TALE - Brotherhood of Lions, v2.0

[Sigismund229]

You could smell death on the wind.

Death was a stench like no other. It was a mix of various smells, the coppery tang of blood, the sickly sweet stench of rotting corpses, the foul smell of bowels ripped open by a spear. Together they combined to create the stench of death, clear and unmistakeable. Death had many faces on Mycenae, many ways in which it could come to spirit you away to the earthen halls of Cerbassan, gloomy and grim, or the bright halls of Cuchaelos, king of the gods. That day it wore two faces.

There was violent death. It would carve open your flesh with an axe or smash your bones with a maul, knocking you to the ground so that you felt nothing but your life draining away into the cold earth. It would stand over you and hack or smash at you again and again and again for as long as it took for it to be certain you wouldn't rise again or you were so mangled and disfigured that even death could not bear to look at you any longer. Then death would move on to its next victim and the crows would descend to feast, pecking out your eyes and breaking open the outer layers of your skin and fat with their beaks to get to the muscle and organs beneath.

Then there was quiet death that took those who fled into the wilderness. Maybe they would run too long too fast and simply collapse as their muscles gave way. Or perhaps they would freeze in the night, deprived of the warmth from a fire. It didn't matter. Somehow they would weaken and stop moving. Then the wild dogs would descend, ripping and tearing, taking as much meat as they could before a larger beast came to join the feast and finish what the dogs began.

It didn't matter which face of death it was. Both killed with impunity, heedless of age or youth, innocence or guilt, male or female. All died just the same when they kissed a face of death. On Mycenae, death's face was worn by many. On that day, it was worn by the Riata.

They had come late in the year. Where before the trees had borne leaves of every shade of green, now their leaves had turned to brown, red and orange. Already, the ground had begun to freeze and any crops still unharvested withered beneath its touch. The cattle had been moved to lower pastures for the last grazing of the year before winter truly set in. Storms on the seas were growing more frequent, the waves churned by lightning and the draks restless.

The days were growing shorter. Mycenae's twin moons were now snapping at the sun's heels. The sun spent more and more time hiding as the moons prowled across the sky searching for it amid the starry branches of the world tree glowed brightly in the sky.

It was by the light of the stars that the Riata had come. As darkness cloaked the world and the Siluri slept, they had swarmed down from the hills above the Siluri village, torches and weapons in hand, war cries in their throats. Abartach had seen them. He had seen them cresting the hill, looking like a wave of fiery light and he had seen them begin their charge. He had seen them too late to do anything more than ensure his people died awake.

The village's men had rushed out of their home's with weapons in hand. Some wore little more than their cloaks, others had been able to don trousers, a few even mail. Most were overrun and cut down within moments. The Riata had come prepared for war. Most of the experienced warriors wore a helmet and in a few cases mail while the youngest, the getae, were naked save for the red, black and blue tattoos that covered their bodies, still bright, not yet faded like those of more experienced warriors. They all bore axes, spears and mauls, the most privileged bore swords, and shields thick enough to stop a spear thrust and reinforced with bronze. Their eyes, the iris' dyed red with henna root, were wild. They gleamed with murder-light.

As they charged through the village, they burned every house, slaughtered everyone, sounding their war horns, whose piercing shriek made Abartach's blood run cold. Worse were the sounds the Riata made as they killed. Men of the far north, their home its barren plains and stony shores, they were big and broad. Few of them wore any gold or silver and they went unshaven, their hair shaved on either side of their head and their teeth filed into fangs. They howled as they killed. Not the roars and battle cries of the Siluri. Howls. Abartach saw one tear out a woman's throat with his teeth and tip his head back to the sky and howl like a wolf, her blood running down his neck and chest before he turned his blood maddened gaze on Abartach.

Abartach had taken been unable to take a shield. He had been unable to find one. At just nine winters old, he was still one of the getae and barely old enough to have seen battle at that. His only defence was his sword.

Unlike most weapons, his sword bore the waves in its blue iron of a sword whose iron and had been repeatedly folded over by a blacksmith's hammer. It was a shield cleaver, more than capable of going straight through bone and carving a full grown man in half. It was sharp too. It had kissed a whetstone scarcely hours ago. Mustering up his courage and offering a silent prayer to the bassi to take word of his deeds to the gods, Abartach charged. With a blood curdling howl, his foe leapt to meet him.

Yet the worst sounds were not the Riata warriors' howls nor the meaty sounds of axes cutting flesh nor even the dull thunk and loud cruch of a maul hitting bone. It was the sounds the came after. The screams, of warriors writhing in agony on the ground and of women and children trapped in their burning homes.

Abartach ducked the warrior's first strike with his maul. Swinging low, he brought his sword up through the warrior's hip bone and into his chest, letting him drop with a scream and a wet thud when he pulled out his sword.

Abartach had killed three by the time he saw them. A warrior with a heavy gold torc about his neck, its ends twisted to resemble the world serpent. In one hand he held a heavy sword, a work of deadly art, in the other a shield inlaid with fantastic swirling patterns and a dozen gems. Covering the warrior's torso was a heavy coat of mail extending down to his mid leg while his helm bore a golden boar on top of it from which a bright crimson crest spilled down his back. A chieftain clearly. Around him were at least two dozen other men gripping axes and shields, helmed, many of them wearing mail. His curadhi and brod clearly. No other group of warriors would be so well equipped.

Blood dripping down his body, both his and other people's, Abartach broke into a sprint towards them, letting out a wordless roar, his visiom tinted red in rage. Although he didn't notice it, others followed him, those of his father's brod and curadhi who didn't yet feast with the gods, other getae as angry and eager to win the attention of the gods as Abartach.

Carried forwards by momentum, Abartach slammed into the king and his chosen warriors. While at least a head and a half shorter than them, all grown warriors where Abartach was still a boy, he had momentum on his side and he barrelled through their shield wall and buried his sword in one of their eye's before slashing through the rings of another's mail and into his neck. However, once he lost momentum, Abartach had no advantage left, isolated and outnumbered. A maul smashed into his jaw, the sheer force of the blow spinning him around and knocking out several teeth as he fell to the ground. As the maul crashed into his jaw, Abartach felt an axe blade bury itself into his stomach, letting blood flow in rivers from the wound it created when its owner pulled it out. For what seemed like an eternity, Abartach waited for the blow that would end him. It didn't come.

His head spinning and his vision blurred, Abartach rolled over. Instead of a warrior poised to deliver the killing blow, he saw a giant in dark red and white armour striding through the ruins of his village. He was a giant, dwarfing the Riata, making them look like children. However, despite his great size he moved carefully, stepping over and between the bodies of the dead. When he reached Abartach, Abartach could see him more clearly. 

His armour was covered in blue and bronze patterns in the manner of a Mycenaean warrior's tattoos. His torso and arms were white and in his left hand he held a goblet. Kneeling beside Abartach, he lifted the youth's lips to the edge of the goblet and Abartach took a shallow draught from the liquid contained within. As his head tipped back, Abartach could feel his body being scooped up by something, being carried off  to wander the branches of the world tree. As his eyes lolled back into his skull, Abartach caught one last glimpse of the crows circling above his village and smiled as his entire world went black. 

Edited December 1, 2017 by Lord Thørn

[Sigismund229]

EDIT: second chapter to be added later

Edited February 14, 2017 by Sigismund229