaited prize.

  Aviin’s heart pounded as he ran, thumping in rhythm with his iron shod feet. The men, those he had deemed his friends, roared with all their terror, invigorated by the anticipation that had grown heavy over the last hour of waiting, or so.<
br />
  “For Asix!” They vigorously yelled in unison.

  For Asix….

  His thoughts strayed to his father’s command, and what he would do when he knew that his son had broken it. There would be a reckoning to pay.

  But, only a few steps behind the rest of his group, Aviin quickly was returned to the reality at hand as fighting broke out all around him. A bit stunned, he scrambled to a stop, realizing, not for the first time, that this was all new to him.

  Killing. The art of taking life from another.

  Death would not wait for anyone, not even himself. This he knew well, and it seemed that it had already come to test his wits. One rather tall man broke through the line and came rushing at him with teeth bared and eyes smoldering, hungry.

  Aviin started, his sword rising in natural defense to parry the approaching blow. The barbarians thrust slid harmlessly off, and for a moment Aviin nearly rejoiced, but the curved blade returned in a high swipe to sever his arm. The flat of his own took the impact, jarring him with a force he had not expected, and drilling into him for all time that this was no game.

  And suddenly all of the hours, countless hours, spent sparring beneath the heat of the sun pumped into his veins and activated that inner part of yourself that seems to lay quiet for so long. Like a sleeping dragon, bursting forth from the hibernation.

  He parried two more blows, stepping back to regain his footing and shifting his weight to a more aggressive position. The man saw his move, and reacted in an attempt to force down his defensives, but Aviin’s speed was greater than his.

  And so he dodged again, this time taking advantage of the man’s slight over reach.

  They were fighters, this was obvious, but they had spent their days battling with the wind and the sands and whatever nameless beasts make their home here.

  They were not trained for this.

  As he spun on his heel to recover from the last advance, the tip of his sword slipped right past the man’s chest, slitting a thin line across the bulge of his bicep.

  First blood.

  Nothing fatal, but it served to aggravate him all the more, his yellowed teeth grinding together as he dealt a resulting weak blow to Aviin’s back plate, bouncing off harmlessly.

  Words from his father came back to him, “You have to feel through the fight,” he had said, “It’s like dancing, only, while holding sharp objects, which means you have to be all the more careful.”

  Parry to the right.

  Then the left.

  An open book was laid before him, begging to be read by piercing eyes.

  “It’s not a test of strength, it’s a test of control. You’ll know you will win when you’re calm, and you don’t have to think.”

  Rage, intense and so vile, infected the man’s features as he was foiled again. He took a chance, and lunged. The curve of the scimitar refused to let Aviin’s blade through, catching a bit on the edges, but it gave him a foundation to push from. Balance was tipped from the scale. The barbarian attempted to recover, but found that Aviin’s firmly planted leg stood between him, and fate.

  He stumbled, dropping weapon and guard, but not of his own choice.

  The blow forced Aviin lower to the ground, his sword touching earth, then ripping across with the power of his full chest, clipping into the man’s free standing foot and once again destroying what edge he had.

  And he fell. Having made a partial turn and with nothing to grasp, gravity took control and drug him down with intense strength, unbreakable in its grip.

  Aviin’s sword was there to meet him, pulling out of the long sweep and rising up in a curving arc.

  The earth’s pull slipped him onto the length of the steel, starting from the point of contact at the hip and forcing up through the chest, parting muscle and bone and sinew like paper, clinking over each rib, breaking across the sternum, diving into the cleft of the chin and ripping at the mouth. A complete victory.

  He had won.

  He had killed a man, the first one.

  Flashes of gold and silver sprang to his eyes as he envisioned the honor, and the satisfaction it would be to present this man’s head to his father.

  He looked down, and saw the collapsed form dropping heavy and without support, writhing all the while.

  He looked to the left to see the fires of destruction still raging through the camp.

  He looked to the right, to find two people, small and short, children, one dragging the other back as she fought with all her might to approach the fallen man. Screams rose from her lips and tears from the eyes.

  A father?

  Glancing again to his victim, he saw something else there. It was liquid. Hot, and red.

  Why so warm?

  It was as if he was touching him, reaching into the black cavity of his wounds, feeling over the severed bones and the quivering muscles.

  It was as if it was touching him.

  Glinting from the gray of his sword was a thick coating of that same crimson, running to the hilt and pouring over to slip down the length of his arm.

  Yes, he had killed a man. This one. His prize, his victory, his honor, his conquest,

  His responsibility.

  Too soon he realized the full gravity of what his actions had done. Spirit rushed from the man’s body, to be carried away on Death’s wings.

  A soul, he had murdered a soul. A living being.

  He had watched the pain mar his brown eyes as it dug in. Pain on that child’s face. Daughter or not, it was still the same.

  Something rose up inside him, a thick knot of vile tasting liquid called guilt, choking out his mouth and spilling to the ground to mix with the blood. Aviin’s body lurched in an attempt to stop the onslaught of nausea that began to overtake him. His vision seemed to close at the edges, drawing in towards the center. There was this pounding in his temples, tearing at his mind.

  More bile slipped past his lips, bitter and sour.

  I watched on as this pitiful figure succumbed to the sickness. They all have it, in some form or another, but few as plaguing as he.

  Weak.

  And pitiful.

  Hardly worth my time.

  But I was not the only one watching then. A figure stood just a stone’s cast away, shadowed from the light, his eyes staring down the poor soul before us and shaking his head in what I can only call disappointment.

  We both were. He perhaps more than I.

  . an excerpt from the book of draal: Chapter XLVII .

  It is the eighteenth year of the reign of the Lord Karx, year 974 in the sixth age. Many Doomspeakers have risen up and begun to preach in the streets of the southern peninsula and its towns. Their presence has begun to stir bouts of insurrection against the High Order, which are being quickly crushed by Lord Karx’s heavy arm of rule.

  Amidst such times of war and desolation, there can be no division amongst the people.

  To quell any spark of rebellion, he has sent his High Elders into the land to preach the law set forth by Arkus III in the days of Tribulation, to reestablish a stronger unity between the clans.

  But, while the efforts succeed in restoring peace to the land, a new threat arises as the fanatical preachings of these Doomspeakers gives birth to an increasing amount of so called believers in the Old Religion.

  Fallen, they have been known.

  A new statute mandated by Karx will be set forth, demanding that all such subjects renounce their corrupted faith under penalty of imprisonment, or death.

  . Her .

  I remember the day when She was called, oh so long ago.

  She wore colors then, a green dress of silken leaves, draped over her delicate shoulders. So vivid and bright and young. A youth of my past, no longer to be.

  But it was a time of great change for all of us.

  There were others, of course, but none such as she. God-like in beauty and form, she possessed the strength to resist the temptations that would surely come. But she alone was human enough to feel their pa
in.

  Both were prerequisites to this appointment.

  She never wanted it, in fact, she asked to be spared from such a thing. But submissive in nature, she was resigned to this fate before accepting to take it upon herself.

  A few offered assistance in minor forms, but most just pitied, and then went on their way, having secured for themselves something far better than those dismal prospects.

  Oh, how I long for those days before the gray mantel of her indignation fell. Veiled by the tears of this world, she was never again to see into the light.