[b]The Old Road, Poertia[/b]

Through the knifing rocks that clung the mountainside, behind juniper trees with trunks twisted and stretched as if they had had been shaped by giants, Omid could see the far off flickering light of ancient Sarnath. That was their destination. He had his brother had begun their journey a week ago, when they left their valley home at Tikikra to reach the heart of the kingdom in time for Sacrificial Games. The thought of competing against the best men in the kingdom made Omid feel completely alive. He was a not a wealthy man, this was true. Neither he nor his brother could afford the equipment, or the training, that the wealthier competitors would have, but he felt that they could make up for what they lacked with simple manliness. What would heavy armor, or a new sword, or the teachings of a southern master compare to the balls that Omid's family were blessed with?

Omid rode on top of a surefooted mountain pony. He wore a tawdry copper breastplate. Instead of a helmet, he had woolen scarf wrapped around his head. From a holster on his saddle hung a simple wooden spear, which he would wield in place of a proper lance. His brother Kuleb walked beside him, wearing leather armor and an iron cone helm. He had an iron axe strapped to his back, with a head that looked as black as pitch in the dark.

"The city looks like a fire in the heavens." Kuleb rumbled. His voice was a deep, monotone growl filtered through a wiry black beard, but Omid could hear the awe in his brother's words. 

"Sarnath is no great city." Omid said. An angry wind blew cold around the mountain peaks and whistled through the rocks. It joined a chorus of locusts and the distant chirp of a night swallow. "It is the entrance to a great fortress of the Jinn." he said. "The town around it is very small." Kuleb had always been slow, and correcting him made Omid feel like a wise teacher.

"It does not look like a small place." Kuleb said. He was breathing heavy now. The road - little more than a wide dirt path zigzagging across the side of the mountains - would flatten for a distance before finding a place where it could climb. Where the road grew steep, Kuleb would slow down. He was a strong man, this was true. But he was a strong man with short legs.

"People are arriving for the Games." Omid said. "They will be camping in every corner they can find now. For this week, the town will be a city."

They passed a place where another group had camped. The ashes of a campfire sat cold and damp in a crevice in the mountain side. Wild onions grew in a patch of pale-green mountain grass, and it looked like a few had been plucked.

"Lucky for us." Omid said, pointing at the plants. "Brother, fetch us some onions so we can eat under the stars."

"I would ask you to fetch the onions." Kuleb groaned. 

"Then you would steal my mount." Omid joked. "If we face your demons on this road, I would not face them on an empty stomach."

"I do not think that onions will help you against a Kizzeh." Kuleb retorted. He had ambled dutifully to the onions and picked a few. 

"They will flee from the farts that the onions will give you, brother." Omid chuckled and shifted in his saddle. He was quite pleased with himself. "Deliver me an onion so I can fart as well."

When they had joined the Old Road as it began to climb into the mountains, Kuleb had began to obsess about the Kizzeh. It was a story that old women told, Omid knew. It was said that the Gul kings who called themselves "Vampires" once turned a child into a Gul. The infant remained an infant forever, but it was a hungry beast and hunted on the roads near Sarnath. A person would be traveling alone on the road at night, and then they would hear a baby cry in the bushes. If they went to investigate, it would leap out and eat them.

It was a silly story. And what was the lesson? Do not help babies? This was the foolish thoughts of an old lady scared of the world. Omid took a small onion and popped it into his mouth. It tasted like good soil, with a hint of tangy sweetness.

"Do not put the onions in the sack with the pomegranates, good brother." Omid said.

Kuleb looked at him confused. "Why?" he asked.

"Those are for the sacrifice. How would it look of our sacrifice was soiled with onion?" 

"What do I do with them?" Kuleb asked.

Omid shrugged. "Toss them to the side of the road. We are men. We can find more food when we need it."

They traveled in silence for a time. Omid watched a crescent moon peaking behind the distant shadows of stony mountains, and dreamed about the days to come. There would be wrestling, and boxing, and feats of strength. Omid had traveled to a Sacrificial Game once when he was fourteen, and he remembered seeing a burly mountain dweller lift a pony over his head. There would also be racing, and the pony polo of the desert tribes. And there would be mounted archery. Omid had forgotten his bow at home, but he hoped to buy a new one in Sarnath. It would not take long to get comfortable with it, and he couldn't help but relish the glory that would come from winning a game with an unfamiliar bow. There would also be the lighter competitions, for those who did not fair well in martial challenges. There would be beef eating contests, and contests for dancing. And their would be contests where old men dress up their daughters and have them judged on who is the most beautiful.

And after all of that, there would be celebrations. Many mule-trains had climbed this road laden with food from all over the known world. If that was not enough, there would be just as much drink, khat, and opium poppy to dull the pains of the day's competition. And there would be an endless sea of glory-drunk maidens and copper-to-come whores looking to make a fortune one tent at a time. It would be all of this for an entire week. This was all the reason he needed to accept the rule of the dark Gul-Shapur, and their unnatural hunger that made this celebration possible.

The Sacrificial Games had been named as such for a reason. Warriors who had taken captives in battle kept them imprisoned until the next solstice, when the Games were declared and the captives were all brought to the Gul castle at Sarnath. Those human sacrifices would be slaughtered in a ceremony on the steps of the castle and brought inside to be butchered and prepared like animals. That was the cost the people of Poertia payed for the favor of their dark Gods.

There were still those that spoke ill of the Gul Shapur and their dynasty of Vampire Kings. In the early days, battles were fought between those that supported the Gul Shapur and those who opposed them, and they had always ended with the enemies of Vampires being brought to the castle as sacrifices. Those who supported the Gul Shapur were given land, and power, and their descendents learned how to become rich off of the spoils earned from raiding neighboring kingdoms. The Gul Shapur required no tribute but captives, after all. Everything else could be kept by the raiders.

Omid had never went on a raid before, but he had always wanted to. His father had required his boys to stay home, however. The clans of Tikikra had a way of always feuding with one another, and both Omid and his brother had learned how to fight by dueling their neighbors. Omid had once taken a child captive from a neighboring clan, but his father had insisted he accept a ransom instead of taking her to sacrifice. "Bring her to the vampires and there will be more blood." his father had complained. "If they take your sister as a hostage instead, and feed her to the Gul Shapur, what would you do then?"

"It could not happen." Omid mouthed to himself. His father's cowardice had kept him from the glory of delivering a real sacrifice to the Gul Shapur. It was a shameful blot on their families honor.

"It is cold tonight." Kuleb whined. "We should have stopped for the night."

"The later we arrive, the more we miss." Omid replied. "When we get there, we can sleep. And maybe find women to warm us."

There was a brief silence. "That would be good." he agreed. "How far do we have to go yet?"

"A few more hours." Omid replied. It would likely be more than that, he knew, but Kuleb did not need specifics. He decided to change the subject. "It is near midnight. They will be finishing their sacrifices just now and moving on to the grand ball."

"That is fine." Kuleb grunted. "But we cannot go to the grand ball, and we have no sacrifices but pomegranates."

"Pomegranates bleed red like men, and there will be another sort of ball in the tents."

"Is it true that the Gul turn into vultures in the night and steal dead from the cemeteries?" Kuleb asked. "It seems like it would be easy to kill a vulture, even if it is also a Gul.

"I doubt it. That sounds like a foolish tale..."

"...for old women." Kuleb answered. "You cannot just believe in nothing but what you see, brother. If that was true, we would have to doubt the sea."

"And why is that?" Omid asked, annoyed. He did not like it when his brother played as if he knew something Omid did not.

"Because we have not seen it." Kuleb replied. "So we could not believe it."

"I have seen the sea. In my dreams." Omid's voice grew wistful as he looked out across the land. From here, they could see across a small river valley. Low mountains danced around the edges, and in the distant fog of night taller mountains will snow-capped peaks loomed over everything. The greatest of them was Shagrat, the home of the fire god, were the dull red glow of the mountain hung like a dying torch among the stars.

Kuleb said nothing, and the world went silent again. Omid marveled at the silence now. The sound of insects had died to a distant hum hundreds of feet below them, and the whisper of night-swallows had completely disappeared. All there was now was the sound Omid's pony, the subtle footfalls of Kuleb, and a mean wind blowing across the tumbled rocks and through struggling trees.

They came across an opening where the disembodied head of an old statue rested in a field of gravel. Where the body had went nobody could answer, but the head was accounted for. Its sharper features had been worn down, nose and ears rounded to nubs, the details of its beard flattened so that it looks like it had a bulbous second chin. Its crown looked like a puffy dumpling sitting on top of its head, all decorations gone with the wind. Its eyes were blank and hollow.

"Shapur's Head" Omid exclaimed. "That is the old king. Be sure to rub his head for luck." Kuleb did just that, petting the statue's nose as if it were a dog.

Shapur had been a foreigner from a land so far away that it had long been forgotten. His Empire had stretched across most the globe, and its western-most reaches had been the mountains of Poertia. Before him, Omid's people had ruled this land. Now it was the decedents of Shapur - the Gul Shapur dynasty - that ruled this place. 

"We do not have long now." Omid promised. "This was the place where Shapur camped when he laid siege to the Jinn at Sarnath."

"This is good news, brother." Kuleb accepted.

They could see the light of Sarnath peaking over a rise in the road like the arrival of the morning sun. Omid held his breath. It was here that the parapets of the ancient stronghold would start to become apparent. Though a town had grown around it, Sarnath had originally been smaller patch-, and an entryway into the underground empire that had ruled so much of the world in those days. Its people were said to have been demons, with powers much worse that what the Gul Shapur wielded.

When they came to the top of the rise and saw Sarnath in the distance, Omid couldn't help but smile. It was still far away, but he could see towers etched into the mountainside so that they looked impossibly tall. It was as if they had turned the entire mountain into a fully functional castle, or at least the front of it. Behind the parapets of Sarnath, Omid knew, lay solid rock.

"It still looks far away, brother." Kuleb complained.

Omid frowned. "Do not fret like an old woman, my brother. We walk."

Songs played through Omid's head so that he hardly noticed the stillness of the night. He remembered tales of Shapur fielding a line of pikemen so long that the horses of his enemy's outriders collapsed and died under them from exhaustion when they tried to find his flank. There were stories of how he began his wars as an infant, a seer interpreting his babbles and burps into battle commands so that he could conquer the clans that opposed him. It was hard to imagine the Empire that he had built, especially since so much of it was lost to them now. 

There were other songs playing in Omid's head as well. Stories about the times before Shapur's conquest. They were about great warriors outsmarting wily Jinn who tried to trick travelers to their deaths. There were stories of men fighting Weregoats, or men fighting birds so large their wingspans blocked out the light. And of course, there were those old stories of men fighting Guls.

"Brother" Omid heard Kuleb speak up. He sounded nervous. "Brother, there are eyes up there."

"Eyes?" Omid said. "Probably a lion." Omid wanted to sit back in his saddle and dream of glory. This was not the first time his brother's superstition had interrupted him.

"Look." Kuleb's voice shook. "It is up there."

Omid squinted and inspected the hillside, but all he saw was rocks and blackness. But he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Was there something amiss here? He kept looking, and looking, until all at once he saw it. Two glowing pink orbs. He would have mistaken them for stars if they had not blinked.

He heard Kuleb whisper. "Kizzeh." That annoyed him. Was his brother so easily unmanned that he felt threatened by a wild animal? Omid reached down and unbuckled his spear from its holster. "Kuleb, you old woman. It is a lion I am sure. Prepare your axe."

Something in the immediacy of Omid's voice seemed to startle his pony, and it began to kick and whine so that he could hardly keep it in his control. He pulled on the reigns and tried to steady his animal, but a bloody shout made him look up at his brother. That is when he saw it, and horror washed over him until he felt numb.

The eyes had been hundreds of feet away before, perched on a nearby hill. That had been half a moment ago. Now they were in the treeline less then ten feet from them. 

Kuleb had his axe in his hand. "Beast! Kizzeh!" he roared, and Omid knew that he was trying to bring his blood to boil for the fight ahead. A gurgling hiss replied from the trees, as sick and pained as the last rasp of a man who's throat had just been slit. Before Kuleb could respond with another bellow, the creature was on him. Omid's horse backed away from the battle, and its rider had no desire to disagree.

The fight between Kuleb and the creature was over almost as soon as it began. Omid saw it as a white blur, with cloudy pink eyes glowing in the dark so bright that they cast a dull ruddy light on Kuleb's face. Kuleb swung, and missed. The creature hopped on top of him and brought him down. The last Omid heard of his brother was his desperate dying screams, and the wet sound of his gut being ripped open by evil claws. The screams grew wetter, and more unnatural as the beast continued to destroy him, but it was when the screaming ended that Omid felt the sickest. That was when he heard the monster swallow.

"He is eating my brother!"

Omid yelped and kicked his horse, The creature took off in the direction of the castle. Tears streamed down his face as he through of his brother's horrific end, and of how these stories ended. A great hero was needed, and Omid was just a farmer's boy.

His pony rode at its top speed, but the wet hiss of the monster continued to follow. Omid looked back to see if it was coming after him, and when he saw it his mind began to slip. It was not running, but rather hopping like a possessed toad. Every time it hopped, it seemed to clear ten feet. 

"Help." Omid mouthed to no one. He could do nothing else. His survival depended on his pony now. For miles, the chase seemed to continue at the same pace it had started. It was only when the creature seemed to fall behind that Omid realized he had dropped his spear.