_Proud Kery of Broina felt like a ghost himself;
shade of a madman flitting hopelessly to the
citadel of Earth's disinherited ... to recapture the
resonant pipes of Killorn--weapon of the gods--before
they blared forth the dirge of the world._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories November 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_The third book of the Story of the Men of Killorn. How Red Bram
fought the Ganasthi from the lands of darkness, and Kery son of
Rhiach was angered, and the pipe of the gods spoke once more._
* * * * *
Now it must be told of those who fared forth south under Bram the Red.
This was the smallest of the parties that left Killorn, being from
three clans only--Broina, Dagh, and Heorran. That made some thousand
warriors, mostly men with some women archers and slingers. But the
pipe of the gods had always been with Clan Broina, and so it followed
the Broina on this trek. He was Rhiach son of Glyndwyrr, and his son
was Kery.
Bram was a Heorran, a man huge of height and thew, with eyes like blue
ice and hair and beard like a torch. He was curt of speech and had no
close friends, but men agreed that his brain and his spirit made him
the best leader for a journey like this, though some thought that he
paid too little respect to the gods and their priests.
For some five years these men of Killorn marched south. They went
over strange hills and windy moors, through ice-blinking clefts in
gaunt-cragged mountains and over brawling rivers chill with the cold of
the Dark Lands.
They hunted and robbed to live, or reaped the grain of foreigners, and
cheerfully cut down any who sought to gainsay them. Now and again Bram
dickered with the chiefs of some or other city and hired himself and
his wild men out to fight against another town. Then there would be
hard battle and rich booty and flames red against the twilight sky.
Men died and some grew weary of roving and fighting. There was a sick
hunger within them for rest and a hearthfire and the eternal sunset
over the Lake of Killorn. These took a house and a woman and stayed by
the road. In such ways did Bram's army shrink. On the other hand most
of his warriors finally took some or other woman along on the march and
she would demand more for herself and the babies than a roof of clouds
and wind. So there came to be tents and wagons, with children playing
between the turning wheels. Bram grumbled about this, it made his army
slower and clumsier, but there was little he could do to prevent it.
Those who were boys when the trek began became men with the years and
the battles and the many miles. Among these was the Kery of whom we
speak. He grew tall and lithe and slender, with the fair skin and slant
blue eyes and long ash-blond hair of the Broina, broad of forehead and
cheekbones, straight-nosed, beardless like most of his clan.
He was swift and deadly with sword, spear, or bow, merry with his
comrades over ale and campfire, clever to play harp or pipe and make
verses--not much different from the others, save that he came of the
Broina and would one day carry the pipe of the gods. And while the
legends of Killorn said that all men are the offspring of a goddess
whom a warrior devil once bore off to his lair, it was held that the
Broina had a little more demon blood in them than most.
Always Kery bore within his heart a dream. He was still a stripling
when they wandered from home. He had reached young manhood among hoofs
and wheels and dusty roads, battle and roaming and the glimmer of
campfires, but he never forgot Killorn of the purple hills and the far
thundering sea and the lake where it was forever sunset. For there had
been a girl of the Dagh sept, and she had stayed behind.
But then the warriors came to Ryvan and their doom.
* * * * *
It was a broad fair country into which they had come. Trending south
and east, away from the sun, they were on the darker edge of the
Twilight Lands and the day was no longer visible at all. Only the
deep silver-blue dusk lay around them and above, with black night
and glittering stars to the east and a few high clouds lit by unseen
sunbeams to the west. But it was still light enough for Twilight
Landers' eyes to reach the horizon--to see fields and woods and rolling
hills and the far metal gleam of a river. They were well into the
territory of Ryvan city.
Rumor ran before them on frightened feet, and peasants often fled as
they advanced. But never had they met such emptiness as now. They had
passed deserted houses, gutted farmsteads, and the bones of the newly
slain, and had shifted their course eastward to get into wilder country
where there should at least be game. But such talk as they had heard
of the invaders of Ryvan made them march warily. And when one of their
scouts galloped back to tell of an army advancing out of the darkness
against them, the great horns screamed and the wagons were drawn
together.
For a while there was chaos, running and yelling men, crying children,
bawling cattle, and tramping hests. Then the carts were drawn into a
defensive ring atop a high steep ridge and the warriors waited outside.
They made a brave sight, the men of Killorn, tall barbarians in the
colorful kilts of their septs with plundered ornaments shining around
corded throat or sinewy arm.
Most of them still bore the equipment of their homeland--horned
helmets, gleaming ring-byrnies, round shields, ax and bow and spear
and broadsword, worn and dusty with use but ready for more. The
greater number went afoot, though some rode the small shaggy hests of
the north. Their women and children crouched behind the wagons, with
bows and slings ready and the old battle banners of Killorn floating
overhead.
Kery came running to the place where the chiefs stood. He wore only a
helmet and a light leather corselet, and carried sword and spear and
a bow slung over his shoulders. "Father," he called. "Father, who are
they?"
Rhiach of Broina stood near Bram with the great bagpipes of the gods
under one arm--old beyond memory, those pipes, worn and battered, but
terror and death and the avenging furies crouched in them, power so
great that only one man could ever know the secret of their use. A
light breeze stirred the warlock's long gray hair about his gaunt face,
and his eyes brooded on the eastern darkness.
The scout who had brought word turned to greet Kery. He was panting
with the weariness of his hard ride. An arrow had wounded him,
and he shivered as the cold wind from the Dark Lands brushed his
sweat-streaked body. "A horde," he said. "An army marching out of the
east toward us, not Ryvan but such a folk as I never knew of. Their
outriders saw me and barely did I get away. Most likely they will move
against us, and swiftly."
"A host at least as great as ours," added Bram. "It must be a part of
the invading Dark Landers who are laying Ryvan waste. It will be a hard
fight, though I doubt not that with our good sword-arms and the pipe of
the gods we will throw them back."
"I know not." Rhiach spoke slowly. His deep eyes were somber on Kery.
"I have had ill dreams of late. If I fell in this battle, before we
won ... I did wrong, son. I should have told you how to use the pipe."
"The law says you can only do that when you are so old that you are
ready to give up your chiefship to your first born," said Bram. "It is
a good law. A whole clan knowing how to wield such power would soon be
at odds with all Killorn."
"But we are not in Killorn now," said Rhiach. "We have come far from
home, among alien and enemy peoples, and the lake where it is forever
sunset is a ghost to us." His hard face softened. "If I fall, Kery, my
own spirit, I think, will wander back thither. I will wait for you at
the border of the lake, I will be on the windy heaths and by the high
tarns, they will hear me piping in the night and know I have come
home ... but seek your place, son, and all the gods be with you."
* * * * *
Kery gulped and wrung his father's hand. The warlock had ever been a
stranger to him. His mother was dead these many years and Rhiach had
grown grim and silent. And yet the old warlock was dearer to him than
any save Morna who waited for his return.
He turned and sped to his own post, with the tyrs.
The cows of the great horned tyrs from Killorn were for meat and milk
and leather, and trudged meekly enough behind the wagons. But the huge
black bulls were wicked and had gored more than one man to death. Still
Kery had gotten the idea of using them in battle. He had made iron
plates for their chests and shoulders. He had polished their cruel
horns and taught them to charge when he gave the word. No other man in
the army dared go near them, but Kery could guide them with a whistle.
For the men of Broina were warlocks.
They snorted in the twilight as he neared them, stamping restlessly and
shaking their mighty heads. He laughed in a sudden reckless drunkenness
of power and moved up to his big lovely Gorwain and scratched the bull
behind the ears.
"Softly, softly," he whispered, standing in the dusk among the crowding
black bulks. "Patient, my beauty, wait but a little and I'll slip you,
O wait, my Gorwain."
Spears blinked in the shadowy light and voices rumbled quietly. The
bulls and the hests snorted, stamping and shivering in the thin chill
wind flowing from the lands of night. They waited.
Presently they heard, faint and far, the skirling of war pipes. But it
was not the wild joyous music of Killorn, it was a thin shrill note
which ran along the nerves, jagged as a saw, and the thump of drums
and the clangor of gongs came with it. Kery sprang up on the broad
shoulders of Gorwain the tyr and strained into the gloom to see.
Over the rolling land came marching the invaders. It was an army of a
thousand or so, he guessed with a shiver of tension, moving in closer
ranks and with tighter discipline than the barbarians. He had seen many
armies, from the naked yelling savages of the upper Norlan hills to the
armored files of civilized towns, yet never one like this.
_Dark Landers_, he thought bleakly. _Out of the cold and the night that
never ends, out of the mystery and the frightened legends of a thousand
years, here at last are the men of the Dark Lands, spilling into the
Twilight like their own icy winds, and have we anything that can stand
against them?_
They were tall, as tall as the northerners, but gaunt, with a stringy
toughness born of hardship and suffering and bitter chill. Their skins
were white, not with the ruddy whiteness of the northern Twilight
Landers but dead-white, blank and bare, and the long hair and beards
were the color of silver.
Their eyes were the least human thing about them, huge and round and
golden, the eyes of a bird of prey, deep sunken in the narrow skulls.
Their faces seemed strangely immobile, as if the muscles for laughter
and weeping were alike frozen. As they moved up, the only sound was the
tramp of their feet and the demon whine of their pipes and the clash of
drum and gong.
They were well equipped, Kery judged, they wore close-fitting garments
of fur-trimmed leather, trousers and boots and hooded tunics.
Underneath he glimpsed mail, helmets, shields, and they carried all
the weapons he knew--no cavalry, but they marched with a sure tread.
Overhead floated a strange banner, a black standard with a jagged
golden streak across it.
Kery's muscles and nerves tightened to thrumming alertness. He
crouched by his lead bull, one hand gripping the hump and the other
white-knuckled around his spearshaft. And there was a great hush on the
ranks of Killorn as they waited.
Closer came the strangers, until they were in bowshot. Kery heard the
snap of tautening strings. _Will Bram never give the signal? Gods, is
he waiting for them to walk up and kiss us?_
A trumpet brayed from the enemy ranks, and Kery saw the cloud of arrows
rise whistling against the sky. At the same time Bram winded his horn
and the air grew loud with war shouts and the roar of arrow flocks.
Then the strangers locked shields and charged.