by Jeffery Scott Sims
in Issue 93, October 2019
After the difficulties of having journeyed thus far, Jacob Bleek, that questing scholar and seeker after strange matters, hoped for an easy passage over the steppes that spread across this portion of the expansive kingdom of the Rus. Indeed, he had sent his trusted manservant ahead with their loaded wagon to seek lodgings for that night in the next town, the domed spire of which gleamed tiny in copper hue at the distant horizon. Bleek did this that he might tarry a while with the previous night’s host, the primate or priest of a meager village whose maps of the region promised useful insights. He intended to catch up with man and goods that afternoon on horseback.
Bleek came into Russia in search of the arcane lore associated with a fabled sorcerer dead these many centuries, writings that might lie fallow for the taking. A student himself of the esoteric arts, Bleek craved the greater wisdom of the past that could increase his magical power and lead to his ultimate mastery of cosmic knowledge. Therefore he journeyed, regardless of travails, through lands unknown.
This day, however, his seemingly simple arrangements failed him. Departing before noon, the results of travel of some two hours across the featureless plains indicated problems with his progress. The feeble road, scarcely discernible before, gave out entirely, while an infinitesimal fold of ground hid the church spire that promised to guide him. The primate’s maps, after all, lacked essential elements of detail, or the bland terrain did. Bleek made the best of striking across country, a wearisome and warm ride that led him to the wooded banks of a hitherto unsuspected brook. This he followed downstream for a time, until the approach of evening cautioned him that he was completely lost.
Then the trees fell away, and he beheld a squalid village lacking even a copper-topped tower, more of a military-style post from the look of it, a huddle of dismal huts enclosed by a rough log stockade. Figures moved about outside the wall, a few domesticated animals, others a quite artistic representation of poor peasants at toil. On the instant the latter spied him, to assume stances of menacing character, with hoes and axes and other implements suddenly hefted high. From out the open gate passed a small throng of similar types, and all advanced upon him muttering to themselves and uttering fierce cries. Having learned the language, Jacob Bleek quickly deduced that they meant to kill and rob him.
He dismounted, freed him arms from his long cloak, stood there in silence a tall pale figure in black, his bright eyes cold under a broad-brimmed hat, braced himself. The hostile crowd closed with him. He produced from an inner pocket a small sphere, a globe of milky glass, which he tossed at the nearest, intoning multisyllabic words of an obscure language forgotten by all but the adepts. The sphere burst with a flash of greenish light, hurtful to the eyes—the mob recoiled—brown smoke puffed forth, encompassing several staggering forms. They staggered a little more, until they dropped. Already the majority of the remainder regressed, save for one massive brute who bulled forward swinging a scythe.
To him Bleek delivered special treatment. He thrust out his arms, thin fingers splayed in air, fixed the man with his eyes. No standard magician’s trick this; reciting the eon-favored words, he called down a Doom upon the threatening personage. The hasty spell (like the crystalline globe, it could never have served against a fellow mage) opened, only for a moment, the narrowest crack in the dimension of mundane reality, let seep through a denizen of other mystic realms normally better left to slumber. It appeared—shouts and screams ensued—it fashioned on its victim, and that unfortunate shrieked and gibbered until his human shape had been entirely disassembled.
Bleek sent the entity back with a word and a wave, awaited further developments. Before him steamed a puddled mass of ooze spiced with splinters of bone. Everyone else present, including most of those choked by uncanny vapors, dashed into the village through the gate, which they fastened behind. Bleek remounted his steed, which he spurred forward at the trot. At the gate he slipped his staff from his saddlebag, shook it at their heads, demanded whys and wherefores.
A quavering, uncultured voice called, “What manner of man you be?” When Bleek proclaimed himself peaceable traveler and wizard another voice cried, “We mean no harm to one or all, but poverty starves us, and visitors from the steppes are wont to pack trouble in their baggage.” Said still another, of uncouth dialect, “Aye, these days, and nights especially, the riders of the steppes plague us fiercely. If you truly be not of them, good sire, then leave now, and go unmolested.”
Bleek opined as to how that would not serve. He would know who were their people, and for his own immediate needs treat with their master. This request elicited from them further whines and countenances of woe.
“We be the peaceful folk of Kirgusk, this our village, under the lordship of mighty Valgorod, our esteemed head man, of noble birth, and a knighted soldier in former days, whose prowess in battle these many years has kept us secure from raiding enemies. Expect not much from his benevolence, however, as we can no longer lean on his strong sword arm. Lately he suffered wounds in a fight, and lies now ill in his house.”
Bleek murmured platitudes of sympathy, but raised his staff and with vehemence demanded admittance and succor. Subsequent to a whispered conclave the gate swung open. Bleek rode in, alert to evidence of a trick. He soon realized the needlessness of concern, for he had cowed the folk with his artful demonstration. They gave him food and drink, perhaps more than they could afford, while he relaxed in a grubby hut, they explaining that the recent constant attacks from the plains had cost them supplies and fruitful labor. Their guest paid these complaints scant attention until his homely meal was interrupted by hollering from the stockade.
“The riders come!” Instantly his women and children attendants scampered for shelter, while the men of age—including the elderly and mere boys—rushed to their stations at the wall. Jacob Bleek accompanied them, peering through a loophole that he might regard the danger. He saw, charging out of the closing darkness, scores of shadowy horsemen brandishing torches and long lances. They shouted dreadful cries, full of cruel glee. A thin shower of arrows flicked towards them, sent by the few villagers so equipped. The mass of riders divided; one group galloped past the wall, thrusting with lances and hurling torches, while the rest raced into the cultivated fields by the stream, which they commenced to plunder with practiced speed. Shortly they rode off, carrying with them a man or two dead or wounded, herding some head of livestock, leaving the folk of Kirgusk to quench the fires, to mourn two of their fallen, with three gravely injured.
When they had shaken off the worst of their fear and dismay they summoned courage to tax Bleek for his supine behavior, insisting to know why he had not employed those powers—God-given they trusted—which he had employed against them with such bitter effect. While scorning their effrontery, the wizard nevertheless felt it necessary to acknowledge their point, replying that magic could not be thrown about willy-nilly, serving best when conserved for those dire moments of last extremity. Had the raiders attempted to break in… Whatever the case, while he spared them some slender pity, their ordeal he forswore to share. All he wished was a bed for the night, and nourishment for breakfast, and he would be gone, leaving them to sort out the complexities of their dilemma.
One fellow of better speech, his hair white as snow, asked if Bleek’s studied wisdom extended to medical skills. He allowed that it did, a specious stretch, yet he guessed a convenient boast. So it proved. “Then, sire, we beg that you look to our master Valgorod, whose pulse beat faintly this day, with evil pauses. Doctor him as we can not, and give him back to us. If not, the riders will come again, tomorrow, the day after and the next, until we can not stand against them.”
Jacob Bleek accepted this charge with a grand show of compassion and good will. He counseled them to attend his horse, take him to their master. This they did, leading their guest to the only house worthy of note in the village, a relative mansion of logs with many rooms and a peaked roof of planks rather than thatch. There the large family of the owner, a wife and a brood of sons and daughters, implored him to spare no efforts on his behalf. Bleek ordered that all of the inmates be driven out, that he be left alone in the edifice with his patient. In solitude, he averred, his curious arts functioned best. They agreed to everything, bringing him more food, a brackish wine, and sundry goods that he thought to request, imagining they sounded proper for a physician. These latter he tossed cavalierly aside so soon as his hosts left him in peace. He toured the manor, which he considered barely tolerable as an abode for humanity, locking the doors and all the windows. When he had done he sat back wearily in a poor chair, laughing quietly to himself.
Generous impulses rarely motivated Jacob Bleek, nor did they now. Fearing his hosts, he sought temporary safety from their numbers by feigning altruistic kindness. He would sleep, clear out and seek his destination before they realized a trick. Meanwhile, from simple curiosity, he paid a visit to the lord of the place.
In the best room the first thing to catch his eye was, dangling limply from a stand in the corner, a battered suit of armor, hanging in the posture of a crouching ape. Valgorod, master of Kirgusk, lay nearby on an iron bed heaped with blankets and cushions. His breath rasped feebly, his chest rising and falling at hesitant intervals. He was a big man, easily a head taller than any of his compatriots, powerfully muscled, with a broad head, black hair shot with gray, and strong, commanding features. A minimal check revealed swathes of dirty bandages stinking of camphor and infection wrapped about his chest and right arm. A bowl of watery porridge and a jug of wine rested on a table by his head. Bleek shook his head absently. The man stood little chance. No ministration of this world could long forestall his arrival in the next.
Having discerned this, Bleek left the room, arranged quarters for himself in the fair adjoining compartment, and having attended to his own needs, slept. He was not to enjoy unbroken slumber. Waking before his time, well before the dawn, he idly wondered why. A groan reached his ears, the second he realized, then a shuddering, rattling gasp. He knew too well the proximate cause of that sound. Bleek rose to investigate.
In that room he found life departed. Valgorod had passed on into the dim regions that ultimately claim the finest of heroes. Bleek pondered the situation, calculating his chances. The probable consequences of this complication dismayed him. Already he knew how attached to the fleeing soul were the rustics of Kirgusk. They might blame him for their loss. The majority of his magical items of defensive capability lay far away, presumably with his man in that town leagues away. What to do?
Jacob Bleek, scholar and mage, combined to an inordinate degree self interest and curiosity. Fate and nature had provided him with an unwelcome corpse, one whose existence boded ill. Bleek could not have doctored the man alive, had not bothered to attempt that foolish act. On the other hand, for years he had dwelt upon, occasionally experimented with, the notion of resuscitating life where it had gone extinct. He knew of spells, formidable words ripped from shunned texts, and precious materials scraped from the defiled tombs of antique sorcerers which possessed, when method and acumen united, the power to infuse vitality into flesh otherwise given over to the worm. No guarantees to be sure—in no wise had he come fully prepared for this—a knotty problem, but a stimulating and conceivably rewarding one. As he heard the cock crow Bleek determined to try.
A deputation arrived after dawn, vehemently asking for news. “Show us the master,” they cried. “His women will attend. We reckon it not mete that he be left with a stranger, however clever he be.” Bleek chased them off with verbally violent bluff, declaring his efforts at a critical juncture. Give him the day, he demanded, wait until the next nightfall for his professional report. They grudgingly agreed to this, and to supply him with a variety of herbs no one ever previously associated with medicine. Shortly they proffered what could be gathered in their narrow district. These, plus the exceedingly rare materials Bleek kept with him, must suffice.
And so, for hour after hour, under the most difficult of conditions, Jacob Bleek plied his strange trade. He steamed weird potions in clay pots, filling the death chamber with noisome reek. With smarting eyes he thumbed through a sheaf of notes, uttering odd words, peculiar chants, blurting fragments of language scarce human. In red and black ochre he described unhallowed designs on the walls, pulled up the rug to draw on the oaken floor intricate geometrical forms that dazzled with their furtive suggestiveness. At the height of his endeavors, without the slightest flinching spasm of disgust, he took into his mouth a nauseous solution squeezed from a mummy’s entrails, administered it through the blue lips of the dead specimen upon which he labored.
Morning retreated before afternoon, afternoon surrendered to the remorseless advance of evening. Dire events ensued beyond the confines of the sealed house. The riders came again, in greater numbers this time, with greater boldness. The results of recent attacks inflamed their ardor and passion for loot and slaughter. They charged close to the walls without hesitation, mockingly calling to the forlorn defenders, “Where stands the mighty Valgorod? We do not see him. Hides he from us? Believe we not that. He is dead. That we know. Soon all his people shall join him, save your prettiest women, our slaves!” Flung torches ignited blazing thatch, lances jabbed, a crudely fashioned log ram battered at the gate. Men of Kirgusk fell, more wavered. The gate broke apart. The assailants surged forward, spurring their foaming beasts to trample down the crumbling defense.
At that moment there occurred a thing most incredible. The door to the house of Valgorod burst outward, rent from its hinges and falling with a crash. From out the dark opening strode a familiar gigantic figure in dented chain mail also familiar. Only one suit of armor resided in those parts, and only one man wore it. The huge metaled shape gripped in both massive hands a gleaming, lovingly oiled broadsword over half the length of his height. By the glare of burning huts that double-edged blade swung and flashed in a vast semi-circle, and its bearer, as he rushed into the fray, laughed and thundered in a voice that heartened and inspired the folk, “Dare these wretched barbarians intrude upon my sacred demesne? With me, men, and woe to those who choose to taste my wrath!”
The speaker wore raised his visor, and had any failed to recognize that voice which boomed its proud fury, none could have mistaken the hard countenance of their master Valgorod. Indeed his eyes glowed with a passion almost inhuman, as if the fires of Hell flickered from them, but it was he, Valgorod of Kirgusk, noble warrior and master of men, plainly eager to add luster to a name already renowned for mastery in combat.
This he did. The men cheered, with their clubbed weapons closed ragged ranks about him as he led the counter assault. He waded into the swirling enemy throng. Their lances glanced from his armor. The sword of Valgorod leaped to life. It hummed and it sang, it carved lustrous paths through the air. At quick intervals it bit flesh, drew screams of pain and terror. A horse reared, neighing wildly, dumped its rider minus an arm. The fellow rolled in the dirt, pawing at his hideous stump, howling for aid. Instead bucolic foes hacked him to bits with their tools. Another rider fell, his bowels agape, begging for mercy. None did he receive.
The folk of Kirgusk had seen Valgorod at war before, but never with such murderous zest and invincible precision. His opponents could not fell him, strike as they might, while each thrust and slash of his blade struck home. The horsemen recoiled; already some, the most fortunate, decided on flight, put into instantaneous practice this sound tactic. Others Valgorod, with remarkable speed and frenetic energy unseemly in a wounded man, caught and slew like a relentless killing machine. Emboldened, his followers leaped at foes trapped against the stockade, pulled them from their mounts. Axes and knives splashed blood, scattered viscera.
Of a sudden combat ceased, for the enemy survivors had gone, madly galloping into the night, leaving behind their heaps of dead, the very image of a massacre. The lesson of this battle took hold; the riders would not come again during the lifetimes of this generation. A shout of victory rose from the hoarse throats of the fighters of Kirgusk. They clustered about their hero and leader. He, the magnificent Valgorod, raised his sword on high in both hands and shrieked a warrior’s hymn of thanksgiving to his God. Then—what was this?—he sagged, collapsed into an awkward, motionless jumble of metal.
His people smothered his body with theirs as they groped and struggled to raise him. They clawed at his armor, hurled from him his helmet… and surged back in horror, moaning, swearing, even sobbing. For what they found within that iron case was death, only not that of this moment, but with an appearance of long standing: putrefaction, corruption, insidious signs of deep decay. A loathsome skull, soiled by liquid filth, grinned up at them. Congratulate they would a rotted corpse, the disarticulated joints of which came apart under their hands. This they would never understand, nor would the tales and songs of after years explicate the mystery. Nay, seldom did they mention it, not as it actually happened. Maybe a hearth story lingered into the decades that hinted at the grim fomentations of Jacob Bleek, but no spinner of tales managed to get that story right.
Faster even than the fleeing pirates of the steppes rode that wizard, a league and more gone before any remembered to ask of him. Dawn found him far away, by good chance within site of that spired village where, by better chance, his true servant anxiously awaited him. From there they journeyed on quickly, heedless of discomfort, Bleek brooking no delay.
Jacob Bleek ever considered his arcane devisements of that night a lugubrious failure. For his own amusement and acquisition of expertise he had genuinely attempted, with the petty materials and arts at hand, to raise Valgorod from the dead and rejoin sundered spirit and body in their entirety. This he proved unable to do. That fierce soul, sparking with the lust for life, surely reanimated the frame, but the corpus, weak and tragically abused, could not long hold the charge. Bleek turned to implement his escape once he deduced the score, until a gasping, hollow voice arrested him.
“Man of this world, I know you not, save that those who reside beyond the grave whispered that you awakened me for this brief instant, and just for this instant. Meanwhile my people perish. I must die again soon, a truth chiseled in fiery letters behind the black veil, which naught can prevent. So be it—I accept what God grants—only do this for me, I implore, if your power allows. Feed into this pathetic shell, this wreckage born of woman, a mere hour’s grace of vitality and wholesome sinew. Make of me once more a man of might for an hour—half that, a quarter!—that I may wreak my will, one last time, on my enemies.”
Valgorod begged as for a fantastic boon, one at which Bleek snorted in fey irritation. Of course he could inflame mortal tissue with ephemeral strength; a trivial spell, that, one readily wrought off the top of his head. Bleek learned nothing, gained nothing by it, a waste of his ability, nor offering lasting result, for the simple conjuration derived its realization from the organic matter of its subject, feeding on that matter. It would shortly render a strong man weak, a weak man endangered, and one previously dead… Yet why not? It did Bleek no harm, cost him little, and of course practice paid dividends.
Thus came Jacob Bleek to weave that charm which meant everything to the master of Kirgusk, so much to his people. Bleek never learned what transpired from his artful wiles, nor would he have cared. Such is the way of wizards.
©October 2019, Jeffery Scott Sims
Jeffery Scott Sims has published a book of weird tales, Eerie Arizona, as well as many short stories in various publications. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery.