all.
He had gone up on the heights alone, and there the vision had come to him, and he had seen his totem-beast, and learned his True Name.
And he was blest above all the warriors of his tribe since time began: for the beast of his vision was the Black Hawk of Valkarth itself, the symbol of his race. And he knew then that his destiny would be stranger and more wondrous and more terrible than that of other men.
And he had seen a prophecy, too.
He had seen the Black Hawk fight and slay the Snow Bear. The ghost-beasts had fought there on the windy heights near to the blazing stars, and from that fight the Black Hawk had borne away the victory.
He drank down cold wine and rested for a time.
Then he went on, to make the prophecy come true.
* * * *
It was the month of Garang in late spring, and the thaws had begun. The great snow that lay thick upon the heights and that cumbered the steep slope of the cliffs was rotten and lay loose, water trickling here and there. When he crossed over to the other side of the ridge he could look down on the valley where the tents of the Snow Bear tribe stood out black against the snow, which reddened, now, to the first shafts of dawn.
They were weary after the long battle, the Snow Bear warriors—those of them that had survived. They had killed and killed and come away with the Black Hawk treasure of mammoth-ivory and red gold and with those of the Black Hawk women and girl-children who had not been fortunate enough to die beside their men.
They had feasted long, drunk deep, and caroused lustily and late, the victorious Snow Bear warriors. And now they slept heavily, gorged on meat and blood and wine and womanflesh.
From that sleep they would not awaken.
For a long moment the boy stood, arms folded against his breast, looking down on the camp.
His face was grim and expressionless, like a mask cast in hard bronze. He was a boy in years, but the iron of manhood had entered his soul. He knew what he must do; the spirits of the dead called to him in the windy silence, and he hearkened, and bent to the task.
With the great sword he began to cut the snow away.
It was not hard to do; the growing warmth of a Northlands spring had done half the job for him. The broken masses of snow began to roll down the steep, high slopes; as they came whirling down, they broke more snow loose, and each mass became a greater mass, until at last a mountain of heavy snow poured like a ponderous white river down the cliffs to collide in thunder on the floor of the valley below.
They had put up their tents close under those cliffs, the Snow Bear warriors, to block away the wind. Now it was snow that came down upon them, not wind, and by the time the avalanche came thundering down upon the tents it weighed many tons.
It crushed them into the earth, smothered them and their treasure and the ruined, broken, empty-eyed women they had taken captive; and in that thundering white fury not one lived.
The tribes of Valkarth have a simple faith.
Only those brave warriors who face the foe, and fight, and fall in battle, only their bold spirits are borne by the War Maids to the Hall of Heroes, to feast eternity away before the throne of Father Gorm.
And what of they that die by accident in gross and drunken slumber? The shamans shrug and do not say. But they do not die the death of men, the death of warriors; the Hall of Heroes does not open to such as they. Their miserable souls slink cringing through the grey mists and cold shadows of the Underworld forever.
The vengeance of Thongor was completed.
5
Red Dawn
Morning lit the east and the stars fled, one by one, before the red shafts of dawn.
When Thongor had made certain that not a single foe had survived the avalanche, he turned away and set his face to the sun.
The task was accomplished and he had lived.
Where, now, would he go? To a valley of corpses and an empty hut, whose walls would ring no more to his father’s joyous laughter and his mother’s quiet, crooning songs?
Not there; he could not go back.
But where, then? No other tribe would take him in, for life in the Northlands was a grim, bleak struggle for existence, and every mouth that was fed meant that another must go hungry.
His people were extinct; there was nowhere for him to go.
And then it was that a verse from the old warriors’ song he had sung over his father’s grave for a dirge returned to him. And he thought of the Southlands, of the Dakshina, the lush jungle-countries that lay beside the warm waters of the Gulf, beyond the Mountains of Mommur to the south.
There, bright young cities glittered in the bold sun, with green gardens, and laughing girls. There, fiery kings and princes contended in mighty wars, and kingdoms lay ripe and ready for the taking. He thought of gold and gems, of fruit warm from the sun, of whirling battles on the green plains, of dark-eyed, barbaric women…
And he set the great broad sword back in its scabbard, and drank deep of the red wine, watching dawn rise up over the edges of the world to fill the land with light; and he set his face towards the south, that last of the Black Hawk warriors.
And he passed from sight, down the hill-slope, striding with long steps towards the place where the great range of purple mountains marched across the world from west to east.
His heart lifted within him, for the night was over. And as he strode from view, he lifted his voice and sang again that warriors’ song…
Out there, beyond the setting sun,
Are kingdoms waiting to be won!
And crowns, and women, gold and wine—
Courage! And hold the battleline!
INTRO TO THE CITY IN THE JEWEL
For over two years, the youthful Thongor wanders the vastness of the Lemurian Northlands. Here the tribesmen are clannish, suspicious of strangers and a swift death is promised to anyone straying into their jealously protected domains. Thongor lives on his wits, often forced into using his fighting skills to survive, developing them, hardening himself until he has become a dangerous, fierce warrior, lion-like and elusive.
Not yet seventeen, he moves ever southward, away from the lands of his birth, into the huge range of the Mountains of Mommur.
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