The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1

by Lumley, Brian

  Thus came Kank Thad to the city’s dungeons, and in particular to that deepest of deep cells wherein only death-sentenced criminals wait—or prowl, or howl, or pray to heathen gods or whatever—during the short, short hours of their last night on Earth. Kank Thad, however, was no howler but a son of Kulik Thad; nor was he a prowler, for he saw little sense in wearing himself out wandering to and fro in the confines of his cell when tomorrow he had a great cliff to climb; and the only god he knew was one Yib-Tstll, who is no god to pray to but whose name may fairly be used in cursing; and so, because there seemed little else to do, the barbarian simply lay down in his cell and slept—he slept the sleep of a babe in arms until the night guard came on duty.

  As fortune would have it his watchman was a Northman like himself, who first came to Bhur-Esh as a stripling stolen by swart slavers from Shadarabar in the east. Thasik Haag was a slave and a youth no longer but a greybeard now, and trusted as one whose duty is his all and holy above all other things. Thus Kank Thad’s pleas (he was never one to miss out on any kind of chance, no matter how slim, in a tight spot) for the sake of the memory of northern lands with barbarous names fell on stony ground, and while he did at least wrench a tear or two from Thasik Haag’s one good eye with his tales of the Mammoth Plains and the great hunts of home, he could in no way conjure a desire in the heart of that worthy ancient to assist him.

  Instead, and in return for the barbarian’s tales of dim-remembered northern territories, his jailer told him all he knew of the Ghost Cliffs of Shildakor: how Shildakor had been a wizard in immemorial times whose adventurous son had attempted to climb the great walls surrounding Bhur-Esh and the valley—and of how the boy fell and died! The wizard had straightway ensorcelled the cliffs, laying down a curse upon them, that henceforward ghosts would ever inhabit their crevices and niches.

  Too, Thasik Haag was willing to share his supper and a skin of sour wine, and later he brought out a trothyboard and counters that they might play a game or two through the bars. In this he made a fatal mistake for he was a good player, and the sons of Kulik Thad—Kank especially—were not known for sporting natures but rather for short and fiery tempers.

  Towards morning, when the first light was creeping in wispy mists over the eastern cliffs of the valley, down in that deep cell the loser of many trothy games, holding to a mere snarl the bull yell of anger that had grown in his chest all night, reached through the bars and grasped his keeper’s windpipe in both of his hands. This had been the barbarian’s plan all along, but damn it—he had first wanted to win at least one game!

  Hauling hard, Kank Thad flattened his victim to the bars so that the astonished watchman was unable to draw his shortsword; and then, so as to make a quick dispatch and offer the greybeard no opportunity to cry out, he dug his fingers in and hauled even harder until skin, flesh, cartilage, windpipe and all parted from the writhing neck of Thasik Haag in a crimson welter of blood and sinew. The watchman hardly knew what had happened, for he was well dead before his murderer let his corpse sink down to the floor to rest. Then Kank Thad set about to make a systematic search of the old man’s body.

  It was all of an hour later when the captain of the dungeon guard descended the nitre-sweating stone stairway down to that deepest cell . . . there to find the shattered shell of the good and faithful Thasik Haag, and, crouching behind the bars in a corner of his cell in a black and murderous rage of hate and frustration, the great scarfaced Northman. Even with the watchman’s shortsword the barbarian had been unable to force an escape. At first sight of this horror-fraught scene the captain’s hand went straight to his belt—where dangled the great key Kank Thad had thought to find in Thasik Haag’s pockets . . .

  HALF THE CITY of Bhur-Esh, it is told, turned out to watch Kank Thad take his departure of this world, gathering in select groups according to status at the feet of the Ghost Cliffs of Shildakor. Thamiel was there, of course, ringed around by a dozen guardsmen with loaded crossbows. He had gained an odd respect for the barbarian since learning of the additional murder of Thasik Haag: the Northman was definitely a berserker and even more dangerous than first believed! But safe in his impregnable circle Thamiel was, as ever, puffed up in the contemplation of the Indefectibility of his Justice.

  Kank Thad’s thoughts were for once chaotic as his bonds were released and, at half-a-dozen spearpoints, he was forced to mount first the piled bones and stinking shreds of corpses long fallen from the Ghost Cliffs of Shildakor. Noisome and slimy to his sandaled feet were those carrion remains, and given to crumbling and pitching him down into their vileness. Nonetheless he made his way for some fifteen feet over this debris of malefactors gone and finally turned with his back to the bare rock face.

  “Climb, barbarian,” Veth Nuss squeaked from Thamiel’s flabby side.

  “Climb, O minuscule? And what if I choose simply to sit here on a comfortable skull and drink in this marvellously ripe air?” Kank Thad hated to be ordered to do anything, and especially by one tiny as Veth Nuss. At a sign from Thamiel there came the whistle of cleft air as a bolt buried itself deep in the sandy rock through the Northman’s free-hanging hair between his left cheek and shoulder.

  “Look a little to your right, savage—and be warned!” Thamiel hissed as the huge murderer threw up an arm in anticipation of further missiles. When he saw that no more bolts were forthcoming, Kank Thad lowered his arm and did as directed, staring along the cliff to his right—and then he swore.

  “Yib!” His curse was a mere whisper. At a distance of no more than a few paces a grisly skeleton sat, skewered through the eyesocket to the cliff.

  “Aye,” Thamiel offered, just loud enough to be heard, “he was one, just like you, who thought not to climb but sit on a skull and drink in the ripeness of the air.” His voice changed abruptly. “Now get on—My nostrils rot with the stink!”

  So the climb commenced and at first the going was relatively easy, with plenty of protruberant stones and knobs of rock, gaping fissures, and ledges, so that soon Kank Thad was quite high above the breathless crowd gathered there expressly to watch him fall. He did not intend to fall, however, for back home as a youth he had used to climb the sea-cliffs for gull eggs with the best of them; and now, when he’d reached what he thought a sufficient elevation, he paused on a wide ledge and turned to peer down at the multitude of tiny, tiny faces beneath him. The Seeker of Truth in his scarlet turban stood out plainly, with Veth Nuss at his side in the now slowly scattering circle of guards.

  “O landwhale,” the barbarian called down. “Hey Thamiel. You—woman-bosom!”

  “I hear you,” Thamiel called back, his voice trembling with rage at the new insults and the disturbing and embarrassing titters of the thronging assembly. “I hear—but will not listen. Go on climbing, or . . .”

  “Or what, spherical Lord? I’m already out of range of your weapons. Iron bolts are far too heavy to ever reach me up here.”

  For the next few minutes Kank Thad sat back on his wide ledge and roared with laughter as bolts clattered against and bounced from the face of the cliff below his position. The closest shot fell short by at least the length of his body. On his ledge, wide enough to walk two horses, a great boulder lay half embedded in the weathered sand. The Northman went to this rock and, out of sight of the crowd below, prised it loose and hoisted it slowly, muscles straining, to his chest. Then he carefully put the boulder down again and stepped back to the ledge’s rim.

  When Thamiel saw him come back into view he called out: “We’ll wait until you either resume climbing or attempt to come down, barbarian. The latter action, I may point out, will only hasten your inevitable death . . .”

  Looking down, Kank Thad positioned the “landwhale” in his memory’s eye, stepped quickly back and again hoisted the boulder, rushed forward and tossed it from him, barely maintaining his balance as the well aimed projectile sped out and down as truly as a shot from a hurling-engine handled by an officer of Vilthod’s artillery.

  Thamiel
was quick for one his size, and well he needed to be, flinging himself like a mobile mountain to one side and taking two of his guards with him. Veth Nuss, however, had not been looking (he was prone enough to attacks of vertigo on the thick Tzulingen carpets of his chambers in the High-Court without peering at the fly-like human way up on the Ghost Cliff walls), and the boulder all but drove him into the earth. He emitted not a single squeak but crumpled like a wafer beneath the boulder and spread out in a scarlet stain on the stony ground. One uncrushed arm and hand protruded from the now shattered boulder’s perimeter, and, as irony would have it, the hand was clenched and balanced on the thumb, which pointed down . . .

  III

  For a few seconds there was a silence broken only by Kank Thad’s uproarious laughter from on high—and then a multitude of hushed “Oohs” and “Ahhs” of horror went up from the crowd and a scream of rage from Thamiel the Seeker of Truth. A few seconds more and bolts were whizzing, sent more zestfully than before and decidedly, Kank Thad thought, more dangerously.

  Earlier, when first he’d paused upon this ledge, the barbarian had seen a runner dispatched in the direction of the palace guard’s quarters. He knew that some of Vilthod’s guardsmen were longbowmen, and that their flight arrows might easily end his sojourn in this lofty aerie forever; and so he decided it was time to move on, and there was only one way to go—

  When the longbowmen arrived at the base of the cliffs a short while later, the barbarian was already out of range and climbing steadily. Nonetheless, at Thamiel’s command and strictly to hasten the Northman on his way, an experimental arrow was loosed, fell short, and just missed cutting down a cotter on its return.

  In another quarter-hour, when Kank Thad next thought to look down, the people were less than ants and the spread city was but a toy. Away to the south lay the Unknown Ocean—placid in the bay like a pond, tossed and wild without—sparkling in the sun and with gulls wheeling about like white midges on the horizon.

  Again the barbarian found himself a ledge on which to rest, amusing himself by flinging great boulders from it and picturing in the eye of his imagination the chaos these missiles would create below. They did indeed cause chaos—and death—and soon the crowd, all bar Thamiel and his guards (and some few others who were there now to stay) went home. Thamiel was determined to remain till the very end, observing the spiderlike antics of the sentenced man through his powerful glass.

  By now Kank Thad was almost half-way to the top, taking his time, making frequent pauses—though his muscles were far from tired—systematically checking and observing the cliffs above so that he might always choose the best route. In two shallow niches he had passed crouching skeletons, doubtless remains of bygone climbers who had found themselves too tired or frightened to carry on or turn back. There they had starved and died, shivering in fear of their terrible predicament—and perhaps of something else . . .

  For a while now, as he climbed, Kank Thad had been pondering the tale told him by Thasik Haag, of Shildakor and the legendary curse he’d brought down on these cliffs following the fall of his son from their heights. A mist had started to weave up from the rock-walled valley below, and the vertical slabs had quickly dampened and turned cold to his touch.

  Now oddly enough (or remembering Shildakor’s curse, naturally) this mist went unobserved by Thamiel, still watching through his glass, but it was very real to the Northman and it cut his climbing speed by half. For this was a ghost-mist, raised up by the ancient sorcery of Shildakor, to worry and dismay would-be climbers . . . and Kank Thad was suitably worried and dismayed!

  Still, he had carried out observations of the not quite sheer face up to a point some eighty feet or so immediately above him, and mist or none there had seemed plenty of good hand and footholds over that distance. He decided to push on—it would be bad should he find himself stuck here for the night—perhaps the mist would clear as quickly as it had come. But Kank Thad’s previous visual reconnaissance proved of little use in the rising banks of fog now surrounding him and cutting down his field of vision to a few scant feet, and soon he found himself for the first time in trouble.

  Below, through his glass, Thamiel could see how slow and tortured the barbarian’s movements had become, and he chuckled to himself as he watched. Spreadeagled, the big man was, on the awful face, moving upwards inches at a time, and the Seeker of Truth expected to see him fall at any moment. No man—certainly none in Thamiel’s time—had ever gone so high before, and the gross, red-turbaned judge did not want to miss this insolent murderer’s inevitable slip. One slip was all it would take now.

  Yet even as these exceedingly pleasant thoughts were passing through Thamiel’s mind, Kank Thad had spotted a reprieve of sorts. Just when it seemed his hand and footholds had run out—when nothing but a flat, smooth surface loomed in front and an abyssal emptiness behind—he saw, just a little to his left, a concavity in the face of the cliff from which long ago a great stone must have fallen. A gentle slide, letting his body fall sideways and to the left, would allow him to put his head and shoulder over the lip of the hole before gravity claimed him completely. Kank Thad looked once at his sandaled feet, to make sure they were firmly seated, pushed himself to the left with his hands, and then, as his motion picked up speed, he saw the—thing—that awaited him in the misted darkness of the concavity!

  The barbarian’s first impulse was to fling himself away, which would of course prove fatal, but his horror of the thing in the hole froze him rigid—and it saved his life! It was Thasik Haag sat there—legs adangle from the hole, the pipes of his throat hanging out in threads of gristly red and yellow, his good eye bulging and his black tongue lolling—Thasik Haag, or rather his shade. But even as the barbarian’s rigid fingers struck the corpse-thing it disappeared, vanishing into mist and leaving the hole empty and once more friendly.

  Kank Thad unfroze in the very last instant of time, his hands shooting forward into the small cave and his shoulders hunching to take the strain as his arms spread wide and wedged. For a second the lower half of his body hung in space, and then he hauled himself up and into the hole.

  “Ye Gods!” he whispered to himself, the short hairs of his mane rising on his spine as he thought of the thing he had seen. “Ye Gods—but they named these cliffs aright and no mistake!”

  By the time the barbarian was over his initial terror the mist had cleared somewhat, and he could see what looked like a good wide ledge some three man-lengths higher. He levered himself from the hole backwards and began to traverse the next section of his climb. It was not easy: projections were slight and toeholds shallow, and for the first time he felt the strain on his powerful muscles. Eventually he was only an arm’s length below the ledge, which was when he gave a huge thrust with his legs and threw his arms up and over—and into a gory mess!

  With one leg cocked on the ledge he reared instinctively back . . . and barely managed to hang by his fingertips as his leg slipped and the full weight of his huge frame fell on his hands. A ghost, of course, he knew that even hanging there—a mass of blood and squashed guts and brain—and an arm, and a clenched hand with the thumb pointing down . . . There had been a flattened grin on the face of the lich, and for an instant Kank Thad had thought to hear a mouse-like squeak of disapproval. Veth Nuss!

  Slowly, a monstrous fear clutching his heart, the great Northman pulled himself up and peeped over the lip of the ledge. Nothing! Just a hard shelf of rock with a few pebbles. Wearily the barbarian hauled himself up and lay full-length where the lich of Veth Nuss had stretched in ruptured loathsomeness only a few heartbeats earlier. Now Kank Thad had had two warnings, and he knew what to expect of the rest of his climb.

  GHOSTS? . . . DAMN them all, for no lifeless ghost could ever harm a man of warm flesh and hot blood! What he must do was simply . . . ignore the things, should any more of them appear. If only they wouldn’t come at such inopportune moments!

  But try as he might the barbarian could not ignore them, and toward the
end of his tremendous climb he came across at least a dozen more. Swart Yhemni slavers from the distant East; grisly, bearded Northmen, fathers of buxom daughters lost to Kank Thad’s wiles and lusts; taverners who’d called time far too early for a barbarian’s thirst, or denied him credit in the first place—many of them. And so there should be, for the scarfaced Northman was an old hand at murder and all of these ghosts had been his victims . . .

  Far below, Thamiel’s suspense was almost too great to bear. The afternoon was drawing out and his flabby neck ached with the strain of peering upwards through his glass. Even to that instrument the climbing savage was now only a fly, and Thamiel gave a shrill cry of disbelief and frustrated rage as he saw that fly suddenly merge with the high horizon of the Ghost Cliffs of Shildakor. Kank Thad had done it!—the barbarian had climbed the mile-high cliffs!

  He had indeed, and his great lungs banged away in his chest and his great muscles throbbed and ached as he rested his elbows atop the nightmare abyss. His eyes swam and the sweat stood hot on his forehead; but not for long, for here a cool wind constantly blew from the east, blowing sand and grit in his eyes and bringing a final curtain of fog from the unseen valleys and unknown places beyond.

  “I, Kank Thad, have done it!” the savage roared to the world. “What no man ever did before, that I—” He opened and closed his mouth, hanging on his elbows, peering into the mist. Then he shook his head and with a worried grin recommenced his broken cries of victory and self-esteem. “That I have—”

  His boasting finally gurgled into a choked silence and the wind keened into his bared teeth . . .

  Eyes bugging, the barbarian saw the horror lurch from out of the mist, saw the thing that had been a man crumple to its knees while still advancing, saw it reach out for him with jerking, crooked fingers and heard the agonised, rasping rattle of its throat. Clad in a bronze and leather breastplate, in thonged sandals and a leaden kirtle, it came—and its green features were twisted in eternal agony and its eyes blazed with the red light of revenge.