Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (2 page)

Young Hands tied the horses in a string, then again watched the Barbarian as his head lifted dizzily. The big man stood, looked around, then dragged himself back up to the road and sat down tiredly in the dirt. The top of his helmet was severed and dangled at an angle to his broad shoulders. He looked around, then across the gorge and into the rookie’s eyes. The lad drew his crossbow and loaded it, but the Barbarian did not move. Young Hands angrily raised his weapon to fire. But he quickly reconsidered, turned his horse and rode off the way the scouts had come leading a file of eight horses, their saddles empty.

NEW TOOLS

I
t was sundown before the Barbarian reached the bottom of the gorge. A family of vultures was already at work on the bits and pieces of bodies protruding from the wreckage of the bridge. The birds eyed him angrily, screeched and flapped about making a show of their gore-specked beaks and neck feathers. He kept coming and they took flight, winged back up the narrow gorge, almost beautiful in the fading orange light.

The birds came to rest on the remnant of bridge, then looked back down, their beaks dripping.

The Barbarian found his axe and picked it up. The handle was broken off a foot short of the head. He moved to the first body, drew a knife, bent over, then hesitated as if sensing life. Then he saw it.

Twenty feet away, a serpent colored with gold, brown and black diamonds slithered down a large rock towards a dead arm protruding from a pile of fallen timbers. A Sadoulette, the mother breed of the python. It was not yet fully grown, but big enough to have a squad of Kitzakk scouts for supper.

The reptile approached the arm, saw the Barbarian and coiled back, nostrils flaring. It appeared more than willing to wrestle for its dinner, then suddenly lost all confidence, slithered up the rock and tumbled awkwardly out of sight.

The Barbarian listened to the sounds of crunching gravel and breaking grass made by the retreating reptile, grunted with contempt, then glanced around again. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. He searched through the rubble of the bridge, shoved timbers aside, found the source of what he sensed.

Soong lay on his side, jackknifed over a rock. He still lived, barely breathing with short, wet gasps. One eye was smashed closed. The other watched fearfully as the Barbarian lifted his short-handled axe and moved for him. As the shadowed face of the Barbarian loomed close, Soong’s eye opened wide, white with wonder, and the axe struck.

The dark savage checked the other bodies, but they were dead. What remained was work for vultures and ants.

He stripped each body and made a blanket from their leather tunics. He heaped their armor and weapons along with his broken axe and helmet on the blanket, tied them in a bundle. He drank from the stream in animal fashion, and washed most of the dry blood and gore off his body. Then he picked up the bundle, heaved it to his back, and started down a narrow trail beside the stream.

The family of vultures watched until the man-animal had vanished around a bend, then glided down and came to rest on broken timbers beside the naked dead bodies. They eyed them warily, then the largest screeched, leapt on Yat’s back driving his claws into the flesh, and stabbed his pointed beak at a shoulder muscle.

The other vultures screamed and moved for the meat. There was a loud crack of breaking wood. The vultures, screeching, took flight. Above them, a heavy timber broke loose from the remains of the bridge. It tumbled through the air, hit the side of the cliff and dislodged several large rocks. A small avalanche followed, and covered the birds’ dinner.

Reaching the sky, the vultures looked down and cried out in rage, then flew off, still complaining.

BROWN JOHN

T
he three men riding the wagon had not intended it to be a shy vehicle. Its flatbed, side boards, driver’s box and shaft were as red as a harlot’s lips and trimmed in a pink and orange so bright they would have made the same harlot blush. The men were Grillards, a clan of outcast and outlawed entertainers. Their wagon was designed to serve as a traveling stage, but at the moment it was on its way to do, hopefully, some serious hauling.

Heading south, it danced through the tall pines at the southern end of the Valley of Miracles, crested the mountain, and raced across a glen that was a riot of greens in the early morning sunshine.

Old Brown John sprawled in the bed of the wagon, and despite the clattering wheels and bouncing boards, dozed comfortably on a pile of ragged blankets beside a clutter of coiled ropes. He was the
bukko
, the boss and stage manager of the Grillards. He wore a ragged brown tunic with large patches which, in addition to covering holes, were the clan’s sign. He was short, wiry and bandy-legged. At first glance he appeared no more impressive than his patches, but on closer examination, even in his prone and snoring position, he had a surprisingly alert, in-charge and genial manner.

His bastard sons rode the driver’s box.

Bone, the older, held the reins. He wore bright red patches, was big all over and proud of it. Regardless of the role his father cast him in, on- or offstage, he played it as a swaggering, braggart soldier whose brain was just slow enough to make him suspicious of everyone and everything. Dirken, the younger, was short, lean, and favored deep umber patches. He picked his own roles, was always on stage, and cherished playing vile, treacherous villains, so long as he could play them well groomed.

All three men wore leather belts hung with pouches and short swords. Not stage weapons, but working tools which protected them during the cold wet season when they had to survive as thieves.

The wagon rolled clear of the forest, skidded to a stop where Thieves Trail met Lemontrail Crossing, and Brown John glanced over the side board.

His white hair fell in smooth silky slopes down over his large ears and bristled with feathered tufts at his neck. His tangled white eyebrows, rising at sharp angles, gave his face a slightly satanic expression. It was deeply cut with all varieties of wrinkles, but they only gave a vague indication of the complexity of his wrinkled mind.

Seeing the crossing, he chuckled with far more amusement than any bridge, particularly one which had been destroyed, deserved.

Father and sons got down from their wagon, moved onto the battle-scarred remnant of the bridge, and peered down into the gorge at the pile of dirt. The tips of splintered timbers protruded from it.

“There they are,” Brown John said with exhilaration. “Go to it, lads.”

“Now just a minute,” Bone said with grave caution. “If the Dark One and his axe did all this work by themselves, it’s something a man should think on some before messin’ about with it.”

Dirken, barely moving lips as thin as fork blades, asked in a theatrical whisper, “How many did he say he killed?”

“He did not say,” their father said in an instructional tone, “because I made certain there was no discussion of bodies. It would have made him suspicious. I simply inquired, while your brother traded our wine for his meat, as to where he got his new armor. All he said was, ‘Lemontrail Crossing’. Two words.”

“Then where are the bodies?”

“If you were more interested in the work, Dirken, and less in the drama, you would have noticed by now that the hyenas and jackals have already been at work on one of them.”

He pointed at the bottom of the gorge about fifty feet to the east of the wreckage where a gutted rib cage rested among rocks. It was black, and the blackness moved vaguely. Ants.

“Well now,” Bone announced, “that sure enough used to belong to something that drank from a cup, and it sure enough is dead.”

“Not completely,” Brown John corrected him. “His Kaa is exceptionally strong.”

Bone and Dirken hesitated, then nodded thoughtfully. They knew that the Kaa, the spirit of the victor, could be infused within the bones of his victims at the moment of death. It could live there for days, weeks, even months, depending on its strength, and they normally did not question their father’s evaluation of anything. Brown John had “vision”. He saw many small, insignificant things and put them together into great and important things that common people like themselves could not see. Nevertheless, they were wary. Brown John had told them the Dark One’s Kaa just might be strong enough to be contagious, and that kind of strength usually only lived in legends.

Brown John, ignoring their hesitation, pointed at the dirt pile. “You will more than likely find the bodies under that rubble. I’d say you’ll find five, perhaps even six Kitzakk scouts.”

Dirken put two sharp, black, skeptical eyes on his father.

Bone blurted, “That is a whole mess of muscle and metal for one man to murder, to say nothing of it being Kitzakk!”

“That, lads,” Brown John glared at them impatiently, “is precisely why we are here.”

Bone scowled with his entire face, two chins and both ears. “Well, if there are five scouts down there, the Kitzakks are coming for certain.”

“Yes,” said Brown John solemnly. “It is no rumor this year. They’ve been sighted in all the passes. So get to work. The kind of magic we now trade in can not be made by tossing dancing girls about a stage. It’s man’s work. Best done unseen and fast. We don’t want the Dark One, or anyone else, to know what we do until it is done.”

Brown John and Dirken glanced up and down the crossroads to make certain they were unwatched. But Bone stared at the dirt pile.

“Now just a minute.” He put his fists against his hips, looked at his father and brother. “If they’ve been down there two whole days and nights, they’re going to be nasty ripe.”

Dirken grinned darkly. “We’ll bring them up in pieces. If you forgot your spoon, you can borrow mine.”

Bone winced.

The old man said, “Bone, you bring up the large pieces. Let Dirken handle the arms and heads, we don’t want to lose any fingers or teeth.”

Bone grimaced sickly, but obediently helped Dirken drag blankets and ropes out of their wagon and down into the gorge.

Late that day, when the Grillard’s wagon was rolling west on Border Road, Brown John sat between his sons in the driver’s box. Silent. Grave of expression except for a faint flicker of pride behind his eyes. His sons were filthy with dust and blood, exhausted, and grim faced. Their expressions had not been fashioned by their theatrical training, but by the day’s work. Today they had played roles they had never played before, roles they were going to have to master, and had taken to them nicely. The colorful wagon had also taken to its new duty: It now hauled the slimy, swollen cadavers of eight Kitzakk scouts tied down under a blanket on its bed. It was doing a real wagon’s work, and doing it in style, sporting a nauseous perfume.

COBRA AGAIN

I
n the midnight darkness of The Shades, the Glyder Snake was as black as a buried stick, as invisible as a creek meandering through the ocean depths. It hid at the edge of an open track twenty feet wide and many miles long which ran in a straight line through the tall spruce, hemlock and pines. Faint moonlight cast a glow on the track’s ground cover of fallen leaves. The snake wiggled into the moonlight, lifted into an arc of a cold blue and pointed across the track. The glowing blue light revealed the jagged stone about two feet high supporting the tiny snake. The sounds of crushing leaves and twigs came out of the forest behind the Glyder Snake, then a massive blackness the height of the stone appeared beside it. The blackness had two fist-sized yellow eyes. It was the head of a full-grown Sadoulette python. Its body receded into the darkness for forty feet. The Glyder Snake was not big enough to serve as its tongue.

A graceful figure emerged from the forest, stopped in the yellow glow of the python’s eyes. The Queen of Serpents.

Her enveloping black robe was travel stained. Her almond eyes were cold and calculating. She studied the opposite side of the track. There spruce and hemlock rose to towering heights supported by thick exposed roots taller than herself. Between the roots were shadowed caves and passageways.

When Cobra’s eyes found what the Glyder Snake pointed at, they flickered with the first satisfaction she had felt since having sent the Dark One to Lemontrail Crossing seven days earlier. It was a wide section of roots grown together to form ribbed walls that were covered with moss, vines, plots of grass and beds of needles. These walls rose nearly thirty feet to vanish into black shadows cast by the branches of the trees they supported.

Cobra bent and stroked the Glyder Snake. “Well done, small one,” she whispered. “You may go now.”

She pulled her hood over her face and stepped into the moonlight, moved like a drifting shadow across the track. The python followed, a serpentine blackness as thick as a young pine. Reaching the wall of roots, she crept up one of its natural trails, and the giant snake slid up the roots into the darkness of the trees overhead.

The moonlight had left the sky by the time the Queen of Serpents found the cluster of hanging vines which concealed a recess big enough for a crouched man to enter. She felt around inside the recess, touched the edge of a man-made door, a string latch. She pulled it, pushed quietly on the door, but it resisted. She lowered the latch, placed her fingertips on the door, then moved them about until she sensed the thickness of a locking beam on the other side.

She took a breath, blew on the tips of her fingers and placed them carefully against the spot. She closed her eyes. Her body began to tremble. When the trembling reached her fingertips, she slid them across the door, and the sound of the sliding locking beam came from within. There was a dull clack of something falling to the floor beyond the door. Her eyes snapped open. She held still, listened for a long moment. No sound. Her tongue darted eagerly between her scarlet lips. Then she slid the unseen locking beam clear of the door.

When she tried the latch again, the door swung inward, and a faint glow of firelight emerged to illuminate the sculpted whiteness of her face. She stepped out of the recess, looked up into the shadowed branches overhead. There the large yellow eyes of the python watched her. On guard. She dipped her hooded head, glided across the recess and through the door.

Thick roots formed the walls of a shallow entryway. The dark mouths of crawl holes opened among them. A larger hole in the floor opened onto a stairwell hand carved from a single root. An orange glow came from somewhere below.

Leaving the door open, Cobra silently descended the stairs until she could see the lower room.

It was hewn out of living roots. Irregular seams climbed the sides of uneven walls where the roots had grown together. The floor was hard dry earth, a deep red ochre. A stone fireplace and chimney had been built within the cavity of the roots. Beside the fireplace stood a woodpile, an anvil and assorted tools: hammers, tongs, a barrel of rainwater. The floor was cluttered with empty earthenware jugs, wooden cups, broken crockery, and bones recently chewed clean of meat.

At the center of the room was a table. On it were several cups, a wine jar. The far wall supported a wide, deep shelf with a washbasin, a dirty cloth, a pitcher and barber’s knife. Beside the shelf wooden pegs held assorted black furs, a helmet, and armor and weapons stolen from Kitzakks.

The helmet was strange: the bowl of a Kitzakk helmet, a mask of crude iron, and reinforcing belts of Kitzakk steel bent around both to attach them. The belts had been crudely bent by fire and hammer and fit badly. One had sprung loose and dangled awkwardly.

Cobra smiled knowingly and edged down the stairs to the floor, hesitated. In the shadow beside the helmet was a huge axe with a new handle which belonged to the Dark One called Gath of Baal.

She trembled slightly, and glanced about at the deep shadows of the many recessed areas, then at an alcove around a corner. It was heaped with furs covering a large mound. Her breath raced. Color flushed her face, throat. She drew a tiny dagger from a sheath strapped to her forearm.

Its blue steel glistened like wet ice. The blade was needle sharp, just long enough to plunge into the heart of an onion. The cutting edge was finely honed, sharp enough to trim a baby’s lashes without the baby noticing.

Moving like a melting shadow, Cobra crossed to the bed of furs, stood over it, her bosom heaving, dagger in hand.

With reptilian grace, she sank silently beside the furs, lifted one gently and gasped audibly. Underneath were only more furs. She crouched over the furs, explored them with delicate fingers and recoiled. They were warm.

She closed her eyes, gathered control, then spoke without moving, distinctly and carefully.

“Do not kill me, Dark One. I come as a friend.”

She opened her eyes, waited. From the shadows came a low growl, then a ragged grey timber wolf emerged. He was large for a wolf. Three feet tall at the shoulders, six feet long. His head and neck hair were erect. Yellow eyes were lethal. His teeth showed as another low growl moved past them.

Cobra lowered her lids, held her place without moving.

A low harsh command came from a shadow somewhere behind her. “The wood beside the fireplace! Put it on the fire.”

Cobra rose carefully and walked slowly to the fireplace. She covertly returned the tiny dagger to its hidden sheath, then stoked the glowing embers into a flame with an iron poker, and placed four logs one by one on the fire. A moment passed before they burst into flames, filling the root cave with flickering orange light. She warmed her hands, then sighed, a faint whistling sound.

“Be quiet and turn around,” said the voice.

Turning slowly, she said, “Forgive me, I have traveled alone a great distance to see you. I am weary.”

Gath of Baal’s head and part of his bare chest glowed in the firelight across the room. The rest of him was hidden in inky black shadow. His chiseled head, sculpted by moving shadows, had a harsh savage beauty. Wild, knife-cut, black hair fell to brawny neck. His lips were wide, flat, and sensually sculpted, while his nose was square. His eyes hid in the dark shadows of a blunt brow crusted with thick eyebrows. A thin smooth scar ran from the left corner of his mouth to his chin.

The color in Cobra’s cheeks flamed. Her voice became a husky whisper. “Thank you… for sparing me.”

His eyes seemed to look off at nothing, yet see everything. He listened, then shot Cobra a brutal glance. “You lie.”

He strode out of his concealing shadow and moved, not toward Cobra, but to the stairwell. There he stopped short, and the firelight probed his muscular flesh. He was naked except for a loin cloth. A long thick dagger protruded from his left hand. His right was balled in a fist, Cobra gasped sharply with sudden fear.

The head of the huge Sadoulette dropped down out of the stairwell and floated in the air with its yellow eyes level with Gath’s grey. It hissed, spread its jaws wide showing Gath fangs no longer than the blades of a pitchfork.

Gath’s cocked body exploded with rippling muscle and his balled fist drove up at the snake’s head. Its hammer end caught the reptile’s left jaw flush, drove the head up at an angle, crushed its skull against the sharp edge formed by the end of the stairwell and the wall of the cave. There was a loud crack.

Cobra winced.

The head of the dazed python dropped onto the stairs, its body convulsing. Gath kicked it out of his way, moved up the stairwell to the landing. There he hauled the dying snake up and threw its tangled body through the doorway. It was too large and stuck in the doorjamb. Gath kicked it the rest of the way out, then closed the door, slamming the locking beam shut. He then picked a yellow stone off the ground, placed the stone in the open shaft which cradled the locking beam at a position between the end of the beam and a hole carved out of the bottom of the shaft. When he turned, Cobra was standing at the base of the stairwell watching him.

She said, “You are a careful man.”

He said, “You are careless.”

He moved down the stairs, took her by the elbow, guided her roughly to the fireplace. There he took hold of her black velvet cape, ripped it open breaking the tie thongs and revealing a tunic of gold cloth. She did not protest or struggle. He stripped the cape off her, then shook it out. Finding nothing hidden within, he tossed it aside, looked at her. The jeweled handle of the tiny sheathed dagger glittered on her forearm. The whites of his eyes became cold within the shadows of his brow. Firelight danced there, as if it came from within rather than without.

Cobra took a step back trembling and said accusingly, “He would not have hurt you. He was only for my protection on the trail. You had no need to kill him!”

He muttered with a low, thick coarse voice that made words unnecessary.

The metallic petals of her scaled skullcap and cape shimmered wetly with fear from her toes to her flushed cheeks. Her breasts heaved.

“Take them off!” He spoke as he moved to the fire. He picked up a large stick, thrust it into the fire. She did not move. When he turned to face her, the stick burned like a torch.

She smiled uncertainly, and unbuckled the clasp at her throat saying, “Whatever you wish. I have nothing to hide… not from you.” She pushed her skullcap back, let its cape drop off her arms, and her long hair cascaded down her back like black rain. She made no movement to remove her gown.

He growled, “The gown.”

She whispered, “The cloth is thin. You will have no trouble seeing what hides under it.” There was a teasing warmth in her tone.

He passed the torch around and behind her. The gown glowed hotly, then the scales slowly dissolved and the cloth became a shimmering transparent amber. She was naked underneath. He grunted contemptuously.

She stiffened sharply, insulted. Then, seeing that his cheeks had taken on a ruddy flush, a playfulness moved into her eyes.

She asked, “Would you be happier if I had a tail? Or fangs?” She smiled widely, displaying perfect teeth.

Scratching a naked hip, he studied her thoughtfully. The wolf rose, made his way toward Cobra sniffing the air, mane bristling and fangs bared. Growling, she said, “I do not please your pet.”

“Sharn is not a pet. This was his home before it was mine.”

His eyes stayed on Cobra as Sharn made his way across the room to the stairs. The wolf looked back once with cold eyes at Cobra, then bounded up the stairs into one of the crawl holes between the roots.

Gath muttered, “He’ll see what other pets travel with you,” His nose twitched, and he pawed it with an open hand more in the manner of a cat than a man. Then he stared at her, naked of expression.

She appraised him openly. As she did, her lips parted, her breathing quickened. The rose tint in her cheeks spread to her chin, and the scarlet of her lips brightened. Abruptly she turned away, moved to the fire and sat in front of it. She looked into the fire, hiding her face from Gath. Slowly her gown regained its scales and gold color.

He shifted uncomfortably, moving sideways to see her face and suddenly stopped.

Her body had altered slightly under the gown. Her curves, which had been supple and sensual, now only looked pleasingly comfortable. When she turned to Gath, there was no color on her face except that made by sunshine and good health. Her smile was still playful, but in a manner that made fun of herself, not him.

She said, “I should have known better than to try and sneak up on you.”

He ignored her moved to the table, leaned against it and drank from the wine jar.

She started to say something, stopped herself. She turned back to the fire, then spoke in an even, modulated tone:

“I know that it angers you to have me, a mere woman, find and enter your hidden lair as easily as if you had put up signs showing the way and given me a key. I know the pains you take to avoid the outside world. But I had no choice. I can change my appearance… but not my nature. I use the darkness and certain powers I have to enter where ever my desires lead me. Often,” she laughed, “with dark intent.” She turned to him, void of guile. “But I meant you no harm. You are far too valuable just as you are. Alive. Powerful. And so… so savage.” The color was back in her cheeks before she finished. Feeling it, she looked away.

His voice was low. “What do you want?”

“Please, allow me to finish,” she said to the fire. “You must understand, I have a thousand eyes. Ten thousand. And they have watched you for many months.” She turned to him. “But I had to see for myself, with my own eyes, that you came away from the battle with the Kitzakk scouts unhurt.”

“You lie,” he said. His tone was harsh, wise. “If your thousand eyes can measure the man, they can measure his wounds.”

Cobra flinched, looked away. A moment passed. Her shoulders lost strength, rounded. Her voice lost its music, became weak, shrill. She said, “I have been too long in human form. My natural skills have deserted me… at least with you.” She hesitated. “That… that is why I was afraid… and called for my friend. I… I shouldn’t have. It’s my fault you killed him.”