THE BLOOD GATE
by David Ross Erickson
Copyright © 2011 by David Ross Erickson
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from David Ross Erickson
March 2011
Cover design by Glendon Haddix.
Contact him at streetlightgraphics.com
Published by
Rockford Road Publishing
If you would like to read more of
David Ross Erickson's books
or contact the author, please visit his blog.
DavidRossErickson.blogspot.com
ACCLAIM FOR THE NOVELS OF DAVID ROSS ERICKSON
THE BLOOD GATE
"When the author promises unforgettable characters, non-stop action, romance and intrigue, he most certainly delivers. A definite 5 stars out of 5.
"This may be my shortest review, but there is a limit to the number of ways I can say this book was awesome--go read it.
"Sure to keep you engaged until the end ... All of the book's subplots weave together beautifully and leave the reader invested in the characters/world."
--Sift Book Reviews
"You will never get bored and the writing is well done ...When you read the battles, you feel like you are right there as the background of research is spot on."
--Bab's Book Bistro
"Rich characters, tons of action and intrigue, romance and great storylines ... The world the author created for this book was extraordinary ... [The Blood Gate] has a very historical feel to it, thanks to an incredibly well-created world ... [The] great pace...kept me turning the pages."
--The Caffeinated Diva
THE WAR GOD'S MEN
"Informative, Interesting, accessible and entertaining ... Exciting."
--The Wargamer
"Military history fiction really is my favorite genre and I read of lot of this stuff. I can't remember reading better than this book. It is a fine piece of work.
"I cannot praise this book enough. Do yourself a favor and read it."
--Bob Jarvis, Reader
"Hard to put down. Any fan of historical fiction will enjoy it."
--B. Gibbons, Reader
"Land warfare, siege warfare, the importance of cavalry, logistics, and even some of the politics of Rome and Carthage are explored. Students of Roman history will particularly enjoy the dramatization of the rise of the Roman fleet.
"The well-rendered battle scenes make for an exciting read ... The battles have an epic, cinematic feel to them.
"The author has an obvious and thorough command of ancient Roman history."
--Good Book Alert
NOW AVAILABLE FROM D.R. ERICKSON
MY CLOCKWORK MUSE
A Poe Files Mystery
New York City, 1847: A madman is on the loose. Someone is committing murders in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe's tales of terror. The police are stymied. When a corpse is found interred in a masonry wall in a subterranean chamber, they call on Poe himself to help solve the crime.
Edgar Allan Poe's fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, has made the author famous as the master of deductive reasoning. But when "the father of the detective story" applies his powers of discovery to the "Poe Murders", he finds that the clues lead in only one direction: to Poe himself.
Poe soon becomes the prime suspect, and he begins to doubt his own sanity as the evidence piles up against him. What of his somnambulistic trances that often find him at the graveside of his late wife, Virginia? Or the bizarre raven that visits him in his Fordham cottage? The strange mark on his neck? The odd behavior of his one-eyed cat, Pluto? And what of his doctor, Coppelius--he of the bulging pale blue eye--and his beautiful, other-worldly daughter, Olimpia? Nothing is as it seems.
As the police tighten their noose around Poe's neck, he races against time to solve the crimes and clear his name. But he soon finds himself confronting horrors that not even his macabre fiction could have envisioned--and a conspiracy that threatens the very fabric of reality itself.
Once again for Roli
You are my wings
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
War God's Men Excerpt
My Clockwork Muse Excerpt
PART I
MAN OF PAIN
Chapter 1
After their horses died, Xanthippus and Nydeon walked the last few miles to the Tygetian border. The road they followed was little more than a dirt track which for short stretches disappeared under massive drifts of windblown sand. Though more accustomed to drifts of snow than sand, the men said little as they staggered over the dunes. The Albyans had told them that it was the only route through the desert into Tygetia, a fact that now seemed like an understatement. A waterless waste stretched away for endless miles on either side of the road and anyone who wandered into it would surely die.
Xanthippus was willing to admit now that the horses had been a mistake. The sandfarers had tried to warn them to take malecs instead, but Xanthippus wouldn't listen.
"I would sooner walk than have that thing spitting on me all the way to Tygetia," he had said.
His words had proved prophetic, but neither man spoke a word of it. They had merely taken the packs from the dead animals, strapped them onto their own backs, and continued along the track.
The horses would last no longer dead than they had alive. For days, sandrunners had been peering at them over the dunes. The reptilian scavengers might have been keenly eying the men, but would have to content themselves with horsemeat for now, for the men would not fall so easily. Members of the famed Prathian Guard, both were prodigies of brutality and endurance, trained from youth to withstand every hardship. Though the legend of the Prathian Guard was long past, men still knew to fear them, and if the Tygetian prince Hurrus had known that two of them had just entered the country with his name on their blades, he would not have rested easily, whatever their tarnished glory.
Xanthippus unwound his headscarf from his mouth. "This must be it." He nodded toward the border. A simple swinging gate spanned the road, a chest-high web-work of slim timbers. To one side stood a little guard shack. The fence that separated Tygetia from the Albyan desert ran to the horizon on either side of the gate. In places, its ragged black posts just ba
rely broke the skin of the shifting sands.
Nydeon nodded, saying nothing. Both men wore the long white kaftans of Albyan traders. Scarves covered their heads and faces and brass visors protected their eyes from sun and sand. Nydeon cocked his head in the characteristic manner of a man trying to see an object through the narrow slit of the visor.
He was looking beyond the fence and the gate to the border complex itself, a place the Albyans had simply called The Crossing. A palace, stables, and an entire small village of mud brick houses and shops crowded around an oasis of green sprouting from the desert. Tall date palms shaded the narrow alleys of the village. In front of the stables was parked a caravan of laden wagons where Albyan traders conferred noisily with Tygetian officials who wore red-trimmed tunics and black wigs. Malecs, horses and mules snorted and shuffled in the dirt. Some of the malecs laid upon bent knees in the shade.
Here they were to meet the administrator, a man named Seus, as themselves, a Gyriecian, they had been told. If so, he would be the only Gyriecian in sight, for, The Crossing appeared to be populated by no one but Tygetians and Albyans, from what Xanthippus could see. At least their kaftans might allow them pass for sandfaring traders. Without them, they would be recognized as foreigners a league away.
"We don't get many walkers here," a voice said in the Common Tongue. A shirtless guard wearing only a white linen kilt had emerged from the guard post and stood at the gate scrutinizing the two men with an expression of amused contempt. A short sword hung from his belt and the braids of his black wig fell about his brown shoulders. He had the arrogant bearing of a civilized man of authority accustomed to dealing with simple sandfarers.
"We are Albyans, lost in the desert." Xanthippus had had to uncover his mouth to speak and saw that the guard was watching his lips. Even though his close-cropped black beard gave him a slight Albyan cast, his lips were thin and pale. They were the lips of a foreigner, not an Albyan. Certainly not a Tygetian.
"Lost in the desert?" The guard laughed. He leaned on the gate and crossed his legs at the ankles. Obviously, the gate would not be opening anytime soon. "Albyans don't get lost in the desert, and you don't look like Albyans."
Nydeon turned to Xanthippus. "This is not the man," he said in Gyriecian.
Xanthippus agreed. Shaking his head, he uttered a curse.
The guard stiffened. "What is that you're saying? That doesn't sound like Albyan to me."
Xanthippus looked into the guard post and saw no one, only a parchment-strewn wooden desk, an empty stool, a door leading into some other room. In the distance, the Albyan traders gestured flamboyantly while the Tygetians haggled with them. Malecs barked angrily, releasing showers of spit.
"To get past this gate, you'll have to come up with a better story than this 'lost in the desert' business." The guard stood straight and put a hand on the hilt of his sword. "I'll tell you this, friend, in case you don't know. Anyone lost in the desert here is a dead man. Now, why don't you take off those visors..."
"Then I am a ghost," Xanthippus replied.
He reached across the swinging gate and grasped the guard by the throat. He spun him around and held him in the crook of his elbow, squeezing until the guard's eyes rolled up in his head. He climbed through the gate and lowered the unconscious man gently to the ground. No one had seen a thing. Xanthippus dragged him into the guardhouse. Nydeon scooped up the man's wig and hurried after.
Inside, they put their packs down and shoved the guard under the table.
Still crouching, Xanthippus said, "We will take this out of Seus' hide!"
"Let us hope he has not betrayed us," Nydeon said. "There is no escape from here."
Xanthippus felt a presence. When he turned his head, he saw a young man standing in the doorway that led into the next room. When he realized what was happening, his eyes widened. He turned and fled.
"Damn!"
Xanthippus sprang to his feet. He lunged through the doorway and found the young man unlocking a cage. His hands trembled as he struggled with the key. The cage was full of sandrunners. Knee-high, they stared at him, bird-like, their unblinking yellow eyes set in green lizard faces. They had been warned back in Prathia about the Tygetians' sandrunners. Alone, a single sandrunner, a scavenger by nature, was a skittish, timid creature. In packs, they could be fearsome killers.
Xanthippus grabbed the lad at the same instant that the lock came free. Running on two legs, the sandrunners spilled into the room, fangs bared. Xanthippus held tightly to the terrified Tygetian and kicked one of the biting creatures across the room.
"Nydeon!" he called. "The vial!"
The sandrunners were beginning to swarm. They lunged at Xanthippus' legs and he winced as he felt fangs digging into his flesh. Nydeon rushed into the room and fell headlong to the floor when his feet became entangled in his long kaftan. Holding the guard and fending off sandrunners, Xanthippus could not move to help him. Nydeon lifted his visored face and a sandrunner lunged at him, its fangs glancing off the brass that covered his eyes. He rolled away from the attack. Reaching frantically under his robes, he produced a small glass vial. He smashed it to the floor. Tendrils of vapor rose from the liquid that spilled over the floorboards. The first sandrunner to breathe it calmed down immediately. The calming effect quickly spread throughout the room. Soon, all the sandrunners stood about docilely. Their eyelids -- eyelids that Xanthippus had not even realized they possessed -- were half-closed. They appeared to be in some kind of lizard rapture. Nydeon stood and herded them easily back into the cage, like sheep. One leg of Xanthippus' trousers was now spotted red where the creatures had bit him.
"Damn their fangs!" Xanthippus turned and through his visor looked the frightened young man fiercely in the eye. "You will take us to Seus," he said. He shoved the lad outside and he scampered away, across the courtyard and up the steps of the palace.
"He will bring guards," Nydeon said.
"Let him. I only want Seus now."
The two men followed in the young man's steps toward the palace. Tall pillars lined the wide staircase, all of them carved full of the Tygetian's colorful picture-writing. Xanthippus supposed some Tygetians could still read the inscriptions, their priests perhaps. But he thought the figures made neither good writing, nor good pictures.
An instant after the young man had vanished into the palace, Seus himself appeared in the arched entryway. He hurried out the door and began making his way down the steps. Xanthippus at once noticed the man's pale skin. He was Gyriecian. He was dressed in the manner of the Tygetian nobility, however. He wore a long white robe and a solid neckpiece of gold and jewels that spilled over his shoulders. He clamped his black braided wig down on his shaved head as he scurried toward the Prathians. The terrified young border guard followed nervously behind him.
"It was the wrong man!" Xanthippus shouted as he strode to meet the minister at the base of the steps.
"Where is he?" Seus asked, peering out over the yard as if he expected to find his man there lying in a bloody heap.
"We had to put him down."
"You didn't kill him? Fools! Do you want to bring all Tygetia down on my head?"
"Calm yourself, Minister," Xanthippus said. "He is resting comfortably. In there." He nodded toward the guardhouse.
"Go tend to him," Seus commanded the guard. He grasped him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the little wooden building. The guard sprinted across the courtyard. "And say nothing! Neither of you!" Seus shouted behind him. Despite his appearance, he had a Tygetian accent.
"It was the wrong man," Xanthippus said again. He watched Seus adjust his wig, which had been sitting crookedly upon his sweat-slicked cranium. The aspect of a Gyriecian in Tygetian garb fascinated him. Of course, he had known Tygetia was ruled by Gyriecians now. What place was not? But he never thought he would see it with his own eyes. At least none of the Tygetian Gyriecians were Prathian. He was spared that dishonor.
"We are a little busy here," Seus said when he had finished with
his wig. "You might have noticed."
"Sorry to inconvenience you," Xanthippus said, though he would rather have wrung the man's neck.
Seus waved his hand dismissively, as though he were brushing off a sincere apology. Perhaps the Common Tongue did not convey sarcasm as sharply as Gyriecian did. Seus gave his robe a final straightening tug and then turned and started back up the steps. "Come along with me," he said. "I have papers for you. And take off your visors. You're not in the wasteland anymore. You're attracting attention to yourselves. You have blood on your pant leg."
Xanthippus and Nydeon removed their visors, squinting in the bright flood of light. They followed Seus up the steps. Xanthippus' anger had been replaced by a feeling of puzzlement. Only a few minutes inside Tygetia and he already felt hopelessly out of his element.
"I was not expecting you," Seus admitted and they continued to climb the steps. "Apparently General Menleco cares little for schedules and plans. I trust your journey was a pleasant one. How is life in Prathia these days?"
"Like living in the bottom of a latrine," Xanthippus said.
Seus paused on the palace portico, considering his comment. "That is what it is like here, too," he said at last, resuming his quick strides. "Now come along inside."
The interior was bright but cool. A central courtyard oasis dominated the great hall. A blue pond inhabited by wading birds and bounded by reed beds and palms stood open to the sky above. Flying birds twittered in the trees and darted freely through the open roof. Others clung to the sides of the massive painted columns that surrounded the courtyard. They peered down inquisitively at visitors passing below them. In the pillared hall around them servants, slaves and officials bustled about their duties. Xanthippus saw only Tygetians and Albyans, no Gyriecians. At the exits were stationed small groups of armed guards. A black-wigged official led a noisy delegation of Albyans briskly out of the hall, while another man and his attendants approached Seus in the same officious manner. He held out parchment and pen, speaking in Tygetian. Seus unquestioningly took the pen and motioned toward an antechamber between two of the columns.
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