Lords of the East - Library

[Quirl]

Qara-Suu: Rogue's Gallery (Tegin Savalat: the Black Bear)
Dvin (December 15, 1182)

“We hold in here!” Abaaq screamed to his troops—the last few of his few brothers left alive after the fall of the city. “When they come in… we slaughter them!”

Held up inside the governor’s pitiful mansion, one of the guards looked outside. It was dusk. The sun was just beginning to set over the city’s palisade. The pink hue of the falling day filled the dim city, reflecting off the gray and blue armor of the scurrying “ghul” outside. His guard looked back at Abaaq, some worry crackling in his voice. “They haven’t tried to push through, yet.”

“But when they do,” Abaaq said, slamming his fists together and smiling in grim anticipation. “Take as many of them down as you can... before you embrace the glories of paradise.”

His men nodded, then another turned back to him from the window. “Lord, they’re organizing but… they don’t seem to be coming in for an attack.”

Abaaq turned to him. “What?”

Outside, the ghul stood around the mansion. The smiles of their masks refracted back to the men inside from the shadows. The creatures were hunched over, gripping the air with an excitable eagerness. But they merely stood there.

There were whispers coming through windows—soft words none of the men inside could understand, but which haunted the mansion nonetheless. Then, a man stepped out from behind the crowd of ghul.

Savalat stepped out from behind his soldiers, several sizes taller than any of the ghul around him—and easily several sizes larger than Abaaq. He wore a great fur helm over his stone face. His brow set heavy over his eyes, casting a thick shadow there that made his face expressionless. Then, one of his ghul handed him a spear and another threw one of Abaaq’s captured soldiers onto the cobblestone in front of his master. Then, in an instant, the giant bear, Savalat, thrust his spear into the writhing prisoner below him. Abaaq watched from the window as the bear’s eyes locked onto his, the giant mercilessly rolling the spear into the prisoner’s spine back and forth—back and forth.

The screams from the prisoner below the demon made Abaaq churn. He fell below the window, trying to block out the noises from the outside. He could not. Those black eyes and those screams still scraped against his skull, like fingernails on his mind. Finally, however, the man stopped screaming. The squishes of the spear silenced. He was dead.

Abaaq closed his eyes, then breathed a heavy breath—not sure whether to feel relief or pain. Not too far away, he could hear one of his guards beginning to weep.

Then, suddenly, another "CRACK!" came in from the outside. Abaaq thrust his eyes out the window one last time to see yet another prisoner below the Qipchack general. Savalat's spear was also now in his back and the giant twisted it left and right—left and right—letting the man’s screams fill the mansion as he watched on callously.

“Infidel!” Abaaq screamed, but the giant outside did not acknowledge him. He merely continued to turn the spear methodically left and right, indifferent to the choking screams of the man below him. “Infidel!” Abaaq cried again, and the man below the giant finally fell silent.

Abaaq closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears, just in time to hear the faint and sudden “CRACK!” of another victim outside—and the left and right turns of the spear into the muscles and spine of yet another of his fallen comrades.

“DOG!” Abaaq cried, getting up from where he stood and pulling out his scimitar. “God will judge you for what you have done this day!”

Suddenly, on the outside, the door to the mansion burst open. Abaaq’s men ran forth—their scimitars glistening in the coming night—their eyes filled with vengeance before the coming paradise. Then Savalat stepped back into his ghul and the smiling soldiers around him held up their bows. Their claws pulled back on the arrows and some strands of dust flew off their strings. They pulled back and there was the sound of tension echoing in their weapons. Then their fingers flicked up and they released their arrows, the daggers flying off from their masters like rabid cobras or drops of rain. They whizzed through the night air towards Abaaq and his charging soldiers, burrowing little tunnels through the winter fog.

Then it became very quiet. Then the sun had finally set.