I do all my creative writing in the “novels” (which is what we call our collaborative fiction stories) at Pan Historia or Panerotica. Over the years I have tried my hand at a number of roles and genres, some of which might surprise people who think of me only as that “that queer science fiction guy” *grins*.

Perhaps the most unusual character I ever attempted was created for a very short-lived historical novel at Pan Historia, which if I recall correctly was called "Circle of the Kurgan". My character, Askuzai, was a warrior of the historical Pazyryk culture which inhabited the Altai Mountains and Southern Siberia c 4th century BC, and was intended to travel to join up with the related Scythian culture around the Black Sea (where the rest of the novel's writers were assembled!). He never got that far, due to a number of reasons that were beyond my control *grins* But I thought it might be interesting to re-post his very brief appearance, so here it is, first time seen in public since the winter of 2003!

----------------------------------------------------

1.
The ground flowed like a river under the dark mare’s compact hooves, an endless path that stretched before and behind. She paced untiringly, sinew and bone strong and enduring as the mountains, swift and nimble-footed as the deer whose carven images danced in the amulets upon her bridle. Each sinking of the moon saw us a day’s length further towards its cradle, as she bore me lightly far away from the high river valley where both of us had first drawn breath in the shadow of snow-clad peaks.

Two full moons ago, my sister-brother She Who Walks in Smoke had considered my question, then twisted the lime-bark about his tattooed fingers, eyes like those of a snake silvered by the thick spiraling smoke that filled the yurt. “I see a new horizon for you, Askuzai my brother.”

“Where do I look for it?”

He cast another handful of hemp seed into the hot stones that glowed red within the copper censor, and as the smoke rose and curled he inhaled deeply. “In stone, in cloud, the earth: Apia will guide you.”

It had still been the cold time of the year when I had turned my horse’s head west with the shaman’s enigmatic words ringing in my skull. It was bitter crystalline mornings crunching under hooves, sharp air holding the breath like a mist. The snows were harsh, the wind cruel like a sharp wooden splinter. The journey was both long and lonely with no companion or felted yurt for shelter.

But with each cycle of days that passed, the air became kinder and warmer, the dark mare’s hooves rang not now on solid frozen ground but fleetly trod the thickening grass of the lowland steppe over which black crows wove an esoteric pattern of flight.

Here on the fringes of the territory of the Kati-Skuda I found encampments made skittish by raiding Sauromatae and paused my journey only to sleep or hunt, avoiding those to whom my dialect and the manner of decoration of my trappings might mark me too much the stranger.

My mind was as open as the sky and a strange restlessness drew me ever on into the grassland plains. I let Apia guide my trail as my sister-brother had told me, and the journey’s end was indefinite. But I would know it when I found it, somewhere between the clouds and earth.

2.
As I rode ever towards the west, my whole world became a horizonless sea of rippling grass. The mountain peaks and wooded highlands of my birthplace were far behind me now: each day I rode across a treeless land where eagles soared across the endless dome of the sky, and I remembered the sharp tang of pine-needles in cold bitter air distantly, as if it was a hemp-dream I had once had.

Tired of my own company and only the mare to talk to, for a while I fell in with a small group of Sarmatian hunters with whom I traded a fur pouch sewn from the pelt of a snow leopard for a place by their fire and a share of their meat. There were some women amongst them, armed and riding with their men as is their custom, and one of them was glad enough to share her felt blankets with me fiercely for the two nights I spent in their company. When we parted, they told me if I continued west within three days I would reach a great wide river which a good horse could easily swim across, and beyond that was the homeland of the Kati-Skuda.

Was it my intention to join with my western kindred? I didn’t know. My shamanic sister-brother hadn’t told me what I should do save follow where Apia directed my mare’s steps. It was all the same to me, and I didn’t see any reason to make a decision.

The river was reached exactly as the Sarmatians had told me. A broad expanse of silver ripples that tumbled forcefully over rocks but was shallow enough in places to consider a crossing possible, if I so chose, and I made camp there for the night.

Once the sun sank at the end of each featureless day, it was still cold enough to make me glad of the warm felts I unrolled in front of the fitful fire I lit to keep the night-wolves at bay. A little distance away in the twilight the dark mare stamped and snorted as she grazed hock-deep in the flowering grass. She was annoyed with me because I’d put the hobbles on her. Usually I didn’t always care to hobble her at all even at night, as she never strayed far and would always return to my call. But we were so far from anything or anyone I knew now, I couldn’t take the risk of a hunting animal scaring her into flight and thus losing her.

Tomorrow, I told myself, as I pulled the felts closer against the chill, tomorrow maybe I would cross the river and see what lay beyond.
.....