Warlord of Tsalal, Frederick Poulson, DAW Books, 1979

Warlord of Tsalal, Frederick Poulson, DAW Books, 1979

''[Author's note: This is a fictionalized version of the Yg-Hg-Krz, a sort of Tsalal epic poem depicting the life of Krz or Karsh, a Yag culture hero, believed to date around 8,000 BC, and believed to have been the first man to unite the Yag cities. Karsh may or may not have existed. He may have been a composite of several warlords from the post-surge period. Or he may have been a complete fiction, invented to explain a series of cultural traits and institutions in the Antarctic Yag society.] ''

After a brutal winter siege, the walls of Yth had fallen.

The Warlord, Karsh of Yg-hth uttered a prayer of thanks to the black toad god of night, and marched on the temple. He had a promise to keep. Before him, the soldiers of Yth, defeated, cast down their weapons and knelt to await their fates.

Karsh had offered life to those who would serve Yg-hth usefully. To soldiers, to bakers and butchers, to counting men, scribes, flint knappers. The children would be killed of course, thrown to the cook fires. Most of the women would be killed. The old, the useless, the infirm, the resistant.

They were savage terms, but common among the Yag of the civil wars era. Even generous. Yg-hth had put whole communities to the death, or reduced entire nations to slavery and to the seasonal drowning which were the fate of slaves. So had Yth. Between them, the rival communities in their quest for arable land had exteripated all the communities between them.

Indeed, a goodly percentage of the people contained within Yth were the survivors of other communities. Karsh assumed that these would be useful persons, with no particularly allegiance.

In the great square before the temple, a delegation of fearful priests was waiting for him, their faces smeared with ashes. That wasn’t a good sign.

He glanced over to make sure his carpenters were building the torture platform. He had vowed to torture to death the entire ruling family of Yth before the eyes of their nation, to end the ruling line of Yth and break any bond they still held. Every witness would know in their hearts the futility of contending with Yg-hth.

The priest threw himself at Karsh’s feet, blubbering.

Probably literate, the warlord thought sourly. And favoured by the gods. Oh but sometimes, he ached to string up all these godbastards and watch them dance like puppets on the wind.

“Get up man,” he ordered, “and loose your tongue. What’s the matter.”

“The Queen of Yth has taken her own life. And the lives of her consort and children.”

Karsh felt his stomach going hollow.

“Who helped them?” he demanded. They’d been alive when the city fell, holed up in the temple. The priests had promised them to him.

“No one, great warlord,” the Priest wept, “she had a knife.”

Karsh cursed.

He needed finality. He needed a certainty that everyone would know in their heart. Without it, the vermin of Yth would not stay cowed. Oh, they’d kneel now, they’d weep now. But it was hard to root fear in a human heart, the spirit kept casting it away. You had to drive it in and fix it there.

Without a demonstration, they’d regain their will, their attitude, their rebellious souls. And that bitch of a queen had planted the seed of defiance already, with her own suicide.

Nothing to do but slay every human being in this city, to turn it into a rotting pit of corpses. Let the dead Queen commune with a dead city, if she loved it so much.

From this thought, came the germ of an idea.

Perhaps.

A fitting revenge?

“Bring out the corpses,” he told his men, “bring each of them out, I want them all hanging on the platform.”

“Hang the dead?” His lieutenant asked. “Pointless if you ask me, Sir.”

“I didn’t ask.”

The bodies were brought out. A young consort, barely a boy. Two daughters, a son. Throats all slit, covered in red. Karsh knew well what a collection of vipers they’d been.

The Queen was the worst. She’d slashed her face. Some scheme to conceal identity, to plant seeds of doubt, of course. Instead of slashing her throat and bleeding out, she’d plunged the knife into her belly. There was a foul smell, a sign that she’d but through her own intestines.

Karsh hoped that she had suffered.

The bodies were hung by their necks around the torture platform. Flickering torches illuminated the scene. The blood looked black in torchlight, almost oily. The postures of the hanged were slack, it was clear to all that they were dead.

Some of his soldiers jeered.

“Attend me,” Karsh whispered. He stripped off his armour, and climbed the platform, naked, and carrying only his flint edged sword. His manhood was rampant for all to see. Let them watch this, he said, and let them remember.

Walking to the dangling Queen, he struck the corpse, watching it lol. He tore its robe away. With one slash of his flint sword, he cut the noose holding it, watching as it flopped on the platform. With a contemptuous kick, he flipped the corpse onto its back, another kick spread its legs.

And then...

He did the unspeakable.

********************

Afterwards, Karsh stood, covered hi gore, and raised his sword.

“Not even death,” he roared, “is an escape from Yg-hth. Those who wish to live shall show their heart by defiling this....” he spat. “Those who would show their loyalty to the dead, shall join them.”

The assembled throng was silent.

Bring the first legion. His soldiers dragged out squads of bound warriors, forced them to their knees.

“Choose,” he ordered.

The bound men bowed their heads. He gave a signal. One by one, the axes fell, heads rolled.

“Wait,” a man cried out.

Karsh held up his hand. The bound man climbed to his feet. He was a brute, cauliflower ear, brow ridge, scars, a long time warrior. Karsh nodded. His bonds were cut.

The crowd watched as he silently climbed the steps to the platform and knelt over the body of the queen, he pulled his loincloth off. Karsh watched as he did his new duty.

After that more heads rolled, but more men climbed the platform. Eventually, the square was full of severed heads, but now the chops were coming slowly. Most of the men, hardened or fearful, ambitious or mercenary, joined the growing lines.

The other royal bodies had been stripped and cut down, for unspeakable use.

It was going too slowly.

“Collect a hundred women,” Karsh ordered his men, both the ones he’d taken the city with, and the ones newly made in his service. “Bring them here and cut their throats. By the time the stars stand opposite their paths, this city will be either of the dead or of those who use them.”

---

DV, Man, that's messed up. But historically, a way to ensure loyalty was to force someone to violate their own taboos.

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'''"On the Unspeakable," Susan Sontag, Ms Magazine, Araby Press ''' "Transgression is one of the most powerful human events. As humans we live in islands of normality, bolstered by mores and expectations. When transgression occurs, the island of normality is shattered. The victim must find a new reality, either constructing it themselves, or having it thrust upon them. The worst transgressions were those in which the victim is forced or seduced into participating. In these instances, in order to live with themselves, in order to survive the death of a moral universe they have themselves participated in shattering, they must embrace, wholeheartedly and without reservation a new amoral universe and give themselves to it utterly. Such peoples as the Yag of the South Pole have raised this sort of transgression to a hideous art form..."

'''"Against our Will, A History of Rape," by Susan Brownmiller, Butnam Press '''"....The most infamous rapists are the Yag of the South Pole. Although technically speaking, one can't describe what they do as rape since consent can never be an issue. But the underlying dynamics, and social prejudice come together here. The Yag practice has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with power. There is nothing sexual about the act itself, and by some reports, those who engage it often have difficulties performing the act. But the true axis is that of power, not only a domination of their victims, but an expression of social power. For the Yag, their act is the ultimate expression of domination, of their will over death itself...."