Pomp easily zips an arrow into his neck, and he is instantly laughing and dancing like a scarecrow in a tempest, completely unable to stop himself from looking like a fool.
The column stops to stare at the dancing fool long enough that the stationary torches catch the overhead leaves on fire, sending small wisps of flame up into the trees.
“He is possessed!” yells one of the mob.
“The Serb’s magic has driven him mad!” exclaims another.
Then, when someone in the back sees flames in the trees: “The Serbian wizard casts fire down from the sky!”
A few in the back flee down the mountain. The bulk of the mob pushes on, shoving each other into the clearing where a few strong men tackle the dancing idiot and tie him up with ropes. The fool continues to try to dance within the ropes, loudly singing a bawdy song, until someone stuffs a rag in his mouth.
“I had hoped to hang the Serb with that rope,” says one. “Now I’ll have to strangle him with my bare hands.”
“Me first!” comes a chorus of shouts.
The remainder of the mob, heads for the stronghold door.
“This really is not working,” Pomp says.
She shoots the one closest to the door, who turns to embrace and kiss the man behind him. His love is requited with a fist to the mouth, a knockout punch that sends him to the floor.
“Huh!” says another. “Who thought Gerderink had such a brittle jaw?”
“Who cares?” is the response, followed by several shouts of “Kill the Serb!” and a mass rush to the door. They don’t bother using the door handle, preferring entry by axes.
“No, no, no!” Pomp says. “I need to save these arrows to fight Mowler.” With that realization, she goes to the top of the trees and quickly fashions several crude arrows out of sharp, relatively straight sticks. Inaccurate, but they will have to do.
By the time she is finished, the mob has broken through the splintered door. They enter, then several immediately barrel back out, clawing their way through the opposing human traffic with cries of “Ghost!”
Pomp hopes that the introduction of the undead to the living might be sufficient incentive for the mob to break and run, but more people are rushing into the castle than are rushing out. She estimates that some three dozen strongmen are ascending the staircase, any one of them capable of killing the old Serb with little effort.
She flies at full speed up through the canopy of leaves. The tower is punctuated with lanceolate windows all the way around the circumference, high above the floor of the chamber. Pomp looks for the trapdoor from the air then, after locating it, she stands on the bottom of the window opening opposite the trapdoor. She nocks one of her arrows and waits.
The Serb—the one called Porchenskivik—kneels by the trapdoor, head bowed, his whole hand grasping the end of his stump, in the aspect of prayer. Pomp notes that Porchenskivik has piled all furnishings and books into a mound in the center of the room and interspersed sticks and kindling throughout, as if he was planning to burn it all in a bonfire. Candles are lit throughout the room. Pomp isn’t sure what to make of all this, though she has an uneasy feeling about it.
Her uneasy feeling is compounded by a banging that thumps up from the underside of the trapdoor. This noise, along with the sound of muffled arguing and yelling, heralds the arrival of the mob at the top of the stairs.
“’Twas a ghost, I tell you!”
“’Twas not, you idiot!”
“I saw it . . .”
“And I felt it!”
“I’ll give you something to feel!”
“No, you imbecile, not on the stairs.”
“I . . . aaah!”
“Aaah!” the voice fades away, down the shaft.
“Good riddance, says I.”
“Now he’ll really be seeing ghosts.”
“Haw, he’ll just have to look in a mirror.”
“But I saw it, too.”
“Shut up, you, or you’ll go down, too.”
The trap door bucks but doesn’t give. It’s secured by a large timber held to the floor by iron rungs. The mob, having to hack above their heads while keeping their balance so as to avoid tumbling over into the stairwell shaft, would take hours to break through.
Porchenskivik, breaking his prayerful pose, slowly slides the timber out of its rungs, as if to open the trap door.
“No!” shouts Pomp, allowing herself to become visible so that he can see her. He pauses, looking straight up at her.
“Well, hello, my little friend. You’re back.”
“Don’t open that trapdoor!” she says. “They’ll kill you! And you’ll be sent straightway to Hell. I’ve seen it. You don’t want to go there. I can’t stop all those people. They’ll kill you! Oh, please don’t open that trap door!”
Porchenskivik smiles, his eyes calm and reassuring. “Don’t worry, little friend. It will be okay.”
He slides the bolt away from the trap door.
“No!” Pomp screams.
She can hardly see from the tears in her eyes, but she shoots an arrow blindly at the opening trap door, then another, and another. The first two elicit a simple “ouch!”—the third a scream of agony.
“Aaah! My eye! Aaah!”
Pomp sees through her tears that she has hit the first man, whose head and arms have cleared the floor, directly in the eye.
Porchenskivik reaches down, plucks out the makeshift arrow, then holds his hand to cover the eye, his ghost hand holding the necklace.
The injured man who had been frantic just a moment before relaxes, slowly turns his head toward Porchenskivik, and looks at him as if Porchenskivik’s healing hand—for the man’s eye had been instantly healed—held the secrets of the universe within its palm. A look of admiration, of awe, and of understanding washes over the man’s face. His body relaxes as hate gives way to peace. Porchenskivik looks down at him and smiles gently, running his hand over the man’s head like a mother does a sick child’s.
“No!” Pomp screams again as the rest of the mob pull back the healed man, who cannot take his eyes off his benefactor, and trample over him to get to the object of their derision.
Porchenskivik never stops smiling. He is as calm as a gently rolling brook on a clear summer day in the country.
And they are upon him.
They pummel his smile into a bloody mash, then tie him up with what rope they have left after tying up the dancing madman in the courtyard. Porchenskivik offers no resistance as they fashion a noose and throw it around his neck. They search for rafters, a hook, a sconce—anything on which to hang him. Finding none, they strap him to the pile of furniture, books, and sticks in the center of the room and light it on fire.
He lays still and allows the flames to lick his body, flinching only when the searing heat becomes too much for any man to bear. His murderers keep him in the middle of the fire, using their pitchforks to prevent him from rolling off.
Pomp, in desperation, flies down and tries to pull fuel from the fire, but her efforts are in vain. It’s too late. She flees from the scene. The dying cries of Porchenskivik echo in her head as she flies out the window. The mob, as if pouring their sound into Porchenskivik’s death throes, has grown silent.
Pomp flies through the trees toward Szentendre, where she last left Heraclix. She will join with him and avenge all those who have died by Mowler’s hand. The fire blazing all around her gives her purpose. She will be to Mowler as the fire is to the Serb. The flaming trees don’t hear the faint sounds of the dying man—they know nothing of the fate that awaits him in the afterlife, and they do not care.
CHAPTER 15
One moment, Heraclix was immersed in his surroundings, soothed by the breeze-driven susurrus of the barley fields through which he waded, mesmerized by the golden waves under the blue sky; the next, a sharp cry snapped him out of his reverie. Comfort fled, and he, as an almost automatic reaction, ran toward the source of the interruption. A flock of white birds, flushed from his movements
, rose up in a column just ahead of him, like a feathered geyser.
Barley parted like water before him as his muscular form carved through the fields. But even the hissing and popping of the grass as he passed couldn’t conceal the grating of saber blades being slid out of their scabbards. He turned his head to look back over his shoulder and spied a pair of saber points bobbing up and down through the grass. The hunt, it seemed, was already on, like it or not.
The screams—clearly from women—grew louder, and more adamant with each step he took. His pace increased into a full run. He charged forward and broke into a clearing, heads of barley exploding all around him then raining down onto the road on which he suddenly found himself sprinting.
Ahead was a tangle of bodies on the road, above which stood a tall Cossack wielding a riding crop. To the right of the people was a small caravan of three brightly decorated, horse-drawn wagons, painted to attract customers. A man lay on the ground, each limb held down by the dirty hands of a grubby Cossack. The body of another victim lay partially-concealed in the grass, bloodied legs out on the road as if the man had tried and failed to leave the road before being cut down by the Russians.
The men on the ground, living and dead, were dark-bronze-skinned with black, curly hair and thin, pointed beards—both likely Turks, Heraclix thought. The dead man bore a matrix of whip-scars along his back, still bleeding into the dirt and barley. The living was about to gain some scars of his own, though he struggled mightily to be free, lithe muscles straining against his captors. But the more he bucked, the harder they pressed his wrists and ankles to the ground.
The lash of the riding crop, followed by the screams and whimpers of the captive Turk elicited, again, the women’s cries, though Heraclix hadn’t seen the women on the road. Perhaps they were in the wagons. After all, two men could not steer three wagons, and, from somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that Turkish culture wouldn’t allow a woman to ride as anything but a passenger. Still, there must be another man somewhere, unless he was fled or hidden in the deep grass.
Seeing the tall Cossack’s hand raising the threatening riding crop, Heraclix closed the distance between himself and the tormentor. The golem’s left hand twitched and pumped almost uncontrollably, anticipating the throat of its victim. The Cossack was so engrossed in the torture of the Turk, who now sobbed under the weighty sting of the skin-stripped wounds on his back, that he was completely oblivious to Heraclix’s bounding approach until a split-second after the giant made his final pounce.
A loud crack signified the dissolution of the man’s ribs as Heraclix tackled him with a shoulder to the Cossack’s side. The Russian yelped, then struggled for breath. Heraclix forced the left hand away from the man’s throat, down to the Cossack’s wrist. The grip was like steel. The wrist was not. After the man’s wrist bones shattered, he fainted, hanging limp like a rag doll from Heraclix’s grasp.
It was over in an instant.
The next moment, bedlam broke loose.
Three of the four Cossacks who had been holding the Turk to the ground drew sabers and attacked the giant. It became immediately apparent that these were not mere conscripted soldiers, but accomplished swordsmen, veterans of battle. Their blades arced through the air in a deadly whirlwind. Their swords seemed to be an extension of the men themselves. They danced, sabers and men, around and toward Heraclix, inviting him into what would be, for most men, a courtship of death.
But they didn’t know that he had already entered that relationship and ended it once, maybe twice. Another pair of screams, one from the road behind him and another from beyond the wagons to his right, convinced him that it was time for hosts and guests to reverse roles.
It was a short-lived courtesy. Heraclix threw the unconscious Cossack, by the arm, at two of his attackers, knocking one to the ground and causing the other to take a slice out of what Heraclix presumed was their commander.
The third lunged for Heraclix, hacking at his outstretched arm. Much to the man’s shock, the blade bounced off. Heraclix grabbed the blade and snapped it at the hilt. The wielder backed away, stumbling over the fourth Cossack, who had been kneeling on the Turk’s shoulders to keep him on the ground.
This allowed the Turk to come free. He elbowed his erstwhile captor in the throat, causing the Russian to claw at his own windpipe in an effort to breathe. He did not. He slumped to his knees then sprawled on his stomach, twitching. The others fled off into the grass.
Heraclix turned around to find the source of the screaming behind him. There were two more Cossacks, no doubt the ones who were hunting him through the barley fields earlier. But they had a third person with them, namely a young Turk of perhaps sixteen years, who clung to the back of one of the men, one arm hooked around the man’s neck. The other arm rose and fell rapidly, repeatedly plunging a curved Ottoman dagger in and out of the man’s back and shoulder. This, then, was one of the sources of screaming, the man screaming in agony, the youth screaming a battle cry.
The Cossack’s companion swung his saber, hoping to hack the youth off of his comrade’s back but, instead, slashed his friend’s bowels open. Realizing what he had just done, he ran off down the road, then into the grass, leaving the other man to die there on the road.
Heraclix looked down to where the Turk had been, but he was gone. Another scream rang out from behind the wagons, so Heraclix ran between them to the other side to render what aid he might.
As he cleared the wagons, he saw the half-naked Turk taking a young woman into his arms, or, rather, his arm. The other arm held a saber, taken, no doubt, from the Cossack he had killed. The bloodied saber, along with a pair of dead, de-pantsed Cossacks, gave evidence to the fact that the Russians were after more than mere plunder. The girl’s torn dress, along with the similarly torn dress of her mother, who angrily pounded the dead bodies with her fists, provided further evidence of the Cossacks’ ill intent.
“You are safe now,” the Turk reassured the girl.
“You are safe now!” a voice called out from down the road.
The boy who had ridden and stabbed the back of the Cossack rounded the corner, the bloodied dagger still in his hand. He was panting from the fight.
“You are safe!” he said, exultantly. Then, seeing the couple in each other’s arms, his countenance fell, along with the dagger, which dropped from his grasp.
“You have done well, Al’ghul,” the Turkoman said to the boy. “You have killed half a man in defense of Fuskana here,” he looked into the girl’s eyes and smiled. “I have killed three. You are catching up!” Al’ghul disappeared, skulking off to the other side of the caravan.
A trio of elderly men emerged from the wagons, two of them tottering over to pull the older woman away from the body she was desecrating. The third walked briskly toward Heraclix, then stopped as he beheld the giant’s face. The man breathed in through his nose and held his breath, composing himself for the conversation with the unsightly Heraclix.
“You have saved us this day. I have witnessed it, Allah be praised! Now, how can we reward you, large one?”
The man wore the white robes of the Hajj, a rarity here. His sharp, pointed beard, along with his dark eyes, atop a corpulent frame, gave him a sinister appearance, but his voice bespoke kindness. “We have much to give you as a gesture of our thanks, brass pots, silk, spices, incense . . .”
Heraclix held his hand up then, realizing it was covered in blood, he wiped it on his cloak. The merchant’s smile faded in a brief moment of hesitation, as if he regretted having approached the stranger so openly, then the smile returned as quickly as it had left.
“I don’t want your goods,” Heraclix said in German-accented Turkish. “Only some companionship.”
The merchant looked at the couple. The girl showed fear in her eyes, then averted her gaze from the elder and Heraclix. The young man had fire in his eyes as he placed himself between Heraclix and the girl. Heraclix understood almost immediately that there had been a misunderstanding.
“Not that kind of companionship. I only seek to share a part of my journey east.”
“East!” the merchant said loudly. “Allah is smiling on you, friend. That is exactly where we are headed! To Istanbul!”
The girl gave a puzzled gasp.
The merchant shot her a harsh glance and cleared his throat. She immediately became silent.
Heraclix noticed that the wagons were facing northwest.
“I don’t want to be any trouble . . .” Heraclix began. He stopped himself suddenly, realizing that Istanbul was the city to the east that he sought.
“No trouble!” the merchant said. “None at all. We will be heading to Istanbul starting tomorrow.” The merchant gave the couple a suppressing stare, then called the others together. “Tonight we share. But first, we mourn. Kaleel,” the merchant said to the young man who had his arm around the girl, “you and Al’ghul will bury your cousin there, in the field. It will be known as Hamad’s Meadow.” The young man and the boy nodded, then hurried off. The girl tended to her distraught female companion, and the merchant wheeled around and walked off on other business, leaving Heraclix alone in the midst of the people.
Heraclix observed, listened, eavesdropped, even, and learned much in the process. He was careful not to be found alone with any one member of the party, as they all grew nervous when it seemed they might be alone with the giant, all except the youngest, Al’ghul, the teen who felled one of the Cossacks. Al’ghul was a loner. Heraclix felt that the boy was only loosely connected with the rest of the group.
Al’ghul’s eldest brother, Hamad, had been killed trying to defend the caravan from the raiders. Kaleel, the other young man whose valor and strength Heraclix found commendable, was a cousin to Al’ghul and the deceased Hamad.
The object of Kaleel’s affections (and those of Al’ghul, Heraclix suspected from the younger’s body language), Fuskana, was somewhere in age between Al’ghul and Kaleel. She was attractive and innocent. Heraclix didn’t wonder that some jealousies between the two cousins might be provoked over her.
Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey Page 16