The second chapter of my just-for-fun story. Disclaimer: this hasn't been edited or re-drafted. It's literally just written as it comes to keep the wheels of my brain turning. Enjoy!
Chapter Two
Khalash ducked beneath vicious claws and slammed both fists upward into the jaw of the bear.
It was a large beast, a territorial male, all muscle and fury. 11ft tall on its hind-legs, it must have weighed close to 2000lbs. Unfortunately for the bear, it had wandered into Khalash’s territory.
The punch sent it stumbling and Khalash closed in, hammering blow after blow into the side of its skull. His heart hammered like a war drum. His breath was hot. The sting of the claw marks across his ribs was distant and unimportant – he was close to victory.
The bear rallied and lunged with massive jaws, aiming to end this human nuisance by crushing and tearing its throat.
Khalash caught the jaws before they could close and halted them.
The bear strained, eyes blazing, furious at being denied. It had never faced prey like this before, so strong, so fast. The other humans it had encountered had been no challenge at all.
Khalash gritted his teeth and steadied his feet in the dirt as his shoulders started to strain. The muscles of his back knotted, adding their strength to the effort. Too late, the bear realised its mistake – it was not the dominant beast here, it never would be.
With a yell of triumph and a cracking of bone, Khalash wrenched the maw of the beast open far enough to break its jaw. The bear staggered back and tried to pull away, roaring in agony. The roar only grew louder as Khalash heaved and ripped the lower jaw off completely.
The sound shook the trees and then abruptly stopped as Khalash, chief of Clan Strong, rammed its own jagged broken jawbone through its eye socket and into its brain.
As it fell, Khalash beat his fists against his chest and roared his triumph to the forest.
“Very impressive,” said a voice behind him.
Ammonita stood there, the spiral birthmarks on her cheeks red-pink against her pale skin. Her eyes were sharp and bright green, like precious stones.
“Probably easier if you use that though,” she pointed to the great war-axe abandoned in the ground.
Khalash let out a dismissive chuff of air from his bloody mouth.
“This bear killed five of our best hunters,” he said. “It deserved an honorable duel.”
He wiped the blood from his face on the back of his hand and forearm, leaving a bright smear on his weathered skin. At seventy years old, Khalash had out-lived many. Loved ones and friends had come and gone and their loss had hurt him each time. Now the chief of Clan Strong was distant and cold but no less fearsome in the defense of his people. Ammonita was his closest companion, his own granddaughter if her claims were to be believed (and this was possible – in his youth, Khalash had sired many children).
Perhaps he had allowed her close because she was different, like him. Perhaps he was lonely and her persistence had ground him down into allowing her to stay. Whatever the reason, despite his outward gruffness, he had grown fond of Ammonita.
His heart beat began to slow and his breathing returned to normal. He felt the pain of his wounds; the claw marks on his ribs, the gash on his shoulder, the mark of the tooth on his scalp, dying his fair hair steadily red. Pain did not bother him. It was an old friend.
He heaved the bear onto its back and drew a knife from his belt. Made from the tooth of a tree-stalker, it was wickedly sharp. As they said in the village – even in death, the tree-stalker may bite.
Ammonita watched with only a vague interest as his cut the chest of the great bear open and pulled out its heart.
“Come then,” she said, as he bit into the muscle. “Back to the village. The fur would make a nice rug, you know.”
“Rugs are for warmth,” grunted Khalash between chewing. “I prefer the cold.”
Ammonita shrugged and left the bear where it lay. Unless gifted to you by another, possessions amongst their people were earned – made by your own hands. It would be unthinkable to take something from another’s kill.
They made their way back through the forest, Khalash leading the way. Despite his size, he moved nearly silently across the ground; muscle memory from a lifetime of hunting. In his right hand, he held the axe. Even the strongest people in the village struggled to lift the weapon with both hands but their chief carried it in only one. His strength was unsurprising; he was head and shoulders taller than the tallest of his people and broader than two of them stood side by side.
Khalash had no memory of his birth or early childhood. He had been found living wild in the forest as a child, with no possessions besides the mighty axe. His strength, his senses and his hunting abilities were far superior to even the clan’s best hunters and warriors so his usefulness was immediately apparent. Some thought he might be a wikka but, besides his vast physical capabilities, he showed no sign of their magics nor did he bare the telltale markings on his skin. Others whispered that he was an Alpha, like the ancient chiefs, the first born in a hundred years.
Khalash paid none of this any attention. He was uninterested in his origins.
The village of Clan Strong was nestled against the mountain, natural stone providing a wall across the back while a fence of tall wooden spikes protected the front and sides. The sun was going down when they arrived, dusk lancing its fire between the tall trees. They could smell the cooking pots preparing the evening meal, boar and deer if Khalash’s nose was right. While possessions were earned, food was shared. Clan Strong ate together every evening at the table of the long hut, beneath the trophies of the greatest hunts and fiercest battles.
Khalash felt some pride as he entered the village. The people here went about their business, children playing, young people preparing for the night-time watch, the elderly sat around their fires, talking tall and passing a flask around. Distant as he kept himself from these people it gave him some warmth to know they were safe because of him. The other clans, Wolf-Rider, Wanderer and even Bladetooth, left them alone now.
Those who met his eyes nodded deeply, a sign of respect as he passed on his way to his own hut. None asked if he had killed the ‘demon bear’ that had claimed the lives of five of their own – he would not have returned if the beast still lived.
His hut was simple, small, right up against the roots of the mountain where the ground was hard and cold. He had no bed, preferring to sleep on the floor. In fact, he had very little at all. There were a few furs and cloaks that made up his wardrobe, a rough-hewn chair made of an old stump and not much else. Khalash’s prized possessions, he kept on his person – the axe, the dagger made from night-stalker tooth and a bowl Ammonita had carved for him from stone, when she first learned to control her wikka power.
Khalash sat in his chair and breathed in the smells of home – earth, stone and wood, firesmoke and the distant cooking pots. Ammonita left him without a word. Another reason he liked her was her ability to appreciate silence.
For a time, Kalash slept, the sounds of the village lulling him into comfort. But his sleep was not peaceful. In his dreams he was deep within the woods in a place where the trees were black and their matted branches blocked out all light from the sun. There was no life here – no birds sang, there were no insects. The earth itself felt dead beneath his feet.
Despite the lack of life, Khalash knew with utmost certainty that there was a presence here. He could feel it, a malevolent weight in the air, like the tension before a storm. All his life, he had hunted and been hunted and he knew the feeling of being watched. For the first time in decades, the chief of Clan Strong felt a stab of fear.
“You are right to be afraid,” said a voice. Khalash wheeled around, axe ready to strike. He had heard no-one approach and that made him wary. It was no mean feat to fool his senses.
The figure before him wore a cloak, hiding its face. It glowed a faint blue in the murk. It had no smell.
“What do you want, ghost?” Khalash growled.
“For our people to live,” the figure replied. “The Bindings are threatened. Something comes. You must remember the old oaths. You must protect the Forbidden Place.”
The ground beneath his feet began the rumble and Khalash fought to stay standing. Shrieks and howls wove through the trees and a fierce wind tugged at his hair and beard.
“Protect the Forbidden Place!” the figure commanded.
The figure was gone and Khalash found himself in a ruined temple as the ground fractured. Rising from the fissure, cast in sickly light, came a creature. It was tall and pale. Its face was a bare skull with distant light glowing in the depths of its eye sockets. It opened its mouth and its breath was death. Upon its brow was a silver crown. It turned and focused those twin lights on Khalash and he felt terror in his very soul.
Khalash woke with a start and a cold sweat, his breathing quick and panicked.
The long table was almost prepared when the chief arrived, striding through the doorway which he filled almost entirely. His face was set and his eyes were hard. His shoulders were tense. Immediately all activity in the long hut ceased. The people of the village looked to him.
“We must call a meeting of the chiefs,” he announced, his voice ragged from a dry throat. “Now.”
A meeting of the chiefs had not been called in decades but still they came when the horn was sounded.
The call was carried from village to village until all the forest and the valley, all the way to the mountain peak, rang with the sounds – the long mourning howl of Clan Wolf-Rider, the ominous chilling cry of Clan Bladetooth, the deep throaty bellow of Clan Thunder and others.
They met in the sacred circle, a ring of ruined stones atop a balding lonely hill. The place was older than any could remember and there could be no bloodshed here. The chiefs were protected by the laws of the old ways.
Still, they observed each other cautiously. Khalash stood, tallest and mightiest, his axe out of his grip, leant against one of the standing stones. He was uneasy still, though the dream was several nights past but he dare not show that to the others. The others, especially Nerra would see it as a weakness.
The chief of Clan Bladetooth, Nerra was a schemer and a fiend. Utterly ruthless and calculating, Nerra watched all and said little, unless it served a purpose. He lurked in the shadows of the stones, hiding from the light of the high moon, sharp eyes flitting from chief to chief. His body was light, lithe and wiry, coiled like a snake about to strike. His head was shaved and, standing out against his tanned skin, his eyes were piercing blue, almost luminous. As was the practice amongst his people, his teeth were filed to points.
Rook of Clan Thunder, leant back against the nearest stone, arms crossed. His body language was relaxed, but his storm-cloud eyes missed nothing and there was tension about his shoulders whenever he glanced at Nerra. The youngest chief in the history of his clan, it was mistake to underestimate Rook. The boy was a powerful wikka. Of all those gathered here, he was the only one that might prove a challenge for Khalash in a straight fight.
His fair hair was cut short and twisted into spikes, as was the custom of the warriors of his clan, and he wore a leather band around his left bicep with five smooth pebbles of blue glass attached to it by a short leather thread. One for each challenge of single combat he had won.
He nodded to Khalash and Khalash returned the gesture.
“Why have we been summoned?” asked Red Sky. A sombre, dark-haired man, the chief of Clan Wanderer was odd. He projected an aura of stillness and tended to stare too long without blinking. His people were largely peaceful and had stayed out of most battles between clans. They simply moved about their territory, staying with the wandering herds of buffalo.
“Something grave is afoot,” said Charrah. Her long hair was flame red – her wikka mark. “The flames have shown it.”
“The only thing your flames show you is how to lose your night vision,” rumbled Red Sky. The Wanderer clan did not trust wikka and exiled or killed those that were born to their people.
“You blaspheme!” Charrah snarled, her eyes literally blazing, sparks spilling down onto her cheeks, bright in the night.
“Peace in this place,” Khalash warned. They were bound by the old ways – there could be no bloodshed amongst the ancient stones. Charrah made no move to attack but smoke curled on her breath.
“The Forbidden Place,” said Herja of Clan Wolf-Rider, surprising everyone with her sudden speech. Clan Wolf-Rider communicated with each other through canine barks and growls and body-language. In fact, it was widely believed that they could not speak at all. This was perhaps the first sentence Herja had spoken in years.
She sat cross-legged on the ground looking up at them through the eye-holes in her wolf’s head hood, her gaze sombre and golden.
“You had the dream too,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Her voice was low, husky, and the words sounded foreign from her throat, as if she was unused to forming their complex sounds.
The chiefs didn’t answer. They didn’t need to; the truth was obvious.
“Something threatens the Forbidden Place,” grunted Red Sky.
“The Iron,” said Herja with the hint of a growl. “They come from south. We watch. Their path leads them to Forbidden Place.”
There was a shifting of body language in the stone circle. The Iron were a great threat to all the tribes, dangerous creatures wielding powers beyond that of ordinary men. They had been encountered less than a handful of times in the past but each time there had been bloodshed and destruction.
“The Forbidden Place is cursed,” said Red Sky. “The Iron will find only their own destruction there. Let them have it.”
“We are bound by oath to protect it,” said Charrah. “Failing this duty spells doom for us all.”
“Keep your visions, Fire-Watcher,” grunted Red Sky. “Clan Wanderer has no need for ghost stories.”
“Clan Wolf-Rider will not ignore danger,” said Herja. “We track the Iron. We turn them back.”
“Clan Fire-Watcher will keep the oath,” said Charrah. “I shall lead my warriors to the Forbidden Place. There we shall keep guard.”
Rook of Clan Thunder was quiet for a moment as all eyes turned to him.
“Clan Thunder cannot spare the warriors,” he said, turning to Nerra with a face like a storm. “We have other demands on our strength.”
Nerra only grinned his sharp-toothed grin in response. Khalash grimaced. So the Clan Bladetooth, having learned that they could not defeat Clan Strong, had turned their sights elsewhere. Clan Bladetooth were thieves, scavengers and murderers. They saw no value in creating for themselves what they could simply take from others. All Clans made war from time to time, usually over territory, but for Bladetooth it was a way of life.
“Clan Bladetooth, too is otherwise engaged,” Nerra grinned. There was a rumble from the chief of Clan Thunder, somewhere between a growl and a stormcloud’s warning. He uncrossed his arms and his hands were fists. Nerra merely continued to grin.
Khalash held up a hand in warning.
“Not here,” he said. “Peace between the stones.”
A snarl hooked Rook’s lips but he took a deep breath and relented, though his eyes promised murder to the chief of Clan Bladetooth.
“What of Clan Strong?” Charrah of the Clan Fire-Watcher asked. “Will they keep to their oaths? Will they protect the Forbidden Place?”
Now Nerra was interested, his sharp little eyes needling into Khalash’s skin like stinging insects. For years Clan Bladetooth had tested Clan Strong’s defenses and Khalash knew that each time he turned them back, their chief had only grown more determined for victory. If all their warriors went to the Forbidden Place, there was not a doubt in his mind that Nerra would remove his forces from Clan Thunder’s lands and turn them straight towards Clan Strong instead.
Still, he could not refuse the call. He took the oath to keep the old pacts when he became chief. He had the dream.
“I will go alone,” he said, finally.
Ammonita could protect the village. Her wikka powers had made her strong and she kept a cool head. She should be a match for Nerra and his Shadows.
The others nodded. Having the chief of Clan Strong himself in the battle considerably increased their odds, even against so powerful an enemy as the Iron.
Nerra only smiled his sharp little smile and his bright eyes glinted.