The Fields of Gorgo

As the Azhdark guards warily parted their spears to admit Krogg and his sabre toothed tiger Sabira through the arched ornately carved gateway, the Neanderthal took the time to study the houses that neatly lay along both sides of the central stone path.

The huts were made of stone block walls cemented with baked paste, with thatched roofs and thick poles of wood jutting out from the front in place of a balcony. These poles served as perches for the villager’s pet pterodactyls. The leathery winged, long beaked lizards hosted a variety of shapes, from long crests to arrow headed tails. They all had long impressive narrow beaks, with some of them filled with jutting needle-like teeth. They cawed, groomed and preened as they observed the new visitors to their village.

The villagers were elaborately dressed in red, yellow and green garments, from head-wrappings to vests with white stitched patterns that left the right shoulder exposed, looked healthy and importantly, were armed. Ready to plant a spear or sword in the chest of any intruder who tried their luck at looting their homes or make off with one of their daughters.

They appeared healthy and well fed, the mark of a well-protected tribe who looked after one another. The health of your neighbour meant the health of all. Krogg could attest to that value, back when he lived with his own tribe. This was even more so when he saw an elderly, wrinkled man wrapped in a turquoise shawl, sat on a chair with thick wheels set under the armrests. He squinted at him with beetle-like eyes from the shelter of his doorway, which had a green painted triangular archway stained white and black from the countless droppings of their resident pterodactyl roosting above.

The villagers also did not throw stones or hiss at him like they would at a diseased animal, like other Sapien tribes have done in the past. He was grateful for that too, and he could feel the tension roll off the huge lumbering shoulders of Sabira as she noticeably relaxed into a gentle ambling gait.

The sabre-tiger flanked his left side, cautiously eyeing the villagers with her ethereal sky blue eyes. The deep orange and black striped sabre-tiger was fiercely protective of him, and death would have claimed him many times in the past, if not for her bear-like paws filled with iron-sharp claws and dagger-sized fangs coming to his aid. Her shoulders, which sported thick limbs longer than her hind legs, reached an inch taller than his head, making her taller than most bears when they walked on all four legs.

A ball pounced once and rolled across Safira’s path to stop in front of Krogg’s feet. Movement to his left drew Krogg’s attention to a pot-bellied skinny armed little boy, probably only four or five winters old, scamper with flapping arms, his head down and focused only on the ball.

There was a collective gasp from the surrounding villagers in the street, a sudden tension coiling in the air like a serpent preparing to strike as the boy saw the massive tiger’s paws and froze, glanced up with wide-eyed open mouth wonder at the hulking feline predator staring back at him.

Krogg looked between the boy and the cat blinking lazily down at him. The boy was more stunned by wonder and curiosity than abject terror. Too young then to be taught about the dangers of sabre-tigers roaming the jungle along with the menagerie of carnivores that claimed Vorrtaya as their home.

Krogg looked down at the small wooden ball by his bare feet, then bent down and picked it up, feeling the notches and scratches along its smooth surface in his leathery palm. He looked up and reached towards the boy with the ball, curling his lips to something resembling a soft smile, by neanderthal standards, at least.

The boy, brown-skinned with wide eyes and a fuzzy growth of hair and dressed in only in a simple brown loincloth, reached shyly for the ball and took it from Krogg’s unresisting hand.

There was a flurry of movement which Sabira glanced up to see as the boy’s mother hurriedly approached to retrieve the boy. She wore an intricately patterned red and orange head wrap, and a teal-coloured sleeveless vest that hugged her matronly form and left her left shoulder bare, along with a black skirt dotted with yellow and white spots that flowed around her legs as she scooped up the boy and scurried back to her husband’s side. The father was a bare chested and tall warrior with a stern expression and a white knuckle grip around a stave he carried that was adorned with intricately carved glyphs and whorls.

Krogg regarded the family and the mother scolding her child under a hushed voice, met the eyes of Sabira who flicked her ears, almost like a gesture of dismissal at the exchange, and together they carried on, under the watchful eyes of the Azhdarkian villagers.

Together, they padded up the pathway through the village, up to the Chieftain’s Moot, an impressively sized circular hut, walled with sturdy tree trunk logs and crowned with a pointed thatched roof from which smoke lazily drifted out.

Krogg had learned that some chieftain and clan leaders favored caution, preferring not to meet with strangers within the opulence of their palaces. In this meeting hut for ambassadors and other visitors of merit and repute, the chieftain would not have to worry about losing his riches and war booty to thieves with quick knives and quicker feet, should any decide to do mischief and make off with their clan’s heritage.

Approaching the Moot, they were met with by two more guards wielding small curved swords and iron studded animal hide shields. One with his weapon sheathed held up a huge hand, and pointed to the tiger, shaking his head with an unreadable expression.

Krogg nodded, and turning to Sabira, he raised his hand to softly stroke the top of her head, which was the size of his chest.

“Taig, Sabira. Taig.”

Sabira grumbled, clearly displeased with being told to wait. Eyeing the guards with ready suspicion, she slowly curtsied her back legs and placed her left rump on the ground, the rest of her body following suit. Her short tail waved restlessly as she rested her long forelimbs on the ground, kneading the dirt with steel-grey claws.

The guard then pointed to Krogg’s stone-headed leather-handled oak club and his flint spear holstered on his back by a strap of woven plant fiber, and pointed to where his companion stood by the hut’s entrance. Krogg nodded again, and untwining the leather strap of his club handle and unslinging his spear, he placed them at the feet of the other guard, not letting his eyes drift from the man’s equally expressionless face as he did.

The open-handed guard nodded and gestured for Krogg to follow. The guard was tall and heavily built, but the white skinned Krog matched his width and barely held a sliver of fat compared to the well-fed brown-hued guard. He followed the guard into the sanctity of the hut, pushing through the vine-laden doorway into a cool dark chamber.

Inside, the evening sun was blotted out by curtains of thick leaves covering the windows. A cooling fire hungrily devouring its own embers provided some warmth to stave off the evening chill. Krogg followed the guard around the fire to the rear of the hut, where, on a fiercely carved chunk of stone that elevated a wood-carved throne, sat a mighty, imposing man.

He was leaner than Krog expected him to be, with large bony hands clutching the carved arm rests. His body, bare from the waist up, was lined with scars, crisscrossing along the bulging sinew of his torso. His black irises watched Krogg with a keen hawk-like focus.

The guard knelt, and Krogg did the same, placing his thick knuckles to the ground.

“Chee geh.” The deep rumbling voice of the chieftain replied and Krogg glanced up to see those hands, like uplifted talons, lift and turn upwards to signal them to rise. Krogg followed the guard up to his feet.

With one slow wave, the chieftain dismissed the guard, and soon enough, he and the Krogg were left alone in the Moot.

Both men regarded each other, their faces made of stone. Where Krogg sported a short mane of black uncombed hair and his face was filled with unshaven stubble, thick eyebrows across a deep brow and the beginnings of a beard and moustache, the deep brown chieftain was shaven completely bald on the scalp and the face. Krogg knew that some Azhdark riders favored speed above all else, never allowing a single strand of hair to interfere with their swimming, running or their flight aboard their pterodactyl mounts.

The bald man, with a brow shape that gave him an intense stare, an aquiline nose and full lips on a proud face marked here and there by nicks and scars, regarded the short but heavily built neanderthal with a relaxed but focused scrutiny. A filed length of bone pressed through the septum of the man’s nose, and his cheeks were ridged with tiny raised scars, set in rows as ritual markings with a small knife. His chin was tapered, round and strong, while Krogg wore the slightly receding chin of his own kind. Krogg knew this was a leader who had not idly rested on his laurels during his years. He had kept himself sharp and strong, and that already earned him respect in the Neanderthal’s eyes.

“Kr-Ogg?” He asked with one word, his accented tongue clipping the singular word in two at the r.

Krogg nodded in reply.

The chieftain nodded back with approval, no doubt relieved his time had not been wasted requesting this summons. He pointed the fingers of his right hand to his scarred chest.

“Khan-Dar. Ketzalt Freygar.”

Krogg knew enough of the Azhdark tongue to understand that Khan-Dar was a rider of the feared flying dactyl known as the Ketzalt, a highly revered and powerful dactyl. Taller than a giraffe, with a long beaked head longer than its neck and body, and a wingspan known to blot out the sun, the Ketzalt was among the largest winged beasts to take flight across Vorrtaya’s jungles.

Krogg nodded to show his understanding, and Khan-Dar smiled grimly, seeing the glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

He stood, rising to his full height, and even on his stone platform, Krogg knew that Khan-Dar was tall enough to look a Great Raptor in the eye. He wore a belt made of leather studded with glistening tiny gems and girded with folds of impressive, thick animal hide that covered the chieftain’s upper legs.

On Khan-Dar’s muscular arms, he wore wooden bracelets rimmed with pale animal hairs and silver arm rings around his biceps. Dangling at his right hip by a sliver of fiber was a curved knife adorned with smaller blades along its body. Krogg had seen these before, used as devastating throwing weapons.

The chieftain turned to his right, and walked to a black and emerald shape on a waist-high pillar made of a fine white stone laced with jagged dark veins. Khan-Dar bent slightly and wrapped his fingers reverently around the shape, and Krogg’s eyes adjusted enough in the dim firelight to realize that it was a head-dress, with large feathers plucked from the tails of raptors and ostrich lizards.

When the giant turned to fix him with a solemn stare, he realized that this was something of a crown belonging to a different person, too small to adorn the brow of the chieftain

“Tekhar. Varruun Eske mann, Ketzalteese Vreytana. Me’en Vahuteer. Shaheen-Dar.” The chieftan spoke.

Krogg looked at him and back at the headdress that was not his, not quite understanding, yet. Noting this, Khan-dar lifted his left hand to place on his chest.

“Zhorr, reegar.”

He gestured with an open hand to the headdress, its feathers swaying gracefully in the air like grass in the wind.

“Vahuteer. Vreytana. Shaheen-Dar.”

Krogg’s understanding of the chieftain’s language was still rudimentary at best, having listened in on Azhdark scout conversations. This had been during his stealthy incursions along the treetops in his youth, before he met Sabira. That said, he knew well enough to distinguish names from words by hearing their repetition and inflections.

“Shaheen-Dar.” He pointed with one thick digit to the headdress and then to the expectant Chieftain. “Vahuteer?”

Shaheen-Dar. Your daughter?

“Chai. Me’en Vahuteer, jek Vreytana dar Azhdark.” The chieftain intoned back to him with a grim nod of approval.

Krogg conveyed his understanding with a nod and then a bow of his head. Vreytana was the word for holy woman. A priestess in the Azhdark tongue.

So Shaheen-Dar was Khan-Dar’s daughter and a priestess. The High Priestess to be precise. The highest honor a woman could wield along with being the chieftain’s daughter.

Khan-Dar nodded again, and returned the headdress with the tenderness a father would give laying his newborn babe in its cradle. The headdress was a much a part of his daughter as it was a symbol of divine rank.

Khan-Dar turned with a sweep of what appeared to be a two-pronged cape, fashioned like a pair of pterodactyl wings and clasped around his neck with a link of gleaming yellow metal. He stepped off the dais and strode down to Krogg’s level, then turned to his left and moved to another raised stone platform. This one, placed by the wall under a window, was tall enough to serve as a table, and upon it, Krogg saw the object of Khan-Dar’s focus.

A sheet of cracked papyrus lay on the flat surface of the raised stone, its curling edges held down by four stones for each corner. Krogg knew this to be a drawing of the hilly valley the Azhdarks called home. Their village was on the highest hill in the jungle valley, surrounded by heavy jungle and a steep vertical climb on all sides.

Its location alone was one of its best defenses. Only rival clans who flew pterodactyls or those with animal mounts to negate the enfeebling climb could think to assail the settlement, which was ringed with thick logs with spiked tops and constantly patrolled by long bow archers on the battlements and riders on the backs of their pterodactyl mounts.

Krogg took his place on the opposite side of the block, and Khan-Dar parted the leaf-cover, resting the leaf on an embedded tusk to allow the sinking sun’s light directly onto the map.

Khan-Dar began to speak, and Krogg listened and translated to himself as best as he could.

Shaheen-Dar and her guards had left the village to gather supplies for a ritual, something to do with the moon waxing. - Or was it waning? -  She did not return at the expected time, causing the village great concern. Khan-dar led the search party himself, tracking them south to a clearing where a plant - an herb or mushroom? - was said to grow.

There they found the aftermath of a scuffle. The guards acquitted themselves with bravery and loyalty to the bitter end, despite being caught off guard by an overwhelming force.

They were then butchered and eaten.

All that had been left were gnawed bones. The only evidence that led Khan-Dar to conclude that a hyena pack had not been responsible was the teeth marks on the bones. They were too small to belong to a wolf, cat, raptor or hyena.

It was men who did this. A pack of cannibalistic Ape-men.

The chieftain bent down, lifted and slammed a large white ball on the map, startling Krogg during his concentration to translate his words. It was no longer needed in this case however, as understanding dawned in Krogg’s mind along with an icy dagger in his gut.

“Mayeekar!” Khan-Dar roared, and spat on the object.

Krogg stared at the black pits that were once the eyes of the de-fleshed ape-man skull. How similar it was to his own skull, with the thick brow ridge and the flat-topped head, compared to the dome shape that Sapiens had.

But ape-men had renounced what made them human a long time ago. They were subterranean dwelling brutes, living in dark caves underground, venturing out to range across the land and risk the predators of Vorrtaya to hunt and drag their kills back to their lairs.

Their stone craft was limited. They used wooden spears, crude short bows and scavenged weapons from anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path. Some wore pelts from the animals they killed for warmth, draping their skins crudely over their shoulders in place of needle-work and boiling leather. They held ape-like strength, able to rend a man to pieces with the effort it took to rip apart a sapling. And their teeth…

Khan-Dar’s tale revealed how one had ambushed him as he found his daughter’s headdress, wrenched off her head and carelessly tossed aside in the melee. The ape-man had been injured in the skirmish and was simply left to die by its pack, another sign of their lost humanity. Krogg looked at the teeth he knew to be used for slicing, cutting and grinding, suppressing a shudder as he beheld the fangs of an ape that renounced fruit and nuts stitched into the head of a man.

The chieftain paused, and Krogg glanced up to see the man’s lips grow tight, his jaws muscles bulging as he noisily breathed in through his nostrils, noting how the great man trembled.

Krogg spoke again. “K…Kuruu…ney sorven..vahuteer.” What he hoped he had just said was ‘Sorry for your daughter.’

To his relief, Khan-Dar only nodded slowly by way of reply. Then he glanced up at Krogg with the dying firelight and the setting sun alive and burning in his eyes.

“Shaheen-Dar suuk feliyen. Feliyen!”

Alive?

“Feliyen?” Krogg asked, repeating the word.

“Chai! Feliyen!” Khan-Dar nodded, and began to speak again.

After killing the ape-man, Khan-Dar set his men to task tracking down the marauders. And soon enough, they found tracks. The ape-men dragged something away. Too large to be a limb of raw meat. Then they stopped and picked up their bounty, having one of their largest carry it.

The one clue that they knew it was Shaheen-Dar was the ringlet they found placed on a tree branch, pulled and nearly snapped off its bough. A ringlet that contained a lock of Shaheen-Dar’s black hair.

Encouraged by this, Khan-Dar followed his trackers down into the valley, braving the evening and the nocturnal predators to find more pieces of Shaheen-Dar’s jewellery. She had stripped herself of her regal finery to leave a trail for anyone who would come to her rescue.

He pointed to the map, and Krogg followed the man’s finger as he showed the path he and his men took following the abductor’s trail.

And then his finger stopped abruptly.

The ink-drawn jungle had ended abruptly, and beyond Khan-Dar’s finger, there was a circle where rows of neatly drawn slanted lines lay beyond the boundary line.

It was grass. A field of grass surrounded by jagged rocks and a denser forest than the last to the south. Krogg glanced back up at Khan-Dar to see him take in a deep breath, and shakily loosen it from his chest.

Krogg understood immediately why the chieftain had reacted this way. This was a brave, proud man who had defended his place and his people by using his blades, his wits and sheer will. He had stopped here at the edge of the jungle and had been deeply ashamed at being unable to go any further to rescue his daughter.

And yet, his choice to hold and not pursue the ape-men any further was not due to cowardice. It was from wisdom borne from years of brutal experience living on a jungle island filled with a host of monsters.

Khan-Dar had only given up the pursuit of his daughter, stopping short of returning and sending an entire war party after the ape-men for one reason and only one reason alone.

And so, Krogg waited and watched, as Khan-Dar lifted his finger and placed it on another shape, on the opposite side of the field.

And Krogg began to understand why he and his loyal friend Sabira had been summoned to do what an entire army of Azhdark warriors could not. Why Khan-dar had allowed a Neanderthal wanderer and his pet Sabre-tiger, of all the mercenaries in the savage land of Vorrtaya, into the heart of his village under wary eyes and welcomed him with the hospitality he could offer.

It was because he could not risk the lives of his men, or worse, his own daughter, for the plan he wished to set in motion.