And hidden from the sight of men-in their sunless burrows and secret lairs in lost lands-the serpent-folk also sank into the abyss of barbarism. Very few of their number had survived that war of extinction in past eons. Through constant inbreeding their race grew degenerate and sickly. New monstrosities tainted their attenuated bloodline through depraved couplings with captured humans and with the great serpents of the jungles. Once the serpent-folk had almost become men. Now they reverted to the call of their ophidian heritage. Of their former civilization and wisdom, there remained only a memory of ancient depravities and a passion for the foulest of abominable sorceries.
Yet again, a smaller catacylsm rocked the earth. The seas pushed in to drown the ashes of the Hyborian kingdoms and the bones of the savage tribes who fought among the ruins. New mountains buckled forth from the northern continent. The ice-fields again rotted, retreated before the destroying sun to leave their crushed and shattered booty upon the warming earth. The newly reordered continents now assumed contours familiar to Bran’s age. The mountains of western Cimmeria were cut off by the devouring sea to form the isles of Britain. The blue waters of the Mediterranean swallowed the legendary lands of Argos, western Koth and Shem.
From barbarism Pictdom sank into deeper barbarism. Again the survivors of mankind struggled upward from brutish savagery. New races sprang from the scattered survivors of the Hyborian Age. Once more man groped toward civilization-following a crimson sword, and a torch raised on high to burn all that he could not carry off.
For a space of many centuries, the men of the First Race dwelt about the warm shores of the Mediterranean. Again the Picts attained a rude sort of civilization-tilling the soil and grazing their herds-their frontiers secure against the new tribes of man who fought among themselves in the wilderness beyond. For a time the Picts knew peace.
Then the southern-sweeping drifts of the new barbarian races overwhelmed the frontiers of Pictdom. Once more the men of the First Race waged war against the emerging tribes of mankind. Once more the earth-shaking clash of great armies, the remorseless massacre, the flaming death of cities. Once more relentless war to extinction.
This time the armies of Pictdom reeled back in gory defeat. Before the inexorable advance of the new barbarian migrations, the warriors of Pictdom stood firm-and died where they stood. The cities of the Picts now felt the torches of howling mobs of reavers. Their fields and orchards burned over the bodies of those who had tilled them. Their women were carried off along with their stolen herds.
Grimly fighting each step of the way, the men of the First Race were harried from the warm shores of the Mediterranean-driven across the continent, at last to take flight across the Channel to the white cliffs across the blue waves. Of the once vast nation of the Mediterranean Picts, only a handful of hunted savages remained in the mountains of Hispana.
To the isles of Britain fled all others who survived the collapse of their Mediterranean civilization. There the Pictish warriors confronted a race of red-haired giants, powerful and savage albeit of groping wit-these the descendants of survivors of some of the Hyborian tribes. Against these massive warriors the men of the First Race waged desperate battles-and this time Pictdom conquered. The survivors of these autochthonous savages fled into the northern wastelands.
But there was a far older race that also confronted the warriors of Pictdom. Here, in the caverns beneath this isolated land, the serpent-folk yet survived. After millennia of dwelling in buried lairs and indulging in unspeakable rites and couplings, the serpent-folk had degenerated into unplumbed depths of depravity. They hated the light of the sun now, and would have shunned the world of men altogether were it not for the undying hatred they tore toward all mankind.
Nor had the Picts forgotten their ancient warfare. With maniacal thoroughness, the Picts sought out the secret temples and hidden lairs of the serpent-folk. After millennia of blighted evolution, the serpent-folk had bred into a race of loathsome, dwarfish monstrosities-creatures whose hideous aspect was now only a hellish travesty of the human form-monsters for whom the appellation Worms of the Earth was more truth than denigration. By the hundreds the serpent-folk died beneath the blades and arrows of the Picts, shrivelled beneath destroying flame. Where during the endless centuries of barbarism, the serpent-folk in this desolate isle had presumed to dwell in rude hovels above the earth, to chip weapons and tools of flint, to mimic the arts of human culture-now the Picts utterly annihilated all those of their loathsome race who remained above ground.
Savage and cruel were their battles, long their war. And in the end the last survivors of the serpent-folk crept back into their hidden lairs beneath the earth, and cunningly disguised such Doors as gave egress to the world of men.
On rolled the tide of centuries. The Doors to Those Below remained closed. The Children of the Night became only a dread legend in the world of men. In their secret caverns, the serpent-folk continued on their downward drift to bestial degeneracy. Naked and abhorrent, the twisted and dwarfish Worms of the Earth lost all contact with humanity.
Only their hatred survived.
Centuries spun past.
And now another race of invaders followed the Picts to the Isles. The sword-wielding warriors of the Celts leapt howling from their ships and onto the blood-washed beaches of Britain. By tribe and by clan the Celts migrated into the Pictish Isles. Again the savage wars of defense and conquest. Again-again-as they were driven from the Mediterranean-the hordes of Pictdom were flung back in bloody defeat.
These final battles were grim and ruthless struggles of a stone age people against men of the new age-the last stand of the ancient Pictish nation. Defeat and slaughter were the fate of Pictdom. Uncounted feral battles were fought on desperate fields, where the Picts took savage toll of the Celtic invaders-but always more of the Celts came to swell their numbers, and among the Pictish ranks there sprang no new warriors to replace the fallen.
In a century or more the Celtic conquest was complete. Only in the desolate Highlands of Caledon did the remnants of Pictdom yet hold sway-in a mountainous waste where the Celts neither cared, nor dared, to follow. Ironically these last of the First Race now interbred with the survivors of the red-haired savages whom they had driven to these wastelands centuries before. From that interbreeding, the lithe and pantherish Picts degenerated into a race of misshapen dwarfs, of apish savages who with each passing century slipped farther back along the path of stone age barbarism.
Here in the Highlands of Caledon. The First Race. Pictdom-a race that had time and again scaled the heights of civilization only to plummet into the abyss of brutish savagery. Here they would remain, Bran realized-hunted outlaws in this age, ogrish goblins of the coming age when the glories of Pictdom no longer survived even in legend. Thus the fate of Pictdom-unless he could turn the tides of fate…
New invaders loomed across the panorama. The galleys of Rome beached on the shores of Britain. The legions of Caesar marched into the forests of Britain-and now the Celts were the hardpressed defenders of their homes-now Celtic warriors who died beneath the invaders’ swords.
In a rush of blood and flame, images of the Roman conquest flashed before him-images all too well known to Bran Mak Morn. Sword and spear. The armored order of the legion against the reckless charge of the Celts-smiting with their long iron swords they could not wield in close quarters, fighting from their dashing chariots whose quick mobility gave no advantage over the disciplined legionary formations.