Kandar

by Kenneth Bulmer

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

Two rival sorcerers cast their spells as flames rise above Dreaming Ferranoz, capital of the bright empire of Akkar. Half-human wolflings devour citizens. The conflicting spells meet - and paralyze the city. No one moves, even to breathe. Time stands still. The pall of smoke hangs motionless over unflickering fires. Outside the city walls, Kandar, prince of Ferranoz, learns that he might save his people - if he can uncover the infamous Trilogy of the Damned, the books of sorcery in whose pages is locked the secret incantation that can free Ferranoz.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 122

Sample

Of the Ensorcellment that overcame Dreaming Ferranoz and how Kandar sat down to read.

When the first ships of the wolf horde swept out of the red dawnrise to raven down on Dreaming Ferranoz, Kandar had long been closeted with his apparatus in his own secret retreat five miles outside the city walls.

He did not see those lean dark ships sliding down out of the blood-red light over the ancient gray walls of Ferranoz. He did not hear the first screams, or the chirring of the arrow storm or the surprised strident clangor as blade met blade.

Wolf-like, the half-men leaped from their metal ships, roaring a reckless challenge, their blades high, leaping ferociously to slay and maim, battling for plunder and rapine.

“This is not possible!” screamed a tall captain of the guard. He screamed no more as a wolfman-driven javelin pierced him through and his blood bubbled brightly over gilded armor.

Frightened councilors scurried through the palace, their slippers clack-blacking on marble flagstones and scuffling on rare Sanghara rugs, to wake Pandin Heliodotus from his wide silken bed. The Emperor awoke and understood. His tired old face, deep-marked by the benign exercise of power over fifty years, tautened with this fresh, this unexpected, this impossible, crisis. He hurried to a tall window that commanded a broad perspective of towers and battlements and gleaming roofs. He saw the black smoke rising evilly from the watchtowers.

“The last day has come,” he said, and his gentle voice betrayed the sorrow he felt. Pandin Heliodotus had been a mighty warrior in his youth, and although the iron strength might have left his limbs, it nerved his willpower and determination still. “Send for Quantoch—”

Before he could finish the command his son, the Prince Sheldion, appeared at the bedchamber door.

Sheldion wore full battle accoutrements, his gilded armor gleaming, the tall defiant plumes nodding from his helm. His hard face, brown with constant exercise and hunting in the sunshine, showed a tough and self-reliant strength. One day all Ferranoz would be his. No curs of wolfling half-men were going to deprive him of that golden heritage!

“Father—” he said, concern for the old man gentling his rough voice. “I have sent for Quantoch. But he is not to be found. Very early this morning he was seen slipping out—”

“By the south gate, I’ll warrant!” “Yes, father. He must have gone to see his brother Quarmeln—”

“And,” said the Emperor heavily, “to plead once more with Kandar.”

At the sound of the name the Prince Sheldion’s face darkened.

“The city is attacked,” he said, roughly, shaking himself out of unhappy thoughts. “The wolf horde have struck at the heart of the empire. They have flown in their metal ships clear across all the lands from the frontier. They are aided by a magic greater than ever they have used before—”

“Quantoch—”

‘The court necromancer is absent in the hour of the city’s peril! But whilst I have my true sword no wolfling will enter the palace—”

The dull and continuous rumbling from the city streets increased sharply. Individual sounds spurted up. The cry of a man mortally hurt. The clanging resonance as the bronze springs of a great catapult let fly. The clash of mail and harness, the gong-strokes of hand-to-hand combat, the sundering shriek of splitting metal.

“They are nearer! The fiends leap walls and battlements in their cursed magic flying ships! I must go, Father. I but to see you safe. My place is at the head of my men—”

“Go, my son, and may the spirit of the omnipotent Heliodotus go with you.”

Saying this, Pandin Heliodotus, in the role of God-Emperor, signed the secret sign in the air before his son. Then he held his son’s bare right hand, from which the mailed mitten dangled, in a brief farewell.

With a martial clangor of mailed feet the Prince Sheldion marched out.

From his tall window the God-Emperor watched the carnage, and his heart lay heavily in his breast.

Logic told him that the wolflings were being used.

The bright Empire of Akkar and its brightest jewel, the capital city of Ferranoz, had long resisted all efforts to destroy its wonder and life. From the Sea of Dreams to the west came corsairs and reavers; from the swamps and the ice floes of the south ranged fur-clad barbarians and outlaws, and from the encompassing lands and deserts and forests to north and east stole shadowy assassins and marched glittering armies of men and half-men, all, all those beings outside the pale of Akkar, bent on the destruction of the fairest civilization on Earth.

He looked down and saw the columned infantry of the Guard marching in ranked steadiness toward the conflict. But his spirit trembled. Of what avail swords and spears against the evident magic that had transported the wolf horde in slender metal ships through the air and over the centuries-old walls of Ferranoz?

Where was Quantoch? Orders had been given, and fleet chariots had sped in riven dust clouds southward toward Kandar’s secret retreat. But the feeling of doom pervaded the air. Pandin Heliodotus found it difficult to draw breath. He doubted that even Quantoch’s unrivaled mastery of the thaumaturgical arts could win the day for Bright Akkar and Dreaming Ferranoz.

The Emperor fretted and trembled and tried to bolster his iron-spirit with strong beliefs in victory but his evil premonition of disaster would not be shaken off.

Akkar had grown over the centuries, ever pushing outward with the light of civilization. Sometimes her frontiers had diminished as some petty lordling, cunning with the arts learned from Ferranoz itself, had momentarily carved himself out a kingdom; but then the outward tide of pacification had resumed. But now, now for some five centuries, the frontiers had remained static, save for a few inevitable local adjustments. The snarling of the barbarians had grown fiercer over the years. Pandin Heliodotus searched his own heart for a reason and could find none.

A sound on the marble floor brought his attention away from the evil sights and sounds outside and he turned to see King Shamrath enter, clutching his robe agitatedly about him. Not chronologically as old as the God-Emperor, King Shamrath wore his years less easily. His yellow-dyed beard and his drawn face alike betrayed the fear writhing in him, as he pulled that beard with one hand, dragging at his robe with the other. He staggered to an onyx chair and slumped, his lips trembling.

“It is the last of the Days,” he said, breathily.

Pandin Heliodotus was not to be seen dejected before a lesser king, even if that king ruled a land in fee to Akkar, away on her southern borders, a buffer state long erected between the Empire and the blubber-eating barbarians of the south.

“It may be as you say, Shamrath, the last of the Days foretold to us by the Books. But we will meet whatever the dark fates have in store for us like men and like warriors!”

Shamrath swallowed. He peered up distractedly. “I saw the Crown Prince, going forth to battle, noble and proud and truly warlike; but I did not see your younger son—” Shamrath swallowed again. “I have sent Elthalee to the women’s quarters; but—but—”

Thunder darkened the brow of the Emperor.

“Fear not, O king, that your granddaughter will not be marrying a man and a warrior!”

“No—you know me better than that, Pandin. We have been friends since our youth, and I am overjoyed that at last our houses will be joined. But this day every man of Akkar must fight!”

“Every man will!” And Pandin Heliodotus turned once more to the vista of battle.

King Shamrath joined him, and together the two old men looked out on the battle that would decide perhaps for a thousand years the destiny of the Empire.

The Prince Sheldion jumped lithely down the marble steps of the palace that rose dominating the city. All about in the broad avenues and the narrow connecting streets flames flickered cruelly and black smoke rose against the morning sky. The sun would shine hotly today; yet the scenes on which it shed its rays would burn and smolder with a fierceness it could not know.

An armored groom struggled with his horses harnessed to his war chariot. Milk-white steeds from the far east, each one represented a fortune in jewels and gold. The four of them would ransom two petty kingdoms.

“Not today!” snapped Sheldion. He waved the grooms aside. “Street fighting is no place for a quadriga. Ho there, my warriors! Dismount, all!” He stared arrogantly forth on his personal chariot squadron.

Fifty chariots, all gilded and painted, all harnessed with matched steeds sleek and groomed in the morning light, fifty fighting machines with men armed with javelin and spear, sword and shield, they waited on the broad marble forecourt of the palace.

“Dismount!” shouted Sheldion. He snatched up the heart-shaped chariot shield, cunningly-shaped for quadriga work. He lifted his broadsword aloft. “Today we fight on the feet the good Lord Helios gave us!” He smiled proudly on his men. “This day will cure your corns!”

Dismounting, his men laughed at the crude joke. Avid for war, trained fighting men, they thirsted for action.

A waft of black smoke and an evil stench of burning gusted across the forecourt. Straight ahead, the Imperial Way stretched from the palace down a series of wide steps, going straight across the center of the city toward the harbor and the sea. Halfway along, a knot of struggling men was being slowly pushed back as the wolflings fought their way toward the ultimate prize of their conquest.

“Form a wedge!” shouted Sheldion.

Quickly the charioteers ran to form a triangular mass of men, spears leveled, shields up, the inner men ready with poised javelins.

Sheldion’s driver, a gnarled and massive man clad in thick leather armor, studded with bronze, took the second larger chariot shield from its beckets above the gilded and finely-spoked wheels.

“I am your back today, master,” he grunted.

Sheldion nodded. “Good Tojas, with your strength to guard me I fight as ten men.”

All was ready. The wolflings down the Imperial Way had pushed nearer. Already the charioteers could see the white splodges of the infantry of the guard’s faces. The infantry had turned. They were facing back. They were running.

With a firm and steady step the Prince Sheldion marched to the apex of the triangle. He positioned himself at the point of that armoured wedge. Tojas, blank-faced, grim and unforgiving, positioned himself to Sheldion’s left and rear. There would be no sudden spear-thrust from that quarter to bother the prince.

Sheldion lifted his sword. The blade gleamed with a flash of white fire in the sunlight.

The blade swept down.

The mass of men swept forward at once in a jog-trot motion that would carry them through the ranks of any enemy.

Sandaled feet beat against the marble. Sweat dripped. Bronzed hands clasped spear haft and javelin, the heart-shaped chariot shields lifted high in hedgehog defense. The Charioteers of Ferranoz plunged forward.

A single thought pulsed in Sheldion’s mind.

“We must fight on until Quantoch is found! Only Quantoch can save us against this evil magic!”

The infantry scattered. A howl of triumph arose from the wolflings. They raced forward, intent on cutting right through to the palace and all its treasures, its gold and jewels, its wines and plate, its women …

That breaking wave of gray bodies hurled squarely against the charioteers’ flying wedge.

At once the clangor of arms, the shriek of dying men and half-men, the insane clamor of pitched battle racketed through the marbles and columns of the Imperial Way.

This was no exercise, no battle-maneuver, no well-contrived drill. This was red blood spurting, this was severed arms and heads bounding on the marble, this was gray ferocious shapes reeling back with the javelins protruding from gray-white bellies. At the apex of that triangle of death Sheldion wielded his brand like a god of myth, slaying any who ventured within the sweep of that deadly blade.

In that first shock the gray . . .