He realized that he had covered a lot of ground and not yet starved to death, so he diverted some of his attention to worrying about his lost sword, the Usurper. How proud he would have been to present the thing to Wodan. Was some imbecilic ghoul using it as a backscratcher even now? Just when his worries began to reach a fever pitch, he stepped on a slender strip of green grass and a blond rabbit tore away from him and disappeared down into a hole. He was already starving again, so he uprooted a young, slender tree from the ground and began whittling it against the side of a boulder in order to make a bow.
He shaved the thing for nearly half an hour before he finally thought, Wait, what will I use for a bowstring? At that moment he felt movement, looked, and saw that a troop of primitive women had surrounded him. Their skin was painted black and gray, and their eyes were hard. They had long bows drawn and their arrows were pointed at him.
They regarded one another for a long time. Finally Zach cleared his throat, then said, “You use the dark wood from the tree with five-pointed leaves for your bows. I tried that, but they’re too hard to draw.”
One of the women, a tall broad-shouldered hunter with her face painted like a gray sunrise, said, “You get used to drawing them.” Her arrow hovered near his neck.
“But what do you use to string them? I broke any guts I used for string.”
“Don’t use guts for string. Weave the hampia grass. It makes a pliable, unbreakable string.”
“Is that a fact?” said Zach. “I don’t know that name.”
The hunter smiled. “It’s the same thing we weave into rope for the binding of prisoners.”
* * *
The hunters led Zach to their village, a collection of mud and straw huts sitting under a towering rock. Other hunting women, also painted in black and pale gray, met with them and stared at the newcomer. A few men sitting on mats glanced at Zach sideways before averting their gaze. Zach was overwhelmed with the desire to understand these people - why their painting differed between individuals, how they survived living in the foothills, what they ate and drank.
One young male, painted all gray, stomped toward Zach with his chest puffed out, chanting “HA! HA! HA!” with each step.
Is this some sort of test? Zach thought.
As he came into range Zach shouted, “Shut up!” and pushed the youth to the ground. Immediately the women laughed and the youth, who glared at the other men in humiliation and limped away without a word. The women led Zach to a square wooden construct that was as tall as a man, with many ropes attached to it. They no longer pointed their arrows at him, but Zach noted that they kept them notched against their bows.
The leader of the hunt who had spoken to him before, a woman called Amiza, took one of the ropes and said, “See, this is the hampia rope that we use.” She tied one end to Zach’s wrist. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said. “Very nice.”
Amiza tied another rope to Zach’s free hand, then two more to each ankle. As soon as he was secured to the wooden construct, she leaped away nimbly and shouted, “There! Now you are trapped! You wanted to see our ropes... and now you have!”
“Uh huh,” he said. Strangely enough, only a small sting of annoyance marred his curiosity about these people and their ways.
While the women congratulated one another, the men in the camp smiled with relief, but they did not rise or come near the hunters.
“So you’re going to sacrifice me to some demon, are you?” said Zach.
“That’s right,” said Amiza, smiling wickedly.
“Well, we’ve probably got some time to spare. Might as well give me some food. I’m starving, and wouldn’t make much of a meal for a monster.”
“Very well. Our village is strong. Even our prisoners eat well!” Amiza snapped her fingers to a bent-backed male who scurried into a hut and returned with a bowl of some mashed grains and a jug full of liquid.
“Let me have a drink first,” said Zach. “I’m a king and I’ve developed a royal thirst.”
The male seemed too terrified to approach the prisoner, so a huntress snatched the thing from him and held it near Zach’s face. The male whispered something to Amiza, who chuckled harshly and patted the male on his head, then pushed him away. Zach tasted the stuff and his tongue and throat burned. He strained against the instinct to sputter and cough, though it felt like a live grenade was slowly going off in his chest.
“There you go!” said Amiza, laughing. “Did you think you were going to get cool, clear spring water? Too bad for you!”
“You call that alcohol?” said Zach, his face melting with numbness. “Tasted like water to me. Give me some more.”
The ladies of the hunt laughed at him and extended the jug once more. Zach chugged the stuff and, as his throat bobbed up and down without rest, the laughter died and Amiza’s smile ghosted away. Zach finished the stuff off, his belly an inferno and chest hemorrhaging warmly. Amiza’s people used this concoction only in their most dangerous ceremonies; only the strongest shamans could handle a single sip and come back from the Dream World with their spirit still attached. The original idea was that the prisoner would take one sip and pass out, waiting for the time of his sacrifice without a lot of fuss and worry. They had no idea that Zach had been training for this moment his entire life.
“Fine stuff!” he said, his voice completely changed. He strained at his bonds. He strained in vain against the unbreakable ropes - but the wooden structure tore apart at all its seams and fell around him. He stalked away from the group, dragging the clattering mess behind him. A hunter with a club leaped behind him and smacked the thing against the back of his head. He felt nothing.
While the ladies of the hunt looked at one another in confusion, Zach stomped about the village and the men ran from him. A pack of chickens stood and stared at him. Terrified of their ability to teleport and cast tracers of light with their burning feathers, Zach lashed out at them with kicks and screamed, “What are these things?!” Zach soon forgot the horrifying creatures, then continued on through a shower of feathers with one chicken still hung up in his train of ropes and clattering wood.
“This guy right here!” Zach shouted, pointing at a shaman. “This is the guy I want to see!” The old man shook his head in panic and Zach sat beside him. “Tell me about your medicine,” he said. “Your ceremonies, and uh, wait, do you read weather signs? Huh?”
The hunters gathered around with weapons raised while the shaman looked at them pleadingly.
“Come with us!” hissed Amiza.
“Go away!” said Zach. “He doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s busy!”
“I meant you, idiot, not him! Now get up and come with us!”
“No! He’s busy telling me about your ways. Your culture!” Zach shrieked into the man’s face, “Don’t go with them!”
“If you come with us,” Amiza said through clenched teeth, “then we will give you food and rest. I promise.”
Zach turned away from the hunters, muttered savagely, and rose by putting a hand on the diminutive shaman and nearly throwing them both to the ground. He dragged his mess of wood and flapping chicken toward a hut.
“We have to stop him,” one hunter whispered as Zach disappeared into the hut. “Amiza, he is crazy. We have to knock him out!”
There was a terrible racket and they saw Zach tearing through the rear of the hut. “I can’t get this back door open!” he shouted, forcing his way through the single-entrance home. A family still inside screamed as Zach dragged his mess through, got hung up on something or someone, and pulled with superhuman strength until the entire hut fell on its side, arms and legs poking out. The others watched in amazement as he dragged the thing behind him.
Amiza whirled on the old shaman. “Mix up a strong medicine to knock him out... or you become target practice!”
“Uh... uh...” said the old man, swallowing his panic. Ever since Amiza had taken over, he had gotten used to telling her anything she wanted to hear
. Her wrath hung over his head, and his confidence in his ability to argue was long since gone. He pointed all around and said, “Cloud signs... stars not in alignment... he is crazy, I can do nothing!” He rolled some chicken bones on the ground, then pointed at them with tears streaming down his face. “See? See?!”
“Amiza!” cried a hunter. “Look!”
At that moment, Zach walked over the side of a cliff and disappeared. The hunters ran to the edge, fearing that their sacrifice was dead.
The collapsed hut teetered over the edge of the cliff. Zach hung below, snoring loudly, body bent in reverse-fetal position as the ropes held him up.
“He is not worth keeping around to sacrifice to a forest god,” said Amiza. “This man, he is an asshole.”
* * *
Zach hurried through the forest at night. He had made good his escape, but he was afraid of the hunters.
He had no idea how long he had stayed with the hunting matriarchs. After he pulled through the tortuous hangover, he had grown violently feverish. Time, faces, locations, none had meaning. He had nightmares of such awful immediacy that he would have chosen suicide if only he could have broken his paralysis. Tucked in between those visions were rich dreams of life-changing portent that he later forgot upon waking.
He was to be sacrificed to a demon in order to spare one of the village’s worthless men, but by some stroke of luck the demon had been late in arriving. For days he rested, healed, plotted - then bolted. But he was not so proud of the means he had used to escape, so he ran as if the hunters were directly behind him.
He burst into a clearing and nearly ran into a woman sitting there. He stopped and scampered back, then realized she was not one of the hunters. The dark-haired woman was sitting on a log with her back to him, and wore a hole-ridden, filthy draping. Zach eyed her suspiciously.
As the woman slowly turned to him, he saw that her shoulders were covered in scores of tiny scars. Her profile revealed a hideous overbite and inhuman black eyes. Horrified, he realized that she was the very same flesh demon who had led the ghouls that attacked the mine. He balled up his fists and swore he would have his revenge against her.
Then Bilatzailea smiled at him. He caught a whiff of some indescribable perfume and his mind changed gears immediately. He was overwhelmed by the realization that she was beautiful, a goddess who had come to earth to grace him with her presence. He was filled with wonder, with joy, as all conscious thought was drowned out by her beauty.
Bilatzailea never tired of her pheromonal charm. She was an old succubus - perhaps even the oldest - and with the power that had come to her in old age, she was able to shatter the strength of any man. It was a wonder for her to see any man’s character, or his sense of dignity, or his “resolve”, all fall apart like a house of cards. To her, the mind and its illusions of self-sovereignty were vastly inferior to the demands of the body, which was easily controlled.
Zach stood before her stupidly. She wondered if, after she drained him, it might be fun to convince him to strangle himself, or even gouge out his own eyes. Or perhaps he would chew off his own tongue before passing it to her in a delicate kiss?
“I was there when your brother died, holed up in an insane asylum,” she said.
“My… brother?” Zach mumbled.
“In a manner of speaking, yes, I was. And he died as he lived, O great king.”
“He… did? How?”
“Screaming for mercy.”
An arrow flew from the dark and skewered her chest below the left breast. She felt pain, but no organs of any importance were damaged.
In a split second she switched off her pheromonal discharge and flooded her system with battle hormones. Zach dropped to the floor, a puppet with its strings cut. Bilatzailea’s muscles were engorged by quick-flowing blood, and her lips pulled back from fangs. She flew toward the source of the arrow. A dozen more arrows whipped through foliage, ran through her arms, thighs, through eyeballs and into brains. She faltered and crashed into a tree, then heard bowstrings pulled taut once more. As she rose, still more arrows flew and impaled her arms and the side of her head against the tree. With one good eye she saw an artery along her neck open like a floodgate, bathing the side of the tree in steaming gore.
Then she smelled it, a reeking stench that was disgusting and intolerable to her.
The smell of human bitches.
* * *
Zach woke with a start. In the light of the pale moon he saw the painted hunters crouching over him.
“Not you again,” he groaned. “Going to take me back as a sacrifice for your patron demon?”
“Ah,” said Amiza. “But you’ve complicated things.”
Amiza gestured. Zach looked and saw that the grotesque succubus was run through with arrows. The twisted carcass was nailed to a tree, still dripping blood. Zach was confused. The creature vaguely resembled the beautiful woman in his dream. He began to wonder if the dream had not been a dream at all.
Amiza grasped Zach’s arm and hauled him to his feet. He looked about and saw at least one hundred female hunters, either standing guard in the clearing or moving about quietly in the darkness beyond. “I’ve complicated things?” said Zach. “What did I do this time?”
“We were going to bring you back for our sacrifice. But the creature that we sacrifice to... we ended up killing it, as you can see. Who would have thought that it was mortal? It’s been alive for as long as our people have existed.”
“Why’d you go and do that? I happened to run into it anyway. Why not just let it have its way with me, and then return home?”
“That’s what we would have done if this silly girl hadn’t tried to save your hide.” Amiza nodded to a young girl who stood near Zach. She was smaller than Amiza, and had a genuine smile under her black paint. Despite her diminutive stature, her shoulders were broad and she carried a bow as long as any he’d ever seen. Zach remembered her all too well.
“Oh,” said Zach. “I see.”
“Maena says that she has fallen in love with you. That is why she let you escape.”
“F-fell in love with me?!” Zach shouted, then backed away. The women jerked their bow-strings taut and glared at him. Zach froze. “Th-that’s fine, because, uh, I’m totally in l-love with, uh… what did you say her name was?”
“Love, no love, what does it matter?” said Amiza. “You have gotten silly Maena pregnant. Your blood is now our blood. You are one of us.”
“I’ve… uh… pregnant?! How can you possibly tell that? This only happened a few days ago!”
“We have our ways. Things like that will no longer be a mystery to you, either, once we have taught you our ways.”
“But I can’t go live with you! I’ve got to get back to my people. I’ve already told you that. My people need me. They’re in a desperate war against monsters and they need every hand they can get. And my friend is with them, too. He doesn’t hide from monsters or feed them, not like you do, so I’m not going to abandon him.”
Amiza exchanged a quick look with some of the other hunters. Zach was not entirely sure what the look meant. “But, you have already chosen to become one of us,” said Amiza. “Why else did you seduce Maena with sweet words, if not to avoid death? You will come back with us. You have already told us about your village full of men. It sounds like it is of little worth. This life that we offer you is more proper than living in a place that is already fated for destruction.”
Zach knew they were at an impasse. He looked at Maena. He did not dislike her, but she seemed like a bit of a simpleton. When she’d tended to him while he was sick, she’d been fascinated by him; even the simplest phrases seemed outlandish and exotic to her. He didn’t like the idea of being forced into a marriage among primitives. Not that he really believed that Maena was pregnant; how they could even assume such a thing seemed absurd to him.
On the other hand, her people were noteworthy. He studied the archers. Every one of them looked fiercely determined, not to mention their
physical strength and excellent bows. It was a shame that they were not already allied with the people at the fort.
The wheels in his head began to turn.
Zach nodded and sighed in resignation. “Oh, you’re right, I suppose. We probably should go back to your village. The fort is full of men – real men, you understand, not boys like in your village - and they would probably make short work of you and your friends. They’re a hard lot, and they tend to focus on fighting ghouls and flesh demons. Which, as I’m sure you know, is men’s work.”
“Ha!” Amiza shouted. “The ghouls fear us for good reason, and it’s only our spineless men who are hunted by demons. We can handle ourselves against any man. I say, show us this fort. In time, we’ll show the men there how life in this valley is supposed to be lived.”
“Very well,” said Zach. “If you say so, then it will be so.”
As they set off for the fort, Zach felt pleased with himself. He had gotten allies for the fort, and a tribal girlfriend for himself!
“See, Maena?” whispered Amiza. “I told you we could get him to show us this village that is full of men. Ask a man how high he can jump, and he’ll say, ‘How high do you want me to jump, dear?’ ”
“You are so right, mother!” said Maena. “We are finally free of those broken eunuchs back home. Not to mention that I have made you a grandmother as well!”
* * *
They trekked through the forest all that night and into the next day. Maena kept close watch over her new husband, who was now painted in gray and black like the others. During their journey, Amiza often scouted ahead of the others and returned with animals run through with her arrows, which she passed on to others who threw them over their shoulders.
Demonworld Book 5: Lords of the Black Valley (Demonworld series) Page 26