[i]The Great Purge and the Last March of the Old Believers[/i]
[b]Prophet Hammerguard Goldenhand Bronzespear of the Great Steppe (136 - 216)[/b]
[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]I am loath to record these events, for they are the most painful of all my memories, and to recall them brings tears to my eyes and great dolor to my heart. They come back at some times in fits and starts—blood-stained images in bold relief, perfumed with sulfur and bleary-eyed with smoke, imbued with nothing but naked sensation: the putrescence, the disembodied howls, the fires viewed through filthy canvas, the flashes of gore-smeared steel—and at other times as clearly as if carved in intaglio upon my mind. But I must, for none have yet chronicled how the Bronzespears came to be Bronzehammers, and what happened to those who refused to renege upon the faith that they had kept for thousands of years, since their ancestors still roamed the steppes, and to all of that I was a witness and beheld it with my own eyes.[/quote] 

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]I was a captive, a prisoner in the household of Chief Thimblehorn. To detail how I came into my thralldom would be an onerous enterprise, and I have not the ink, nor the parchment, nor the patience to narrate it. Suffice it to say that I was young and far too bold and brash for my own good, and the Bronzespears took kindly neither to outsiders nor to impudent scholastics with a genuine interest in learning their culture and language. I was discovered, beaten, tortured, and eventually kept as a thrall, a slave in all but name. Believe me when I say that that slavery is a yoke greater than any should have to bear; that it is the deepest of humiliations, the most hateful of outrages, the cruelest of pains. Yet it also afforded me a theretofore unparalleled opportunity to learn their language and their ways, although it was learning by the lash. And so within a matter of years I could speak the tongue of the Bronzespears, Ilwadi, as well as any of their warriors, and had even taken a wife—a woman-thrall captured from the Tollscythes, for it is very amusing to them to play the matchmaker and wed their thralls together. Thimblehorn found us all very diverting, and had us perform tricks, spar with one another, recite poetry, and cast us in lavish dramatic productions. But despite my mastery of the language and earnest attempts to reach out to him, he never saw me as anything other than a thrall, something lesser, something filthy, something [i]weak[/i], though others were more willing to express themselves in my company. Theirs is a culture predicated upon strength and might; to [i]submit[/i], to [i]succumb[/i], is the ultimate disgrace. The moment I was captured and impressed into thralldom vouchsafed my status amongst them. And no matter what I did, I was, and always will be, a thrall.[/quote]

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]Thimblehorn was outraged when he learned that Goldenhand, their [i]chief[/i], had taken to a heathen religion, had even had the temerity to call himself [i]prophet[/i]. He had abandoned the old ways, even claimed that they were weak, and that the Hammerfaith had the mastery. And it was then that he resolved not to accept the iniquity and perfidy of Goldenhand's conversion, and raised his banner in rebellion, along with a confederacy of other chiefs. The thralls remained at Horsehome with his wives and daughters, and heard nothing of the course of the revolt. Somehow, though, we knew that we were doomed, and that the master was never coming back.[/quote] 

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]We fled, along with whole tribes, to the north. The Hammerfaith had triumphed, and Goldenhand would do all he could to ensure that its victory was total. Rumor had drifted into Horsehome from the east of the slaughter of entire tribes at the hands of the Bronzehammers. It was said that they had even butchered the horses, and left them to rot beneath the open sky, so tainted were they by the "heathen". And they were coming to the west, coming to put down all of the Old Believers, all for the greater glory of the Heavenhammer. Goldenhand claimed that he had been visited in a dream by the Hammer's majordomo, the Lord of the Anvil, who had told him that judgement had been handed down by the Hammer and that it augured doom and damnation for any who held to the old ways. He ordered the massacre of all those who did not [i]submit[/i]. But to submit was to be a slave, and thus, even if it would result in the extinguishing of their lines, the loss of their households and of their lives, even if they knew they had no chance to contend with Goldenhand, the Old Believers fled (they would have termed it a tactical retreat) in order to find a defensible place in which they could build their strength and strike back at the Bronzehammers. But it would all be for naught, and the mountains to which we retreated would become the tomb of thousands.[/quote]

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]They had found us. Silverspear had been slain, and his tribe had been massacred—the children impaled or dashed on boulders, the women raped and then burned alive, the men tortured in an unimaginable variety of manners. And they were coming for us. There was nothing we could do but wait and despair, for we were faced with the wall of the mountains. There was nowhere else to run to.[/quote] 

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]In the bedlam of fire and blood I escaped, ran like a billy goat into the mountain heights and hid my eyes from the blaze and clasped my hands over my ears to block out the laughter and the wailing. For twenty-three years I had lived amongst the Bronzespears, and that life that I had had, that little, little life that I had been given even while in fetters, was burning far below me through the wind and snow. The wife that I had loved so briefly. The son she had borne that had lived all his life as a slave and known no kindness. I had lost them in the confusion, and I could not help but believe that I had abandoned them to die in the hecatomb, in fear and anguish. I despaired. I agonized. On the crag that I had taken as my harbor, I convulsed and flailed and raged into at freezing air. I boomed and accused. I wished that I had killed them while I still had the opportunity, as so many others had, let them go softly and easily into death. I wished that I had killed myself, and in my throes I almost did. But I did not, could not, no matter how many times I drew my knife or ran towards the precipice as if to leap. I could not, because in the depths of my heart I wanted to live.[/quote] 

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]By mid-morning they had ceased their revels, claimed what plunder they could find, and quit the killing grounds. I descended the mountainside, to find the bodies of my wife and child. In places, the fires still raged, but mostly they had consumed everything that they could, and burnt themselves to cinders. The reek of death, charred flesh, shit, and seed was overwhelming. I retched, I know not how many times; but still I searched, searched for those precious faces in the mire. There was no sign of life in the camp save for the carrion birds, already grown fat from their repast. I looked all day, until sundown had come, until I was smeared in the blood and the stink of the dead, but still I did not find them. I could not weep, for I had no more tears left to shed. I briefly entertained the hope that they had escaped, but knew by some intangible feeling that they did not live, and that perhaps that was a mercy, for those of us who live must in some part inhabit the world of the dead. Its shadow shall hang over me for the remainder of my brief years, until finally I join them in the mansions beyond the pale of living.[/quote]

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]I did not tarry. I fled over the mountains, into Windbeach, that fatherland that I had not seen for twenty-four years, to which I was little more than a stranger. I recollect little of that flight. I remember only the sensation of cold rock and frigid ice and bitter snow against naked feet, of rapacious winds that roared with the sharpness of knives, of the blinding sun and the cool luminescence of the stars. And then: rugged foothills, spare forests of cork and holm oak, fragrant almond blossoms, plains hammered into bronze by the heat, and finally a stone house on a hill, a wizened farmer, a young daughter, soft straw, and sleep as bottomless as the sea.[/quote]

[quote=Ogbar Delbas, linguist of the Grand College of Windbeach, 214]...And I still live in the shadow of that death march, the Last March of the Old Believers, and some part of me still lies dead and insensate upon the ground at the foot of that cold and cruel mountain, exposed to the wind and the spring snow, with my wife and son (who I shall not name, for all that is left to me of them are their names), and my bones rattle and molder into dust. And when finally my time is come, I shall return there and make of it a couch, and I shall lie there with them, those that I left and I lost and I loved, and we shall sleep together in peace and silence forever.[/quote]