by Roland Green
The chieftain did not look behind her to see if her back was guarded. She would not show doubt now. If it was protected, she was safe. If it was not—well, Grolin or his men would have to find their way behind her before they could use her bare back to their advantage.
This time Lysinka gave no war cry. She merely screamed like a lost soul and rushed forward at Grolin.
Grolin knew no fear at the sight of Lysinka for all that she had been his master in combat the last time they met. Fear now seemed something that he had heard of, perhaps even seen, in other men.
It was no part of him.
So he met Lysinka without regard for his own safety, and with less studied weapons craft than he might have used. Lysinka owed her life to that, for Grolin wielded the axe with blurring speed and terrifying strength.
Thrice it slashed only air where Lysinka’s head had been a heartbeat before. Twice it struck where it would have sliced off the arm of a slower opponent. Once it struck sparks from the rocky ground, Where Lysinka’s bleeding foot might otherwise have lain.
Lysinka knew that she could, in theory, get in under the swing of that axe with sword and dagger. Even a less than mortal wound could slow Grolin enough to let her inflict more harm later. At least it might slow him enough so that she would not stumble or exhaust herself from the frantic speed she used to avoid the axe now.
Meanwhile, Grolin’s own men were doing their share of harm. Two or three of them would charge one of Lysinka’s people, slashing and stabbing with small regard for anything save drawing their opponent’s blood. The moment the blood flowed, they would leave the first opponent and move on to another.
If this went on, Lysinka would have a band of the crippled and maimed to nurse downhill. Fortunately most of the wounded fighters were still on their feet, even if slowed, and still fighting, even if one-handed. The Thanzas bred hardy folk, or they made hardy those who came to them from elsewhere and survived long enough.
She spared a glance for Klarnides, whose men were approaching at the best pace they could manage. Was it her imagination, or had the ground before their feet suddenly grown steeper and rougher since she last looked upon it?
The ground beneath her feet seemed to grow cold. The chill made her miss a step—and in the next moment Grolin struck with the strength and fury of desperation.
Lysinka’s sword seemed to fly up of its own accord. It broke across the handle of the descending axe, and a piece tore Lysinka’s flesh. The axe handle smashed her across the shoulder and back, and pain roared through her.
She went down, but it was half a fall, half a roll, and she came up where Grolin could not easily see or strike at her. Before he could do either, she uncoiled like a striking serpent, and rammed her dagger up to its hilt in Grolin’s belly.
Grolin knew both pain and terror as he felt the dagger sunder his flesh. He also felt rage. Failure was impossible, after all this. Lysinka would not defeat him. She could not.
Two of his men seemed less sanguine. One on either side, they gripped him and drew him back. Lysinka’s second thrust missed. A third man cut at her, but she was cat-quick as before, and opened his throat halfway to his spine with a dagger slash.
The dying man reeled, then fell against Grolin. His blood poured over the baron. The baron gagged at the stench—then felt as if something warm and soothing was growing in his belly.
Where the wound had been.
As Grolin looked down, he saw the blood cease flowing from his belly. He felt more than saw flesh and internal organs knit—although not without pain.
The man with the slashed throat was now all but dead. Grolin embraced him as he would a brother. Now, his senses all alert, the baron felt life leaving the other’s body—and entering his.
In the last moments of the other’s life, the baron’s healing completed itself. His belly felt as if it had never been wounded. Moreover, it felt solid, like a wrestler’s. He looked at his arms. They were no larger, but they seemed harder, as though he were a blacksmith or a tree feller who laboured hard every day.
Grolin found himself reluctant to describe what was happening to him. As for asking why, he did not even care to guess.
The sorcerer was less accepting.
“This is not yet to be!” the voice came into his mind. “You have a power of the Death Lord already.”
“Well, then plainly I am to be his successor,” Grolin replied.
“Not without my labouring for you!” The sorcerer now blurted out his words. Grolin detected fear in the voice that spoke within his skull.
“I labour for myself,” Grolin said. He bent down, picked up with one hand a stone that he could not hitherto have lifted at all, and flung it. It crushed the chest of the man to his left. The man sprawled on the ground, and Grolin knelt beside him. As both his hands pressed on the man’s ruined ribcage, life again flowed out of another into Grolin.
This time when he rose, he felt as if he could lift mountains, swim oceans, or even fly. He doubted that this strength was as yet more than an illusion, perhaps even a trap.
He needed more life from others. He advanced on his companion, axe ready to strike as one of Lysinka’s fighters leaped on him from behind. He stooped and flung the man over his shoulder. The man’s dagger barely pierced his flesh, and the wound healed almost at once.
The man fell on his head, crushing his skull and breaking his neck. As Grolin knelt to absorb his life forces, the man who had served Grolin struck at the baron’s skull with a heavy club.
The blow staggered Grolin. It seemed he was not wholly invulnerable nor did loyalty seem to weigh much in the face of what he had become. But still, the blow should have shattered his skull. It did not even give him a headache.
Grolin rose and swung his axe at the club wielder. The steel cut off the man’s right arm. He screamed, turned, and tried to run. He had no more chance than a rabbit fleeing a wolf. Grolin was on him in moments, and this time he willed the life out of the man.
So fiercely did the baron will the life force from the man, that he was not only dead but crumbling into reeking brown powder in moments. It was that sight that broke the courage of the fighters on both sides. The baron’s men ran uphill, fearing both Lysinka’s followers and their former lord.
Lysinka’s men ran downward. They might have gone on running a long while except that Klarnides faced them. His sword was out, and the look on his face would have stopped a pack of rabid jackals on the hunt, let alone mere men fleeing from magic they did not understand but feared to be near.
Klarnides did not even have to wield his sword. The men slowed from a ran to a trot, from a trot to a walk, and at last stood still around him. He did not ask them to return uphill.
Instead he called Lysinka down to him.
As she went, the chieftain looked over her shoulder. She saw the last of Lord Grolin’s men vanishing among the remaining boulders.
She also saw, far too high on the hill and moving far too fast for any human being, a running figure.
Lysinka went downhill with less reluctance than she usually felt at turning he back on an enemy. But when an enemy was death to face...
She also felt numb contemplating the deaths of so many fighters, hers and Grolin’s. Even enemies did not deserve so fearful a death by magic.
The numbness lay not only in her wits. She had braises and grazes all over, from her desperate efforts to stay clear of Grolin’s axe. Her wounds were better than being a corpse unnaturally stripped of life, but she still hurt and knew that she would be slower than usual for days.
Rasha spread her cloak on the ground and motioned for Lysinka to lie down on it. “Let me see what I can do for you.”
“If you can heal, there are others more in need than I.”
“All are in need of you at our head, Lysinka. Do we have the time and you the strength to argue?”
Lysinka forced a smile and lay down. She did not even think of undressing, and this surprised her. Then she realized that if she undresse
d, she would be naked to more than Rasha’s soothing hands and the eyes of those who had seen her bare more times than they had fingers and toes.
She would be naked in the presence of whatever evil power was loose on this mountain.
That thought chilled her, as if she was not only naked but also sprawled upon the ice of a Hyperborean glacier.
Lord Grolin had to exert himself to stay well ahead of his fleeing men. His new-found magical strength was vast but not infinite. He was sweating before he reached a safe hiding place, in the path of his men but invisible both to them and to Lysinka’s fighters.
He felt a trifle more respect now for Klarnides, having seen the “boy” rally the fleeing Rangers and bandits. A pity that he had. All would now have to be killed, Klarnides first, and perhaps without Grolin’s being able to absorb any of their life into his increasing strength.
But he already had many powers of the Death Lord. Soon he would become the Death Lord. A few lives more or less would make no difference.
Meanwhile, there were his own men to hunt down. If wounded men gave Grolin strength in dying, what might he not expect from the deaths of his unwounded men? He began circling uphill, moving from rock to rock, seeking to remain invisible until he was ready to strike.
He expected success. His men would be half out of their wits with fear, and he could move faster on this kind of ground than any mortal.
At this moment, the sorcerer’s presence returned to Grolin’s mind.
The baron had read of “shrill, small voices” in poems. This voice would have been shrill had it been in his ears. It would not have been small. The sorcerer would have been shouting at the top of his lungs.
“What are you doing? What is this power in you? Where did it come from? The Soul of Thanza is mine, not yours. You must not take it for yourself!”
And much else to the same effect, without causing Lord Grolin to miss or even slow a step.
It was useful to have the discipline of mind to ignore the sorcerer. However, this discipline might work only against the powers the sorcerer was now exerting. If in a panic he invoked more potent magic—
The answer was simple.
The more life he drew from others, the more the baron could resist the sorcerer. In the end, there would be no contest over the Soul of Thanza. Grolin would simply be invincible.
As that thought passed, Grolin saw that one of his men had wandered a little farther uphill than his comrades. It might be possible for Grolin to take a first healthy life without being seen or having the victim put up a fight.
Just as well. Clearly he was already nearly invulnerable to mortal weapons. He would become still more so. Clearly it also cost him strength to heal himself from grave wounds. Moreover, some of his men had bows and could inflict such wounds from far beyond his reach.
Grolin settled down to stalking the man. He discovered that all his senses were now sharper than ever before. He could see eagles an hour’s ride away, feel the ground beneath his feet as if he were barefoot, and smell small animals in their burrows.
For a moment he wondered why he was using this glorious new life to kill others. He could live content with his powers on this mountain for centuries, letting no one harm him but harming no other being.
The moment and the thought passed. Grolin snarled like a hungry wolf. That thought had to be the work of the sorcerer he had once thought an ally. The man had grown so desperate that he would abandon the powers of the Soul of Thanza if he could make Grolin do the same!
Grolin wanted not to snarl but to howl. He wanted to tear out his next victim’s throat with his teeth and drink the man’s blood. He—
Grolin heard the sorcerer’s voice again. Now he was trying to drive Grolin into revealing himself, so that he might be killed from a distance.
Grolin willed himself to deadly silence, even in his mind. He left room for only two thoughts.
Kill the men below.
Take the Soul of Thanza and all its powers for; himself.
He had not decided what to do with the sorcerer when his chosen victim appeared below. Grolin leaped down from a rock, landing on the man’s back, and snapped his neck before the fellow had time to move or cry out.
Grolin found that he wanted to cry out, however. Cry out in exaltation as the man’s life force flowed into him.
It took some time for Lysinka and Klarnides to gather all their people and divide them into three groups. Some were sound of wind and limb; some were wounded but still able to fend for themselves; and some were too badly hurt to be left alone.
In such situations in the past, other bandit chiefs had resorted to killing their wounded. One reason why Lysinka was held in such honour was that she had never done this. Some of her wounded had slain themselves, rather than be a burden, but if a wounded fighter wished to remain with his comrades, he would be carried and cared for.
While this work was going on, an awful silence reigned above on the upper slopes of the mountain. Twice Lysinka heard it broken by something that might have been the howl of a wolf—if one could imagine wolves or any other natural beast in this wilderness.
Once an unmistakably human scream broke the silence. It sounded like a man in mortal agony. Lysinka saw fear twist faces all around her, and she and Klarnides were sharp-tongued for a while until the fear vanished. Neither of them wished to let their thoughts dwell on what might have made any man scream like that.
At last the walking wounded were left with the seriously wounded, and the able-bodied resumed the climb. They were no more than twenty now, and if Lysinka had not sworn an oath before the gods and on her honour to find Conan or die trying, she would have hazarded no more lives on this quest.
Klarnides seemed to be of the same mind. She was just about to ask him, when they came upon the first dead man.
Or rather, a dead thing that had been a man to the moment of its death. The skin was brown and crackling; a puff of wind would turn the body to mud-hued dust. The eyes were white blanks, the mouth clamped shut and twisted in a rictus for which there were no words in any sane language, and the hands had become blackened claws.
Lysinka and Klarnides stared at the horror at their feet, then at their men, daring them to so much as breathe without orders. Then they looked at each other, and Klarnides spoke.
“I’m beginning to feel a trifle dead myself. But the more of this we see, the more we need to find who’s doing it. No one will ever walk these hills in safety again if we do not. Every man who dies will lie upon our consciences.”
Some of the fighters looked as if they would forego a clean conscience for a clean pair of heels that would keep them out of the ranks of the dead. Lysinka did not agree, but understood.
A simple quest to locate Conan and make her band safe had turned into something not even nightmares could match.
Grolin—he would not yet think of himself as the ) Death Lord, lest the Soul of Thanza grow angry—was I careful to leave none of his men alive behind him. He might not need all the life in all of them for his own purpose. But it was necessary to be able to resist the sorcerer’s increasingly frantic efforts to interfere.
Also, he would not leave behind anyone to be tortured by Lysinka. The men who had followed him so far and so faithfully did not deserve that fate. They also could not talk of what was happening on the mountain if they were dead.
The sorcerer or whoever had been shifting the landscape about forswore that game before Grolin breasted the last few hundred paces to the summit. He recognized the cave mouth from two hundred paces off, and quickened his steps.
A hundred paces from the cave mouth, a living 1 figure appeared, standing on a boulder. At first Grolin thought that one of his men had evaded him and was waiting with futile thoughts of revenge.
Then he recognized the sorcerer. Was the man finally presenting himself in the flesh, to fight Grolin more effectively? The sorcerer would learn that flesh was more vulnerable than a magically-presented image.
But first, Grol
in must approach the Soul of Thanza. The sorcerer was between him and the cave, but that need not be a problem without solution. Not with Grolin’s new strength.
The baron ran straight at the boulder. The sorcerer raised his hands. Lightning streamed from his fingertips, making the ground smoke and hurling gravel into the face of the running man.
Grolin did not miss a step. Like a schoolboy rushing a friend off his feet in a game, he slammed his shoulder into the sorcerer’s perch. The rock was as large as a small hut, and pain shot through Grolin’s shoulder.
But the rock split. Half of it rolled off downhill. The other half tottered, then toppled. The sorcerer, however, did not crash to the ground, because he caught himself with a spell of levitation.
That spell distracted him. Grolin was tempted to strike another blow at the sorcerer, perhaps finishing him off. He resisted the temptation, however, and ran toward the cave.
He plunged inside as another blast of magical lightning tore at the cave mouth. Stone cracked and crumbled, dust poured out, and looking behind him, Grolin saw the cave mouth collapsing.
Part of the roof followed, but he shrugged that off and ran on through the darkness. His eyes could penetrate it now like a cat’s, and soon he saw a skull looming up.
What part of the skull was the true Soul of Thanza, he had never thought to ask. But the mouth turned out to be large enough to allow a man to enter the skull. Grolin dashed up and flung himself into the mouth.
He landed on the open chest—or rather, on what lay inside the chest. He had no clear sight of it, before light poured out of it, as if it were a crucible of molten metal, and something plastered itself across his chest.
For a moment Grolin knew pain as if his Soul was tearing through his body from chest to back, taking his life with it. He had a brief thought, that in old tales creations like the Soul of Thanza could reject and destroy unworthy suitors.
Then the pain vanished. So did the light. He was in darkness again but not as great as before. The skull was gone, crumbled into pebbles, and dust was heaped all about him. Several new cracks gaped in the rock, revealing the sky outside. Through one such opening, he could see black smoke spiralling into the air.