The Pale Maraud Read online

The Pale Maraud

  by Andrew McEwan

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  Copyright 2012 Andrew McEwan

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  Cover design by Andrew McEwan

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  Chapter One - The Mute Jeriant

  His mother took shelter from the storm in a cave whose entrance was screened from both wind and eyes by a thick wall of leaves shaped like spear points. Her sodden cloak outlined her swollen belly as she rocked tearfully, wretched, cast out by family and village, her own mother beaten when the pregnancy was discovered. They would have beaten her too, but it was considered ill luck to harm one with child, no matter how that child was conceived. The talk was of magic. Certainly, this witch had no husband. Her father had been given no choice other than to load his daughter onto a cart and abandon her far from home. No one in the village would tend her or witness such a birth. Her mother's crime was punishable. His mother, soon to guess the colour of his hair and wash his tiny face with spit, to lift him to her breast - her plight was inadmissible, the sad result of a soldier's courting, his helm rich with feathers and his sword's blade dazzling.

  The war-tide had taken him. She wished that tide on her village as she lay dying.

  Rain lashed from the sky. The pain inside her matched the violence without, livid stalks of lightning stretched taut from earth to cloud, the space between streaked like burnt iron. A livid blue echo that cut to the bone. On such a night and in such a place was her son born, pushing from his bloody mound into his bloody world; from death to life, a pathetic creature wrapped in slick tissue, delivered onto cold stone. She was too exhausted to move. Her limbs were as weak as his, feeble knots of flesh and bone exposed to the vagaries of the combative elements. This the winter season, the breath in their lungs cold and raw.

  Her head propped against the cave wall, her fingers gripping roots, she saw her child, his withered right arm and clawing left, the slant of his cheek, the distortion of his face, one eye still closed. His strangled cries frightened her more than the wind. If he had been born in the village the women attending would have taken him to be drowned. But he was not, and would live. She was sure of that; his survival perhaps his fate. In his good hand was a strength, a will, a purpose. That which had silenced his father would suffer defeat in challenging him. She named him then, Jerian, from jeria, meaning outcast, for already he was friendless, alone, couched between her stiffened legs, his name pressed in the shape of her thumb on his forehead. He would remember it, she reassured herself. He did not need her past morning...

  Struggling free of the afterbirth his mother shielded him, turning her back to the outside elements. She would teach him to suckle and that was all, laying him across her arm so that when she died he would have use of her nipple. Her body, curled to surround him, would serve as a cradle, and her skin, warmed by his own, would be his blanket, her ragged cloak stretched like a tent above. If in time he grew empty and did not wish to leave the safety of the cave, he could burrow into her chest and fashion both a meal and a refuge, eating more of her as the days passed. Ultimately the decision to explore beyond the cave mouth would be made for him. Hunger, gnawing at his own chest, would drive the young wolf from his lair, and once he had seen the sun and moon, and grown accustomed to the stars, not even his mother would be able to stop him venturing deep into that sphere where corpses laughed and danced, cavorting with one another before falling down and rotting.

  She wondered how Jerian would fare. His mother wished him well

  It was a world of blood and gore he entered.

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  The boy crawled amongst the thorn bushes on his knees, his one hand sweeping the tall sharp grass from his eyes, alert to the bloated feast of worms, the filling berries, succulent fruits which these stunted trees had in plenty. He stopped to read his name in a puddle as he had done countless times before, the breeze sifting fingers through his hair and whispering in his ear. There was a sunny rock on which he liked to stretch when his belly was full. There were grooves criss-crossing it, and Jerian traced these with his thumb.

  An owl watched him through the summer months.

  When snow fell he sheltered in the cave, digging under his feet with a bone. Jerian used this talent to uncover a stream, and was happy to drink, the water gurgling stories of bears and lichens, goats and dragonflies.

  He budded with the leaves come leaf-time.

  When he was strong enough to climb as far as the topmost branches of the tallest trees, he learned the bird's names. He dreamed at night of flying like them; but no bird could fly with just one wing.

  Chasing a rabbit he tripped and fell. Yet he caught that rabbit another day...

  He could not talk. He had nothing to say. He laughed emptily and swung from tree to ground, racing over the damp earth in the wake of a shower having spied a horseman on the road. The air in his lungs lifted him, drove him, Jerian with a crude wooden spear. Something had fallen from the rider's saddle, something that glittered as if spangled in dew, the boy's curiosity matching his stomach for guile. Pausing, breathless at the road, two jumps wide, he watched the horse vanish into the mist before grabbing the object and running back to his rock to inspect the find. He turned it in his five fingers and pushed it against his tongue, but could not determine its use. It was not a knife as he had hoped. It was hollow, tapered at one end, etched with complex designs that shattered the light into blue and gold, ice and fire sitting together on his palm. Sometimes oxen dragged hay wagons along the road. It wound in both directions for as far as he had explored, narrow and twisting. Jerian collected the straw that drifted between the lats. There was a hollow oak where people left the entrails of chickens and pigs, fat-smeared packages of bark and toothless lower jaws. He had opened a package once and found it to contain a set of wrinkled toes, ten in all, bound together with human hair. All the world passed down the road.

  In winter fewer travellers braved the mud.

  Sat on the rock or in the cave he would picture their many faces and compare them to his own. He had run alongside a cart one year and the children riding in it had thrown apples at him. A horseman had tried to crush him under metal-banded hooves, mount spitting foam, eyes rolling, the boy too fast for his whip. The episode had taught him to be cautious; but the apples were good.

  Autumn found him picking more.

  He tied his hair in a knot, strapped his spear to his back and the silver object about his waist. The owl, gliding from branch to branch, was leading him through the woods. Its beak instructed him to follow, having scratched his name in the scales of a fish, silver like his find, blue and gold as it shimmered towards death. Jerian understood the owl to be his friend. He was not afraid when the bird led him from this valley to the next, out of the wood and out across a wide grassy plain. The day was warm and long, sweet-smelling, the clouds as thin as frost in the sky. The owl hovered high overhead, sweeping down on occasion in order to steer him in the right direction, the boy easily distracted, apt to stray, such were the many delights of the open, toads and flowers whose names Jerian did not know.

  He walked into summer again...

  The rush of a stream cooled his feet, bright water trilling as it plunged the length of the valley wall, slowing as it coiled like a snake through the village. People meandered between brick and thatch, busy with saw and brooms, wood dust forming clouds to be swept. Jerian watched everything, himself unobserved by all save the owl, an eye to jutting elbows and stunted horses, woven baskets and threadbare skirts. He watched as a girl ran screaming in circles, hands in the air, chased by a boy even younger, naked to the waist and streaked with dirt. Painted, other children crawled about the shadows gripping mock weapons, twig spears and plank swords. Old men laughed and wheezed at even older
stories, and young men kicked stones, restless and bored - condemned to a life of ploughs and herds, steel ax death the option favoured by those bucks still hot below the belt for spilt blood of any kind, the truth of their lusts always close enough to come as a surprise.

  Jerian felt no kinship. Was that why the owl had brought him here? He was aware of these people, singularly and in small groups, having witnessed their passing over numerous seasons, walking, riding, trundling along the road. He knew himself to be like them, of their kind. But no greater ties bound him. He was alone.

  He sat and watched them the long afternoon. The bird was never far away. Jerian absorbed the lesson, although he remained puzzled. The owl, however, was well satisfied. It puffed its feathers and disappeared over the irregular valley horizon, a brief flurry of brown-white plumage set off against green-mottled stone.

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  A figure moved clumsily through the dark, upsetting rocks and snapping the limbs of trees, trampling vegetation while leaving no mark in the soft earth.

  It was shapeless and far from home. Lost, the figure dragged its mournful head, cast its blind gaze around, sighting nothing but stars. Deaf to the complaints of the forest and forgetful of the cause of its wanderings, the figure shouldered its way, mumbling like thunder.

  Jerian was shaken from his perch. He had been dozing between branches, the night no different to the day, simply cooler and blacker. His fall slowed by leaves, the boy rolled to his feet as he had seen the fox cubs do, then scrambled after the intruder, shaking dreams from his eyes as he had been shaken awake. But no matter how fast he ran or how keenly he listened for clues, the source of the disturbance was not to be located. Instead a soundless release, a collective, easy sigh emanated from the woody milieu, and in place of chaos there was tranquility, relief in the wake of a storm. All traces of damage were eradicated by sunrise, light spilling like new flesh over minor wounds.

  He hunted for lizards that morning, knowing them to be slick and fast, catching four by midday, not one now longer than his good arm. The character of the surrounding trees was changing, reddened towards slumber as if subtly coloured by age, his own skin and bark a deeper shade, strengthened with threaded hairs, further toned, the lizard meat insufficient to fill his rapidly expanding belly where a year ago four such lizards would have been food enough for two days. Jerian's hunger was becoming more than a match for his skills at stalking prey. Endowed with the arts of a man, this once-boy looked back at the winters he had survived, the passing of each marked by unmistakable signs. It seemed to him he was possessed of a full set of memories, the past thus arrayed, composed of images and thoughts. What he lacked, Jerian realised, was a place outside, a place to go. The owl had shown him the village that lay at the end of the dirt road; but the road ran elsewhere, away from that one drab source. Deep into the heart of the world it stretched, winding like a stream - with a current like a stream, weak or strong, a human flow dependant on factors not necessarily related to the seasons, linked rather to questions Jerian was unable to verbally pose, the answers scattered across country, there to be harvested and graded, fruits and berries and fat round worms the man himself was called upon to pluck and gauge. A whole new feast over the border...

  A dangerous place.

  Perhaps the figure was headed there, deaf and blind. And the outcast, mute and deformed: ought he to follow?

  Chapter Two - The Chalic Horde

  Washing up on the beach like surf, the armies of the Chalian king gathered momentum for the climb, the defeat of nature's obstacles a first test, the plundering of village and town the prize. They had raided before. The pickings were easy, the coast several day's ride from the nearest city, and that a mud-hole thrice ransacked. No, these coarse lands held little fear for the Sea Lords.

  They rose with the moon and the quiet tide, secured the headland before daybreak, assembled like green-blue blades of grass on a sandy plain, the tree country beyond awakening to steel and blood, its brown earth reddened before nightfall, when the beacon fires cast silent fists at the stars and the dead were newly tall...

  Their scales were hammered and their horses decorated, not one less than twenty hands.

  They came from another world. The seabed, some would say, man and beast with fins and gills beneath armour fashioned from crab and turtle shells.

  Whatever the truth, the army's advance was as swift as it was devastating. In two days they had driven all but the most foolhardy and adventurous deep into the forest and high into the mountain chills, taking what they would of those belongings left behind, of homes and families, dealing harshly with any who challenged, the few motley groups that remained scoring disproportionate losses. Ruthlessly, these were hunted down, put to the sword and other uses as night by night the fires changed from yellow to green, the communities, the farmsteads and animals burned, slaughtered, tinting the flames along with powders and invocations. The gods of the Sea Lords rampaged.

  The fighting men wore massive helms, stony basins studded with melted copper and ornamented in complex designs, outlines highlighted, jewelled, garnets and aquamarines prevalent, also beryl and onyx, topaz denoting lower ranks, sapphires and tourmaline the higher. Their faces were obscured, completely covered, protected by a heavy metal gauze, and their hands shone equally brightly, seeming extensions of the blue-stained weapons they bore. They had no need for reins, steering their mostly grey horses with their knees, the panting beasts clawing this foreign soil with shod hooves as silver manes were tossed. Neither did these horsemen employ a battle cry, or were they ever heard to shout between themselves, or offer instruction, instead charging as one individual, no matter if they were ten or a hundred. Indeed, it was rare to find one of their number alone.

  Supported by lesser men on foot whose leather cuirasses were crude and unembellished, whose voices and hammers were heard to ring out, who built the fires and butchered the swine, who were, if anything, more vicious than their masters, gaming with woman and child, the host of the Chalian king spread terror in their wake as they marched.

  At the gates to a city they raised strings of flags, colours of every shape and size emblazoned with lurid devices. These they tied to lances rising stiffly from the backs of captured woodsmen, shepherds, any poor man or woman unfortunate enough to find themselves or their works in the army's path. A cutting swathe of smoke and ruin heralded their coming. A cruel passage, stripped of life and sowed with pain.

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  He carried a great shining ax, Jerian saw, its blade finely honed, rippling the severed air like the moon's ocean reflection. The horse's head, slack through injury or exhaustion, hung as low as his own, blood marking the creature's neck and side, an arrow buried deep in this lord's thigh. The ax was borne over his shoulder. He sat motionless, surrounded by darkened trees, the night pricked by stars and fires. Jerian circled him three times and then emerged from cover to his left with his spear balanced across his palm. He circled a fourth time, closing, not taking his eyes of that magnificent helm. The horse watched him intently, snorting with apprehension, yet receiving no command, remaining steady, holding its ground, the rider tall on its back and disdaining to either to run or fight with what appeared little more than a boy.

  Or was there another explanation? A trick to lure him into striking distance, the lord's strength almost gone? Jerian could not be sure.

  The man was perfectly still. Dead still, he thought, stood now before the horse.

  A knight of the Chalian king; there was much blood on his soul, the weave of it coloured a virulent red, a tapestry depicting unknown glories, numerous campaigns. His armour, flowing like the sea it championed, an elaborate housing, sheathed him from the skull down, a rich overlapping of curves, polished metal the hue of oil-fired steel, all but the most prominent details confused by dancing shades.

  Jerian never let his spear waver, nor lost his aim. As previously he had grown in body he grew in mind, strong and patient as he waited for the warrior to fall. For fa
ll he must, the outcast was convinced. He had sought an isolated place to die. In peace he sat upon his horse and in peace Jerian spaced his feet before him, as still as the rider until that rider slowly leaned, dragged from his delicate saddle by the rising sun, illuminated as light stabbed through leaves, dealing the final blow to his years.

  The ax stuck in the ground.

  Jerian pulled it free, weighed it in his hand, his single hand that had known only the rough shaft of the spear. It was heavy, smooth and sharp, a blur at its edge enhanced by the blue tinge. Its balance was surprising, however, and Jerian found he could swing it with ease.

  Standing the ax he once more regarded its bearer. The lord was truly peaceful, the first time on this shore, his bloody soul leached, his life unwound. A dewy gauze not dissimilar to that encasing his features shrouded his metal corpse. The armour was punctured about the throat and beneath one arm, wounds made by a straight thrust sword, the owner of that weapon a rare individual, quick of wrist, precise of eye and nerve as he ducked under the slicing ax and bunched his shoulders. Jerian wondered briefly who he may have been, the soldier who dealt the killing blow. It was not important. Neither did he wish to strip the plate off the dead rider and peer at his face.

  It might be beautiful, he reasoned, pleased to have met its end, happy in the defeat of its threat...

  The horse turned in circles as if lost. Its load eased, the ashen beast searched for purpose in the dew-soaked grass. Finally, as Jerian looked on, it lay down on its stained flank and slowed its breath, coiling steam about itself until its lungs slackened and its heart ceased to pump.

  He took the ax, having waited the night for it. He left the spear, its uses waned - but he would fashion another, as no ax was much use in catching fish. The spear was all he had to barter. To the ghost of the Chalian knight it was fair exchange.