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
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 remarked that it was their custom to put to death the old and the weak, even those of their own tents.
Those times, you see, were not the same as now. You may judge them as you wish, for that is the prerogative of each age. Be advised, of course, that you, too, in future ages, may be judged, as well. Will you be convinced that you were wrong? But it is not my role to judge, but merely to relate. As I have indicated, my task is an unambitious one, a simple one, merely to tell what happened.
Hunlaki, a horseman, a warrior of the tents of the Heruls, was at this time a member of the rear guard. It had not been so three weeks before. At that time he had been one of the first who, at night, testing the ice on the Lothar, had taken his horse across, in a place hidden by trees, and a bend in the river. The raid itself had taken several days. The many clusters of cabins, the small wooden huts of the villagers, had been encircled, one by one, that none might escape to warn others. The territory had been scouted earlier by Hageen merchants, welcomed by the men and women of the villages. To be sure, as is always the case, some had eluded the nets of the horsemen, doubtless men returning to the villages, finding them burned, the occupants slain, or missing. The claw prints of the horses of the Heruls, the marks of blades on timbers, an occasional arrow in the soil, the marks on the bodies, the unmistakable print of the stones, the parts of bodies, the impaled bodies, made things clear enough. Indeed, perhaps the Heruls, in their roving patrols, dark against the snow, had been noted, the conical helmets, the furred cloaks.
Most of the villages near the edges of the forests, west of the Lothar, had been found deserted. The villagers had vanished into the forests. Neither the Heruls, nor the Hageen, would follow them into the forests. On the other hand, some of the villages near the edges of the forests, west of the Lothar, had been defended, or, perhaps one should say, certain high grounds, certain dirt hills, held as keeps, surrounded by a palisade, had been defended. One digs a deep ditch about a small hill and adds to the hill the dirt from the excavation. One surmounts the hill with a palisade. In such a way a tiny fort is constructed. The hill makes it difficult for the horses, and the foot, to gain a footing. At such times and places the Heruls would content themselves with burning the village. Heruls did not engage when it was not to their advantage.
Hunlaki had looked back at the Lothar. His leggings and boots were wet. He had, with the others, swum his horse back to the east bank. The ice, you see, had broken in the recrossing some days ago. Hunlaki’s beast itself had had the ice break beneath it, and it had howled in fear, clawing and scratching at the gigantic, suddenly sloping plate of ice, unable to gain purchase. Then it had slipped backwards, and, twisting, had fallen to its side in the icy water. Hunlaki had almost lost his seat. Then, rolling with the beast, rising dripping from the water, he had struck it savagely about the snout. Thusly, by inflicting sharp pain upon it, by recalling it to itself, did he calm its panic, did he reassert his control of the mount. Then, blood from the beast’s nostrils trailing in the water as it swam, he gained the opposite bank. That had been a terrible crossing for the captives. Many had crossed on the ice, it breaking under them. Many of them had been drowned. Others had been swum at the stirrups of captors, ropes on
