Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (15 page)

THE SENTRY

T
he horned helmet faced huge spreading jaws. Saliva as thick and green as wet grass dripped from teeth as long as table legs. They protected a raw purple throat which vomited a forked tongue, about three hundred pounds of red meat. The jaws belonged to a snake as thick as a full grown pine tree. The silver drapes of the Queen of Serpent’s bedchamber were drawn back to reveal its body behind the surrounding silver columns. Its head rose up out of the entrance stairway completely blocking it. Its lower jaw rested on the floor of the chamber. Cobra stood beside it, only a foot taller than its largest fang.

The monster hissed. The floor shook from its trembling weight, and several silver columns fell knocking Cobra aside. She staggered back, and stumbled down the entrance stairway out of sight.

Gath’s metal-clad body hurtled out of the smoke. His spear was leveled at the reptile. The blade drove between two white teeth and buried itself in the pulpy meat of the tongue. The tongue convulsed, cracked the spear against the jaw’s upper teeth and whipped the holder into the air. He twisted in midair, landed on all fours, and leapt up, bringing his axe with him. He caught a tooth with the blade, and cracked it off. But the impact flipped him tumbling back across the room empty-handed.

He rose slowly in the middle of the black swirling smoke, the helmet’s eyes glowing. His body, fed by battle, swelled. The chain mail bulged at his chest stretching the links from circles to ovals. The hides under the metal pressed through the small openings as if the steel was growing fur. Sweat dripped from the rim of his helmet, sizzled on his mail and ran in bright rivulets down his pulsing arms.

He backed down into the interior stairway and vanished within the smoke. A short time later he reappeared carrying a brass bucket of bubbling lava and marched for the mouth of the reptile. The snake obliged by spreading its jaws in a mindless repetition of what normally worked best for it. Gath charged through the gap he had made in the snake’s lower teeth and heaved the Sava, bucket and all, into the throat.

The lava splattered over the wet purple flesh. The monster mouth sizzled, foamed. Its tongue shot forward, caught Gath in the chest and drove him out as the upper teeth clanged down with shattering force.

Gath hit the ground, kept rolling and came up facing the writhing creature, dodging the flaming, smoking spittle, his axe back in his hands.

The reptile’s body thrashed and convulsed, knocked over columns and bulged out into the room with its mouth vomiting bits of teeth, chunks of tongue, and the gore of throat and brain tissue.

As Gath started forward, axe raised, the snake whipped forward, knocked him down, and rode over him. There was a dull smoky haze over its yellow gold eyes. It was blind.

The lava had reached the brain cavity. Then the head collapsed on the floor, spitting up melon-sized glands and a river of steaming blood.

Gath clawed through the gore and found the body blocking his escape. He climbed the reptile’s convulsing back, stumbled along it toward the entrance stairway. The last convulsion carried him up to the ceiling. He dropped flat and, axe in hand, slid down the slick wet back of the snake into the stairway. He dropped to the floor, squeezed past the undulating tail, and raced up the polished obsidian passageway, not seeing Cobra’s unconscious body partially buried by rubble.

THE PRISONER

G
ath stepped through the red doorway into the tavern.

It was empty. Everything was silent except for the distant thunder of the Lord of Death raging within the earth. Furniture had been thrown down and shattered by falling rocks. Ceiling beams were splintered and broken. Dirt trickled down from cracks in the roof to make neat conical piles on the floor.

Gath moved through, passed the cluttered empty barracks room, and reached the golden doors. He kicked them open, and strode out into the sunlight.

There was no one in sight. The caves and the mountainsides appeared deserted. The volcano was spewing smoke at the sky, turning it black. A strange unquiet emptiness permeated everything. Sensing threats everywhere but seeing none, he descended the stairs and trotted down the trail heading for the swamp.

By nightfall he made the waterfalls and found an overhanging shelf of rock. He made a camp under it and built a fire. Falling to the ground more than sitting, he leaned tiredly against the rock and unbuckled the strap under his chin to remove the helmet. The helmet would not come off. Its chain mail cowl had somehow become tangled with his body armor. He sat up and worked at it for awhile, but, without any sort of mirror and in the dim light, he could not free it. He sagged back, sighed, then closed his eyes. But he could not sleep.

BUTTERFLY MORNING

T
he Kitzakk fort was situated on the heights of the cataracts at the mouth of the main pass, The Narrows. It was built of wood and designed in ancient fashion, like a butterfly. The head was the main gate, with the mouth opening on the pass. The front wings spread forward along the sides of the pass then fanned out backwards forming the main body of the fort. The hind wings formed forked fortifications to guard the rear gate.

At the very center of the fort, on a rectangular earthen rise, a red lacquered box rested on a shallow black altar.

Behind the box General Yat-Feng sat on his bamboo campaign stool watching the eastern horizon where the cool glow of dawn light promised to deliver the sun. Beside him, mounted on a red pole, two horsetails fluttered on the morning breeze, the insignia of his rank as field commander. Standing beside him were six greybeards, old campaigners wearing battered, unfashionable armor from forgotten wars. They also watched the horizon.

The faces of the old warriors were set with proud expectation. They had reenlisted to consult with Yat-Feng on the organization and training of new raider regiments and the tactics of the raids which were about to commence.

About the fort all human life stood waiting. Some at attention, others scratching, whispering: the regiments, mule skinners, drivers, animal and slave wranglers, cooks, skinners, armorers and general scavengers. Horses, oxen, mules, buffalo and camels, momentarily masterless, drifted about inside the stables and corrals, and wandered loose among a formation of large wagons, chewing grass and tent ropes.

A hush fell over the still camp as the white-gold eye of the sun appeared. When the light touched Yat-Feng’s flat brown face, he chanted, “Let the butterfly free,” and the others present echoed the chant three times.

The eldest greybeard kneeled reverently over the red box and removed the lid. Within the black interior poised a large yellow and black swallowtail butterfly. It remained motionless for a long moment, then fluttered, lifting itself out of the box into the white-gold light on wings of weightless beauty.

Gasps of exaltation ran through the crowd, then cheering broke out.

The communications sergeant in the wooden signal tower which stood at the highest point of the camp, lifted a huge yellow and black butterfly flag mounted on a long black pole. It danced with rhythmic sweeps in the air, and the thrill of proud memories played among the wrinkled features of the old campaigners.

The message, passing from the fort to the first flag tower, then from flag tower to flag tower, was carried across the high cataract, then down through the three selected passes.

The Hammer Regiment waited in Wowell Pass to attack Bone Camp. It was the home of the left-handed totem people called the Wowells. Among them were the witches who had manufactured the totems from the dead scouts.

The Spear Regiment was positioned in Snake Pass above Pinetree Bridge. Beyond the bridge was a log village of the Barhacha Woodmen.

The Black Hand Regiment waited in the pass above Short Crossing to hit the village called Coin, the home of the priestly Kavens, the money changers.

When the commanders of these three regiments saw the signal flags, they ordered their mounted troops forward, and they plunged, with trumpets blaring, down the three passes. As they did the first of two innovations which had been made in the day’s order of combat took place.

A desert people called the Feyan Dervishes had been enlisted as irregular troops in the Kitzakk Army. They were a tattered group of wanderers who were converts to the cult of the Butterfly Goddess. They had a fetish for pain and, when half-mad on drugs, an insatiable appetite for sacrificial death. These dervishes were to strike first from within the target villages where they had hidden themselves.

On hearing the regimental trumpets, the dervishes erupted from their hiding places screaming and waving daggers and torches. They were stark naked. Their flesh was stained with carmine from toe to forehead, and their hair and flesh glistened with translucent pitch. Noses bled, and trickled blood over foam-flecked lips. Their eyes were mad with drugs and death.

They grabbed the first available chief, magistrate or priest and stabbed them, then set their own bodies on fire. The thick pitch ignited instantly, turning them into living torches, and they raced screaming, throughout the three villages setting fires and spreading terror. Before the villagers could kill them, the dervishes flung themselves onto the nearest child or aging woman and clung on with teeth and nails. Both assassin and victim burnt to death before they could be pried apart. The grotesque beauty of the carmine bodies and the earsplitting discord of shrieking voices turned each village to mindless pandemonium.

Next came the attack, and here the second innovation in tactics occurred. Each soldier wore a regimental flag in the old style, mounted on the back of his armor. This added height, color and fluid, flashing movement to the regiments as they galloped down out of the cataracts toward the awestruck, disorganized villagers. Before the Barbarians recovered, the Kitzakks had crossed the gorge and dashed through the gaps in the unfinished walls of the villages.

The battle at each village was a routine Kitzakk job-of-work. At the points where the Barbarians were able to initiate significant resistance, the Kitzakks surrounded and contained them. Then, while the main body of Kitzakk soldiers swept into the village to bottle up the children and young women, a Company of White Archers was brought into action. Each soldier carried a long composite bow made of bone and bamboo that stood two heads taller than himself. Each was a veteran sharpshooter. They set up on rooftops and with deadly rhythmic accuracy shot down the small pockets of resistance.

The result was screaming surrender.

The women, children and surviving men were then herded into a long line stretching out of the villages and across the bridges. At the same time the Companies of Chainmen with their wagons of chains and cages rode across the bridges into the village to form two parallel lines. The Kitzakks chained and caged their living booty, then turned about and left in the same orderly manner in which they had arrived.

The remaining Barbarians were driven into the forest, and Companies of Engineers entered in large wagons. With fire, exploding jars of pitch, and rake, shovel and hoe, the engineers then leveled the mud, brick and stone villages of Coin and Bone Camp, and the log structures of the Barhacha.

The commander of each regiment entered his conquered village and measured the rubble of its body with his black ceremonial rope, knotted in three equal sections. No structure remained above its length.

The commanders folded their ropes neatly, tucked them inside their armor, and surveyed the scenes of slaughter and destruction with satisfaction.

Later, as the raiding parties retreated through the passes, the slavers forced their prisoners to shake their chains. Each chain was made with tuned metal, so an eerily beautiful harmony swelled like a chorus of temple bells and was carried by the wind back to the forests where the huddled, beaten barbarians heard them and wept.

Bounty hunters lying in wait also heard the music of the chains, and crept covertly into the forest on separate trails.

RED JAW

B
rown John sat in the driver’s box of his colorful wagon at Pin wheel Crossing, where the roads to the border villages joined Amber Road, and several other roads leading to different sectors of the deep forest. The wagon was parked in the afternoon shade on the western side of the crossing. The old man was watching refugees from the demolished villages flow north in a steady stream in hope of finding safety from the Kitzakks.

He had tried to count them, but it was impossible. The Barhacha, the Kavens and the Wowells were in full flight, and among them were Barbarians whose villages had not been raided: groups of Cytherians from Weaver and outlaw bands. The homeless traveled on wagons and drove pack animals and surviving livestock. Only a few weapons could be seen, and no warriors.

Brown John’s head drooped dejectedly. The Kitzakks had reached across continents to harvest flesh. To reach a little farther into the forest would not inconvenience them.

Across the road, under a spreading oak, the tribal chiefs were meeting. They paced and sat on tree stumps talking animatedly. Bone and Dirken stood at the edge of the group. After a moment, the chief of the Dowats, a man called Jathh, with a patch over his eye, turned to the two Grillards and spoke to them. They listened, intently, nodded and dodged through the fleeing multitude to Brown John.

Bone leaped up beside him. “It’s you they need now, it is, and they’ve finally figured it out. They want you to sit with them, and be a member of the Council of Chiefs.”

“Is that so?” Brown John replied slowly. Ideas tumbled behind his troubled eyes, and he turned to Dirken. “Whose idea was this?”

“I don’t really know,” Dirken said with a theatrical whisper. “Someone not so dumb would be my guess.”

“They’ve got no leader,” Bone added. “Not a real one. All they can agree on is to argue.”

With only a trace of the bitterness Brown John felt, he said quietly, “Yes, they would ask… now that it is too late for so many of their kinfolk. They probably believe I will negotiate With their new hero for them. But… they will have to do the waiting now.”

The brothers liked that, and it showed.

Brown John turned to Dirken. “Go back to them. Thank them for their invitation, and do it with sincerity, and tell them that I have pressing business elsewhere this afternoon, but that I may be available this evening.”

Dirken nodded, and pulled at Bone.

“No,” said his father. “He will stay with me. And, Dirken, talk slowly and courteously, but with pride, just as you did in
Up by Lamplight.
Go now, and don’t run, but leave as soon as you have their answer.”

With a slow, easy manner, Dirken nodded, got down off the wagon, and paraded back through the flowing refugees toward the waiting chiefs.

As they turned to welcome him, his father spoke to Bone, “Take the Weaver Road. We’re going to talk to Robin.”

Bone, grinning with pleasure, cracked his whip, and the wagon lurched forward through the refugees and rolled onto Weaver Road.

Dirken delivered his father’s message. The chiefs huddled briefly, then Jathh approached Dirken stiffly and told him that the council would welcome his father’s participation at the evening meeting. Dirken bowed graciously, walked jauntily to the wagon and climbed aboard as it continued to roll slowly down Weaver Road.

There was only a scattering of elderly people coming up the road. Those were the last people they saw until an hour later when they approached a stretch of apple trees.

A man was sitting on a grassy knoll with his back against the greyish trunk of a tree laden with green apples. He was neatly slicing an apple into sections and eating them. He wore plain leather boots and a leather tunic banded by several buckled belts that carried a wide range of different sized and shaped daggers. A leather skullcap with long, dangling earflaps covered his square head, and he wore a necklace of brightly colored beads interspersed with human finger bones. His eyes were grey and empty, unmemorable. What was memorable was the brilliant red stubble on his enormous chin.

As the wagon lumbered by, Brown John studied the man with the corners of his eyes. When the wagon was well past, he motioned to Bone and his son reined up. The brothers looked at their father with questioning eyes. Before they could speak, Brown John silenced them with a raised finger, picked up his walking stick and got down off the wagon. With a jerking limp and leaning heavily on the stick, he started back toward the stranger.

Brown John stopped a good fifteen feet short of the big-jawed man, and waited respectfully. The man carved and ate three more sections of his apple, then lifted his head slightly, measuring the old man with thin, squinting eyes.

Brown John dipped his head courteously, and asked meekly, “Excuse me, sir, but perhaps you could do a tired traveling player a favor?”

“And perhaps not,” the stranger replied indifferently.

“I understand,” the old actor agreed. “Nothing is certain in these tragic times. Nothing at all.” His deliberately artless eyes met the stranger’s stare. “I am afraid we are lost. I am trying to reach the village called Coin, which I hear has been attacked by Outlanders. I… I have relatives there. Could you tell me if this is the right road?”

“This road leads to Weaver.”

The old man signed tiredly, and sank a little. “Then we are surely lost. Do you, perhaps, have a map?”

“You think I’m a rich man? That I can afford a scribe to draw maps?” His red jaws snapped impatiently.

“No, no! It is only that I can see that you cut your apple with great care and skill. I thought that, perhaps, such a precise and well-organized man might also have a map!”

The man slid the last section of his apple past his pale lips, chewed it slowly, his eyes regarding the old man curiously. He swallowed, and said, “You have sharp eyes… for an actor. Perhaps we can help each other.” He unbuckled a pouch, and removed a folded parchment.

Brown John leaned forward on his stick, but did not move closer. The stranger looked up at him sharply. “You’ll never find out where you are standing over there.”

Brown John nodded. “I know, it is just that a man of my age and physical infirmities must move with care.”

The stranger offered what he considered a smile. It did unpleasant things to his face. “You can die just as suddenly over there as you can over here,” he said. He lifted a small loaded and cocked crossbow from behind a grassy rise and leveled it playfully at the tottering figure. “Come on over and talk to Red Jaw.”

Brown John mumbled meekly, shuffled over under the tree and sat down placing his walking stick across his knee. The bounty hunter handed him his map. Brown John studied it making appropriate murmurs of discovery.

“Humm! Oh yes, here it is. Thank you.”

He looked up to return the map and nearly dropped it.

Red Jaw was holding a black, hand carved doll in his hands. It was a likeness of Gath. Brown John needed all his craft to hide the jolts of shock that went through him.

“Cute, isn’t it?” Red Jaw said conversationally. “Ever see a life-sized version? Or heard words about anyone who might look like this?” He pushed the doll closer to the older man. Brown John hesitated, then nodded, once. Red Jaw, with sudden animation in his empty eyes, drew the map from his limp hands. “My map tells you where your village is, your words tell me where he is. Fair?”

Brown John shifted nervously, glanced back at his wagon, then muttered, “The Shades. He lives somewhere in The Shades.”

“Shades?” Red Jaw’s forehead gathered in folds.

Brown John pointed at the parchment. “It’s on your map. The large forest to the west there.”

Red Jaw, squinting, raised the map to his eyes.

Brown John grabbed his walking stick with two hands, and drove it through the map into the bounty hunter’s chest bone. The blow drove him against the trunk of the tree, pinned him there, gasping. Brown John shouted over his shoulder, “Hurry, lads! Hurry!”

Bone and Dirken leapt out and raced for their father.

Red Jaw, fighting for breath, tried to wrestle the stick aside. The old man held him in place with grunting, sweating effort. Red Jaw drew a knife from his belt, and raised it as Bone and Dirken jumped him. They pulled his arms back and stretched them around the tree until he dropped the knife.

Brown John, without letting up on his stick, bellowed, “Don’t play with him!”

Bone and Dirken blanched at the ferocity of his tone. Dirken dropped on Red Jaw’s head and, using his body weight, slammed him back over an exposed root and Bone drove his sword into his bulging chest with such force that it splintered ribs and backbone. The blade went four inches into the earth before coming to a stop.

Brown John, heaving from the exertion, clutched his chest and sat back. Bone, hands numb from the impact, tried to remove his sword, but couldn’t budge it. His father waved him off, still panting. “Leave it for awhile… you never know… when his kind are truly dead.”

The old man stared at Red Jaw’s bulging eyes. When he got his breath, he whispered, “Bounty hunter.”

The brothers stepped away from the contorted corpse, bodies cocked. The man hunter continued to bleed.

“How can you tell?” whispered Dirken.

“The knives. There’s one for every bone in the body,” Brown John said with recovered energy. “We’ve done well.”

He lifted the doll and map off the ground where they had fallen, held them up. “This is a Kitzakk map, and this is a totem made by the hand of someone very skilled. I would advise you not to touch it. Its magic may be strong.”

They did not argue.

Brown John looked musingly at the black doll and murmured, “Incredible. What detail! As if the doll itself had once been alive.”

He looked up and snapped, “Search him.”

His sons did the work quickly, searched Red Jaw’s many satchels as well as his boots and tunic. Bone came away with a handful of heavy coins, and belts and daggers strung over his shoulders. Dirken, with a dramatic gesture, laid another doll in his father’s hands. It was white.

Brown John held it with trembling, respectful fingers as he turned it over, and over, then said, “Oh, my.”

When Brown John and his sons reached Weaver, at sundown, they parked their wagon outside the Forest Gate. Before their feet touched the ground, Robin was heading for them with a crowd of frightened children. Their faces were tearstained; their little hands pulled at her tunic.

Reaching Brown John, she clung to him crying. “You’re here! You’re here!” Her big feathery eyes, moist with desperation, looked up at him trustingly. “What can we do?”

“What we must,” he said quietly.

“Did… did Gath try to stop them?”

Brown John shook his head.

“Nobody’s seen him.” Bone interjected. “Not for days.”

Robin sank slightly, then lifted her chin gallantly. “I’ll find him. I’ll leave right now.”