I wrote this as a teenager in the 1980s. I found a copy on my PC along with other stories I wrote. I was heavily influenced by Jack Vance, particularly Dying Earth.
The Chronicles of the Bitter Stars
“In the waning centuries before the Deluge, when the heavens themselves warred and the Immutable Logos withheld His veil from the trembling Earth, men yet strove beneath the shadow of calamity. Across Vallombrosa and Cathay, across the shattered banners of Francish kings and the lacquered helms of eastern soldiery, the Wyrm’s Host uncoiled, and the Fallen Stars whispered their treacheries into mortal ears. These are the tales of that age: of Custan of Sareth, of Zhann Kaelai, of heroes doomed by fate’s slow spiral, each deed shining a brief defiance beneath a sun half-eclipsed.”
The Warm Lands
I
He awoke to pain, that old and constant companion of men long accursed. His head throbbed; his tongue lay parched within a mouth as arid as the cracked beds of vanished rivers. The desert sun sank low in the sky, bleeding copper into the dunes like a wounded giant. Around him sprawled his last companions—forty gaunt shadows in whose hollow eyes the flicker of hope had long since guttered out.
Zhann Kaelai raised his gaze toward the heavens and found there no comfort, only the gloating visage of a merciless star. His mind replayed the rout at Shimmering Pass: how their proud banners had fluttered above a gorge now choked with the dead; how the Emperor’s Giant Sabermen had stood, their towering frames blunted and broken beneath the onslaught, until the last fell and silence claimed the heights.
Without those titans of the Emperor’s bodyguard, even these forty battered remnants would not have slipped away into the desert’s maw.
Their helms, lacquered scabbards, crested armor—all abandoned. Now they bore only swords, dulled by ruin, and water-skins whose meager contents whispered of thirst’s coming triumph.
There had been no time for graves. No cairns, no final rites beneath the banners of Cathay. Their pursuers—riders of Menqorath, wolves of the steppe, and darker things still—followed close, less than a day’s march behind.
Zhann Kaelai sighed.
“To perish here, far from Paequyn, far from the incense-choked streets and the gentle perfume of Hua’s rosewater hair…” He closed his eyes, conjuring her saffron skin, her laughter like temple bells. “Ah, bitter fate, to die beneath alien stars with bones unshriven and spirit uncarried to the Immutable Logos.”
But he must return. He must bear word to the Emperor. For at Shimmering Pass they had fought not only men of Menqorath, but other shapes: monstrous, misbegotten, spirits whose limbs bent at obscene angles, whose eyes burned with cold and starless hatred.
He knew them then, as the Westerners named them: the Fallen Stars.
“To send an army against such,” he murmured, “is to send moths into a flame.”
God—no, the Immutable Logos—had not stood with them at the Pass. Betrayal had seeped from the very stones.
II
He scanned the dunes. Endless, rolling, treacherous. Somewhere ahead, an oasis whispered in the dreams of dying men. Behind, a faint plume of sand curled skyward.
“They ride,” Kaelai muttered. “Fast ponies, sharp hooves. Curse them.”
He steadied himself. These were not the Emperor’s Red-Plumed Archers, nor the iron-helmed Guards of the Jade Throne. No—these were common swordsmen, dust-caked, weary, mortal.
Yet it was by such men, he mused grimly, that the wealth and splendor of Cathay endured.
“Men,” Kaelai said, his voice threading into the dusk, “before dawn the enemy will be upon us. Our swords will be bathed ere sunrise. But let it be known: we do not fight merely to survive. We march for Paequyn. For Cathay. For the Immutable Logos, who is called the Lord of Hosts in His warlike aspect. Let that knowledge fortify your arm.”
Silence greeted him—not for lack of valor, but because such men had no need for empty bravado. They had heard; they had accepted.
Kaelai sighed. “First-rate soldiers, every one,” he murmured. “Let us fight as though we were thrice our number.”
And so they prayed, and so they walked, scattering the sand beneath their grim, deliberate steps.
III
“The enemy is upon us!” cried Lan, his veteran’s voice hard as flint.
They came—riders of Menqorath, streaking across the dunes like shadows with swords. Kaelai’s heart gave a strange lurch of relief.
“They are men,” he whispered. “Thank the Immutable Logos. Men.”
How strange, to rejoice in facing death so long as it bore a human face.
A cry rose from the ranks: “Though all the world betray thee, one sword at least thy honor shall guard, one voice shall praise thee!”
A cheer. Then steel met steel.
Kaelai’s sword sang through the first rider’s side; a clean arc, a mortal end. Another—cut down. He pressed forward. Strike, parry, thrust, riposte. Each stroke a stanza.
Then—his blade locked against a scimitar chased in gold. Their gazes clashed: Tuanthemic.
Blow for blow. Cut for cut. Sparks flew, blood blossomed, breath quickened.
“Fall back!” Tuanthemic barked.
The enemy wheeled away.
Lan came beside him, counting heads. “All accounted for, sir.”
Kaelai’s lips twitched. “We’ve escaped death’s embrace—for now. But I fear we’ve merely delayed the kiss.”
“They flee! We’re saved!”
“No,” Kaelai sighed. “They reform. They circle. They will loose arrows.”
Indeed, Tuanthemic’s men wheeled in circling formation, bows rising, circling like vultures.
IV
“What now, sir?” Ruan asked, youthful hope flickering in tired eyes.
Kaelai gazed skyward. “We pray.”
And so they prayed.
To the Immutable Logos, the Lord of Hosts in His warlike aspect.
A wind stirred.
The wind grew.
A gale shrieked across the dunes, flinging sand and pebbles like the hurling of unseen hands.
Tuanthemic’s men faltered; their arrows loosed, swallowed by storm.
“The Logos hears!” Lan shouted. “Let us flee beneath His mercy!”
“No,” Kaelai said. “He has delivered them into our hand. Attack!”
And so they surged, blades flashing amid the storm. Later, poets sang they moved so swiftly their blades were unstained, though each man slew a score. In the chaos, brother slew brother, blinded by whirling dust and the storm’s fury.
Tuanthemic fell from his horse.
Kaelai’s blade met his.
A duel beneath the fading storm, beneath the sky paling toward dawn.
Strike. Parry. Clash. Blow upon blow.
At last—Tuanthemic’s scimitar found Kaelai’s side.
And as Kaelai sank, the sun crested the horizon, painting the sands in gold and crimson.
“The Wyrm’s host devoured the Francish; now it slouches toward Cathay,” Kaelai thought dimly, and was still.
V
Of a thousand, thirty-six remained. Now thirty-five, bearing their captain across the dunes.
Under a date tree they laid him, draped in banners red. His sword upon his breast; Tuanthemic’s gilded scimitar at his feet.
“He should have had a state burial,” Ruan murmured. “Instead, we are all he has.”
They built a pyre.
Ruan lit the flame.
As fire and sun rose together, they whispered prayers:
“Return this man to the Immutable Logos, Beyond the wild, impartial world… Grant him a warrior’s rest…”
One by one, they turned away, marching toward Paequyn, toward warning, toward a war not yet lost.
“Friends meet in the Warm Lands,” Ruan whispered—and followed into the desert’s vast waiting silence.
Thus began the War of Bitter Stars.
