Tales of Cthulhu Invictus

by Brian M Sammons

  The cripple turned and hobbled off in the opposite direction, leaving Caius feeling a sudden chill.

  ***

  Charging up to the gate, Caius could already see that something was very wrong. The heavy wooden doors hung open, but that was nothing unusual. The way they hung, though, spoke volumes. There was a feel of impending desolation about the place, and it filled Caius with dread. He looked closely at the doors as he rode up, and they looked as if they’d aged years in the hours he’d been away, the wood now dried and split.

  He entered the courtyard, and his fears were confirmed. He heard the sound of a wailing woman. He dismounted and called for a slave, but it was a slave woman who came out, weeping and collapsing with grief. “My son!” she said. “He was my only son. My only boy.”

  Caius looked at her. “What happened, Slave?”

  “He fell ill after you left, Dominus. In his ravings from a high fever, he said ‘The King is coming!’ Then he fainted and never woke up! Oh, my poor boy!”

  Caius swore, and brought his horse into the stable himself. He ran into the house and checked with her ladyship’s head maid. “How is her ladyship, Sabina?”

  “Still troubled, Caius, but otherwise she is well.”

  “Good. Keep an eye on everyone who comes close— On second thought, don’t let anyone other than yourself into her presence for the time being. One of the stable boys fell ill and died.”

  “Oh my g—”

  “Be still! We mustn’t let too many suspect anything is wrong, but that visitor we had may well have caused some real trouble. A dagger I found stuck in the door frightened the boy badly, and though he touched it, he wouldn’t fetch it down for me, and now he’s dead, mere hours later.”

  “Fates preserve us!”

  “I hope that they may. I have one of Magnus’ men coming over shortly, please have one of your girls show him straight in to me.” Caius spun on his heel and walked out.

  Once in his rooms, being careful not to touch any part of the dagger or strip of cloth, he spread them out on his table to examine them both. The cloth he had wrapped them in crumbled and turned to dust as he unfolded the fabric. He wrenched his hands back and away. Somehow, this dagger was infecting everything that touched it with a wasting disease. Swallowing hard, Caius continued his examination. The dagger had a curved blade, in keeping with the style of the area. The blade, as he’d noted before, was pitted, but was once made of very good quality metal. It was as if it had been left to the elements, and exposed to considerable mistreatment over years and years, just as it did to everything that it touched over the span of hours.

  Moving over to the cloth, he looked closely at the yellowed strip. For some reason, this was immune to the effects of the dagger, and that made it important. There were ink markings over it, seemingly in a random pattern. He looked at where the ink ran off the edges and then it hit him. “How could I have been so stupid?” he hissed at himself. It was a scytale; he was sure of it. Spies had been using this method of communication since the Spartans started doing it over 500 years ago. He looked around the room, and finally his eyes settle on a pole with a hook on one end that he used to open the windows set high in the wall of his room. Carefully taking a corner of the fabric, pinched between folds of a fresh rag, Caius lifted the strip and wound it around the pole. His pole was a little too thick, but now he could see the beginnings of writing, and what it spelled.

  “Sir?” came a voice from the doorway.

  Caius’ head shot upright as he reached for a weapon.

  The man backed away, and Caius recognized him as the beggar from the marketplace, but cleaned up, and without faking twisted legs. “Ah! Sorry…you startled me. Come, see what I’ve found so far.”

  The beggar-spy came over next to Caius, and the two shifted the fabric back and forth until they worked out what it said: “Welcome, supplicants, to the Court of the King.”

  The two men looked at each other, Caius wearing an expression of confusion and the spy an expression of worry. “What is it?” Caius asked.

  Before he heard an answer, a loud clattering sound startled both men. They looked down, only to see the pole had broken, right where the fabric had been wrapped around it. Caius grabbed the pole, and looked at it. The whole section that had been covered by the fabric had completely rotted through, and as it grew weak, the weight of both ends snapped it in half, dropping both halves to the floor.

  “What in Hades is going on here?” Caius roared.

  “This is a terrible curse indeed, Sir,” the spy answered. He then turned and looked at the table again. “See! Look at your table around the dagger!”

  Caius looked and saw that the wood all around where the dagger lay was dried out, twisted, and cracked, and the decay was spreading. Almost as he watched, Caius could see the dry rot spreading out over the table. His eyes wide, Caius snatched the dagger off the table with his rag.

  “So,” Caius began. “You’re saying that these items: this dagger and this strip of cloth, are somehow causing things and people to decay and die simply by touching them?”

  “I’m not saying that, Sir, but the evidence is there. That would be my assessment based on what we’ve seen, and what you’ve told me.”

  Caius shivered despite the heat. He was sweating more than he should have been, too. His stomach twisted. How was he going to get out of this one? He’d been in plenty of bad situations in his past, as regular military, as a spy, and even as the finder and head-of-household for his lordship the general. Caius took a deep, long breath and rubbed his face. “All right. What can you tell me about who sent this? Who are these people, and what king are they talking about.”

  The spy turned to the door, and walked over and closed it. “I apologize for the presumption, Sir, but some of what I have to say may unsettle some in the house. I don’t have much, though, because we’re dealing with local myths and legends. These curses, though, when they happen, are very real, and I’ve never heard of anyone surviving them.”

  “Charming,” Caius growled. “Now some information, please.”

  “Very well. According to what information I have, we’re dealing with the inhabitants of Carcosa, a mythical place not of this earth. People are taken there, and they never return. The king they mention is often called the King in Yellow, but there is no record of any name for that sovereign. They attack by attempting innocuous contact, and if all goes well, then people are invited to join the visitor on a trip back to his land. The guests go with him, to this Carcosa, and never return, their fate a mystery. If the initial visit does not go well, they deliver curses like the one you have here, and the people gradually sicken and die, and buildings decay and turn to dust. All of this usually happens in the course of days.”

  Caius stood silent for a moment. “Very well, now what do we do? What can we do?”

  “I have no information of anyone combating this and being victorious.”

  Caius narrowed his eyes. “Combat you say? What if we bring the fight to them?”

  “There was one story of a cohort north of here. They were being menaced by shadowy beings in the distance who, it turns out, were denizens of Carcosa. The legionnaires attacked. They charged into the desert.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing! That’s all. They charged into the desert and were never seen again. Almost five hundred men. Gone.”

  Caius blew out a breath. “All right. Well, we have to leave, but while we do that, we’ll need to build up some outer defenses. The dagger was left in the door, which is already showing signs of rot. If we build outer walls and fences, that should buy us some time, no?”

  “Perhaps. I’ve not heard of anyone trying that approach to this. Hopefully, this will be successful, and I’ll pass on the information.”

  “Speaking of passing on information, please tell Magnus of my plans, and ask again for some men to help me. We now know what we’re dealing with, and how little time we have—”

  A series of muffled thuds
came from outside. Caius reached into a trunk and strapped on his sword, and ran to the door. He was met by one of the younger maids. “Sabina bids you come outside to the eastern wall.”

  “Let’s go,” Caius said, and the three ran outside.

  What they found stopped Caius in his tracks. His mouth hung open. There, all along the eastern edge of the estate, was a crumbled wreck of a wall. No siege engines had been used. No catapults had leveled these stones. No, this wall that had been perfectly sound just the other day was now a waist-high mound of chipped boulders and rubble. This was no longer a wall, but a broken farmer’s fence that would fail to keep goats contained. Caius ran a hand over his graying, close-cropped hair.

  “Look!” the beggar-spy cried, pointing out into the desert to the east.

  Caius looked up, and saw there, among the wavering heat-shimmers and phantom bodies of water caused by mirages, stood several figures. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or perhaps it was the heat, but the people standing out there seemed to fade in and out of visibility. One minute they were there and solid, the next they were only partially there, and then they were gone. Then the process started all over again.

  Caius turned to the spy. “Tell Magnus that we are about to be invaded by men from Carcosa, and we need his legion to muster just beyond our eastern wall. The enemy is at Rome’s eastern gate, and we must not let them in.”

  The spy saluted, and dashed away.

  Caius turned to the girl that Sabina had sent, who was still gaping at the destruction and the ghostly creatures in the distance. “Tell Sabina to make ready for immediate travel. Her ladyship leaves tonight. We travel light and fast, as if Cerberus were nipping at our very heels.”

  The girl nodded and ran off.

  ***

  Within an hour, Lady Julianna had been sedated and laid on a curtained litter in the courtyard. Meanwhile slaves and servants bustled to pack horses and camels with the essentials to a trip south to Damascus and then on to points west.

  At the opposite end of the estate, Caius sat atop his horse, armored as he’d been years ago with Magnus in the First Adiutrix, carrying his shield emblazoned with the company’s emblem: the Pegasus. He shifted and adjusted the 20-year-old armor, listening to the leather straps creak. He could have worn some something newer, but he liked the idea of standing with his old commanding officer in uniform. If he arrived in time. Or at all.

  Standing by his side were the few able-bodied males he had on staff. They were really just five untrained male slaves and two boys. They held their spears as ordered, but fear rose off them like a stench. Caius trotted his horse to the ruins of the eastern wall, now little more than a mound of heavy sand. He kept glancing back toward the road, hoping Magnus’ men would arrive. While it hadn’t yet been an hour, it felt like several lifetimes to Caius.

  The sound of distant marching feet had never thrilled Caius so much. There, riding at the head of a column of 300 men, rode Legion Legate Furius Magnus, and even though it was fully 180 men short of a fully cohort, the sight would make any enemy tremble. Even with only that many men, Roman Legions were a sight to behold, putting steel in allies’ spines and water into enemies’ veins. Caius looked sidelong at the phantom enemy in the desert, and hoped they felt such fear.

  He rode over and stood with the legate as the men gathered into formation, and he could feel their hesitation as the enemy loomed on the horizon. Their usual resolve lagged and shifted as they stood awaiting orders. He could see the men shifting their weight from foot to foot, adjusting their grips on their weapons. The same feeling ran through his own stomach. Caius turned to Magnus. “Yes, Caius, I feel it too. We’d be best served getting this done sooner rather than later, so the men don’t have too much time to think about it.”

  Caius’ mouth was too dry to speak, so he only nodded.

  “Men!” roared Hell Belly. “The Roman Legion has faced enemies untold and emerged victorious. That will not change today. No force on earth is as feared as we are. Our enemies quake as we stand before them. We are Rome. And today, we are here to send these creatures back where they came from!”

  The men cheered, and even Caius grinned. Hell Belly was good. He was very good.

  They turned and rode out to face the invaders, gaining speed as they got nearer. The opposing army started to move, but not advance. They seemed to be shifting position. As the First Audiutrix bore down on them, all they did was part so there was a path down the middle, and someone was coming forward. Riding on a palanquin born by men crawling on all fours was a tall, gaunt figure, dressed entirely in yellow, with a hood concealing his face.

  Despite themselves, the Roman advance slowed. Their enemy wasn’t riding out to meet them. So what were they doing?

  “Legate? Magnus! What now?” Caius asked.

  “The time for talking is passed. If they’d wanted to parley, perhaps they shouldn’t have cursed your household.”

  “Good,” growled Caius, and dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and drew his gladius.

  The charge began again, but it had lost momentum. The infantry behind had fallen out of step. Faces could be seen paling as the silent enemy merely sent the one man forward. The slender figure raised his hands. In his right hand, he held a staff with a strange insignia at one end. The symbol seemed to shift and twist the longer it was beheld. The left hand was empty, and with it, he motioned for the advancing army to halt.

  Caius heard Hell Belly try for a contemptuous chuckle, but the sound became an uncomfortable cough and the legate signaled a stop. “Caius,” his old commander started. Caius turned to him, and saw that his face was pale and sweaty. This was the man who’d led hundreds in battle in the campaign against Parthia almost 20 years ago. This was a career soldier, a commander, the fearless leader, and he looked like he was ready to drop to the ground and vomit. “I don’t know if we can win this,” Magnus said.

  “I- I understand.” Caius stuttered. He felt the sweat trickle down his back. As a spy, he dealt with intelligence. Knowledge. Knowing what he was up against. This was different. He knew little, and what he did know did not bode well at all.

  Magnus turned to his men, and ordered them to stand at attention, doing his best not to let his fear be seen by his men. They felt it though, as Caius did. They all felt it. These creatures were doing something, unmanning them all. Caius wished he could feel righteous fury at the insult, but his own innards quailed at the sight of this enemy.

  Towers taller than the grandest in Rome floated into view behind the opposing army. Through a haze, over a distant lake, lofty towers pulled the entire cohort’s focus. Everyone watched as the ethereal edifices soared toward the sky, until something…changed. Faces fell as the beauty began to fade. Columns cracked, facades crumbled, and friezes fell. Caius realized that music had been drifting on the wind, and it was now different. Where it had been blissful and bright, now it had turned dark and morose, as if it were weeping set to music. The water in the lake turned murky and ashen where it had been crystalline.

  The figure in the lead had turned away, gazing back at his domain, and as it began to fade, fall, and decay, his shoulders dropped and his head fell forward. Caius could feel the torment flowing from the enemy. The anguish twisted into anger, then raging fury. The leader brought his head up.

  A foul wind blew, and Magnus and Caius nervously rode forward to speak to the form in front of his army. As they advanced, wings burst forth, unfolding from the creature’s back, and the sleeves of his tunic slid up his arms, revealing mottled, wasted flesh. His right hand lowered, and rested the staff on the platform, the eerie yellow insignia continuing to shift. His left hand went to his hood.

  Caius heard Magnus grunt. He turned and saw Hell Belly lifting his hand, his face contorted in fear with tears streaming down his face. “No,” cried Magnus, “don’t!”

  Magnus dropped from his horse, landing on all fours, and vomited. The men behind saw this but remained transfixed. Caius widened his eyes as the rest
of the men dropped to their knees, covered their eyes with their fists, and then collapsed to the ground bursting into explosions of rotten sand. As he watched helpless, every single member of the cohort disintegrated into putrid mist, and blew away on gusts of an ill wind.

  Caius turned back to the King in Yellow, who pulled his hood away from his face. Caius’ stomach wrenched as his eyes told his brain what he was seeing. He shook his head as his brain denied it. He looked away, and he, too, dropped to his knees.

  He couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  None of them.

  No!

  All-

  Had to get up!

  Had to run!

  All of them!

  Get away!

  Sweet Juno, NO!

  The Temple of Iald-T’quthoth

  by Lee Clark Zumpe

  I.

  During the Siege of Jerusalem, 70 A.D.

  “And indeed the multitude of carcasses that lay in heaps one upon

  another was a horrible sight, and produced a pestilential stench, which was a hindrance to those that would make sallies out of the city, and fight the enemy…”

  —The War of the Jews, Book VI, Chapter 1; Josephus

  A leaden grey sky—like death—hovered over Jerusalem.

  “They turn upon each other in these desolate days, pale with famine, demoralized by the prospect of defeat,” Caius said. “Hunger and desperation has driven them to acts of savagery and cannibalism. It is no wonder so many undertake reckless campaigns against us. It is neither faith nor duty that inspires them so much as hopelessness.”

  “This one is different,” Quintus said as he prepared to drive a thick iron nail through the man’s right wrist, adding further support to the cord fastening him to the crossbeam of the crucifix. “He was cast out of Jerusalem by one of those treacherous factions vying for control of the temple and the Tower of Antonia. It is said he was banished for excessive malice and violence visited upon his own people, according to Josephus who made inquiries on behalf of Titus.”