A cradle of thorns

[DarkCloud]

I think that the best civ-tyin part is the Primary School Textbook

I have to agree that this tale is one of the best written here: it call to mind Fred Saberhagen's SWORDS Series (although it is, thankfully, written better than Saberhagen's ) and Turtledove's works...

The only part that I thought might need some work was this section:
(because it is excessively vague)

A weak sunlight was streaming through the bare trees, but he saw only red mist and a rising darkness through his tears. The cursing and howling in his head had died away, for the first time in his life. In it's place was a steady and terrible whispering. For the first time, he understood.

He saw a burning tree in the dead of night.

He saw the blood spurting from the throat of a slaughtered hog.

He saw a gale ripping through the darkwoods.

He saw a thousand shrines sprayed with the blood of babies.

He saw the cold, dead eyes of a striking adder.

He saw the weak and maddened spirits of a hundred thousand ancestor-spirits shaping themselves into a handful of silent and terrifying shapes.

But then again, if Laz is describing madness, I suppose this will suffice.

My only comment is: are you going to tie-in some of this madness with a backstory, much like Robert Jordan did in his first 2 Wheel of Time Books?

are the gale, sacrifices and the adder going to prove important?

Good work!

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

It isn't an attempt to describe madness (though some might argue it is). It's a case of pondering how religions start. This is a true Civ story, and that part was an attempt to show how the "breakthrough" of discovering Polytheism might have come about.

Backstory? It's an account of a developing civilisation, focussing on it's breakthroughs. The part I'm currently writing deals with making contact with other civilisations. This means that gaps of centuries may occur between episodes, but the heart of the story remains constant.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

The water splashed upwards and sparkled in the light as Magd sprinted through the ford. His bare feet scrabbled up the damp mud of the far bank, and then he was charging through the low scrubland again. It was near dawn and he was racing towards the smoke he had seen rising in the distance. If it was a barbarian encampment, he wanted to reach it while they were still yawning and scratching their crotches. While they were unprepared.

Not a big man, but a scarred little coil of sinew, lean as a whip. Sometimes it seemed like he'd spent his whole life running- even as a child he'd run rings around his mother. As a hunter, he'd chased the elk herds across the endless miles of the moors, until one sicker or slower than the rest would finally fall to his spear. He rarely returned to the village empty-handed. That was why the elders had chosen him.

"You are fast, and resourceful. You will survive and return to us. See what lies far beyond our frontiers, and bring your news back with you."

That was two years earlier. He'd seen two winters pass without sleeping within walls, hearing his own language or lying in a woman. The trophies of this hunt were frostbite scars and a heavy heat in his loins, and he wanted to go home. Much of last winter he'd spent in a hollow tree near a game-trail where the hunting had been fair; now he intended to spend the coming winter back in his village, drinking cider and whoring the cold months away. The elders owed him no less for these endless months spent under the open sky.

First- some unattended business.....

For hundreds of years the barbarian tribes had harassed them. The precarious early years were long gone, and the Five Villages were securely fortified with walls of hardwood twice a man's height. There was little to fear inside the villages, but outside was a different matter. Raids on the paths between the villages were not uncommon- now Magd was settling a few scores.

He'd supplemented his supplies by lightning raids on the barbarian hunting parties that ranged far and wide as they attended their fish-traps. Magd's goal was the leather sacks of salt, stuffed full of trout fillets- he'd acquired quite a taste for salted trout over the last two years and he pursued it ruthlessly. Always a dedicated hunter, he had applied his skills to the hunting of men with considerable success. His tactics had been honed to perfection.

In early morning's light, while the fishermen were still addled from sleep, he would rip through their encampment like an adder's strike. A blur of motion and panic, and he would vanish clean out of the far side of the campsite at a sprint leaving one of the barbarians cupping a spear-wound. Then the hunt would begin in earnest- that wound might not be a killing one, but Magd's fire-hardened spear-tips were coated in the sticky sap of the Ancestor Tree, that brought a slow paralysis. The shocked barbarians would find themselves dragging an ailing and wounded brother as they struggled back to their homes. Sometimes, overburdened by their casualty, they would leave a sack of fish behind and Magd would eat well. If they did not, he would stalk them and pick them off one by one until their haul was his.

Two years of hunting had put the scalps of 15 barbarians drying on his belt. He would be granted the honours due to a great warrior on his eventual homecoming, but first he intended to add to his tally. Now he was close enough to hear the soft popping and cracking of the wood on the campfire, and the breathing of the man who slowly moved around it. He reached inside his shirt to where his talismans hung and, passing by the lumpy depiction of the Mother, clutched at the spikier pendant of the Horned God. Later today he would give worship to the nurturing of the Mother, but now he needed the wild speed and primal savagery that the Horned God brought. Whispering a short prayer, he felt the presence of the god in the adrenaline that surged into his veins. He took a firm grip on his spear and coiled up like a spring....

The spring snapped back. Magd burst out of the trees and charged the stranger, but even as his momentum carried him towards his opponent he realised that this man was very different. Before he was halfway across the clearing, the stranger had sprung up in a blur of motion with spear in hand. Magd's every muscle tensed hard as bone as his feet bit into the earth, braking his headlong charge. Everything stopped.

He had halted not ten feet away from the stranger; his spear held overhead poised for the downward stab. The stranger had braced his spear-butt hard into the earth and faced Magd in a defensive crouch. Not a movement. Not a sound. Not even breathing.

It was the smell that struck Magd hardest. The stranger didn't smell like a barbarian with a comfortable settlement nearby- all woodsmoke and the sweet taint of horse-dung. He smelled of damp earth and leaf-litter; of old, stale sweat and rotting, untanned pelts. The smell of one who had spent months far from home, and the smell Magd carried himself. This man was like Magd, though his skin was chestnut-red and his spear-tip was a strange, dull yellow that caught the morning sun. Not one of the barbarians, but one strange and alone.

Neither had moved. Two spearpoints faced each other like night and day. Two pairs of eyes locked unblinking. No movement.

No movement.

No movement.

Then (astonishing!) the stranger's spearpoint moved. Slowly, so slowly, it moved downwards and outwards, until it pointed just away from Magd's body. Then paused. No movement.

No movement.

No movement.

Then, in a move no less astonishing, Magd took a slow step backwards and lowered his spear from the attacking poise, still holding the stranger's gaze.

No movement.

Then, almost beyond his will, Magd raised his right hand with his palm open and facing the stranger. In a move just as shocking, the stranger raised his hand in reply.

************************************

(Extract from the Secondary School textbook "Introduction to Macro-Economics")

The biggest breakthrough in our primitive economy came when we first encountered other civilisations peacefully. Trade was soon established, and our ancient ancestors started trading their furs, horses and charcoal for bronze and ivory.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Sheer brilliance.

[Kull]

I love reading Laz's stuff - and this "dawn of time" tale is really good.

[DarkCloud]

It isn't an attempt to describe madness (though some might argue it is). It's a case of pondering how religions start. This is a true Civ story, and that part was an attempt to show how the "breakthrough" of discovering Polytheism might have come about.

Hmm... Perhaps it should have been more obvious... it may be just me- but I don't see how I could have figured out religion from your prose... it seemed nice... but perhaps a few clarifiers would have been good...

As for your newest installment- I enjoyed it- and It was much easier to understand that it related to trade!

Backstory? It's an account of a developing civilisation, focussing on it's breakthroughs. The part I'm currently writing deals with making contact with other civilisations. This means that gaps of centuries may occur between episodes, but the heart of the story remains constant.

Okay- that clarifies things a lot
Perhaps an introduction might suffice although now that I think of it... the 1st installment was obviously settling a city- and I realized it at the time... I just didn't notice the jumps

[Hueij]

Laz, any chance this story gets finished?

[vovan]

I would also like to see this story continue. And I agree with Chrisius, this story as very well-written.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Hey Mr Gimp like when you going to write some more?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Sorry for the delay- I've been obscenely busy. I'm drafting the next part which should hopefully emerge in the next week or so.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Here you go- this one's all about what "researching" Monotheism might entail.


*******************************

Ralka the Chanter shuddered and twitched as he lay face-down on the bare earth floor of his hut. He had been talking with the gods all night, and was now exhausted and half-poisoned by the trance-drugs he had ingested. Kess sat in the doorway without demonstrating the merest hint of emotion. From dusk until dawn the blind prophet had sat there, listening to the gasps and the gurgling of the trancing Chanter as the fits had torn at him.

It is amazing how complete a picture can be built up through just sound, taste, scent and feeling, and that strange other sense of "knowing" that was a gift from the Gods. In the presence of that final sense, sight was just a frippery- a frippery that Kess had not experienced since he was eleven years old. He had put out his own eyes with a splinter of bone in order to sharpen his other senses- the mark of a true prophet. Since that day he had been respected, feared. He experienced visions of strange new futures that others did not, and even the Chanters were wary in his presence.

The Chanters had featured strongly in his latest series of visions. They were the keepers of the old knowledge of the Gods through their immense memories of stories and songs. They chanted the sun up every morning, ensuring that the power of the Gods lifted the sun above the horizon and warmed the earth. Yet Kess had seen powerful new sights in which the full array of the Gods- The Mother, The Horned God, The Teaser, The Screamer-By-Night, The Shadow of Hooks and the many others- were all revealed as just facets of one vast and all-knowing power. The braiding and clashing pathways of belief and faith were blown away by one shattering truth.

One God. One Faith. One Truth. One Chant. A heresy and a genesis that would change all. The Chanters had heard of it, and feared it. Ralka- oldest and greatest of the Chanters was going very deep to try to speak with the faint whispers of the Gods in order to find the truth of this. Kess, however, had gone deeper still.

He turned his empty eye-sockets on Ralka. Throughout the night he had never shown the slightest hint of an emotion. The prophet had gone so far into the starless night where the spirits of the long-dead margin ancestors wandered and howled that very little of the living man was left. Each time he talked with the dead, he became more like them. Kess would die young (it was the curse of prophecy) but while he lived he had power. The Chanters knew it.


Eventually Ralka raised his face from the ground and crawled towards the fire. He looked haggard and very old. He lay there and let some warmth seep back into his bones.

Kess spoke for the first time. "They were silent again, weren't they?"

Ralka did not reply, but no reply was needed. The slump of his shoulders and the eyes screwed shut in exhausted despair spoke with an eloquence that few chants could match.

"It's there in front of your face, Ralka. You are throwing your chants onto delusions and dreams". The prophet stood up, and felt his way out of the hut's doorway. With his back to the Chanter, he continued.

"You Chanters have the power, but you took a wrong turning generations ago. Now you're too lost in the woods to ever come out by your own power. Are you too proud to take my directions?"

Ralka slowly rose to his feet and looked out towards the morning sun. He had not chanted the sun up for days. It had still risen. It always had risen.

Kess spoke again. "Why can't you see it? You tied yourselves up in so many charms and taboos that you lost sight of the core. The truth at the heart of it all. Don't you see? In every one of our Gods, there was a common vision and shared aims. They were shared because they are all just faces of one God, Ralka. It was always there. Who are the blind?"

The prophet turned his sightless eyes to the sun and spread his arms. He felt the power of the God start to swell in him, like a flash-flood building up behind a beaver's dam. He paused, savouring this new sensation, before letting the first syllables of the chant start to slip effortlessly across his lips.

The rays of the warming sun sparkled as they illuminated the rough grey edges of Ralka's flint hand-axe. He grabbed the prophet around the throat with his left hand, and with all the sinewy strength left in his right arm he smashed his hand-axe down onto Kess's head. There was a sharp "KRAKK!" and blood splattered across the shaman's face. Kess made a croaking gasp, and clawed upwards, reaching towards his attacker. Ralka forced Kess's head down, and slammed the rough block of stone into his left temple, exposing the white bone of the skull and partially ripping off the ear. Again the hand-axe was raised and slammed down, onto the prophet's brow.

Kess slipped to the ground heavily. Ralka still held him, and smashed the hand-axe down again, and again, to the accompaniment of dull thuds and the sharper reports of splintering bone over the song of the local birds greeting the day. Arcs of blood flew through the air, looking almost black in the bright sun.

Finally Ralka stepped back, covered in blood and breathing hard. Kess's hands and feet twitched spastically, and thick blood was running from his mouth, nose and ears. The Chanter watched until all last traces of movement and life were gone, and the pool of blood around the body had stopped expanding.

Then he spat at it, and spoke for the first time.

"Unbeliever."

...and turned away to where his coracle was moored. He silently paddled away from the bank and vanished into mist and shadow.

[Chingis Khan]

Like everybody else says- awesome work!

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Wow!!

[Kull]

Excellent

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I suspect that I'll call this collection complete after the next part. The reason being that I really want to cover elements a little further down the line that represent the move away from the brutal and precarious early years, and that would pretty much result in emergence from the "cradle of thorns".

Then again, no story's ever really finished, is it?