Weirdbook #31

CHIVAINE, by John R. Fultz

CHIVAINE, by John R. Fultz“Chivaine!” they cried.

“Chivaine will return to us and all of this suffering will end.”

Chivaine with his silver sword and gleaming mail. Chivaine with his lion eyes and quick limbs. Chivaine on his white horse strung with chains of gold and jewels.

Chivaine. Bane of Invaders.

Across the Land of Willows he was little more than a fable, a dream kept alive by frightened townsfolk gathered around their burning homes. The war was over and the land had been won not by its valiant defenders, but by the enemy. The horse tribes of the tundra had descended on the Land of Willows for the fifth time in as many generations. This time they had conquered all.

“Chivaine…” cried the witch on the mountain. She sprinkled bone dust over her fire and looked across the valley where the river flowed toward the Yellow Plain. Seven villages she counted burning in the valley. She rattled feathers and bones, spilled blood from her wrist to pacify the Demon of the Winds.

Forty years ago it had been Chivaine who led the Bright King’s army to the field of Eleanim. Chivaine who led the king’s men to victory, and Chivaine whose blade took the head of the Horselord Ugtuk Wolfstooth. Yet Chivaine had wandered into mystery during the decades of peace that followed his victory.

“Chivaine…” cried the witch. She called on the spirits of her ancestors, all those who had lived and died in the Land of Willows since the beginning of time. She spoke the names of dreadful powers known only to witches.

On this day the Land of Willows belonged to Barain Hawkheart, Lord of Horses, heir to the Druid Crown. Slayer of the Bright King. With fear and fire and iron blades his raiders came south on the backs of stallions bred for war. The Willow Folk were unprepared, used to peaceful living, forgetful of their hard-fought past victories. They were easily conquered.

Yet they remembered Chivaine. As the Bright King’s citadel fell and the northmen torched entire towns, the Willow Folk remembered the Hero of Eleanim.

“Chivaine will return,” they said. “Chivaine will bring us freedom.”

The conquerors walked the streets and orchards claiming whatever they wanted. They violated women and temples, slaying wildly in the name of Hawkheart. Packs of mounted raiders owned the roads. The Dreaming River ran red and corpses floated among the reeds. The Land of Willows burned, and Chivaine remained a dream.

“Chivaine!” said the witch. “He will be our vengeance. Come, Chivaine, hear the call of your people! Come to us now in the hour of our need.”

A storm blew over the valley. Thunder roared Chivaine! and lightning struck the wooded slopes. The witch chanted and danced in the rain. Her fire smoldered but did not extinguish. As the storm faded, a dense fog crept into the valley and up its slopes.

The witch inhaled smoke from the embers and sat quietly in the fog. Listening. She listened with the patience of a stone until she heard a horse’s hooves on gravel. A dark shape, a rider, moved through the mist. He came down the slope, as if from the mountain’s unseen peak, and paused at the witch’s camp. She stared at his face and raised her bony arms.

“Chivaine?” she sighed.

The man on the white horse was very old. His flesh sagged on his bones, as did the rusted mail on his shoulders and arms. Arms once big ’round as treetrunks, the stories said. His beard was white with streaks of grey. His eyes in their beds of wrinkles squinted at the witch and sparkled with mystery. A silver sword hung across his back.

“What is this place grandmother?” asked the knight.

“The Valley of the Dreaming River,” said the witch. “Are you Chivaine?”

The old man blinked and rubbed his beard. He wore steel gauntlets as rusted as his armor.

“That might have been my name,” he said.

“What were you?” she asked, waving a crow feather at him.

The knight looked into the fog, or into the depths of his foggy memories.

“I was a hero,” he said.

“Then be so again,” said the witch. She rose, dubbed his forehead and shoulders with a blackthorn branch, as a queen blessing her champion. The knight offered her a kindly smile, but shook his head.

“I am too old,” he said. “Too tired. I wish only to rest.”

The toothless witch grinned, a horrible sight for anyone to see.

“I have called you from the Deadlands,” she said. “You may not return to your well-deserved rest until the man called Hawkheart is driven from our land.”

The knight bowed his head. He seemed to have fallen asleep.

“You are Chivaine!” she said, shaking him awake. “You are the Bright King’s blade! Bane of Invaders! Go now and bid your people to rise up and slay their oppressors! Go take the head of Barain Hawkheart as you took that of Ugtuk Wolfstooth. Bring it here to me if you would regain your eternal rest.”

“I am Chivaine,” said the knight. “Yet I am not the same Chivaine who felled the Wolfstooth. I was younger and stronger then. Foolish enough to be courageous. Convinced of my own invincibility. I would learn eventually that all these headstrong truths were lies. Untruths that I told to make myself strong. Lies I told the world.”

“If lies are strength, then find that strength again,” said the witch. He could not refuse the power of her geas. “Go!”

The white horse sped down the slope and Chivaine inhaled the sweet honey of the mountain air. Mammoth lillies were in blossom this time of year. He galloped through a field of tall, drooping flowers that bobbed and nodded like praying monks.

Riding along the riverside he smelled the reek of the burning villages. He saw blood and bodies floating on the river. He stopped, slid from his saddle, and walked to the water. Found an unspoiled place to drink.

His own starlit face looked back at him from the water’s surface. His beard was darker now, his face less wrinkled. He was not so old as he had imagined. The water was cool, bringing strength to his limbs. His broad shoulders filled the rusted mail better than they had at the witch’s camp.

“Chivaine…”

A voice called to him from beneath the water. Several voices, all repeating his name.

“Spirits of the dead,” he said. “I hear you.”

“Avenge us, Chivaine,” said the voices. “Bring us the head of the Hawkheart.”

“That prize I have already promised to a lady on the mountain,” said Chivaine. “But I will give you a taste of this tyrant’s blood, once I have cut him down.”

The water spirits cooed and bubbled. “Take with you the power of our own blood flowing in this river, that it might not be lost entirely.”

Chivaine climbed into his saddle. A forgotten vitality sang in his arms and legs. It churned in his chest like a battle cry ready to be set free. The hooves of his white horse beat against the earth as he flew between the flaming husks of farms and hamlets. Following the trail of bodies and wreckage he came to the valley’s end, where the land spread itself flat and the river flowed toward the great plain.

There Chivaine found the great encampment of Barain Hawkheart. The northmen were enjoying the rewards of plundering and pillaging. They had claimed this land, and now they claimed its spoils. Ale, meat, and captive women flowed between their tents of elk hide. The screams of victims mingled with the slow cadence of drunken war chants sung about the fires. Thousands of fine northern horses were picketed in haphazard rows about the site. The despoilers of the valley thought all their enemies dead or in hiding, so they celebrated and forgot their native caution.

Chivaine rode into the mass of carousing northmen swift as an arctic wind. His blade cut a red path toward Hawkheart’s pavilion. The blood of northmen rained upon his ancient mail, somehow cleansing it of rust and filth. His armor gleamed as bright as his silver blade. His beard was black as midnight, his face young and defiant. He grinned at the red c*****e about him, exulting in the slaughter.

“I am Chivaine!” he roared. “Bane of Invaders! From beyond death I have come to take the life of the Hawkheart…”

At last the crowds of panicked raiders spread apart, revealing their champion, the reaver who had delivered their greatest victory, Barain Hawkheart himself. His chain mail was black with soot, his war helm set with a crown of jagged spikes. His mount was a dark behemoth of horseflesh with iron-shod hooves, trained to split the skulls of footsoldiers.

Hawkheart peered through his visor at the hero of southern legend. He knew the fables like everyone else. He understood this Chivaine was a specter from the netherworld, but he did not care. He was the Lord of Horses, ordained by his savage gods to spread conquest. The entire world was his to take as he had taken the Land of Willows. No man, dead or alive, would stop his colossal ambition.

“Shade!” Hawkheart hailed Chivaine. “Revenant!” He raised a great axe in each hand. “You have forgotten the sweet embrace of death. So come. Let me refresh your memory.”

The two horses and their riders collided. Sparks flew from scraping metal, drops of blood fell to the muddy earth. The riders swirled like battling storms striking thunderbolts at one another. The northmen gathered in a great circle about the combat, cheering their hero, spitting and cursing Chivaine’s name.

“If you kill me I will only return to the Deadlands,” Chivaine said. “And if I kill you that same return is my promised reward.”

“Then why not let me slay you?” said Hawkheart. “I’ll send you back to the dead country quickly and painlessly.”

“Look at the red river,” said Chivaine. He struck and parried, his greatsword leaping between the two great axes. “Look at the burning villages. See the bodies of the dead trampled into the earth, hear the wailing of war orphans. For all of these things you are damned. For these crimes I will send you to the Deadlands well before I return there.”

Hawkheart grinned like a hyena. “I will wait for you on the other side of death. I’ll give you no peace, even in the afterlife. Once I am dead too, you’ll not be able to kill me again. We will fight this battle forever at the gates of the Deadlands.”

Chivaine answered with the thrust of his blade through his opponent’s neck. The sword sliced open Hawkheart’s jugular. Blood gushed to drown his blackened breastplate. He dropped his axes, raised hands to his spurting neck.

“This is your choice,” Hawkheart said. His voice rasped and he coughed blood.”You’ll find no more rest in death… Only me waiting for you…”

“I am Chivaine,” said the knight. He swept the silver blade sideways and finished beheading the Lord of Horses. Hawkheart’s head fell into the muck and rolled a short way, its eyes still blinking through the visor. His body fell from the black horse and lay still upon the red earth.

“Now we are both legends,” said the head. Its eyes grew still.

Chivaine’s horse and mail gleamed crimson. He spun about, bent to grab up Hawkheart’s head, and rode back the way he had come. He trampled or cut down any outlanders foolish enough to get in his way.

The army of northmen wailed and fell into disorder. Without their warlord to calm tribal hatreds they fought among themselves. Several skirmishes broke out at the heart of the horde, while tribal bands along its edges rode into the night. Better to leave with whatever treasures were gained this season than to stay and lose everything. They had taken gold, women, and weapons of steel from the Land of Willows. Every warpath must come to an end and most of the northmen were ready to go home anyway. Hawkheart might have driven them eastward to plunder the cities of the Yellow Plain next. But Hawkheart was dead and so was his campaign of conquest.

Chivaine went back to the river as he had promised and sprinkled a few drops of Hawkheart’s blood to appease the water spirits. Then he rode hard along the High West Road leading out of the valley into the heart of the Bright King’s domain. Always bearing Hawkheart’s head in his raised fist, he passed from one shattered town to another.

Commoners and noblefolk cheered him on together.

“Chivaine!” they called in the morning sun. “Chivaine has saved us!”

“Chivaine has killed the Horse Lord!”

Across the Land of Willows the knight rode and displayed his grisly trophy. Men took up spears and pitchforks and rusted blades, determined now to drive out the remaining invaders. The savages had no heart for a fight without a dominant force to unite them. History had show this again and again. The Bright King was dead, but Chivaine had returned.

“Chivaine!” they cried from town square and ruined tower, from the decks of riverboats and the slopes of mountain glens. “Chivaine lives!”

After nine days of ceaseless riding Chivaine returned to the witch on her mountain. Hawkheart’s head was rotten and brimming with deathworms. Still the knight held it dangling by its long black hair. Summer rains had washed the crimson from Chivaine’s mail. He gleamed sun-bright on the mountainside as he presented the witch her prize. She danced about the decaying head of Hawkheart and sang an ancient song. She placed it in a jar full of beetles that would eat away the putrid flesh and preserve the skull.

“You have done well, Chivaine,” said the witch. “You have earned the pleasure of a fine drink before you embrace death again.” She poured him a goblet of wine, an ancient vintage that had lain hidden in her cave for a lifetime. Except for the river water it was the only thing Chivaine had ingested since his return to the living realm. He savored its heady flavors on his tongue.

Chivaine took off his helm and admired the green valley. Sunrise gleamed bright on the river. The bodies had all been burned or buried. The blood had been washed away from the land as it had been washed from his armor. The Willow Folk were rebuilding along the riverbanks. Sailing boats brought provisions and laborers into the valley. Where the northern horde had camped there was now only a heap of charred bones, the remains of a communal pyre. The sun was golden with the heat of summer, the sky blue and brilliant.

“Time to resume your eternal rest,” said the witch. “Return now to the Deadlands.”

“I no longer wish to return,” said Chivaine. “I want to stay.” His young eyes gleamed.

“What?” said the witch. “Forsake your well-earned rest?”

“You’ve reminded me of life’s splendors,” said the knight.

“Not all of them,” said the witch. She stepped in front of Chivaine and he saw her as a young and lovely maiden. “I know what it is you hunger for. I too remember that hunger.” Her dark eyes glimmered and his heart fluttered beneath the silver curiass. She was very beautiful and the night sky gleamed in the folds of her black hair.

Chivaine walked close to her. “Are you in truth this comely girl?” he asked. “Or only a hag wearing a glamour?”

“Are you in truth a living man of flesh and blood?” she asked. “Or a dead spirit called forth to roam the physical world?”

Chivaine could not answer.

“It does not matter,” she said. She kissed him. Hey lay with her in the cave where she kept her pots, talismans, and hanging herbs. All the splendor of the flesh that he had forgotten in death’s numb grip, all the deep pleasure of sharing one’s self with another, all of these things she gave him. Later they lay outside the cave and watched the stars winking at them.

“In nine months I will bear a son from this union,” said the witch. “I will name him Chivaine.”

The knight looked at her. “How can this be?” he asked. “Can the dead conceive the living?” Already her face seemed older, more worn. The magic of her glamour was fading.

“Death…life,” she said. “Both are curtains, easily swept aside. Or kept in place to obscure the truth of where we all dwell.”

“And where is that?” he said.

“Eternity,” she said. Now she was old and wrinkled again, her hair a tangle of wispy gray.

“You cannot stay in this world,” she said. “You belong in the Deadlands. By the power of our shared flesh I command you to return. Now.”

Chivaine dressed himself in the silver mail and mounted his horse. Fog rolled down the mountain and he rode into it with a single backward glance. He glimpsed the maiden one last time. She waved at him as he disappeared from the living world. Then only the mountain witch stood before the cave. She wiped her swelling eyes and went in to sleep. Tomorrow she would begin to prepare the cave for the child to come.

Chivaine rode through the fog until the gray world of the Deadlands took shape before him. The ruins of toppled citadels and fallen cities lay spread across a dusty flatland. Phantoms danced and shivered in the air. The dead sky was silver and full of gleaming black stars. Ahead rose the Great Gate where dead souls pass into the afterlife.

A mighty figure stood before the gate. The shade of Barain Hawkheart raised its twin axes, glared at Chivaine from behind its horned visor.

“I told you I would meet you here,” said Hawkheart. “Now we fight again. Forever.”

“No,” said Chivaine. “I am tired of fighting.” He had grown old again. His armor and sword were rusted, his beard long and snowy. There was no strength left in his limbs. He slid down off his horse and rested on a broken column.

Hawkheart’s ghost stamped through the bone dust to overshadow him.

“Fight!” said Hawkheart. “You must! Or I will slay you with a single swipe of this axe.”

Chivaine laughed. “You cannot slay me. I’m already dead. So are you. To fight here would be pointless.”

“No!” bellowed the Lord of Horses. “We will fight again, and again, throughout eternity. Get up, southern man!” He raised the great axes above Chivaine’s head.

Chivaine tossed his rusted sword at the conqueror’s feet. “I have sampled more than my fair share of life’s delights,” he said. “But that is all over now. I only wish only to rest.” He yawned and lay his head back against the broken marble.

“So be it,” said Hawkheart. He swung the great axe in an even arc, lopping the old knight’s head from his shoulders. Rusted chain links and blood spattered across the dust. Hawkheart lifted the head of Chivaine high in mockery of what the hero had done to him in the living world. He climbed upon Chivaine’s steed and rode it through the gates into the Deadlands, shouting his victory.

Once beyond the gate Chivaine’s head faded to wisps of vapor in Hawkheart’s fist. The Horselord looked back, flexing his empty fingers, but the gate was lost in grey mist. A horde of demons crept about him, drawn by the echoes of his boasting. He slashed at them with both axes, but could not cut their flesh. They laughed and screeched like apes while his blades sang through phantom bodies. They tore the axes away, carried him in their claws kicking and screaming to a great pit, where the cries of damned souls rose on columns of smoke and flame. They chained him to the wall of the burning abyss and began the first of his endless tortures.

Chivaine’s thoughts blew on the wind like lotus blossoms. He remembered the swipe of the great axe and nothing else. He heard the sighing of celestial currents that flow between worlds. The scattered thoughts gathered like moths about a tiny and insistent flame, a golden pinpoint sun in the barren void. A great calm settled over these tattered shreds of being. They grew warm and dull and mingled with dreamstuff, floating in a brine of absolute serenity. What was left of Chivaine, an infinitesimal spark maybe, settled into its new home. Slept there for nine months.

On a day of brightness and pain he came back to the world again. A midwife pulled the squawling infant from the witch’s womb. The hag had lost far too much blood during the birthing. She lay dying with the pink newborn in her arms.

“Chivaine,” she told the midwife. “His name is Chivaine.”

“A hero’s name,” said the midwife. She stared at the baby’s round and gentle face. His eyes were blue and something of the lion gleamed deep inside them.

The witch nodded. “Take him, raise him with kindness,” she said. “He will grow tall and strong like his father. And when the raiders again come screaming from the north, as they always do, hungry for our blood and gold, he will be there to greet them. Everyone will know his name.” She kissed her son once on his hairless head and died.

The midwife took little Chivaine from the cave and carried him into the valley. Her people were planting spring crops in neat rows along the riverside. A warm breeze played in the tops of the willows. She brought the babe into her simple home, telling everyone his name as she passed

One evening while the baby slept in its crib, she found a greatsword lying before her fireplace. No one in the village admitted to leaving it there, and none could even afford such a weapon. Its scabbard was ancient leather set with jewels and golden inlays, the blade itself forged of purest silver.

She laid the sword across her knees and watched the baby dream. So peaceful, so full of blessed innocence. Alas, it was the way of the world: Peace never lasted.

Outside the cold north wind moaned, swearing vengeance against the Land of Willows.

She hid the silver blade in a hole beneath her cottage.

It would be there when Chivaine needed it.

Dedicated to the memory of

Tanith Lee,

Sorceress Supreme