Young Thongor Read online

  and the white sea at our side.

  The wild waves broke on the naked rocks

  and returned to break once more

  Where the grim black walls of the Dragon Keep

  loomed on the grim black shore.

  2.

  The foam-maned lions of the sea

  drove madly against the strand.

  On a desolate stretch of wet black rock,

  the heroes took their stand.

  Above, against a storm-torn sky

  of whirling crimson smoke,

  The jagged walls of the Keep rose sheer

  from the rocks where white waves broke.

  3

  And Thungarth, son of Jaidor, urged

  his mount to the grim black gate

  That rose above him like a cliff,

  death-cold and dark as fate.

  Ah, he was young as morning,

  a hero to behold;

  His mighty thews like ruddy bronze,

  his mane like ruddy gold.

  4

  The challenge was his alone to claim,

  by clan-law and blood-right,

  For the Dragon Kings had slain his sire

  in treachery by night.

  He set his war horn to his lips—

  the thunder of its cry

  Aroused the Dragon warriors forth

  to conquer or to die.

  5.

  And from the ebon citadel

  the Dragon Warriors came,

  And they were mailed in adamant,

  and armed with evil flame.

  The heroes rode against them

  and strove with sword and shield

  To fight and fall—if fall they must

  —to die, but never yield!

  6.

  And Khorbane fell, and proud Konnar,

  and gallant Yggrim too;

  Yet still we strove with the Dragon Kings

  and the great war trumpets blew.

  And for every hero of Phondath’s breed

  who upon that black shore fell

  We sent a dozen Dragons down

  the scarlet throat of hell!

  7.

  From wild red dawn to wild red dawn

  we held our iron line

  And fought till the blades broke in our hands

  and the sea ran red as wine.

  With arrow, spear and mighty mace,

  we broke the Dragon’s pride,

  Thigh-deep in the roaring sea we fought,

  and crimson ran the tide.

  8.

  But we were armed with simple steel,

  and they with sorcery;

  And step by step they thrust us back

  into the hungry sea.

  And Thungarth saw that he must use

  that Sword the Gods had made

  Although he knew it meant his doom

  to lift that dreadful blade.

  9.

  As one by one his brothers fell,

  he raised the Star Sword high!

  He sang the runes to the Lords of Light

  —and thunder broke the sky!

  Red lightning flashed—drums of thunder crashed—

  a rain of fire fell

  To sweep the last of the Dragon Kings down

  to the smoking pits of hell!

  10.

  But the Lord of the Dragons was old and wise

  and a mighty mage was he.

  He loosed a bolt of flaming death—

  his warriors laughed to see

  The Star Sword broke in Thungarth’s hand!

  and now what hope for Men?

  The scaly might of the hissing horde,

  they were upon him then…

  11.

  But he beat them back with the broken blade,

  there, caught in the roaring tide.

  And one by one they fell before

  young Thungarth in his pride.

  But the Dragon Lord, with a great black spear,

  he drove them forth once more,

  They closed again with Thungarth there

  while the wild waves ran with gore.

  12.

  Yet once again he beat them back

  with a fragment of the Sword;

  They broke and fell before him then,

  and he faced their mighty Lord.

  The great black spear was sharp and long,

  his Sword but a shard of steel;

  The Dragon Lord was fresh and strong,

  but Thungarth would not yield.

  13.

  He battled there with the broken blade,

  half-drowned in the roaring tide;

  The great black spear drank deep as it sank

  in Thungarth’s naked side.

  But ere the Son of Jaidor fell,

  or ere his strength could wane,

  The Broken Sword of Nemedis

  had clove the Dragon’s brain.

  14.

  Thunder rolled in the crimson sky.

  the War Maids rode the storm

  To bear the soul of Thungarth home

  to the Halls of Father Gorm.

  The Age of the Dragon ended there

  where the seas with scarlet ran:

  Though the cost was high, the prize was great,

  and the Age of Men began.

  INTRO TO BLACK HAWK

  OF VALKARTH

  It is almost five thousand years since the Thousand-Year War was fought between Man and Dragon Kings, when the reptiles, long time rulers of Lemuria, were vanquished at the culminating battle at Grimstrand Firth. It is a new age, a time of growth, of savage kingdoms, yet beset by turmoil, a world ripe for adventure, conquest and the winning of fabulous fortunes. A hard world for a boy scarce turned fifteen.

  It is the year 6997 of the Kingdoms of Man…

  BLACK HAWK

  OF VALKARTH

  1

  Blood on the Snow

  The flames of sunset died to glowing coals in the crimson west. Slowly, the brooding skies darkened overhead, and the first few stars glared down upon a scene of terrible carnage.

  It was a great valley in the land of Valkarth in the Northlands, beyond the Mountains of Mommur, where the cold black waves of Zharanga Tethrabaal the Great Northern Ocean lashed a bleak and rock-strewn coast.

  Although it was late spring, snow lay thick upon the valley. It was trampled and torn, and here and there bestrewn with motionless black shapes. These were the bodies of men and women and children, clad in furs and leather harness, clasping broken weapons in stiff, dead hands. In their hundreds they lay sprawled and scattered amid the trampled snow, and against its dirty grey their blood was crimson.

  The battle had begun at the birth of the day and with day’s end it, too, had ended. All the long, weary day the warriors and hunters and chieftains of the Black Hawk nation had stood knee-deep in the snows and fought with iron blade and wooden club and stone axe against the enemies that had crept upon them in the night. One by one they had fallen, and now no single man lived or moved upon the gore-drenched snows of Valkarth. They had not died easily, but they had died; and very many of their foes lay beside them in the black sleep of death.

  The valley was like a charnel-pit. And the stars looked down, wonderingly.

  They had been a mighty people. The men were tall, strong-thewed, with thick black manes and virile, golden eyes. The women were deep-breasted, their unshorn hair worn in heavy braids, their strong white bodies clad in belted furs against the bite of wintry winds. They had fought beside their men, the women of the Black Hawk clan, or back-to-back, and they, too, had heaped their dead before them. In the end they had gone down fighting; and their young, too, children scarce old enough to walk, had died with bloody knives clenched in their small fists.

  Life in the bleak Northlands of Lost Lemuria was one unend ing struggle against grim Nature, ferocious beasts, and no less savage men. The weaklings and the cowards died young: this nation had been strong, and it had died hard; but i
n the end it had died.

  By one great rock a tall and stalwart warrior had taken his last stand. He had set his back against that rock and with his great sword he had hewn and hewn until the snowy slope before him was buried beneath the corpses of those who had come up against him. They had cut him down with arrows at the last, no longer daring to come within the reach of that terrible blade; at that, it had taken five arrows to kill him. He lay now with his broad shoulders still flat against the rock, his square-jawed face grim in death as in life, snow and blood daubed on his thick grey mane and beard. The wife of his youth lay beside him, a bear-spear still held in her cold hands, her head resting lightly against his shoulder. They had cut her down with an axe, and two of her tall sons and her young daughter lay near.

  The name of the dead warrior had been Thumithar; he had been a chieftain of the clan, of direct descent in the male line from the hero Valkh—Valkh the Black Hawk, Valkh of Nemedis, the seventh of the sons of Thungarth of the first Kingdoms of Man. The war bards of the tribe, the old, fierce-eyed sagamen, told it had been Valkh who had founded the Black Hawk nation in time’s grey dawn. And the great broadsword that lay still clasped in the dead fingers of Thumithar was none other than Sarkozan itself, the very Sword of Valkh.

  He had been a wise chieftain, had Thumithar, just and strong. And a great war-leader, and a mighty hunter.

  He would hunt no more, would Thumithar, with his tall sons at his side.

  * * * *

  In that grim panorama of death, one indeed yet lived. He was a scrawny boy, scarce fifteen, naked save for a ragged clout and a cloak of furs slung about bare shoulders. They were broad, those shoulders, but stooped with weariness now, and they bore a burden of sorrow, heavy for one so young to bear.

  Blood was bright on the brown hide of his deep chest, and some of it was the blood of the foemen he had fought and slain, but much of it was his own. He limped through the bloody snow, dragging one foot behind him, and, now and again, he paused to look at this dead face and that one. He knew many of them, the dead faces; but he did not find the one he was looking for.

  At last he came up to the place where the grey-maned warrior had taken his last stand, and the limping boy flinched at the sight of that dead face in the starlight. And the serene face of the woman that lay beside the dead man wrung a sharp cry from the white lips of the boy.

  He crumpled into the snow before them on his knees and he hid his face in his hands. Tears leaked slowly through the blood-encrusted fingers, and he wept there at last—he who had not wept before.

  His name was Thongor.

  2

  The Cairn in the Valley

  After a time the boy climbed wearily to his feet and stood staring at the ruin of his world. In repose, he had the same grim-jawed face as his father, the same heavy, unshorn mane—save his was yet untouched with grey. His eyes glared golden like the eyes of lions, under scowling black brows. He had long, rangy legs, and strong arms seamed with scars, some of which were raw wounds.

  In the crush and swirl of battle, he had been swept away from his father and his mother and his brothers. All day he had fought alone, with the tigerish fury of a young berserker, and many of the enemy had fallen before his murderous wrath. When his old sword broke in his hands, he had fought on with the stub, then with rocks clawed up from the snowy ground—finally, with his bare fingers and his strong white teeth.

  He had taken a deep wound on the breast, and lesser wounds on thigh and shoulder and brow. He was splattered with blood from head to foot, although he had stemmed the bleeding with snow until the wounds were numb.

  The Snow Bear warriors had clubbed him down and beaten him to earth and left him for dead. That was their only mistake.

  For he had not died.

  He had slowly climbed back from the Shadowlands into the realm of the living again, to find night fallen and the battle over and the terrible valley silent with its dead. Slowly, dragging his injured foot behind him, he had searched among the fallen until at last he had found that which he sought. And now he knew what he must do.

  He cleared away a patch of earth, clawing back the snow, and he laid out the bodies of his mother and father beside the bodies of his older brothers and his younger sister.

  He set their weapons beside them. All but the great sword of his father, the mighty broadsword Sarkozan; that he took, for he would need it.

  He kissed their cold lips one last time in farewell.

  Then he began to pile the stones upon them.

  There must be many stones, else the beasts would feed upon them in the night. Although he was bone-weary, and sick with loss of blood, he dragged the great stones one by one upon them, heaping up a tall cairn until it stood higher than a grown man. Then, and only then, did he rest; and by then he was shaking with exhaustion.

  It would stand for the rest of time, that cairn, to mark the place where Thumithar of the Valklings had fallen. Or until the mighty continent itself, riven asunder with earthquake, was drowned beneath the cold waves of the sea.

  He sang the warrior’s song over them, his clear young voice sharp and strong and strange to hear in that deathly silence.

  * * * *

  The black sky lit with cold glory as the great golden Moon of old Lemuria rose up over the edges of the world to flood the bleak land of Valkarth with her light. In the cold flame of the moonlight, he saw that the cairn was high and strong. The white bears would not claw it asunder, nor the grey wolves, to feast on what lay beneath.

  At the thought, his jaws tightened and his lips clamped together. For the white bear of the Northlands was the totem beast of the enemy clan who had worked this day’s red ruin, even as the black hawk of the skies was his own tribal totem.

  He hated the mighty ulth, the white bear of the snow countries, and had often hunted him down the bleak hills of this wintry land. And now he had another reason for that hatred.

  The cairn was done; and he was finished here.

  But there was one last task the dead had set upon him.

  And its name was Vengeance.

  3

  Horror on the Heights

  He gathered up his gear and was ready to depart. From the dead, he took what he needed, nor did it bother him to plunder them. They were the men of his race, and the blood that lay strewn upon the snows about them, that same blood ran hot and fierce in his own veins. They would not begrudge him what he needed of them. Nor would they need it any longer.

  From one he took the black leather trappings that were warriors’ harness, the leather yoke studded with discs of brass that fitted about the throat to protect the shoulders, the affair of buckled straps and the great brass ring that shielded the midsection from the flat of a blade, the iron-studded girdle worn low about the hips, the heavy boots, the broad-bladed dagger and the twin leather bottles, one filled with water and one with wine. His sword he slid into its worn old scabbard, which he clipped to a baldric and slung it across his chest so that the scabbard hung high between his shoulders.

  He was not truly of age to don warriors’ harness, for he had not yet undergone initiation into the rights of manhood by the old shaman of his nation. Nor would he now, for the garrulous old tosspot lay dead across the vale, having slain a dozen Snow Bear warriors with a two-handed axe before they had cut him down. Had not this day befallen, Thongor would with summer have gone up into the high mountains, there to dwell alone amid the heights, drinking the water of melted snow and eating only what he could slay with his bare hands; there would he have dwelt for forty days until the vision of his totem came to him and he learned his secret name.

  Now that would never be. But manhood was upon him without the old rites.

  Vengeance is for men. It is not a task for boys.

  * * * *

  Half the night was worn away. He crossed the valley and climbed the hills, ignoring the pain in his injured foot. Strong red wine had warmed his numb flesh and it drove new strength and vigor through his tired frame. The cold, th
in air of the heights cleared his throbbing head and the exertion of the ascent made the blood tingle in his veins.

  There would be time enough to rest, later, when the deed was done.

  If he lived…

  The Moon was high in the heavens now; the night sky was black as death and the stars blazed like diamonds strewn on dark velvet. He thought of nothing as he climbed, neither of the dead he had left behind him in the valley, nor of those he went to kill, but merely of setting his foot upon first one rock and then upon a higher one until at last he came to the crest and the wide world fell away beneath him to every side and the stars seemed very near.

  Here a saddle-shaped depression sloped between twin hill-crests, thick with virgin snow. It had fallen here, perhaps, when the world was young and fresh and the Gods still went among men to teach them the nine crafts and the seven arts.

  He began to wade through the snow between the twin peaks. With each step he stirred snows that had lain for a thousand years, and the crystals swirled up before him like ancient ghosts awakened by the step of a rash intruder into places better left undisturbed.

  His nape-hairs prickled and the flesh of his forearms crept. He had a sense that something was aware of his coming, that something—roused.

  The cold breath of fear blew along his nerves, and it was colder than any snow. One hand went to his breast where a fetish of white stone lay over his heart, suspended about his neck on a thong. He muttered aloud the name of Gorm, his god.

  And terror woke, roaring!

  Was it a sudden gust of wind which raised the snow before him in a whirling cloud—a cloud that shaped itself into a mighty, towering form—a phantom-thing of numb snow that reared up before him on legs like tree-trunks, hunched shoulders massive and monstrous, huge paws raised to crush and tear, dripping jaws agape, red eyes of madness glaring into his?

  He fell into a fighting stance and the great blade was alive and singing in his hand, starlight glittering on the blue steel, acid-etched sigils blazing with eerie fires.

  The thing came lumbering towards him. And he knew no steel could slay it, for it did not really live.

  4

  Vengeance in the Night

  The gigantic, white, hulking monster was almost upon the boy now. He knew it for an ulth, a snow bear, but twice the girth and height of any ulth ever seen by mortal eyes before.