The Word

By Daniel Dacre

Seventy generations after the Great Dying, peoples strange and varied vie for mastery of the Island. Cities up and down the length of it lie mangled and buried in centuries of overgrowth. Cities destroyed in a cataclysmic war, yet still in the grip of terrible sicknesses unleashed by that ancient annihilation. But a new era is dawning when after long centuries, the fevers of blood and air and water begin to release their hold on these places.
Tribes from the north rise and unite to threaten the whole Island. Tribes whose ancestors came from the remote highlands and across the ice bridge formed after the fourteen-month-winter of long ago. Using captives and slaves they begin a brutal harvest of the cities under their sway, looking for metals, machines and knowledge from the last days of the world before theirs. A world cursed with its gift for destruction.
Only one power on the Island can prevent the march of cruelty and the renewal of an ancient, destructive compulsion. A southern people which had striven in some way to preserve the ancient art of writing. Treachery and brutality conspire against them.
In time their hopes begin to rest on the frail shoulders of an extraordinarily gifted child.
An eight-year-old girl who must survive at all costs ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Dacre
• Release date: Feb 10, 2015

Daniel Dacre

Hi, I'm Daniel Dacre. I have collaborated in the publication of a number of works through the years. 'Solomon Seal and the Darkley Troll' is my first work of young fiction. I wanted it to be sad, frightening, funny, uplifting and, somehow, true. I hope I have succeeded. Inspired by the great Anglo-Saxon classic 'The Dream of the Rood', I wrote 'The Manger and Other Stories'. Each story takes an 'object's-eye-view' in the unfolding of one of the famous stories in the Gospels. Embellishing freely, I have nonetheless written each story in a spirit of 'creative reverence'. 'One Year Under Weeping Mountain' captures the travails of a young southern African nation as it seeks to develop. It is shown through the experience of an English volunteer expatriate teacher. Although a work of fiction, it is in part based on true life occurrences. 'The Word' is a post-apocalyptic epic that envisions a world many centuries after a cataclysmic war. When a warlike people of the north threaten the Island, the hope of its defenders rest on the frail shoulders of a little girl. An extraordinarily gifted girl who must survive at all costs. I live in the Royal County of Berkshire. I can be contacted at [e-mail].

Book preview

I: A Tale of Two Stories

The Island, Seventy Generations after the First Age

South Rivers, Chief Settlement of the Southlands

Though Writermen were renowned as people of the book, they loved to tell stories. In South Rivers, there was a custom especially in the spring and autumn to tell folk tales by fire and moonlight. Days warm enough to sit outside and cool enough to want the warmth of a fire as the night drew in. Any elder could volunteer who could tell a good story and gather a circle of young listeners.

On a mild spring evening, Lysander Trueblood sat at the uncovered part of his large porch while a fine fire took hold in the great iron grate. The grate was placed so that any listeners gathering could circle its warmth. Every so often the old man would pull on the armrests of his chair, lift himself up and take an old wrought iron poker to the fire.

The children watched with delight as he prodded and nudged charred wood pieces to make them crease and break in yellow-orange brightness and give themselves once more to flame. Having roused the fire, he’d then cap it with a rough pyramid of fresh timber while the children listened to the hiss and wheeze, to the shuffle and snap of new burning.

Sometimes an especially loud crack would jolt them and make their eyes follow an ember up into an evening sky in the last blue fade of the day. Behind their gazes was a wondering hope that the ember would stay long in bright ascent. Long enough that it might seat itself among the stars now beginning to pick themselves out far over the lamps, fires and bright windows of the city.

But as often as not, the embers would lose themselves in the moon. And when eyes fell slowly down, it was to an earth where textures, colours and detail had mostly given way to night horizons of cluttered darkness. The muddle of forest and farms that ran gently to the rivers. The thousand roofs of the old quarter. The huddle of different buildings amid the broken strings of lamps that lit the market and artisan quarters.

For all this, you could still make out the sharp magnificence of the offices of government and – a mile along an avenue rising from them – the broken, ancient immensity of the holy place. These were unerring landmarks for a sojourner either by road of river. Things that told them they were approaching South Rivers, the capital of all the Southlands and a city of some forty thousand souls.

It had been a while since Lysander Trueblood had told a tale. He had been lately too busy keeping up the Annals of the Truebloods. But children loved his stories. He’d always manage to make young hearts deliciously afraid. He’d let terrors snap at them in the firelight, terrors held taut on only the flimsy leash of a story. But then he’d send them home with something of the warmth of the fire in them.

One of the last to seek out a seat by the grate was his own grandson, a boy called Ptolemy – Ptolemy Trueblood. He’d been busy at his studies all that day, his grandfather guessed. Studies that marked him as a child of a leader. For he was the younger son of Demetrius Trueblood, who had inherited the leadership from Lysander himself.

Grandfather Trueblood would never know what story he was going to tell. So he’d take a minute to search the young eyes, wide and white among the darkening spaces. He’d say he was looking for a story in the fire-fleck of an eye.

Then he’d ask something of a riddle: who were the first to rule this island in the very beginning?

Now most people understood the beginning as the times after the Great Dying some seventy generations ago. And it was only the well-spoken who would say ‘Great Dying’. Most others would say ‘gre’dyin’ or simply ‘greddine’. However they said it, it named the start of a world that made sense to them rather than the end of another world and the loss of millions upon millions of lives in horrors unimaginable.

For the children, the ‘great’ and ‘dying’ that began their world were like the ‘break’ and ‘fast’ that began their day. Words unconsidered in themselves. Nobody but the scholar would think of the dawn people of the Tenth Age or of the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Greeks and Latins of the Fifth and Fourth Ages. Or of the peoples of all the ages right up to the great people of the First Age who had left their ancient mark everywhere on the island. Up and down the length of its six hundred miles.

‘Take your time about it,’ said the old man with a hint of mischief, looking around him at the fire-bright faces. ‘Who were first to rule this island in the very beginning?’

The children began to fidget in their places, turning their heads at an angle and looking sideways for an answer. Each one rummaging among their knowledge of those races that peopled the morning of their world. In the times after the Great Dying.

‘The earthpeople. The Pusbloods,’ one boy eventually volunteered.

‘Well, they did rule for many generations – but they were not the first.’

‘The men of the north,’ another said.

‘No, they are a powerful people, but they have never ruled the whole island.’

‘The tree people,’ came another volunteer.

‘The shore people, the purplers,’ came another.

‘The mountain people.’

‘The people of the west – the Border folk.’

‘The people of the Southlands – us!’

And at all these answers Lysander Trueblood shook his head.

‘Well, who?’ the children came back in chorus.

‘Who ruled the land in the beginning? It was not people at all. In those first days, it was the beasts.’

The frisson of a story’s beginning had the children shuffle more fully into their spots by the fireside.

‘Yes, it was creatures of land and water and air that ruled.’

The old man suddenly shot out a question: ‘Has anyone ever seen a stelbird – as huge a bird that ever flew and with a sharp horn above the hook of its beak?’

The children slowly shook their heads whilst the flame light played on their faces.

‘And a gulvern? Think of a raven, only much bigger. A giant, hook-beaked raven.’

Again, the children shook their heads.

‘Look around you. Do you see those big posts at the end of each street? What are they called?’

‘Hawkwatches.’

‘Hawkwatches. Why? Well, nowadays we put them up for decoration. But when my grandfather’s grandfather was a boy, there was no street in any Southlands town – nor anywhere else – without its guard eagles and goshawks. They kept them on posts they called hawkwatches.’

‘Why …?’ one girl shyly enquired.

‘Well, to protect the little children and infants. Goshawks to chase off the gulverns. Eagles to chase off the stelbirds.’

‘Do you mean …’ a boy began but could not finish the question.

‘Yes,’ Lysander Trueblood spoke slowly, watching eyes about him widen a little more.

‘Are they still around, stelbirds and gulverns?’ the shy girl blurted in fear.

‘They are,’ said the old man to a general alarm. ‘But don’t let it worry you none. As time went on, these great birds took more to fearing men and their places. Now, you have to go to the farthest reaches of the island even to have a chance of sight of one.’

Some of the children flopped down a little into their seats in relief.

‘But then there’s the shrakejaw! Has anyone ever seen a shrakejaw? No? Well you would remember if you did. It’s a fish as long as two boats and with big teeth in a curved jaw. It could take a full-grown swan in one swallow and no one would know. It could take a leg clean off a man.’

‘Have you ever seen one?’

‘Truth is, I have not. And even my grandfather’s grandfather had never seen one. But they lived once in the big rivers and lakes. Some say they live still in the far waters of the north. Others say that if you go out on a night like tonight when the moon is bright … and go down by a really deep lake … you will always find them where the moon tears on the water.’

The children were silent for a moment, some with mouths slightly open. Tiptoeing in their imagination by moonlit lakes …

‘And then there were the creatures of the land! Take the red-dogs of the north. Bigger than a lammas-hound and twice as heavy. Stiff with muscles like the neck of a bull. Some say they were made crazed by feasting on the brains of men. Some say they were just made crazed. Others say they can uproot a badger and crunch it to nothing. Or that they can break trees to get at what hides in them. Where they live, only the giant roan-pigs with their six tusks can face a red-dog. Them and the mighty spread-elks of the mountains.’

‘Do red-dogs live around here?’ a boy wondered.

‘They do not.’

Hardly leaving time for his audience to breathe out their relief, Lysander Trueblood shot out another question: ‘And do you know why?’

The children shook their heads.

‘I found this out as a lad myself travelling the north borders with my father. He told me that the red-dogs end … where the beredogs begin.’

‘Beredogs!’ the boy said in awe.

‘Beredogs. Bigger even than a red-dog – but slower mind. That being so, no red-dog – crazed as they are – will take on a full-grown beredog, one on one.’

‘Do beredogs live round here?’ the same boy persisted.

‘In the wilds of the Southlands. In the open plains and rocky places. They don’t trouble people much. Like the red-dogs, they have a hatred of fire.’

‘Do they live in the forests too?’

‘In the forests? Have you lost your senses? No red-dog or beredog in its right mind would ever live in the great forests. Because then they would have to face the tarqorl. And they would never want to do that.’

‘The tarqorl!’ another boy hymned in awe.

At this, the seeds of tomorrow’s game began to be sown in the minds of the boys. Some were impressed by the massive strength of the beredog, others by the power and mystery of the tarqorl. No one wanted to be a red-dog.

Meanwhile, the girls around the fire simply wanted to snuggle closer and feel anew the warmth of the fire on their faces. One of them asked, ‘Weren’t there any good animals in the beginning?’

‘Good animals … mmm … let me think. You must mean the sand-leach as thick as a man’s thumb. Or the rasp lizard the size of a child. No? The cave spider or bird wasp? Oh, I know, the four-fanged coulter viper as long as a horse?’

Against a rising protest among the girls, Lysander Trueblood eventually said, ‘Oh, you must mean the tannaphire!’

At this the girls were silent – as tannaphire did not sound to them the name of a bad creature.

‘Did I ever tell you about the tannaphire? No? In size between a red deer and spread-elk – and the fastest creature on the island. They live north of here wherever there are hills and forest cover. They turn white in the winter. Except for one spot. Something like the shape of an arrow on their forehead just beneath their antlers. Do you know what colour it is? Blue. Pure blue. It’s the only animal that has pure blue on its hide. Nobody knows why.’

‘Have you ever seen one?’

‘Oh yes … it’s hard to get close, but out with my father we once saw one in silhouette on the ridge of a hill. You know there’s a saying about the tannaphire ...’

If south points the arrow of the tannaphire,

You will be granted your heart’s desire.

But if the tannaphire looks to the north,

You should run for all you’re worth.

‘Which way was it pointing? Which way was it pointing?’ came a chorus of questions.

‘It was pointing … to the south.’

‘Did you get your heart’s desire? Did you get your heart’s desire?’ came a second refrain.

‘I did,’ Lysander Trueblood smiled. ‘I did,’ he said again, blinking a little as he felt warmth in the back of his eyes.

Ptolemy noticed beside him that a girl was breathing in to ask his grandfather another question about what this heart’s desire was. He reached across carefully – not so his grandfather would notice – to squeeze her arm and keep her quiet.

Everybody knew – didn’t they? – that his grandfather had given up the leadership of the Southlands when his wife died. She was called Anna of the High Moors. Ptolemy had never lived to see her – though grandfather had loved her much.

The children were quiet now for a while, letting the firelight swim in their vision and fill their minds with dreams to sleep to. Lysander Trueblood noticed his own grandson shifting a little in his seat like something was playing in his thoughts.

He had an instinct that the boy wanted to ask questions no-one else would ask. Maybe to go back before the beginning of their world and ask how the world before his had ended, an immense world of power and might.

And if the boy did ask, how would he answer?

Though his own people – the Writermen – had kept the art of letters, these things were so long ago, that no one people could remember how it all happened. Really remember. When a world dies, a world’s memory dies with it.

Other folk guessed. Made up stories. These stories would pass on, twist this way and that and feed into each other. For all that, there were some things that were the same in most stories.

Many, many generations ago there had been a great dying. This was the end of that great age called the First Age. In that age, there had been countless marvels. Wonders in steel and stone, wonders of the air and beneath the earth, wonders of land, sea and space. In that age, there had been more people in one city than now lived across the whole of the island, all six hundred miles of its length.

What had caused the Great Dying? Here, the stories were different. But many tell of a fever fire. A fire that could burn iron in unimaginable heat and then poison the blood for generations. A fever fire, an Ague of Fire.

That was why across the island the ancient cities and towns were left alone till their fever subsided. Alone and overgrown. Enormous twisted carcases of black and grey and glass. Ore middens, as the north men called them. Deadly places where the brave, the rash and the condemned were sent by these men of the north to harvest what metals and knowledge could be got from that great age.

Other stories tell of a war of numbers. Not numbers of people or armies or weapons, but of numbers themselves. In the days of the First Age, numbers were everywhere and were all. They were, the stories say, the rulers of lives and the bringers of prosperity for the fortunate.

But then the numbers fought. And then the letters fought. The words of all the tongues of the world fought. And then came the fever fire and two other agues in its wake, poisoning air and water. And then the Great Dying across the whole world, as far as anyone knew.

II: Shadows at the Door

Birdsong pierced the break of dawn, a dawn as bright as the clear night before had promised. Lysander Trueblood was up early at his desk looking over some papers – part of the Annals of the Truebloods. He sat tapping at his forehead for inspiration as the curtains, part-drawn against the brightness of the day, breathed lightly in the morning breezes.

In time he became aware of a shadow behind the door to his study. A small shadow, perhaps that of the boy. A shadow he was happy to let hover where it was.

For there was another shadow at the door. A shadow that had been causing him great worry for many months now. It was a shadow his son and his grandson would one day have to deal with.

For even as he pondered things of the recent past in the story of his people, there were other things afoot to the far north of the island that would shape annals soon to be written.

At that very time, about 250 miles north of South Rivers, some warriors and their folk had struck camp. These were the men of the north, or the Makermen as they called themselves. They prided themselves as a people of the furnace and forge.

Gathered under their twelve chieftains, it was their tenth day of Forrlastime. A time of feasting and festival after their conquest of a people who had refused to accept vassalage to them. The unfortunate and proud Hill Folk of Sennocdur. All that night the victors had been carousing, smoking pipes of dried stollberry blossom and spilling pear spirit freely down their throats.

These had been days of apportioning tribute. Bodies had been defleshed, straight bones harvested. Animals had been taken. Slaves had been set aside – some for ritual sacrifice, some for midden slavery, some for general servitude, some for underwives, some of the strong boys for conscription into the Tellnone guards and other serf units. Anything that could be put to use from the settlements of the Sennocdur – and they were extensive – had been stripped. To the rest they laid waste.

This day – the tenth and last of Forrlastime – culminated in the Chiefway. This was when the finest noble from the conquered was led before the people on a ritual cart. A cart drawn by a pale mare along a long path to a lye pit facing east. At the head of the procession there was a cairn-priest dancing in a transport of mesmerism.

To a stranger watching, it would have seemed in some ways a joyful thing. It was done to the sound of hornpipes and the trill of wood flutes. Children cast petals on the cart as it passed by and people sang the festive airs of the men of the north.

The captive – a prince of the Sennocdur – stood upright in the cart, grasping on handles at the front of it. He was a fine man – tall, of red-hair and features, and he wore a ringleted beard. Most important of all, his bones were straight. Though called to many times, he did not let his gaze shift from straight ahead. His lips moved quietly. Perhaps he was praying ... The Sennocdur were said to have kept the ancient religion.

He did not seem to be held captive at all except by a gold half-torc that went around the front of his neck. The half-torc had a ring at each end into which had been tied strong strands brightly dyed in the colours of the chieftains. Six tied from one ring, six from the other. These were pulled gently taut behind the captive through twelve holes equally spaced along the rim of the Forrlas wheel.

This wheel was a thing of wonder to the men of the north. Found – shining, ancient, untarnished – in the mist of their folk memory, its twelve holes spoke to them of their clans. Near each hole close to its rim they had engraved the bird or animal totem of a particular chieftain. Hawks and eagles, red-dogs and toll wolves, and other fierce creatures of the north.

Fixed up on the cart behind the captive, parallel to his back, the Forrlas wheel had no axle. Instead, it ran silently within a circular casing ring. If the wheel had not been held still by the taut threads, it could have spun freely like a giant compass wheel.

Picked from early girlhood, twelve Forrlas maidens followed in ritual procession behind the cart. Each held the end of one of the strands connected to the half-torc and pulled through the Forrlas Wheel.

Barefoot in their long, purple-trimmed dresses, the maidens danced a lissom way along the path. There was a wildness and freedom in their steps and in the sway of their long, blossom-lit tresses. Like the cairn-priest at the head of the procession, they had had a long tuition in ritual and movement and song.

And ferocity.

They stopped at the beat of a drum when the cart reached the edge of the lye pit. The mare was released and the cart pushed to the very edge of the lye pit. Then the drums took up more insistently, sending the cairn-priest into rhapsodic turns. All of a sudden the maidens began to wind their strands, passing between each other, dipping and rising at the rhythm of the drumming. Winding more quickly as the drumbeat forced them.

When it stopped in an instant, the twelve maidens pulled in unison, spinning the Forrlas wheel and sending their weave across it. Another time, and a time again, the drums took up and the maidens wound their strands only to pull them taut at the ceasing of the beat.

In minutes, the captive was on his knees choking, his eyes bright with pain, his once ruddy features pale and his lips with a hint of blue. A minute more and he slumped forward at the end of the tight-wound strands that had choked him.

What followed would be auspicious moments for the whole people, and so the twelve chieftains came forward to watch. They sent men to keep the wound energy in the strands by holding the Forrlas wheel still. Another they had squeeze and hold an iron ring firmly around the tight woven strands behind the neck of the dead prince.

The cairn-priest then undid a latch so that the cart’s front fell away. The drums took up once more as the cairn-priest raised a knife so as to slice the strands cleanly away in the narrow space between the back of the dead captive’s neck and where the iron ring had been pressed in.

How would the dead prince fall into the pit? Only the cairn-priest could divine the posture.

Straight ahead to the east? Then a sign that the people should rest on their gains for a while.

Auspiciously to the north? A sign the Makermen should continue towards the mountain peoples and bring more of them under subjection.

Auspiciously to the south? A momentous sign. For it would signal the beginning of a move south so as to threaten the allies of the only people on the island who could match the strength of the Makermen – the Writermen of the Southlands.

One slice and the dead prince lurched immediately forward. His body fell into the lye-pit somewhat on its side in a slight arc to the north. But the arms – these both reached out south as though for a help too late in coming for the Sennocdur.

The cairn-priest turned and gazed at the twelve chieftains gathered. Then a divining spirit claimed his expression. His eyes were half-shut under quivering lids, his body shaking. Raising his knife, he pointed slowly to the south – and the cries and roars of the Makermen filled the air, the hills and fields around Sennocdur.

The final part of the Chiefway was the claiming of the bones. Twelve times the Forrlas wheel was turned more tightly from precisely where it had been held. Then it was released to spin upon the signal of the cairn-priest. Whosever totem was nearest the top of the wheel when it came to complete rest, that chieftain could claim the bones of the prince. And – in the belief of the men of the north – harness the power mystically exhaled by a vanquished peoples.

Though the Forrlas wheel was so finely balanced that it could not be rigged, some chieftains exchanged suspicious looks as one totem crept slowly above the rest. The totem of the clan that had had success after success in the recent campaigns of the Makermen. Its banner planted on the best booty. A success gotten whether by craft or courage. For it was that the Forrlas wheel stopped with the eagle at the zenith.

A chieftain – Torthinger Halles – stepped forward and raised with his own arm the arm of his favoured son, John Torthingerson. The man who was his finest fighter and his chosen successor.

The totem was the eagle of the House of Straightbone.

III: The Prophecy

Two hundred and fifty miles south, Demetrius Trueblood still pored over previous pages in the Annals and pondered on his own, scratching on old vellum a few practice lines and pushing himself back with a frown to check their worth.

The Annals of the Truebloods were collected in eras, volumes, parts, chapters and pages. When it came the turn of Lysander Trueblood to compose his page – as it had fallen to every senior Trueblood from time immemorial – he had had to refresh his memory of the strict requirement upon him.

His page would have to have a recapitulation. This was a summary of the generations until his own, and was simply for show. A leader could copy a previous entry and append a few lines at the end or he could recast it completely in his own style.

Once this recapitulation had been checked as satisfactory by the Council of Six, Lysander Trueblood could proceed in clear, brief and precise lines to tell of his own time as leader. This was to be a memory of his rule for all the ages to come. As such, it was neither to flatter nor understate this rule, but instead to tell of its achievements truthfully.

Annals of the Truebloods. Era XII. Volume XXXXII of the Seventy First Generation. Book XV. MCLXXi

Written in the very hand of Lysander Trueblood in the seventy first of the generations from the Great Dying.

The first of the generations began with Thomas who was also called Arthurson. He lived where the hills are white and rise high by the sea. He wore no beard and had two sons and two daughters. He was first to hear the message and preserve the memory.

He, his children, his grandchildren and the children after that to the generations even to this day had never had the ague and so were called true of blood. His eldest son was Andrew whose wife was called Jonquil (for her hair was yellow like the jonquil flower). Andrew was the father of Henry who was the father of Thomas the Younger.

They lived before the Southlands were a people and when those who are called Earthpeople or Pusbloods (whom the Northerners call Lowmen) had sway in the land for forty generations. These lived in caves and in places under the earth. They were pallid of face and began to speak a different tongue from the people of the Islands.

After Thomas the Younger, there came leaders who lived in long alliance with the Pusbloods. These were cruel leaders and their names are expunged from Southlands memory. There was misery on the face of the land, a misery almost the equal of that misery of the Great Dying. In these long years, there were prophets and seeresses who comforted the people and preserved the memory by sounding upon the hour.

After this came Xander the Brown. He was a good leader, a Trueblood, who had preserved the memory and kept the art of letters. He took a wife, Sabina Firehair, who was a Curblood of the seventh generation and a prophetess. In his time the people came to be called Writing Men or Writer Men. After him came the leaders of the Second Alliance. These nine each in succession kept alliance with the confederations of Pusbloods.

The last of these leaders was called Thales. It was he who united the Southlands as a people and who tried to make alliance with the people of the north. So began two centuries of cordial relations between the two peoples, and this did much to preserve a common language for the Island. The leader Thales wore his beard short and was thus given the name Cutbeard. He took a wife called Catherine the Fair, who was also called the Seeress. Thales Cutbeard was a leader renowned for many other deeds. He built South Rivers upon the remains of an ancient town which had good water and was clean of agues. In his day, men began to use gold, silver and bronze coins in their trade of goods. Lawless men were no longer killed before the crowds or left hanging along the ways. But no lawless man lived without fear of the justice of Thales Cutbeard. After him came nine more leaders, each a just man who wore his beard short.

The last of these was Lysander whose wife was Anna the Mild of the