The Horses At The Gate
By Mary Mackey
This is a prehistoric epic tale of the story’s heroine Marrah
in her quest to establish herself in the days as evil as in the dark ages when men were as beastly as wild dogs and other wild animals. The story started in the year 4368 B.C. The story tells about conquests of the heroine using romantic plots and magical exploits to strengthen her resolve to be a different woman in such an age.
The story is about the escapades of the heroine Marrah who escaped from the captivity of cruel and savage nomads of Hansi lands. She is from a more civilized part of old Europe known and called in the novel as Motherland. Marrah is the granddaughter of Queen Lalah of Shara, and a great priestess who was taken into captivity in the
company of her younger brother Arang by the invading Hansi
warriors known for their lust for carnage and conquest.
The story starts with an unbelievable escape of Marrah and her brother in the company of her lover Stavan – the son of the late Great Chief of the Hansi people, Zuhan and two other slave concubines to the late chief, Hiknak and Dalish.
On the death of Zuhan, the Great Chief of the Hansi, Vlahan his bastard son from one of his concubines ascended to the throne albeit illegally after poisoning his own father. He is a usurper as it is Stavan that is the rightful heir to the chiefdom as a legitimate son of Zuhan. And to secure his throne, he offered to sacrifice by strangulation the five characters earlier mentioned to the burial of Zuhan. But on the day of the great burial, story is told of how Marrah the witch from the west through fowl magic wove a spell that snatched out the eyes of his warriors, leaving them blind and helpless. She threw their eyes into a leather bag which she tied round her waist, stole five horses and took off for the west in company of her younger brother Arang, the heir to the Twenty Tribes of Motherland and the other three.
There was great lamentation in the land of the Hansi by their warriors when they regained their sight with some cutting off their limbs and offering to be better off dead than live through the shame brought on them by a mere woman. Vlahan their new Chief admonished them not to take their lives but promised them trophies, money and gold for whoever would succeed in hunting down the witch and Arang the great prince from the west who was adopted by the impotent Vlahan to succeed him when he’ll be no more. Though they fear the witch Marrah because it is said she has the powers to cause a man’s penis to shrivel, but nevertheless, they rode forth to hunt down the witch under the onslaught of the snow, the nine of them in the company of their leader, Mukhan’s three half-wild dogs trusted for their ability in tracking down runaways. They left on their horses in their search party well armed with stone axes heavy enough to split a man’s head open, long spears, sharp flint-tipped arrows and daggers.
For days on end, the Hansi warriors’ search party remained a clear and present danger to the safe escape of Marrah and her lover Stavan and the others until they decided to do the unthinkable by riding back to steal the horses of the warriors – a pastime of the Hansis. This brought them a temporary relief and exposed them to more dangers as they moved on.
It is worthy to note that Marrah was as brave as they come as she took a lover right under the nose of Vlahan her husband in the person of Stavan with whom she gave birth to their children and lived happily ever after in Shara. Not only that, another love story existed between Arang the heir to the throne of Twenty Tribes of Motherland and Hiknak a slave concubine of Vlahan.
The story is full of the heroic exploits of Stavan and Marrah on their way home to Shara as they go about rescuing the defeated and enslaved peoples of the west whose women were raped and their men and children killed or taken into captivity by the invading uncivilized war-faring Hansi warriors.
If you are a historical buff of near-lost times, this is one sure well packaged entertainment for you.