Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (20 page)

PINWHEEL CROSSING

B
rown John led Gath through the night to a small camp laid in a clearing to the west of Pin wheel Crossing. A dying fire lit the bodies of Grillard men and women sleeping beside their weapons. Bone and Dirken were on guard. As their father emerged from the trees, they greeted him but kept their wary eyes on his massive, metal-clad companion.

The stage master, flushed by pride and the long walk, said, “Yes, it’s Gath, and he has agreed.”

Dirken’s sharp lips curled at the corners, and Bone chuckled grandly. “By Bled, this is good news.”

“There is no time for celebration,” Brown John said tersely. “Hurry. Tell the tribes and have them gather at the crossing.”

The brothers, without delay and with a minimum of explanation, woke the others and sent them off into the forest to deliver the news.

Brown John, watching his Grillards stumble and trip in their haste, smiled with a swelling sense of prophetic wonder, as if he suddenly could see the future. His Grillards were not merely messengers but heralds of a newborn legend.

The stage master guided Gath down a footpath through the forest that ended at a rock rising twenty feet above Pinwheel Crossing. When they climbed the rock’s exposed promontory, they found it flooded with torchlight. Hundreds of torch-bearing warriors massed at the crossing and in the surrounding forest, and looked up at them. Seeing the horned champion, they cheered lustily and began to bang their swords and spears against their shields.

Brown John chuckled to himself and watched with pride as Gath instinctively mounted the promontory to stand in the spilling torchlight. His metal glittered, his arms and legs pulsed with cording muscles as that power known only to men who command armies surged through him. The power swelled, and he lifted his axe like a hammer, saluted his followers.

The army returned the salute, shouting their champion’s name. This caused a reaction that Brown John could not have dreamed of or hoped for. The power inside Gath grew so hot and intense with blood hunger that it demanded release, and fire flamed from the eye slits of the horned helmet.

The reaction among the Barbarians was magical. The ragtag horde surged forward cheering, like an army.

When dawn broke, the Barbarians were marching across Foot Bridge at the base of The Narrows. The line of march was organized by long-standing custom, except for two notable exceptions. Gath led, and the stage master of the outlawed and outcast Grillards, grinning with a sumptuous satisfaction, followed close behind.

Behind Brown John marched eleven big, hairy Grillard strongmen wearing scars, swords, iron and furs. Then came Dirken and Bone riding their gaudy wagon. It was crowded with Grillard men and stacks of Kitzakk armor and weapons to be distributed to needy volunteers.

The main body of the army followed jauntily, each tribe marching as units: large, happy, strutting Cytherians with their long spears; dour, dark, skull-faced Kavens with long serpentine knives; Wowells, naked except for fur wraps around lanky hips and carrying stone clubs in their large hands. Then came the Barhacha woodmen hefting monstrous axes, and Dowats in persimmon tunics with longbows and quivers of reed arrows mounted on their broad backs. Most were on foot. Some were mounted on horseback. A few rode wagons. Three thousand, all told.

The tail of the army consisted of heavily laden wagons and carts pulled by draft horses, camp followers, cooks, witches, whores, sorceresses, maidens with healing hands, hunters, wood-gatherers, messengers and entertainers. The tribes were not divided here. Everyone rode together, but the Grillards in their bright-colored patches stood out like brave banners, and the Wowell witches in their black robes followed like shadows of death.

Brown John looked over the army proudly. Flurries of fog swirled around its tramping boots, and, up ahead, dense fog hid the cataracts behind a billowing grey wall. The soupy mist was just the thing to conceal the army from the Kitzakk watchtowers. Prospects for success were growing by leaps and bounds, and he had never before seen an army move with such commitment. It marched into the wall of fog as if it were impossible to turn back, like wine poured past the lip of a pitcher.

BATTLE AT THIN BRIDGE

B
y midday Brown John looked as if he would never grin again.

The army was not a third of the way up The Narrows. The fog had burned off and taken the army’s confidence with it. Now it marched like armies usually marched, sweating and complaining.

Brown John, wearing a frown that looked as though it had been made with a pitchfork, slumped achingly in the Grillard wagon and did more than his share of the sweating. He took a deep swallow from a waterskin and, sighing, lifted his face to the sky. Its pale, translucent blue was graced with billowing white clouds out of which poured golden shafts of sunlight so beautiful they could have been the source of a new religion.

Brown John, not being in a religious mood, mumbled unpleasantly and spat over the side of the rolling wagon. He watched his meager spittle fall a thousand feet into the gorge, then turned away, letting it go it alone for the next two thousand.

Twenty strides ahead Gath marched in the puddle of his own shadow. Apart from sweat dripping from the hem of his chain mail, he showed no sign of discomfort and moved with the same strong stride with which he had started the march. Suddenly he raised a hand, halting the column, and it staggered to a dusty stop.

A distant sound was drifting down out of the massive grey cataracts. A musical sound without melody or rhythm.

Brown John climbed off the wagon, joined Gath, and they walked slowly forward. At the next bend in the trail, they stopped short, A red glow nickered behind the slits of Gath’s helmet, and Brown John groaned.

Far up the pass a long, winding, colorful body was surging down the narrow road, appearing and disappearing, a serpentine column of scarlet, rose, crimson and vermilion. As it descended the music grew louder and the instruments became distinct.

“Chains,” Brown John whispered as a group of warriors crowded up behind their commanders. They spoke in startled whispers.

“Kitzakks.”

“Thousands of them.”

“That’s no raiding party.”

“That’s the whole bloody horde.”

Brown John turned to speak to Gath, but he was heading for the next sharp bend in the trail. The old man hurried after him, heaving and panting with each painful step, and caught up with Gath just as he started around the next bend. Again they both stopped short.

Up ahead, the road ran alongside the sheer cliff to a wide, deep-sided chasm angling off the main gorge. The chasm was spanned by a narrow wooden structure called Thin Bridge. It was a hundred strides long and wide enough for a single wagon to cross, providing it moved like a cautious caterpillar.

The bridge was guarded by a recently constructed palisade gate and a guard tower that stood on poles beside the main gorge in a small clearing at the front of the bridge. The five Kitzakk archers occupying the tower appeared to be having difficulty deciding whether to look back up the pass at the Kitzakk column or at the Death Dealer.

Gath and Brown John were having a similar difficulty. They were looking back and forth from the Kitzakk column to their ragtag Barbarians. Finally Brown John said, “Our army is not strong enough.”

Gath nodded. “But if it comes apart now, we will never get it back together again.”

Brown John glanced at Thin Bridge, then his eyes met Oath’s. They glittered with the same reckless plan as his own. Gath, moving at steady trot, headed toward the bridge as Brown John shouted for the Dowat archers. But they were frozen with fear and staring openmouthed at the road up the gorge.

The front end of the Kitzakk column was emerging, a Company of Skulls with painted faces, Beetle Red armor and flags. Their tall spears glistened in the sunshine five feet above their marching bodies.

Brown John shouted louder but without results. The Barbarians were behaving like ants standing in the shadow of a falling avalanche. He looked back at Gath in time to see the Kitzakk archers in the tower level their crossbows at him. When Gath was within five strides of the tower, two archers opened fire.

Gath leaned out of the way of one bolt, and bounced the second off his homed helmet, then dropped his axe and charged! The other Kitzakks fired. Too late. Their bolts drilled his dust, and Gath hit the nearest log support of the tower with his shoulder. The log shook with a loud ripping sound, bounced him off, and he hit the ground.

The guards, reloading, stopped and looked over the edge of the tower just in time to see the cracked log splinter and sag. The tower dipped at one corner and threw them into each other.

Gath leapt off the ground beside the splintered log with his legs wide, and circled it with his massive arms. He twisted it and, with his legs driving, pushed it over.

The tower lay over in midair, then suddenly swung around. Its weight ripped the remaining log supports loose, and it crashed through the palisade wall, taking out a large hunk. It deposited two archers on the bridge, then continued its lurching arc out over the gorge where it tossed the other three, along with their wine jars, hard biscuits and signal flags. With one long throat-tearing shriek the archers disappeared into the abyss.

Gath was left on the ground hugging the splintered log. It was still attached to the tower, which was suspended over the gorge and impatient to complete its fall. It dragged Gath half off the road before he could let go. The log ripped free, leaving him a handful of splinters as a reminder of their brief acquaintance, then clubbed him in the head by way of saying good-bye, and dropped.

Dizzied momentarily by the blow, Gath dangled half off the road until Brown John reached him. He helped Gath scramble back, and the Grillards surged forward cheering. The main body of the Barbarian army, still holding its ground at the bend in the road, cheered too. Briefly.

The Company of Skulls, their spears lowered, were charging for Thin Bridge. They were about five hundred strides away and closing fast.

Gath let out a low growl, swept his axe off the ground and strode through the wreckage of the palisade wall, leaving Brown John and the Grillards in his heat. He appeared fresher and more alert than when they started, like a wolf scenting live meat. The Grillards stared in awed wonder, and Brown John clucked with pleasure.

Two surviving Kitzakk archers, swords in hand, stood on the bridge staring down at their falling comrades. When they looked up, Gath had joined them.

He hammered the first archer’s startled face with the flat of his axe and the man’s head caved in. The other archer swung his sword, but Gath leaned out of the way and kicked him in the knee. It popped and doubled up under him. The archer staggered back, then forward. He was good at staggering, but not good enough. He stepped off the bridge and fell as the charging Skull spearmen burst around a turn not three hundred strides away.

Brown John joined Gath, and they looked down at the supports holding the bridge. To reach them would be difficult and time-consuming, but a section of the wood flooring was rotting. Before the old man could suggest it, Gath was hacking at it with his axe. Brown John started off to fetch Barhacha woodmen to help, but they had seen the plot emerging and were already hurrying toward the bridge.

With professional skill and ten axes the Barhacha went to work on the five logs forming the span of the bridge. They had cut only halfway through when the Skull spearmen came within thirty strides of the bridge. But Dowat archers, with Dirken leading, had climbed the side of the cliff and opened fire. Their arrows leveled the front rank of the charging spearmen and ate into the second.

The Skull spearmen, however, did not break stride. They charged over their fallen comrades, kicking several into the gorge, then swept onto the bridge. The Barhacha were still chopping when Kitzakk spears found their thighs and chests. Two went down. The others gallantly kept at their work, but the spears only begat more spears. The Barhacha finally fell with the logs severed more than two thirds of the way through.

Gath abandoned the bridge and, with the help of the Grillard strongmen, blocked the charge of the Skull spearmen at the north end of the bridge. They cut up whatever came their way, spears, arms, legs and snarling faces. The Kitzakks dropped in twos and threes in front of the Death Dealer and piled up quickly. Their confederates had to climb the dying bodies to get at the Death Dealer. As they did, Dirken and the Dowats rained arrows on them and Brown John shouted at the bridge, “Fall! Fall!”

At first the bridge refused to behave as the old stage master felt a good piece of scenery should. But all of a sudden the logs snapped apart, and the Skulls departed in the manner they had arrived, as a colorful body. But there was no pleasant music now, only screaming. Some fell with their spears still in their hands. Others clung to falling timbers. Both should have let go. The spears did mean things to their comrades tumbling beside them. The timbers bounced off the sides of the gorge with rock-shattering cracks and dull thuds where a clinging body padded the blow.

Gath remained standing at the end of the broken bridge with his legs apart and his chest heaving. His axe dripped blood, and his heat was so intense that the Grillards backed away. The pile of tangled dead and living bodies in front of him had been sucked back by falling comrades into the gorge. All that remained was one dying Kitzakk. He clung to the Death Dealer’s boot. His legs dangled into the ragged gap. Gath considered him a moment, then lifted his leg and shook him off. The Kitzakk fell by himself. His lonely scream echoed up out of the chasm, then was cut off when he joined his silent comrades far below.

The Barbarian Army stared spellbound, barely moving as Brown John, seeing the main body of the Kitzakk column only a hundred strides off, ordered them back out of range.

At the opposite side of the bridge, the remaining Skulls glared with dark, maddened faces at the Death Dealer, and flung their spears wildly. Gath deflected them with axe and horned helmet, as if it were a game. When they were finally empty-handed, they shouted foul curses, then turned to greet the approaching head of the main column, a Hammer regiment.

Brown John, peering around the turn in the road, watched the approaching Kitzakks thoughtfully. Slowly an expression of grotesque understanding, began to twist his many wrinkles.

Except for the soldiers at the very front of the arriving column, the Kitzakks had no idea what had happened or that the bridge was destroyed. The surviving Skulls screamed in warning, but the column kept coming. Some of the Skulls fell to the ground, others were forced back onto the remnant of the bridge and began to spill over its broken edge. That brought the front ranks of the Hammer regiment to a stop, but the column behind them kept surging forward. The surviving spearmen and the first five ranks of the Hammer regiment were fed to the gorge, then the officers managed to halt the column.

The column was trapped. There was no space on the narrow road for messengers to ride, or even walk, back along the column and explain what was wrong, so the officers dismounted and gathered in a group, chattering excitedly.

Brown John, with his expression changing to one of grotesque anticipation, was certain he knew the subject of their discussion. They were asking each other what the command for retreat was. One or two of the veteran officers might remember seeing commands for a retreat in some ancient yellowed parchment, but the old man was certain they had never bothered to read it. There would have been no need. The Kitzakk Horde had not retreated in a hundred years. Consequently, the officers, no matter how long they talked, would find no means of turning the column around in an orderly fashion.

When Gath joined Brown John, the
bukko
explained what was happening, and the eyes within the horned helmet darkened with anticipation. The two joined their army beyond the turn in the road, and Gath started climbing a narrow crack in the rocky cliff siding the road. Seeing the jagged break led all the way to the top of the cliffs, a surge of excitement coated the old man’s cheeks like fresh paint. He turned to his troops and just as quickly lost his color.

His sons, the strongmen and the rest of the Grillards were joking and laughing with the Dowat archers, congratulating themselves. The army was behaving no better.

Cold panic ran up the old man’s spine. He pushed his way to Bone’s big, bragging face, and interrupted his laughter by stepping on his foot and shouting, “You idiot! We’ve won nothing! We’ve only stubbed their toe. If you want something to cheer about, get up there. Follow him!” He pointed at Gath. “Hurry!”

Bone and Dirken promptly started up the cliff with the Grillard strongmen following. Brown John ordered the remainder of the army to wait in place, then set the Barhacha to cutting timber for a temporary bridge to replace Thin Bridge, and ordered messengers back to the forest to tell the tribes that had stayed behind of their glorious victory. Then, with nothing left to do but collapse on the road and wait, he did just that. He was wet and cold to the touch.