The Devil's Island

 

Beyond the fall of night, as the waves roiled over the deep and the sky turned to fire in the west, Jaya and her men rowed for the dark shape of the island.  The ten Ekwa rowed silently, wise in the ways to cut the water without a sound, hunched low behind the rail of the longboat.  Dhatun himself rode the tiller, his leg hooked over the side to steady it with his foot.  Jaya was in the bow, bent low so she would not make a high shape above the waves.

She had spent almost the passing of a moon with the Ekwa, recovering from her ordeal, and now the scars of the sea only stung slightly when she touched them.  She had new tattoos on her shoulders, marking the heads she claimed and was entitled to, as well as new marks on her hands to make her known to all Ekwa she might encounter.  She wore her hair like one of them, twisted into braids and knotted behind her.  She had painted her face black tonight, so she would not be seen.

The island was a low shadow, like the raised spine of a dead animal, the central ridge jagged and cloaked by high jungle.  Even from so far away Jaya could smell the quick scents of flowers and smoke, the sour odor of sweat and shit and castoff food.  Men were there, it only remained to see how many.  If there were few, they would slaughter them, if there were more she would have to plan, as she wanted more than blood: She wanted a prisoner.

The harbor was on the north end of the island, so she had been told, so they cut for the southern shore, which was too rocky and exposed for large ships.  Dhatun knew the approach, and she watched carefully as they headed in for land.  She saw the slight disturbances of the water where reefs haunted and noted the way the currents broke.  Most of all she watched for any flicker of light, for they did not wish to be sighted.

The canoe’s bottom scraped on the sand and she jumped out, the others a breath behind.  They grabbed the boat and dragged it up beyond the reach of the water – easily done at high tide.  They moved it in among the rocks, and the other warriors quickly fanned out to gather seaweed clumps and large palm fronds to cover it, so it would not be easily spotted from afar.

Jaya took her new spear in hand and stood guard, watching for any sign that they had been noticed, but the night was quiet, with only the sounds of birds and insects in the trees.  She touched the sword sheathed at her side and sniffed the air, catching only a hint of smoke in among the jungle decay and, beneath it, something bitter and reptilian.

Furious

 

This is a 2017 Russian-produced film based on on the historical Siege of Ryazan and events surrounding it, though we don’t have a huge amount of hard information about the battle, so people can – and have – felt free to invent a lot of heroic detail.  The main plot centers around the warrior Evpaty Kolovrat and his efforts to at first defend the town, and afterward to avenge it.

Set during the mongol invasion of Russia in the 13th century, this is a quasi-historical epic that doesn’t let accuracy get too much in the way of the action.  At the beginning our hero, Evpaty, is just a child, and he sees his lord and retainers cut down and captured by a mongol ambush.  He is wounded in the head and left unconscious.  We then cut ahead to 13 years later, when he has grown to belong to the prince’s guard and suffers from a strange type of amnesia, where whenever he sleeps he wakes up in a kind of berserk rage, thinking he is back on that day.

The movie takes a good bit of time to show us his daily life before it gets wrecked, and I think that was a good choice.  We see his wife and his children and his friends, we see Ryazan before it is destroyed, and so later there is more emotional weight to the death and ruin in the town.  Also, the sets, both indoor and outdoor, are outstanding, and combined with the first-rate costuming we see an imagined slice of Slavic life from the middle ages, which is not something often seen in the West.

Once the action gets going, it is good stuff.  The weapons and armor are all pretty good, even if the mongol costuming can get a little outlandish.  Accurate or not, the costumes look fantastic.  The fight scenes have good choreography and imaginative cinematography, so they are exciting and visceral.  Unknown actor Aleksandr Choi is magnetic as Batu Khan, and he probably gives the best performance in the whole movie, really giving the villain of the piece a lot more depth than you would expect.

This was shot in Russia, and so the filmmakers made great use of the snowy, frozen vistas you can probably only find there.  There are also a good number of CG backgrounds and digital flyovers, and while these look like CG, they are not terrible, and they sell the kind of oversaturated, hyper-real world of the movie.  The plucky bunch of misfits, led by their vengeful warrior with his two swords and his traumatic brain injury, poison the mongols, set their camp on fire, and terrorize them with various masks and costumes, all while fighting off numerous attempts to kill them.  I do like that the mongols are played by actual Asians, and that they are not made into caricatures or racist demons.

By the midway point it becomes pretty obvious that this movie is basically trying to create a Russian-themed version of 300, right down to the hopeless but dramatic last stand and even directly referencing some specific shots.  Choi’s Batu Khan is definitely in the same ballpark as Rodrigo Santoro’s Xerxes, though not so cartoonishly depicted.  And as with 300, the filmmakers are kind of stuck with the fact that Batu Khan won this war – he flattened the Russian principalities and the Golden Horde ruled Russia for 250 years.  It can be hard to make an uplifting ending out of something like that, so they mostly don’t try, rather embracing that tragic aspect of Russian folklore and history.

I will note that the dubbing on this is absolutely unbearable, and if you are going to watch it at all, switch over to Russian with subtitles, as otherwise you will be groaning too hard to pay attention to anything but the bad, bad voice-overs.  In the original language, however, this film is transformed.  Some stunning scenery, great cinematography, good fight and stunt work combined with stellar sets and costumes that really evoke a different world.  If this movie had thrown in Baba Yaga or something, then it would definitely be a Sword & Sorcery movie, as it is, this sits comfortably on the shelf beside Howard stories like “Swords of Black Cathay” or “Shadow of the Vulture”.  You can watch this on Prime and it is definitely worth a look.

The Old Ways

 

Jaya did not want to leave her canoe, but she could not hope to keep pace with the Ekwa boats.  Without a word they unstepped her mast and removed the outrigger so they could lash her craft into a smaller bundle, and they stowed it aboard one of their own.  She admired the workmanship of their boats.  The sleek lines and the jagged black coloration.  They were made for eleven men each, deeper and wider than hers.

She sat at the center and watched as they rowed low and swift, bent over their places with their hard, tattooed hands on the seasoned wood of their oars.  The steersman sat at the stern, one leg over the side to brace his foot on the rudder.  They sliced through the waves and then out beyond the scattered rocks.  They stayed close in to shore, evading shoals and sandbars with the ease of long experience.  There was no chatter among them, no jokes or stories or songs, only the steady, low exhalations as they sped through the waters.

The day burned down behind them in the west, and they rounded a point and then struck out across the deeps toward the dim shadow of another island.  Jaya noticed how sharks haunted the waters behind them, sniffing at the drops of blood that fell from the fresh heads hung on the high prows.  The sea-beasts knew to follow these ships, seeking meat.  She imagined the Ekwa must feed them often, to keep them hungry.  Shark-hunted waters would help keep intruders away.

It was after dark when she heard the crash of waves, and by the light of stars and the rising blade of the moon the Ekwa rowed between high points of rock hung with clinging vines and night flowers and into a hidden lagoon between ridges thick with jungle growth.  She smelled cooking fish and boiling pitch, and she saw the shimmering lights of many fires.  Here was a village tucked away from seeking eyes, canoes drawn up on the white crescent shore and stilted huts clustered near the water.  She closed her eyes for a moment, for the sight and the smells, while different, were familiar enough to cause a pang in her chest, a missing place of home in her heart.