by Urs Gereon, Wizard of the Amber College
Ghur, the Amber wind, blew strongly across the northern tundra. Urs wrapped his bear-skin cloak tighter around himself, but only against the cold. The wind of Ghur he drew in with a deep breath; absorbing it, incorporating it into every level of his being. He felt it in the back of his mind like a howling wolf. It clawed at his reason, his logic; the things that other men clung to and called civilisation. To Urs there was truth only in the instinct of the beast, a purity that humanity turned aside from long ago.
The northern barbarians that rampaged through the village seemed to the casual observer to be no more than beasts. To Urs, standing on the edge of the pine forest and watching the destruction, they were little different from the men of The Empire. Men that acted like beasts, but men still. The barbarians had their own civilisation, based around the worship of the Ruinous Powers, and were no more a part of the natural world than were his own long-forgotten family. All men were despoilers of the land, slayers of beasts; some were just worse than others.
Those who followed the Chaos gods were the worst of all of course. Their coming meant the end of the natural order – replacing it with the unimaginable randomness of the Warp. The deaths of these villagers mattered little to Urs, but the threatened death of the land itself was something he would always strive to prevent.
They moved strangely, these servants of the dark gods. At first glance they were simply moving through the village and slaughtering indiscriminately. Closer inspection revealed a pattern to their actions, a purpose. Some they killed where they stood; others they dragged a brief distance and then killed; some they allowed to escape with their lives. It was the same with the buildings of the village. Some were put to the torch, others doused in water to prevent them from burning. It made little sense to Urs, but he quickly discounted it as an irrelevance. Instead he focused his mind and began the calling-song under his breath.
In the forest, hundreds of birds took wing. They rose together as a vast and diverse flock – crow, sparrow, owl; united by a single purpose. The flock descended on Urs and circled him, their chatter quite deafening. Raising his hand, he pointed toward the barbarian raiders and spoke the words of sending. The birds fell upon the chaos worshipers in a hail of pecking and clawing, forcing them to scatter in panic. However, the attack was not to last. Scant moments after the birds had struck, Urs became aware of the presence of another magic-user. He stood on a low ridge overlooking the village: despite the distance between them, Urs could tell that his adversary was of far greater than mortal stature. The black-armoured man called upon his vile god, and at once Urs lost control of the birds. Even as the flock dispersed, the armoured sorcerer commanded his minions to attack Urs.
They were on him in a moment, a dozen screaming madmen. Urs did not run, but threw back his head and howled like a beast. He drew the wind of Ghur around him, and became the bear. Mere men were no match for the avatar of the wild; he rent their limbs and scattered their corrupted blood upon the earth. Perhaps he would have killed them all; perhaps in time he would have been overwhelmed – it was not to be decided that day. The sorcerer intervened to save his troops, by breaking the spell and leaving Urs as but one ordinary man against many. Urs had no desire to spend his life meaninglessly. He fled, changing himself into a hawk and climbing steeply though the air to safety.
It was only when he saw the battlefield from above that Urs realised why the raiders had acted as they did. The bodies, the blood; the burnt buildings and the unburnt – together they formed a pattern. Outlined below him were great, sweeping symbols, too large to be understood from the ground. The chaos sorcerer had directed this, had carefully planned and orchestrated the carnage to achieve this effect. It was so trivial, yet utterly breathtaking – he had spelled out his name in the slaughter.
copyright JRT 2007, all rights reserved