The Time of Iron

Haruchai sat motionless, feeling the northerly wind bite his face as it scythed through the dense trees. This was his time of iron. Still new and heavy, his armour or bolod dugulg hung on him like the honour it was. The moment to come would forge the final link of his status as a tsereg. He stood on the threshold of life and death, careless of either. In the next hours, he would die unknown and unsung - or would live as a true warrior of his ayimag, iron of will and courage.

As the icy wind knifed through the ringmail, he let it blow away all thoughts. He tasted life, felt all that it had given him. He was content. Much had changed in the ayimag since he had returned home. None of that mattered. His agha, Dogei Matur who now led the tribe had brought him aside and placed his hand upon Haruchai's shoulder. In proud words, he had asked Haruchai to take the test of manhood and become tsereg.

But to be a warrior was not a test of words, though words had their place. This moment was the time, when alone and unaided a young man should stand before his enemy and place his heart in the hands of the tengri. If he was worthy, perhaps the tengri would return his heart. As the moment dawned, it mattered not. Only the iron mattered.

Haruchai had pondered long and hard on the nature of his choice. Dogei had told him to follow his heart, for the tengri would show him the right path. Dogei was renowned for his single handed killing of a dragon on his own tsereg quest. Yet Haruchai reflected that he had already killed a dragon, albeit with others, and remembered the nobility in the creature's eyes as it fell. He liked dragons and anyway, what had been done had already been done. He was not Dogei.

Even as he thought his heart had already decided. No matter how he toyed with attempting the not-dead bugu-lords or the famous poisonous melly-lentils he knew clearly what he had to do. Orghs. His mortal and sworn enemies, his hatred of them knew few bounds. Dire worshippers of the Ulaan Burhan, the Bluudgod in their filthy tongue. He knew a place where they swarmed in large numbers, caroused and fought without care, believing themselves safe. The woods around were thick with their allies the ettins and within the fort itself he knew there lurked many of the most dangerous orghs of all - their mighty bugus.

So he sat now, feeling the winter wind against his face, the faint smells of campfires and blood-soaked palisade walls reaching his nose. He was already battered, having hacked his way through endless trolls and ettins to get here. On Trammel, these woods were dangerous with creatures. Here on Felucca, there were more monsters than trees. Yet behind him lay a swathe of death, crushed and bloody. And still the moment was yet to come.

With a grim irony, he had thrown his battered kryss away and taken a new forged one from the nearby stores owned by the Sebered Hed orghs. Their own iron would deliver their doom upon them. Gently, with the deep reverence of long association, he stroked Jaga's muzzle, feeding him apples and remembering old times. A Monggol's horse was more than life to him and it was meet that they say their goodbyes now.

The wind shifted a little and a shaft of cold sunshine broke through the grey stone of the clouds. It lit the tops of the nearby mountains and turned them gold. It was time. Haruchai touched the sides of his horse and trotted out into the apron of grass before the orgh fort.

"URAGSHAA!!" He shouted his battle challenge. "URAGSHAA!" He flourished his kryss above his head in the ancient manner of the invitation to combat. Smiling grimly, he heard the clamour and confusion within the fort. Guttural cries and orders flew over the walls, the clanking of armour being readied and axes being grabbed followed seconds later. There was a pause and the wind dropped.

Suddenly from his right, outside the fort, Haruchai found himself being charged by a scouting party of ten orghs, led by a lord. He swung Jaga round and hurtled into their midst.

Blood flew, axes chopped, armour rent. Screams of bloodthirst, of invocation, of hatred. Pain inflicted, pain ignored. No quarter asked, and none considered. Death given, death received.

A moment's respite allowed Haruchai to register the broken bodies around him. He had prevailed against these first. He turned the horse, hearing the great wooden doors roar open. Then his sight dissolved into a curtain of fire and agony. Reeling with shock, he saw the source of his danger. An orgh bugu ran from the shadows and mouthed foul requests to his Bluudgod. Despite the pain, from which his armour could not protect him, Haruchai charged the bugu. Behind him, the fort spewed orghs. Had he been able to see how many issued forth, even Haruchai might have stepped back. But only the orgh bugu mattered, for he knew if it lived too long, it would kill him most surely.

As he bore down, green poison suddenly filled his veins. That was the last hurt the bugu inflicted though, for the irresistible charge of the Monggol buried his kryss right through the mouthings of the orgh. It croaked a mangled word of power and died.

The moment had transformed Haruchai. No longer thinking or rational he was now the fulfilled creature of iron. He wheeled his horse and once again charged into the multitude racing to kill him. He felt naught save glory, saw naught save death, desired naught save the moment last forever.

Not even a war-cry escaped his lips, for what sound could embrace the carnage, what word could encompass this brotherhood of death? The orghs too, stayed silent, at one together in this danse macabre, knowing the moment for themselves. Only Death laughed soundlessly, gathering butchered souls to his carrion arms. The forest rang to a peal of tolling bells, metallic clangs of finality that echoed through the gathered trees. Every animal fell silent at the ringing, huddled on its bough or in its burrow. And still Death laughed.

Haruchai slowly began to realise that the clash of iron had stopped and that he was cutting at empty air. The haze fell from his eyes only to be replaced by the acidic sting of blood. He wiped at his face, but his gauntlet was sodden with ichor too and his motion served only to blur his vision further. Angry, he ripped away the glove and rubbed the cloying gore from his face as best he could. And what he beheld astonished him.

He was in the fort itself, in the furthermost courtyard. A carpet of corpses surrounded him, some still twitching with remnants of departing spirits. The carpet rolled towards the open gates, and outside lay a gruesome mound of broken flesh and bone. The ground was stained with a floodplain of dripping blood. Even though he could not remember them coming for him, several of the dead glowed with the unmistakable signs of magic use.

After so much clamour, the silence was deafening, unnerving even. There was a crackle of fire, and the wind moaned quietly through bestial tapestries and hides that flapped desultorily. These sounds merely heightened the sense of quietude, of abandonment, of finality. Haruchai had prevailed.

He knew that no orgh ever gave up until its heart was ripped from its body. He need not tend to the wounded or despatch any crippled enemies. Even shorn of limb, he had known orghs still fight. He would do honour to the fallen and to his moment by leaving the bodies for the buzzards, unmolested. Like his own people, orghs believed the birds would return their bodies to the skies. They lived and died in the open plains and deep forests - being placed in the cold, dank earth like the hans served only to deprive one of the air and light.

Haruchai raised himself high on his horse and reached for the sky with his kryss. Finally, his war-cry echoed around the quiet fort as a stentorian salute to the fallen. He was alive and the tengri had returned his heart. A heart that was re-forged in iron, quenched in blood and worthy of a tsereg.

Only one question remained: How much kumis would be needed to keep Dogei's attention as he recounted this tale? Haruchai smiled happily through his veil of gore and trotted out of the sepulchral fort into the welcoming woods.

© 2001 Pól-MichelSeachra AnDaingean