The Brotherhood of Merlin

by Rory D Nelson

  At worst, Gerard will receive a mild rebuke. Most likely, the King will be happy to pay up the reward. If you survive, that is. And there is that nagging voice. Experience taught Gerard never to ignore that instinctual voice inside his head. And yet, he is pertinacious. He will not stop. He will not deviate from this path.

  The soldiers comply with the orders and fan out, hoping to entrap both man and beasts. Some of the corridors are so narrow they allow only two soldiers to ride side by side and slowing their progress down considerably. Other corridors are much wider, allowing more soldiers to fan out and traverse more quickly. Every possible corridor is taken to ensure that the culprits have no escape route.

  Ithicus observes the bloody scene and smiles. Although they came perilously close to getting shot, they managed to escape unscathed. Once they are safely through the corridors, he takes out his dog whistle and blows it in D minor. The wolves whine frantically and begin to ascend the corridor walls. The wolves are no strangers to climbing such extreme, though this one poses some extreme risks. Merlin’s post adheres them to the rocky surface as they make painstaking but consistent progress.

  Any other wolf would have fall to their death; but like their Brethren guardians, they are exceptionally well trained.

  When the wolves emerge at the top of the canyon peak, Ithicus greets them with much needed water, food and affection.

  Ithicus laughs to himself at the sheer volume of soldiers induced into the chase. They were hoping for five hundred, but the number is much larger. He would estimate their numbers at perhaps twelve hundred, at least. The amphitheater-sized corridor will be more than sufficient to accommodate them.

  Ithicus runs to his horse and calls to his brood. They are resting from their laborious climb but perk up at the mention of their names. “We have much work to do.” He says. “I will not have my brother’s death be in vain.” Boraco whines at the reference to his late guardian and compatriot.

  Chapter 29: Deathtrap

  Martimus was hopeful the moment they seized one of the culprit’s lifeless body, a brief hope now waned to a sliver. The adrenaline rush he felt also diminished. He is now fueled on fumes and survival instincts. He has never been blindsided by such an opponent. He sees his Lieutenant, Maximus Derringer and hopes for some reassurance. That hope is just as quickly quelled from the look of his dour countenance. “Lieutenant, what word of the culprits have you?”

  “None, Captain, we have scoured every rock, crevice and cavernous hole, no matter how small, but he is nowhere to be found and neither are the wolves he possesses in his steed. We have searched thoroughly, but to no avail. Shall we rekindle our search, Captain?”

  “No Lieutenant. We continue on.” That nagging sense of dread continues to bite at his heels like a rabid dog. He cannot shake it off. “Make double time! Now!”

  “Ai, Captain.”

  Ithicus watches as the Captain speaks briefly with one of his subordinates. If the Captain turns his men back, he will set off the traps now. Although their traps will not completely destroy the large battalion, at least they will not be a factor in their campaign. The Captain, however does not lead his men back. He continues on.

  Captain Gerard leads his men through the winding corridors until they empty out into the amphitheater canyon floor. The men on the other side of the corridor fire several arrows as they make their way through the narrow switchback trails, hoping to catch their would-be assailants off guard. None of the arrows find their mark and the Captain grows more frustrated by the second. Once in the large opening, he stands there, indecisive, contemplating his next course of action.

  Ithicus waits. The canyon walls are at least a thousand feet in length and offer no chance of escape. The traps are set and waiting to be initiated with a strategic shot from his rifle.

  As Gerard sees his Lieutenant galloping towards him at breakneck speeds, he nearly loses control of his bladder and his heart begins to trip-hammer in his chest. He feels his bowels begin to loosen up inside him and the pit of his stomach churns acid, causing him nausea. The impending sense of dread building in him escalates into mortal terror.

  The Lieutenant does not bother with pleasantries. He is succinct to the point of rudeness. His normally rosy complexion lost all color and he is ghostly white. “Captain, we found a contraption in one of the narrow corridors. I have seen the likes of it before. I would have ordered my men up there, but it is impossible to climb, a death trap if ever there was one. Our culprit is nowhere to be found. Captain, what do we do?”

  Captain Gerard’s complexion turns ashen and then ghostly white. He stands there like a statue, an impossible look of defeat on his face. He is unable to speak.

  The Lieutenant becomes indignant. “Captain!” He yells frustratingly. “Captain! What are your orders?”

  The quarrelsome tone brings the Captain back to the moment and he responds, desperately. “It’s a trap! Men, retreat! Get out!” The men retreat as quickly as they ventured into the large corridor. Unfortunately, the dogleg trails can accommodate only so many men and the riders bottleneck and collide with each other at breakneck speeds, ejecting riders forcefully from their horses.

  Ithicus grabs his sniper rifle and lines up his sites. He breathes deeply to center himself. There is no room for error here. He fires the first round at the rope that is holding a large iron fence fashioned with sharp spears attached to the end of it. With a direct hit, the fence shoots forward on its pulley system, blocking further riders from escape and impaling horses and riders alike.

  Other riders fall to the ground and are crushed by the onslaught of horses toppling them. Riders are ejected from their horses and land headfirst into the contraption, impaling them.

  In seconds, blood spurts from cavernous holes, pooling on the ground. The cries of the helpless and the whine of horses erupts horrifically and echoes through the canyons. The echoes of the dying continue long after their last cries for help.

  Ithicus fires several more rounds from the sniper rifle and releases the remaining traps, producing the deadly chain of events over and over again on the hapless soldiers. The lucky riders who manage to escape from the booby traps, gallop out of the gruesome scene, hoping to avoid the same fate.

  When the last trap is set off, Ithicus removes his dog whistle and blows the D minor chord as forcefully as he can muster. This frequency is the most sensitive to wolves and the only one they will hear from such a distance.

  Over two kilometers away, Shadow hears the whistle blow and barks at Merlin, alerting him. Though barely detecting the whistle himself from such a distance, Merlin nevertheless picks up on Shadow’s acute recognition and knows before he vocalizes it. Merlin nods to Shadow, takes out his own whistle and blows the D chord.

  Troubadour is less than ten hectares away and he easily hears the whistle. The high frequency is somewhat unpleasant for him and he is happy when it ends. The time of inactivity and the cacophonous whistle induces aggression and hyper-energy in the massive beast. He sprints off for the ballista traps like a shot, easily reaching top speed in less than fifty yards.

  Large spring boards are attached to wires and connects them to the trip wires to release the ballistas. Troubadour must travel across the spring boards to ensure that they are set off, disconnecting the spring mechanism from the trip wires and setting off the deadly volley of high range arrows. While Troubadour is not the fastest of the wolves, he is certainly the heaviest one. His massive weight guarantees the trip wires have enough weight to release them.

  When Troubadour reaches the field where the traps are set, he is running close to fifty knots, shy of the sixty-five knots the other wolves can reach, but more than sufficient for this endeavor. Troubadour sprints over the pads and releases the trip wires. Several ‘whooshes’ ring out as the massive arrows are propelled from their respective ballistas.

  When Troubadour finishes the run, he slows down considerably, panting and looking off into the distance to admire his handiwork. Close to a thousand a
rrows fly through the air at an astonishing pace.

  “Here they come.” From the relatively short distance, Merlin hears the swoosh of the arrows as they make their deadly voyage to their intended targets. Syrus, Savelle, Germanicus, Jamison, Cotteroy and Atticus look up in the sky to see the dizzying volley of arrows fill up the sky and they smile to themselves.

  “To Justinian and Ithicus. We are well met,” says Jamison.

  The others respond in unison. “Ai! Well met indeed.”

  Merlin feels a pang of grief wash over him and he knows instinctively that one of his Brethren did not make it out of the canyon corridors. From this distance, he cannot read their minds, but a pervasive sense of sorrow fills him. And he is never wrong about such things. He avoids telling the other Brethren about the loss. They will know soon enough. Why not allow them their brief celebration?

  Ithicus tracks the arrows making their deadly voyage to the canyon. The speed at which they are traveling is mind-boggling. Something that deadly could be hurled at such a force never ceases to amaze him. To Merlin, it is nothing more than basic physics.

  Captain Gerard gallops hard to exit out of the deadly trap but is forced to turn back as he nearly collides with a group of riders galloping in his direction. “Halt! Halt!” He orders. He directs his horse out of the way just before man and angry beast collide with him.

  “Halt!” He orders. The frenzied soldiers, remembering their duties, comply.

  “Captain, what must we do?” Why have they lead us here? To what end?”

  “To ours, Lieutenant.” The soldiers begin to yell out clamorously, a hint of mortal fear evident in their voices. The Captain and Lieutenant look up in the sky to see the volley of arrows bearing down on them. Hundreds of arrows are blanketing the sky and they are bearing down on them hard.

  Horses whine frantically as indecisive and terrorized soldiers desperately run from the deadly volley. Several inadvertently collide into each other, ejecting riders from their horses. Many are trampled to death before the volley of arrows rains down on them. When they do arrive, they do so with a vengeance. No one in its wake is spared. One arrow impales a hapless rider to his horse, eliciting loud whines from the beast who bleeds profusely from the wound and topples over with rider still attached. The man continues to twitch spasmodically as he is permanently impaled to his horse. Numerous arrows rain down on soldiers, who try in vain to shield themselves from the onslaught.

  One soldier tries to hide himself under a downed soldier, which does little good. The arrow shoots straight through the dead soldier and into him, embedding itself in the hardpan below. He dies mercifully quick as his heart explodes in his chest.

  The volley of arrows impales riders and horses indiscriminately. Prodigious blood flows from severed arteries. Dying horses topple onto men that have been ejected from their horses. Some die from suffocation, some from internal hemorrhaging.

  Several riders escape the first couple volley of arrows only to succumb to a subsequent volley, which impaled them where they sit. Arrows lodge in necks, torsos, shoot through limbs, nearly severing them. The lucky ones die instantly from their wounds. The unfortunate ones are left to linger for hours before death takes them.

  Captain Gerard is ejected from his horse when he collides with another rider. He puts up a hand instinctively to keep himself from crashing headfirst into the hardpan, but the force of the fall breaks his hand and his head hits the ground violently, nearly knocking him unconscious. If knocked unconscious, he would have been spared the pain.

  Every desperate man is for himself, so no one notices where the Captain falls or seems to care. Blood seeps out of his nose and mouth and he finds it very difficult to breath. He knows instinctively he has punctured a lung because it feels like a massive weight has been placed on his chest. He wheezes uncontrollably and his raspy breathing emits a spray of blood with each painful inhalation. Unfortunately, there is much more pain to come.

  A large arrow shoots through his waist. Blood seeps through the wound but clogs and stifles blood flow. Remarkably, not one artery is severed as he clings to life. A nearby rider is ejected forcefully from his horse when an arrow lodges deep into its sternum. He lands directly on top of the Captain, impaling himself and eliciting agonizing cries from both the Captain and himself. Mercifully for him, he had severed a major artery and would be dead in less than a minute.

  The Captain is not so fortunate. He already felt like an anvil was placed on his chest when he was impaled. Now another soldier is lying on top of him adds to his excruciating pain. He pushes as hard as he can on the soldier and as he does, a torrent of excruciating pain courses through his body, eliciting agonizing screams.

  Previously, his heart was beating so rapidly, he felt it might explode in his chest. Now, his heart had slowed considerably and was beating erratically, missing several beats, making it difficult to draw inhalations and causing a pervasive numbness in his extremities. He prays for death, but none will come for several excruciating minutes.

  After several agonizing minutes, the volley of arrows stops. Ithicus surveys the deadly aftermath. Horses lay dead atop dead or dying soldiers. Several unfortunate soldiers who cling to life try to recapture severed limbs or push their intestines up into their bodies. Some soldiers crawl slowly on the ground, trying to regain their balance, with massive arrows sticking out of them.

  Some tried to pull out heavy arrows, but the angle, size and depth of the penetration makes it an act of futility. Many riders who avoided the arrows suffer monstrously from being trampled to death. The chain of command breaks down and the horses succumb to wild barbarism. Several soldiers survive the assault unscathed and scramble around in a paranoid state, desperately looking for a way out. None is afforded them. They are trapped.

  Satisfied with his handiwork, Ithicus packs up the hyper-oculars and heads off to the rest of the booby traps with the wolves. He mounts Isabella and gallops off.

  He approaches an elaborate pulley system. The drums have handles with chains attached through them. He pushes on the crank that operates the pulley system and it begins to move the drums atop the canyon corridors. Once the pulley system moves the drums to their farthest point along the chains, he pushes back on the crank and locks the drums in place. Each drum has a mixture of lather and kerosene in them, an extremely combustible mixture. The vapors are combustible enough to initiate a fire and the fire will burn extremely hot, destroying everything in its path.

  The fleeing soldiers gallop hard through the canyon corridors until their numbers force them to bottleneck or risk a head-on collision with other riders. The drums hang precariously over these strategic points.

  Ithicus notices a group of fifty soldiers making their way through the corridors. Another group is paralleling them in the next corridor over. Eventually, their paths intersect and the intersection point narrow considerably. They must slow down to accommodate their large numbers. The time is at hand.

  Because the handle is especially thick on the drums, Ithicus cannot risk shooting the handle with his speed shooter. If the shot fails to blow off the handle on the first try, there could be a backlash explosion, killing himself in the process. He will need a fifty-caliber shell from his sniper rifle. He picks it up, lines up his sites and squeezes the trigger.

  The handle breaks and the first drum plummets to the ground. The drums themselves are made from a light metal easily breaks if they are dropped from a sufficient height. The thousand-foot drop is more than sufficient to break open the drum. The drum crashes to the ground with a sickening thud on top of an unsuspecting soldier and his horse. The man is crushed like an eggshell, his internal organs and blood exploding and drenching his fellow soldiers in a gruesome and hot blood bath. His horse meets a similar end as the drum smashes straight through his torso. His organs liquefying and increasing the splash of gore on the soldiers. His head and legs are all that remain. They are the lucky ones.

  The soldiers who are in the immediate vicinity are obliv
ious to the actual contents of the drum. A burning sensation ensues shortly after the drum crashes to the ground. They at first believe the burning sensation is the result of the blood splashed on them. They wipe away the gore, hoping to ameliorate their discomfort. The discomfort increases second by second until the pain is agonizingly unbearable.

  They try in vain to wipe away the combustible mixture from their eyes as blood oozes out of them, blinding them. Some soldiers rub so hard on their eyeballs they inadvertently peel away layers of their cornea, causing them to scream out in pain. Their skin begins to sizzle, puss, and bleed as they try to expunge the mixture from their bodies. But, to no avail.

  The Brethren covered the corridors with a small amount of lather, so the entire canyon floor is a volatile mixture waiting to be ignited. Ithicus walks to Isabella and pulls a flare from his saddlebag, lights it and throws it down into the canyon. Before the flare touches the ground, the vapor gasses ignite a deadly and searing fire that obliterates everything in its path. The fire seizes man and beast alike.

  Agonizing wails from men and whinnied cries of horses issued up from the canyon floor in a cacophonous wail as fire devours flesh indiscriminately. Skin scorches, sizzles and melts as flames penetrate vital organs, exploding intestines, hearts and livers until they are literally vaporized. In some cases, all that remains are scorched hooves and charred bones.

  “For Justinian. May you rest in peace, Brother,” says Ithicus.

  Ithicus rides off to set up the next trap. He observes another large party approaching and sets up as he had done before. He releases the drum on them, watches and hears as the deadly flames engulf man and beast alike for another deadly assault.

  In only a matter of minutes, several hundred soldiers are slaughtered and without firing a shot. Ithicus continues his assault until the drums are dropped. When he finishes, he rejoins his team.