Norman, John - Telnarian Histories 01 - The Chieftain

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etext v3.0 based on 1st print edition, 1991, ISBN 0-446-36149-6

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Revision History:

v 1.0 spell-checked scan; saved as RTF because of extensive italics use.

v 3.0 proofread against DT, complies w/ ABEB versioning standard 3.0

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The Telnarian Histories

The Chieftain

John Norman

***

This book is dedicated

to all who disapprove of blacklisting.

***

PROLOGUE

"In this year war was carried on with the Aatii."

—The Annals.

The above entry is not untypical of the dark and troubled times to which I should like, in what

follows, to devote my attention.

I suppose one might distinguish between history and chronicle, though the distinction must surely

be one of grades, or shades, rather than of kinds, for there is seldom a history which does not

clearly contain chronicle, nor a chronicle which does not, at least implicitly, recount a history.

We do not know, incidentally, who kept the Annals. Quite possibly they were set down by a

succession of individuals, men who occupied remote, fortified places, places within which the

most precious of the treasures of Telnaria might be kept safe, the ability to read and write.

"In this year war was carried on with the Aatii."

This entry, with which I have begun, surely approximates to pure chronicle. There is doubtless an

explanation for this. The men of the remote, fortified places had, for most practical purposes,

turned their backs on history and the world. Such matters had little left in them to interest them.

They had little to do with their studies, and the pursuit of their personal salvation, to assure

which they may have withdrawn from the world. Also, they probably knew very little about the

world they had left, perhaps some gossip, some remarks, picked up from merchants or traders.

Yet they did keep the chronicles. Indeed, were it not for such sources we would know much less

than we do about the dark and troubled times.

"In this year war was carried on with the Aatii."

If one listens carefully, perhaps one can hear, beneath this laconic sentence, the ships, the roar of

the engines, the bursting of the shells, the blare of trumpets, the hiss of weaponry, the running

feet, the screams, even the clash of steel. Not all entries in the Annals, of course, are so terse. I

have chosen this one because, you see, my story begins in the year referred to in this particular

entry, the year, one of several, actually, in which war was carried on with the Aatii.

I have wondered sometimes why men tell stories. I suspect they have always done so. In the

beginning perhaps they danced them, or drew them. A man is, after all, a story-telling animal.

One needs no reason to tell a story, or to sing. Those are nice things about stories, and about

singing. Perhaps the story, the song, like seeing, and thinking and breathing, if you like, is its

own justification, its own reason.

I shall, in what follows, speak in simple, familiar terms, for these are the terms in the light of

which we live and understand ourselves, and the worlds, both those without and those within. I

shall ignore then the terrors of distance, the puzzles and paradoxes of time, her crevices, the

clashing and grinding of her walls, the opening and closing, like the coming and going of tides,

of her gates. Though these figure in our story they have little to do with it.

It is raining outside. Water runs down the casement. It gathers on the sill.

I think the vastness of it is what is most frightening. Perhaps, in the corner of some droplet of

water, perhaps even one at hand, one lingering on the sill of the casement, some tiny,

infinitesimal creature, one in which has just arisen the first glimmering of consciousness,

trembles at the awesomeness of his universe. And perhaps we, ourselves, and all our time and

space, and our history, and all the vastness of our own universe, those plenitudes before which

we tremble, lie only upon another sill, inhabiting merely another droplet, somewhere. But the

magnitude of man is not measured in the quantity of his being, that he lingers for such and such a

time in such and such a place, a small time, in a small place, or that his frame contains so many

cubits or less, but in his heart and soul, as tiny, as foul and dark as they may be. He, in his tiny

place and time, may do deeds, and in these deeds he stands among the loftiest, farthest of stars. A

smile, a gesture, an upraised fist, a laugh, a song, with these things, seemingly so small in

themselves, he exceeds dimensions, he challenges all time and space.

Greatness, you see, is not measured in size. The magnitude of man is not measured in cubits.

We must understand that, in the dark and troubled times, the billions of worlds met, in the course

of their turnings, their billions of mornings and evenings, and seasons came and went, as usual,

and vegetations waxed and waned, as was their wont, and so, too, men, and other creatures,

some like men and some not so like them, came to be, and suffered and died. Those times, you

see, were not so different from our own.

I have not written this history to edify or instruct. I have not written it to praise or blame. I have

not even written it, really, to explain, or understand, for who can, truly, understand such things.

My purpose, rather, is a simple one, merely to tell what happened.

Early in the dark and troubled times the wings of the Telnarian empire still spread over galaxies.

My story begins on the provincial world of Terennia, in an arena.

Notes pertaining to manuscript 122B Valens:

1. The Chronicler:

We do not know, at this time, at any rate, the identity of the chronicler, or historian, responsible

for this particular version of the Telnarian histories. This, however, is common with the various

manuscripts. It is interesting to speculate on this. Perhaps, when they sang, or wrote, they knew

well who they were, and it did not occur to them that their names might be lost, blown away in

the winds of time. Perhaps they thought their names would stand forever. Indeed, how many

founders of cities and nations, occupants of thrones, commanders of armies, wielders of scepters,

discoverers and claimers of worlds, have not subscribed to a similar delusion. In most cases, we

do not even know who named the planets in our own system. How many immortals have died,

how many imperishable gods, and peoples, have perished! But one suspects that the reasons lay

elsewhere, that the investment of the time, and toil, the pain and love, was not to procure the

glory of their own names, but to make a thing of meaning, of beauty and significance. These are

not the men to whom "I made this" is all-important; rather they are the men to whom "This has

been made" is all that matters. It is not even clear whether the chronicler, or historian, here is a

single person, or more than one person, nor whether the manuscript was written rather at the

same time, or has been added to, and glossed, at different times. Clearly the chronicler, or

chroniclers, had at their disposal various manuscripts, and documents, which, as far as we know,

are no longer extant. Some scholars, and commentators, from various details, have speculated

that the narrator's relationship to the story may be more intimate than appears upon the surface.

This seems to me unlikely, but much is obscure.

2. The manuscripts:

We have known of the existence of the Telnarian histories for several hundred years, but,

initially, only in virtue of some references, which seemed quite clear, and several seeming

allusions, less clear, more disputable, in certain classical authors, notably Asclepiodorus, Singer

of Olrion; Chi Tung, to whom is attributed the founding of the imperial academy at Hinan;

Umake, counselor of Kreon, lord of Corathon; Philip, count of the Taurine Marches, who

apparently composed his works in exile; Regius, tutor of Urik, tyrant, and third elector, of Kash;

Leland, courtier of Lemanthine; and Heiband, the Benellian, who once served as secretary to

Loren, prince of the Rosterdam Gates.

The first actual Telnarian histories, or fragments thereof, came to light four hundred years ago,

when a cache containing them was accidentally opened by workmen engaged in the construction

of the Andirian Canal. As sometimes happens, once the existence of such things is indisputably

established, and authenticated, a serious search was undertaken in numerous archives, libraries

and treasuries. To the embarrassment of scholarship more than forty versions of the histories, or

fragments thereof, were found cataloged, and apparently forgotten, in almost as many locations.

The manuscripts, of course, were derivative, being copies of copies, and so on. One of the

puzzles concerning many of these manuscripts is why their existence was not more clearly

established, and understood, earlier. The various versions are clearly of different ages, and

different hands. It is not as though they were written at the same time, or copied at the same time,

or even cataloged, at the same time. Perhaps original documents, suggested by the classical

references, were forged, but, if so, why were these "forgeries" not brought to light, that their

perpetrators might then attempt to reap what profits they might? Some of these fragments tend to

reciprocally authenticate one another, and yet others seem utterly independent. It is almost as if

these various manuscripts were placed, in one century or another, in one location or another.

Their origins remain obscure. Perhaps, somewhere, in some dim archive, other such manuscripts

exist, remaining to be found. It is difficult to say.

The current manuscript is that known as the Valens manuscript, because it was found in the ducal

library of the district of Valens, one of the minor duchies of the Talois Confederation. It is known

as 122B, following the system devised by the collegium of Harcourt, to which institution the

original trove, consisting of more than one hundred manuscripts, primarily fragments, was

referred.

This particular manuscript, portions of which I have prepared for the press, is unusual among the

manuscripts, as it deals on a personal level with affairs of states, movements of men, the destinies

of nations and worlds, such matters as seen by individuals involved in them. In such a sense the

vast pageants involved, the sweeping biographies of empires and peoples, are only dimly hinted

at. What a tiny particle of space and time falls within the brief purview of any individual! We are

but specks on a cosmic sea. In this manuscript one discerns, and this seems precious to me, not so

much the vast tides of time and space, the configuration of those awesome seas, understood in

terms of charts of currents and winds, but what it was, at a given time, to be embarked upon

them.

The manuscript may have been glossed. I have, in certain places, set certain materials in italics.

These italicized portions of the manuscript almost invariably provide background information

without which certain actions and events in the story would be obscure. Some regard the glosses

as interpolations by an independent hand, to supply later readers with political, historical and

religious background. My hypothesis with respect to such passages is that they are by one, and

the original, author, and constitute glosses, if they are even to be understood as such, which

seems to me unlikely, on his own work. Certain statistical studies of a linguistic nature support

this theory, that of the single author, both in the more narrative and in the more expository or

explanatory remarks, without which the narrative passages might seem less intelligible.

3. Telnaria:

There seems no reason to doubt the existence, at one time, of Telnaria, and her empire. Too many

records, too many allusions, too many stories and legends, too many ancient place names, too

much linguistic evidence, embedded in current languages, too much archaeological evidence,

now-silent beacons, debris, claiming stones, coins struck by barbarous kings bearing the devices

of an empire perhaps even then little but a memory and a legend, support the hypothesis.

In the legends Telnaria seems mythic to us, but, indubitably, at the bottom of such myths there

once lay a far-flung, bright, formidable, perhaps even terrible reality. The location of the empire

in time and space remains obscure, as do those modalities of being themselves. It is usually

assumed that Telnaria has fallen, and long ago. But this is not actually clear, even in the

manuscripts. Perhaps the empire has only drawn back a border, that it will later fling forth again,

with a hand of iron. Some think that the Telnarian world lies before us, that it is our own world,

others think that it was once our world, others that it recurs, coming again and again, perhaps as

our own might, in the cycles of nature, in years so large and meaningless as to baffle our

comprehension. Some speculate, interestingly, as suggested above, that the empire never fell, but

survives, that it exists even today, and that we are but a lonely, isolated world, forgotten, or

neglected, for a time, and that one day the ships will return, demanding their claiming stones,

their taxes, their tribute. Who knows. Perhaps Telnaria lies at our elbow, and at that of other

worlds, as well, our sleeves perhaps brushing, now and again, a column, unnoticed, in a temple

not antique but one fresh and golden, consecrated but a moment ago. Can you not see the

processions of robed priests, detect the bells, hear the chanting of the choirs, smell the incense?

Universes, you see, might not be parallel, or fully so. Perhaps, now and then, they touch one

another, and a corridor, as sudden as the snapping of an electric spark, forms a crossroads

between realities, perhaps intersecting for a moment, or perhaps longer, perhaps forever, at

certain points. Are there such portals, such gates? Let us believe that Telnaria is past, for I would

not care to glimpse the pennons of her fleets upon the horizon, nor hear the tread of her legions in

the night.

In our own small galaxy there are more than a billion stars, and for each of these stars, another

galaxy can be glimpsed beyond.

Sometimes one is afraid.

Which of us, at one time or another, has not heard the cry of a distant voice? Which of us has

never heard a footfall behind him?

Once, long ago, you see, when I was very young, for the briefest instant, my sleeve did brush

such a column.

CHAPTER 1

It is odd, sometimes, how one notices little things, the way a step is splintered, the eleventh,

rather at the corner, on the climb to the platform, how a cloud, over the rooftops, seen from the

height of the platform, moves in the wind, like a flag, how a board is stained near a block, how

the patterns of dryness and dampness, and, here and there, a bead of dew, appear on the fiber of

the rope, and exactly how it hangs from the hook, slack, bent a little, not yet straight, not yet taut.

One supposes such things are there to be noticed always, the lie of a pebble, the way a blade of

grass bends, such things, but often one does not notice them, nor, I suppose, generally, should

one. There is not much economy in doing so. Often other things are more important, much more

so, the shadows cast by the great stones, the scent of a cat in the wind, the hum of an engine, far

off, in the darkness. But when one has nothing much else to do, and one must choose how to

spend a last handful of perceptions, one, or at least some, grow curious about little things, a

splinter, a stain on a board, a drop of dew on a rope. It is surprising to realize just how

meaningful, and beautiful, such things are. Too, at such a time, one sees with great vividness. At

such times, life gleams.

It had been some thousands of years since the skies had come alive.

Oh, there had doubtless been sightings even before that, long before that, the detections of the

scout ships, not known for what they were, and such, but records of those sightings, if, indeed,

they had been made, were now lost. Some things will not be seen for what they are. One refuses

to understand them. One looks upon them but refuses to see them. The defense mechanism is a

familiar one, common to the rational species. And so the day the sky came alive came as a

surprise to the old world, one far from this one, as it had to hundreds of other worlds before.

Evidence, later clear, had been understood in terms of misleading categories of interpretation,

old categories, comfortable categories, categories more acceptable. The hints had been

neglected, save by some fanatics. Sometimes, of course, only the insane can see a certain form of

truth, one which is beyond sanity, as it is then understood. But even so, one does not listen to the

insane, and one always hopes that a truth, like some of the cats, not looked in the eye, will go

away. The deep archives, later ransacked by historians, unwilling to accept the abruptness of the

advent of the ships, were silent. But all that took place long ago, and much in it, even today,

remains obscure.

He knelt in the deep, warm white sand.

It was late afternoon.

The sun was warm on his back and shoulders, as in the fields.

He was a large man, unusually so, particularly for one who had been raised in a festung village,

one of the villages in the vicinity of a high, fortified place.

He noticed the sand, as one might on such an occasion. Light sparkled here and there among the

grains, flashing from some tiny crystalline surfaces, suitably oriented to the sun. An ant, as we

shall call the tiny social insect, came within his view, going about its business, trekking its

awesome hills and valleys. He watched it, with interest. He had never really considered such

creatures before, except to remove them from his tunic or blankets. To the ant, he supposed, this

day was no different from a thousand others. He could also detect, what he had never noticed

before, the shadow of the ant, moving with it, hurrying a little before it.

Many worlds, of course, had, long ago, offered resistance to the ships. The ships had not won

their worlds, or many of them, with ease. In many cases steel had met steel. Had it not been the

case the ships might have come centuries earlier. Sometimes the issue had been genuinely in

doubt. Long ago, you see, the ships had not their reputation of invincibility, casting centuries

before them their image of power and terror. There was a time when standards stood against

standards. There had been the wars with the Valeii and the Torinichi, that with the system of

Aurelian, those with the Genteii, and their systems, and, later, with the federation of the thousand

suns, and, even later, entire galaxies became battlefields of unimaginable scope. Ships, in vistas

of spinning, clashing millions, thousands of navies, wrought out the destinies of universes in

silence. Armies, bred on millions of worlds, over thousands of years, beached on millions of

worlds. Planets swam in blood. Boundaries extended now, it was said, beyond the territories of

the former Hermidorian and Vincenzian alliances, beyond the 712th, the 808th, and the 1161st

galaxies. The claiming stones of the ships, some vestige of a primitive rite, the origins of which

were lost in time, had been set on innumerable worlds, the claiming beacons within a thousand

galaxies. This had not taken place, of course, in a short while, not in a rotation of gigantic Cyline

7, nor even within an orbit of the Comet of Hilbreth, but it had taken place. For more than a

million years the ships had left their orbits, burning forth in the quiet night of space. In the

beginning, it was said, there had been only one world, a primitive world, and only a few ships,

ships which could not, at that time, even traverse galactic space. Then there had been seven

worlds, and then others, and others. There seemed no obvious reason why that particular world,

a seemingly insignificant world, not particularly endowed with resources, not much different

from millions of others, rather than any other, or any world, should have accomplished what it

did. Many were the historians who sought, lengthily, unconvincingly, to penetrate the secret of its

success.

To be sure, ruthless conquest had been followed by surprising consideration, bewildering the

prostrate and subdued, by lenient levies and tributes, by invitations to alliances, in dozens of

forms and, in some cases, eventually, and more later than before, in the extension of the

citizenship itself. Much was the iron gauntlet of war feared, in all its merciless, bloody

weightiness, and rightly so, but when that heavy fist opened, it held, more often than not, to the

amazement, gratitude and consternation of the defeated, the branch of tolerance, of friendship.

For the most part the ships left behind them not enemies but friends, grateful, loyal allies. To be

sure, it was not always so. Some planets were riven to the core, even their tiniest stones

atomized; others were ruined, thousands of square latimeasures burned black and desolate; in

some entire planetary populations were placed in chains and transported to processing worlds,

for shipment to the markets of ten thousand worlds, their world itself then itself reduced to no

more than an orbiting cinder, a monitory instruction to passing ships. Such object lessons, dark

and obdurate, in their subtle, unspoken delicacy, were not easily ignored. It was speculated that

they had their role to play in the programs, the policies, of intergalactic power.

Kneeling in the sand, he watched the ant, the tiny, nine-legged insect, blind, the odd leg like a

walking stick poking quickly about before it.

In the myths it was said the claiming stones flowed in meteor rivers as far away as the sunless

worlds of Sheol, that they reached even to the lofty halls of Kragon, the long-forgotten god of

war.

He watched the insect.

It was having difficulty climbing a small hill, no more than an inch in height. It slipped back,

again and again.

Certain it was that they had, only a century ago, extended to the molten deserts of Saritan, first

born of the yellow star, Nobius, to the plains of Gurthan, to the seas of Hysporus, to the Odonian

forests, even to the remote ice mountains of tiny Durniak 11.

He was, at this point, kneeling docilely in the sand. His limbs were not encircled with bonds.

The ant, or its people, doubtless claimed all the sand within their purview. But there was a great

deal of sand on this world, and even in this small provincial arena. How many grains of sand

were there in this arena, or on this world? Less than there were galaxies, demonstratively. He had

learned that from the teaching of the brothers. They were wise, the brothers. And the shadows of

the ships fell upon worlds, and upon galaxies, more than a thousand of them. But there were other

worlds, and other galaxies, surely. How vast was the domain of the ant. And how fixed, and

eternal, was the Imperium, the Empire, the power of Telnaria! It was the world, or all the worlds

which counted, the others not mattering. Oh, there must be other worlds, other galaxies, but they

were far away, beyond comprehension, beyond belief, beyond the stones. They did not count.

They could not matter. Telnaria was the world, the Empire was fixed, it was of steel, it was

eternal, it was civilization. Within it was peace, outside it was nothing.

Not bound, he reached out and, with one finger, furrowed the sand, bemusedly smoothing the

way for the small creature. It hurried down the track. It was not thought necessary, generally,

incidentally, to bind those who had been raised in the shadow of the festungen, even those from

the schizmatic festungen. That was why he was not bound at this time. To be sure, several events

might have turned out differently had they not bound him later, had they left him free, as he was

now, only within his own bonds, the worst and most terrible bonds, the invisible bonds which had

been put on him long ago, bonds he was not, even certain he wore. Then, you see, he might have

held himself, for it is quite possible he was weak enough, or strong enough, at that time, to do so.

Of course, he might not have held himself. It is hard to know what would have happened.

Perhaps it was wise to have had him bound, as was soon done. It is hard to say about such things.

It is always difficult to know the future. Even the readers of the mystic tables, the counters of the

stars, the casters of the bones knew that. It was hinted that the tables guarded their secrets

jealously. Certainly they were hard to read. Few could do so. And surely they spoke darkly, in

riddles and paradoxes. And it was whispered by some that the living stars, for all their fiery,

savage immensity, knew no more than men, that they, too, for all their size, their ferocity and

beauty, were ignorant, or indifferent. And others admitted, in their cups, that at times the bones

themselves could do no more than guess. He supposed that the ant, or its people, claimed the

square yard of sand about his knees. But did not every wind, every passing foot, expose them to

stirrings of a nature beyond their comprehension?

He watched the ant scurry away, its path smoothed. It was the sort of thing the brothers would

have wanted. He had wanted to please the brothers. The brothers were kind, and wise. He wanted

to please them now, by submitting to death, if not joyfully, for his blood, a foreign blood, found

that hard to understand, at least resignedly, as an intellectual matter, in deference to their

teaching.

"I should not have made the way smooth for the ant," he thought. "I should have let it go its own

way. I should have let it succeed, or fail, by itself. I should not have interfered. I should not have

adjusted its world. It may come to depend on such things. But they cannot be counted on."

That was a strange thought, for one from a village in the vicinity of a festung.

But such thoughts may come to one sometimes, ancient thoughts, thoughts from lost lakes and

caverns, from forgotten fields and forests, from a time when a world was new, strange thoughts,

strange understandings, that cruelty can be kindness, that kindness can be cruelty.

It was at this time that he lifted his head, that he heard the blare of the trumpets.

He has had many names, and in order that we may follow these matters rather as they developed,

without anticipating, and understand them rather as men then understood them, we will call him,

for the time being, by the name he bore in one of the high places, as a child, 'Dog,' to which he

had been taken as an infant, by a warrior, or soldier, of the tents of the Heruls. The name of the

warrior was Hunlaki.

CHAPTER 2

The column was a long one.

It was in the bitter winter of 1103, dated from the setting of the claiming stone, when time began

in the galactic records for this world. To be sure, it remained a primitive world, a border world,

left much to its own devices, the imperial administration located in the provincial capital, in the

southern latitudes, at Venitzia, in one of the native tongues called Scharnhorst, in another Ifeng.

The forces of the Imperium, after the time of the Tetrarchy, and the Barrack Emperors, when the

empire had been torn for centuries by civil war, had been divided into the outpost, or garrison

troops, and the mobile forces. The pay of the mobile forces, and the quality of the men, though it

was forbidden to say this, was superior to those, generally, of the border troops, the outpost

troops, the garrison forces, as they were variously known.

The column made its way across what was then known as the plain of Barrionuevo, but which is

now, in these later days, known as the flats of Tung. The mountains, bordering the plain on the

east, however, as the river of Lothar does on the west, are still known as the heights of

Barrionuevo. The name lingers. Too, the mountains were held. In the heights, or mountains, of

Barrionuevo is found the festung, or fortress, or holding, of Sim Giadini, or, as we might

sometimes say, thinking the translation, all things considered, to be justified, Saint Giadini. To be

sure, Giadini is not to be found today in the calendar of saints, but things were more fluid in those

times. The outcome of certain political and doctrinal struggles was not at that time determined,

and it was not, at that time, yet decided who the victors would be, to whom the prerogative of

pronouncing the defeated to be schizmatics would fall.

Returning to our story, it was in the winter, that of 1103, in the chronology of the stone, in the

coldest and most bitter of months, that of the god, Igon.

The sky was dark, and gloomy, and laced with falling snow. The track of the column was a long,

narrow, twisting, tortuous churning of thickened mud, more than a dozen miles in length, fraught

with crystals of ice, melted for the moment here and there by the warmth of passing feet, many

wrapped in rags, some bare, those of captives, cut by the wheels of the carts and wagons, pressed

down, and churned, by the tread of the soldiers, those of the foot, and by the claws of the mounts,

of those of the saddle, or riders. We shall call these mounts 'horses,' as that term seems suitable.

There had been some four or five thousand in the raiding party. It was a large one. Usually the

Heruls came only in their hundreds. One supposes that their crossing of the Lothar had not been

expected, and certainly not in the month of Igon. Their raids usually took place east of the Lothar,

against the villages and fields near the river, and in the spring and summer. This was when they

brought their herds into the plain for pasturage. Many tents had been summoned. It is said, too,

that the Heruls had been joined by their allies, the tents of the Hageen. This matter is not clear in

the annals.

The column continued to cross the plain.

It did not do so in silence.

Overhead, birds circled and screamed in the dark, cold sky, impatient.

Sometimes, eagerly, they would alight.

In places one could see only the birds, in jostling heaps near the columns, black, like living dung,

beating their wings, climbing over one another, squawking. Sometimes a soldier, in passing, for

the soldiers knew no love for these things, might rush out, and thrust at them with his spear, or

whirl at them the stone, the spiked ball on its long chain, and they would squawk, and flutter, and

then return, some with broken wings, flopping awkwardly, protesting, doomed, not knowing it, to

their business.

There was the sound of the wheels creaking, turning in the half frozen mud, the sound of the feet,

the growls of the horses, the snarls of the dogs, half-starved, crested beasts of war, which ran with

the Heruls. They served in battle, simple, merciless, fearless, eager to be set on enemies. They

herded animals, and slaves. They guarded camps. Their howls gave warning. Too, as was

common with primitive folks, they could be eaten in time of need. Sometimes the dogs left the

column. The birds would not challenge them. They would alight yards away, in the frozen grass,

hunched up, their heads buried in their shoulders, watching, waiting until the dogs were finished.

There were other sounds, too, with the column, the clanking of chains, the groans of men,

captives, struggling under the burdens of their victors' loot, often their own household

belongings, or treasures, on their backs, and the lamentations of women, laden with plunder,

serving, too, as beasts of burden, roped by the neck to the backs of wagons, some half-naked,

barefoot, even in the month of Igon. Some of these women, too, were heavy with child. More

than one, screaming, trying still to follow the wagon, had gone into labor, and then, the cart or

wagon drawn to the side, her rope freed from the back of the cart or wagon, had been thrown to

the ground, and there, screaming, weeping, thrashing, her neck rope still in the hand of a captor,

had delivered herself of a child, in the mud to the side of the column. These children were

dragged forth, hot and bloody, tangled with their afterbirth, and discarded, thrown to the side, left

for the birds and dogs. The screaming woman was then dragged to her feet and fastened again to

the vehicle. Weeping, screaming, her legs covered with blood, reaching out futilely for the child,

she was turned about by blows, those of spear butts and whips, and, once again, as the wagon

rejoined the column, returned to the march. Many died. Of those who died, they, too, were left

beside the column, for the birds, for the dogs. The Heruls did not care for the cubs, the litter, of

their captive women. It was not as though they were the female offspring of prize slaves, who

might bring a good price in Venitzia. Too, if we may offer a partial extenuation for the behavior

of the Heruls, and of what might otherwise appear to be an unusual harshness, it might be

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norman,john-telnarianhistories01-thechieftainv3.0.rtfetextv3.0basedon1stprintedition,1991,ISBN0-446-36149-6**********************RevisionHistory:v1.0spell-checkedscan;savedasRTFbecauseofextensiveitalicsuse.v3.0proofreadagainstDT,compliesw/ABEBversioningstandard3.0***********************TheTelnarianH...

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Norman, John - Telnarian Histories 01 - The Chieftain

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