Doom's Break

by Christopher Rowley

  "Yes, dear Admiral, I shall smear you with the black paste of expungement. Then I shall boil the meat off your bones with the white fire."

  Heuze spat weakly and replied in as steady a voice as he could manage, "Well, whoever you are, I'll be dead by then, so I won't know anything about it."

  "Oh, but you will, for the tension of your life force seeking to depart is exactly what I will be playing on."

  Heuze shivered. Whatever the insane giant was raving about, it didn't sound as if it was going to be much fun.

  The leer was back. "So, tell me, Admiral, as I prepare the black paste, what does it feel like to be a broken man? An empty vessel, drained and waiting to be thrown on the fire? A doomed captive without hope? You never expected this, I'll wager."

  The huge man was breaking up a black substance into a golden bowl held in front of him by two slaves. As the substance fell into the bowl there were strange sparkles in Heuze's vision and he heard uncanny little tinkling sounds at the very edge of his perception.

  Heuze saw how the game might be played. Confidence, that was the thing. "Actually I do have hope."

  The giant paused, his eyes wide. "Really? You astonish me. What hopes can you have? Do you refer to an afterlife? You aren't a religious man. No, no, I've seen the reports. You have many marks against you. A blasphemer, it is plain. You don't believe in an afterlife."

  "You're right, I couldn't give a fart for your religion. All bunk, and you know it. My hopes rest, actually, on your undoubted intelligence. I know a lot of things that you don't, and I could tell you those things, if you were to spare me."

  The giant's smile widened, if that was at all possible. "Oh ho! You know things that you haven't told us. Muambwi, how can this be?" The big man whirled on the spidery Gold Top like a bird of prey stooping on a pigeon.

  "He lies, Great One..." Muambwi cringed.

  "Maybe he does. Let us see."

  Heuze tried to grin at Muambwi. It hurt too much. He let his face sag again. That at least didn't hurt quite so much.

  "Well, well, well, you have hopes, Admiral, you really do. Because if you do give me something worthwhile, something I do not already know, then I will spare you."

  A huge hand scrunched his shoulder again.

  "I will take Muambwi Gold Top instead."

  Heuze scarcely dared to believe what he'd heard. "Really?" he mumbled.

  "Yes, yes, indeed." The giant man turned and snapped his fingers to the guards. He gestured to Muambwi. "Bind him for sacrifice."

  The guards seized the startled Gold Top and bound his wrists behind his back.

  "Now shut the tent. No one is to be admitted on pain of death. If there are urgent messages from the front, you will call me from outside, understood?"

  "Yes, Lord."

  The look on Muambwi's face brought a grunt of amusement from Heuze. The giant's eyes twinkled.

  "Now, Admiral?"

  "Well, you know that Aeswiren commands the colony army. And you know that the monkey army is commanded by this fellow Toshak."

  "Yes, I have heard that name. The monkeys under this Toshak's leadership have done extraordinarily well against you, Admiral Heuze. Drove you back to your fleet once or twice, I believe."

  "Yes, well, they're tricky, especially in the woods. So, anyway I have met with this General Toshak. You see, the Emperor, er, the ex-Emperor"—Heuze hurried on when he saw the huge brows knit in a frown—"he demanded that we sit down with the monkeys and pretend they're human and everything. And we were supposed to talk about what we were going to do. How we were going to get along in this campaign."

  "Not your idea, eh?"

  "Oh, no, your lordship. I prefer my monkey after it's been cooked."

  "Very good! That's the spirit. You may have your fill of grilled monkey very soon—if my lizards leave any!"

  "Yes, your lordship. It became very apparent to me that this Toshak is the key to the situation. See, he's some sort of natural leader. There's no one else like him, except the little old demon things."

  "Yes, I know those that you refer to. So you say this monkey general is unique. He is their guiding genius, eh? Without him, their horde will disintegrate."

  "Yes, your lordship."

  "So how do I find this monkey general?"

  "Well, it just so happens that I know how you might find him."

  "No, Lord, do not listen to him!" cried Muambwi, horrified by this turn of events.

  "Silence!" roared the Old One, who slapped the Gold Top across the mouth so hard blood and spittle flew across the tent.

  The huge man turned back to Heuze. "Yes?"

  "Well, I have to bargain with you, don't I? You kill that Gold Top first, do your spell, and then I'll tell you."

  The giant smiled, but the eyes were most unkind. "Hmm. You think to bargain with me, do you?"

  "You need the information. I need to live."

  "I could hammer it out of you."

  "I could hold it back until it's too late for you to use it."

  The evil leader's eyes filled with calculation. He turned and went to the front flap of the tent.

  "Bring my pet monkey," he snapped to the guards before turning back to Heuze, now holding the golden bowl in his hands.

  "All right, Admiral, it's a bargain."

  Heuze watched with a mix of awe and horror as the Old One stirred sparkling powder into the bowl and then handed it to a slave, who crouched down and held it steady.

  With a casual grasp, the giant seized the bound Gold Top and lifted him into the air as if he were no more than a chicken. Muambwi wailed with terror.

  The huge man held Muambwi upside down by his ankles. A knife flashed in his massive hand, and the priest's wails cut off abruptly into choking noises. The giant held the Gold Top by the ankles and let his blood drain down into the golden bowl.

  As the blood flowed, the sorcerer muttered a collection of guttural phrases. The words meant nothing to Heuze, but they seemed heavy with sibilance.

  Heuze began to feel a charge rising into the room. The hair on his neck and then all over his body stood up. A strange chill ran down his spine. Suddenly a thick black whisker writhed up within the bowl. Something about the motion made Heuze's skin crawl. The tendril was joined by another, and then more, until it seemed that some giant spider must be lying on its back inside the bowl, waving its legs in the air.

  The tension continued to build. Heuze heard odd little sounds, squeaks and chirrups, coming from the bowl. The whiskers waved frantically.

  Heuze noticed a horrible smell, as if something long since dead had been brought inside the tent. The smell got stronger and stronger until his eyes were beginning to smart and he was gagging.

  There was a sudden explosion, and a flash of red light seared his eyeballs.

  The stench still hung in the air, but now it began to diminish.

  The giant man was standing still, his hands clutching the top of his skull as if he were holding it on with every ounce of strength he had. The slaves that had held the golden bowl were lying prostrate, dead by every indication.

  With a loud gasp, the huge man let go of his head, opened his eyes, and extended his arms upward. He gave a great, deafening cry and then lowered his hands.

  Heuze realized he'd been holding his breath and let it out. Damn, but this was getting to be bad for his nerves.

  "The monkey is here, Lord," said a guard outside the tent.

  "Good, send him in."

  The giant man spoke as if nothing had happened inside the tent.

  More slaves appeared, who dragged away the comatose forms beside the golden bowl.

  A mot entered. Heuze found himself being introduced to the creature a few moments later.

  "Admiral, meet my translator, my guide to the ways of the native folk. This is Pern Treevi."

  Heuze had spent enough time around mots to see at once that there was something strange in this mot's eyes.

  "Now, tell us all about this Toshak."

 
; CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Through the night, the armies labored on Shelly Fields. Thru delivered his last message to Aeswiren in the fourth hour of darkness and was relieved of duty for the while. He stopped for a moment at the crest of the hill and studied the pattern of fires on the far side of the river. The enemy was not resting.

  But Toshak knew all this. Thru turned away from it. He had something more important to attend to.

  The trails were crowded. Mixed groups of men and mots were carrying their wounded to the field hospital set up on Blue Hill. Around him, Thru heard the groans of pain and the murmurs of encouragement in both his own language and the tongue of Shasht, mingled together as he'd never heard them before.

  A donkey cart, piled with wounded men, was being driven by a big brilby wearing a captured enemy helmet. Thru worked his way around them.

  The trail was a morass of mud where the storm had soaked the ground. Thru found he could make better time working his way through the woods, even in the dark. Eventually he crossed the rocky stream and struggled up the slope of Blue Hill. A city of tents had sprung up here. A big fire was blazing farther along, and he checked there.

  Hundreds of wounded men and mots had already been brought in. Others were being operated on at that moment. Screams and cries echoed in the darkness. Up the muddy trail struggled a steady stream of stretcher bearers. A young mor, her fur streaked with blood, was drinking a mug of tea. In her eyes was the look of exhaustion.

  "Nuza?" she said when Thru spoke to her. "Must be resting somewhere. I haven't seen her for a while. She worked so hard to get us all up here."

  He went on, looking in the tents, finding scenes of horror and scenes of heroism as young mors struggled to help the wounded. Often the wounded men, delirious from pain, would panic when they found themselves being handled by mors. But Thru heard more than one of these mors respond gently, "Be calm, we will help you."

  They spoke Shasht, and he heard incredulous exclamations as the men realized that they were being cared for by the "monkeys" that they had hated for so long.

  At the entrance to the largest tent of all, he ran into Simona.

  "Thru?" She was stunned to see him there, and he was equally surprised.

  "Simona."

  It was simply natural to hold each other close, though it awoke memories of another desperate time, and after a few moments they pulled apart.

  Thru felt suddenly awkward, unable to speak. Simona recovered first.

  "You're looking for Nuza, of course. Silly me."

  Thru peered past her into the tent. Under a lantern he saw Simona's father at work, covered in blood.

  "He has worked wonders," said Simona. "My father is not a strong man, except when he's working like this."

  Thru shivered. "I think it's easier to take lives than it is to save them."

  "They took Nuza to the blue tent, over there. That's where we sleep when we can't go on any longer."

  Thru saw the lines of exhaustion on her face. "Thank you. How long have you been here?"

  "I don't remember. Mentu brought us up on the Sea Wasp. Sailed in right under the nose of the enemy fleet. They know they can't catch the Sea Wasp so close to shore."

  "Mentu is here?"

  "Yes. He wanted to fight, but they rejected him. He knows nothing of war and, besides, he's too old."

  "How was Nuza?"

  "She is amazing. I have never seen anyone work so hard. Moved this entire hospital here from Dronned. Forty donkey carts, sixteen ox wagons, and more are coming. She will save hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives."

  Thru was already gone, though. Simona looked after his retreating back before turning back into the tent. Despite everything, she found she had tears in her eyes.

  Thru searched the blue tent, where a few exhausted mors and older mots were asleep, but Nuza was not among them. One of them suggested he try at the cook shack where a fire was blazing. Though he had missed her on his first pass, he spotted her at last, huddled alone on the far side, sipping a mug of tea and staring into the fire with blank eyes.

  He slid in beside her and took her into his arms.

  "You're alive," she said at last, relishing this confirmation in her faith in providence.

  "I haven't been in the fight this time. More likely you would have been hurt than me."

  "Silly! What harm could befall us back here?"

  "The enemy has horsemen. They're out there in the woods."

  "Aeswiren has a company here to guard us."

  "Or, you could have killed yourself with overwork."

  She started to laugh but stopped.

  They were silent again. Treasuring the precious moment snatched from the battle, a quiet point of stillness in the midst of the vast storm.

  "It's not the work, Thru, it's the heartbreak. There was a young mot today. He was done for, a sucking chest wound. I keep hearing him ask me if he had a chance. I lied, and he knew I was lying."

  She let out a sob then steadied herself and sucked in a deep breath. "Sorry, that was weakness. It's hard sometimes..."

  Thru just held her quietly in his arms. "The Spirit has some plan for both of us, or we wouldn't still be around."

  "Trust you to put it that way," she laughed, brought back to her normal self. "That's Thru Gillo, always seeing the silver lining in the clouds."

  But Thru wasn't listening. For he had felt a sudden change.

  "What is it, Thru?"

  "Listen."

  Across the hills, over the trees, they heard it. A great moan that went on and on, an unbroken sound, neither rising nor falling for many seconds, until at last it cut off with a strange sob.

  Silence fell across the Land, while every man and every mot felt his or her being shiver to its core. Some dropped their weapons and sprawled witless on the ground. Others crept into the trees and tried to hide.

  A vast red light lit up the north, and they became aware of the sound of enormous drums beating in the hills.

  "It is him. The crisis is upon us."

  Nuza held up her hands as if for rain. "What is it?"

  Thru saw the light pulsing with the sound. "Black sorcery, that is all I know."

  With a last embrace he left her and started back to the front.

  The climb over the hills seemed to take an eternity. The red light pulsed in the sky, the great drums throbbed, and a terrible gloom settled over Thru's spirits. Men, mots and donkey carts were all mixed up on the trail, with some trying to get up the hill and others seeking to get down to the village.

  Suddenly Thru felt a sizzling sensation in his hands and feet, and then terrifying, alien images rushed into his mind. He cried out, one in a multitude of others who cried as well. The images did not let up. At first they were almost meaningless, shapes like those of bats or knives or perhaps simply clouds, but they filled his mind and blocked his vision.

  Thru stumbled into someone and recoiled from a blow. Dimly he heard voices cursing in both the tongue of the Land and in Shasht. His vision cleared, and he saw himself surrounded by men and mots holding hands to their ears, some who had fallen to their knees in the mud.

  A donkey cart had turned over; the donkey was kicking in the stays and the wounded men had spilled out into the brush. No one seemed capable of restraining the struggling animal or helping the wounded. Thru staggered toward the donkey, then stopped dead, blinded by a terrifying hallucination.

  He waved his hands to force it away, but it would not leave him.

  He stood on a shadowy plain. In the company of thousands of other doomed souls, he was marching forward to a line of great anvils. Behind the anvils stood enormous men wielding huge bloody hammers that rose and fell in time with the throbbing drums. As the doomed came up to the anvils, they laid their heads meekly on the gore-soaked metal, and the hammers came down.

  Thru struggled to clear this monstrous vision from his mind, but it held fast. The sense of the inevitable grew in his heart. Why continue with the struggle when death was the only cer
tain reward? Why resist the great power of the enemy that towered above them?

  The hammers were rising and falling. The sound of their blows on the anvils throbbed in his brain. Thru heard himself screaming, but it was almost as if he were already a ghost and separated from the real world by a membrane across which sounds filtered only weakly. Strange, sickly images continued to torment him. Bones and graves, corpse flesh hanging from hooks, a pile of skulls with green light glowing in the empty sockets—all paraded across his vision.

  Then the spell was broken. A flash of white light erupted across the plain, splitting the darkness like a knife. The anvils disappeared, the hammers vanished, and Thru was back, crouched over the mud on the slope of Blue Hill, holding his head in his hands with tears streaming down his cheeks.

  All around him, mots and men were recovering. Someone took hold of the donkey's reins. Others struggled up from the mud. Thru shook himself free of the horror and went on, plowing through the mud and the chaotic crowd of mots and men on the trail.

  As he came over the crest of the hill, the red light fell upon him in full fury. The source of the light was down in the Shell Valley, and it glowed like the sun. The throbbing of the great drums continued, and Thru could see that the battle had begun again. Arrayed across the valley were serried ranks of spears, helmets, and shields, and he could hear the harsh music of war coming from where the enemy's thrusts across the river had driven into Toshak's formations.

  The trail was still full of mots and men moving away from the fight, but Thru pressed on and eventually found Toshak and his staff perched on a knoll thrust out of the northern slope of the hill.

  "Colonel Gillo, good to see you. Our enemy decided not to wait for morning."

  "Sir. I was delayed."

  "By the hallucinations, I expect. Well, not your fault, that's for sure. We all had them, until the Assenzi did something that cut them off."

  Thru recalled that blinding flash of white light. "Thanks be given to the Assenzi," he said.

  "Yes, indeed, but the enemy crossed the river during that period, took our front ranks by surprise, and drove us back from the river. Now he's massed enough troops on this side to give us a real fight."