Agar The Barbarian

Chapter 1

A long expected party

 

Dawn.

The rising sun spread warmth and light over the night-chilled landscape of the Norange, its first rays touching the high, snow covered pinnacles of the Mountains of Dawn and the craggy weathered peaks of the Mountains of Mist with brilliant vermilion fire.

Trembling fingers of light felt their way through the great forests of the Norange, painting tree tops with vivid greens and transforming the forest floor from the grey of half-light to a profusion of browns, reds, yellows and mottled shadow. First to Lothlarrikin and Elvenholm, where the elven folk looked up into the morning sun and thanked the new day with joy and celebration, and then, as the sun rose above the eastern mountains, to Darkwood and the impenetrable Forest of Gloom whose inhabitants held little liking for sunlight.

Dawn crept over the rolling landscape of The Dales, revealing verdant hills and valleys and a single hamlet with its stone houses crowded closely together under a veil of chimney smoke. New light awoke the Dalesfolk from slumber. 

The sun shone through a small, uneven pane of glass and struck with full golden light, possibly even with lens-flare effects and post-production haze, the slumbering form of Agar. Agar the Noranger: barbarian warrior! Defender of the free! Hero of the Norange! Slayer of evil! Destroyer of wrong!  Upholder of justice! The sunbeam paused dramatically until the Dalesman, still sleeping, reached up and pulled down the blind in a reflex action. Light fled, leaving the hero snoring on his back.

Many long leagues to the north, the guards of the Tower of Minas Phyve yawned in dawn’s rosy glow and waited for the next shift, their breath fogging white in the frigid air.

“Where’s the bleedin’ next shift?!” hollered the sergeant, teeth chattering.

The was a muffled thump from the guard-house and a slurred reply.

And so the people of the Norange stirred, awaking each to their task; a potter turning to work his wheel, a publican setting down chairs from tables, a smith heating his forge, a seamstress sorting her inventory. Peaceful civilisation in harmony with itself and the world around it.

Yet eastwards a dark and menacing shadow loomed.

*

Noon.

Agar was getting about the day as he usually did. Now the sun, despite its earlier failure, was gleaming vigorously off the barbarian’s sweat and bodyoil-soaked back as he picked fruit from a methyle orange tree, one of the many such fruit trees unique to the Dales.

He was a strong silent type who, long ago, decided muscles you could make jelly moulds with were a fair exchange for mental abilities. His hair was long and his strong, angular face was shaven to a stubble. His demeanour, unsullied by intelligent expression, was enhanced by thick black eyebrows that met in the middle and a supraorbital ridge that kept the rain off. At twenty five he counted himself lucky to have a brain of half his years. The decision to take up the long and august tradition of the professional barbarian was made when he was not but five years of age. Then, in the village, lived an elderly blind man called Klemitz who had been, in his youth, a barbarian warrior of great fame. One day Agar had found the man resting against an old dry stone wall, eating an apple with a long knife and staring blindly out into the forest that lay beyond. Out of childish curiosity he crept up to the old man and waved his hand in front of Klemitz’s sightless orbs, fascinated that he was unseen. The old man grabbed Agar’s hand and laughed as the child tried to escape.

“You can see!” cried Agar.

“No, lad,” replied Klemitz. “I can hear…” Awed, Agar stopped struggling and the man released him. “There are two spaces,” explained the man, smiling. “One to my left, one to my right. There the birds sing and the forest talks to me in whispers. Listen lad! In front of me must be the bough of a mighty tree!”

In an instant he had cast his knife, flinging it with deadly precision at the great tree which indeed stood but twenty yards ahead. There was a stifled scream from a woodsman who was passing by. “Damn,” exclamed the old man irritably, “third one this week.”

Nevertheless, Agar had been impressed. Many years later he left home. He sought training in barbarian ways and eventually had found Anthrax O’ The Ridgetops who was to be his master and mentor for ten gruelling, terrifying, yet enlightening years.

He had learnt about life, death, how to love (with or without rope), how to breathe (important), about hope (dinner?) and about terror - how to use it (“this is MY sword!”) and how to face it (“THAT’S your sword??”).

Agar bent a tree limb to get to the top oranges, but paused as he spied a plume of dust approaching along the East-West road. A seasoned campaigner, it took the barbarian mere minutes to realise that a rider was nearing. He let go of the tree, flinging oranges high into the air with a rubberised twang. As he ran home the stranger was becoming clearly visible, a white figure riding a white horse.

The Agar residence had belonged to his family for generations. Built of a ramshackle mixture of wood, stone, tile and mortar, it had burnt down, collapsed or been demolished countless times, always to be rebuilt. Agar shared the cottage with his half brother. Two personalities and styles of living were clearly reflected in the peculiar décor. Piles of dangerous looking weapons and armour - trophies from past campaigns - lurked in the corners. Rusting swords and knuckledusters belonging to his grandmother perched on shelves amongst fine porcelain vases. A huge chair made of sawn logs, one arm missing, sat near the fireplace not far from another seat made from wicker and half covered with thick furs. Beer jugs lay next to the large one and something looking suspiciously like a stamp collection was neatly folded next to the other.

“Hey!” he called on entering the dim interior.

“What is it?” came the response from his brother’s bedroom. The barbarian crossed rush-covered floor.

This room smelt strongly of spices, musty leather, fragrant herbs, and powerful underarm deodorant. Leather bound books were piled in orderly stacks around the room and a bookshelf was filled with a multitude of tomes and scroll cases. A narrow sleeping palette was pushed against one wall. A study table sat under the open window, and a man, Agar’s brother, sat contemplating the insides of a dissected frog. Klymax was a strikingly tall man, apparent even when seated, with short well-groomed black hair, a sharply defined, serious looking face, all surrounded by a neatly trimmed black beard. His dress wardrobe consisted almost entirely of plain grey robes, one of which he was now wearing. A robe, that is, not the wardrobe.

When Agar had returned from his training with Anthrax he had found Klymax freshly graduated from the School of Magic at Minas Phyve, a fully qualified wizard. Many were their adventures together across the face of the Norange and much was their reputation. Down the local, anyway.

“Hey, Klymax,” said Agar. “I think there’s a stranger coming to the village!”

“Well, this isn’t going anywhere,” the wizard said, putting his tools and frog aside. “We’d better take a look.” He rose and followed his brother outside.

They arrived in the village square and joined a group of curious townsfolk led by the village’s mayor, Furram Spiggot. The stranger rode in and drew to a halt before the crowd. He had the slightly over-done look of a bearer of grave and portentous news. The only visible facial feature was a pale chin that jutted out from the shadow of a hood of epic proportions.

“Pway, tell me gentth, I theek a plathe called the Daleth. Do you know where I could find thith fair land??” called the man.

Klymax took a second to translate the man’s thick Minas Phyve accent (actually, an hereditary speech impediment of the region) and called back: “Aye, stranger, you speak in its town square!”

The stranger seemed a little confused.

“What? Ith thith it?”

“Yes, ‘fraid so,” replied Klymax sympathetically. He avoided the mayor’s scowl.

“I theek one called Agar. Doeth any here know that name?”

“Hey,” cried Agar excitedly, “Hey! Hey, that’s me!!”

The stranger unfurled a scroll with a vigorous flourish and began to read: “‘I, Lord of Thyme, charge ye to attend the Conclave of Minath Phyve. The Conclave will convene when the moon Thebulwitch ith full.’”

Klymax was taken aback. “What has happened to warrant the Conclave meeting now? It meets only every six years and the last was, as I recall, only nine months ago!”

“Great thingth are afoot,” cried the messenger with his arms raised dramatically. “Beware! The tideth of darkneth thtand weady to thweep athide the daylight and He-Who’th-Name-Cannot-Be-Thpoken will weign thupweme! A terwible thtorm of blackneth withes fwom the Eatht weady to engulf the Nowange. The windth of dethpair will wavage the land, and thould none thtand againtht the black tide all will be lotht. Come, for tomorwow there will be no dawn!” With that, he spurred his horse on and galloped out of the Dales, leaving the confused group of Dalesfolk choking in dust.

“What was all that about?” coughed the mayor.

Klymax scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I could be wrong, but I think he was talking about the weather. I think it's going to rain.”

*

While Agar followed his old friend Brogar the smith back to the forge to bend a few hundred horseshoes into shape to pay for the mounts they required, Klymax went to the village’s spice store and herbarium to greet Bilharzia, a tall scraggly woman in late middle-age with an affectation for men’s attire she called ‘practical’. She had frizzy dark grey hair that sprayed in all directions like water from a badly capped high-pressure hose.

“I suppose you heard that messenger,” Klymax beamed at her. “A summons from Minas Phyve, my old Alma Mater!”

Bilharzia shook her head sorrowfully. “A summons - always knew they’d come for you one day. I’ve been putting stuff away for years, Klymax, with this you can do over the bailiffs and be in Phlem before they know what’s hit them…”

“Er, I think it’s a good summons. They were sure to recognise my talents sooner or later. Anyway, I’ll need to stock up on some of the planta exotica, anything you’ve got. Potions and spells and whatnot, eh?”

The woman wiped her hands down the front of her stained overalls and moved to a wooden rack filled to the ceiling with ceramic beakers and pots, glass jars and phials. “Thought it was your brother that fellow asked for,” she grunted as she reached up and gathered a handful of dried fleshy-looking plant stems. “Mandrake?”

“Thanks. Well, of course they’d ask for him. The big muscly heroic types are always the front men.”

“Hmmph. I suppose the Lords know what they’re doing. Powdered narwhale horn?”

“Ta. Know what they’re doing? Gods, I hope so. Lord Lemongrass once blew his bedroom ceiling off stirring his cocoa with a wand.”

“Lemongrass?”

“If you’ve got it.”

“Whatever they want, it will be a responsibility. Fancy you two getting a summons! Sophonisba would be that proud. Pith of rhubarb?”

“Uhuh. Not my father, you mean.”

“Well, it was your mum’s family’s money that got you to the School of Magic, you know that. Came from a good family, she did. And they all followed her to the grave within a year, fancy that!”

Klymax nodded distractedly.

“They were all looking so healthy too, that dinner before they died.” The herbalist grinned toothily. “Arsenic?”

“I suppose so. Bilharzia, what was she like?”

“You’re asking me what I’m like in the third person past tense?”

“Not you, Sophonisba.” Though he knew he’d heard as much about her as he was likely to, a sudden whimsical yearning filled Klymax for the mother he’d barely known.

Bilharzia seemed to understand this. “Well... she was a bit unconventional, didn’t hold much store by tradition. She wouldn’t stand for you to be called Agar, for a start.”

“So, why ‘Klymax’?”

“Don’t knock it, though whether it’s really an improvement on ‘Two Dogs’ is open to question.” She opened a cupboard and peered inside. “Feather of Cockatrice? Bark of Barnacle Tree? Yeach of Soya? Tea? Milk? Sugar?”

*

Agar was ready to leave. Packing for him was a simple matter involving heaping weapons and food into an old leather backpack together with a rug and a few bottles of his favourite brand of body oil. The two horses supplied by the smith, relics from the last agricultural show, were groomed, saddled and bridled. With a certain sense of occasion, Agar had also given his a quick rubdown with oil. The resulting slipperiness meant he’d have to tie his ankles together to stay on, but he felt it was worth it for the effect of gleaming around the landscape - a personal hobby. Throwing himself into his work he also oiled Klymax’s horse, a couple of nearby trees and the West wall of the Mayor’s house.

Now he was waiting for his brother to get ready. Klymax was thoughtful about his preparations and always spent time making up his mind which plain grey robe to take as a spare. Thus confronted with this idle moment, Agar’s mind moved to visions of action, preferably executed with a great deal of shouting and trimming people's chest-hair from the inside. Prompted by this thought, he quickly sought an open area in the street and drew forth his scarred and rusty sword that he’d strapped in its scabbard to his belt. He gripped it firmly in his strong right hand before dropping his massive frame to the ground in a low crouch. It was at times such as this that Anthrax’s training became apparent, for "Keep your knuckles to the ground" was an old barbarian saying, kept alive by oral tradition, along with timeless classics like getting plastered, belching and gargling with your vomit (or some-one else’s if feeling squeamish), and making bets that you could move a boulder using only the accumulated dirt, sweat, and mysterious waxy substances found in your armpits, for every true barbarian knows that even rocks have standards of decency. But now Agar uncoiled the muscles of his legs and sprang high into the air, twirling his mighty blade above his head thrice before dragging it down to the level of his neck. It was only with a last-minute twist of his neck that his head was spared separation from his shoulders.

"What on earth's he doing now?" whimpered Spiggot as the barbarian directed another slashing stroke at his own jowls, the sword's edge missing the skin of his cheek by less than a hair's breath. Within seconds Agar was again attacking his own head with bestial savagery. "He hasn't found some fleas, has he?" The mayor raised his voice: "It’s all right, Agar my boy, they'll be softened up by now, we can talk them out!"

"He's shaving," Bilharzia told him, leaning out of her shop.

Agar had almost finished - plucking from his belt the half-dozen needle-sharp daggers he customarily used for getting miscreant halflings out of his belongings, he flung them high into the air, then spread-eagled himself on the ground, chin jutting skyward - Agar always relished the final trim and manicure.

*

At last, preparations were complete and the two brothers swung up on to their mounts. The afternoon sun warming their backs, they rode out of their hometown to the sound of weeping women (provided courtesy of the mayor who prided himself on his sense of occasion). Minas Phyve was a few days’ travel north and east across the Eider Downs and farmlands beyond.

Yea, and the swollen orb of the sun hung low on the western horizon, illuminating the sky with curtains of iridescent gold. Soon, the inky blackness of night settled like a dark blanket upon the land as the first crystal-bright stars appeared against the fading glow of evening. The small furry creatures of the day retreated into their warm burrows and the small furry creatures of the night came out and took the triple-time wages, and were happy.

The heroes, the great sickles of the Norange’s twenty-nine moons hanging above them like a shower of celestial toe-nail clippings, rode on into the night: their past behind them, their destiny ahead. Above them, those constellations that could get past the moons, shone. The Prancing Horse, the Sabre, the Dismembered Warrior, the Tangled Piece of String, and the astronomers’ bane - the Funny Patch Of Stars Just Over There But I’m Buggered If I Know What It Looks Like*.

To the south, atop a distant hill, nine black robed horsemen sat upon nine black steeds. They gazed at two faraway specks moving slowly along the road. Their leader nodded, turned his horse about, and together the black riders fled the hilltop.