guages.
Though they are highly civilized, their ways differ greatly from place to
Hatu Khagan and the
Storm-Riders
As we write, some men in high places fear that a great invasion may soon break
upon Minaria from the East.
Strangely-garbed emissaries have lately arrived in the courts of monarchs
proudly arrayed in caps of fine felt, coats of gold-embroidered brocade, and vel-
vet slippers. These men speak of a faraway master whom they serve, Hatu
Khagan. This khagan is said not to be a khan commanding a few thousand men
like Kang the raider, but a master of many nations to whom kings are mere
pieces on a game board. Hatu Khagan, they say, demands an oath of vas -
salage from all the monarchs of Minaria along with a yearly tribute of gold and
precious gems.
The lords of the West, say these self-styled ambassadors, shall henceforth rule
only on the suffrage of their acknowledged liege lord. Should they defy the god-
sanctioned commands of Hatu Khagan, he has sworn to himself visit Minaria
with fire and sword to slaughter its subjects without pity and supplant its kings
with princes named from his own family. Those who formerly sat upon thrones
will crawl naked in the cold shadows and beg passersby for a crust of bread to
preserve life.
Some kings of Minaria have met these threats with a display of amusement.
Some have sent the so-called ambassadors away with angry rebukes. The
fierce and vengeful [Editor's note: here the name of the vengeful king is illegi-
ble due to damage to the manuscript] grew greatly wrought and put the Great
Khagan's messengers to cruel death, along with all their servants. The king
saved only one, a man charged to drive a cart full of heads back to the Lord of
the East as a warning of what would befall any of the khagan's subjects should
they return.
Surely this harsh act has thrown the gauntlet at the feet of a proud and venge-
ful man. Does one such as Hatu Khagan possess both the will and the power
to make good his vow of vengeance? Some who are wise in the ways of war
and diplomacy say that there is no danger. Others, no less well-versed in the
affairs of men, whisper the contrary -- that great and terrible forces are rising,
that prophecy warns that a storm is coming from the birthplace of the sun and
that a tempest of steel shall break up on Minaria, bringing back the kind of man-
made devastation not known since the revolt of the Scarlet Witch King. They
remember that only twenty-four centuries earlier the Lloroi had came from the
East to lay low all the kings of Minaria. Could it not happen again?
Whenever we cast our glance to the East there are ominous signs. The Eastern
Horsemen have sullenly withdrawn back beyond passes leading East. Have
these tribes truly quit our land, or have they merely been summoned to a gath-
ering of warriors by a lord so powerful that their strength dares not oppose his?
It is difficult to tell the story of a land so distant and so little known. The best this
historian can do is to cull information from the testimony of travelers, traders,
and diplomats who have had contact with Hatu Khagan's ambassadors or with
the leaders of the Eastern Horsemen. But here is what we have heard:
The land of the East, which the Dwarves call "Trazig," is a realm broken into
many small kingdoms. These represent sundry nations which speak many lan-
1
place and home-grown conquerors have now and then created empires by
forcibly uniting many kingdoms under their personal rule, but none of these
realms have lasted long, so intractable is the love of freedom that exists among
the city-dwellers of Trazig.
But north of the cultivated lands is a vast, but harsh expanse called by its
nomadic inhabitants "Madhava." Its earth is dark and rich, but has never been
broken by the plow. Instead, it is a treeless grassland well-suited for grazing.
These steppes are hot in summer but very cold during the long winter. To the
west of Trazig and Madhava are found deserts broken by barren mountains.
These wastelands remained unknown to both Madhava and Trazig until events
in Trazig forced many of the tribes dwelling therein to migrate toward Minaria.
The way of life of Trazig's northern barbarians is different from that of the sav -
age tribes north of Minaria. Few of the steppe-dwellers had fixed homes and
dislike living within four walls. Their year-around home is the circular felt tent
which is called by many of them the "shashi". It might be twenty feet or more in
diameter and is mounted upon a wicker frame. Its upper parts are conical with
a small, round neck projecting from the top to serve as a chimney. Its shape
enables the shashi to stand up against the powerful steppe winds without the
use of guy-ropes. Its materials insulate it from both summer's heat and winter's
cold. When the time comes to break camp, the shashi can be dismantled by
the women and children within half an hour.
When a camp must move, the larger tents are mounted on huge wagons. As
many as twenty oxen or camels might be harnessed to one of these wains.
Gear and household belongings are packed into chests carried in smaller carts
and a string of twenty or thirty of these vehicles might be hitched one behind the
other to a large team, the whole train being given to one boy or girl in the lead-
ing cart to drive. Meanwhile, the men riding herd, the stronger women go on
horseback like the men, and the elders and children cluster in the wagons and
carts. No one walks on the steppes if it can be helped. In fact, bow legs are
common among the barbarians and their gait is awkward.
They have a custom to leave behind on the trail any member who is too sick,
injured, or enfeebled by old age to recover and contribute to the life of the camp.
The wretch dies alone of hunger, thirst, or the attack of any of a number of large
predators.
The harshness of life on the steppes breeds violence and cruelty in its inhabi-
tants. The nomads host generously, but inflicted fearful punishments on slaves
and enemies. The steppe people seem to think no more of slaughtering human
beings than they do of butchering their own herd beasts. Sometimes a khan
purposely seeks to make himself feared by engaging in memorable acts of cru-
elty. The khan Shaka Asad once buried scores of captured enemies up to their
necks and then brought in two teams of horsemen to play a violent game of
tirtha on the field of the imprisoned, trampling them under flailing hooves as the
riders careered back and forth in reckless play.
Each camp normally holds some fifty or sixty people. Several such camps
make up a clan, and several clans comprise a tribe. Several tribes form a
nation, i.e. a people with a shared language, customs, and perhaps some leg-
endary ancestor. The steppes of the Madhava support several indigenous
nations, but these are often at odds due to rivalry or feud. Nonetheless, some-
times nations unite as allies and chose war leaders called "khans." The "khan
of khans" is referred to as a "khagan." These confederacies are known as kin-
tani and when they come into being each commands thousands of steppe-
toughened cavalrymen eager for fight and plunder.
Herdsmen tend to have simple religions and the Madhava are no exception.
The pastoral faith of the nomads honors the earth for its fertility and pays hom-
age to the gods of the sky, especially "the Lord of the Fearful Storm," Ketan.
Warriors call themselves "the carriers of the lance of Ketan," but they offer few
prayers to the storm god, believing that he gives each man his due at birth, in
the form of strength, wits, courage, and destiny. The deity is believed to despise
weaklings who beg for his help and takes special pleasure in seeing them in
despair. The winds are regarded as powerful spirits that the nomad must
always be on guard against.
Several times in past history the steppe-nations have combined and raided
Trazig to devastating effect. Not infrequently barbarian confederacies have
established dominion over portions of the cultivated lands to their south, though
these so-called empires rarely endure for more than a half-century. The rea-
sons for this short life are not hard to recognize. The nomads rule only through
their superior skill as warriors, but children born away from the steppes never
acquire the toughness and skill at arms needed to maintain their rule. When a
kintani's warriors decline, revolts inevitably drive the khans from power.
Furthermore, the barbarians are quarrelsome and civil war often erupts when a
khagan dies and a new heir must be chosen from among many candidates with
different followings. During such periods of disunion, successful revolts may
occur.
While enmity is the norm between city and steppe, the relationship of Madhava
and Trazig is actually very complex. The trade of the soldier is scorned in many
states of Trazig and the recruitment of willing and capable men is always diffi-
cult. The steppes-dwellers are superb warriors as a rule, and overpopulation
forces many of their young men to leave the steppes. It makes sense, there-
fore, for the cities to hire Madhavans as mercenaries.
But serious problems have ever dogged this system. Frequent wars between
the states of Trazig have encouraged the kingdoms to hire nomad warriors in
large numbers. Too often these mercenaries realize how powerful they are and
they tend to revolt, just as the mercenaries of the South Plains in Minaria revolt-
ed during the Age of the Tyrants. Fortunately for Trazig, the barbarian muti-
neers usually follow the same pattern of decay common to other nomad-run
regimes.
The marches between cultivation and pasturage have been the scene of many
wars. In the early Fourteenth Century the creation of a new kintani in the north
motivated the kingdom of Phlegation to send a promising young general, Aloeis,
against it at the head of an army. Oddly enough, though Phlegathon had had
long experience in fighting the nomads, Aloeis took minimal cavalry with his
expedition, saying that he did not trust the hired nomads who made up these
units, that they might turn traitor when forced to oppose their wild kinsmen.
When the Phlegathonans met the army of the kantani, the outcome was pre-
dictable: Aloeis' slow-moving force found itself surrounded by fast-galloping
horse-archers with whom it could not close and who could replenish their arrows
as needed. On the other hand, though longer bows of the city army outranged
that of their attackers', they had no resupply of arrows and could not use the
short barbarian arrows that constantly fell amongst them. Once the
Phlegathonan supply of darts was exhausted, the killing was all one-sided. At
last Aloeis attempted a desperate night retreat.
Men on foot could not, of course, outpace a mounted pursuit and the killing
ground fanned out for many miles as the fugitives were hunted down individu-
ally or in small groups. In the aftermath, the victorious kintani under a khagan
named Lal took over an unprotected Phlegathon almost without a battle.
Lal ruled like many other nomadic conqueror-kings had ruled previously, only
somewhat more efficiently. He was a cunning politician who kept his enemies
divided, striking hard for gain when one of them showed weakness. By the time
of his death he ruled not only Phlegathon, but also its neighbor Hedyla. Lal had
so chastened the other nearby kingdoms that most of them were rendering trib-
ute.
Lal had many wives and children. He kept his sons in doubt about his nomina-
tion for the succession until old age, by which time he had fallen under the influ-
ence of a favorite wife, Gauardi of the Seema tribe. A sly and astute woman,
she encouraged Lal to favor their son Chander while stirring up quarrels
between the khagan and his heirs by other women. Sometimes she went so far
as to present false witnesses or contrived to have forged documents of treason
intercepted by the khagan's agents, thereby implicating the innocent. Several
sons of Lal were executed before the khagan died and when the old tyrant final-
ly passed away, Chander took the throne to the acclaim of the kintani leaders.
That a man of so little charm or talent could attain the dignity simply through the
stated will of his father testified to the stature of the late khagan.
A dissipate of tainted morals and dubious personal habits, Chander preserved
all the vices of his race without inheriting any of its virtues. As the first act of his
reign he ordered all his half-brothers arrested and beheaded. However, two
brothers by a woman of the Vairocana tribe, Hatu and Sajag, had already fled,
warned in advance of Chander's bloody-minded intentions. Assassins rode
quickly after the absconding boys, who could move but slowly due to Sajag's ill-
ness on the road.
2
Hatu and Sajag had overnighted in a village on the banks of the River Padma,
the traditional demarcation between Trazig and Madhava, when an excited
noise awakened Hatu. The prince saw the black standards of Chander on the
horizon, the warning of approaching death. Hastily rousing his younger broth-
er, Hatu led him to the river and they both began to swim across it. Their pur-
suers either could not swim the deep channel or simply did not wish to. Their
leader pleaded from afar that thy need have no fear, that no injury would be
done to them. Sajag, still weak from illness, was too exhausted to flee further
and so turned back. Hatu continued on and reached the far bank in time to see
Chander's riders bind Sajag's hands and feet and place a noose around his
neck. Hatu swore revenge when his brother was dragged behind a horse, torn
by the stones and cactus of the wasteland while slowly strangling.
Now alone, the prince decided that his best sanctuary would be his mother's
tribe. Thus he stole a horse and set out north. Unfortunately, the palace-reared
Hatu was not the equal of wild Madhava riders and a few days later he fell cap-
tive to enemy tribesmen. For a year he lived as a slave, set to menial tasks and
beaten at the whim of his masters. Yet this experience harden him and taught
him much about the ways of the Madhava.
Hatu was careful to keep his identity secret, lest his captors send him back to
Chander for ransom. He watched for opportunities to escape and to this end
seduced a younger wife of his master, thereby gaining her aid in the form of the
horses she provided. The woman sickened and died on the journey, some say,
but other believe that Hatu ruthlessly sold her to a passing band of herders in
exchange for a fresh horse and a remount, it being said that the fastidious
prince despised adulteresses. For certain, Hatu was alone when he reached
one of the camps of the Vairocanans.
Though the Vairocanans were members of Chander's kintani, they were disaf-
fected from it. They grew even more disaffected when they learned that one of
their own might have won the khaganate had a villain of Seeman birth not
usurped the dignity. For the next couple of years Hatu worked hard to learn the
ways of his wild kinsmen, the ways which had made his father a leader of war-
riors and a famous khagan. Soon he excelled over all the young men his age
in horsemanship and the use of weapons. The prince's native magnetism was
great also, drawing men older than him into his circle of friends and supporters.
Hatu soon showed his innate political cunning, going boldly among the tribes of
the kintani and putting himself forward as a rival to Chander. To cement an
alliance with an especially-powerful tribe, he wed the khan's daughter, Chhaya.
The maid was a seeress and she claimed to foresee that Hatu would indeed be
khagan one day, not of merely of Phlegathon, not merely of all Madhava and
Trazig -- but also of lands so far away that even their names were still unknown.
Chhaya seemed to bring her young husband good luck; after the marriage many
other tribes warmed to his lonely cause, until Hatu's support grew so great that
Chander heard about his half-brother's intrigues. The khagan accordingly sent
an army north to punish the pretender's adherents and put an end to the life of
his last living brother. Chander's large army departed with every chance of suc -
cess. It was joined by many wild nomads who had remained loyal to the kha-
gan in Phlegathon.
Open civil war was something that Hatu's followers did not relish. Hatu stepped
forward at the moment of indecision to offer a plan of battle, arguing his inten-
tions so forcefully that his allies finally agreed to make ready for war. But spies
in the camps told Chander's general about the rebels' war plan and he accord-
ingly prepared to meet it.
The two armies wound their way toward one another and met near the channel
of the river Deva. Before the battle Hatu is said to have shown no fear despite
his inexperience in war. On the contrary, he appeared eager to make this fight
a test of the destiny that Chhaya had predicted for him. The warriors from
Phlegathon, knowing in advance the foe's plans, arrayed themselves with over-
weening confidence.
And then Ketan intervened.
It was a true spring storm of the kind the high steppes experience all too often.
It lashed the ground and the men upon it with unceasing torrents, waging a bat-
tle of its own in the sky with thunder chasing lightning. The ground became a
morass of mud; the horses chilled and weakened as they splashed in mud up
to their bellies. The nearby river added to the inundation by flooding the gullies
and lowlands. For days the men went about in soggy garments, protecting their
weapons as best they could.
The storytellers say that the rain was a trick of Hatu. He, forewarned by
Chhaya's visions that his battle plan had been betrayed, had brought together
the tribal shamans to conjure a storm to aid him in an alternate plan. Hatu's
men, having been told to prepare for bad weather, had put up heavy felt shel-
ters and gave blankets to the horses. They also chose a campsite for the pur-
pose of run-off and had dug canals to additionally drain their positions. For this
reason Hatu's army came through the storms in much better condition than his
enemy's.
After the usual skirmishing, the advanced regiments of Hatu's left flank charged
the right wing of the enemy. Upon a sea of mud, all the war bands, the turgas,
lost cohesion. Wet bows were useless and steel was the only weapon that
served. The clanging of blades, the screaming of horse, the shouting of the
warriors, and the war cry of Hatu's men, "Sar do rour," made a bedlam of the
plain.
Hatu realized that no man could command in the confused wallow where the
battle was being waged and so he did not try. Instead the young prince led his
own turga directly at the opposing commander's standard. The two leaders
fought hand-to-hand, until one warrior by the name of Gulab, Hatu's brother-in-
law, got behind the enemy general and ran him through with his spear. The
horsehair standard of Chander fell down into the mire.
The steppe warriors, superstitious and always disheartened by the loss of a
standard, began to retreat. In that morass no orderly withdrawal was possible
and so the southern riders fled in complete disorder. Many were trapped by pur-
suers in the bend of the flooded river and massacred.
As soon as he had reorganized, Hatu, now claiming the khaganate openly, led
a much-expanded army south toward Phlegathon. After each battle waged
along the route he acquired new volunteers from the defeated army, until he
was in a position to lay siege to Chander's own capital city. Believing that their
leader had lost the favor of the gods, Chander's officers soon revolted and made
terms with Hatu.
Hatu Khagan, now come of age as the lord of a vast realm, displayed the innate
savagery for which he would soon grow famous. He had Chander chained on
a rack with a dull bamboo saw placed near it. Each citizen of Phlegathon was
invited to take a single draw on the tyrant's body. Chander suffered the tor-
ments of many wounds and was days in dying.
Finally Hatu could turn his attention to the lands he dominated. To keep his men
fit as warriors and to fight the weakening influences of city life, the khagan rotat-
ed them back and forth between cultivated territory and the heartland of the
Madhava, where they were expected to live the traditional life. Unlike Lal, Hatu
made Madhava an important part of his kingdom and sometimes governed his
realm from the north, dwelling there in a traveling shashi. For years the khagan
struggled to bring the neutral and enemy tribes of the grasslands into his orbit.
Those who opposed him openly and lost to him in fair fight Hatu treated gener-
ously, but any who professed obedience and later rebelled he punished without
pity.
The leaders of one revolted tribe were staked out upon the earth with their eye-
lids removed, to be blinded by the sun's light while they baked under its heat,
tormented by insects visited by steppe wolves by night.
Lal's army had still been largely made up of irregular bravos fighting in the man-
ner of barbarians. Hatu drilled his forces to form disciplined units of cavalry. He
also improved his siege train, finding skilled engineers among his civilized sub-
jects. By his tenth year Hatu had consolidated his control over the Madhava,
which he used as a source of military recruits. The next twenty years were
passed in reducing civilized Trazig to vassalage. Now, truly, his legend started
to be made. The storytellers say that Lord Hatu never lost a battle or failed to
take a fortified position if he personally commanded.
3
These years of conquest saw many battles, sieges, which often led to massacre
and sacking. Hatu Khagan seems to have drawn one great lesson from histo-
ry – that no empire built out of any region as diverse as Trazig can long endure
unless it is cemented by an idea powerful enough to transcend all languages
and all cultures. Terror was to be the cement.
The khagan always punished resistance harshly. When the city of Melanthio
fell, Hatu separated the civilians from the soldiers, then put the latter to death.
Their heads were cut from the bodies and the head of two pyramidal towers
were built, cemented with clay from the river. Upon the foundation stones of the
towers this legend appeared: Behold the fate of those who defy the universal
monarchy decreed by the gods; behold the fate of those who oppose Hatu's will.
When the capital of Jencir succumbed to siege, the Madhavans drove the pop-
ulation into the open country. Hatu Khagan picked out thirty thousand artists
and handicraftsmen as gifts to his sons and army leaders; the younger men
among the remaining mob were compelled to serve on labor gangs and some
of them were drafted into the army. The young women were taken away for
slaves, wives, and concubines. The portion of the population for which Hatu
saw no use were butchered as a lesson to other cities not to resist.
As always, the khagan's most terrible vengeance was reserved for rebels and
oath-breakers. When the province of Zsofia rebelled, Hatu dispatched his son
Hastim with orders not to resubjugate the land but simply to exterminate every
living thing in it. What followed was a war of annihilation. Hastim never had to
leave garrisons behind in occupation, for after he passed by there was nothing
left but uninhabited ruins. In towns which had formerly contained from 70,000
to 100,000 inhabitants there was nothing remaining. Hastim even sought to
slaughter brute beasts, not excluding the dogs and cats.
The Madhavan avalanche overwhelmed every attempt at resistance. The city
of Keleo defended itself desperately for three weeks, but the fortress of Telca
only held out for three days against Hastim's disciplined military machine. The
land of Zsofia was rendered utterly uninhabited. In the aftermath Hatu ordered
cattle brought in and relocated tribes from the steppes to dwell there. Hereafter
it was known as "Little Madhava."
Astonishing as it may seem, as soon as Zsofian resistance was tramped out,
the province of Lakini rose up. Even though his first lesson in terror had seem-
ingly failed, Hatu did not change his tactics, only hardened them. Hastim was
sent out once more, instructed to try a new tactic. Hereafter, following the
destruction of a city, a special unit of two thousand men would sweep though
the ruins a few days after the army had passed on to catch whatever survivors
had crawled out of their hiding places in the expectation that it was now safe to
look for food.
During this campaign three thousand of Hastim's men were trapped and slaugh-
tered near the town of Zene. Hatu's son ordered the moats of the city filled to
allow the Madhavans to cross and storm the walls. The Zenites defended them-
selves street by street and house by house. The lesson they had drawn from
Zsofia was that surrender was impossible. When the city finally fell the entire
population was taken out and butchered. It is estimated that each soldier exe-
cuted four people, these being of all ages and both sexes.
But finally the period of conquest and revolt was succeeded by an exhausted
calm and Hatu Khagan ruled over a chastened and subservient land. During
these years he consolidated and reorganized his vast possessions. He showed
considerable talent for empire-building, creating a courier service to keep the
different parts of the empire together and sagaciously transferring populations
from hungry provinces to areas undeveloped or depopulated by war. He creat-
ed a common currency good throughout the empire and trade expanded despite
high taxes. Yet he ever seemed restless for new wars to wage. Most of all he
wanted to once again lead armies himself.
Never had the khagan forgotten Chhaya's prophecy that he would rule lands
unknown. Already of venerable years, Hatu Khagan began seeking for infor-
mation of where such lands might be found. Meanwhile, his armies were mov -
ing westward, to put pressure upon the free nomads dwelling there. Some of
these harried tribes moved farther west, displacing in turn the tribes which they
impinged upon, creating a chain reaction. Hatu oppressed non-humans, such
as the wyrms of Trazig. He wanted them to abandon their own range and move
to locations where they could better serve the needs of his military machine. In Wasn't it a terrible day
result, many of these great beasts fled to avoid his domination, withdrawing to Wasn't it a terrible day
the mountains, deserts, and jungles on the periphery of Hatu's empire. Wasn't it a terrible day, great gods,
When the khagan took the town?
Westward-fleeing free tribes discovered Minaria at last and word traveled back
East to reach Hatu's ears. Here, he realized, was the unknown land that
Chhaya had long-ago spoken of. The khagan sent his ambassadors West, to
gather information about the enemy in preparation for the war to come, for he
doubted that monarch living so far away would submit except under the com-
pulsion of the sword. Hardly had his ambassadors departed before Hatu the
Khagan of Madhava and Trazig marshaled his forces for war.

Shall this intended war come to the land of Minaria? Who can say? Hatu, by
all accounts, is an old man. If he should die before he reaches the West, the
kingdom which he has so painstaking built up may fall into revolt and civil war,
as has so many other Trazigan empires before it.

It is not the nature of men to prepare against dangers that they cannot them-
selves see. So the kingdoms of Minaria dream on as before, and perhaps this
is for the best. The actions of mere mortals have little power to alter the course
of Destiny. The fate of Minaria remains, as ever, in the hands of its unknowable
gods.

When the Khagan Took the Town

Will I e'er forget that morning

When the khagan took the town?
Women, children were slaughtered, gods,
Death was all around!

Wasn't it a terrible day

Wasn't it a terrible day
Wasn't it a terrible day, great gods,
When the khagan took the town?

A herald gave a warning,

"You'd better yield this place,"
But we never stooped to sue for peace
Till death was in our face!

Wasn't it a terrible day

Wasn't it a terrible day
Wasn't it a terrible day, great gods,
When the khagan took the town?

A high wall there at Korudor

Long kept the foemen down,
But a broken breach on the northern side
Let soldiers into our town.

Wasn't it a terrible day

Wasn't it a terrible day
Wasn't it a terrible day, great gods,
When the khagan took the town?

Then the blood began a-flowing

As the brave ones made their stand.
I heard our general crying,
"Gods, save this tortured land!"

Wasn't it a terrible day

Wasn't it a terrible day
Wasn't it a terrible day, great gods,
When the khagan took the town?

They found us still resisting

When they broke into our hall;
I saw my mother's throat cut,
I saw my father fall.