Kalac

If ye make it

Ye go south then, the old ranger had suggested. Hug the Charmed Heights, and follow the thin strip of arid land that is the border, between the unending Cofol Steppe and the Great Desert. Keep at it, minding your water, until you spot the Kraken’s Spine Peaks on the horizon. If ye make it there, Vapi Arn Ria and its springs, will provide for the weary and the brave alike.

If ye make it.

His horse, dark brown turned to an ashen yellow, neighed pathetically, froth and blood in his mouth. Kalac, who’d raised the animal since he was a boy, touched its burning mane to give it courage. Tarn, son of Babal, coming up behind him, leading another twenty riders pulled at the reins of his mount, face covered in dust, lips cracked and bloody, the column coming to a stop, in the middle of the desert.

“Where’s the scout?” Kalac asked, his voice dry. The cloth covering the lower part of his face, turned solid and heavy with caked dirt, cracking as if falling apart.

“Run ahead over ‘em dunes,” Tarn replied, mostly empty water flask in hand. He shook it once, but didn’t drink. “Reckon, it’s him raising ‘em clouds,” The man pointed in the distance and Kalac sat back on the richly decorated saddle, to see for himself.

Someone was coming, all right.

Kalac cried a sharp order, four of the men pulling arrows from the twin heavy quivers, attached on the sides of their sturdy Steppe horses, in the time-tested manner of the horselords. The rest spread about, tired horses obeying after some urging and a lot of cursing.

Tarn, who had the better eyes, called it off a couple of minutes later.

That was Nimra in the end, their scout.

Riding hard, billows of thin sand half-hiding him.

Riding too hard, Kalac thought, eyes glancing towards the afternoon sun above them. The giant sphere's shine blinding.

The scout raised a hand, waved it in a circle above his head, again and again.

A heavy roaring sound gathering behind the rise, gave enough context to his gesture.

“ARM YOURSELVES!” Kalac shouted, heart thumping wildly in chest and kicked his legs, to get his horse moving. Kind Eyes he called it, which was the foremost thought the young man had, when he met the animal for the first time. That was the way. No one could give Kind Eyes a different name, nor will he ever listen to another, but the one the man who first rode him, had called him.

He tied the reins on his saddle’s bone pommel, freeing his hands to use the bow. Guided the animal with his legs as they burst ahead, the men following him. A dust cloud raising and quickly engulfing them all.

The column cut to the right, the onrushing scout to the left, still waving his hand like mad, a look of despair on his face, much as Kalac could see it amidst the haze. It worried him, but the rush of the gallop made it hard to think clear and by the time he did, the first Cataphract burst out the top of the ridge, long lance in hand. Horse and man, covered from head to toe in metal.

“STEEL TIPS!” Kalac bellowed a warning, his throat raw, Tarn repeating it from behind. He switched arrows, legs kicking Kind Eyes hard, the poor animal cutting away from the danger.

Another five came after the first one, who had continued after the scout, missing them closing in. Those saw them turning hard, to avoid crashing on the heavier armoured opponents and went after them, just as the first arrows started flying.

Kalac saw one break on a conical helm, another bouncing off a horse’s scaled armour, as he led his riders towards the base of the large sand dune in a sharp angle, forcing the charging down the slope heavy cavalry, to correct its course, losing momentum.

They there going to take the turn first, it seemed.

If ye make it, the old ranger had said.

A horse neighed, voice straggled and horrible, two, three bodies behind him. Kalac turned, took aim at the leading Cataphract and fired in two seconds, before glancing back to see his man getting up dazed, his hand broken.

One moment Alem was there, the next he got skewered right though the torso, lance breaking in half, not taking the weight and the armoured horse run over his broken body, finishing him off.

He’d missed.

Kalac reached for another arrow, his men rounding the base of the rise fast, but with their time running out. He turned to his second, in the mind to split the men and circle around, put the heavy cavalry in the middle. Finish them off from afar.

There was no more thin, watery sand underfoot. His tired horse’s hooves thundering on sturdier ground. A Steppe, he thought in despair. We veered too far.

Curse the Old Gods.

All of them.

“Kalac!” Tarn yelled on his back and he turned, another arrow nocked, saw him pointing at the Cataphracts falling back, their charge spent.

Deliverance.

Fear the loss that comes gently, an old warrior used to say, face lit from the fire, open sky over their heads, his father smoking his pipe, still alive. For it can kill you, in yer sleep.

“These are the Neesen Mountains in the distance,” Tarn said an hour later. They had managed to lose their slower pursuers, but things weren’t looking good. They’d lost a man and the scout was nowhere to be seen. His second checked on the rough drawing again, the parchment torn in several places. “Much as I make of it.”

“Why is the Khan’s cavalry patrolling so far?” Tyeusfort was at least a week away and over the distant mountains.

“Can’t tell ye,” Tarn wiped his mouth, with a gloved hand. “They can’t be alone and these weren’t any plain border guards. That was solid Imperial riders we faced, gold Chariots on their crests.”

“Doing what? Huh? What are they doing here Tarn?”

“Guarding the supply caravans for those working on Eikenport?” The man guessed. A merchant had given them this information, gone back four months now, learned it while dealing in the large city of Yin Xi-Han. Kalac and his warband, had steered clear from Yin, opting to travel undetected from the other side of Desert Lake, the last body of clear water before the Great Desert started.

“That’s still too strange, no one but us has ventured so far,” Kalac said, his mouth bitter. The last bit of his water, he’d given to his horse. To keep it alive. Most of his men, did the same.

“Way I see it, we have two options,” Tarn said. A grimace of pain revealing, what he thought of them. “Either swing back, take a crack at finding the Kraken’s Spine, or we stay in the Steppe, save the horses. More chances to find a waterhole here I reckon, than back in the desert.”

That is where your journey ends, if ye ask me. After that it’s either the Desert again or the Central Steppe, mayhap cross half the realm, if yer keen on it and fight Lorians in Raoz, or chance the acid rivers all the way down to the cursed Jade Lake, find yourself the door to ancient Wetull.

Ah, I see it now.

Ye want to become a legend? Kalac, son of Duham, the feared.

Be warned young Warlord, for no free Horselord ever returned, to the lands of Eodrass.

None that I know off anyway and I’ve seen three of my horses, breathe their last.

No one.

Not since the demons died.

“We know there’s army and heavy cavalry in Tyeusfort,” Kalac said, looking at his tired men. Measuring their resolve. Would they follow him? Should he come clear? “Whatever the reason, where there’s Cataphracts, archers are near. I say, we move south. Straight down. Make for Jadefort. Or even Dia. Test our teeth, on what we find there.”

“Jadefort? Isn’t that abandoned?” Tarn queried, showing his surprise.

“Maybe it is,” Kalac replied. “Maybe it isn’t. But we can fight whatever they have stationed there, or outright take it, for our own.”

“We can’t hold a fort Kalac.” A man said, but he couldn’t figure out, who he was.

“We don’t need to hold it forever. Just till, we get our strength back.”

“And Dia?” Another asked. Belec, judging by the voice. “There would be soldiers there aplenty. It’s a royal castle. They might try to lick us, something fierce.”

“When is the last time, you heard a Prince coming this far? You expect to find elites in the back end of the realm?” Kalac asked them, raising his voice. An attempt to shame them. “Eikenport, I can understand, but even that, it’s still a bloody ruin for the most part. At least you can see the Lorians across the sea, right? But thither?” He made a dismissive gesture. “Nothing to see thither, but the Pale Mountains and ruins.”

“And Wetull, just behind them,” Tarn pointed, crooking his ruined mouth. “Gods only know, what lies there,” He added with a frown.

A legend, Kalac thought, eyes burning.

If ye make it.