The tattooed girl

Ghouls were everywhere. Figures beastly, vaguely human, that seemed to take shape from the fog itself suddenly dropped to hide everything. And then the necromancers emerged from the earth.

The ghouls obeyed the sorcerers with all their blind, fierce violence.

It was no longer a battle: it was a massacre.

Men fell, one after another. Those torn to pieces by ghouls, those who have been hit on treason by sorcerers. There was no armor that could withstand the claws and superhuman strength of the ghouls or the bewitched lances of the necromancers. None, not even his one.

The black armor that had saved his life so many times. Forged by the best craftsman of Ectabana, with a technique whose secret the man had brought with him to the grave. Some thought it had been forged with a metal alloy and spells, and sometimes he thought it too, when he felt the armor repelling an arrow thrown at him or resisting the impact of a sharp spearhead.

Certainly must have thought it the necromancer who had sunk bewitched fingers in his chest, as if to wring his heart with his bare hands, with the result of finding himself with clutches stuck in the armor black metal, unable to reach his goal.

With the painful sensation of feeling again the wizard's cold fingers penetrating into the flesh and touching his beating heart in his chest, Daryun jerked. He clenched his right hand, as if he were still gripping the hilt of the sword he had stuck into the necromancer's body until he had passed it from side to side, and he opened his eyes wide.

Suddenly he found himself staring at the ceiling of colored sheets, supported by poles and boards of what he recognized as some foreign tent, lit by the flickering golden light of some oil lamps.

The mind, though still confused, gave him back with ferocity all the memories of those same events that had tormented him in delirium as if they were nightmares. Through the veil of suffering and dizziness that dulled his senses, Daryun remembered everything, since he had reached Qbad with his men and the unnatural mist that had imprisoned them had fallen, when the sorcerer had tried to kill him.

The last thing he remembered was the face of the necromancer, disfigured by the scars of those who were supposed to be self-inflicted wounds in some obscene ritual. A horrible face, twisted in an expression of fanatic hatred, which spat on him the last breath, as fetid as the breath of hell.

Daryun shuddered and lifted a hand to the point where the sorcerer had wounded him, instilling poison in his veins. He managed to move, though a bit 'with difficulty, and was not too surprised to discover the greasy substance that covered almost the entire left side of his chest.

Someone had medicated him. He remembered a vague figure of a woman bent over him; a song and a scent of burnt herbs. The same that he smelled even now, all around, although more tenuous. Attracted by a feeling of warmth, Daryun turned his head to the side and saw burned a little brazier, not far from the bed on which he was lying.

Following the smoke escape upward, Daryun watched the sky glisten in a gray patch through the circular opening in the middle of the ceiling. Trying to clear his mind, as much as he could at least understand if it was dawn or sunset, he raised his arm to bring a hand freeing his forehead from the hair he felt fell on his face, but stopped when he saw the strange signs drawn on the skin.

He turned his arm, looking puzzled at the ocher signs running from his wrist to his shoulder. He looked down and turned his head. He had the same designs on his left shoulder and on the other arm. Then he remembered, as if it were a dream, the impression of unknown fingers running on his body to draw mysterious symbols.

Where was he ended up?

He tried to get up. He hurt himself, but he managed to turn aside and lift himself up on his elbow, but only to fall back on his side, at the edge of the mattress of skins he was on, unable to get up again. He held a moan of pain and struggled to remain conscious, feeling he was about to lose his senses again.

He closed his eyes, stubbornly resisting dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him. He stayed awake, or so he thought, until he opened his eyes and found a young woman, dressed in white and red, kneeling beside looking at him apprehensively, but who he did not remember hearing come.

Daryun realized that she was talking to him. He did not understand her words, spoken in a language he did not know, but he recognized her voice. It was she who had cured him and intoned the song that had been impressed in his memory too clear for having been caused by delirium.

With an effort that cost him a sharp pain, Daryun managed to pull himself up again, albeit slightly. Immediately the woman put her hand on his shoulder to gently push him back, so that he would come back to relax. She smiled at him, as she took something from the small leather bag she wore on her belt, and nodded as if to tell him that everything was fine and that he had to stay calm.

But he had no intention of staying calm and let her drugs him again.

Suddenly Daryun grabbed her forearm with a snap of his hand, locking it before she could lift up what had taken from the small bag.

Perhaps he was more violent than he wanted, because the stranger was frightened and tried to withdraw, looking at him now with surprise and fear. In any case, Daryun did not have time to realize what the girl had in her hand, nor to feel sorry for frightening her. A small, stocky man was on him, roaring something he could not understand, and certainly he would at least have broken the arm with which he held the girl, if she had not rushed forward, to get in the way , raising his free hand to stop the man in a gesture full of authority.

The man grunted and stepped back. Daryun let go of the girl and drew back, returning the glare in which the other was staring at him.

Without taking his eyes off him, sitting aside on the colored carpet that covered the planks floor, the man addressed some words to the girl and she answered him in a calm but firm tone. The man then raised his hand and spoke again, his voice rough as he pointed to the general of Parsia with a gesture that made Daryun think he was pointing to a poisonous snake.

There was authority in the man's manner, but there was authority also in the young woman's attitude, Daryun observed. And while their discussion took on a rather animated tone, it was easy to see that he was the reason for their questioning. Finally, the girl pronounced a sentence that seemed to be definitive and turned, without taking care of the man who snorted and took on an air that was anything but resigned.

The girl pointed to herself and smiled. "Ay Jana" she said gently.

Daryun looked at her. Apparently she was the one in charge, at least in that tent.

She must have been in his early twenties; rather small; the eyes of an unusual gray-water color and brown hair gathered in a braid that fell on her left shoulder. She had a face with regular features and a pale complexion. She certainly did not belong to the same ethnic group as the man, who still scrutining him keeping an eye on his every single breath. Low and corpulent, with the typical somatic characters of the nomadic people of the north-east, the black and small eyes, the thin cut, and the skin of the yellowish-colored face stretched over the pronounced cheekbones.

"Ohi!" said the man recalling Daryun's attention and, when he turned to look at him, he pointed to himself, beating his chest with a fist. "Tavan Bogd" roared, then waved hand in a gesture of invitation that had something peremptory.

Daryun sensed that the two had just introduced themselves and now waited for him to pronounce his name. The girl waited patiently, but the man showed a certain impatience, and looked at him like he was an idiot who could not understand even such a simple thing.

"Daryun," finally replied the general of Parsia, and saw the man who had indicated himself as Tavan Bogd frowning and becoming thoughtful, as if he were rolling that name in his mind similarly to a closed box, of which he could fear the contents.

Ay Jana instead smiled again and, with a slow and measured gesture, showed Daryun what she had taken from her leather bag: a square of hemp cloth, impregnated with a fresh scent of herbs and flowers. The girl brought the handkerchief to her face and breathed in the aroma, wanting to prove it was harmless, then lowered her hand and made a gesture like a asking Daryun's permission to bring near to him that little patch of tissue.

Only in that moment, Daryun noticed the tattoos that ran around the girl's fingers, on the hand and on the wrist, up to her arm, disappearing under the sleeve of the white shirt she was wearing. Thin drawings, by the precise lines tracing symbols that he could not interpret, but which probably referred to the young woman as the religious authority of her clan.

Ignoring Tavan Bogd's steady gaze, Daryun lay back on the mattress. He did not feel very reassured by those two, the suspicious man and the woman, priestess or shaman that she was, but in any case he knew he could not help but try to stay alive and recover his strength as quickly as possible. So he let the girl named Ay Jana wipe to him the sweaty forehead with his piece of scented cloth.

Tavan Bogd mumbled something to which Ay Jana replied in a few words. Daryun listened to them, trying to understand what language they spoke. It did not sound like one of Turan's or Turk's dialects, but he could not concentrate enough to find any clues that would suggest to him which people it might belong to. He felt tired, too tired to think for a long time with lucidity.

He forced himself to relax. The caress of the perfumed hemp handkerchief on his skin was pleasantly refreshing and, since he could not do anything else, Daryun decided to give himself over to the feeling of relief it brought him. He had to rest, at least for a moment, to clear his mind.

Ay Jana seemed to believe that he had finally surrendered. With a rustling movement of the silk of her clothes, she moved closer and sat down next to him, legs folded sideways under the long crimson skirt. Tavan Bogd spoke again and, although he did not understand what he was saying, Daryun realized that the man would have preferred her not so close to him.

It really seemed that Tavan Bogd was afraid that he could hurt her, but the girl, in spite of the fright of shortly before, showed no fear. On the contrary, she appeared pleased that at last the stranger relied on her with confidence, so she resumed to sing softly.

Daryun stood still, listening to the sounds coming from outside. He needed to know where he was ended up and in the hands of whom, so any information would have been useful to him. He was among a group of nomads, this was the only thing he was sure of, but he could not understand who those people were.

While he was listening attentively, beyond the song of Ay Jana and among the various noises that came to him, he got a familiar one. Near to his left, beyond the stretched leather of the tent..

Daryun focused his attention on it and listened again.

"Shabrang" he finally murmured. He felt his heart open with relief when he heard the snorting, followed by a subdued whinny, of the faithful black steed.

"Shabrang" repeated Ay Jana.

Daryun turned and looked at her again. He remembered Shabrang being cruelly wounded by one of the ghouls, before he could cut off the hell's creature head, ripping it off the trunk with a slash of his sword. The steed, maddened by the pain, had risen and was ruined to the ground, dragging him with it. Daryun had seen the blood flow on the flank of his horse and dye the black fur red, then the sorcerer had arrived.

The girl still pronounced the name of the steed and moved her tattooed hands, as if to caress something closed between the two palms, and Daryun understood:

She had been the one to take care both him and his horse.

Why? He wondered, but then, in front of the young woman's clear look and sincere smile, he didn't care anymore to know.

"Thank you" he said.

She understood and accepted his gratitude by nodding her head, then began to sing again and Daryun, not knowing why he was giving up, let the torpor invade him and finally abadoned himself to a restful, dreamless sleep.