I made this post hoping for someone interested to make this story into film... very much hoping for this! =]
BATTLE REALMS STORY : BEFORE KENJI'S JOURNEY STORY
Chapter 1 : Tarrant Struggled
Once, long before the time of our fathers and grandfathers, the land was whole.
It was as rich and abundant land, a land of rolling hills and pristine forests and its people were many and exotic. Some arrived on ships from distant lands and chose to stay. Some were descended from the hill-folk, and could recite the names of their ancestors beyond the most ancient histories. War was not unknown, but peace was the rule: a peace born of strength and abundance.
Nowhere was the glory of that age greater than in Serpentholm, the keep of the Dragon Clan. Forgotten sculptors fashioned its walls with such cunning that the peasantry believed them alive; a forgotten shogun forged its laws both strict and fair; forgotten masters trained its warriors in fighting techniques subtle and fierce. Even its wisest scholars wrote proudly on sheaves of gilded parchment that the strength and honor of the Dragon would endure forever…
…and then, in the span of one year - one sowing, one harvest, one terrible winter - it was all lost.
Nobody knows now what they were, demons or spirits or monsters; nobody knew then, either. They were simply the Horde, black and inhuman, and they rose in the thousands and tens of thousands from beyond the northern borders, somewhere in the trackless mountains. Where they passed, noting lived. Even the trees withered and died. There were no bodies, or survivors to bury them.
Tarrant the Elder ruled Serpentholm in those days, and he was no coward. When he learned of the Horde threat, the most valiant of his samurai rode forth to meet them at first light, hundreds of heroes beneath hundreds of fluttering Dragon banners. It was two weeks before the first and only warrior returned, slumped and over his saddle, his dark blood caked over dozens of vicious, ragged wounds. He was quite dead. Somehow, his horse had fled far and fast enough to escape its rider's fate. Tarrant knew in that instant that the Dragon Clan's only hope of survival lay in a similar flight.
A week later, the walls of Serpentholm - walls that had never fallen to a siege - were abandoned, and the Clan of the Dragon began its long march south. As the months of ceaseless travel passed, the great column of horses, wagons and men swelled with refugees, those who knew the proud Dragon would never flee an opponent who might be b eaten. Those who chose to stay and defend their lands were honored. Nobody ever heard from them again. Always, the scouts sent north failed to return, and always, the Dragon marched south.
At the end of the sixth month, they crossed the final ridge and saw the ocean. The Dragon had nowhere left to run.
Tarrant the Elder had, of course, foreseen this. He set his scholars to devise an escape for his people, and there had been plenty of time for argument and debate during the long march. But there was no time to build ships and nowhere to hide. The greater part of the Dragon's army had already fallen tin the first disastrous ride against the Horde. Tarrant's only hope rested in a locked, silver-bound chest within his private wagon: the Serpent Orb, most ancient of the Dragon Clan's treasures and the symbol of his leadership. Some tales claimed that the Orb could summon the spirit of the Dragon itself, if the need were great enough. Few believed these tales, but the need was indeed great. As his weary people prepared for a final stand against the Horde, Tarrant passed leadership of the clan to his son, Tarrant the younger. Then he stood alone-to attempt the impossible, and to die.
To his last moments, there were no witnesses. We know only that he succeeded. The gathered refugees heard the crash of the Dragon's fury as a terrible wall of air smashed men, horses, and wagons to the ground. Everywhere, the land seemed to writhe in agony. Many of those who survived the long and grueling march were crushed beneath cascades of stone, or disappeared into chasms that appeared beneath their feet. The rest huddled together and prayed for deliverance.
When the quake subsided, the survivors of the Dragon's wrath could barely move for fear. It took all of the younger Tarrant's courage to begin directing the construction of shelters from the remnants of the train. If the Horde had come upon them, they would have met with no resistance. But the Horse never came.
It was then - surveying the broken remains of his people - that Tarrant the Younger realized they were Dragon no more. It was something in the eyes of every child who had seen his home abandoned to evil; something in the stance of every warrior who knew his bravest comrades had fought, and died, rather than run away. They belonged now to the earth, not to the heavens. Yet they would still be fierce, and they would toil in their new lands with pride. Out of this humility and grim determination, the Serpent Clan - our clan - was born.
Today, if you travel north beyond the mountains, you will reach a ragged cliff overlooking a swirling, vicious channel, full of rocks and debris. On a clear day, you may glimpse the outline of the opposite shore, but more likely it will be cloaked in the mists. The Dragon's fury bloke the land as well as our people, and our ancestral home lie across the impassable waters of the channel. Whether the Horde still waits on those foreign shores, none can say.
We think about it less every day. This is our home now.
Chapter 2 : Serpent Orb
As they traveled south the weather grew warmer. In a month they had left behind familiar landmarks. The long retreat took them past strange marvels stories about the Headless Men, and the Howling Marsh circulated up and down the column. They passed between two enormous brooding faces carved into the sides of a mountain pass, each with a different glyph carved onto its brow. At night, they could see lights winking on and off in the mountain range east of their route
And then after six months, they crossed the last hump, and beyond it saw the ocean. He had foreseen this moment weeks ago, and slowly over time he had reached his decision. The Dragon Clan and the refugees with them could not put to sea, nor could they defeat the forces from which they were fleeing. He stood there for a long time, gazing southward as the sun began to descend over this new land.
Calmly, Tarrant descended to his camp and summoned his advisors and his two sons, Tarrant the Younger and Ozaku to his tent. There, he gave his last orders. The clan was to cross the ridge and settle in the green valley beyond it under the leadership of Tarrant the Younger, his eldest son. It was to be their new home. He, Tarrant, would stay here and make a final stand against the coming of the Horde. He, and the Serpent Orb. According to legend the Orb might allow him to summon the Dragon itself to make a last, desperate stand. Should he fail, at least the ridge would give them a good place to fight from as the Horde came on.
Early the next morning, as the refugees picked their way downslope into the valley, Tarrant left his family and walked north, dressed simply and carrying the talisman known as the Serpent Orb. He walked until he found a pleasant clearing with a broad, flat rock and a long view to the north. There, he seated himself and waited for his thoughts to become still. The sky was clear, birds sang, and a long way north he saw a band of gray on the horizon where the Horde had advanced. For all he knew, there were no human beings at all north of where he stood. All the lands they had traveled through would be empty now. He was the one living thing standing between the Horde and was left.
Legends told that the Serpent Orb had been given to the founder of the Dragon Clan by the Dragon himself. The object was of no workmanship he recognized, a smooth clear orb with watery blue energy swirling within. It was as beautiful as it was simple, but something in its form spoke of power.
He held the Orb in one hand as he began a chant that had been taught to him by his father in secret, words in a lost language that only those of his lineage now spoke. His father had explained to him that the Dragon was linked to the Orb in some way. He did not understand what was about to happen, but he knew that somehow, through the Orb, he could call upon the Dragon itself. And that the attempt alone would probably kill him. He took a deep breath and prepared to die.
No man saw what happened next what followed is known only from the words of those far to the south. The sound of the Dragon's fury crashed over the refugees many leagues away. Horses panicked, men fell to the ground from the shockwave. Weather went mad, torrential rains fell and landslides cascaded down the cliffs, crushing people and animals. This was Tarrant the Younger's test as a leader, rallying the standard-bearers and calming both the Dragon Clan and the motley band of refugees that now looked to him for protection. In the first few weeks he had led them down and southward, through inland marshes and to a calm inlet where he halted and declared the first settlement.
He also made another decision: those who had come south together would now be one people. The Dragon Clan had been a mighty people, a proud and pure expression of their traditions and their spirit. That had changed -- they had been humbled by a force they could not withstand.
In addition, they were no longer simply the Dragon fragments of a dozen clans had joined them, from Heron and Tiger and Eagle and even more exotic peoples. They would remember the Dragon, but they were no longer exalted above the other animals. They would be fierce, but they no longer belonged in the heavens they belonged to the earth where they would toil and fight for their right to live they were the Serpent Clan now.
Weeks later the mists began to thin out, and the bravest Serpent Clan scouts scaled the heights again to look northward. There they found that what had been the southern edge of a plateau was now a thin mountain range, the northern slopes plunging straight down to the sea. The land they had crossed was now a rocky, turbulent ocean channel, currents eddying. Far to the north might have been a mountainous shore. In its fury the Dragon had broken the continent itself, forever cutting them off from the Horde, and from their home. Of Tarrant the Elder, and the Serpent Orb, they saw no sign.
Chapter 3 : The Founding of a Clan
Tarrant the Younger stood on the High Plateau, looking north, while his guardsmen stood by. The Breaking of the World was two months gone, and he had much thinking to do. He gazed out across the channel where the Great Dragon had struck, turning the southern tip of their continent into an island. Jagged cliffs attested to the unthinkable force and violence of that strike, which had cut through massive strata of rock, all the way down through what had been a high plateau, to reach sea level. The water still churned with strange currents and eddies -- it would never be easy to navigate. Thousands and thousands of Hordelings had died in the cataclysm, but it was safe to assume that some of them had survived, and were gathered on the opposite shore, still looking southward. Tarrant knew they would someday find a way to cross the water and that day there would be a reckoning.
But there were more immediate worries. His father had led the Dragon Clan and refugees from half a dozen other clans south after the Horde had decimate their ranks. His father, who had known lore and history of the Dragon Clan that he never had time to teach his sons in the final days. They had thought he would live for years, but he had died – when last they saw him, he was in a clearing, standing on a slab of shale holding the Serpent Orb, the ancient artifact that would somehow allow him to summon the dragon. Now where that clearing had been there was ocean, his father was gone, and the Serpent Orb was missing.
Scattered, humbled, their knowledge and talisman lost, they could no longer call themselves the Dragon at all. In the days following the breaking he had decided on this, and set certain weavers and dyers to work in secret, creating the banners they would ride under. The refugees were even beginning to disperse from the rough camp they had set up, riding out farther and farther to hunt or look for fertile land, separating out along old Clan lines. He spoke in secret to the ad hoc leaders of all the fragmentary groups, and made his arguments -- they could not continue to be a confused band of co-refugees. The Breaking had happened and that could not be undone. They could scatter and bicker or they could begin to rebuild and create a nation. Once they had given their consent he gathered all the peoples and in a great ceremony he had proclaimed them a single people united by fate.
One people -- or at least they were supposed to be. Already fighting had broken out twice between members of former rival clans, Eagle and Heron. He had settled the Heron people on the Lowland Coast in the far south where they could fish the coast and the streams that fed a river named the Talon. Eagle clansmen had gone to the fertile valley near the Dragonsteps, and in time he hoped they would forget and become one people in truth. Other clans, Dragon and Tiger and Monkey, had scattered to homestead wherever they found lands that resembled their own, whether swampy or mountainous or grassy.
In the meantime Tarrant the Younger was not idle. Construction had begun on a great keep at the tip of the bay. Most of the original Dragon Clan had camped there, and he had been fortunate to find one or two builders from the Eagle people had survived the retreat. An ancient man called only StoneBridge was directing the keep's construction -- it would be called Serpentholm, and its walls would overlook the river Coil for generations to come...he hoped.
While he remained at Serpentholm, he set his younger brother Ozaku the task of surveying the realm. Tarrant had always been calm and sober, knowing that the future of the Clan lay on his shoulders, Ozaku was his fiery opposite -- restless, quick to anger, and a warrior whose daring in the field had already made his name among the peasantry. He had grown up knowing he was the expendable one, and seemed to relish the lack of responsibility, drinking, whoring, and leading troops into battle. It would not do to have Ozaku sitting idle at Serpentholm -- better to let him ride and act, and let the people see their leadership.
Chapter 4 : Dragon Law
Ozaku rode south with a dozen drinking companions, into the patchwork of forest and grasslands that covered the flatlowlands. It would make excellent farmland and it continued all the way south to the coast, to what might well be the southern tip of the world. Already, life was returning to normal there, and fishing villages and hamlets were springing up. Ozaku was doing good work there, spreading word of the mighty construction going on, bringing news from the north, reminding people they lived as one clan now. When he could not go south anymore he moved west, to the southwestern tip of the crescent-shaped ridge that curved north and east to half-encircle the entire land. He named the low hills there Dragon's Tail, and found the source of the Talon, the slow, wide river that meandered through the lowlands. Over many weeks the party rode north, hunting and stopping in wherever they found settlers, occasionally running across ancient relics that showed that long ago other men had been here a stone amphitheater cut into a hillside, or a low wall cutting through the hills for many leagues until they lost track of it in the underbrush.
In the north they found swampland fed by streams cascading down the high ridge the settlers of that region had begun calling Shaleback, for the deposits of shale jutting out from the mountain. Most of it was impenetrable on horseback, though one outrider reported glimpsing the walls and towers of a ruined city almost completely sunken into the marshland. Deeper in, the swamps became forbidding, lying in the shadow of the Shaleback. Streams crisscrossed the region feeding into a deep, cool lake they named the Shadowmere. They could not see its bottom, but peering into it they once saw a portion of the darkness there shift for a moment, as if something dark and massive had swum by. Leaving the horses they now traveled to the heights, up onto the saddle of the ridge where refugees had first descended down into the land. Here the land quickly became cool and dry; squinting into a stiff wind, Ozaku and his men spent a long hour looking north over the booming surf toward their homeland. An agile Monkey clansmen scaled the peak to their west and reported a strange white throne cut into the rock near its summit, looking west toward sunset. Then they climbed east toward the High Plateau, where by day they could look south and take in almost the whole of the new land, the lowlands tailing off into the blue of distance. As night fell they noticed odd halos in the rarefied air around their torches. They spent an uneasy night among whispering voices and half-glimpsed lights crossing the sky even then, the High Plateau something ancient and sorcerous in its atmosphere.
It was with relief that they made their descent, down the rocky shelves below the south edge rim of the plateau, into the bountiful fields and groves of the Fertile Valley. As they worked their way down they saw that the many mountain streams trickled together to form a clear, cold river running east to the sea. They followed it for a few days in the first week of autumn as the first harvests of the new land began to come in, and named the river Cascade.
When Ozaku returned he had much to tell his brother Tarrant. The Serpent Clan was beginning to take shape as a culture. There was a sense of liberation from the harsh strictures of the old Dragon law codes of honor and behavior were relaxed as traditions mixed through intermarriage, and were called into question or simply forgotten. Taverns and bathhouses had sprung up in the south, and a sweet, sharp-tasting new liquor brewed from certain native lowland plants had come into vogue.
Tarrant the Younger chose a dozen lesser leaders from the Dragon Clan and elsewhere, and set them in place as lesser lords and daimyos. These men were taking strong measures to keep order and teach the peasantry that, after the terrible chaos, laws were again in effect and would stay that way.
Life had begun again, and for six months Tarrant the Younger, now called Tarrant the Builder, had peace in which to build a home and a people. But the chain of events set in motion by the Horde and the Breaking had yet to run its course.
Chapter 5 : The Coming of The Wolf
Tarrant the Builder first had word of the Wolf Clan's arrival from one of the watchtowers he had placed on the high, rocky northern coast. He had decreed that there must always be a vigil kept, always an eye watching northward for the Horde. A rider came pounding up the western road, bringing the news: "Ships! Ships wrecked on the northern coast! A whole fleet men, women, a whole clan!" Tarrant knew this young rider had never seen the Horde, and might not recognize them, but even so he knew this could not be the enemy they had run so far to avoid the Horde were not men. He gave orders that the newcomers should be sheltered and given every kind of aid, as long as they offered no harm.
Soon a peculiar looking man in middle age was brought before him, and was presented as Greeneye, chief of the Wolf Clan. Tarrant studied him well. For a start, the man was enormous, a head taller than Tarrant and broader across the shoulders. Everything about this man spoke of a life lived closer to nature than that of the feudal Serpent people. His clothes were hides sewn roughly together, and they left his limbs bare, except where they were covered by leather straps and cloth wrappings. He wore spiked gauntlets and high leather boots, stone jewelry, all raw and roughly cut, as if their makers were determined to alter the original natural shapes as little as possible the original natural shapes. Likewise his hair was long and unbound.
But looking closer, Tarrant noticed more. His eyes showed nothing but calm readiness. The man had been ship-wrecked and brought before a foreign lord, yet he didn't seem nervous or hostile or afraid just watchful, open and ready for whatever came. When he spoke it was with a gruff courtesy, and when asked to tell his story he was eloquent, even poetic this was a people who valued the ability to speak publicly and tell a story. There was a nobility to him that transcended his rough appearance.
Until two years ago, the Wolf Clan had lived on an island far to the west, a place of cool mountains and deep green forested valleys. They had lived there for as far back as their oral histories could recall, having little traffic at all with the mainland. They hunted the still forests and fished in the rivers and bays. They were a wild people but not bloodthirsty or warlike most of their violent impulses were channeled into Wolfball, a brutal, no-holds-barred sport that was the focus of their cultural life. They lived in harmony with nature and practiced a druidic religion, worshiping nature itself.
Two years ago all nature was thrown wildly out of balance. They would have been destroyed as a people had they not received warning from their high druidess, who saw a dark power coming from the north and a bright one rising to oppose it in a conflict that would shatter a continent and drown their island. For months they worked to build a fleet of ships to hold their entire clan's population and food to sustain them.
When the disaster came they barely survived it they put to sea as fast as possible, but entire villages were lost when the winds came that tore trees up at the root, and waves came like rolling hills to wash over the land. Navigation was impossible -- when the great channel was torn through the continent the seas rushed to fill it, and the Wolf Clan was drawn with it, crossing hundreds of miles as they wandered, swirled by eddies, fishing to stay alive.
When they were drawn into the channel the currents grew more violent, and they were sucked inevitably onto the cliffs to the south, dashed on boulders which until eight months ago had lain far underground. The seas and the stony shores were merciless, and when Serpent Clan watchmen made it down the cliff face to the shore, they found less than half the Wolf Clan alive and safely ashore. When Greeneye's story was finished, Tarrant the Builder told his own -- the arrival of the unbeatable Horde from the north, fleeing south desperately with the remains of his tribe and fragments of a dozen others. Then leaving Tarrant the Elder alone to try to summon the Dragon and meet the oncoming Horde, and lastly, the terrible Breaking of the World, that had saved the Serpent Clan but which they now knew had driven the Wolf Clan from their home.
Greeneye listened unmoving, neither condemning, nor entirely forgiving what he had heard. In the end he asked only for a place for his people to live, and Tarrant granted him the high peak in the northwest extreme of the realm, and the Shaleback ridge down to where the foothills begin, halfway to the Wendwater source. There the Wolf Clan went to dwell, living much as they did before, hunting the high forests and ranging occasionally into the swamps and woods below. They kept to themselves, and were seen only occasionally by far-ranging hunters, traders and messengers. Still, those who lived in the valleys below could always see lights burning there, and on the solstices bonfires and singing and howling would drift down from the high places to show that the Wolf Clan was alive and well. More often, villagers would be disturbed by howling closer to home, or would look up while hunting or riding to see a pair of almost-feral eyes peering at them through the trees, and a skin-clad bestial-seeming Wolf Clansman would lope away through the trees. Both clans were uneasily conscious of the past that linked them, the Serpent's unintended devastation of the Wolf.
Years passed and both clans grew, living more or less in harmony. A generation of men and women lived peacefully. Tarrant the Builder took a wife, a chief's daughter from the Heron Clan, who gave him a son, Yukio, and a daughter Mariko. In time, that whole generation passed from the earth. Ozaku died when he was thrown from a horse while skirmishing with robbers who raided out of the swamps; a decade later, Tarrant the Builder, once Tarrant the Younger, died peacefully in his sleep, leaving Yukio to rule.
When that generation died, so did the last of the men who had lived through the great journey southward. The last who had fought so desperately against the Horde, the last who had been born into the Dragon Clan, and had known their ancient homelands so far to the north. Those who followed knew only the Serpent Clan and their lands, and the ways of the Dragon Clan became something one read about, rather than a living tradition. And would remain so, unless someone returned to bring them back.
Chapter 6 : Yukio's Time
Yukio was twenty-four when his father died and he assumed leadership of the Serpent Clan. Still, he wished his father had been able to teach him more, more of the past, the history and knowledge of his Dragon Clan ancestors. Some of it was on the old scrolls his grandfather had saved when fleeing the Horde. Some was scattered among dozens of old Dragon families, who, although they no longer practiced the old ways, had passed some of the knowledge down, like the kabuki fighting forms and the philosophies of the Dragon Warriors. The rest… was lost.
Still, times were good, and there seemed to be no need to question what was happening. Plentiful harvests had followed one another, year by year, for so long it seemed that this new land was a paradise. When the time came to marry, Lord Yukio did so intelligently, choosing a woman whose family had once ruled the Eagle Clan, and so erased one of the largest divisions remaining in the land.
Even the new arrivals, the Wolf Clan, seemed to be content to live in peace with them. The troubled history of the Dragon clan seemed to belong to a mythic past. Already men were starting to doubt the Horde, to treat it as a fairy tale, forgetting the terror and devastation their grandparents had endured, the times when it seemed the Dragon Clan and all human life would certainly be destroyed.
As the ways of the Dragon clan faded, new Serpent traditions began. One example of this was the new role of gunpowder. Dragon Clan had known the secret of gunpowder since time immemorial, but had never used it for other than large artillery, useful for sieges and large-scale engagements.
There were two reasons for this. One was the effectiveness of their traditional fighting units, particularly archers and samurai as long as they possessed a culture that practiced extremes of discipline and martial ability, there was no need to develop muskets or riflemen.
The other was the martial code, that valued personal skill and bravery over all else -- the musket was a weapon even a man with minimal training could use where was the honor, the beauty in that? Even a powder keg required training and strength to use, and it was needed for situations where another weapon could not be used. But to kill a samurai with a musket was simply to dishonor oneself, and that was synonymous with defeat.
But that had been the Dragon Clan, and the Serpent Clan's philosophy was quite different. Soon the sharpshooters' guilds multiplied, and the musket became a standard part of every armory. Despite its inferior range compared to the longbow, it became popular simply because it was easier to use, and trained archers were often scarce. It was a relaxed, fruitful time, with warm seasons and plentiful harvests, not a time to be serious. No one seemed to want to worry about the old standards of martial training, or points of honor.
Indeed, it was not until four years later that the first test of Lord Yukio’s leadership came. It began innocently enough, with the arrival at Serpentholm of a delegation from the farmers in the northern reaches of the Fertile Valley, in the shadow of the High Plateau. They complained of disturbances emanating from the heights chanting, flashes of light, once a groaning noise, as if some colossal beast were speaking in half-formed words. There was a strange taste in the Cascades, the river that trickled down from springs somewhere on the rocky mesa, and their animals drank only reluctantly. There were superstitions about the plateau, and the peasants were afraid to investigate.
Lord Yukio sent his nephew and thirty men, archers and swordsmen, to scale the Dragonsteps and satisfy themselves that nothing was amiss. They were gone for ten days, and even before they returned word ran ahead of them -- they had discovered a group of bizarre-looking strangers on the plateau, and were returning with them. This was the first Lord Yukio heard of Clan Lotus.
Chapter 7 : Strangers Visit
Their arrival confirmed the rumors. The four strangers were indeed outlandish in appearance. All were well over six feet tall, and the tallest towered at what must have been eight feet high, with a long face and elongated limbs. The eldest had long straight black hair reaching to below his waist. He wore luxurious robes marked along the fringe with runes from an alphabet no one of the court recognized. His lined face marked him as old, but with an ageless quality he might have been fifty, but Yukio would not have been surprised to learn he was twice that. Despite his age he stood easily through the long diplomatic introduction, and moved gracefully. His three companions, apparently bodyguards, were equally baffling. One carried a long staff, and another, the gangly eight-footer, wore two dangerous-looking crescent-shaped blades. The third carried no weapon at all, but wore long bandoliers lined with silvery leaves. None of them spoke, and all had the same straight hair and flowing robes.
The elder, introduced as Lord Zymeth, told their story in a deep, resonant voice, the voice of a practiced orator, speaking in an archaic trade language that had been common once on the continent. They were Clan Lotus, and they were exiles and refugees. Years ago they had been part of a great and ancient clan, who lived on a forested island that lay a score of miles east off the coast of the main continent. They were a peaceful and civilized clan, with a deep reverence for nature, and a matchless knowledge of magic and the inner workings of the world. He spoke of their island, the Blackmount, of great limestone ziggurats rising among the vegetation, and the mossy temples where they performed ritual devotions to the gods of balance and nature.
When the Horde devastated the mainland, the old clan had thought themselves safe, for the Horde seemed reluctant, or unable to cross water. They watched as the Horde moved unstoppably southward, killing not only those who opposed them, but all animal and plant life as well, leaving bare rock and dirt in their wake.
What happened next, no one had predicted. One day the winds rose and the sea seemed to go mad. A storm grew and struck with hurricane force, and an unstoppable current in the ocean began to flow southward, sweeping away ships and tearing docks out from their foundations. This in itself was no more than a nuisance, but the bizarre tides continued until, for the space of twelve hours or so, a causeway of bare rock was exposed between the Greenwood and the mainland, and that was all it took. The Horde had been gathered on the shore perhaps awaiting just such a chance, and thousands of them rushed across, and the devastation that had so far spared them finally descended. The clan, which had depended on its soothsayers to predict and avert all harm, was caught completely unprepared.
For all their learning, the old clan had not fielded an army for hundreds of years, and the Horde simply slaughtered them. Only one group within the Clan was able to put up any resistance at all, heroic wizards who had rediscovered an ancient area of magic that might offer survival for some. His voice trembling, Lord Zymeth described the desperate final moments of their defense of the forest temples, the fall of their mightiest heroes, and a desperate retreat to the coast.
The group of brave wizards put to sea on hastily-created magical craft, spells loosely holding timbers together until they could put in at an island harbor and build more permanent craft. Their magics had allowed them to endure the terrible currents that followed the breaking of the world, and they had wandered from island to island, hoping to find one both safe and large enough to live on permanently. They had come to this land in order to live and work in peace, and founded a new people, the Lotus Clan.
That night, the Lotus delegation was quartered at Serpentholm, while Lord Yukio consulted his advisers and the ancient scrolls of his library, the remnants of the recorded wisdom of his ancestors. There he found an account written some four hundred and fifty years earlier by Tarrant the Wise, that shed additional light on Lord Zymeth's tale. It told of eight strangers who had arrived on the Dragon Clan's borders pleading for sanctuary. They, too, had been exiles like the Lotus Clan, and had been more forthcoming about the Forbidden Path, describing it as a magical art that involved death and corruption, and harnessing those forces. With some misgivings, Tarrant the Wise had allowed the strangers to stay, and had even allowed a few members of the Dragon Clan to study with them, among them his own nephew.
The experiment had ended badly. The area where the strangers settled quickly became unpopular cattle would not graze there, and even birds seemed to avoid it. The following year a plague afflicted a nearby village, and the area was quarantined. A few months later, Tarrant was awakened by his guardsmen with word that his nephew had returned, gravely ill, and was asking for him. By the time Tarrant dressed and hurried to his nephew, it was too late -- indeed, it was almost unbelievable he had managed to ride home at all. Some kind of rot had invaded his flesh. In the act of dismounting, most of the muscle had actually sloughed off his right arm, the bones of which could now be seen. The stench was horrible. He managed to say a few words before he died. "Burn it...burn it, uncle...Forbidden... Path." His nephew's horse, and one of the guardsmen who had helped him in, also died within a week.
When Tarrant and a dozen volunteers arrived at the visitors' compound, almost all of them were dead of a similar disease. They found one man dying in the courtyard when they rode in; his legs were so badly decayed he could not walk. He wept incoherently and begged for death, and Tarrant recognized him as the dignified, scholarly man who had spoken for the group when they first arrived. Inside they found rotting corpses, most of them unburied, some of them still in their beds, or, incredibly, seemingly in the act of studying. A few were more disturbing, with elongated bones and extra fingers. There was a tree growing in the garden there that had increased enormously in size over the course of a year, and at its base they found another skeleton, this one apparently a child's. They burned everything they found, destroying all the written materials the strangers had brought. Even so, it took years before the area could be resettled.
After reading this, Lord Yukio considered for a day and a half before sending for Lord Zymeth again. The strangers of Tarrant’s time were clearly more dangerous than Lord Zymeth looked, but too much about them was still unknown he had decided to speak frankly. He acquainted his visitor with all he had read, and waited for a response. The elderly man looked very grave, and hesitated for a long time before speaking.
"We had long wondered what became of Lord Thuria's people. Now I know what end came to them. I wish to explain what has happened. Our way does indeed involve very dangerous forces. The corruption your ancestor witnessed is the danger we face, and seek to control. However, the fate Lord Thuria suffered will not come to us, because we have mastered what they fell victim to. Among my people I am considered most learned, a Master Warlock of the High College, but I have not died of it. Why? Because I learned to control the Corruption that claimed them. Please trust me, noble sir they died because they had only imperfectly grasped the secrets, the arts we have mastered."
In the end, Lord Yukio let himself be convinced, perhaps most of all because the Lotus Clan claimed to have had some power against the Horde. He granted the Lotus Clan all of the High Plateau and the passes leading up to it, land that in any case no one else had wanted, both because of its desolation and the sorcerous reputation surrounding it.
After that, Lord Zymeth was a frequent visitor at Serpentholm, and frequently offered advice. He also befriended Hideo, Lord Yukio's son, and the two of them frequently went riding together. In time, Lord Zymeth became, informally, both Yukio's adviser, and Hideo's tutor. Hideo was only eighteen when Lord Yukio fell ill of a wasting disease and died, and when Hideo became the head of the Serpent Clan it was natural for him to appoint Lord Zymeth as his chief adviser, and listen closely to his councils.
Strangely, in all that time, Lord Zymeth never seemed to grow any older.
Chapter 8 : Meeting of Clans
Lord Hideo frowned as he sat on the rough matting that was the Wolf Clan keep’s only concession to comfort. Once each year the leaders of the three clans met together, along with their advisers and bodyguards, to discuss matters of mutual interest and attempt to keep the peace. Hideo had observed, though, that these meetings were increasingly devoted to airing grievances, making veiled threats, and generally creating as much friction as possible.
This year it was the Wolf Clan's turn to host, which meant a difficult ride up steep trails to that clan's keep, high on the Shaleback ridge. The insular Wolf Clan made little attempt to make their guests comfortable, and hospitality meant sleeping on the ground in the stone, wood, and stitched hide structure they called a keep, and sitting through the chanting and endless sagas they thought of as entertainment. Endless bestial howling from the woods – some primitive ceremony had kept him awake half that night, and Hideo was not in a pleasant mood.
To his right sat Lord Zymeth, head of the Lotus Clan, with his long black hair and robes of office. No one knew how old Lord Zymeth really was, but he had been Hideo's boyhood tutor and was now his chief adviser. Behind Zymeth sat his bodyguards, bizarre-looking Lotus clan warriors, elongated men with a curved blade in each hand, and bone-white warlocks. They had had to camp up on the ridge a hundred yards from the Wolf village something about them drove the dogs here crazy.
Across from them sat the Wolf Clan chief, Blackbone, an enormous gray-haired man dressed only in a light vest despite the chill of altitude. Behind him lounged half a dozen men in animal skins and shale armor, hulking ones carrying enormous sledgehammers or feral berserkers with claws strapped to their forearms.
The meeting had gone as predicted, issue by issue. He and Lord Zymeth had discussed complaints of something strange that had been seen to come down from the High Plateau by night and roam the forests of the Fertile Valley. Zymeth and Blackbone had squabbled as usual over mining rights in the disputed areas on their territories’ mutual border. Hideo had agreed ahead of time to take the Lotus Clan's side in that argument, and so he did. All agreed to maintain the lookouts on the Channel to the north, despite seeing nothing for many years, of either the Horde or any seagoing clan. Was the Horde even a reality, Hideo wondered, or just part of the legend of Tarrant the Elder, his semi-mythic great-grandfather?
Chapter 9 : Blackbone's Trust
After much argument and persuasion, it was agreed that one of the old Lotus Clan scholars would be sent to tutor Blackbone's son, Brighteye, as Lord Zymeth had once done for Hideo. The Wolf Clan sought little contact with outsiders, but eventually Hideo had persuaded him that there was little harm in it, and possibly much advantage. Despite all the posturing, growling, and ill-will, peace had been kept for another year, and all parties returned home semi-satisfied.
Two months later, Hideo was out riding when the news came that fighting had broken out between the Clans. A messenger caught up to him and told him the story as they rode back to Serpentholm. Four days after the meeting of the clans, Brighteye's new tutor had arrived, a Master Warlock named Errelth. There were many in the Wolf Clan, especially among the shamans and druidesses, who did not welcome him, but Blackbone allowed it, reluctant to reverse his own decision.
However, three weeks later the shamans were proven right. Two guards had discovered Errelth crouched outside the boy's door in the dead of night, whispering and chanting in some harsh unknown language. There was no pause for discussion. With a howl of rage, one guard had assaulted the tutor with an enormous club, while the other ran to rouse the household. Brighteye awakened from troubled dreams to find a pitched battle in progress outside his bedroom, as at least thirty Wolf Clan soldiers, including Blackbone himself, engaged a lone Master Warlock. In the end, eight Wolf Clansmen had died and a third of the building had been demolished, but Errelth was dead. After an enormous brawler named Heartsclaw broke his skull open, the tutor's body had wasted away in seconds.
Or so the Wolf Clan version had it. When Hideo reached the castle, he found that another messenger had arrived from Lord Zymeth, with a different version of events in which drunken Wolf Clansmen had assaulted an aged scholar without provocation.
Already there was scattered fighting between Lotus and Wolf troops near the disputed mining camps. A third messenger had arrived, from the Serpent Clan lookout garrison near the Throne: should they stay neutral, or choose sides? And whose? But there was really no choice. Lord Zymeth had been his friend, really a second father, since he was a child, and had taught him everything he knew of statecraft. Clearing decisions with him had long since been second nature. He had no reason to distrust the Wolf Clan, but he had never particularly liked them. The way Blackbone looked at him coldly, seeming to judge him. No, there was no question about who he could trust.
Chapter 10 : Lord Hideo's War
And so, in Lord Hideo’s reign war broke out for the first time since the coming of the Serpent Clan: Lotus and Serpent allied against Wolf. Surprisingly, for the first eight months or so the outcome seemed uncertain. The Wolf Clan warriors were matchless in their own territory. They fought at night and in all seasons, on all terrains. They seemed to have no organization, only packs or lone fighters who emerged from the forest to harass large contingents or massacre smaller ones. They laid traps and ambushes, and at times the forest itself seemed to thicken on command to immobilize their enemies. Individually Wolf Clansmen were cunning and brutally strong. More and more, Serpent Clans soldiers were relying on muskets and a defensive line of spearmen, just to keep from closing with the foe in one-to-one combats. And when a Wolf Clan fighter was killed, it was always at a terrible cost: he would invariably sell his life dearly, and these berserker rages were an awesome sight, enough to cow any warrior in the land. Fighting opponents such as this eroded morale, and occasionally Serpent troops would retreat even with the advantage of numbers, rather than face a berserk and suicidal enemy.
It was Zymeth himself who first began to turn the tide. He saw the Wolf Clan's Achilles heel, their failure to coordinate on a larger scale, their lack of organization. Lord Zymeth’s counter-offensive had a discipline and sophisticated organization that Blackbone could not cope with. Zymeth's strategic vision first began to turn the tide.
This was especially true as new and stranger Lotus troops began taking the field. Until this point, almost no one outside the Lotus Clan had really understood what was happening on the High Plateau, and not even Hideo had seen the worst of it. Now reports began coming in of what their allies really were. Distorted long-limbed bladesmen, staff adepts, and leaf disciples had been strange enough half-sorcerous warriors. Now they were joined by terrifying rotting things that had hitherto been kept out of sight, men who seemed always to be dying and spewing disease as they died, but staggered on and on until hacked to pieces. Even Wolf Clansmen could be cowed when faced with these.
For a while, the Wolf Clan held out. They had discovered a crucial fact, that the black shale they used in their armor and buildings was one of the few materials that could shield them from the Lotus Clan's magical corruption. Perhaps this explained why Lord Zymeth had insisted on access to the mines.
In the end it was a suggestion from Lord Issyl that sealed the Wolf Clan's defeat. Even then, the master warlock looked like a young man barely into his teens. Giggling, he told the war council of the Wolf Clan's superstitious terror of a being called the White Wolf. He proposed a plan whereby all the Lotus troops would dye their hair white. No one knew where he had gotten this knowledge, but it worked. This new measure played on ancient fears, and it broke their morale, fatally. Lotus Clan hair has been white ever since.
In the last days of the war even the highest master warlocks were seen on the field of battle, cloistered beings who had not been spotted outside the High Plateau before or since. They were bizarre and terrifying fighters. Reality seemed to break down around these men and women, like Koril who shimmered and blinked in and out, laughing as blades passed harmlessly through him, and Issyl who seemed to accelerate as he fought, stabbing opponents who were still hopelessly trying to get their blades in line. And others whose names were never learned, whose shapes changed, or who changed those around them, or wreaked havoc in a dozen other ways.
When the end came for the Wolf Clan, many of the defeated chose not to surrender, but piled up the bodies around them as they raged, fighting to the last. No one who fought in the final battle could help but feel awe and respect at the Wolf's conduct, save perhaps the impassive warlock and master warlocks, whose feelings no one could read. When Blackbone fell at last, however, it was the end for any real resistance. Fourteen-year-old Brighteye called for a general surrender on any terms, and the majority obeyed. Otherwise, the Wolf Clan might have been wiped from the earth.
There was a brief conference of the three leaders, Brighteye glaring defiantly even as he agreed to the surrender terms. The Wolf Clan was sent into slavery, working the mines under supervision of the Lotus and Wolf Clans. In return, they would be spared and allowed to live on their lands in comparative peace.
Officially, the Wolf Clan no longer governed itself, but submitted to the will of Lord Hideo, Lord Zymeth and a governing council. The facts, though, were different: although enslaved, the Wolf Clan was never subdued. Even though Brighteye was forced to work the lowest tasks, digging sewage trenches and sleeping in common quarters, they could not stop clansmen from subtly deferring to him. Hideo heard rumors of secret meetings deep in the mines, even a code worked out in the rhythm of the sledgehammers as the broke the shale. Hideo knew they were savages and could never outwit him, but he sensed in the reports and the tours that the Wolf Clan was waiting, even preparing, for its chance.
Whether or not they felt this way, the Lotus Clan did not make kind masters in the mines they oversaw. Certain of the Master Warlocks had appropriated a number of Wolf Clan slaves to perform experiments on, in the hopes of creating more efficient, more tireless workers. The results were bizarre and often tragic, the strangest of these being the creation of the Shale Lord, who still lives today.
When Hideo's son Oja was born, he grew up in a different world than his predecessors. He knew the Wolf Clan only as slaves, not as a legitimate clan, whereas the Lotus Clan were trusted allies and partners in victory. He was taught to govern according to many Lotus ideas, ruling through strength and fear, valuing fanatical loyalty over thoughtful devotion, using any technique to gain obedience. Although he learned the Serpent Clan's history, the Dragon Clan and the Horde were little more than names to him, part of the life of his great-great grandfather.
Although some did criticize Lord Hideo as too obedient to Lord Zymeth's wishes and far too trusting, even brainwashed, it can be said that he learned from his experiences. Although the two clans remained close, Oja learned his letters and his history from his father's Serpent Clan generals only. He never had a Lotus Clan tutor, nor did any of his sons. Of this, Hideo made certain.
Chapter 11 : Whispers of War
After the funeral rites had been completed, Oja went for a long ride and mentally reviewed his situation. At the time of his father’s death, Lord Oja came of age in a complex world his predecessors had never had to face. In theory he was the most powerful man in the realm, with Lord Zymeth of the Lotus Clan as his advisor. The Wolf Clan was enslaved, and as far as he knew, had no chief at all. However, to his credit Oja understood that the situation was more complex than this. The Lotus Clan leader was too clever by half, and obviously more ambitious than he would like to admit. Likewise, the Wolf Clan was far from subdued the small riots and uprisings that broke out every few months testified to this.
As Oja grew up he had been trained in the arts of statecraft and war, both personal combat and the command of armies, and he suspected that one day he would need all his abilities. He was not wrong the other two clan leaders were not idle on that day.
Far to the northwest, Lord Zymeth stood on the lip of the High Plateau, gazing south over the patchwork of fields and forests that covered the fertile land, as the wind blew through his long, white hair. For three generations he had served the Serpent Clan chiefs as friend and advisor. To all the world he appeared to be their subordinate, the faithful adviser first to Yukio, then Hideo, now to this young Lord Oja. So he played a double game, pretending to serve lesser men, while he maintained his own status as leader of his own clan, the Lotus.
Leading the Lotus required mastery of their Byzantine hierarchy and endless maneuvering, playing the other master warlocks against each other, edging out the heads of the different colleges, repeatedly asserting and proving that his was the highest mastery and the strongest will. The Lotus Clan had many master sorcerers to contend with, some of them older than himself Koril of the College of Space had centuries, as did Issyl of the College of Time (though currently he appeared to be a nasty child of eleven).
Zymeth knew as he stood there that he could not continue this way indefinitely. Now that the Wolf Clan was under control it was time to make a forceful move, to take advantage of the Serpent Clan's trust he had so carefully built up.
(But even Lord Zymeth did not know everything that was happening in the land. There was a third man who was also watching, waiting, and planning. Far to the Northwest, the man who would one day lead the Wolf Clan labored in the shale mines, swallowing his anger as he waited for some moment of weakness or confusion in his enemies. As he waited he trained his clan, letting the daily work digging tunnels and breaking stone make them stronger and more skillful. But it was not yet time for the Wolf Clan to rise again...)
Only eight days after Lord Hideo’s death, Lord Zymeth made his proposal to Lord Oja, he began by playing on Oja's youth and ambition. He flattered him, assuring him that the Serpent Clan was larger and stronger than the Dragon Clan had ever been. Surely, a capable young man like Lord Oja would want to make his name immortal, become a greater Lord even than Tarrant the Elder who had saved them all from destruction. Then Zymeth revealed his idea: the master warlocks of the Lotus Clan had drawn up plans for a fleet of magical ships, which could bear them safely over the lethal currents and eddies of the Channel. Once on the other side, Serpent Clan soldiers could finally engage and destroy the Horde, if it even still existed. Under Lord Oja's generalship, the menace that had driven them from their ancient home would finally be defeated.
It was too much for such a young leader to resist. Lord Oja gave the orders, and construction began. Wolf Clan laborers were immediately set to work cutting timber and building a shipyard on the northeastern coast, under Lotus supervision. The Wolf Clan were the only Clan to have a real tradition of shipbuilding although the Lotus Clan had also arrived by ship, those were little more than desperately improvised platforms, two-thirds magic, constructed at great cost. In any case the Lotus were too scholarly and dignified to cut wood and warp planks that could be left to the brute laborers.
The ships were not ordinary ships, however, and the plans provided by the Lotus warlocks were unlike any the Wolf Clan laborers had seen before. The ships they were building were obviously seaworthy, but they sported certain...modifications no one fully understood, and which the Lotus Clan did not explain.
Most obvious was the lack of either sails or oars. As the Lotus men explained, the ships would be propelled by magical means alone, a spell laid into each of the ships as soon as it was near completion. The second feature was that each of the ships was built to contain, at its center, a large object roughly the size of a barrel, which would be enormously heavy, to judge by the reinforcing timbers called for in the plans.
Construction continued for two years, while uneasy relations between the three Clans continued, and skeletal ships began to take place in the coastal shipyards. Strange ships built in an alien style, with elongated hulls and delicate woodwork compared to the stout Wolf Clan traditions. Only then did Lotus warlocks arrive and begin to take charge of certain aspects of the shipbuilding.
Runes were laid into the keels and main timbers of each craft, first carved into the wood and then inlaid with a silvery metal brought down in carts from the High Plateau. At night the warlocks would return and carry out some further inscription or treatment, which outsiders were not allowed to see.
A month after the spellcasting began, more wagons arrived from the plateau, bearing a dozen sealed trunks that the men handled with the utmost delicacy. The following day, one of these was carried to the ship farthest along in construction, and opened to reveal for the first time the heart of the warships of the Great Fleet. It appeared to be a violet gem of monstrous size, carved in many facets. Some who looked too long into it spoke of a darkness glimpsed in the translucent depths of the thing, even under the bright sun at noon. None were allowed to touch the thing they lowered it with chains and straps to fit into the hollow at the center of the craft, a space now lined with ornate runes, and padded clamps of the same silvery metal, into which the monstrous gem fit precisely. Over the next week, each of the twelve ships was fitted with its own gem in the same manner.
Warlocks and master warlocks now came and went throughout the shipyard, and labor intensified. Each day, some magical ritual would take place or some inscription would be added to a ship in progress, a complex binding focused on both the gem and on a small platform affixed to the stern of each ship where the captain would stand. Lean, white-haired men in robes would stand chanting or debating with one another about the occult nuances involved.
At the same time, however, something began to go wrong in the worker camps. There was some kind of plague or problem among the Wolf Clan laborers. It began with a general weakness, and a complaint that everything seemed to “smell wrong.” Disturbingly, it would surface among groups of workers who had done work on the same ship on a given day. In a few cases it would pass off, but most of the time it would grow progressively worse, until the afflicted would be unable to work or even stand. The worst cases were among those who had dealt closely with the gems themselves. There was a story going around that a worker had actually slipped and touched the surface of one of the great gems, and died instantly. In seconds his body become dust and simply dispersed.
At this stage, the Lotus overseers would transfer them to special camps set up at a distance from the main shipyards, and new workers would be brought in from the mines to replace them. There were complaints, of course. An emissary from the Wolf Clan even reached Lord Oja himself, to beg for help, some investigation, a cleansing of the camps. But he met with no sympathy. Such outbreaks were common, especially among groups of workers living in close quarters. Construction continued apace.
Three months after the first sickness was reported, however, one of the diseased workers returned from the camp. He had escaped and staggered the two miles back to the main worker barracks. He had been a tall man of legendary strength, but not even his close friends recognized him at first. He told a horrifying tale of what was happening. The workers who had been transferred away, he said, were not getting better, nor did the guards there even seek to treat them. The diseased men simply wasted away in their beds, without ever developing more specific symptoms. On death, their bodies were simply mummified husks.
"They bring us there to die. It is not a disease at all, my friends, it is Lotus magic. It is these black sorcerous ships themselves. Somehow they are killing us. Look at them!” He pointed back towards the shipyards, and even at this distance they could all see the faint purple glow emitted by the gems at night.
Panic spread. The men of the Wolf Clan had never been slow to action, and panic swiftly became rage. Workers seized axes, hammers, even slabs of wood, and stormed the guard barracks in a confused, chaotic mass. The response from the Serpent and Lotus Clan guards was quick and lethal, as they had been prepared for just this kind of undisciplined mob. However, ultimately the confusion served the rioting workers well. A fire broke out, and men were diverted to keep it from reaching the ships.
Amid all this, a few Wolf Clansmen escaped into the mountains, and ultimately were able to carry word to their brothers in the mines, that the Lotus policy of enslavement had become one of genocide. Four days later, listening to the panting messenger telling the story in whispers in the back of a squalid barracks, * Grayback nodded in comprehension. If they wished to free themselves, they would have to do it, not years from now, but in the next few months.
Grayback was not the only one with informants in the shipyards. There were many ears present there, some of them loyal to the Serpent as well as the Wolf. Lord Oja heard the story as well, and understood something of what had happened.
He had never trusted the Lotus as his father once had. The terrible life-draining effect the Wolf Clansman had described was one of the hallmarks of Lotus magic. He saw a frightening possibility opening up before him. Lord Oja had planned to put his whole military strength aboard that fleet to sail north, all the Serpent Clan's armies, where they would inevitably have been claimed by the ship's horrible cargo. With those lost, and the Lotus Clan free of the corruption they had sent out to sea, nothing would stop Lord Zymeth from dominating the entire continent. Only a day later a Lotus Clan messenger brought word of minor setbacks in construction, but made no mention of the true nature of the disaster. Lord Oja pondered, and the more he thought, the less happy he became.
Neither the Serpent nor the Lotus Clans were prepared for war. In the long peacetime, borders had been left unwatched and undefended. Over the next few days, moving swiftly Lord Oja contacted the lesser lords and had them put men in place at the borders, repair their walls and guard towers, and prepare themselves for what could be a prolonged, desperate conflict. He didn't want a war, but he had to be ready to defend against a more direct assault.
Chapter 12 : A Hero Returns
If the Lords Oja and Zymeth were unready for war, Grayback wasn't. From the moment he heard of Lord Zymeth's betrayal, Grayback saw the Wolf Clan's chance. Over thirty years, he had been building for this moment. Since his cousin Brighteye's death in an avalanche, Grayback had stealthily taken control of the Wolf Clan's fortunes, training his people, making them strong and maintaining their identity.
However, Grayback knew they would never have a better chance at the prize than the current crisis. He knew his messengers had reached Lord Oja, when all along the Shaleback, Serpent Clan garrisons were pulled back toward Serpentholm and the lowlands. No one noticed when a few supplies and mining tools went missing, or lights burned late in the Wolf Clan barracks.
Lord Oja was returning from an inspection of the Fertile Valley when the news came to him of the Wolf Clan uprising. A dozen ragged soldiers and messengers had straggled in that day from the mining country, each bewildered with a similar story to tell. Two nights ago, as the moon rose all along the Shaleback, a sound had rung out an unearthly croon, a howl. The men who oversaw mining operations were not unfamiliar with late-night festivals and ceremonies. But that night it sounded as every single slave had joined in, and there was a note of anger they had not heard before.
No one could give a clear account of the night that followed, just confused impressions of violence and horror. Slaves hurled themselves at the armed Serpent garrisons with nothing but their fists or stones. Fortified positions broke apart with mining equipment by huge men heedless of the arrows that cut them down as they worked. Something, perhaps a pack of huge wolves, emerging from the forestlands to tear trained soldiers apart with their claws. Strangest of all, a manlike thing called the Shale Lord that fought alongside the slaves, a stone man that their weapons could not hurt.
The barbaric uprising was astonishingly tightly planned and coordinated. It was obvious that whoever planned this had waited for a time when the Serpent and Lotus Clans were wary of each other and forgetful of their slaves. Carefully chosen access roads have been cut off by avalanches, and the most defensible mines had been the hardest hit. In most places casualties on both sides were horrific, and blood pooled in the stony quarries and spattered the shale cliffs. But the Serpent and Lotus guardsmen could not possibly prevail against men who were fighting for the existence of their people most broke and ran, and of those a few escaped the mountains.
A few garrisons were reported as holding out, groups of terrified men barricaded into the mines, but these had most likely already fallen by the time word reached Oja. This was confirmed when another messenger arrived the following day, a Wolf Clansman riding in barbaric splendor. Five men only, huge warriors armed with what had once been mining implements but were now only too clearly weapons of war hammers and clubs and metal balls on chains. Speaking in a rough miners' dialect, but with dignity, they informed Lord Oja that the Shaleback mines and all the lands his great-grandfather Tarrant the Builder had originally granted to the Wolves, were now reclaimed under the Chief known as Grayback. This Grayback offered him neither friendship nor war at this time, but demanded only recognition and fair treatment.
He also laid out the full truth of the disasters in the shipbuilding camp, a confession extracted at great cost directly from a Lotus Warlock (it was never revealed how this was done, what might have frightened or compelled such a man. The druids had been involved). Lord Oja’s worst suspicions had been true. The Great Fleet had not been built to return, but to use the life energy of its passengers to subdue the corruption that would be contained within the terrible gems, the entire corruption of the Lotus Clan. Freed of that curse, with the Serpent Clan’s warriors gone, nothing could have stopped Lord Zymeth from claiming all the Clans as his slaves.
This event ushered in the new political age, in which no Clan trusted the others, and no Lord had supremacy. An age of fitful border clashes and raids, sporadic trade, and shifting borders this was the time in which Lord Oja's sons, Yukio and Kenji, came of age.
Yukio was handsome and proud, every inch the Lord's son and heir apparent. He appeared with Lord Oja on state occasions, and even rode with patrols and raiding parties. He excelled in swordsmanship, archery and horsemanship, and trained with the greatest teachers in the land, scarred veterans of half a century of unrest. He also sat with Lord Oja on the counsels, learning to rule as his father did through strength and fear. Several times he was sent away from Serpentholm to spend six months serving under one of his father's lords, Otomo or Shinja or Garrin, to understand their methods and successes.
Kenji was quieter and less apt to be noticed, as befitted the younger son, but fiercely competitive in his own way. They were only two years apart in age, and they trained together constantly. Indeed, Kenji seemed to live for the days when he would score a touch against Yukio with a wicker training sword, or outpace his brother on horseback. Neither Yukio nor Lord Oja seemed to pay him much attention, and perhaps Kenji preferred it that way. During the many hours when Yukio would be attending a ceremonial appearance with their father, Kenji practice alone, holding obscure, agonizingly difficult fighting stances or loosing shafts at an archery butt until his fingers bled and his left arm ached.
As Kenji grew older, he began to argue more frequently with his father. Once, he even interrupted his father with a question during a public meeting, an unthinkable slight that got him sent away to study with the Lords Shinja and Otomo for a year, learning the methods and philosophy of each. When he returned, he seemed even more determined to cause disruption. Some nights he spent in the inns and bathhouses speaking with the peasants, poachers, and common swordsman, listening to their opinions and learning their ways. He was neither lazy nor dissolute. He spent just as many late nights in the ancient archives at Serpentholm, reading the few remaining scrolls from before the coming of the Horde, scrolls that taught the legends and traditions of the Dragon Clan, now almost forgotten.
Kenji's clashes with his father became more frequent and public and more strident. Soon his brother Yukio would have no more to do with him, siding with his father on every issue and calling him disloyal and useless. Rumors spread about this break, and were amplified in the telling. Half the realm had heard they had fought a duel and that Kenji openly spoke against his brother. Lord Oja was more tolerant, although only barely.
Late one evening, Kenji went to visit his father to ask him about a recent court decision. Such visits were not uncommon. What happened next confirmed everyone's worst suspicions. The guards outside Lord Oja's chambers heard a gasp, and rushed in to find Kenji standing over his father's body with a knife in his hand. The Serpent Clan leader was dead, brutally stabbed. The conclusion was obvious. In either a premeditated killing or an argument carried too far, Kenji had slain his father. Before the guards could rush to arrest him, Kenji seized a weapon and escaped. Despite a massive manhunt, Kenji was never found.
Yukio lost no time in taking control of the Serpent Clan, but he proved to have no gift for statecraft. Where his father had used his power carefully and masterfully, keeping order through fear and shows of strength, Yukio used it foolishly to vent his anger and irritation. Within two years, he had been killed in a clash with one of his own lords as he tried to confiscate the man's lands. As Yukio was burning the man's fields, his horse panicked and threw him badly. Yukio, the heir of Tarrant the Elder who had saved the clan so long ago, lay in a muddy streambed, his skull crushed by a stone.
This event led to perhaps the most difficult crisis since the coming of the Horde. For the first time, the realm had no heir; the line of descent from the lords of the Dragon Clan had been broken. To the north and west were the other Clans, perhaps waiting for just this sort of weakness to tip the balance of power in their favor. Swiftly, the lords Otomo and Shinja moved to maintain order, each in their characteristic style, Shinja through strength and cunning, Otomo through honor, loyalty and fairness. Both men were capable, even brilliant, and for the next five years the borders remained secure, the realm survived.
As each year passed, however, it became clear that the Serpent Clan needed a single leader to make them strong again. The fate of the Clan that had survived the Horde and the Breaking of the World was now in the balance. Perhaps there would be civil war, as Shinja and Otomo found their differences increasingly stressful. Perhaps the Wolf Clan would take brutal vengeance for their years of captivity. Maybe Lord Zymeth would sweep down out of the mountains with unearthly power, and the Serpent Clan would be wiped from the earth.
Many wondered what had become of Kenji, whether he had truly escaped and where he was now in the long difficult years since Lord Oja's death. For a while there would be occasional rumors, telling of his death or of his deeds in a far land. However, no one could tell the truth of them, and soon the stories stopped. But after seven years had passed, the talk began again, word of a lone traveler who had been seen going under the name of Kenji. Word spread that in these troubled times, at the eleventh hour, Kenji had returned. But where he had been all this time, and what sort of man he really was, no one could say.
* The Story including Grayback's Journey inside, but the story didn't tell detailed info about Grayback's journey.
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