A frown creased his brow as he realised there was still one more concern to eliminate. Octavian’s wife had demanded he find her husband and take him to some strange and foreboding castle. If there was one thing Kerian disliked intently, it was being told what to do! He had no intention of tracking down Octavian. The man was a jinx!
He gathered up some more fuel and added it to the fire, letting the flames rise up to cast more illumination across the darker walls of the room. He loved the fact these murals showed merchants at work plying their trade and could almost imagine that people of wealth met in these very chambers and conducted important business deals within these opulent settings. One thing was for sure, they would have had something more appetising than dried bread and hard tack to eat. He lifted the bread to his mouth and let his eyes linger on the mural illustrated on the wall across from him.
“Well I’ll be…” Kerian muttered, his attention all but taken away from the stale bread he was chewing in his mouth. The picture showed the city of Tahl Avan when it was a thriving trade centre. Illustrated Caravans moved along trails from distance towns and cities, some carrying goods to trade, others leaving the city with purchases. He took in the vivid colours, the small nuances emphasising different races and exotic trade items. Here someone was buying a bird in a cage, there a travelling circus, high in the sky a griffon flew amongst the clouds.
Kerian held up a makeshift torch and gently traced his finger along a northern route showing travellers crossing the desert. He smiled at the illustrated camels, monkeys and amphorae painted there, before his finger arrived at the destination. It was a walled city patrolled by men on lizards waving a banner between them. Kerian squinted annoyed at his eyesight being so poor in the darkness and brought the light closer. The writing on the banner was impossible to misread. His eyes went instantly wide in recognition. This was not just a wall mural. Neither was it just an artist’s impression of the lifestyle of the city, this was so much more! He lifted the brand in his hand and mouthed the words on the banner, feeling the way they rolled from his tongue as he smiled.
Octavian could go to hell as far as Kerian was concerned. He had just found a map to Al Mashmaah!
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Weyn opened his eyes and tried not to be sick. The archer knew his right arm was ruined. It felt numb and about three sizes too large. His fingers felt like cold sausages, pins and needles stabbing aggressively. He tried to raise his hand and found himself screaming with pain. There was no way he could lift it. He pulled himself to his knees and took in the massive hissing multi-headed monster still snapping, spitting and lunging around him. Severed limbs wriggled about the clearing, Nirschl snakeheads swooped and glided about searching for prey to rip asunder.
He reached for his bow, slipping it awkwardly from his shoulder and unsteadily nocked one of his magical arrows to the string using his left hand. A wave of dizziness swept over him, forcing the archer to close his eyes, then slowly open them again, in an attempt to stop blacking out. Where was Rauph? He could not see the Minotaur. A figure rose from the muck and mire about twenty feet away, dripping gore and slime, making Weyn start before he realised it was actually Mathius, bleeding from assorted lacerations and abrasions, a dagger clutched firmly in his hand.
A shadow fell over the assassin, another Nirschl head dropping silently down towards him, fangs dripping venom that hissed as it hit the jungle floor. Mathius appeared completely unaware of the impending danger and indeed appeared to be more distressed about the state of his dagger by the way he was staring at the blade.
Weyn reacted on instinct, his left arm bringing up his bow, right hand clawing ineffectively at the bowstring as if he were suddenly a child with no power at all. The archer’s right arm screamed in protest, the strength in his limb gone. There was no way he could manage to draw his bow, the resistant poundage in the sturdy weapon simply too much for the wounded man to handle. There was only one other thing he could do as the hypnotic hydra head slithered closer.
“Mathius!” Weyn screamed. “Above you!”
The assassin looked over at the archer with apparent confusion, noting Weyn’s cry but clearly not understanding him. He lifted a muddy hand as if to wave back in acknowledgement, causing the archer to curse at the absurdity of it all. Did Mathius not realise the danger he was in? Weyn started to take a step towards Mathius, not sure exactly what he would actually do to stop the approaching Nirschl. Another massive figure rose from the mud and charged towards Mathius drawing a sword.
Was that Rauph? It was so difficult to tell. It was clearly an angry Minotaur but the creature was coated in so much muck and filth that there was no way for Weyn to tell for sure if it was the navigator. So why was he attacking Mathius? None of this made any sense at all. Everything was moving much too fast. A fresh spasm of pain ran up the archer’s right arm and he looked down and noted, with horror, the jagged remains of an arrow jutting from his fleshy forearm. Bile rose in Weyn’s throat, the bitter taste making the likelihood of vomiting that much greater. At least he now knew why he could not draw his bow, the splintered shaft appeared to run right through!
Weyn tore his gaze away from the horrific wound and looked pleadingly back over to his shipmate, realising that he needed as much assistance, if not more than his colleague did. Mathius had stopped in place as the Minotaur charged towards him, assuming a defensive position despite his battered look, still apparently unaware that death was stealthily approaching from above. Weyn watched powerless as the Nirschl opened its jaws wide and lunged straight down at the assassin and the mud caked Minotaur.
The Nirschl’s head swiftly extended, then snapped tight at full stretch, bringing the monster up, just short of its prey, fangs smashing together above the assassin, who incredibly appeared to duck down just at the last second, the deadly maw clamping shut inches above his head. The Nirschl drew back and then lunged again, still coming up short, clearly frustrated and pulling with all its might. It strained against the main trunk of the hydra body behind it but failed to reach its goal, due to having its neck entangled with all the swaying heads and slithering coils across the clearing.
Mathius smiled at the reflected image in his dagger blade and then struck out at the Minotaur alongside him, only to find that this foe was no longer there. Although the hydra’s maw had closed inches from Mathius’s head, his horned foe had been taller, much taller. When the jaws had snapped closed, they had taken the Minotaur with them. Even now, its muscular legs wriggled urgently as it hung above him; despite the fact that the Nirschl’s jaws had pierced the Minotaur’s body in at least a dozen places.
The assassin limped cautiously away, one eye watching the Nirschl as it commenced swallowing the poor Minotaur, spasmodically gulping as it pulled the creature further into its mouth with each immense swallow. Mathius reached Weyn, who moved to hold the assassin tightly by the shoulders; however, his right arm failed him, making the friendly attempt of reassurance a decidedly ungracious and awkward affair.
“I thought you were dead that time for sure.” Weyn stated in concern. “Did you not see the snake?” Mathius grinned, as the two fighters staggered apart again, both showing signs of utter exhaustion, the chaos of their surroundings forgotten.
“Of course I saw the snake.” He smiled, not daring to admit how close the strike had come. “Why did you not use your bow? I thought you were supposed to be a dead shot?”
“I can’t draw my weapon.” Weyn confessed, pointing down at his arm and shaking his head. Mathius stared at the splintered arrow sticking from the archer’s arm and held his tongue, deciding to forego the obvious jokes about the archer shooting himself. Instead, he opted for a subtler attempt at humour.
“Trust our archer to complain about a splinter.” He grinned. “A little scratch like that! Huh, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. My granny would still be able to fire your bow with five of those.”
“I’d like to see how.” Weyn remarked, failing to
see the funny side and gesturing towards the Nirschl. “I am totally useless down here when all the snake heads are up there without the use of my bow.”
“Oh I don’t know about that.” Mathius replied cryptically. “Just let me show you.”
* * * * * *
Marcus lifted his legs up just as a jagged tree stump came within inches of permanently removing him from his precarious perch. He swung about at the end of his makeshift set of reins, banging and smashing against the shimmering scales of the hydra’s neck, desperately trying to get his feet up under him. He needed to lunge for the crimson plant dangling just beyond his reach. This was insane; the Nirschl was not slowing for an instant, clearly agitated about the injuries inflicted on its other heads by the crew of the El Defensor.
The hydra angled to one side just as another length of the giant serpent shot past, heading straight towards the others. Marcus barely had time to focus on the multi-coloured projectile, before he realised this was not another head but instead a vicious barbed tail. The appendage slammed into an ancient tree trunk at the edge of the clearing, almost disintegrating the rotten wood with the force of the blow. The ancient sentinel groaned loudly before crashing to the ground, directly across the path of the hissing head that the monk was hanging from.
The Nirschl reacted instantly, defensively spiralling straight up into the sky to avoid the collision, dragging the monk up along with it. Marcus found his grip slipping and frantically struggled to hold on, before the beast dropped again, swinging him around in front of the creature’s nose. Marcus found his boots suddenly scrabbling on the curved fangs, desperate to maintain purchase or end up eaten alive. The monk grabbed the reins tighter and slowly began to pull himself up; over one of the monster’s flaring nostrils, past a slowly blinking eye. Every inch climbed was a gargantuan effort as Marcus tried to position himself where he could make a play for the elusive lifesaving plant, acutely aware that just one slip would spell his doom.
* * * * * *
The remains of the crumbling tree trunk bounced and rolled across the ground, picking up speed as it twisted, before catching on the edge of a depression in the ground that flipped it end over end, before finally crashing down onto the extended neck of one of the ‘kissing’ Nirschl heads. The injured snake jerked back in reflex, fangs retracting, pulling away and breaking its macabre kiss, just as the navigator pushed up as hard as he could from inside the other Nirschl mouth, snapping the lower mandible of the serpent with an audible crack and leaving its bottom jaw hanging useless.
The hydra went wild, writhing and jerking about on the jungle floor, thrashing its head from side to side; aware its jaw was broken, yet refusing to stop trying to bite the prey that had dared harm it in this way. Rauph dropped away, leaving the monster flailing as he moved towards the second Nirschl head now pinned by the fallen tree and without pausing for breath plunged one of his huge swords into the creature’s orbit, levering the blade right behind its dark orange eye. The Nirschl head appeared to go rigid and then slumped to the floor unmoving. Rauph spun away, intent on returning to the head with the broken jaw, only for the Nirschl’s massive tail to slam into the ground next to him, barbs spreading out as four razor-like fingers.
The navigator jumped backwards, noting how the barbs clicked together as they slowly reverted into a wicked point. The massive tail slowly lifted from the ground barbs extending and then surged to the left, slicing a devastating path through the undergrowth, cutting through even the thickest vegetation and laying waste to everything therein.
Rauph ran in the other direction, turning back to his earlier task, intent on despatching the Nirschl with the broken jaw, only to find it dragging itself through the muck towards him. The air suddenly filled with crossbow quarrels, stitching a line up across the creature’s broken jaw, ricocheting from a large upper fang and then running down the Nirschl’s scaled neck. One quarrel punched clean through an umber eye, piercing the eyeball with an audible pop and dropping the Nirschl head lifeless to the ground.
“Seems I’m always here saving your hairy arse.” Commagin grinned, stepping out from behind a boulder, reloading his retrieved crossbow as he came. Rauph lowered his weapons and tried looking over his shoulder, turning first one way and then the other.
“What are you looking at?” Commagin laughed.
“How did you know my bottom was hairy?” Rauph pondered aloud. “There are no tears in my garments.”
“Your whole body is hairy, oaf!” The Dwarven engineer replied, plucking some errant leaves from his bushy beard. “It’s therefore a good bet that your butt would be just as hairy as the rest of you! Now let’s get moving, you can examine your hairy bottom in your own time.” The dwarf raised his crossbow stock to his shoulder and squeezed off another couple of shots at a slithering shape nearby.
Rauph moved up alongside his smaller friend, knowing all too well the dangers of being in front of Commagin when he let loose with his favourite weapon. The Dwarf drew a bead on a Nirschl head rushing towards them, the creature moving so fast it churned up a bow wave of plants and soil as it carved its way across the ground.
“I’ve got this one.” The engineer announced, lining up the monster in his sights. “There is no need for your input dear navigator.” Commagin cracked a smile and pulled the trigger only for his crossbow to misfire.
“What?” The Dwarf spluttered. “Not now Janet of all times!”
Rauph pushed the agitated engineer to one side and lifted his swords out wide as if welcoming the Nirschl to come and take him. He gritted his teeth and prepared for the crash to come as the hydra head lunged.
An arrow sliced through the air, slamming into the side of the monster’s snout, a second arrow piercing its eye sending the Nirschl veering away and missing the navigator and engineer by inches. The wake of jungle debris thrown up by the creature washed over them, leaving the two characters dripping in slime and muck.
The Nirschl squirmed and thrashed, hissing in agony as it tried to remove the arrow sticking from its eye. It recoiled, turned back on itself and tried to twist into a knot at the pain, its remaining good eye turning to stare with undisguised hatred at the two dripping figures. Another arrow streaked through the air slamming into the second eye, popping the gleaming surface causing the monster to shriek in agony and writhe even more.
“Oh good shot!” Mathius grinned, “Do you want me to shuffle to the left or the right?”
“Right.” The archer replied. “The sooner we finish this up the sooner I can go home. Do you know how uncomfortable it is lying on the floor?” Mathius looked back over his shoulder and smiled at the archer, who was lying in the mud with his legs in the air, the bow balanced on the base of his feet. Weyn was already nocking another arrow, leaning back to pull with his left hand and complete the draw. Mathius shuffled slightly to the right, feeling the tension of the bow lying across his shoulders where he supported it, along with the weight of the archer’s legs.
“Now if you could just move upwards a fraction.” Weyn asked.
“Just don’t forget to miss my ear!” Mathius replied as he pushed up from the mud. “I’m rather attached to it.”
“Then make sure you duck!” Weyn replied, releasing the string and sending another enchanted arrow spinning out towards the writhing mass of hydra. “Where next?” the archer prompted, as the arrow slammed into the serpent’s eye just behind the last missile he had sent out “I think that Nirschl head has had the fight knocked out of it.”
“Aradol is to the left.” Mathius replied shuffling around on his knees and dragging Weyn through the muck after him. “I have no idea where Ives is.”
“What about Marcus?” Weyn joked as another massive hydra head swooped by overhead, the monk dangling from his neck. “Whatever do you think he is trying to do?”
“Oh you know Marcus. He’s always hanging around with the wrong type of monster and causing trouble.” Mathius joked. “You never know, if we hurry and sort ou
t Aradol’s problems we might still have time to take a couple of pot shots at him.”
* * * * * *
“That’s it, just a little…” Marcus muttered under his breath, swinging backwards and forwards with the movement of the hydra head and inching ever closer to the prize of the crimson orchid. “And I’ve got it!” The monk leapt for the delicate bloom, just as the Nirschl swung its head away. Marcus’s hand snatched at the bloom, inadvertently crushing the flower and snapping the stem off.
“Okay, so I haven’t got it!” Marcus moaned his disappointment, only for the reins he was holding in his other hand to finally part with an audible snap sending the monk slipping and sliding down the creature’s neck, bumping and scraping over every scale as he fell towards the ground.
The monk hit the floor at a run, deftly dodging two strikes from the Nirschl as it attempted to swallow the prey that had eluded it all this time. Marcus threw himself behind a tree trunk and ducked down low before daring to look at the mess he now held in his hands. The Death’s Head orchid was ruined, the petals disintegrated and smeared across his palm like the desiccated remains of a gossamer butterfly wing he had once found wedged in the corner of a forgotten dusty window frame at the monastery in Catterick. Sticky sap smeared his fingertips and seemed to make his fingertips tingle and feel slightly numb.
Marcus shook his head. He had no idea what part of the flower they required for the antidote but it was clear that what he held in his hands would never do! They only knew where one other bloom existed. It was on the head of the Nirschl Weyn had become pinned to.
A massive hydra head angled in from the left snapping its fangs as it tried to flush the monk from his cover. Marcus took a step to the right leaving the creature to close its jaws on nothing but air, then dodged back again as another monstrous maw snapped and hissed from the right, this one sporting an injury on its jaw from where thick blood welled. Marcus stared intently, noting the splintered arrow shaft jutting from the wound. It had to be the head he was looking for. The creature slithered past hissing angrily, only to reveal, as it turned, the ragged remains of the death’s head orchid that had once bloomed there.
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