Red Sun Over Loch Rindach
A gonzo Sword & Planet story set on a sundered Earth
I love obscure speculative fictions genres, especially niches that were more popular prior to the advent of mass media. This month has been mostly dedicated to the often forgotten genre of Sword & Planet, so I figured it would be fitting to have this month’s story also be an S&P tale. “Red Sun Over Loch Rindach” takes place in an alternate version of Earth that was sundered by a cataclysmic event caused by the Tuatha de dannan of Irish mythology. The different “Sunders” of the old world contain familiar yet different cultures (and characters) including space vikings who sail on living dragon ships, a Byzantine Empire that is on a crusade against the cosmic horrors of the universe, cyborg elves who use precious metals and gems to enhance their capabilities, and so much more that I hope to write about in future stories.
I have written a story set in this world before, which was featured in Broadswords and Blasters’ one-shot Sword & Planet anthology Futures That Never Were. My story, “The Vengeance of the Silvern Hand” is a sort of prequel to this one, and has been described as a “gonzo ride”, which “completely exceeded expectation” in Richard Fisher’s review of the anthology on DMR Books’ blog. You can pick up a copy of it as an eBook, paperback, or hardcover on the Amazon page (linked in the collection’s title), and be sure to leave a review!
The season of Day in the Domunnos Sunder marked its surrender to Twilight with a bloody red sun. Deep pink skies domed over the landmass drifting in the aether, sparse splashes of stars glimmering in the eastern horizon. The grass on the rolling hills and moss on the craggy mountains shook in the cool sighs of the great sunset. Several such lonely faces of stone, wrought by the great cataclysm that tore the old world asunder, ringed a lake formed by a great meteor. For its origin, the local Domunnii dubbed it Loch Rindach—the Lake Full of Stars. It doubly lived up to its place-lore as it reflected the growing clusters of stars in the blue beyond the sun.
A warband marched in the shadows of the mountains around Loch Rindach. Black and red hooded cloaks—the colors of horror—clothed them. Each fighter carried a forked spear, oblong shield with a gleaming boss, and a short-bladed sword or ax on his belt. They wore no mail for their bodies had been altered by silvern blessings bestowed by ingenious surgeons and alchemists; limbs, organs, and entire sections of their mortal flesh were excised and replaced with devices made of pure silver and empowered by Star Blood gemstones. Each of them came from under the hills, and were dubbed by the human Dumonnii as sidhe. Normally, the sun would weaken their physical might and arcane abilities, but their silvern blessings embedded in or replacing their flesh reflected its damaging rays as mirrors. None among them, however, had as many modifications as their prince, champion, and war-leader Kvassr the Moon-Troll, son of their overlord Kjartan the Silvern King. Though not but twenty Days old, Kvassr towered over his fighters and was as wide as at least two of them standing abreast. His blessings were those of strength and size, which aided in his gathering of glory and terrifying reputation spread by bards of men and the elfin people of the sidhe mounds. He served and slew for the Silver-handed Cult since he could hold a spear, built and tempered to be the perfect living weapon swung by his father’s will. When he took charge of his own warband, the forces of the mortal Domunnii and the Long-armed Cult, sidhe-people dedicated to the usurper god Lugh, broke, scattered, and trembled in the wake of his campaigns.
“This one,” he had told his father upon the eve of his departure, “will be the raid that cuts the path to your ascension over the whole Sunder.”
“Burn slow, Kvassr.” His father had placed his silvern hand—the very hand of the old true king, Nuada—upon his massive shoulder. “For the brightest stars die too quick.”
Kvassr laughed at the recollection. True, he thought to himself, but when a star dies, it takes whole worlds in its wake!
A thunderclap in the air blew away his musings. The ground trembled shortly thereafter and fighters at the rearguard cried out in pain and surprise. Kvassr spun around in time to witness the bodies of his best men flying through the air with chunks of earth and trails of smoke. Pieces of their blessings rained down in shards.
“Another!” screamed a warrior several paces from Kvassr. He pointed up as a fist-sized, silver-plated ball arced over a rocky shelf above the troop. A fire-stone, Kvassr ground his gleaming silver teeth—the canines protruding like tusks from his mouth—as he recognized the device.
“Out of the way!” he roared and his men made a path at once. He charged towards the trajectory of the ball, hefting his massive sledge off his shoulder and seizing it in both hands. Thick, fire-hardened oak composed its shaft while the chunk of a meteorite fastened on one end served as the head. He swung the great cudgel at the ball. It shattered, exploding in a blast of fire and wind. The rolling flames merely licked Kvassr’s body as his blessings inured him to such pain and vulnerability. His cloak, however, was not spared; he tore it off his shoulders and threw it to the ground. Turning towards the crags, mouth set in a gleaming snarl, head tilted up, he bellowed to the hidden ambushers, “Show yourselves, raven-starvers! Descend from your hiding and face me, Kvassr Kjartanson, if you truly wish for glory!”
Another silver-plated ball flew over the cliffside. Kvassr’s men cried out, but the Moon-Troll held fast. As it neared him, he shot one hand off his club and caught the explosive before it collided with his face. It detonated as his crushed it, the explosion somewhat quashed by his hold. He threw the smoldering remains to the ground and took up his club in both hands again.
“I will bring down this whole mountain with you upon it!” he vowed, rushing forward with his club raised overhead. He brought it down upon the stone. The earth quaked under the blow, causing his followers to stagger. The cliff shivered, dark fragments of its face rained into the pass. Kvassr struck again and the crag shattered. His men rushed out of the landslide’s path; broken stone tumbled in a grey and black tide over the grass, draped covered in a choking blanket of dust. The Moon-Troll remained steadfast as the stone rose up to his sleek, silvern thighs, each the width of a maturing oak.
A pair of bodies tumbled down the newly made slope, accompanied by cries of pain and strings of curses. Two lads landed before Kvassr, caked in dust and coughing. One, a Domunnii, had coppery hair worn long in the front like curtains over his eyes and shaved close everywhere else. A fine yet weathered leathern coat clad his rangy body. He carried a rainbow-bladed star metal sword with a crossguard curved like the rim of the moon. A thick leather glove covered his left hand, which only had two fingers and a thumb. The other had a strip of black hair running down the middle of his head. Red and black tattoos of storm clouds and lightning decorated the clean-shaven sides. A crest of proto-horns protruded from his heavy brow. No shirt or mail covered his broad chest, rippling with muscles and snaking veins that seemed to want to burst from his tanned flesh. He clutched a wooden club lined with sharp purple crystals as teeth on a great astral reef shark.
Kvassr glowered at the lads as they struggled to their feet. They returned his stare with bared teeth and furrowed brows.
“Just you two?” inquired Kvassr, glancing up at the ruined cliff. He set his eyes back on them before either moved another inch.
“Aye,” answered the copper-haired lad, grey eyes locked with Kvassr’s ice blue gaze. “We’re here to kill you, Kvassr Moon-Troll.” He reached for his blade. His companion—a Fer Bolg, Kvassr realized—gripped his club, thews in his long, rippling arms tensing.
Kvassr set his mighty sledge upon his shoulder, threw back his head, and laughed. His rough, booming voice echoed through the mountain pass. The lads lowered their weapons, but looked no less prepared to strike; they glanced at one another, confusion crossing their faces.
“What fool sends only two boys to slay me?” Kvassr wondered loudly. “Was it Rothan Bird-Mouth from the Long-armed Cult? Is his body and pride still smarting from the little thwack I gave him yesteryear? Or was it one of Damros’ avenging bastards? His clan and mine have quite bloody history.”
“Neither,” replied the copper-haired lad. “Our master is no matter to you.”
“Well…” Kvassr looked to the damage the lads’ explosives dealt to his vanguard. They had managed to kill several of his men with the first fire-stone they tossed. “I must thank you at the very least for sending my men to Valhalla; they died standing with weapons in their hands. However, I cannot let an attempt on my life pass so easily.”
“Then stop talking and fight!” growled the Fer Bolg, leaping to his feet.
“Connor!” shouted the Domunnii lad, who then turned to Kvassr with a slight grin. “Would it not be more wonderful to have a difficult duel against your assassins?”
Kvassr furrowed his brow but nodded towards the lad. “I would know the names of my assassins first.”
“Eachann MacLeod,” said the copper-haired one. “From Sky-Isle-Beneath-the-Stars.”
“Connor Ua Sreng,” said the Fer Bolg. “The sidhe know well where my people come from.”
“I have heard of you lads indeed.” Kvassr rubbed his cliff-like chin. He eyed Eachann’s three-fingered hand. “You carry quite the burden.” He met Eachann’s grey, stormy gaze.
“I do so willingly.” Eachann raised his gloved hand. Its extremities were longer than normal human fingers. “For Tethra’s Spine strikes fear into most mortal hearts.”
“You don’t rely on fear from that thorny parasite to win your battles, do you?”
“Let’s fight already and we will see.” Connor ground his teeth.
“Fine, what will make this duel difficult?”
Eachann pointed down the mountain pass, towards where Kvassr’s warband headed. “Over yonder is Loch Rindach, the lake with the clearest waters in all of the Domunnos Sunder. I say we fight upon it.”
Kvassr laughed heartily again, his men—of sidhe extraction—were not so prone to simple jovialities and thus remain stoic. “Unless you know magic to let us walk on water, the lakeshore will have to do.”
Eachann turned his finger towards Kvassr’s great, meteoric sledge. “Surely you could make an island for us with that. I too know of your exploits, Moon-Troll, how you ruptured the dread Fomori pirate Dovzhak in a single blow.”
Kvassr slid his sledge off his shoulder and raised it skywards, one-handed. “With this I could make land for us to fight upon indeed. Likewise, I can crush both of you at once.” He turned and pointed it towards Loch Rindach, its surface a still sliver in the distance from the pass. “Onward to victory or Valhalla.”
***
The lads, Kvassr, and his warband marched to the edge of Loch Rindach. True to its name—the “Starry Lake” in the tongue of the Domunnii—its placid surface reflected the stars above the Sunder. The red, descending sun commanded most of the space, with several stubborn pinpricks glinting through its beams.
“Now…” Kvassr raised a fist, bringing his fighters to a halt. Several of them gathered around Eachann and Connor, facing their liege. The Moon-Troll stepped to where grass met sand. With a long, indrawn breath he took up his sledge in both hands. He pointed it skyward, the veins of its meteoric stone head beginning to glow a bright, greenish blue. Kvassr loosed a roar that sent ripples across the lake; birds on the far shore cried out and took to the wing. He spun and swung into the ground. Like a spade shoveling muck, it scooped up a massive piece of earth laden with stones, sod, and roots. The fragment stuck to Kvassr’s sledge as he continued his swing, launching it into the water. It landed several yards from the shore, as far out as where a longship might have been moored. A wave exploded from the impact and shook the image of the sun and stars.
Kvassr turned to the lads, the anticipation of battle spreading a smile across his face. “Are you prepared?”
Eachann and Connor exchanged a wary glance. They faced their opponent, drawing arms, and strode towards the little island. Once the two mounted it, Kvassr followed. He moved through the water and leapt onto the island with the fluidity of a cat despite his bulk.
“Brace tight, lads,” Kvassr said, facing the shore and raising his sledge. He brought it down onto the water and the island surged farther out into the lake. Foam in the shape of a huge tail followed the mass of earth. The lads struggled to keep their balance as it skipped over the water as a stone. It landed somewhere in the middle of the lake, far enough to make the warband appear as a line of ants on the shore.
“The only land to be found.” Kvassr gestured to the grass under his feet as the island rocked in the wake of his strikes. He set both hands on his sledge, grinned, and locked eyes with the lads. “Now we can fight.”
“At last!” Connor raised his club and rushed Kvassr. The Moon-Troll swung down at the Fer Bolg, simply twisting his hips and letting the great stone head fall. Connor lunged toward Kvassr but loosed a hoarse shout as the mighty shaft slammed against his ribs. He tumbled to the edge of the island, the top half of his form sprawled over the water.
Eachann seized the opening left in the wake of Kvassr’s swing; he led with the tip of his blade and thrust under his opponent’s right arm. The bright, colorful brand shore through wool tunic and flesh like the wind through mist, but it clanged and glanced off silver-plated bones.
Kvassr bared his teeth in a stretched grin. “Not a bad strike!” He retaliated with an overhead swing.
Eachann ducked under Kvassr’s hammering smite and came face-to-face with the ring of his belt. The young fighter, without enough room to swing, drove his pommel forward at Kvassr’s groin. Suddenly, something slammed into Eachann’s back and pinned him against his adversary’s chest. Kvassr had shifted his grip upon his sledge and laid it flat, pressing the shaft into the lad’s back and lifting him off the ground.
“Ha!” Kvassr bellowed, squeezing Eachann tighter. “You boys amuse me. Were you not my enemies, I think we’d get along well!”
Eachann squirmed against the Moon-Troll’s grapple. His spine bent inward, pain shooting into his skull. He reached his left hand towards his mouth and bit the glove at the tip of the first finger to reach his teeth.
Before Eachann pulled his glove off, three thunderous thwacks sounded behind Kvassr and his hold loosened. Sliding out from the sledge, Eachann retreated, clutching his aching ribs and back. Kvassr turned as Connor, dripping water from his head, threw another strike at the warlord’s head. The teeth on his club shredded the flesh of Kvassr’s cheek, exposing gore-caked silvern bones and teeth.
“You’re not even a man anymore,” Connor remarked as he drew backwards to the edge of the island.
“I’m something greater.” Kvassr seized Connor’s throat with his left hand. The Fer Bolg gasped and lashed out like a frantic beast; he slammed his club against his grappler’s arm, creating a crimson field of ruined flesh with gleaming, silver roots. Kvassr hurled him at Eachann. Together, the lads tumbled off the island. Languidly, the Moon-Troll strode towards the edge as the pair surfaced, sputtering and grasping for the sod. He chuckled and held up his sledge.
“I don’t even need this to slay you both,” he said, “it just keeps you at a distance.”
Eachann pulled himself to his knees, setting his sword’s tip in the ground. The water darkened his hair to a reddish brown. “I suppose we didn’t ask for an easy fight.” He spat into the grass and looked up with a grin.
Kvassr laughed again. “Well, take your time getting the water out of your brains.” He waved a hand, then paced towards the edge of the island facing his warband. “I like it when my foes have clear heads.” He tore off his ruined sleeve at the shoulder to expose the rippling tendons beneath his skin.
Connor dragged himself, coughing, beside Eachann. He rose and swayed, eyes locked upon Kvassr who shouted and gestured at his men on the shore. Then, he sat and jabbed a finger quickly at the Moon-Troll’s exposed flesh. “Cut his thews,” he said in a low voice.
“His thews?” blurted Eachann.
“Yes, see the size of the ones in his back? They’re like snakes.”
“How am I supposed to cut them? There isn’t any way he’d let me flank him.”
“Let me serve the distraction.” Connor rose, let his club fall from his hand, then loosed a terse shout. He spread his arms as he advanced.
Kvassr turned, mouth splitting into the broadest smile thus far. “Ah! It looks like your skull isn’t quite dry, Fer Bolg; you’ve left your club behind.”
“I know what I am doing.” Connor flashed a wolfish smile at his foe.
Kvassr glanced past Connor. “And what of you, Eachann? Are you ready?”
The young fighter pulled himself to his feet. He leveled his sword’s tip towards Kvassr and rested his left palm in the crook of his elbow.
“Victory or Valhalla, lads.” Kvassr gripped his sledge, his hand slid towards the butt of the shaft, and swung over his head. He advanced, letting the meteoric head arc towards Connor’s skull. The Fer Bolg, instead of dodging, reached up and seized the shaft. His dark eyes glared past the stony surface of the sledge onto the paling, open-mouthed face of Kvassr.
“How?” he breathed.
Connor grinned as he strained against the force of the blow. “After the sidhe sundered the old world, they used what remained of my people as little more than beasts of burden. That is the fate our ancestors had been locked into. We carried great stones from space upon our shoulders. By the time we liberated ourselves from the sidhe, our kind’s youths could hurl meteors for sport!” Connor’s muscles, from his neck to his wrists, bulged grotesquely. His swollen veins pulsed and squirmed under his sun-bronzed skin. Blood gushed from his nostrils.
Kvassr pressed harder against Connor. His own thews pressed taut through his skin, their silvery hue gleaming beneath the reddened sky. With his attention so fixed upon the Fer Bolg, he failed to react in time as Eachann rushed forward and hacked into Kvassr’s exposed shoulder. A tremendous snap burst through the air; the Moon-Troll’s left arm faltered, his tendon severed. His expression of awe shifted at once to a tight-necked, lock-jawed masque of agony. The blood streaming from the wound on his cheek made him the image of a berserker.
Connor threw the sledge off to the side and closed the gap. He threw his arms around Kvassr’s midsection, driving his shoulder forward. His feet gouged tracks in the ground. “Eachann, take his head!”
With a snap of his hips, Eachann turned his blade on Kvassr’s broad neck. However, his sword sailed over the warlord’s fair head as Kvassr ducked, swept Connor’s leg out from under him with his right arm, then tossed the Fer Bolg onto his Domunnii friend. The lads collapsed in a heap. They scrambled to their feet, ready to resume the fight, but gave pause as they beheld Kvassr.
He slumped over, heaving. His left arm swung uselessly in its shoulder. Gripping his sledge in his right hand, he turned and lifted his head, trembling with fury, and glowered at the lads. “No more courtesy,” he wheezed. “The loch will drink ye both.”
Kvassr lifted his sledge and arced it over his head with a scream. The metallic veins in its head glowed; filaments of magenta streamed down from the sky and linked with the weapon. In the moments before it struck the ground, the island trembled and rings pulsed outward from its edges. Sound seemed to flee in a gust of wind as the sledge smote the sod. The island sank into a funnel under the loch, the water rising into a thick grey cloud of mist. Fish twisted and writhed as they were displaced; those closer to the island hung limply in the air, dead from the force that rippled from the strike.
The grassy clump of land shattered as it hit the bare bottom of the loch. Eachann, Connor, and Kvassr flew sprawling onto the algae-covered stones. Rusted and tarnished arms, armor, and ceremonial jewels, given to the gods ages ago, peaked out from the muck around them. The lake water came down in a torrent, blocking the sun.
The combatants struggled to their feet; Eachann and Connor rose, covered in grime while Kvassr shakily set himself on one knee. He groped for his sledge, but the fingers on his right hand, twisted and broken, could not hold the shaft—fractures ran through the oak.
“Our fight,” Kvassr looked up at the lads, his doused hair plastering his face, “is not done yet.”
“No,” said Eachann. He glanced around at the water already pooling up to his ankles. “We shall end it here. Stand, son of Kjartan.”
Kvassr puffed out a long breath, curled his stubborn fingers round his sledge, and stood with a groan. He looked up at the rainfall of the entire loch. “End it quick. I hear the wingbeats of the Valkyries.”
Eachann and Connor flew towards their foe as Loch Rindach roared around them.
***
Kvassr’s warband collectively gasped in awe as the entirety of Loch Rindach poured down from the sky. It swallowed their leader and his opponents in a glittering deluge made crimson by the sun. Waves blasted on shore from the impact and soaked the warriors. They endured it, however, and at once waded into the tumultuous tide once the loch refilled.
“Find him!” demanded Ruathach, Kvassr’s second-in-command, his cousin through the Silvern King’s marriage.
The sidhe rushed into the loch, some diving straight from the shore. All moved with an urgency seldom felt by the ancient people of the mounds. Most swam mere yards from the banks before a dim form rose near the center.
“Lo!” Ruathach thrust one finger towards the shape. It moved to the shore haltingly. The warriors farther out in the loch swam towards it, then seemingly melded with it. Those on land waded up to their knees and stared, unblinking, as their comrades returned. Eachann and Connor swam on either side of Kvassr, his arms draped over their shoulders and his head slumped down. His face dragged through the water. The sidhe warriors collecting around them helped haul in the warlord. As his body reached the sand, the lads rose and helped turn him on his back, joining his men in laying him upon the grass. In death, he yet clutched his mighty sledge from the stars.
Ruathach knelt beside his cousin and placed his hand upon a new wound in Kvassr’s breast; blood gushed from a slit above his heart. He glared up at Eachann and Connor. The warriors closest to the lads gripped their weapons.
“He died on his feet,” Eachann said. “Holding his weapon. He will go to his Valhalla soon.”
“He may,” concurred Ruathach. “But his slayers yet live. Transgressions against the Silvern King do not go unpunished.”
“The Silvern King may exact his revengeance however he sees fit.”
“For now,” said Connor, “we have fulfilled our own duty. See to your warlord; his memory will not soon perish.”
Ruathach grimaced but made a gesture to his men. They stayed their hands and gathered around Kvassr. “Go then” he said to the lads. “Know that the silvern hand will soon grip the Sunder.”
Eachann nodded. “Then we will be here to severe its fingers.”
The lads went away from the warband as they lifted Kvassr and carried him into the dimming hills ringing Loch Rindach.
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“Red Sun Over Loch Rindach” © Ethan Sabatella 2024 – Current Year, All Rights Reserved. Reprinting or replication of this work in its entirety in any form (written, audiovisual, etc.) without express permission of the author is prohibited. Excerpts may be used for review or promotional purposes with credit and acknowledgement of the author. This piece cannot be used for training of Artificial Intelligence programs.
Good story! I can imagine a sequel coming to avenge Kvassr’s death in the near future!
Beautiful. I love the pulpy feel of this story. It's very 1980ish, maybe 70ish. It has everything I'd have looked for in the local library in an anthology.
Thank you for letting us read this.