The 9th Fortress
Page 13
I wobbled closer and my foot suddenly plunged into thick ooze — a clear mucus running like a tap from this dragon's nostrils, spilling over my ankles and covering the surface of this mountain viewpoint.
"She has a cold," Bludgeon said. "Poor thing needs a warm drink."
"She?"
"Her name is Seppuku; her wings wither during winter so she lives with me until spring. She sleeps mostly, but when she wakes we have a bloody grand time smoking and playing cards — she's a hopeless gambler."
"It… speaks to you?" I stuttered, gawking at the immense claws curving at the end of its fingers; "you talk to a dragon?"
"She does the talking," he grinned back. "Dragons are the wisest of creatures boy, and have a say on every subject!"
The wind raced up my back and I had to shout for my next question to be heard — "Do I have to fight this dragon? Is that your final exercise?"
"Fight Seppuku?" he laughed. "Don't be stupid bloody daft! Dragon's are the ultimate predator — her farts could put you in a coma! Unfortunately, their skill makes them a trophy, and they are now an endangered lot. You ever want to become a saint boy, just you murder a dragon!"
"I don't understand…"
"George, Matthew, Martha, Leonard of Noblac — all of them made saints for slaying a dragon! Heaven's superstitious hierarchy loathe serpents of every kind! Hate them! But I'll die before they get their dirty hypocrite hands on this one!"
"Why are you showing me this?" I said, nervous. "What you want me to do here?"
"When you leave Hell," he said, still caressing the dozing lizard head; "Seppuku here will be the first to greet you in the Distinct Earth. I will arrange for her to fly you and whatever baggage you collect to the Waiting Plain. She already has the scent from your old clothes."
"You have a lot of faith. Expect me to do all that?"
"Course!" he said, insulted. "I trained you, didn't I?! Now… to the matter of your final exercise."
Bludgeon stopped stroking Seppuku to wade his hoofs through the sludge. Passing me, he moved toward a wall of hefty looking boulders, where a slim chain dangled down from the ceiling.
"That chain," he said, aiming his thumb at it. "I want you to give it a good old tug!"
"My final exercise?" I asked.
"Pull the chain!" he replied, tetchy. "All will become clear boy. Come."
Hesitant, I trudged through the mucus, passing Bludgeon to arrive at the chain. It blew against the wind, tempting anyone to have a pull on it.
"Yank speck! Yank it hard!"
My shoulders were strung up to my ears. I had screaming doubts, but no choice; so, wrapping my hand around the chain, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my life support. She would advise me best.
"Go on!" Bludgeon barked, breaking any hope I had of making a link with Missy. "Go on! Pull!"
Opening myself to the worst, embracing it even, I took one last taste of the sleet then pulled hard on the chain.
Seppuku did not wake to wash me in a hose of flames; instead, the rocky wall began to rise in one piece, like an old James Bond movie. Bludgeon wore a crooked grin as that slab rose with trails of dropping rubble. It stopped suddenly after six feet, revealing another secret behind it.
"What the…" I muttered, squinting into a dismal inlet to something remarkable, someone I never expected to see again — a prisoner — a man. “Who is he?" I asked, leering in.
"Look closer speck! Go on! Closer!"
Thick chains stretched out this man's arms; his eyes were closed but his grunts told me he was alive.
"Can't be," I whispered, looking past his bruises and dripping blood. "Not… Kat?!"
Also dressed in a sheet of tarpaulin, this was not the same samurai warrior I last laid eyes on nearly two years ago. He hung here like a circus sideshow, stripped of his strength, dignity, sword, soul and honor.
"What have you done to him Bludgeon? What have you done? He was a giant. You've broken a giant."
My master could no longer control his good behaviour. "Giant you say?!" he yelled, voice echoing. "Giant?! I caught this giant sneaking into my chambers not long after your sorry arse landed at the bottom of my stairs… he shattered my spear and damn near broke my bloody neck!"
I recalled Bludgeon's horribly gashed forehead one evening, and could hardly imagine the ferocity of their scrap.
"Tried to assassinate me!" he roared. "In my own home!"
My pity for Kat quickly turned to hostility toward the centaur, "Bullshit!" I argued. "You’ve got this all wrong!"
"He's a cold blooded killer, on the order of a jealous wizard for my head! Scarfell! The most wretched piece of filth to ever claim the Distinct Earth! Your giant here naively thought the wizard could grant him a wish God could not! The desperate yellow fool!"
"How could you possibly know all that?" I asked, unconvinced. "How could you?!"
"I was there!" he stated. "Saw me yourself speck, stared directly at me!"
I took my mind back to that day in the woods. As I lay on the mud, a dead horse by my side and Scarfell's pig army surrounding me, I saw what I thought to be a stag or pony watching events unfolding between the trunks.
"Why didn't you help us? We needed your help!"
"I came to greet you boy — not kill a wizard for you. I was actually curious to see whom I would be training, and it was amusing to see petulance earn you a kick in the teeth! I had to snort back my bloody laughter."
Bludgeon stomped through the dragon snot to join me in the inlet.
"Wake up yellow man!" he yelled, punching Kat several times in the stomach. "Wake up! Wake up!"
I grappled Bludgeon's hairy forearm and he ceased. "Afraid of my fists," he said, "you'd lock yourself in your room so the Kat would get that honour." He shrugged off my hand then pushed me out of the inlet. "A very strong man is Kat — a highly proficient killer, no doubt about it. You could only dream of reaching his level! Yes, I admit that I've enjoyed beating this assassin to bits; when Seppuku wakes… she will enjoy chewing him to bits."
Coming round, Kat slunk up and I saw his bloated face covered with fresh cuts and older bruises. He did not seem to register the goings on, not recognizing me or the new me before him. A cold and clear intuition told me what to do next.
"Let him go Bludgeon," I said, plainly. "Remove those chains and let him go."
The masters' brow curved upward, and his beady eye squinted down at me. "Did you just give me an order speck? Did I hear right? Because if you did… I may as well piss myself!"
I met his stare, determined, serious, and unafraid. "Kat is leaving this place. We both are, and you won't stop us."
Bludgeon burst into a hysterical fit of laughter, spraying mouth spittle, but not quite pissing himself. I had heard this hearty howl a hundred times before, a theatrical bawl to an invisible crowd — an unnatural reaction forced from the guts.
"I give the orders speck!" he said, suddenly serious. "Now… get up those stairs and start on those dishes before I really, really lose my temper!"
"No!" I exclaimed, standing my ground. "I will not do another God dammed thing for you! Release this man! Or else…"
Bludgeon examined my face, his own on pause for some time.
"Did you hear me?" I said. "Release him!"
Bludgeon bent forward now, touching noses against mine. "Over-my-dead-body!" he hissed, his halitosis turning my stomach, but still I held his gaze. The both of us had drawn our lines and made our positions clear — there was only one thing left to do.
Never removing my eye from Bludgeon, I stepped backward into the inlet — and one lock at a time — removed Kat from his bonds. Despite him losing an obvious amount of weight here, I struggled to hold him up when he flopped over me. Thankfully though, Kat responded to my encouraging words with a smearing palm over my chest. Then, as if by a press of a button, the weight came back to his legs and he stood on his own two feet.
"Still stubborn as hell?" I said. "Come on! We're getting out of here…"
r /> I guided us delicately out of his cold space as an amused Bludgeon witnessed it all with crossed arms and hoofs kicking the gore from his iron shoes. Relieved to see the centaur not advancing, I continued for the spiral staircase when Kat alerted me with a sudden squeeze of my shoulder. "What is it samurai?"
He nudged toward master Bludgeon, who now aimed a sword at my head. "Over my dead body," he said. "Over my dead body."
On my gooey location, I considered all the options when suddenly, Kat left me. An intrigued Bludgeon and I surveyed his hobbling walk, expecting the old samurai to collapse at any moment. He did not. Kat settled himself gingerly at a sword rack in the corner of the room, a rack containing a dozen blades. Then, with a sheen of steel, he removed two swords from the rack and returned, grimacing, back to my side.
"He's too good Kat," I whispered as he passed me a sword. "We can't defeat him — especially with you in this shape."
Kat heard my words and, as if unaware of his condition, he examined his ruined body with a repulsed expression. Nevertheless, no matter what shape he was in, he was still Kat, and the legend wrapped his fingers around the sword hilt, swirled the blade twice in the air and said, "I will not fall."
"I'm going to enjoy this," said Bludgeon, grinning as he ran a finger down his own steel. "Oh, how I am going to enjoy this!"
"Avoid the hind legs," Kat warned me. "And try… keep up."
I was now being given the chance to kill Bludgeon, to fulfil my most coveted fantasy; but the thought of living it out left me utterly cold. I just wanted to see the back of this dreadful place, to feel the air and be moving again. The wind, the sleet, and snow came savagely through the huge hole, echoing how this war would play out.
"The Kat and the mouse," sneered Bludgeon, passing his sword back and forth to each hand. "Are you ready for your final exercise, speck?"
Kat and I crouched low, taking steps from one another. We moved to Bludgeon’s flanks, but our tactics didn't appear to concern the centaur. “Which one will I kill first?” he said.
A problem we three fighters would have to deal with was the vat of mucus we fought in. It was a quagmire making swift movements impossible. I assumed this was already an advantage for Kat and me, since Bludgeon had more hoofs and weight holding him in it. It would, hopefully, equal the playing field. We sized each other up with twitching eyes, wet faces and flexing muscles, before all hell broke loose.
Bludgeon attacked — lunging at me with a meaty shoulder charge that put me onto my ass; and immediately, his sword came down to cut me in half.
CLANG!
His blow interrupted by Kat’s protecting sword. I sucked back my sense and cut my weapon upward, successfully slashing Bludgeon's hairy chest. The centaur cried out and darted back.
"Cut me?" he said, examining the bleeding tear close to his heart. "The weasel cut me?"
The thrill of striking Bludgeon "the master of all things", empowered me with a crazy, overzealous confidence. "More where that came from!" I yelled. "Pain is a warning master — warnings can be ignored!"
Bludgeon sprang at us with a vengeful roar. Kat and I blocked and countered, countered and blocked, but our opponent frugally slapped our attempts away as if mere child's play.
Already the pace was too fast for me, the gale making it seem somehow faster, and even more dangerous. I realized now that theory was one thing… and practice quite another. My lack of experience told as I received a slash down the left side of my arm, causing the sword to twirl out of my grip and across the room. I fell wounded, whilst the samurai continued to protect me from a ruthless Bludgeon.
"Pay attention!" stormed Kat as I crawled through slime for my weapon; all the time hearing the TING-TING-TING of their clashing swords.
As far as I could tell, Kat had the upper hand in every exchange. Despite the bruises and blood-loss, he was superior in all areas, and so forced the centaur back and back again. The longer the fight lasted, the stronger in stature Kat seemed to become. The sword his medicine, the legendary killer in him was returning, a giant growing before Bludgeon. The centaur knew it too, and an expression of concern swept over his face for the first time: did he finally consider defeat?
I collected my sword, stood from the sludge, and watching the blur of Kat and Bludgeon, I rejoined the tangle. Breaking away from the fight, Bludgeon found the sword rack, filled his free hand with another blade then returned with a primal scream, forcing us toward the gaping hole in his mountain.
The closer our heels approached that massive window, the more the peaks seemed to suck at our bodies like a vacuum. Bludgeon cheered, and then yelled some inaudible curse before throwing one of his swords at my head; I swerved to avoid it but the blade took a piece from my ear. Blood squirted from the side of my head and I cried in agony. Stumbling, the sucking hole suddenly picked me up by the legs. Kat reached back immediately and snatched me with one arm, fending Bludgeon off with the other.
I hung onto Kat's wrist for dear life while my legs dangled toward a vortex of white peaks and valleys. Hoping to send us both to oblivion, the centaur tensed his face and attempted to force Kat back; but characteristically obstinate, the samurai remained stretched apart on his spot, defending me and protecting himself.
Kat too, then growled monstrously, and with a dislocating pop of his shoulder, he threw me like old clothes at Bludgeon. The master swat me like a bug into the pools of dragon mucus, then giggled at Kat's insane ingenuity, “You mad bastard, Kat!”
Once safe from the sucking wind and Bludgeon's sword, Kat popped his shoulder back into place with a profound shriek. Not allowing him another moment to recover, Bludgeon galloped back into swordplay.
Meanwhile, I snatched a fresh sword from the rack and felt a rush of adrenaline consume me. Completely disregarding Kat's warning, I positioned myself behind the centaur; but before I could raise my weapon for any strike at the horse's coat, I received the full blow of two hind hoofs into my chest, booting all oxygen from my lungs and the sword, yet again, out of my hand.
I lay stupefied against the sleeping dragon's tail as a magnificent Kat continued his highly skilled battle with Bludgeon. Sparks of steel followed each intense sword smash. Kat like a phoenix, pressing, compelling the king backward and up the wonky spiral staircase. There they swung and swiped from higher and lower positions, never once landing a telling blow.
Kat could concentrate on his foe's blade and arms, but not his hoofs; and so Bludgeon sat back on his hind legs and began wildly kicking his front shoes, eventually striking Kat and sending him backward over the railing.
Hearing the samurai land in the gunk, Bludgeon chortled his way down the twirling steps to finish him off. Upon reaching the bottom, Kat was not flat on his face as expected — he was not there at all — there was only me and my amateur attack, an attack Bludgeon blocked with ease. I now faced Bludgeon's might alone. Mind only on defence, defence, and defence!
"Too advanced for the speck!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Too advanced!"
Bludgeon was enjoying his personal moment; the teacher playing with student, nicking small cuts to my cheek, neck, wherever he fancied. I simply could not keep up. I was actually doing well to remain alive at this point. Bludgeon even had the audacity to yawn during our skirmish; and when ready to conclude this final exercise, Kat appeared to save me yet again.
Balancing like his namesake on the spiral staircase, Kat leapt off the railing and landed with a grunt on Bludgeon's back. The centaur stumbled forward and coughed as the samurai secured both his arms around the king's throat. Chocking now but still on all fours, Bludgeon lashed out, finding it extremely difficult to bounce this nimble fighter from his back and fend me off at the same time.
The centaur became enraged, a crazy desperate horse, stamping, bouncing and roaring almighty; but he was only expending more air and energy — his face glowing purple now, his muscles burning weaker and weaker…
Kat locked his arms tighter still, further sealing Bludgeon's windpipe. The fight w
as not over however so I concentrated — I kept up swordplay and scored another strike down Bludgeon's inner thigh. He cried out and fell to one knee, and Kat continued throttling until the master at last relinquished his sword, and then toppled like a great beanstalk to the floor.
I kicked the blade from Bludgeon's reach as Kat climbed off the panting mammoth's back. Both of us then stood, side by side, exhausted in victory and united in hatred for the defeated king.
"There's your head Kat," I wheezed. "Take it. Just… take it."
Kat examined my disgraced master with contempt as he raised his sword overhead, but instead of bringing it down through Bludgeon's neck, Kat flung the weapon out of the hole.
"That won't get me what I want," he said, stepping away. "His fate is in your hands Fox."
Kat's words sent a chill down my spine. There was, after all, only one way to deal with a wild animal. I searched Bludgeon's pigheaded face for a shred of remorse, or hint of conscience for his treatment of prisoner and pupil. There was none. How could I allow a creature like this to live? I could because I wasn't Bludgeon and I was not Kat.
I threw down my sword, clenched a fist and slammed it across that un-remorseful face — breaking the master's nose with a sickening crack. Bludgeon slumped away, nose-dripping blood into the clear pools of dragon snot. He crawled until pulling himself up on the first stair, and there the blood ran profusely, turning his beard red. Surprisingly, he didn't appear embarrassed or shameful — he was in-fact, content in defeat.
"You have completed the last exercise," he said, panting and smiling proudly. "You are now… a very dangerous man."
13. The Black Angels
Two days later the three of us stood on the golden seal upstairs, facing a blizzard outside. Kat was restored in red armor, katana and wakizashi swords. That dress gave him more than warmth and protection — it returned pride, what honour he had and a strange aura of indestructibility. I was dressed in my jeans and fleece, boots, dagger with belt around the waist. These old clothes were too big for the slimmer man I had become, but they were better than any tarpaulin sheet.