Young Thongor (3 page)

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 in 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.