Knights of Abador

By Mick O’Shea

Knights of Abador is the first instalment of the Tales of the
Knights Xemplar trilogy. It tells the story of Lucian, a 17-
year-old farm boy who accidentally witnesses the kidnapping
of Princess Rhiana of Abador by the blood-lusting Galyaks. But
he arrives at the walled-city to tell of what he has witnessed to find
High King Ocwan having been deceived into thinking it was the
neighbouring Huskenbachs that have taken his daughterhas already
set sail for Varnia with the army.
In the High Kings stead Abador is under the rule of his new chief consul,
Nikobar. But Nikobar is a Symian sorcerer who is in league with the
Galyaks, and has arranged for Princess Rhiana to be abducted in order to
bring about a war between Kalimars two strongest kingdoms. For once
Abador and Varnia have all but destroyed each other, the Galyak Warlord
Salakhan will be free to launch an invasion.
Nikobar has no intention of allowing a simple farm boy to ruin his carefullylaid
plans and sends assassins to murder Lucian, but they are foiled in the
attempt by Sir Amicob of the legendary Knights Xemplar.
In a race against time, Lucian and Sir Amicob, together with his fellow
Knight Xemplar, Sir Kulos, set out from Abador for only by uniting the
Knights Xemplar will they have any chance of rescuing Princess Rhiana
and saving Abador.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453599358

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Mick O’Shea.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010915541

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-9934-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-9933-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-9935-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Chapter One — The Temple Of Moydor

Chapter Two — The Prophesy

Chapter Three — Abador

Chapter Four — The Ardasians

Chapter Five — Sir Amicob

Chapter Six — The Quest

Chapter Seven — The Valley Of Kamar

Chapter Eight — The Labyrinth

Chapter Nine — The Talvek

Chapter Ten — The Sister Witches

Chapter Eleven — A Knight In The Desert

Chapter Twelve — The Stone Circle

Chapter Thirteen — Moydor

Chapter Fourteen — The Abyss

Chapter Fifteen — A Noble Sacrifice

Chapter Sixteen — Return To Abador

Chapter Seventeen — The Enemy Within

Chapter Eighteen — The Trap Is Set

Chapter Nineteen — A Meeting Of Minds

Chapter Twenty — Lord Akola

Chapter Twenty-One — The Feasting Hall

Chapter Twenty-Two — The Dragon Lord

Epilogue

About the Author

map.jpg

Map of Kalimar

Chapter One

The Temple Of Moydor

I

Lightening splinters the starless sky, to cast an eerie staccato glow upon the swirling mist slowly creeping across the plateau towards the desolate ruins of the ancient temple. The temple had been built many centuries ago in homage of Gazankulu;its crudely-carved blood-stained altar a chilling reminder of the unspeakable horrors carried out there in the Dragon Lord’s name.

And looming above the temple is theDrago Constellation; its pulsating malevolence serving to blot out the surrounding stars, and reducing the waxing moon to an ashen shadow.

He hears a voice, a terrified female voice calling out to himfrom the mist-shrouded pillared archways;she is beseeching him to save her. He cannot see the girl, but he knows that it is Princess Rhiana of Abador, and her screams pierce his heart like an Ardasian dagger.

He runs through the temple in search of the princess, but the sound of her voice is already fading away, dancing in and out of the swirling mist like some ethereal spectre. And he cries out fearing he has come too late to save her. He has reached the temple’s inner-sanctum now, and sees the carved effigy of Gazankulu looming up behind the blood-soaked altar; its baleful, slit-yellow eyes watching his every move. He tries to turn away from Gazankulu’s yellowy gaze, but finds he no longer has any control over his limbs; he is now at the Dragon Lord’s mercy.

Blood is gushing from the altar now, splattering the pillars and soaking the ground. He loses his footing and slips in the pooling blood but as he is getting to his feet writhing serpents pull him back down into the crimson quagmire; their odious skins stinging his exposed skin. And then the sound of a Galyak horn reverberates through the temple.

II

Lucian shuddered awake, drenched in sweat and with confusion clouding his befuddled mind. He closed his eyes again, telling himself over and over that it was all just a dream, nothing more than a crazy dream. But his aching shoulders were a painful reminder that he wasn’t in his bed, and when he opened his eyes again he could still see a swirling mist blotting out the stars. And for a heartbeat he thought he was actually inside the strange temple. But like the mist, his disorientation gradually melted away to reveal his more earthly surroundings. And though he was relieved to find he hadn’t fallen into the Netherworld, he knew he would be in trouble with his grandparents for having fallen asleep in the watchtower.

He’d lived with the his grandparents for as long as he could remember, and knew little about his parents other than his mother had died whilst giving birth to him, and his father had been killed during a Galyak raid on their village when he was but a few months old. He wanted more than anything to ask them about his father but sensed the memories of the death of their only child were still too painful.

He supposed that this was why they were overprotective of him and fretted if he didn’t arrive home in time for supper. But he loved going off exploring with his three-year-old pony, Kia, and Lykka, the wolf that had been his constant companion for as long as he could remember. His grandfather had returned from ploughing the field one morning to found the young wolf cub lying at the foot of his bed and would have probably killed it had it not been for his wife. His grandmother had told him she’d stayed her husband’s hand because she sensed the gods had sent the wolf to watch over him.

He knew they didn’t like him going to the abandoned watchtower as it lay beyond the dreaded sucking-sands;a stretch of boggy marshland that had supposedly claimed the life of many an unsuspecting fool. But the sucking-sands held no fear for him, asLykka had found a pathway through the marsh. The pathway was too risky for horses and so they had to leave Kia behind, but she never seemed to mind as there was plenty of coarse grass for her to graze on while her master whiled away the afternoon repulsing an imaginary Galyak invasion.

The watchtower, which loomed up from the bluffs like a rotted tooth, was all that remained of a fortification that had once been home to a garrison of the Centaurian Guard. But Abador’s penny-pinching Senate, believing the victory at Zylos had ended the threat of aGalyak invasion, had reassigned the soldiers to other duties and ordered the coastal fortifications to be dismantled. And while High King Ocwan had opposed the decision, under Abadorian law he couldn’t challenge a Senate ruling. He had, however, insisted upon huge bonfires being erected upon the highest hills along the coast which could be lit to warn of an invasion. His grandmother said the watchtower was a death-trap, and that the garrison commander should be flogged for leaving it standing. But he was grateful to the unknown captain as the watchtower had given him hours of fun. He would imagine himself a Xemplar Knight, charged with defending the tower against the Galyak hordes.

Staving off a Galyak invasion after a full morning’s chores had obviously proved too much for him as he’d never fallen asleep at the watchtower before. And though the Galyaks had featured in his dreams before, this was the first time he’d ever dreamed about Princess Rhiana of Abador.

He scrambled down from the tower and set off through the bluffs heading for the sucking-sands, but skidded to a halt again upon hearing a horn sounding out from the mist rolling in from the sea. And despite the balmy air, the sound chilled him to the bone for he had heard it in his dream; it was a Galyak horn. He scrambled up the bluffs and looked out to sea but saw nothing except the thick blanket of mist creeping ever closer to the shore. And then he saw the faint outline of a ship within the mist; its billowing sail breathing in unison with the oars pulling it steadily through the water. And the carved Dragon’s-head prow casting a sinister silhouette upon the rippling moonlit waves told him it was a Galyak longship.

III

The Galyaks were a horde of blood-lusting savages from the Kolkar Mountains; a cold and desolate land far beyond the Gidean Sea. For centuries, the squabbling Galyak tribes had been content to conduct raids against each other, but from what Sir Amicob had told him the mystical Salakhan had emerged to unite the warring savages with his vision of a mighty victory over their age-old enemy, Abador. And on the next full moon the Galyak longships had set sail for Kalimar.

At that time, Kalimar was made up of five feudal kingdoms, each of which had been squabbling, raiding and warring with its neighbours for centuries. And so when Salakhan’s longships invaded Kavashar on Kalimar’s north-eastern coast the other four kingdoms did nothing to help. The Galyaks easily crushed the Kavashan army, and having enslaved its people, the savages then turned their attentions to Kavashar’s neighbours, the Molocks. Molovar had soon gone the way of the Kavashar, and within days Belanos had also fallen to the Galyak horde.

With winter approaching, and believing that neither Varnia nor Abador were in any position to oppose him, Salakhan set about building fortified settlements in the newly-seized territories in readiness for an all-out assault on Abador the following spring.

That winter was a dark time for Abador. For although the newly-crowned King Ocwan knew he would have several months in which to strengthen his army for the coming onslaught, he also knew that the winter would see more Galyak longships setting sail for Kalimar; each one filled with warriors anxious to make a name for themselves in battle so they could lay claim to a piece of land. The king knew that if Salakhan seized control of Abador, then the Galyaks would have control of the Gidean Sea; the gateway to the lands beyond the Western Sea. And with this in mind he sent out emissaries to Prince Günter, beseeching the Huskenbach Wulvran to form an alliance. For unless their two kingdoms united as one and brought battle to the Galyaks before the savages completed their fortifications, then Kalimar was sure to fall.

Prince Günter had refused to see the king’s emissary, but within days of the emissary’s return news reached Abador that the Huskenbach Wulvran had been killed in a hunting accident. King Ocwan had sent a second emissary to Varnia in the hope that Günter’s successor, Prince Rhodos, would prove more agreeable. And although he enraged several of his chieftains by doing so, Rhodos had readily pledged his allegiance to Abador and the Huskenbach wolf standard had stood beside that of Abador on a sloping plain overlooking the River Zylos.

The battle had raged all day as twenty-five thousand bronze and leather-clad warriors smashed into each other’s shield-walls. By late afternoon, it seemed that Salakhan would prove victorious when his dreaded Bloodshields—led by his eldest son, Kirgus, finally broke the Huskenbachs’ shield-wall. But the collapse of the shield-wall had been but a feint to trick the over-confident Kirgus and the supposedly invincible Bloodshields had been hacked to pieces by King Ocwan’s elite Centaurian Guard that had lain concealed within a winding gulley some two hundred yards behind the line.

Like Kirgus’ broken body, Salakhan’s vision of riding unopposed through Abador’s gates lay trampled in the blood-soaked banks of the River Zylos. And he, along with the raged remnants of his defeated army, had abandoned their newly-erected settlements and fled back across the Gidean Sea.

The kings of Kavashar, Molovar, and Belanos had been so grateful to King Ocwan that they had sworn fealty, and proclaimed him High King. Ocwan’s first decree as High King was to invite those kings and Prince Rhodos to form a Kalimarian High Council, which would meet at the birth of each new moon. Grievances could be aired, and disputes settled so that there would never again be a need for war between their respective kingdoms. The five kingdoms, regardless of size, would be considered as equal members on the High Council; with the five rulers sitting at a specially-crafted round table so that no one would sit at its head.

Within a year of Zylos, however, Prince Rhodos had been assassinated. It was rumoured that the slain Wulvran’s cousin, Prince Agnar, who’d vehemently opposed Rhodos’ decision to form an alliance with Abador, had led the revolt. When High King Ocwan learned of Rhodos’ murder he sent the Knights Xemplar with a detachment of the Centaurian Guard into the Lupinas Mountains to see if there were any survivors.

The Xemplars’ appearance in Rhodos’ still-smouldering village had brought those that had managed to escape Agnar’s slaughter out from their hiding places in the surrounding hills. The bodies of Prince Rhodos and his sons were all found inside the feasting hall which suggested Agnar’s assassins had pretended to have come in peace. But the body of Rhodos’ wife, Queen Gwenyd, was never found and it was assumed that she’d been so overcome with grief that she had thrown herself into the sea.

In the five years since seizing power, Agnar had not only refused to acknowledge the High Council, he’d also chosen to turn a blind eye to his young warriors mounting surprise raids upon the border villages. The High Council had called upon Agnar to hand over those responsible for the raids, as well as make recompense for the grain and animals stolen during the raids, or face being forced into submission. But High King Ocwan knew mounting an invasion of Varnia would prove very costly, for the Huskenbachs had fortified the strongholds overlooking the passes through the Lupinas Mountains. However, the abduction of his daughter, and sole heir, the Princess Rhiana, had forced the High King into action.

IV

Whether the longship was a lone raider, or part of a Galyak invasion fleet was of no significance, he just knew he had to ride to Rygat Hill and light the bonfire to warn the nearby villages. But he was still watching the longship when hearing the tell-tale sound of riders approaching. His initial reaction upon seeing the riders was that they were men from his village that had come to hold the Galyaks off while the rest of the villagers fled into the surrounding woods with their valuables. But he quickly dismissed that idea as they numbered less than a dozen, and he sensed from their casual approach that they hadn’t come to fight the Galyaks, but rather to welcome them. And it was this disturbing thought which caused him to scurry back to the watchtower withLykka at his heel.

The longship was now at anchor and he was watching the Galyaks wading through the surf to where the riders were waiting when one of the horsemen suddenly broke away and charged towards the bluffs; closely followed by three others all of whom were carrying bows across their backs. He couldn’t understand how the riders could have spotted him at such a distance, but that conundrum would have to wait for another day as there was no way he would be able to face archers armed witha catapult. He also knew he couldn’t sit there like a frightened doe but there was little point in trying to make a run for it as the lead rider had almost reached the tower and would cut him down before he’d covered ten paces.

It was only then that he realised the lead rider was a young woman. And what was even more startling,