Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1)

by Thomas Head

  He leaned forward and, holding Bunn’s hand, kissed the woman on the forehead.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  The barmaid watched them, happily, as he kissed Bunn. It seemed to enliven her night. The woman winked at Bunn.

  She brought them a small cask of brandy.

  Bunn smiled, shaking her head.

  _______________

  When the drinking was done, Cullfor rose and playfully gathered Bunn by the waist. In each other’s arms they nudged past the lingering crowds, kissing. Joined at the hands and mouth, they passed down a narrow hall under a few low beams, still clutching as they almost fell but rose again. He was pulling on her cloaks, and she was helping him until she was naked above the waist, writhing their mouths into each other’s necks while they paused near another of the serving maids, who gave him a candle. He thanked her with a kiss, then kissed Bunn. He kissed her again, and she tore at him lovingly. She curled around him and released him to kiss him elsewhere. She clung to him down a second another hall, awashing it in a cacophony of moans to underscore the rush and bang others making love behind the doors. Her neck was scarlet as her chest, and she offered it to him while they paused at the door. For all the dank lamplight and beery vision, Cullfor made efficient work of lifting her pale, welcoming body into an arched enclave. It was just a confessional of a room, really, but a happy space. It was warm. He placed the candle in a small food closet opposite a cold roast turkey. There were also three loaves of fried sweetbreads and a cask of beer. As Cullfor slithered down onto her, he smiled without opening his wolfish mouth while she curled around him. Drawing him in atop thick pillows and clean quilts, she reached down and guided him into her while he chewed lightly on her eyebrow.

  She grabbed his face and kissed it.

  And for the next hour he felt so wonderful he could swear at times he was leaving his body and had to suck on her chin and chest and earlobes to keep from floating away.

  _______________

  The room’s window was small.

  Cullfor, sweaty and depleted, and smiling, was staring into the blackening sky over the moon outside.

  A hundred feet away, a witch was in flames. Her hair and her back and her legs engulfed. He could hear popping and sizzling over the grizzly screams. Guards in finery and shoulder-armor looked at her screaming form as if it were merely an unusual animal. Some interesting fold in the landscape.

  Bunn was snoring behind him.

  A section of the horde was still gathering while others were beginning to leave into the forest roads. They went gliding silently into the woods, the rest of them gathering near the captain of them.

  The witch screamed her last breath.

  The captain simply stood before her slumped form a long moment.

  The corpse rolled to the right, reddening to black and drawing into a cat-like pose.

  The captain looked up at him, and it raised Cullfor’s brow to see that face. The man was a leper. His snarl was permanent. The exposed teeth were cruelly perfect. He reminded Cullfor of an angel that had angered God. But even from down there, a primitive malfeasance seemed to overcome the man as he looked at Cullfor.

  Cullfor curled his lip, backing the man up a step.

  His single, milky eye returned to the corpse that dripped flesh before him.

  Chapter 91

  “Between beer and women, too stupefied to move, there pray my enemies find me.”

  —Uncle Fie, misquoting a dwarven phrase

  _______________

  Cullfor’s eyelids had felt like they weighed ten pounds. But after only an hour’s sleep, there was no hope continuing his slumber.

  He forced down a sweet piece of bread, almost choking on the surprising flavor of some sweet spice from the East. For a moment, catching his breath, he thought Bunn woke up on the bed beside him.

  She was glistening and naked, grabbing food with shut eyes and tearing at it, shoving fistfuls into her mouth.

  All while asleep.

  Cullfor had never seen anything quite like it. Grunts issued with the labor and passion of her chewing. Crumbs popped from her mouth with her breath as if jumping for their lives. He grinned. Nibbling on the sweetbread, he realized found gluttony in women endearing, fascinating; he wanted to wake her and watch her eat, but it was the nature of that want that made him smile even wider.

  He broke from his humored wonder long enough to wrest another sweetbread from her subliminal tussle.

  “I believe I’ll go for a bath,” he said, patting her tummy.

  She waved him off, nodding and chewing.

  He woke her up with a little soft pinch.

  “I’m going to get a bath.”

  She looked down at the crumbs on her lips and breasts, and she grinned. He grinned too, following the bread trail along a single blue vein, which traced under her gorgeous topography like a small hypodermic stream.

  Once more, she waved him off, nodding and chewing.

  He breathed her in another moment.

  Oh, hell’s depths, he loved her.

  Chapter 92

  “Madness serves some men well. I, for one, would not do battle without it.”

  —attributed to Ivorlas Finn

  _______________

  When Cullfor emerged into the crisp, midnight air, he paused. The temperature was wonderful, cool and perfect. A filtered glow shone from the windows of the pub. There was a nest of smaller noises mousing out of the brickwork and thatch now, some snoring, and a little bickering.

  Below his booted feet was a nicely hewn stone walk. The narrow lane wound into the thin darkness, disappearing into the witch’s death-smoke. As he walked into it, the trail kept to the edge of town, winding downward, creekward, until it met the water and a cobble-sided building that straddled the banks. There was a low cutaway door near the center. It hovered like a window, less than a foot over the surface. It was the bathhouse.

  He neared it, walking to a pair of small changing-shacks. There were bolts of wool on shelves and hooks for your clothes.

  Cullfor waded out toward bathhouse, then paused. Screams were rising here and there throughout town. People were emerging from everywhere.

  “For your lives!” he heard some distant voice yell.

  He stared while forms scurried in the dark streets, then growled a low symphony of curses as, around him, the darkened town became alive with motion. He looked downriver a bit. Frozen, five warriors stared back. There were foreign… kilted. Their eyes were sullen and deep with something in them that calculated him as more than a danger.

  They were just standing there.

  Cullfor breathed, shaking his head.

  Then fear hoisted them in stupid ways. They were just runners, lacking any weapon but their fists. And yet they came, hobbling like made along the bank, squalling.

  With each step closer, they glanced at each other. He could feel the ancient blackness of their fear. They were upland rangers, if he judged correctly, which meant they posses more pride than logic. He backed up into the massive timbers that crowned the bathhouse, tracing the streams edge.

  For another moment, he ran, until the darkness surrounded him.

  Then he halted, the warriors coming still.

  Cullfor pulled his cape around him and ducked into the undergrowth. The first warrior tripped over him. Then the man stood, confused. He was shockingly young. Cullfor whispered the lie that he was sorry. He rose and brought his dirk into that young, panting chest.

  The young man sat. Cullfor yanked it out then ripped him across the throat.

  The boy rocked back and forth, rubbing his head as the others caught up. And they saw their friend, a young dog who had come to believe he was a wolf. He was waving to them. Looking past them at Cullfor, who retreated further into the forest. They could see the doleful pleas looming inside his head, but the sounds were frozen in an excruciating replay of a snake hissing. They shook their heads no. This was not supposed happen.

  In shock or fear, they just c
ontinued to stare.

  Cullfor frowned. It was never a good thing, the death-rocking. He was snoring with in the blood in his chest, slumping slowly, nearly motionless.

  Another group of runners emerged from the brambles near him. An understanding descended on Cullfor: that this town was minutes away from being fully seized.

  The second group charged, roaring.

  Cullfor rolled around on his heel and jabbed the first of them on the neck. With surprising strength, the man fought back. Rattling at the others to run, he grabbed Cullfor by the face, putting the pummel of his sword in his eye. Together, they rolled into the water. Cullfor stabbed the man in the back, then ripped the blade in a deep awkward gouge through his liver. The man’s body seized and fell away. It was jerking as it rolled with the slow current.

  He rose, grabbing the sword.

  Before Cullfor could turn, another man came with his sword raised. As Cullfor ducked, he planted his foot and swiped with his new sword across the man’s stomach. The move was off and weak, and far too slow. The man’s blade came down on top of him. As he fell backwards into the water, Cullfor’s lips were curled in pain. A pain he was surprised to feel. He scrambled to stand. The man was grabbing at his own stomach. Cullfor turned, tackling the last man. As they dropped, he stabbed backwards, severing the man’s spine before he turned and grabbed the gutted man once again. He gripped his hair, shoving him into the water. Cullfor looked around, grunting. Holding the man’s face underwater, he saw an army out there in the forest. Thousands of them were gathering. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that some were only a couple hundred yards away.

  The man under his hand shook terribly, undulating as he grabbed his wrist and tried to snap it. Cullfor growled as the body flopped and rolled, fish-rolling like mad. When it finally ceased, he stepped out of the water.

  Then he halted again, and winced.

  Bunn was running toward the bathhouse, running to find him.

  Damn but he loved her.

  A certain brunt of the army was making its way out of the forest toward her. Several had spotted her and while dread danced in his brain, he ran to her.

  Bunn screamed, then disappeared into the bathhouse. The steam from the river hung in the air, unholy in the glow of a sudden fire at the pub.

  He ran to her until a pair of warriors merged from the other side of the building. He kept running. As he barreled sideways into the warriors, one of their shoulders felt like a stone mashing into his sternum. His shins slammed into the face of the other. They rolled nearly to the water. Cullfor slashed wildly. He missed the first man, but recoiled quickly. Stabbing the second man in the jaw, he saw the first man had jumped away. Still rolling, Cullfor stumbled. The massive army was emerging now from the black of the woods. The horde seemed to heave a moment, then the great mass rushed toward him. Livestock scattering and crushed before them, the crazed noise of it all was pulsating and flooding over the town.

  The second man retreated.

  Then Bunn emerged, frozen in the odd pose of shock, her eyebrows raised, her hands over her lips. He grabbed her hand. Both of them panting, they skirted nimbly, impossibly fast, through the forest behind the bathhouse.

  Suddenly they were in another section of town, in its thickening streets and alleys.

  Tromping nearly naked, more runners were coming, yelling out loud to guide the horde of warriors behind them.

  Bunn was utterly encased in panic, which was good. He had no idea she could run so fast.

  Yet a pair of runners was closing in.

  More and more men were gathering in from the second arm of the horde, veering toward them from the pastureland north of town. Shocked at the size of the army, he squeezed her wrist and led her from the edge of the town into a thick brake of maple on a hill. Retreating as best they could through the trees, the runners were coming yet. And they were gaining on them.

  He halted.

  She tumbled and turned to him.

  “Run, wife!”

  Bunn grabbed him, kissing him. “No. God no. If you don’t come, you know I’ll die with you.”

  Cullfor stood, watching the warriors of Delmark run toward him. He thought of how watching her die would be like sitting still amid the gathering of a million evils. He wouldn’t bear that, couldn’t.

  He roared silently and shook his head, then tore with her into a swimmy and complete blackness.

  They were partly disappearing, but the others had been in the woods all night. Their eyes were adjusted, or would adjust in a minute. Without words, he and Bunn ran alongside a narrow black path with little forks that careened from it into creek beds or deer trails, winding between encroaching roots. Soon they were going up a hill. Then edging along its slope. Then suddenly they stood amid impossible terrain, wondering how they had even emerged so deeply into the thick brush. They could scarcely move without stumbling. Despite a sensation of complete ruin, he found it almost laughable when he halted, huffing and spent, atop briar-filled hill.

  The Dellish had halted.

  He could see them through the greening trees below. Most were gathering back into town.

  The lofty hill dipped again behind him. He turned and watched Bunn struggling for purchase down a rooty and vine-carpeted hill.

  “They’ve stopped,” he said with some gallows satisfaction.

  Bunn rushed upward and yanked him down toward her. He was too weak to resist. The shove sent him sliding into her, and together they collapsed and tumbled into unseen black brambles at the bottom. The vines seemed to grab at them. Graceless and jerky thrashing ensnared them both. They struggled there for a moment, stuck.

  He had dropped the sword and had to bend down threw thorns to pick it up.

  “Blister my nipples,” Bunn said. “What a mess.”

  Cullfor shook his head a bit, unable to comprehend what, precisely, he found so humorous.

  “Blister your nipples,” he said, laughing, and together they began running through briars as woven and chaotic as a drunkard’s tale.

  _______________

  They slowed now, progressing past the thick brambles under a large tree to a shelf of stone that looked like a sideways dog mouth. He immediately got the strangest sense that this was a place that should not be: while unseen movement scuttled everywhere out in the blackness of the wood, Cullfor stared at a pile of bones. A stone likeness of a saint was carved into the little stone wall. Skulls arced away in a great sweep on the very ground, half-buried and mostly busted. There were thighs. Ribs. Dirt. He felt criminally aware of being in this holy place, this Altar of Alone, which seemed dropped down into the thicket as if it had fallen out of the talons of a bird that was trying to move it.

  He turned at the sudden noise of rain in the trees. He turned back to the little tombstone altar to find Bunn’s feet appearing before him. Then her face dropped to floor in front of his feet. She kissed the stony dirt, drank from a muddy little hole in the ground, and looked up at him.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “Solitude,” he said. “The Bottomless Puddle.”

  She said, “We’ve found Solitude in the middle of an army.” She stood, smiling at him. “Well, you’re right at home then—my beautiful, you do seem to love a good round bottom.”

  “Damn.”

  Chapter 93

  “Thank God we are slower than trees to learn. Folly? Yes! Folly is wonder and beauty and awe; to see all the world in a smile, this is folly.”

  —Lord Uncle Fie Wyrmkiller.

  _______________

  Far too soon, Bunn and Cullfor found themselves back under the spell of reality.

  They were sore and muddy, and surrounded by a vast army. They each held each other as if they could fade noiselessly into the other, but as Cullfor held her, he looked past a busted pig pen, back downhill.

  The camps were enormous, and they were scattered everywhere. Every window was flickering with light. He patted her buttock.

  A good round bottom.

 
; Rains were gathering and starting to dampen the thick countryside as they walked. It was noisy weather, too boisterous to worry about the sound of their footfalls as they trotted tree to tree into the greening brambles.

  _______________

  They passed several cottages, thrumming with the drunken noise of warriors. They slunk through a small patch of forest, but the little borough expanded again. A road from the east met with the toll houses at the northern edges of town.

  They halted at the edge of the forest, looking at the towers into town. They were high fortresses of wood with a series of double gates.

  The rain halted, and as they stood in the wet and moonless wood, hey could feel of the wet forest floor through their boots.

  Approaching the drunken laughter of soldiers, they spotted yet another gathering of warriors. He and Bunnd crawled backwards a step, then slunk, very slowly, deeper into the hollow. Further away, they stood and slunk back up the ravine to the opposite slope. Crooked trees jutted across their path. They would be hard to see, but not impossible. They pulled themselves along a fallen tree, the bark staining their hands like soggy parchment as they edged alongside it toward the road. He held the sword close so that the glint of steel would not catch in the faint light of distant fires

  There were a dozen or so men coming to join the others, talking lower than the rest. They were more halted than the others. They looked around often.

  Through the better part of the night, he and she waited there, breathless and dripping from the intermittent fall of rain.

  The night was no small eternity, being so still, and being so very well surrounded and cold. But at the far end of the night, the men began to sit or leave. Some just got up to play dice, while others pulled their supplies in brown fiber packs beside them and slept.