Left Hand of Destiny

Part 1

Chapter 1

A man in blood spattered leather armor stood atop a huge pile of mutilated corpses. In his right hand was a long slender sword dripping blood. His left hand rested on the head of a huge gray beast, its claws and teeth also dripping with dark red blood. As they stood together atop the mountain of their vanquished foes, the man could hear the chants of the tens of thousands of citizens of the city he had just saved. "Mar-tin, Mar-tin" the chant sounded in the vaults of his mind, the thousands of voices giving the sound a physical presence that resonated through his body.

"Mar-tin, Mar-tin.....Martin, wake up, lad."

The man who stood astride the bodies of his dead enemies now lay on his back staring at the ceiling of a small room in a rustic barn. The buffeting of the sound of thousands of voices was replaced with the gentle prodding of a stout, somewhat more than middle aged farmer.

"Martin lad, be ye awake son?"

"What? Oh, yeah, Philus, I'm awake," the man named Martin replied.

"The dreams again?" asked Philus.

"Yeah, a different one this time. I was standing on top of a huge pile of butchered Garniles. The casco was next to me and all the citizens of Blyden were chanting my name."

"Well, that sounds a wee bit better than those others that had ye yelling yerself awake in the middle of the night," Philus replied.

Martin threw off his blanket and rose to his feet. As he stood facing the shorter stockier farmer he looked no different than any other farmhand might at the end of the harvest season. His weathered face was deeply tanned, his hands calloused. But his eyes held a tired, haunted look. A look that suggested they had seen more than any farmhand could or would ever want.   

As it happened, Martin was no ordinary farmhand. Even though he awoke this morning on the same farm he had for the last month, this was not his regular place of employment. Truth be told, he was not a resident of the Southron province of the kingdom of Cairstan where Philus' farm lay. He was not even a subject of the kingdom, even though his name was now known to everyone who lived within its borders. Martin was in fact an otherworldly visitor pulled from his home in the American Rockies to this place by an all encompassing power known to the locals as the Net. The Net was a mesh of force lines whose presence lent great stability to their world but at the cost of a very slowly evolving society particularly where technical innovations were concerned.   

However, once in a great while a set of circumstances or events could come to pass that would throw the Net into great turmoil. On those even rarer occasions when the power of the Net could not correct itself it sought out an agent who could bring about the changes needed to return the Net to stability and with it relative tranquility to this world. This agent was known as The Changemaker.   

Within a week of his arrival Martin had been identified as this mythical hero. And nearly as quickly he had become a pivotal figure in the most monumental event in the recorded history of the kingdom. An invasion of unprecedented scale was being prepared by the kingdom's eternal enemies, a race of oddly mutated humans known as Garniles, whose nation bordered Cairstan along its northern frontier. The last major invasion was over one hundred and fifty years ago and the Garniles had recently begun infiltrations and probing raids. Worse than this was the discovery that a huge marshaling of forces and supplies was underway at the northern end of the only pass that led into kingdom territory.  

Martin had spent nearly a year directing the planning and preparation for the defense of Blyden, the city that blocked the southern exit of this pass. The invasion had started just as summer began but what should have been a relatively brief passage down the valley that comprised the pass turned into a tortuous, costly slog thanks to the numerous traps that Martin had devised. Garniles died by the scores of thousands under avalanches of rocks and trees loosed on them from heights along the pass. Thousands more were drowned when dammed up snow melt was unleashed. And many thousands more died under storms of arrows fired down on them by regiments of archers that were perched on the heights. By the time the Garniles had made it to the end of the pass to set up their siege camp more than a month later their force of over a million strong was reduced by nearly half. This left over six hundred thousand troops to face the defenders who totaled some one hundred and twenty thousand men.