Yag Border Region - 5800 BP - Rise of the Ptarh

Yag Border Region - 5800 BP - Rise of the Ptarh

Mitl sat in the guard tower folding his hand under his armpits. He stared out into the icy wastes. He couldn’t see anything of course. The winter night was coming on, day was increasingly short periods of twilight, and the cold had come early.

There was a small fire at the top of the tower, but that was only for signals. Still, as the cold set in, the men would feed it, building it bit by bit to warm themselves.

Tlast came up. Mitl acknowledged him with a nod. He didn’t particularly like the older man. But they’d drawn the rotation.

“Anything?” Tlast asked.

Mitl shrugged.

“Birds, a pack of trippers, apart from that, wind and snow.”

“Trippers,” Tlast said. “Good eating there. Bag any?”

“Too far.”

“No Ptarh?”

“Maybe they decided not to come this year,” Mitl offered. That would be a relief. The Shaghui had always migrated down from the highlands, the same way the astrops moved up the rivers for winter. The big shamblers would move into the lowlands in order to dig for roots and grasses. And they brought the Ptarh with them.

Used to be the nomads had stayed well clear of Yag places. But they’d grown bolder and bolder year after year.

Eventually, they’d become dangerous, attacking villages and towns. The Yag lords had responded in kind, destroying all they met. The Ptarh had fled.

But they’re returned year after year.

They’d become a dangerous nuisance, a distraction to the high lords, who much preferred to watch and defend against each other, or to visit their energies upon the downstream lords.

The Yag lords had been driven to limited cooperation, pushing the Ptarh back, establishing fortifications, even building massive walls and guard towers.

This was one such wall, a flat faced earthen slope, the height of two men, a glacial moraine faced with stone, punctuated with wood and stone towers the height of four or five men.

“They always come,” Tlast replied, breaking Mitl’s reverie. “They always come.”

Tlast had a dead eye, and a large scar that deformed one side of his face. It was one of the reasons Mitl disliked him, his ugliness, that and his fatalism.

“Where are they? They’re late.”

“They always come,” Tlast replied.

“Well, no reason to come here. Let them bother someone further up or down the wall.”

Tlast grunted, staring out into the distance.

“It’s getting too dark to see,” Mitl grouched. The wind had picked up even as the dusk faded, the air was full of blowing snow, a stomach turning whiteness that beckoned and billowed. The horizon was no longer visible, the nearest trees were an indistinct blur.

“Shh,” Tlast said.

“What?”

“Hear that?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen.”

And then Mitl heard it. A sort of low indistinct moaning.

“Shaghui?” Mitl’s heart dropped. Shaghui meant Ptarh. Ptarh meant fighting, it meant relentless, brutal barbarians with their massive clubs and spears. Mitl was glad of the wall. When they came they came in numbers. He’d survived two onsloughts. He had no wish to see any more.

“No,” Tlast said, “not Shaghui, too low pitched. Shaghut.”

The monstrous cousin of the Shaghui, massive, brutal, bad tempered. They were said to be able to rear up the height of two men or more.

“They don’t come down from the highland,” Mitl complained. But he felt a bit of relief. Shaghut were just big dumb animals. One might wander down, but it did not portend an attack.

“Listen,” said Tlast. “There’s more than one.”

Yes, as Mitl listened, the lowing doubled and trebbled, new moans began as old ones tailed off. He tried to remember. Did the Shaghut herd? Weren’t they supposed to be solitary.

Then they saw them, appearing out of the drifting snow, walking reared up on two legs, their gait awkward, but patient. Manlike, but not manlike. The smallest of them was the height of three men.

“They’re huge,” Mitl breathed, staring. How had these titans gotten so close. Their immense forms lumbered steadily closer.

As they approached, Mitl distinguished something odd about them. Harnesses. They wore harnesses. And massive quilted pads that could only be armour. He gaped. There must have been twenty of them, giants advancing out of the white. Colossal mishappen figures, shaggy fur, long necks and small heads, and swinging those massive forelimbs with their curving scimitar claws. They advanced with clumsy, awkward, but unstoppable deliberation.

And behind them... lights

Shaghui, and Ptarh, hundreds of them.

“It’s an attack,” Mitl yelped. He shoved Tlast, the fool. Tlast’s body keeled over, an arrow in his chest.

The giants were almost upon them.

Desperately, he fed the signal fire.

“Attack,” he yelled frantically to those in the guardhouse below. “They’re here.”

Suddenly, the tower began to rock. He stumbled. A massive claw the length of his thigh tore at the window, reaching high. Mitl had no time to scream as the tower fell.

He tried to leap clear, fell hard, felt his hip shatter. He screamed, and curled on his side. The giants were climbing over the wall, moving unbelievably fast with their awkward shamble. Men were scrambling from the guardhouse, but the giants, with their shaggy bulk and their huge sickle claws were already slicing them apart. Two reared up to tear at the guardhouse, solid walls pulled apart like a child’s toy.

Ptarh were boiling over the wall, climbing ruined sections. Dozens, hundreds, so many, Mitl thought, his mind hazed with shock. Why so many, how so many. Their raiding parties had never been more than a dozen at a time.

One of the Ptarh noticed him, and spurred his shaghui over to the injured man. Mitl saw him grin and raise his lance.

And knew no more

--

Yep, I've already covered the Ptarh Empire. But I'd been captured by this image of a lonely windswept guardhouse, a wall against barbarians, and appearing out of an early winter blizzard, a line of shambling, shaggy, mishappen giants, as tall or taller than the wall built to defend. I need to go back and do the Zhudan episode properly. And I want to do another Ptarh sequence, describing the submission of the Yag. Then after that, the Bronze age, the spread of new tools and weapons, the invention of glass, the decline of the Coal Kingdoms, the rise of Azul and Lake Vos, the Zhudan hegemony, perhaps some exploration of the great Islands of the West Antarctic. And, of course, gunpowder. Stay tuned. Captain Cook is only 4000 years away.

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Uh!!

This is a horrific, disgusting, disturbing timeline. I love it!:D ( And am anxious as to why that is so:eek:) Following on from a comment above - given that all the Tslal derive from 4/5 people, and that they have not developed other pretty universal taboos, e.g. cannibalsim and necrophilia, do they ever develop the taboo about incest? Or is it just an example of the game the whole family can play?