Author Notes

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Bardarlen Gorge
How far can a horse jump?

Three days later, Damin stood on the edge of the Bardarlen Gorge, the fool wind whipping the hair around his face, wishing he’d thought through a little more carefully before demanding he be allowe4d to accompany the Raiders across the border into Medalon.

In front of him was a cutting, deep and treacherous, which could at its narrowest point – so Almodavar assured him – be cleared by a man on horseback. Almodavar and Raek Harlen stood either side of him, watching Damin survey the canyon, both of them veterans of many leaps over this gorge and both of them highly amused by Damin’s reaction to his first sight of it. It wasn’t that Damin wasn’t expecting the gorge to be here. He’d heard tales of it all his life. He just hadn’t expected it to be so … big.

“So how wide is this gorge exactly?” Damin asked doubtfully, putting one foot on the fallen log that lay just on the edge of the drop, so he could lean forward a little to look down. The bottom was far below them, two or three hundred feet at least. He could just hear the faintest sound of rushing water echoing off the steep, jagged walls of the canyon, where the Border Stream gathered speed over the rocks as it fell towards the lowlands of southern Medalon. The other side of the gorge was about three feet lower than the Hythrun side and fell away in a gentle, lightly forested slope.

It wasn’t just that you had to clear the gorge, Damin realised. You then had to avoid hitting the trees on the other side when you landed.

“Eighteen, maybe twenty feet,” Almodavar told him with a shrug. “Or thereabouts.”

So how far can a horse jump? Typically, a water jump in professional show jumping ranges in length from 10-16 feet and are preceded by a low hedge and a short run up.

In the case of Bardarlan Gorge there is no barrier, and the far side is about 3 feet lower – so all of the jump is out and down, rather than up then out. Plus, the Krakandar horses can also take a long run up… So those extra couple of feet are entirely possible.

Ronan Dell’s Favourite Toy
Instruments of torture

Elezaar stared at the nightmare Tarkyn had placed on the table, feeling his bowels turn to water at the sight of it. Carved from a single piece of polished horn, the instrument was about a foot long, tapered at the point, which was barbed and serrated, sculpted to inflict as much damage as possible on whatever orifice it was inserted into. Wrapped around its length was a twist of jagged wire, the barbs sharpened to deadly points, a modification Ronan Dell had added himself when the instrument’s initial novelty had begun to wane.

Jennifer’s inspiration for much of her instruments and methods of torture comes from the the Spanish Inquisition who were wonderfully inventive when it came to inflicting pain, particularly when it came to working around the theoretical restriction that they could not break the skin.

Ronan Dell’s favourite toy is a modification of one method of torture used by the Inquisitors to get around this restriction. The Judas Chair was a large “seat” shaped in to a pyramid. The accused victims were then lowered on to the point so that it was inserted in to the orifice of choice. The result was a very slow, extremely painful “stretching”.

The Plague
Breakfast with your descendents – dinner with your ancestors

The plague that afflicts the people of Hythria in Warrior is the bubonic plague. The bubonic plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas transmit the disease to humans, which is why the rat bounty in Krakandar was so effective.

Sufferers of the plague experienced:

Fever
Chills
Mualgias
Sore throat
Headache
Weakness
Malaise
Swollen and painful lymph node
Abdominal pain
Nausea
Constipation, diarrhoea and black or tarry stools
Cough
Shortness of break

The plague incubates for between 1-6 days before early symptoms (headaches, nausea, vomiting and aching joints) appear. The lymph nodes (glands in the neck, armpits and groin) then begin to swell. The swelling continues for 3-4 days until the lymph nodes burst and death quickly follows.

The nursery rhyme “Ring around the rosy” was about the plague:

Ring around the rosy
Rose-coloured macules occurred on the skin

Pocket full of posies
Sweet smelling flowers were used by those attending the sick to help ward off the stench of disease

A tissue, a tissue
The sneezing and coughing of pneumonic plague

We all fall down
Death.

In an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe, 25 million people (1/3 of the population) died in five years between 1347 and 1352.

The seed game

Kraig had arranged the small bowls so there were six on each side of the table with a larger bowl at either end. He was counting the seeds into each of the small bowls. “You own the six bowls nearest you. Your aim is to fill the large bowl at the end with seeds. The one on your right is your bowl. The one on my right is mine. This fame is an ancient tradition in Denika, although in my country, when we play, we use gemstones or coloured beads instead of seeds.”

“That’s all I have to do? Move the seeds?”

“We begin with four seeds in every bowl,” the prince explained. “You may choose to start in any bowl on your side of the table you wish and sow the seeds, one at a time, in each bowl in this direction. When you come to your own large bowl, you may place a seed in it. When you come to my large bowl, you jump over it. When you run out of seeds it is my turn. We continue like this, turn about, until all the seeds are gone or you have no seeds in your small bowls. The winner is the one with the greatest number of seeds in their large bowl at the end of the game.”

Damin nodded slowly, thinking he could probably master this seed game of Kraig’s quite easily. How hard could it be to place a handful of seeds in a line of ceramic bowls?

“You must accustom yourself to defeat,” Kraig warned. “I am an expert at this game and will, of course, defeat you soundly. However, if you pay attention and listen to my advice, you may, after a time, become a tolerable opponent. Or at least one who keeps me occupied.”

The seed game that Kraig teaches Damin is based on the ancient board game Mancala. Mancala is possible the oldest board game in the world – stone Mancala boards found in Memphis, Thebes and Luxor date it to at least 1400BC.

Mancala variations are played all over Africa, the Caribbean, the east coast of South America along with versions in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

~ Read about the history and variations of Mancala ~

~ Play an online version of Mancala ~

~ Tell a friend ~