by David Drake
There was a quiver of motion toward me. An impossibly extended hand gripped my knee. It felt like the ice of the Alps, and it squeezed me.
Alpnu short-gripped my sword and jabbed with the point. The creature’s hand burned as it withdrew. I jerked the door to me with a squeal and a clang.
I was breathing hard, but that didn’t help much because the sulfurous air flayed my throat. I slid back slightly and took the sword from Alpnu. There was a small opening where Galo had bent the door; I held the sword point close to it, thinking that the creature might slip like freezing oil through that crack.
“It won’t come that way,” Alpnu said. She was wheezing as badly as I was. “It’ll wait for us to come out.”
“I’ll get my breath and then go kill it,” I said, though “getting my breath” in this brimstone hell was a bad joke. “It can’t stand up to my sword.”
“Your sword can’t kill the thing you see,” Alpnu said. “It isn’t alive. Its life is here in this jewel. We had to break the jewel!”
“Then give me the bloody jewel!” I said. I held out my left hand without taking my eyes off the door seam. Alpnu probably knew what she was talking about when she said the creature wouldn’t come that way, but its fingers on my knee had been the touch of death.
The cave on this side of the door was almost as wide as the passage we’d followed from the surface, but it wasn’t regular. It seemed to narrow as it wormed back and down. Light came from deeper in the cave, but I couldn’t see a source. Maybe it was the color, but I was starting to feel uncomfortably warm.
Alpnu put the jewel in my upturned palm. I wondered what the chain was made of. It had looked like gold, but gold links that fine would have broken when she twisted it from Galo’s body.
I put the jewel on the stone floor. “Watch the crack,” I said and laid the flat of my sword on top of it.
I stepped onto the upper side of the sword, balancing myself against the walls with my hands. I rocked back and forth, hearing faint crunching sounds. It was a terrible way to treat a sword that had been my father’s, but I remembered Galo’s shrunken body and the eyes of the creature as it watched me.
“What is it?” I said. My throat was raw and my mouth dry. “The thing outside?”
“It was imprisoned here long ago,” Alpnu said. “It’s a creature of the earth. I know nothing of it, but Mamurcus’s power came from the earth. He must have thought he could control it, and he hoped to force me to aid him in his plan.”
She spat on the ground. “He was a fool!”
A dead fool, I thought, remembering the way the Etruscan’s helmet had banged inward under my sword edge. It had been sudden, too quick to think about.
I moved my feet to the sides and lifted the sword. The jewel was untouched, but there was a scar on the stone floor.
I gave the jewel back to Alpnu. I didn’t look at her. “All right,” I said. I wasn’t going to be in better shape for pickling myself longer in this sulfur stench. “I’m going out. I’ve got more confidence in my sword than you do, and anyway I’m going out. You can get away while I’m dealing with the thing.”
“That won’t help!” Alpnu said. “You can burn the body in molten rock and it still won’t die, it’ll just regrow!”
“I don’t have molten rock,” I said. My voice was a growl. “I have a sword.”
I braced my right boot on the door, readying to kick it open and rush out behind it. Alpnu squeezed in front of me. “Wait!” she said. “Listen!”
I grabbed the throat of her robe in my left hand and lifted her off the ground. It was balanced in my mind whether I flung her behind me or smashed her head against the door. I was bubbling with fury, ready to fight, ready to die, terrified when I thought of the creature’s dead touch.
I heard voices.
I set the woman down, trembling with reaction to the violence I hadn’t let out after all. I couldn’t tell what the voices were saying, only that they were human.
“Taranis!” someone called. The voice was deepened and mushy from echoing down through the tunnel. “We’ve found your horses and we see your camp. Come out and face me like a man!”
Dubnoreix. But if he’d come hunting me, he wouldn’t be alone … and it wasn’t a fight he was looking for, it was butchery.
“If you won’t come out, we’ll fill this cave with brush and light it!” Dubnoreix shouted. “We’ll smoke you out like a rabbit in its warren!”
“Soon,” Alpnu whispered. She stroked my left shoulder. “Just a moment more.”
“All right, Taranis, if that’s the way—hey!”
“Now!” said Alpnu, but I’d already shoved the door open and started up the tunnel.
Something caught at my feet as I ran up the passage. Galo’s breeches, I thought, and it may have been—but it may have been Galo’s empty skin. It didn’t trip me.
The rain had stopped when I reached the mouth of the tunnel, but clouds still covered most of the sky. They broke on the eastern horizon as I drew the first lungful of untainted air in too long.
The full moon was coming up. I saw Dubnoreix near the junipers where I’d intended to camp. There were other warriors nearby, probably all Dubnoreix’s housemen. They had their swords out, but they didn’t seem to know what to do.
I didn’t blame them.
I didn’t see Liscus until he screamed. He was among the junipers, gripped by the creature. I didn’t make the mistake I had with Galo: sex wasn’t involved in what was happening, or at any rate not human sex.
Dubnoreix shouted, “Come on, men!” and stepped forward. He brought his sword around in a horizontal slash that struck the creature across the shoulder blades. The white flesh blackened with the stench of an old grave, as it had when I cut the thing.
The creature’s head rotated toward Dubnoreix without its body moving at all. He cried something wordless and lifted his sword. Two housemen moved in, one from either side, and hacked at the creature. Their blades rang together in the creature’s head, but its cool smile didn’t change.
Liscus crumpled away. I knew what his body looked like now, because I had seen Galo’s empty skin. The creature’s hands gripped the housemen’s throats. Dubnoreix struck.
I ran forward. I’d decided where my place was.
I’d never liked Dubnoreix; he was here because he’d come with his housemen to murder me out of sight of the camp. For all that, he was human. Whatever the creature was, it wasn’t human.
My place was beside the other humans.
Dubnoreix’s stroke cleft the creature from shoulder to midback. Its blackened flesh spread away from the steel, then reformed as the blade lifted. Its body turned toward Dubnoreix; the face already looked in this direction. The empty shell of Liscus lay on the ground behind it.
I thrust past Dubnoreix for the creature’s impassive face. It might have been kinder if I’d split Dubnoreix’s spine, because the scream he gave in that instant was one of inhuman torment.
I withdrew my blade. The blackened flesh flowed back. The creature smiled as Dubnoreix’s body thrashed for an instant, then flattened and sank in on itself.
The housemen fell to either side. Their tongues protruded and their eyes bulged.
The creature walked toward me. Dubnoreix’s empty skin was briefly a kilt; then it fell away. I got another glimpse of the thing’s toothed member as it withdrew.
I’d lost the javelin I’d carried into the cave with me, but the other two remained where I’d stuck them, point-upright, in the ground. I snatched one up with my left hand.
Liscus and Dubnoreix had been carrying their shields, which hadn’t helped when the creature attacked. The thing’s right arm stretched out slowly, almost stealthily. I jabbed its wrist with the iron point of my javelin. It snapped back, smoldering, and its left hand met the edge of my sword as it reached for my throat. Each time I felt the world tremble angrily.
Perhaps nothing done to the creature’s flesh could really harm it, but it didn’t like to be burne
d by iron either. It had throttled the housemen to stop them from cutting at it while it devoured their chiefs.
I stepped in and thrust my sword into the base of the thing’s neck, then jumped back when a foot reached for me. It wasn’t quick, but it had four limbs … and there was the maw if it ever grappled with me. I couldn’t let that happen.
I didn’t know what the rest of the housemen had done. I grinned at the thought of them trying to explain to the Crow what had happened.
Alpnu stood by the rock where she’d called down lightning on the metal guardian. If we’d run away then, perhaps the guardian would have gone back into its cave and pulled the entrance closed behind it. But Galo had already been bewitched by the creature and wouldn’t have left until he’d opened the iron door … and I wouldn’t have left Galo.
Alpnu might have run. If she’d allowed the guardian to kill me and Galo, this creature wouldn’t be loose in the world.
I jabbed with the javelin. The creature’s body squirmed away from the point. Its left arm reached for my eyes. I slashed but the right foot also extended. It would have grabbed my ankle if I hadn’t jumped back.
My heel tripped on a rock that barely rose above the dirt. I fell backward, sliding on the wet grass and thumping my head against another outcrop.
The creature moved toward me in the moonlight, as pale as drifting fog. I could see it clearly, silhouetted against the clouds. I could see the sword still gripped in my right hand, but my muscles were frozen from the rap on the head.
The creature paused, looking down with its meaningless smile. Its groin opened and the member extended toward me. The teeth set around its circular mouth were needles like those of a dogfish.
Brilliance crashed. For an instant the earth was black and the clouds above were white. The creature, untouched by the lightning, crumbled across me like a puff of dust.
Alpnu knelt at my side. I felt her touch my temples, and then I could move again. I lowered my sword to the ground, but I wasn’t ready to get up just yet.
“Is it gone?” I said. “You told me that burning it up wouldn’t destroy it.”
“I said burning the creature’s body wouldn’t destroy it,” she said. She pointed.
I lifted onto my elbow and turned my head. Lightning had shattered the stone where she’d been standing. Some of the shards had been burned to glass by the bolt’s fury.
“I put the jewel on the altar,” she said. “When the creature’s life became powder, the body had nothing to sustain it.”
“It’s gone?” I said. I was asking for reassurance; that was weakness. I’m Taranis the Chief!
I stood up. “It’s gone!” I said again, meaning it this time. “We’re shut of it forever.”
Horsemen came over the rise and rode toward us, spreading out as they did. Some of them were shifting javelins to their right hands, ready to throw. The moon came out again.
“Matisco!” I said as I recognized the leader. “What are you doing here?”
“We saw Dubnoreix and his gang ride out,” Matisco said. He pulled up in front of me and dismounted. “I figured my girlfriend could wait a little longer. The rest of the boys figured the same, I guess.”
“What the hell did happen here?” Heune asked. He was standing by the strangled housemen;, and Liscus’s skin, though Heune probably didn’t notice Liscus the way he was now.
“A terrible thunderstorm,” said Alpnu; I’d completely forgotten her. “A bolt struck close by and killed our companion, Galo … and also some others, who had just ridden up when the storm broke.”
I looked at her, then looked back to Matisco. He was nodding.
“We saw that one hit,” he said. “I guess that’s what spooked your horses. We caught three of ’em, Top, they came galloping right up the trail toward us. Dunno about the others.”
“We’ve got plenty more horses in the corral,” I said, meaning it. I wondered if I’d be able to mount without help. “Look, I know it’s late and you boys’ve had a long day already—”
Which was nothing to what I’d had, and Alpnu too.
“—but I’d really like to head back for camp now. Not all the way, but a few miles away from here.”
“What about the bodies, Top?” said Heune.
“Galo completely burned up,” I said. I needed to close the door in the cave. “I’m going into the cave for a moment. When I come out, I want to get out of here. The foxes’ll take care of Dubnoreix’s people.”
And Dubnoreix, but I didn’t say that. All anybody but me and Alpnu knew was that Dubnoreix and his brother had ridden out of the camp and hadn’t come back. I figured any of his housemen who hadn’t lit out on their own would be glad to back the story of the lightning bolt. They might even believe it.
Matisco shrugged. “Whatever you want, Top,” he said. “This isn’t a place I want to stick around neither.”
“I’ll help you in the cave,” Alpnu said. She walked beside me toward the entrance.
“I’m going to lay Galo inside the door and close it,” I said quietly to her. “That’ll keep the birds off, I guess. I don’t want anybody to see what happened to him.”
I felt better. I’d picked up the sword when I got to my feet, and I sheathed it now with no trouble finding the scabbard.
“It’s going to be different without Galo,” I said. “He never led us wrong. Well, up till now.”
“Yes,” said Alpnu as I led her into the tunnel. “He had a gift, though that’s how the creature reached him to begin with. But you have me now, and I can find things also.”
I looked back. “I have you?” I said.
“Yes, as long as you want me,” Alpnu said. “I told you how hard it was to find a man.”
I could see what remained of Galo on the floor ahead: his clothing, and his skin as flat and rumpled as the clothes. I would still miss him.
But I felt an unexpected excitement about what I had gotten in exchange.
About the Author
David Drake (born 1945) sold his first story (a fantasy) at age 20. His undergraduate majors at the University of Iowa were history (with honors) and Latin (BA, 1967). He uses his training in both subjects extensively in his fiction.David entered Duke Law School in 1967 and graduated five years later (JD, 1972). The delay was caused by his being drafted into the US Army. He served in 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Blackhorse, in Viet Nam and Cambodia. He has used his legal and particularly his military experiences extensively in his fiction also.David practiced law for eight years; drove a city bus for one year; and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981, writing such novels as Out of the Waters and Monsters of the Earth. He reads and travels extensively. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by David Drake
Art copyright © 2016 by Robert Hunt