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THE UNNAMED
By Suisjeme

Chapter One.

Slightly built, yet muscular, and dark, with neat, black eyebrows, he stared into the middle-distance across the valley. The order to destroy all trace of the buildings and burn the bodies had been given in his deep-throated, threatening monotone. The stone he sat on felt cold and he was still losing blood from the wound across his upper left thigh.

"Your leg needs attention," said a tall, red-bearded warrior, in a matter-of-fact voice. He was leaning on a two-handed sword stuck point down in the turf of the hillside.

"Who died?"

"Felon, and the woman, Brondale. They were caught in the first shower of arrows. Brondale was hit in the neck. Felon caught one in his upper arm. She put up her arms and he dealt the death blow cleanly. I saw her head fall, but he was pierced immediately many times. He was dead before he hit the ground."

"How old was Bron?"

"At least twenty. Felon was twenty-five. He was a magnificent fighter. He’ll be missed."

"He’ll not be mourned!" the Unnamed said forcefully, as he rose from the cold, stone seat now stained with streaks of blood from his thigh. "I’ll not have mourning. He died a good death. A good death, in battle, with the blood hot. I’ll not have mourning in the camp tonight. There’s food here, those young girls in the grain-pit and that crazy musician... the one found trembling in the grave ditches with his harp. We’ll feast well tonight. Felon died, Bron too. That’s the all." He turned round, glowered and snapped,

"Remember that, you great fat, red hog!"

"I’m not fat, Lord. I’m the tallest and strongest of us all. Seventeen life-lovers fell before me today.... and not a scratch on me. It was good.... a good fight. Here, lean on me. Your leg is weakened. We must stop the blood."

"My leg is weakened, but I’m stronger than yesterday. I’m a day nearer the end. You too, Red. You were fierce and hard. You are now so much nearer death. We both are."

The red-bearded warrior tugged the enormous, two-handed sword from the earth, as if it was as light as a short-sword in his gloved right hand. He swung his shield strap over his shoulder and pulled the Unnamed close in his encircling left arm.

They half-slid down the damp grass of the steeper part of the slope, towards the noise of the shouting warriors making camp by the side of an old burial mound some three hundred paces upwind of the pillaged and burnt village.

Red stumbled and fell to his right. The Unnamed, cushioned by Red’s size and girth, sprang to alertness immediately, his sword held ready as the earth caved-in where they’d tripped.

An old woman crawled up towards the grey light of evening from a muddy pit. The Unnamed reached and grasped her bony shoulder and lifted her bodily, keeping her at arm’s length and his sword point hovering close to her chest. He knew how Death came unexpectedly in the form of a quick dagger thrust, even from beneath the muddied homespun of an old screaming crone. He threw her towards Red, who’d recovered quickly.

The red-bearded hulk swung the double-handed sword and it hissed as it sliced across the area of the woman’s stomach. Her screams stopped abruptly and she fell with a gasp, doubling over to her knees. He let the momentum of the sword carry him round and he was bringing it down to deal the death-blow when the blade clashed loudly with a deflecting slash from the Unnamed’s sword.

Red stared. ‘Why?" he gasped. "It would have been a good, clean death?" He stared at his leader.

The Unnamed ignored him and knelt beside the woman. He lifted her head and looked into her tear-clean eyes. She was gasping with pain and holding her stomach together. He knew she would die within the next few moments. She looked old, at least older than thirty. "Had you a knife, old woman?’

She managed to indicate she had no weapon.

"Good," the Unnamed said, standing and turning to face the puzzlement of Red. "She was weaponless, Red. She wasn’t prepared. She’s a lover of life. They’re everywhere." He turned back to her. She had fallen on to her side. He thrust at her with a twisting blade, feeling a slight pain in his wrist as he continued to turn the steel buried in her chest.

She made a strange gurgling noise and died.

The Unnamed withdrew his blade and bent to wipe it clean on the grass.

"I don’t understand, Lord," Red said gruffly, as if his pride had been hurt.

"No. None of you understand. Not yet," the Unnamed said, in his quieter, threatening monotone. He pushed her back into the muddy pit with his foot, using his good leg. The body slid in awkwardly and an arm protruded.

Red watched his Lord stagger slightly as he pushed with the weight on his wounded leg, ignoring the pain it must have caused him. Red noticed the woman’s upright arm with its hand like a wilted flower head. He swung his huge sword with unbelievable swiftness and felled the white stick of dead flesh and bone as if it was a corn stalk.

In the encampment there was a brief silence, as the wounded leg of the Unnamed was noticed. Scolas appeared to drift towards them in his long, dark robe, because his feet were hidden by the folds dragging over the muddy grass. He removed the sword-shaped package from the Unnamed’s back. He unbuckled the leathers and belt and ordered Red to drag them down the Unnamed’s legs.

Red pushed his Lord down on the grass and tugged off the leather trousers.

The Unnamed felt the redness of raw pain and tightened his lips. "It’s a good, clean cut, Scolas. Do what you must."

"I will," the pale grey, aged face replied, as it hovered above the leg of the Unnamed, examining it carefully. He called for some wine and a warrior threw him a leather bottle. The deeply red wine splashed into the wound. Scolas, sometimes known as GreyMage, allowed the whole bottleful to drain in a steady stream. The cut was only about two finger-lengths long, but it was deep. As the wine came to an end, Scolas parted the lips of the wound and ensured the dribbles reached into its depths. "We’ll see if it heals," he muttered, and from a leather pouch produced a palmful of grey powder. "Hold him still, Red," he ordered.

The Unnamed knew what was coming. Scolas did this with all wounds that had dug deep to the bone. He looked away at a young warrior embracing one of the captured village girls. She was young, attractive in an awkward way, and had long dark hair. He was partial to long, dark hair on a woman. He heard the crack of flints. There was a soft suffused sound like a boot coming loose from sticky mud. He looked down at the wounded thigh. A flame had sparked along its length held open by the long fingers of the old man’s hand. The pain began. He let out a long, gasping breath, realising he’d been holding his breathing tight. First the redness in the forefront of his mind and a curious taste in the mouth, then the blessed release of darkness, as he heard the high-pitched cry of the young village girl, or imagined it.

Scolas bound the wound tight after smearing it with one of his concoctions, which contained the specially sought for webs of a particular spider. He felt the brow of the Unnamed and counted the pulse in the Lord’s naked groin. "He’ll live to die his good death," he said to no one in particular, and stood up to wipe the mud and grass stains from his cloak. Red picked up the body of his Lord and carried it into the only tent of scarlet cloth.

It was Autumn, and their destination was the coastal city-port of Granger. The village attack was a minor skirmish. "It will freshen us up!" the Unnamed had declared. Now they were waiting for the Unnamed to awaken. A day passed.

The following night was cold and a wind began to make many of the tents flap. Red made sure that orders were circulated to make them secure. He’d known his master since he could remember. He was sleeping peacefully. Scolas had inspected the wound twice and was satisfied.

"How many days, Red?" said the Unnamed, stirring on the couch of spare cloaks carried for the Winter campaign, and then coughed. He didn’t wait for an answer, but asked, "Get me a drink?"

Red passed him a wooden bowl, "Scolas said you had to drink this when you woke. You’ve been sleeping for a night and a day."

The Unnamed drank the cold brown liquid. He coughed, "It’s foul. What is it? What damned devil’s brew has he given me now?"

"He said you must drink it all, and if you don’t, I’m to force it down your old throat!" growled Red.

"Old throat," he replied, "old! I’m not twenty-eight yet. I’ll not be called old till I top thirty!"

"Drink it," Red said threateningly.

"There... Get me some wine now?" He swung his legs from under the cloak serving as a blanket, tried to stand, and felt very dizzy. He fell back from his half crouching position as Red pushed him.

"Scolas said a bit of a celebration would do you good. Do you want one of the women? She’ll keep you warm. It’s going to be a cold night." Red moved away from the lamp towards the darker, shadowy areas of the tent. He’d been looking after the Unnamed since he was a child. Scolas had chosen him. They’d suffered the old man’s education together, learned to fight with all manner of weapons, and without, and had shared their first woman. They had been brothers in every sense until the Unnamed was declared fifteen years old. That was when Scolas began taking the Unnamed on one side and teaching him things in secret. At first, Red, or Scalthorp, as was his real name, had been jealous, but it was from that time that the Unnamed’s daring and prowess at the fighting had begun. No one fought like the Unnamed. No one was so successfully headstrong, yet controlled. No one had the madness, the bloodlust, like the Unnamed. No one stood before him. Only three times had he been wounded. No one had his quick cunning and sharp, clever tactics. He became the leader of the tribe before his sixteenth celebration.

Thripps, or Thrippleton, had been the old leader’s name, and it had been his idea to educate the young in the old ways. No one knew where he’d found the slave Scolas, if he was indeed a slave, for he did as he wished, sometimes disappearing for weeks at a time. Scolas became the teacher of the tribe. It had been his idea to train the girls as well as the boys, doubling the fighting power of the tribe with one decision.

Scolas had been shocked three weeks before the celebration of the sixteenth year of the Unnamed by the ferocity of the disagreement between Thripps and the Unnamed. Thripps was over thirty years of age, strong and fearless, and never beaten in single combat. The fight had to be arranged, according to tradition, to determine a new leader of the tribe. It had lasted scarcely two minutes. Thripps had hardly raised his sword and positioned his shield and gauntlet. The Unnamed had simply taken his sword from the table, according to tradition, and ignored the shield and gauntlet, leaving them untouched. He’d turned to face Thripps and charged with such a scream that those who remembered could only describe it as making them freeze with fear. Thripps froze too and, with a straight thrust, he was stuck through the stomach by the Unnamed’s sword. The Unnamed had twisted it as he withdrew it from Thripps. That thrust, with its twist on withdrawal, became the style by which the Unnamed was to be known and feared. Thripps had swung wildly to try and get in a strike, but the Unnamed had ducked low in a swinging turn and his blade found Thripp’s neck unprotected by sword or shield. The head had been sliced cleanly and spun into the watching, silent, crowd. It had all been so fast, and at first they could hardly believe it. The Unnamed became leader and Lord of the tribe.

Scolas supported the Unnamed, and the tribe increasingly relied on the old man to pass on the orders and directions, and as Red grew, and grew beyond the height and weight of the Unnamed, he too came to be feared and seen as the secondary leader, especially when he found a double-handed sword on a battlefield and took to using nothing else. Some said he didn’t even bother to carry his dagger in his foot sheath, where most men wore them to protect the tendons at the back of the ankle from low attack. Such carelessness was part of the triumvirate’s belief, that to destroy the enemy effectively, you had to not just ignore the possibility of death, but actively seek its blessed release.

As the Unnamed sipped at the rough red wine, he watched Red and secretly marvelled at his unquestioning loyalty to both himself and Scolas. It was their joint secret that in the rough, light brown holster scabbard, carried on the Unnamed’s back in battle, was the loaded, automatic machine rifle from the ruins beneath Granger City. They each knew what it could do. In secret, the Unnamed, Red and Scolas had tried it out. They knew it could slice a man in half, who was many steps distant, as surely as Red’s two-handed sword at arm’s length. But they also knew the supply of ammunition for it was limited. Most of the tribe believed the sheath contained a second short-sword, and some of them imitated the style and took to dispensing with shields and using a new style of fighting, using two short-swords; these being carried in double scabbards across the back.

It was also true that only Scolas knew the awful power of destruction that motivated the Unnamed. Anything created could be destroyed, and the Unnamed believed he was the destroyer who made way for life and creation. Scolas argued long, on many nights, that this was a false view of life, expedient only for the present time. To the Unnamed, it was simple. In order to create, Man had to destroy. He, the Unnamed, was the destroyer, who would make it possible for life to begin again, as it was told in the old stories. If something had been created by the darkness of the Past, it was his job to bring it to its death. One day he would create life itself from death. This theory he argued dispassionately with Scolas, and Scolas came to think more and more of destroying the Unnamed, who had been entrusted to him with a sacred and binding oath.

The Unnamed had long sensed this desire in Scolas to destroy him, but, even so, he drank the foul-tasting mush that Scolas had left for him, knowing that Red would force him to drink it in any case. It could so easily have been poison from which he would never awaken, but then, he never worried about his own destruction. The ambition of the bringer of death was his own death, and it should be a good one. The adrenalin should be flowing, the red mist should be behind the eyes and he should be in movement, flowing with the essence of life. Then death could come, and welcome it would be. And if it was bad and he was to die retching from the depths of his stomach, because it was the will of Scolas, so be it. He realised the girl was warm. He clasped her close and she was surprised by his gentleness. She fell in love with him as she climaxed for the first time with a man. She loved the Unnamed.

In the morning, leaning on the girl, the Unnamed hobbled painfully from his tent and looked around. It was cool, but sunny. Red accompanied them. They had breakfasted well. Red had commented that the pig was well cooked in spite of being cold now and there would be no worms for Scolas to dose them for, with one of his foul-tasting concoctions. "Where’s everyone gone?" the Unnamed asked in his deep voice.

"They’re swimming," Red replied, indicating the river beyond the burnt village at the far end of the valley.

"And have guards been posted?" the Unnamed asked, in a tone that indicated he knew what Red’s answer would be.

"Yes," Red growled gruffly. He wasn’t sure that he approved of the girl supporting his Lord. That was his job. He didn’t like the look of her anyway. She was too young, no more than fifteen summers and probably not that, but she’d been his choice, and he’d rescued her from Tim, the scraggy, lecherous archer, who’d found the women’s hiding place during the battle.

"Let’s go swim," said the Unnamed.

They walked down what had been the main street of the village. In the distance, they could hear laughter and shouting. As they approached the riverbank, where the river curved deeply against a slight tree-covered hill, the warriors saw their leader. There were cries of pleasure and welcome. They gathered round, inspecting the neat bandaging round the Unnamed’s naked thigh. They cheerfully disengaged him from the girl’s supporting embrace and, pushing, shoving and laughing, propelled him towards the river, which flowed deeply in its curve against the slope leading up to the trees.

"Will Scolas mind me getting his precious bandages wet?" the Unnamed called out to Red, as he was hoisted into the air and thrown into the water.

"It’s too late now," muttered Red, under his breath, as he watched his Lord surface, spluttering.

The girl pushed her way through the crowd of half-naked, cheering men and women, and splashed her way into the river, falling headfirst in her rush. She swam to the Unnamed as he drifted slightly further downstream. "Are you...." she began, but couldn’t finish her question. The Unnamed had gathered her long, black hair in one hand’s sweep through the water, and he pulled her under. She rose spluttering and screaming as he laughed.

The noisy crowd, who’d watched her headlong rush to reach the Unnamed in the water, were laughing uproariously too, especially as they saw her pulled under by her hair. They cheered as he embraced her and closed her mouth with a long kiss.

Scolas was not amused. He would have to redress the wound. He called in his reedy voice for the Unnamed to come out of the water.

Back in the tent, he ordered the girl to fetch the heavy iron bowl in which he’d boiled the water. He told Red to go and help her; it was very heavy and he didn’t want the purified water to be spilt and wasted. "You’re a fool," he muttered, when they’d left, "...a fool! Let me look at that wound."

The Unnamed rolled onto his side so that Scolas could unbind the boiled bandage now sodden with river water. "It’s not going to kill me," he gasped, as Scolas ripped away the last layer stained brown.

"You’ve opened it up!" Scolas replied angrily. "lt would have been a neat scar! Now it’s going to be messy."

When Red and the girl returned, most of the boiled water was used to clean the wound and it did indeed open up and begin bleeding again. Scolas dried it as best he could and sprinkled something whitish into the length of the cut. He quickly bound it with clean bandage, drawing tightly together the now swollen lips of the wound as he did so. "Don’t get that wet, or take it off until I tell you to," the old man ordered. "And rest the leg," he added. He turned to Red, "What’s she doing here?" he asked, indicating the girl still trying to dry herself. "He must rest"

"I’ll get rid of her," Red replied, grabbing her arm.

"No!" the Unnamed sat up. There was something about his commanding voice, which made all who heard it obey. It crashed into the consciousness carrying a deep sense of threat. No one disobeyed the Unnamed. He commanded. Those who heard obeyed. He pulled the cloak back, inviting her to join him.

Damp, her thin linen dress still clinging to her slight form, she lay down beside him.

He pulled the cloak up to his neck covering her completely. "Leave us now. I am tired. I want to sleep."

© SER,2000