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  BEASTSLAYER

  Rise of the Rgnadon

  Chris Turner

  Copyright 2017 Chris Turner

  Cave Cover Art: Nele Diel, www.nelediel.com

  Published by Innersky Books on Smashwords

  Discover other titles by Chris Turner at Smashwords.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  Prologue

  1: Night Raiders

  2: Vharad

  3: The Mountain King

  4: Haunter of the Deeps

  5: Realm of the Rgnadon

  6: Rites of Passage

  7: Rise of the Rgnadon

  8: Tutraken

  9: Death in Accursed Tutraken

  10: The Hall of Beasts

  11: Time of the Lizard

  Prologue

  “Our seers translated the ancient tablets from forgotten tongues—and they spoke in hushed whispers of a time before man, when a great flood rose flashing through the valleys, a cataclysm, some hundred thousand years ago. The rain sloughed from the heavens. The great glaciers cracked and shivered before bolts of lightning. Tempestuous gales blew around a globe on fire.

  “Hear me, O valiant people of Xatu, that when I say the ice splintered, slid, melted in massive shards, the waters rose!

  “The animals, stripped of their habitat, swarmed to Vharad, the only standing island in a sea of azure stretching as far as the eye could see. Some beasts burrowed into the ancient mountain and founded the grim tunnels below. Others fought for resources, scarce on a windy, water-cursed world—but only the reptiles survived—to evolve into creatures of nightmare, a horrendous brood, relying on strength and size to survive...”

  —Legend of the Flood, the mountain king

  1: Night Raiders

  The beast within...the beast without,

  Slay one and one slays the other!

  —Old Huughite saying

  Long before the sun sank Dereas knew something had been following them. Every instinct screamed that stalkers roved the skull-domed hills—out for him and his forty-three riders. Clear to him as the call of the jackal howling at the moon. His gut spoke loudly that two forces of independent origin worked against him, one human and one not. His instinct was never wrong. Facts spoke from a turned stone, a strange clawed print, a broken bush or weed, or the fretful way a scavenging bird would suddenly screech and arc to the blasted hills to the north.

  Such marauders could be stalking, lurking behind the next hummock, or crawling flat on their bellies unseen beneath the gillhorse weed, or stealthily crouching at the high vantage to the east, ready to pounce on their naked flanks or pepper them with arrows. And possibly then, something even more sinister.

  Masking his rising concern for ambush, he muttered sourly to his lieutenant Jhidik, “We must mount an assault on that louse-demon Ahrion before long.”

  Jhidik’s face remained expressionless. He rode abreast him as befitted a trusted second-in-command.

  Dereas coaxed his mount a little faster. “’Tis time. The eve of the new moon of Alperon is upon us. It has been almost a year since you and I escaped that cursed realm of Phygus! Saeth’s teeth, but I vowed I would put a sword through that sorcerer’s guts.”

  “That you did. I owe you my life, for what you did back at that keep, strangling that gargoyle fiend who was our jailor.” The Pirean warrior gripped his reins and crouched grimly in his stirrups, scanning the coppery dimness, his sun-bronzed features frowning at the rising wall of stone on either side of them and the ever-deepening shadows. “These hills are a nuisance. A phantom’s haunt!”

  Dereas could see that even his lieutenant hated the low moan of the wind, which was nothing more than a wraith’s whisper in this world of haunted canyons and crumbling outcrops.

  “’Tis a world away from those pleasant vistas of your Pirean homeland for sure.”

  “Evil things are about,” grumbled Jhidik. “I sense them. Ever since we found your village burned to the ground and scoured the plains hunting for allies and gathered such warriors as we number now, I have felt eyes probing me. I value your cause, Dereas, as much as any man, but how I wish to be back amongst the green trees and the clean rivers flowing with salmon and trout!”

  Dereas managed a restless smile. He reached out a hand to slap his comrade on the back. “We persevere, Jhidik. We summon what we can.” He winced, peered up at the darkening sky. “’Tis odd, what war can do to a man. It fuels his courage; it burns off his petty sense of identity, his mediocrity...but it also brings out the darkest side of him, the beast, the wandering, primal animal.”

  Jhidik’s eyes narrowed, looking none too easy under his chief’s gaze. “All these evil calamities and strings of bad luck smack of wizardry at work. Recall, we did not part on amicable terms with Ahrion.”

  Dereas shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. Ahrion! The name spawned a spur of hate in his heart. His lips peeled back to show dried gums; it brought a sour sting to recall the men lost in recent days to the jowls of demon hyenas and undead raiders. No less, to unnatural blistering fevers or inexplicable storms, or cursed to fall off their mounts at full gallop. The war chief suspected it was the result of the wizard’s machinations. “We must smite where we can, face our enemies wherever we are forced!” And yet, a part of him considered deviating from the course of this hateful, rugged trench.

  The high, shaggy-shouldered mounts they called the belamyl snorted and nickered as they fought the reins. Heavy clouds thickened the sky and a scathing wind bit at the war band’s leathered skin. Crimson sunset stained the ancient hills a dark ochre, a colour that Dereas liked little, for it was the colour of the banner-emblem of the dead wizard’s circle.

  Up ahead the gulley split into two. A narrow file wound up to the left; ahead the ravine coursed in a stony jumble to disappear into a pool of darkening shadow.

  Jhidik’s keen eyes suddenly caught sight of tracks on the trail and he swung an arm out to his chief.

  Dereas frowned; he stopped his men. Dismounting, he fell on a knee and examined the sinister three-toed tracks in the dry soil—marks left by the shambling undead. A shiver of revulsion crawled up his spine. Could more of those undead fiends from the gorge yesterday have tracked them this far? His face creased in a disbelieving scowl. It seemed unlikely, unless sorcery was about. He did not doubt Ahrion’s necromantic ability to warp events from a distance, especially after witnessing the sickening transformation of a Kechian archer into a ghoul before his very eyes. When he and Jhidik had been imprisoned in the wizard’s keep, it had been one of the most harrowing experiences of his life.

  Grimacing, he sent Lavg, a gaunt-faced scout, cantering on straight ahead.

  Black Balael! None of their riders could follow the higher ground, nor trot comfortably on the heights of the ridgeline—’twas too roughhewn, not to mention impossible to get the heavy-hoofed belamyl up the steep inclines. Worse, Sil had not returned from his reconnaissance a half hour ago. What had become of that first dark silent scout? Had he fallen to the claws of one of those three-toed beasts of yesterday, or some other loathsome horror that haunted these desolate arroyos? Only yesterday, a scrabbling detour after a freak windstorm had led them into a skirmish with a band of half human raiders, with grizzled goat skulls crowning their heads. The fiends had slaughtered a third of their numbers and blood had flown in plenty before their own company had turned, fought the devils and cut them to pieces.

  No, if the warrior still lived, he would have to catch up to their band, following their prints in the scant soil and sand. As it stood, Sil’s hoofprints had petered out some way back on a stretch
of rocky gulch by a stone statue of an ancient king.

  Craning his neck, Dereas had a sudden evil feeling about that dusky gap straight ahead and wished he hadn’t sent Lavg on up so hastily. He made up his mind. To wait here was death. He could not halt the company a moment longer. He was risking the lives of his men. Shadows were teeming, ripe for evil purpose and the powers of necromancy. He could feel it in his bones! Nothwithstanding, he hated to spare another man on another doomed mission.

  He regained his saddle and urged his restless mount into the narrow ravine to the left, avoiding the trail of fallen boulders strewn to the side. Many a sombre face of his company fell in behind him.

  He regretted the course of events that had forced him to push his riders farther east than ever before to escape the teeth and claws of dangerous foes, to the remote territory known as the Vhale, a broken country of stony hills, scavenging jackals, roving nomads and feral hyenas. This desert was a land forgotten by kings and plunderers, a fringe of the larger Thiran wastes which stretched thirty leagues east, to end at the shores of the mysterious Pzison Sea, the end of the world, or so it seemed...

  Jhidik murmured in a confiding whisper: “Perfect haunt these hemmed-in gullies for the living dead!” He loosed a gravelly curse. “When you almost fell to the claws of those undead back at the gorge yesterday, I was well...thinking this was the end of us. And then it hit me. The moment Dereas Beastslayer falls, ’tis the day the earth trembles, and a sad howl goes up in the world of Darfala! Are we so cursed to ride under such a black cloud?” He shook his head in bemusement at his own sentimental admission.

  Dereas’s frown grew eerie in the gathering gloom. He chewed his lip and motioned his men on, hefting his three-foot broadsword. His eyes stared unblinking like those of a wolf.

  Gaylor, his other lieutenant rode in from behind. “Aye! What are a few undead to our sharp blades? You are the Beastslayer of old, Dereas! We called you that when you slew the rabid hyena as a young hunter-warrior, fourteen summers old, the wild, reckless panther you were!”

  “Aye,” piped up Ger, “You slew Hreta the Black’s wild dogs which our enemy worm of a rival-chief enjoyed loosing on our yurts late at night to his devilish amusement.”

  Dereas’s brooding expression became harder to read. He reached around his saddle and tore the gareyr axe from its halter, whirling a practiced loop, signalling to his ragged band to change course down a wider, winding ravine. He peered at the forty-some odd riders, cantering in double file behind—his ‘new’ Huughite clan. Resurrected after his village in Asgolin’s fall, these spirited mercenaries were a prideful bunch: lean-muscled, bearded and armoured men. Helms framed the confident features of their faces; their spears and heavy swords glinted in dying light, easy to access from worn scabbards; they were a brood of men dressed in hides and cloaks, covering leather pads and light-ringed mail—men determined to ride into slaughter, give all to the ghost should their chief ordain it.

  Dereas looked at them with new appreciation. Down a defile and up a rocky incline the riders pushed their tiring mounts. He shook the sweat out of the copper tangle of curls that amassed under his bronze bull-horned helm. Another dry gulch cut their path, spread with rugged outcrops carved with the faces of solemn kings of past ages. On impulse he led his men into the shadowed alley. Like those kings of old, a hunter or tribal chief’s sense of survival was the only thing that kept a man alive long these days, long enough to remember the old tales of sorrow and death, in these dark times of the Saeth.

  Dereas lurched in his saddle.

  What was that? A rustling scrape? Something else yet—a muffled cry that rose over the ceaseless plod of his company’s belamyl.

  An unfamiliar beast? The creak of a bow being strung? An unshod hoof on rock? How much time had passed in his musing?

  In an age when sorcerers or half men walked the daylight, it did not pay to daydream too carelessly on the coming of twilight. He scowled and rubbed his eyes, wiping the cold sweat from the back of his neck. Though the gully offered a firm defence, the path was far from wide and they were too hemmed in to manoeuvre properly. He cursed, remembering he had lost his bow in the last fight with the undead, a weapon he wished he had now! Had he made a grave error? A cold chill raked his spine. His company trotted two abreast, prey to ripe disaster, should the unknown strike.

  Dereas gave breath to a thunderish curse. His dark glittering eyes stared in brooding discontent at the growing darkness. Though they cantered with speed, it seemed there were ten more hollows to replace the endless rises and falls where hideous goats’ skulls peeked from the tops of battered slopes, roped to a stone cairn or a twisted pole, and painted with inscrutable symbols, the heathen fanes of the desert people.

  The lead mounts whickered. Though he had done his best to lead his men to safety, the chief in him felt he had failed, left them as prey for ambush. He gripped the copper hilt of his battered sword, plagued with indecision. His sun-bronzed knuckles shone whitely.

  He motioned in circular fashion to Gaylor, alerted by some primitive instinct that told him attack was imminent. He gave signal to Jhidik and they crouched in their saddles and spurred ahead in a burst of speed.

  A thunderous roar of pounding hooves rose above the wind, masking the clanking armour and battle cries of enemies up ahead. He and his lieutenants looked straight into a raw assault in motion: hooves skidding on rock, the muzzles of screaming horses, lurid shouts, the scrape of unsheathing swords. Dozens of riders were on them from all sides before Dereas could mouth a war cry while twelve of their own were cut to a man. Footmen dropped from the sheer flanks, appearing from nowhere, black, wolf-helmed figures, charging over the low ridge of domed rock like panthers to land before them. A team of axemen had shimmied over a section of rock a half stone’s throw away, pouncing from on high to assault their exposed flanks.

  Dereas felt a wave of nausea. It rose up the back of his throat like snake’s venom. His warriors writhed to action, hands fleeting to weapons, horses rearing; he could feel the indescribable thrill in their blood, the lust of battle and adrenaline rush, death and excitement rippling through them like wildfire.

  The marauders wore black shin greaves, black breastplates and wielded wicked upturned axes, as well as maces and swords, he saw. Most had triangular-shaped bucklers strapped to their forearms with corkscrew-shaped spikes fanning from their edges. The enemy helms were shaped in the form of wicked wolves’ heads and they rode a mixture of horses and desert belamyl—sturdy animals, like their own, with the shaggy slope-backed shoulders of the steppe-beast and the resilience that set them apart in climes of dust and drought, ideal for dry, rocky wastes as these.

  How had these stalkers mobilized themselves so quickly? Dereas’s mad thoughts whirled, rife with dismay. With a savage cry, he drove his mount straight into the teeth of the dragon.

  Yet his first glance told him his band was at a disadvantage, having only fifteen shields for their forty-some men. He was heavily outnumbered, curse Balael! By exactly how many he knew not in this sudden turmoil of blood, dust and death. The aggressors had the semblance of luckless mercenaries not unlike his own, with brawny arms and truculent faces: lawless men with no common cause but the wild inspiration of their leader, a dangerous mix.

  The attackers’ axes and maces rose in meaty synchrony and ripped into Dereas’s men and mounts alike. The beastslayer reined in to the side to avoid the sickening crunch of a blow to his left thigh. He plunged cold steel through his attacker’s throat, then gaped in dismay, for at the head of the throng, he thought to recognize a murky shape crowding his way forward: a big, stalking warrior with coal black eyes and a vindictive smile. He stood out from the rest like a lion in a pack of cubs. He sat grimly astride his lightly armoured belamyl, wearing brown-leather armour. A wolf-eared, tri-horned helm was arranged in fitting complement to a flap of leather and fur under his chin and around his cheeks, making him look more like a wolf than a man. A mane of brownish-reddish hair, not unlike his ow
n, fled low down below his broad shoulders like a dark cape.

  In the warrior’s left arm he wielded a mighty broadsword, while in his right, a small buckler strapped to his forearm, studded and dented, obviously having seen much use in its killing days.

  Dereas turned his snorting mount and discovered to his absolute horror that a quarter of his warriors had been thrown or disabled—and that his enemy, come out of nowhere was his half brother, Rusfaer!—grinning like a bloodhood bearing down on him like something out of a nightmare.

  Dereas gave the Huughite victory chant and thrust his mount into the fray, the fire catching his blood. His black-maned belamyl screamed and reared at the same time, biting hard into the hide and sinew of enemy mounts as it had been trained to do from a colt. His broadsword crashed and sang bloody hymns amongst man and beast, felling anything in its path. Two snarling riders rolled in to replace their bloodied fellows and the beastslayer parried their furious hacking stabs. He let blade, dripping with blood, run arcs of carnal triumph, in and out of faces and torsos, wreaking frothy ruin, finally to sink deep through gullets or straight into their teeth—while Rusfaer, desiring the heart of his brother, caved the skulls of the half dozen protectors who bravely squeezed up from the back ranks to aid their leader. With each stroke of the enemy lord’s glistening weapon, the giant felled two more howling defenders who blocked his path. Dereas snatched a dirk from his belt and stabbed it into the ribs of the nearest mounted dead man, using it as a lever to unhorse the slumping rider. He kicked the man’s horse out of the way. From the corner of his eye, he saw his man Jhidik hack at an overzealous foe who threatened to cut legs from under him. The enemy had foolishly underestimated Jhidik as an easy mark, though nothing could be further from the truth. The Pirean was a wild hillman of the northwest, as wild as the savage race his people bred. He caught a momentary glimpse of the warrior, dashed from his mount, nimbly springing through the melee, whooping and howling and slipping on blood and entrails—only to plunge his sword through the rider’s ribs while parrying the stroke of another who thought to sneak in and smash him from above. The enemy was hacking and stabbing at air, while Jhidik ducked and hopped up on a dead man’s horse and with whirling sword, kept the front line intact.