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The Dark Rider/Intercepted Letter

Marcellus Wind, Guild of Spellswords, to Jisten Hand, Second of the Guild of Slayers and Takers:

You inquire after the Son of the Flaming Night, the one that to the people of the North is Skal’najah, the Dark Rider.  Your concern comes late perhaps, but you chose well whom to ask, o my brother.  For by the grace of the stars and the speed of my feet I alone of those in the East have seen this giant in battle and lived.  And not the once, but twice now.  And perhaps, unless our talks go smoothly, I will see him fight a third time.

If that happens, o my brother, I do not expect to survive.  So be it.  It will at the least be a glorious sight to take with me to the House of the Silent River.  And by the love between our Houses and our kinship in the Mysteries of Flesh and Earth, I swear that each word I hereafter write is unvarnished truth.

So.  When first I saw the Slayer in battle, he had just recently been pulled into the Land from an Outer Realm.  None save the Northmen themselves were aware that a High King once more ruled the Wild and Singing Plains; in fact our Guild had become stupidly used to discounting the North as a political force whatsoever, except as points on a map that were raided when our supplies grew thin.  The Northmen are fierce fighters when they catch you, but their numbers have always been few and the pickings along the edge of their country had grown very tempting for fools such as the Southerners and ourselves.

The Crimson War it was, that year-long skirmish which began when the Southern lackwits thought to annex a part of our Cimmeria simply because it adjoined some dry cornfield they claimed to own.  And perhaps that war would still be simmering, save for the band of Northmen who appeared out of nowhere and fell upon both our forces like sheeted lightning.  Apparently, the disputed land was also very close to some Northern tribe’s territory, and the racket of our disagreement had finally annoyed them.

A band, you say!  A few dozen warriors surely could not wreak much damage upon four times their number?

Ah.  But these were led by a monster.

I have no impression of him that first time as to looks; he wore the battle helm of a snarling wolf concealing his visage, and the long braided hair, black as a bottomless pit, could have been but decoration.  I remember only his incredible size, and speed, and that he struck without mercy.

His single-mindedness was indeed awe-inspiring. The Northmen are one and all stout fighters, but this crew had little to do save point their leader towards his enemies.  Before we even noticed the new presence on the field, he ripped through our engaged armies with the force of an icestorm.  His followers yelled gleefully and struck down those few poor devils along his path who managed to escape the savage reaping of what at the time seemed a dozen blades rather than two.

In that first rush alone, he took down nearly a score of Southern fighters. And those of his own people who forgot themselves and moved too near him were mowed down along with his enemies, unrecognized and unmourned.  We did not face a human warrior that day, my brother.  We faced a weapon of the Earth gods, with neither compassion nor control.

And I believe he would have behaved the same if gods or demons faced him, rather than mortal men.  Something about the way he killed, in a mad frenzy like lust without pleasure, made me think, “This is one who seeks his own death in battle, and is furious because it will not come to him.”  You remember, my brother, that though only a minor mage among our people, my power of Seeing is reckoned formidable.

This was all very well when he was mowing down Southerners, but so crushing were his repeated onslaughts he soon ran out of them.  He and his warriors then turned immediately to attack our ranks, and things began to look troublesome.  We still outnumbered them somewhat, however, and no panic hit as yet.  Unlike the Southmen, we could call upon more than warm bodies or weapon skill!

Elric Thorn, not the least of my brothers in magic, struck confidently at the barbarians with a flurry of pain-spells as they thundered towards us.  And indeed, the bulk of those warriors were slammed from their saddles, or at the least halted as they fought their own bodies’ inclination to surrender to agony.

He of the black braids, Skal’najah, shook himself like an animal hit by a sudden rainshower, growled, and kept coming.  Straight for Elric he rode, forcing his terror-stricken horse into a gallop. I could see the bolts of frantic spells crashing upon the man, making his armor smoke and glow red-hot even as he reached the mage and clove his skull clear to his breastbone.

The barbarian’s hair, too, had begun to flame.  With a kind of brutal practicality, he yanked the dying man upwards toward him.  I could plainly hear the sizzle as he doused the heavy braids in my friend’s spurting blood.

I know of the rest of that battle only through rumors, since I deemed it more prudent at that point to clap heels to my horse and retreat in a sideways direction, into deeper forest.  And by the grace of my ancestors I was not noticed--you remember that beside my gift of Seeing, the boon of Luck has ever been with me in tight places.  I heard later that no one either Eastern or Southern survived that carnage, and that most of the killing was from Nightwolf’s blade directly.

The second time I saw him in battle I prudently spied from a mirror-glass, my body being some hundreds of miles away.  This was some years later; I had taken an interest in this warrior and by then, I knew as much about him as any outsider could through my agent’s reports.  Though admittedly, I have lost a number of spies in the gleaning of such knowledge; the Northmen are irascible by nature, and fond of their privacy.

For the first three years of his rule he seemed a dark and brooding creature, cruel as a mad dog even to his own people.  He was rumored to devour his enemies after killing them, though this I doubted.  My sources insist that he is remarkably frugal in his appetites, consuming no spirits and very little of meat.  Sexually, he is voracious but surprisingly enough, I have heard no rumor of brutality to those he mates with, though he tires of them swiftly and keeps no one more than a few days.

Until lately.  Lately, the rumors coming from the North have been strange indeed.  These tales, of wild magic in the North and the acceptance of some wizard into the very bosom of the mage-despising Shadow Riders, were what prompted me to blow dust off my scrying tools and risk the nausea that always accompanies a session with the seeing glass.

But still, it was a surprise to me to focus the glass upon him that second time.

He wore no helmet in this battle, and was revealed to be a rather handsome man, if somewhat harsh of expression.  But his eyes were the color of the volcano lakes in the farthest east of our land, and to my considerable surprise those eyes held intelligence, and no battle fury that I could see.  In fact, he almost looked amused.

On foot now, he fought no less well than when first I had seen him.  Better, in fact; there was a cold light of glory about him instead of the maddened crimson haze I had noticed previously.  He chose his targets with calm, measured ruthlessness, rather than destroying everything in his path.

But strangest of all, his course of battle was chosen not by his own inclinations.  Nay, he followed the path of a swift-moving young man with fire-touched hair and the face of a mocking angel imperfectly hidden behind a most disgusting growth of hair on his upper lip.  And all those who attempted to cut this one down met a swift death themselves, beneath the black blades of the Slayer.

With some effort and its resultant sickness later, I can force the glass to reflect sound as well as image, for a time.  And since the red-haired one’s mouth seemed to move often, I became curious.  The more so, as the occasional stab of fire from his hand when an enemy ventured too close revealed him as a mage despite the small crossbow he used on the more distant targets.

“Goddammit, mother, wouldya get off my ass?” were the first bewildering words that came forth clearly.  “Got knives and a blowtorch here; think I can handle it!”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you can take care of yourself perfectly well,” his companion remarked in a voice that was deep and rich even translated through magic.  “But that is hardly the issue.”  The Slayer paused to swap the head off a yelling blond warrior who made the decision for suicide by rushing out of the thin growth of trees to threaten the red-head with an axe.

That one made a sound of indignation as the Southern warrior crashed headless to the ground, spraying him with gore.  “Shit, leaky bastard! So what is the fucking issue. dammit, Do’nar is over there with at least thirteen guys dancing on his head and shoulders, why don’t you go help HIM?!”

The reply to this made me gasp, and actually lose the transmission after a struggle to refocus my thoughts.

“Do’nar is not my beloved nor my Bonded.  You are both,” Nightwolf said plainly.  I know Tribal well and speak it fluently. There can be no doubt of his words, though the shock of them flung my mind from its connection, and sickened me for days.

You understand, oh my brother.  Listen closely to rumors from the North, and be prepared to ride to parlay.  If the best of warriors has indeed Bonded with the Chosen of wizards, our world as we know it ends in fire and storm.  We can only try to ride the wild beast of their fate, and convince them that she known as the Death Queen is not by any reckoning the sole representative of the East.