The bronze-skinned redhead sits silently on the great charger and
stares at the newly-introduced Desert man before her. She seems
to be toiling with a response, shifting uncomfortably on her
horse. A short intake of breath and the movement of her mouth
suggests an imminent introduction. However, before the woman
begins her speech, she tenses in reaction to some sound unheard by the
merchant warlord. In a flash, she plunges her horse down the
hill and under the forest rooftop.
Within those few seconds, Din sits stunned at her sudden departure,
and cocks his ears to hear the sound of riders coming up the hill from
the direction in which he has just ridden. Male voices become
clear, and a few more seconds later, two men clad in the attire of the
Northern Desert Tribes crest the hill. The riders stop short,
staring in surprise at the mounted man before them. One of the
men drops the wrapped cloth from his mouth, and Din recognizes him
immediately. The unmasked man is none other than Irfan Badir,
thief and bandit, thug for hire, defiler of the most-prized concubine
of the Sultan of Singephatam. On more than one occasion, the
rogue has benefited from the mercy of Din and his sillidars, after
being subdued during bandit attacks on the merchant's caravans.
The bandit speaks. "Well Rekib, what have we here? If it
isn't the dreaded warlord of the steppes. Well well
well..." His words are spoken with sarcasm, and his greasy
moustache twists, hinting at the evil smirk trapped within it.
Din slowly moves his hand towards the great hilt of his razor-sharp
scimitar.
"How they shall sing my praises..." the bandit
continues. "I shall deliver the bloated and swollen head of
the Horsemaster on a silver platter to the Tippoo of Kahmednugra, and
take Aruna to my tent. She will be shown how a slave woman
should be treated by a man who knows how to deal with such desert
whores..."
Din's eyes glaze over with a red cast. His entire body
tenses. Not even his closest horsemen dare to jest about Aruna,
his Jebedar, the black jewel of his soul's crown. The lust of
battle climbs beyond control in Din. These fools will soon learn
that not all of his reputation was crafted from legend.
*
*
*
*
*
Naqi and Wistan sit on the grass, eating the spoils of Naqi's
hunting skill. The wanderer is impressed by this mysterious
girl's ability to spin such appetizing fare from the land around
her. The grouse is succulent, flavoured with some shredded mix
of savoury plant life and is accompanied by some small cakes, fried on
a hot rock near the fire's edge. The two travelers wash down
their meal with cool water from the stream nearby.
After their meal, the new acquaintances sit in silence, and
gradually begin discussion. Naqi recounts stories of her
homeland, and Wistan dazzles her with selected tales of his
travels. Wistan becomes aware of the time. It will soon be
time to depart if he wishes to reach the roadside Inn before
nightfall.
*
*
*
*
*
Irfan Badir! Din curses a thousand deaths upon
him under his breath. What next? The Rajah of Jabbidan and his
dancing girls? Kali was spitting her bad seeds eastwards it would
seem, and he was getting a mouthful here. If only he had done away
with Badir amongst the rocks of the Dragon Steppes, where lizards
sun themselves and the vultures circle high. But the Warlord of the
Caravans had let him go - not out of pity, but to nullify his
self-guilt. Din sees young Gopal, his newly made havildar,
looking surprised at the bloody shaft sticking out of his belly,
surprise which had turned to shrieks as the shaft was twisted and
pulled. The image of the boy flopping his breath away on the red
sand puts him to shame, as if he could have protected the young
warrior from the ambush, but did not. Now his shame has returned to
kill him.
Desperately, the merchant wants to destroy
this menace, Badir, but two against one are long odds. One chance
then, or flight it would be. Somewhere close by is a town,
presumably civilized, where Din may find refuge. The master horseman
is confident in his skills so that, if things go badly, he should be
able to outrun the bandit and his fellow and make his way to
Shallow's Crossing. He licks his lips and touches the idol of Mara
at his pommel. "Protect me," he says simply.
The desert warrior puts on his worst grimace,
puffs up and booms out, "Borga Din comes to feast on your
flesh!" He twists, calling out to invisible hordes on the other
side of the rise, away from his two enemies, "To me, silladars,
to me!" With a wild, ululating cry that summons imaginary
demons to fill the skies, Din strikes his heels and charges Nunaber
forward like a juggernaut. Hooves pounding, robes flailing, insane
gnashing face, Borga Din thunders towards his foes, pulling his
lance from its scabbard and levelling it. One pass, and then for
the hills!
*
*
*
*
*
A thunderclap shatters the morning tranquility as Borga Din smashes
into his opponents. The battle cry of the Master of the
Silladars inspires terror in his foes. The surprised pair fumble
for their weapons, but the bloodlust of the tribal warlord, often
forgotten, rises like the blazing desert sun. The blasphemy
towards his Jebedar shall not go unpunished this day. Before
Rekib's scimitar clears its scabbard, he sits stunned in his saddle,
motionless, staring at the finely-crafted lance sticking in his chest,
and protruding from his back.
Irfan manouvers his horse speedily out of Nunebar's path, and turns
to see the master rider turn his mount in one deft move, while his now
empty hand disappears into his flowing robes and extracts a gleaming
blade. The desert bandit, recovering his cool, reaches into a
hidden fold of his grimy cloak and produces a round blade with many
teeth. In one quick moment, the blade whistles through the air,
almost too fast to be seen by the naked eye. But Borga Dinn is
no fool. He is a warrior bred in the scorching lands of the
South where the bandit hordes run amok. Without thinking, he
releases his grip on Nunebar's reins, and using only his legs, allows
himself to seemingly fall off the mount as if injured. Irfan
grins, lifted by a fatal misjudgment of his own ability. As his
enemy's steed pulls near, Borga Din, a horsemaster raised in the
saddle, appears, climbing onto his steeds back from his hiding place
under the great mount's belly. His left hand grabs the reins and
his right rises with the razor-sharp scimitar glistening in the
morning sun. Less than a second later, the stunned bandit,
already cursing his foolhardy taunts, attempts to adopt a
defensive position, but it is too late. The tales of the Desert
Defiler's beast-like viciousness in battle seem not exaggerated, for
as Irfan raises his blade in defense, Din allows his scimitar to drop
under his enemy's and with one thrust and a battle cry, the blade
scoops up and drives into the bandit's stomach. The battle is
over.
Din tugs Nunebar's reins and the loyal steed pulls back a few
steps, as the infamous pair watch the injured man, now fallen off his
horse, lying in the dust, screaming, his face contorted in panic.
"Please! please! By the mercy of the gods!
spare me! spare me! I beg you Horsemaster! Help me!
Aggghhhhhhhhhhhhh! Death spare me....Ugghh..."
*
*
*
*
*
Cracking the last leg bone of the grouse,
now grown cold, Naqi sucks the fat rich marrow from inside of it
then tosses it off into the verge to vanish in the grass.
Fingers greasy, she runs them through her thick black braids, wiping
away a slight accumulation of dust and adding another layer of fat
to them to make them shine in the late sun. Her face twists
up, eyes squinting, as she studies the orb.
"Grandfather?" she begins,
still according Wistan the respectful honorific. "Do you
think that the sun, this sun, is shining on my home right now?" Looking
over at him with a somewhat sad smile, she explains the odd phrasing
of her question. "The sun above my home is shy sometimes.
He hides low to the horizon much of the year, and only peeps
above it to look upon the People for a few hours a day during the
laughing time. Other times, when the reindeer are swollen with
life, he stays longer, flirting long with the moon who risks
coming out of her dark home to see her suitor. This
sun..." Naqi frowns, trying to make sense of it.
"This sun is bold all the time. Hot and furious. He's
mad. I do not like this sun, Grandfather."
Naqi stands up and stretches, slightly
cramped from sitting down for so long, and watches the old man
circumspectly to see if his joints hurt when he moves, thinking of
ways the contents of her pouch or the land around her might provide
relief for any pain of his aged body.
*
*
*
*
*
Wistan sits watching Naqi thirstily, paying
more attention to her than to the meal. "Even her
mannerisms are different from a midlands woman," he thinks,
remembering the details to sketch them later in his journal.
The meal has passed so quietly, with only the
normal noise of food being eaten, that her voice startles him.
"What's that? The sun? Well, now, old
Aclosel thought like that, to be sure. Did you know he proposed once
that there were as many as twenty-seven different suns? One for each
part of the world you know. A weak, pale sun for the northlands, a
fat, friendly sun for the midlands, a scowling demon for the desert.
And a lot more besides. Suns for this and suns for that. Even
different suns for the sea, and for islands, and for the
forest...."
Wistan pulls out his pipe and chews
thoughtfully on the stem.
"Now Faldorel thinks the sun..."
Glancing at Naqi, he catches himself waxing pedantic and realizes she
doesn't care what Faldorel thinks. Gruffly he digs in a pouch for some
tobacco.
"'Course it's the same sun, girl,
there's only one sun. The difference is..."
The wanderer pauses in his tobacco-hunt as he
struggles for a way to explain the concept to the girl. Taking a burnt
stick from the fire, he draws two circles in the dirt, about a foot
apart.
"Imagine that this circle is where we
are now. This other circle is your home."
Wistan draws a line over the circle
representing the pair's current location, explaining as he does so.
"This is the path the sun takes through
the sky each day. From where we sit, it's close and right overhead.
For your country, though..." He gestures toward the other circle,
distant from the line. "...it's low on the horizon and far away.
That's why it's warm here and cold there."
Feeling a need to explain further, he
embellishes: "If you sit close to a fire, you get hot, right? If
you sit far away from the fire, you can still see its light, but you
can't feel its warmth. That's how it is with the sun."
Glancing at the fast-disappearing orb, he
springs spryly to his feet.
"Speaking of the sun, it'll be setting
soon. I don't think these old bones will take another night of chill
and hard ground -- it's an inn for me. If you'll come with me, I'll
return the favor of the meal and buy you your own room and bed for the
night, what say?"
As he speaks, Wistan begins tossing his
eating gear in Grackle's saddlebags and preparing to ride.
*
*
*
*
*
Naqi watches as Wistan draws his
circles on the ground. He calls one her home, the other where
she is now, and Naqi struggles to understand his explanation. So
many suns? But then he says there is only one. I only
see one here, and I've only seen one at home so that must be right.
A finger, nail defined by a half-moon of dirt under the thick
front edge of it, traces the line of the sun from this land towards
hers but not ever reaching it. She sits back, knees crawling
up her chest so she can rest her chin on them, arms folded around
her shins and ponders the drawing.
It was true that the sun here in these
hot lands traced a straight line across the sky day after day.
It moved a bit north or south, she'd noticed, depending on the time
of year but it was always a straight line. A frown creases her
lips as she finishes the thought in her mind. But at home
the sun moves in a circle in the summer. Round and round
the horizon, hardly ever disappearing and never getting dark.
Wistan's sudden offer and burst of
activity catches Naqi by surprise. She watches him for a
minute, noticing that for his advanced age he still moves like a
young man. Going into town and staying at an Inn didn't
especially appeal to her. There were too many people in towns,
always too loud and doing too many odd things. Also
they...stared...at her and didn't laugh or speak, just stared.
It was unsettling. Still, it is worth it, she
decides, pushing herself erect without using her hands, lifting from
her legs only. He knows many things and even seems to know
something about my home. I have to stay with him until I can
decide if he can show me how to get back. I
think he can. "Thank you, Grandfather. I would
like that." A smile splits her face and joy returns to
her eyes.
Not even Foamfoot can quell the sudden
happiness in finding someone who might be able to show her how to
get back to her people. Though the mare spins in circles as
Naqi tries to mount, making the girl hop after the horse on one leg
while trying to fit the other in the stirrup, eventually she is
astride the evil-tempered beast and ready to travel on. While
she waits for Wistan to finish his preparations she takes a spear
with a double barbed bone point from where it had rested aslant from
the saddle on the left side of Foamfoot and reaches down with it to
draw a circle around the one Wistan said was her home, letting the
two touch on one side for a short distance. Her attempt to
reconcile the line of this sun and the circle of her own are wiped
out as Foamfoot snorts hot breath, pushing the road dust aside and
spoiling the drawings. "Ayi! Stupid animal,"
she says, kicking it in the ribs. "I'm going to eat you
one day and I'll laugh as I do so," she promises with a grin of
anticipation. "I bet you taste like reindeer."
Naqi replaces the spear, more of a harpoon
Wistan realizes, and follows beside him as they head along the road.
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ABOUT FUDGE: Fudge is a
role-playing game written by Steffan O'Sullivan, with extensive input
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DISCLAIMER: The material based on
Fudge, entitled Darklands Pbem, are created by, made available
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