Tales of the Old World (97 page)

They were called heralders, because their appearance was said to herald great
events and moments of history. Ygdran Ygra feared the gods were playing with
them. He had read the signs that they should pledge at a special dawn, a
heralding moment. It was as if their path had been set from the start. Their
doom too, perhaps.

In the language of the tribes, these rare beasts were called ghur-phaon, the
essence of all beasts.

The warband moved up through the litter of rock, their horses’ hooves causing
stones to slip and patter away down the jumbled slope. Thunder rolled,
distantly. There was an increased stench of death in the air, as if meat rotted
close by. Karthos saw the rocks were splashed with great deposits of white dung,
like birdlime, but far more prodigious. “Caves,” said Odek.

His second-in-command was pointing to dark holes in the cliff face above
them. Roosts indeed. This place felt like a lair.

Karthos lowered his lance and was about to call back to the band when a
shrill cry cut the world apart. It was piercing, as loud as if an eagle had been
perched upon his shoulder.

The ghur-phaon showed itself.

It had scented them, located them with its beady eyes perhaps. It came out of
one of the deep caves and spread its fearful wings. They were mottled black and
white, the lead feathers as long as a horse’s back. It took to the air.

Zbetz Red-fletch screamed despite himself, his childhood horrors made flesh.
All the horses reared, terrified, smelling the predator coming down upon them.
Gwul Gehar was thrown down onto the stones, Lokas too, so hard his neck snapped
like a twig. Aulkor’s horse broke and ran, despite his best efforts to control
it, and carried him away down the long scree slope.

“In Tchar’s name…” Karthos heard Odek stammer.

The beast was huge. Its body massed the weight of six horses at least. It
leapt into the air on lithe feline back limbs, its hide a mangy grey. A tail the
length of the slave master’s finest gang-lash whipped out behind it.

Karthos couldn’t decide what was most terrifying: the width of the massive,
beating wings or the horror of the ghur-phaon’s foreparts. Its head, massive and
distended, disproportionate to the limber body behind it, was the head of a
vulture: a massive ivory beak like an ogre’s waraxe, at the crest of which tiny,
wild eyes gleamed. The beak clacked like swords striking together, and he saw a
glimpse of a thin white tongue.

Around the head and back along the throat, the monster was fletched in black
and white down, which became quite shaggy around its breast. Its forelimbs were
not the nimble things of a cat. They were scaled bird’s feet, huge and armoured
in silver. Each of the three scale-encrusted toes on the forelimbs sported a
long claw.

Just like the talon Karthos had seen the High Zar lift out of his box.

It came down upon them, keening into the dark sky, beak opened to rake them
apart.

Zbetz Red-fletch fired off two arrows before it came upon them, but his darts
seemed like tiny red flecks amongst its feathered breast. Aulkmar loosed one
arrow of his own before his horse threw him. He broke his left forearm on the
stones as he landed.

Odek, Ffornash and Bereng hurled their lances at it. All bounced off.

The creature landed amongst them, crashing out a blizzard of loose stones and
chips in all directions. Koros Kyr and his horse were spilled over, and Tnash
too, his horse ripped open by the ghur-phaon’s talons. It lunged at Gwul Gehar’s
horse and bit it in two with a savage slash of its monstrous beak. The slope
reeked of hot blood.

Odagidor charged into the side of it, the tip of his lance digging deep. It
recoiled and lashed out. Odagidor’s horse lost its head from the muzzle to the
eyes and toppled. Odagidor had his spear shattered and his left arm removed at
the elbow. Gwul tried to drag him clear, both of them sprayed with the blood
pumping from Odagidor’s stump.

Odek tried to recover his spear, but the vast, flapping wings smashed him
over. Zbetz fired an arrow that struck the ghur-phaon in the throat. Enraged, it
surged forward across the loose stones and seized Zbetz by the right hand and
forearm, lifting him off his horse and shaking him in its beak. Screaming in
pain, Zbetz flew through the air, his arm shredded.

Karthos raised his lance and spurred his horse on, keeping the tip of his
weapon low. The monster’s claws had just ripped Aulkor in half at the waist.

Karthos plunged the lance into the beast’s upper body from the side, pushing
it in with all the force he could muster. The ghur-phaon started to bleat and
wail, its body thrashing. It almost tore the lance out of Karthos’ hands.

Odek ran to him, and Tnash and Koros Kyr, and they all put their muscles into
it, grabbing the shaft and pushing it home.

The ghur-phaon screamed.

“Hold it here!” Karthos yelled, and let go of the lance. He drew his pallasz
and ran towards the snapping head of the monster. Double-handed, above his head,
he swung the sword down and cut wide its neck, casting scads of blood down into
the air. Blood engulfed him like a mountain torrent.

He sank to his knees.

“Zar seh… it’s dead,” Odek said.

Karthos nodded, and went to one of the outstretched forepaws. With a cry, he
struck at it, and then raised the bloody claw in his hand.

Aulkor, Odagidor, Zbetz and Lokas were dead. Their mangled and twisted bodies
were bound up and thrown across the backs of riderless horses. Almost every
warrior was bruised and hurt. Aulkmar’s arm was shattered, but he complained
only for his dead brother.

* * *

The moons were setting. They rode back along the trackway towards the
gathering place. Flies buzzed around the dead strung from their spare horses.

Twenty-strong, Zar Blayda’s warband rode out into their path. Their swords
were drawn.

Karthos simply raised the talon in his hand. Dried blood clotted its
thickness.

“Want to try for it?” he hissed.

Blayda turned his band back and rode away.

The ring fire around the tree was lit. The bands had gathered.

Karthos led his warband up to the pavilion to claim his honour. Drums beat
all around them.

“Have you fulfilled the deed?” Surtha Lenk said as he emerged from his tent.

Karthos showed the High Zar the talon.

“You know what this means?”

“It means that my warband and I have done what is necessary. We have made
your pledge. We must be granted with the honour of shyi-zar.”

“Shyi-zar. Death zar. You understand what it is I want from you?”

“Yes, lord seh. You ride to war. Should you fall there, you need the best
warriors to ride ahead of you into the afterworld, to prepare your place and
guard you when you arrive. This is the duty of the shyi-zar. This honour amongst
honours I claim for my warband.”

Surtha Lenk nodded.

“Thank you. Ride on to battle, Shyi-zar Karthos,” he said. And with the
ghur-phaon talon, he cut Karthos’ throat, and Odek’s, and those of all the
others, every single soul of them willing.

Slaves and sorcerers banked the ring fires up until the lightning tree was
awash with firelight. Slaughtered, gutted and stuffed, the warsteeds were set
upon poles, facing east, and the riders of the warband placed upon them,
similarly supported.

They had achieved the highest honour, the duty of preparing the way for their
High Zar in the afterworld.

Karthos, Odek, Koros Kyr with his standard, Bereng with his carnyx, Tnash,
Odagidor and the rest of them.

They would ride into eternity and make it ready.

Karthos’ left arm was splinted up on a pole. Raised, outstretched.

Fingers splayed.

The stench of death hung heavily in the cloying fog. The broken shadows of
twisted trunks and branches swayed fitfully in the lacklustre breeze. Tybalt
dismounted from his great black stallion, his armour dripping with moisture from
the swirling mist. Casting his gaze around to find something to fix his horse’s
reins to, the Bretonnian knight spied what looked to be an old hitching post by
the cemetery’s gate. As he led his steed towards it, the heavy footfalls of his
armoured boots and the horse’s iron-shod hooves muffled by the dense fog,
Tybalt’s eyes and ears strained to sense any other sound. All was still and
silent. Even the hoots of owls and the baying of dogs from the village had
fallen quiet.

Quickly tying the reins to the rotted post, Tybalt unsheathed his longsword
and took one last look around. Above him, the light of the new moon could barely
be seen through the misty blanket surrounding the hilltop. The twinkling lights
of Moreux had been left far behind as he had made his way to the ancient
graveyard overlooking the whole of the valley. Up here, in one of the narrower
passes of the Grey Mountains, the air was thin, and even the fit and youthful
Tybalt was finding himself short of breath. With a deep inhalation, the knight
laid a gauntleted hand on the cemetery gate, the curled ironwork of which
stretched several feet above his head, and pushed it open.

The shrieking of rusted hinges rent the air, causing Tybalt to freeze
involuntarily. His heart was hammering in his chest, and it was a few moments
before he realised that he had been holding his breath. Letting it out slowly,
he eased the gate open further, an action accompanied by erratic squeaks and
grinding noises. When he’d opened a gap just wide enough for him to pass, he
turned sideways and slid himself through the opening, looking up at the
gargoyles on the flanking gateposts. Both had probably been identical when
sculpted, but now the one to the left had only one of its three twisting horns
left, while the lolling tongue of the other had been broken off just outside its
fanged mouth.

Treading carefully to avoid the deepest puddles in the uneven path, Tybalt
made his way further up the hill, heading towards the blocky, dark shadows of
the largest and oldest crypts at the summit. Something scuttling through the
darkness banged into his foot, causing Tybalt to stumble in fright. As he fell
to one knee, he came face to face with the evil, yellow eyes of a black rat. The
verminous scavenger hissed at him and then scampered out of view.

Heaving himself to his feet once more, Tybalt wiped the mud from his left
hand on his scarlet and azure quartered surcoat. For a moment, Tybalt wondered
if he should go back to his horse to fetch his shield, but decided that a free
hand would be more valuable in these treacherous environs. Pausing to collect
his thoughts, Tybalt peered through the mist at the looming shapes of the old
mausoleums at the cemetery’s highest point, wondering which belonged to Duke
Laroche, the resting place of the ghost who had appeared to him in a dream five
months earlier.

The long-dead duke had warned Tybalt that a great evil was disturbing his
rest, and that he should undertake a quest to halt this darkness spreading
through the realm. It had taken four months of searching the length of
Bretonnia, examining the oldest heraldic records, to identify the arms of the
ghost who had appeared to him: a black eagle on a plain yellow field. Duke
Laroche was one of the founders of Mousillon, a man whose family dated back to
the settling of Bretonnia in the time of Gilles le Breton, the first king. For
the last month, Tybalt had searched far and wide for the old duke’s resting
place, until finally he had come across the answer in the chapel records in the
small mountain village of Moreux.

When they had learned that Tybalt was heading up to the old graveyard, the
commoners back in Moreux had warned him against going to the ancient cemetery.
Local superstition was rife with tales of ghouls and spectres haunting the
heights of the mountains. Hearing these accounts had done little to ease the
knight’s nerves.

Tybalt’s thoughts were interrupted by rustling behind him and he spun around,
sword at the ready. Taking a few steps back down the path, his grey eyes tried
to pierce the gloom. Shadows drifted in and out of focus with the rolling fog,
and Tybalt heard more rustling. Taking another cautious step forward, the knight
brought his sword back over his shoulder, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
More scuffling swung his attention to his left, and he stepped off the muddy
path into the wet grass, which reached up to his thighs. Tybalt could hear an
inhuman snuffling noise, accompanied by deep breathing and intermittent
grunting. Something was approaching slowly towards him; he could see its vague
shadow only a few paces away now.

“Reveal yourself, rascal!” challenged Tybalt, trying to speak with a
confidence his shaking hand betrayed he did not have. There was an unearthly
squeal and the shadow leapt at him from the darkness.

“Die, spawn of blackness!” Tybalt cried, stepping sideways and bringing his
heavy sword flashing down. The blade bit deep into flesh, and blood fountained
through the mist, splashing across Tybalt’s surcoat and armour. Ensuring the
beast was no longer moving, Tybalt took a closer look. At first he thought it
some hideous mutant, but as he bent down to look into the thick weeds, he saw
that the long tusks did not belong to some creature of the netherworlds and were
in fact those of a wild boar. Tybalt straightened up slowly and the tension
suddenly released from his body.

“Lady, protect me from fears and nightmares of my own creation,” he laughed
quietly to himself, turning quickly and striding back to the path. The sudden
action and its mundane end had eliminated all of the knight’s trepidation now,
and as he looked about, he saw nothing more unnatural than the heavy mist of the
mountains, hanging over a place where the dead quietly rested in eternal sleep.
With more of a spring in his step, he walked up the twisting path towards the
summit.