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  I am Magdar, disciple of the Lord God Sa’yen, and known as the Left Hand of the Lord!

  I am the one that was by His side all these long years He fought to bring His faithful southward on the sacred pilgrimage! I am the one that first acknowledged Him as the Lord; Sa’yen, God of War and Healing; Lord of the Wrathful Vengeance and Miraculous Healing! I am the Magdar who stood with Him when the high walls of Imperial Hakad of the Far North came tumbling down from His wrath!

  With His permission, I will put to these scrolls all that truly happened to me, to the Inner Few, and to the Lord God, the Sa’yen, while He was with us upon this world.

  “And He shall come, like a newborn babe, to stand among His kind young and invincible and not knowing truly His own magnificence.”

  BANNERS

  OF

  THE

  SA’ YEN

  B. R. Stateham

  DAW Books, Inc.

  Donald A. Wollheim, Publisher

  1633 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10019

  Copyright ©, 1981, by B. R. Stateham

  All Rights Reserved-

  Cover art and frontispiece by Ken W. Kelly.

  FIRST PRINTING, JULY 1981

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN U.S.A,

  Contents:-

  PROLOGUE

  I - The Sa’yen Appears

  II - We Take a Ship

  III - Trusting a Pirate

  IV - Attack of the Golden-Hulls

  V - Our Lord’s Mysterious Chariot

  VI - What Only The Priest Knows

  VII - The Lore of the Ancient Kings

  VIII - A City Divided

  IX - The Grief of the Gods

  X - Hakadians on the Horizon

  XI - In The Heat of Battle

  XII - Can We Ever Escape?

  XIII - The Prince Plots a Trap

  XIV - Will The Sa’yen Prove Mortal?

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  I am Magdar. Once known as Magdar the Ha’valli. And as Magdar the Bull. And most recently, Magdar the Madman. All these names I have been known by in the past A past that stretches out so many long, tumultuous years. A long life, the prophets would tell me wistfully, looking at my ancient and cracked skin and my white hair so thin upon my head. A long and wondrous life. A life to be proud of. A life songs should be sung of. A life legends are bom from.

  And aye, there are legends already about me. Many legends that are sung around the campfires of my father’s tribe about me and, more importantly, of He whom I followed. And songs sung by tire wandering minstrels who wander from city to city by the hundreds. But aye, there are legends and there are songs about me and my deeds while I served the Lord.

  But not by what I am known now. Nay, few who know me now or who have known me in the last twenty years have truly known me by the name legends and songs are sung of. No, pilgrim, the last twenty years few people have known me. For if many had, I confess my life would have been swiftly extinguished many long years ago by most unpleasant methods. Aye, the hordes of howling banshees that would take sword and shield and track me down if they knew me by my real name would be numberless!

  Aye, you find this hard to believe. An old and dying shell of a man, writing these many scrolls with a shaking, palsied hand and living in a cave high above the desert floor, is it not possible to believe such a claim as that I have just made? Aye, it is. And even I, in my youth and strength and arrogant confidence, would have laughed at such a boast if I had come across these scrolls as you have. But then, would your mind change perhaps if I mentioned my real name?

  Well, pilgrim, know you by the title I truly am. I am Magdar, disciple of the Lord God Sa’yen, and known as the Left Hand of the Lord!

  Aye! The true Magdar! The sole survivor of the Inner Few that served the Lord while He was among us! I am the one that was by His side all those long years He fought to bring His faithful southward on the sacred pilgrimage, the Wha’ta. I am the one that first acknowledged Him as the Lord; Sa’yen, God of War and Healing; Lord of Wrathful Vengeance and Miraculous Healing! I am the Magdar who stood with Him when the high walls of Imperial Hakad of the Far North came tumbling down from His wrath! And aye, pilgrim, I am the Magdar who pulled the Lord God Sa’yen, the True One, from the depths of the Pictii’s most sacred fortress sanctuary deep underneath the mountains, known as Halls of the Ancient Kings!

  I am he that the Pictii, those priests of the brown robes, have sought these long years to find and punish. They have, in their merciless ways, tracked down and extinguished the lives of all the few that were part of the Lord’s Inner few. All except me. I am the only one left And it is Lady Death, as the Lord called it, and not the Pictii that soon will lay claim upon my soul Lay claim upon me soon unless what was promised to me by Him, just before the shimmering fire consumed Him, does not happen first Aye, it will be a fast and hard race to see which contestant will win. The Lord’s promise, or that patient ever-present vague form the Lord called Lady Death, whom I have known intimately these long, hard years, I must admit. It never has been easy to be a follower of the Sa’yen among a world that looks upon the brown robes of the Pictii as their true emissaries from the divine gods. And one, if he claimed to be of sane rationale, who dared not mention the Lord’s name among strangers after He was consumed by the shimmering fire while in the process of tearing down the Hidden Garden Sanctuaries of Pictii. The Pictii, being of minds that defy logic, rose from the ashes the Lord left them from His wrath and in only a few decades began to exterminate that which the Lord God had sought so valiantly to achieve!

  Aye, I have known Death intimately these long years! And soon, apparently, shall know her even more intimately unless the Lord’s promise is not realized shortly. But I am of the Sa’yen! I believe! I heard the Lord’s voice, before the green shimmering fire engulfed Him with a roar. He promised to return! To return and take me with Him to the beyond. And all I had to do was wait for Him. Wait for His return deep within this high desert valley where He last walked among us.

  And I have waited, waited these thirty years for His return. I have waited, and watched, and never journeyed for more than a month’s hard march from the desert valley my mountain cave overlooks. And I shall continue to wait until either His promise or that dark-robed lady of many charms finally lays claim my soul.

  Aye, you laugh and scoff at my words, pilgrim! I know, and I cannot deny, that you have cause to! Why would Magdar, the Left Hand of the Lord, the last survivor of the Inner Few, as we were known, be alone and old and penniless and dying in a mountain cave high above a lonely, desolate desert valley. Aye, you have reason to wonder, pilgrim, why this strange tale I am now putting to ink has come about And, with His permission, I will, in my short time left put to these many ancient scrolls that lie about my feet all that truly happened to me, to the Inner Few, and to the Lord God, the Sa’yen, while He was with us upon this world.

  I shall write a scroll at a time. And I shall start at the beginning. I shall start on the first that I saw Him among us. That night, so long, long ago, high up in the Tors Mountains in Northern Hungar. And, pilgrim, keep in mind the one promise left to us thousands of years ago by the prophets.

  “And He shall come, like a newborn babe, to stand among His kind young and invincible and not knowing truly His own magnificence.”

  I

  The Sa’yen Appears

  Aye, I remember the Sa’yen. Even now, in my old and decrepit age, I can still recall with all the startling clarity every detail of the Sa’yen’s sudden appearance among us mortals! Aye, and I become as thrilled now, nay all these years long that have passed, as I became on the night He first came among us. The Sa’yen! How long have we of the rugged Northern Regions wa
ited for the Sa’yen? Eons; generations after generations have sat patiently, staring up into the vaulted darkness, with the millions of lights Our Lord called other suns, and waited for the Fiery Chariot that would bring Him among us. And He came! He came just as the legends foretold He would. He came among us with sword and shield in hand, with fire and madness in His eyes and with wrath and destruction in His heart And I was there! I was the first officer on the old Princess Tagia, when the five black-hulled Aggarian ships attacked. And the night He appeared! Such a wild tempest I have never lived through before or since. His appearance! The winds were blowing with such a fury the old Princess Tagia leaned heavily to starboard, even though all sails were furled except for a few fliers on the for’mast And the rain was pelting us, whipped by the shrieking wind with such a fury that my arms became numbed from the pain of it all. Five Aggarian black hulls against a lowly, meager prize such as we! How could I ever forget His coming? Aye, that was a fight that I was in that night! With sword and shield all of my crew fought the bearded 11 pirates from the high-mountain pirate’s nest in the Aggarian Mountains with every ounce of strength we had. We knew what our fate would be if we failed that night Still, when the five ships of the Aggarians descended down to us through the broken cloud cover of that night, the bright moonlight illuminating the countryside we flew over and glistening off the hundreds of swords and shields on the Aggarian ships, I knew that this was to be my last fight. Aye, do we not remember the reputation of the Aggarian pirates before His coming? None escaped the raiding pack of the black-hulled ships when they descended from above onto their intended victims. None, that is, until the Sa’yen came to our rescue.

  But none of us on that round, slow, old ship knew that our lives, our destinies, would be changed that night with the Sa’yen’s appearance. We fought that night in desperation, against forces that only had to bide their time before they wore our thin ranks down to the last man! But I fought! I fought with shield and sword like I never have before! And as fierce as the many tales were of the prowess of the Aggarian swordsmen, I knew that night, for the first time in my life, that few men could stand before me with sword and shield. With stroke after stroke my arm flew and pirates clambered over bodies as they tried to kill me. But my shield was strong and my blade true; I fought with the madness of fighting lust in my veins, roaring in my ears, and so wild was I that I even jeered and taunted these fabled pirates of the high Aggarian Mountains when one would fall and another stepped up to take his place. Yet for all the mad lust that was surging through my body, one quick glance behind me showed that the fight would soon be over. Our ship, the old Princess Tagia, had a meager crew of fifty. When the first grappling hooks of the black-hulled ships flew through the night air and dug into our sides, followed by the swarming hordes of the bearded pirates themselves, our crew was rapidly cut down to only a handful in a matter of seconds. But we fought, all of us wounded at least once, and we made the pirates that tried to overwhelm us pay a heavy price for their victory. And then, just as I saw our captain go down from a sweeping blow of a pirate’s halberd, the impossible happened!

  In the melee, with three of the black-hulled ships lashed to our sides and the other two hovering just above the upper spars of the mainmast, none had watched in what direction we drifted. The howling of the storm, not once letting up from beginning to end of the pirates’ attack, had pushed us down the vaulted corridors of a high-walled valley. The valley floor and walls were heavy forests of Yab’lal wood, the broadleaved, thick, heavy trunks of wood that our ships of the rugged North are made of. Drifting down, descending all the time as we flew, and pushed by the rain-splattering, screeching wind, we eventually were warned of our imminent danger when one of the black-hulled ships lashed to us crashed into the first limbs of a Yab’lal tree. There was a shout of panic and suddenly the pressure of the pirates, already close to overwhelming the handful of us that yet survived, wavered then disintegrated as Aggarian officers shouted orders to their men to save their ships! A few of the pirates still tried to cut us down, yet’ exhausted as we were, we met these few bearded warriors and dispatched them with some difficulty. I saw through the panic and rain of the storm a chance for us to escape with our lives. The old ship that had been ours was of no value to us, and we were desperately few to try to contest the issue. Since I was the only officer left after the captain died, it was my decision to make. I did not hesitate. I ordered to abandon ship.

  Turning, I said nothing as I motioned with my sword for die few of us yet alive to follow me. Through the darkness and the rain we few stepped across the dead bodies that littered the deck of our ship and darted between masts to make for the prow of our ship. We had crashed prow-first into the high walls of the valley, the crash so intense that two of the black-hulled ships had lost masts that had fallen into the upper reaches of the Yab’lal forest, pinning the whole melee to the forest. The wind was from the stem, and as we paused to catch our bearings, it appeared to me that the wind was rising in its fury. In that case, it helped our cause because it continued to push the littered mass of the three black-hulled ships lashed to our sides farther into the tree-lined wall of the narrow valley, making it impossible for the pirates of the Aggarian Mountains to cut free and rise above the valley into safety. I grinned in the rain-whipped winds of the storm, for the first time feeling that we few had a chance to escape with our lives. With sword and shield in hand, I motioned the five remaining men to follow me as we began to climb down through the crushed beams of the prow and into the waiting arms of the Yab’lal trees.

  But alas! We were discovered and with a roar a mass of bearded pirates swarmed back onto the deck of the old ship and sped for our position. I turned and yelled for the few men alive, only five of them, to turn and hurry for the trees! And then like the fool that I am at such times, I turned and jumped forward to meet the rush of the bearded pirates alone!

  They were upon me in an instant! My shield arm was beyond pain from the incessant pounding of swords being deflected. My sword arm felt like heavy stone as I parried blows and cut and slashed. Yet I was laughing and taunting them with every breath I took. I knew that night I was a dead man, so what did it matter to me? If I died, then I died with sword and shield in hand, fighting like my father, an old Ha’valli warrior of the Ha’valli plains, had taught me to fight. Laughing and talking like a madman, I fought on, hoping that at least a few of my comrades yet had time to escape the clutches of the pirates’ grim-humored torture. Bearded pirate after bearded pirate stepped up to face me and died as my sword slipped under their shield and found its target. But the fight was unfair from the beginning, the odds too much for me to handle alone. A vicious blow to the back of my head from a shield staggered me to one side and suddenly the searing pain of a sword thrust into my shoulder was my reward! And then, He came. From out of the night, out of the dark black forests of the Yab’lal woods, He came. The Sa’yen!

  There was a tremendous crash of thunder, the sky lighting up with the jagged flash of lightning, and the bearded pirates stepped back in that instant to catch their breath for the final rush. Wounded, blood flowing freely from my shoulder, yet I stood with shield in one hand and sword in the other, back up against the for’mast, glaring at the forty or fifty bearded pirates that faced me with a thin grin on my lips. There was another rolling crash of thunder, and from above, one of the five black-hulled ships staggered, struck by lightning. A shout, heard faintly in the wind, then amazingly the night was filled with the licking, hungry flames of fire rapidly spreading across the smooth deck of one of the black-hulled ships! Another bold crash of lightning crashed through the howling, rain-swept night, followed by the staggering clap of thunder. A bearded pirate before me, already stunned by the sight of his ship being consumed by fire, cringed from the bolt of lightning and looked upward to another side of the night. My eyes were upon him as I saw his face pale suddenly in the glow of the roaring flames above us, and then he dropped sword and shield from his hands and screamed in
terror as he pointed upwards into the spars of the for’mast All eyes turned to gaze upwards and all were stunned at what they saw. The Sa’yen! The Sa’yen in His magnificence I He stood on the for’mast main spar, longbow in hand with arrow notched to the string. The long, heavy blond beard was blowing in the wind, curling over His shoulder, as was His shoulder-length hair; and dressed in the rags that once had been strangely cut clothes, to all of us below he looked like a Forest Ghoul.

  How can I describe this man-god? He was an apparition before our eyes that none of us could believe. Wide shoulders swept down into narrow waist, He stood with His feet apart, His legs thick and powerful looking. With His long beard and hair blowing in the wind, we all stood there looking up, too stunned to utter a sound. But this did not stop the Sa’yen! With sudden swiftness that took the breath away from me, the string of His bow twanged in the night wind, and a bearded pirate screamed his death scream, an arrow through his throat I In a blinking of an eye, five more pirates died by the sudden swiftness of the Sa’yen’s bow. The bearded pirates before me sulked backwards, bunching closer together from the sudden assault from above, shields rising to protect themselves.

  The Sa’yen’s voice bellowed in the night, the first my ears heard of His commanding deep voice, and He jumped from the for’main spar to the deck of the ship beside me! Landing on His feet, three more arrows swiftly left His bow, and three more bearded pirates fell to the deck lifeless. It was unbelievable! I had never seen such deft, superb bowmanship in my life. The Man, the weapon He used, was unknown to me and I knew not what to think. But the bearded pirates before me suddenly surged forward, overcoming their shock at a new assailant, and attacked with vengeance in their hearts! I stepped forward, raising my shield to protect Him and me as well, but a strong hand gently pushed me away. Leaning up against the for’mast, blood still flowing from my wound, I watched with speechless wonder as He met the rush of thirty armed Aggarian pirate warriors alone with only a bow and a quiver of arrows for weapons. And what did my eyes witness that night? A fight, a show of martial arts that I have never seen another man equal! And, in the first few minutes of that night, I knew the Sa’yen was before me. I knew the legends of His Coming were true! For what I saw then was impossible for a mere human to do alone. Only a god could accomplish the feats of prowess He completed before me. Only the Sa’yen could do what He did that night.