The Science of Magic

Part Two: Champion

A tale of Sheol

© David Brown 2007 – 2008, all rights reserved

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Chapter 1

The rumours engorged and spread like some airborne plague loosed upon the encampment. The Hunter had returned, they said. And like any rumour, the facts and the fiction of who The Hunter was became distorted, much like a bleeding calligraphic symbol on a damp parchment. Lines of truth and whimsy became blurred, and what was left was an indecipherable smudge, barely recognisable from its original form.

But who could blame them? They were a superstitious people by nature; their faith deeply entrenched - as it was – in ideals of fate and destiny, gods and goddesses, spirits and magic. And what more did these people have? Talking of rumours was the only thing these people really could count on to pass the time during the cold, dark watch-shifts amidst the vast Tylunian mountain-range. Clinging to hopes – no matter how distantly fetched – was simply their manner of survival.

And legends of The Hunter certainly brought them hope.

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‘Eight foot tall he is! With arms as wide as your head and fists not far shy!’ The man slurred, spitting unswallowed ale across the makeshift pub bunches, erected amidst the large tent.

‘I heard nine.’ Said the soldier stationed at the serving pumps off to the right. He wiped away the pipe-fog with the back of his hand as it drifted into his eyes.

Another man grunted, ‘Sure, and I suppose he can breathe fire too?’

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Fury.

Words do not describe it any more than an actor can portray it without feeling it. To understand it, or to portray it, you must feel it. To accurately describe fury using words, and not emotions, or sounds, or flashes of crushing pain and bright lights of anguish – it is a simple impossibility.

For him, it was as if he had been possessed by a thrashing, wretched demon of wild wrath. He was a spectator to his own actions - yet his heart failed to believe that he was capable of the dark deeds that he watched his own body perform. Death fell away from him as if he were a tree and his seedlings were the ruined forms of tattered Human carnage. He shed death; he exuded it. And worst of all; he enjoyed it.

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‘Anyone could have seen him! Even from the walls!’ A man said loudly, ‘He was like a bloody whirlwind! The Humans left a wide ring around him as he charged them down! They were scared senseless I tell you.’

‘So how did he survive?’ A second man said, glancing casually into the open camp-fire. ‘I thought everyone initially on the field that day was killed.’

‘Not everyone.’ The third replied, pulling his cloak further about his shoulders to protect himself from the snowfall. ‘A small group of them fell back to the keep before the main assault started. The field battle was meant to be a skirmish; they were just trying to destroy the siege machines.’

‘Yeah, it was just a skirmish!’ The first confirmed.

‘Otherwise, Lord Kondo would have died with his Father that day. It was people like The Hunter that got him out alive.’

‘So you’ve been told.’ The second man muttered stubbornly. ‘I was told that he wouldn’t fall back, that he got the blood-lust.’

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‘Vengeance’ screamed out in his mind, as if he and it were lovers locked in a climactic, animal embrace of passion. Fury, in that moment, was his all, and he prayed silently that it would never end, for when it did - he knew - he would have to mourn just as wildly. And thus he held faster still to the sweet taste of overwhelming, burning, fervent rage.

In that tranquil world of pure, unblemished fury, he became a god. Not one of the gods that the people of Ryadell worshipped from afar, that never showed their faces, ‘nor their miracles. No, he became a god in judgement. Face to face with his subjects, and most of them became horror-struck, seeking desperately to flee or to beg for their lives as their god-made-flesh rampaged amongst them.

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‘So he’s a berserker?’ A warrior whispered to another.

‘Nothing so normal, I’m sure.’ The other replied; his gaze diligently fixed on the moon-lit slopes about their secret encampment.

‘What’s normal about a berserker?’

He shrugged a reply, ‘Between you and me, I heard he wasn’t even Human.’

‘He’d have to be Tenakoshan to do some of the things I’ve heard he did.’

‘Aye, there’s truth in that.’

There was a pause. Laughter echoed from somewhere near the tavern tent, a little ways to the south.

‘Have you seen him?’

‘I did. But never in battle. He’s not as big as they say. Nor as impressive to look at, but I wouldn’t let that fool you. There’s a fire in that one. A cold fire, that heats up in the … well, in the heat of battle.’

The other man shivered, wiping snow from his armour. ‘Don’t talk about cold-fires on a night like this.’

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The look on his face was inhuman. The speed of his sword arm was like the blurred thrashing of a hummingbird’s wings. There was no stopping him.

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‘Why do they call him The Hunter, anyway?’ A woman asked, running a sharpening stone over the edge of her worn, chipped blade.

‘He carries a bow with him everywhere, and he never misses his target, not once. Also, his Father was a hunter. I knew him.’

‘What was he like?’ The woman pressed.

‘Gerrad Vale? Most warriors who lived in Tunlan before the attack knew him. The village huntsmaster, he was, and a good man to boot.’

‘And The Hunter himself?’

The man frowned, ‘There was always something … different about that boy. Troubled, you might say. As if all the world’s problems were somehow his responsibility.’

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An arrow passed close to his eyes and seemed to slow to a stop before falling away to the ground. A sword came at him from another place, flashing dawning sunlight into his bloodshot eyes, which streamed openly with tears of both wrath and grief alike. But the sword struck thin air and rattled. He turned it away with a blink, and watched helplessly as he run the assailant through, yanking the soldier towards him, even as he felt the flimsy spine give way under his inhumanly strong thrust. He snarled, hating this stranger - hating even the smell of his hair as he pulled him close, hating the way the man twitched and gasped. He twisted his blade and wrenched it free, enjoying the fact that he had brought an end to such a despicable wretch. He launched himself forward, charging like a bull. His movements were rigid and tensed, but quicker than any of his assailants thought possible. Indeed, a year ago, even he would have thought it impossible. His sword arm arched down like the awesome sting of a thunder bolt. His victim tried to parry the attack, but the man’s blade shattered under the force as if it were made of nothing but ice.

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‘Well, I’m just glad he’s on our side.’ One of the guards on patrol said to another. Both stared fixedly at The Hunter’s tent as they spoke of him, as if they were afraid he might hear them.

‘Is it true, what they say about him?’ The man responded, lighting a pipe of locally grown herbs.

‘What do they say about him?’

‘That his whole family were butchered, his mother defiled, and his home burned to the ground as the soldiers passed it by on the way to the castle. That he single-handedly saved Lord Kondo and drove back the Human army as the others escaped. That he killed more than fifty men that night and many times that in battles since then. Is it true that they say that he did all that, and yet he was reared as nothing more than a hunter’s son?’

The guard turned his gaze on his friend, and with all seriousness, replied: ‘Every word.’

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The Hunter would make them bleed for what they had done. He would cleave the Human army into thousands of pieces, until they fled back across the fields of Tunlan and away, never to return.

By Boseraphim’s side, unseen and unsung, the Guardian smiled.

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(For a map of the land of Sheol, go to (www)mooncalfstudios(com))