Slow Turns The World

Slow Turns The World

ISBN 978-1-4116-8408-9

© 2006 by Andy Sparrow.   All rights reserved.

The right of Andy Sparrow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1998.

This book is subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the many friends who have contributed to this work over several years, especially Chris Binding for his thorough proof-reading and Melanie Lloyd for Varna’s song.
 

Cover Design by Glynn Rowland

To contact the author:

[email protected]

Slow Turns The World

by

Andy Sparrow

Prologue

Slow turns the world.  Born out of fire and not yet cooled when the impact came.  Riven and broken by the asteroid the young planet healed, shaped itself anew, but could never be again as it once was.  For now it spun so slowly that a day and a night were ninety years long.    Slow turns the world, a hundred million times and life erupts in all its shapes and forms.

In the bright daylight of the warm side, lush forests chatter with life.  Men stalk and hunt amongst the trees while others plough and plant the land.   On the glittering seas ships bob and pitch as brisk wind fills their sails.   High walled cities bristle with towers and teem with the myriad moving dots that are their populace.  But in the shadow of the dark side are the dead lands of night.  The frozen snow glints in moonlight, skeletal trees reaching with naked twig fingers into a cold, star-filled sky.  There are cities where no light burns, where the empty streets are a glistening web of ice and no bird sings, no beast howls, no voice calls; only the cruel wind whispers.

A storm is coming.  Not in dark, towering, angry clouds, but in steel and blood and marching feet.   Not in lightning flash, thunder or deluge, but in faith and creed, in surging, chanting, angry crowds.    Those that history will entwine are scattered and unknowing.  On the crown of the world, where the sun never sets, a young man looks down from a high tower over a great city and dreams schemes of power, while, far away, in a chill dark palace, an old man on a great carved throne, stares upwards at the cold bright multitude of stars.  

In the East there is a land of always dawn, where a girl, nearly a woman, runs laughing through a forest glade.  On the cold southern seas a dark skinned mariner watches for landfall from a high rocking mast and, in the land where he is bound, a man oversees a creaking, cooling furnace.  He watches the newly forged ingots glint and gleam.  He can blank the distant sounds of lashing and sobbing from his mind but never from the dreams that haunt his troubled sleep.  

Lives scattered and disconnected, soon to be disturbed and joined.  There are other players in this tale, simple hunting men, who cannot guess their destiny.  Men who know so little of the world their actions will change forever; men who walk the sunset lands.  The sunset lands, where the shadowy forests, already turned to brown and gold, assume darker hues of red and copper.  Grassy plains wither as the land grows colder and the sun sinks deeper, and the light tints with the shade of blood as if to warn of what must follow.  Dusk creeps closer and then a cold killing darkness that will endure for half a lifetime.   Those who would live in the sunset lands must never rest too long.  They must never lose their path, or stumble on their way, lest the sun sink away forever, lest the long night consume them.

Chapter 1

Cursed are ye who seek His land or His people for they do not dwell upon this world of men and thy ignorance shall be punished
.
 

The book of Tarcen. Ch. 5 V. 12

The beast lay disembowelled upon the beach.  Crabs scuttled and fed greedily on the putrefying flesh while bloated flies swarmed around the maggot-eaten eyes.  The great buffalo head lay nearly ripped from the torn body which showed marks of slashing and tearing by jaws both huge and cruelly sharp.  The cove was a narrow arc bounded by steep tumbled slopes that rose from shadow into sunlight.  It was a red light, a sunset hue that warmed the jagged mountaintops and soothed the greyness of their broken stone.  The source of that light laid across the water, low in the sky, lower than the spires of stone, the distant mountains on the far shore, between which it hung and sent forth a radiance that turned the sea to churning orange.

Three men approached the corpse, each casting a stretched shadow across the sand.  One stopped, repelled by the wall of sickening stench, and of the other two, only the tallest crouched to look closely at the ripped carcass.  The dead beast was a barak and it was the life of their tribe.  The men regarding the torn body wore the tanned leather of the barak as boots, leggings and jerkins.  Their bone daggers were of the barak, the spiral horns from which they drank or called to each other through the woods or across the plains were of the barak.  The meat they chewed was of the barak and the milk that they drank.  And sometimes their death too came of the barak; beneath the trampling feet or by the butting blows of the spiral-horned head.  

The one who knelt by the rotting corpse was called Perrith.   He was not yet an old man, though the long plaited hair and beard were mostly grey.  He turned the barak head with his foot and an angry cloud of flies rose up.  Leathery skin creased into a mesh of wrinkles around the watery blue eyes that examined the torn flesh.  He turned and rose to face the nearer man, then spoke.

“Torrin, do you see this?”

Torrin stood holding the back of his hand over his nose.  His face was screwed into disgust mixed with deep uncertainty.  His black locks of hair hung and mingled with the beard below.  He stood tall, spear in hand, a bow on his shoulder; a hunter with not yet a third of his life gone by.

 “Perhaps the Ummakil?”  Said Torrin, doubtfully.

“Ahead of us?  It is still too light for them,” replied Perrith, and then he spoke louder to the third man who still lingered in the fresher air.

“Rasgan!  What do you say?”

Rasgan, who was fairer, leaner and carried no weapon, eyed the torn body before speaking.

“This is not the work of any tribe, nor any beast of the land.”

They all turned and gazed across the narrow strait towards the far mountainous shore and the fiery red of the setting sun.  Perrith clasped and then fingered the chieftain's pendant upon his breast.   He stared at the rippling humps of water as if each might conceal a dark menace, then he turned again to Rasgan.

“Pathfinder, where should we go?”

Slung from Rasgan's shoulder was a wooden tube; a hollowed tree branch, lacquered and decorated with faded designs, chipped and battered by the travels of many lifetimes.   He knelt upon the sand and with a twist uncorked the end.  Within were many rolled barak skins.  He fingered through them and then drew one out, unrolling it onto the sand before him.  It was a map; ancient, faded and thin.  Some hand in another time had etched and dyed coloured lines upon a tanned hide.   It showed the coastline upon which they stood drawn boldly, but to the north and south the shape dissolved and faded as if as if the maker was unsure what lay in those distant regions.  A gently erratic line crossed the map from side to side, close to which, to the north and south, woods, rivers, mountains and valleys were drawn in elaborate detail.  But further from the line the detail faded and gave way to a blank space only filled here and there by vaguely sketched mountains. Torrin and Perrith knelt beside Rasgan and watched as he traced a line with his finger.

“Here is the way of the barak.  They must swim from this beach, around the headland to the north and then we know nothing of their path until it crosses ours again on the plains of Farangil.”

 There were two lines meandering across the map.  One, in red, showed the ancient pathway of the tribe, while the other, in blue followed the migratory route of the barak herd.   Mostly the lines ran together, but here and there they separated and then rejoined.

“So we stand here,” said Rasgan,  “mountains to the north through which we know no path and the channel of sea ahead.  We could build rafts to go around the headland.  There should be a swift landfall, for how far can the barak swim?”

Torrin looked again at the dead beast.

“This troubles me,” he said.  “That we must take a path which is not the way of our fathers nor of their fathers.  Our way is here… here!”  He stabbed at the map with his finger. “Over the Great Ridge.  That way we know is steep, perilous, and if the cold wind blows it is a bitter journey.  But to go this other way… to raft around the headland… that is no hardship… so why is this not the path of the tribe?  Why did our father's fathers choose another way?  What is it that they knew about this place that our tribe has now forgotten?  What did this to the barak?”

A shout broke the silence that followed his questions.   Two figures ran towards them from the northern end of the beach.  Both were young but full grown; one a man, the other a lean dark haired girl.  They arrived and spoke between panting breaths.

“There are more… near the end of the beach,” said the girl.

“Perhaps ten,” said the other,  “Or more, we cannot say, there are many… pieces”

Torrin turned to Perrith.

“Would you have the tribe raft on these waters?”

Perrith stood silent.

“And why did our father’s fathers not come this way?”

Perrith stared at the setting sun, his face lit by the deep red light.

“What would you have us do?”  Perrith asked the question as if speaking only partly to Torrin, as if other invisible ears might listen and give an answer.

“Go back and find the true path,” said Torrin.

“The Ummakil will be there first.”  Perrith spoke the words still staring across the waters.  An iceberg was floating past in the distance, turned from cold green blue to rosy pink by the sunlight.  

“Then let me go with a small band,” said Torrin,   “no more than six.  If we can find the Ummakil we might know their path, then return to lead the tribe around them.”  

Perrith turned his blue eyes towards Torrin.

“It might be done, Torrin,” he replied.  “But one problem would remain…Do not forget how we come to be here…”

* * * * * * *

The problem had its roots several moons before.  They had followed the barak to the great plain of Ashank and it had been a time of plenty.  A warm wind had blown from the bright-lit lands to the east and the grasses, shrubs and scattered trees of the wide valley floor had brought forth flower, seed and fruit.  The sun filled the land with a constant warming light and through all the times of waking none knew hunger or cold.  The three hundred souls that were the tribe of the Vasagi, from oldest man to newborn babe, rested, ate, laughed and quarreled.  In the sky above them the great moon Azex spun its face again and traveled on its slow orbit while the lesser discs of Bretil and Kanu sped across the sky.  Ever the pattern of the moons, and the faces that they showed, changed in a slow rhythmic dance that marked the pulse of passing time.  And all the while the sun sank lower, burned a little cooler, and shone with redder light.

Torrin returned from hunting to the camp of the Vasagi.   Leather tents clustered around the central fire, children ran laughing between them as the women chopped herbs and the men fashioned spear shafts or arrows.   There were many greetings as Torrin walked amongst them, before he entered the biggest, most ornate of the domed lodges and cast a great barak leg upon the floor.  Casan, wife of Perrith, looked up from her work of sewing skins.

“A gift for you, mother of the tribe,” said Torrin with a bow of his head.

“We shall grow too fat to walk from this place,” she muttered before biting through a thread with her teeth, then spoke again.

“How red must the sun be before we walk?”

“Ask the chieftain, chieftain's wife.”

“I have, and shall again.  Before the elders and the whole tribe.”

“Perrith will take wisdom from the elders; he will do what is best, as ever he has.”

“Aye, that he will.  Let the old men decide.  That's his way.”

“Where is Varna?”

“Gone to gather milk, from by the river.”

“Will you walk with me to see her?”

“Some must stay and work.”

“We have more skins than we can carry, Casan.  Will you not walk with me?”

“When the wind turns and blows from the darkness there are never skins enough.”

Torrin left the tent and walked from the camp.  He left behind the scent of the wood fires, the shouting of the children, and strode out towards the scattered grazing barak herd.  The words of Casan still echoed in his mind and troubled him.  The children, and sometimes not only the children, called her   'she who cannot laugh', but there was ever truth within her words.  Perrith was a wise man and fair; he had the gift to listen that many chieftains lacked, a silent arbiter as the elders and hunters argued.  The women too, had his ear, when they joined the men in council to have their say.  Then Perrith would decide and often he chose a middle path.  But there was no third choice in the one question that balanced their fortunes; when to stay and when to walk.