by Rypel, T. C.
Shouts of assent mingled with groans of objection to charge the atmosphere in the catacomb, rank with the odors of sweat and mold and burnt oil.
Roric Amsgard, a butcher and provisioner and a former Austrian cavalryman, succeeded in gaining the floor. He was tall and lanky, but his frame hinted at a deceptive strength. Long-faced, sad-eyed—homely as a bloodhound—Roric was a friendly, popular man who wielded much influence. Frankly uncommitted to either side in the dispute, he posed a disquieting question:
“All right, you bold fighting men, so if we’re to attack the occupying troops and defend the city against the siege to follow, what do we do about the innocent ones—our women and children, the old people? It’s easy for you, isn’t it, Phlegor? Your wife has passed on—God rest her soul. But I have a wife and three little ones. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but while I’m out...having a go—” He suggestively patted the jagged scar that coursed along his jawbone. “—I know I’m not going to like seeing my family starved out. In my opinion this isn’t a very defensible city. Half our backside’s hanging over a cliff, and for the rest there’s too much low wall to weather a siege—and that’s against human forces. We’re sitting ducks for....” His hand swept overhead. A shudder coursed through the gathering.
Phlegor tugged at the coarse red hair that tufted like scrub over his freckled arms. He knew a serious issue had been raised, and for the first time he felt his supporters taking stock of the consequences, wavering in the winds of responsibility.
“We have the system of catacombs,” Phlegor advanced. “We can secure them below ground with provisions. They’d be safe from action. And as for defense, you seem to forget that we outnumber this land grubber’s army.”
“So we just leave the innocents to starve or be buried alive if we lose, eh?” Roric probed.
“Have you forgotten the flying monster?” came an accusing voice. “What do you—?”
“How can you be so sure that we have more men than Klann does? Anyway, he has an awful lot of hardware.” The speaker was Paolo Sauvini, the wagoner, apprentice to the blind wagon master, Ignace Obradek. An unpopular man in his twenties and something of a bully as a child, his entering the conversation would usually key an unpleasant turn.
Phlegor laughed harshly. “We probably saw the backbone of his ‘mighty’ army in the square today. What leader doesn’t show off his shining best to intimidate the ignorant, eh, Garth?”
With this last Phlegor had searched out the quiet smith, who snapped out of his reverie and faced the speaker. The council hushed, for Garth’s soft-spoken opinions were greatly respected.
“It’s hard to say, Phlegor,” Garth said slowly. “Snap judgments are most often dangerous in such matters.”
“What about this flying beast?” Paolo queried. “How many men do you figure him to be worth?”
“I say don’t be concerned with monsters and magicks,” Phlegor said. “It’s men we should aim to drive from our midst. That creature likely frightens more by illusion and fear-mongering than by what it can really do. How big do you think it is? It’s an old sorcerer’s trick to intimidate by illusion. When it alights that thing’s probably no more than half what it looks. I can’t believe—”
“Have you ever really seen what a wyvern can do?” Garth interrupted. A buzzing of low voices.
“Garth, I don’t want to hear it!” Phlegor shot back, the buzzing stilled. “Whose side are you on? Do you want to keep these people under this Klann’s heel? I said before, I’ve never seen anything on wings that a rain of shafts couldn’t fell, and magicians—those who really can claim mystical power—they don’t align themselves with small-timers. Besides, as Flavio says, we’re a Christian community. We can count on God’s help in our cause.” He tossed off this last statement as an afterthought, no conviction in his voice.
“From what I’ve heard, the Lord didn’t seem to help Witold Koski this afternoon,” Lorenz observed trenchantly.
The recollection took its toll. Most of them had witnessed the ghastly event. The vision of the dismembered arm and gushering shoulder would remain forever in grisly memories of that day. The prospect of violent death, heretofore remote in the placid environment of Vedun, now lurked uncomfortably near.
Flavio had waited for just such a moment to appeal once more to his peers’ sensibilities.
“Not a very pleasant proposition, my friends,” the Elder asserted. “And the Almighty may indeed withhold His strength from us if our course of action is impetuous and unsound. But since the arguments, pro and con, are tending toward a military viewpoint, I should like Garth’s opinion. Garth, could we succeed in such a plan—if that were the course we decided on?”
The smith rose reluctantly in response to his old friend’s gesture. Garth wasn’t fond of public speaking, and he met the eyes of the onlookers sheepishly. But he was perhaps the best-loved man in Vedun, an affable and generous soul in whose debt was every man in that catacomb. His mighty frame and boundless mirth made him the sort every man liked to boastfully call friend. Yet there was a tinge of sadness in his eyes that their eternal twinkle couldn’t hide.
His ears reddened a bit as he addressed the attentive group. “I know something of Klann, from many years ago. There was a time when he was a noble and fair and idealistic ruler. He was a king, I believe. And if what I heard is true, then whatever his army looks like on the surface, he’s probably chosen and tested them to his satisfaction. Now, granted, Phlegor, the mercenaries likely aren’t much of a fighting unit. But I’d bet that what they lack in discipline they’ll make up for in ferocity. Don’t underestimate them.”
“What about this slant-eyed barbarian Boris tells us you’re feasting tonight?” Vlad Dobroczy asked. “Isn’t he one of them?”
Garth’s brow creased at the hostile murmurs this disclosure brought. “He’s a lone traveler from the Far East, and for God’s sake, he brought in the body of Michael’s poor brother. You all saw that.”
“This would seem to be a bad time to be entertaining strangers, Garth,” Phlegor advised.
“I think it’s my right to entertain who I please in my house,” the smith replied quietly. “Anyway, he’s not the sort who would join a brigand army.”
“I think Garth’s right,” someone piped in. “The oriental had a run-in at the inn today with some of the soldiers. Almost got himself killed.”
“Well!” Lorenz said with some satisfaction. “Wouldn’t Wilfred be disappointed to hear that his hero was nearly skewered! It seems my brother’s become fast friends with this...odd fellow.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Dobroczy stated. “You’d better tell Wilf to keep his trap shut about the city.”
“I’ll tell him you said so,” Lorenz replied sarcastically. Vlad muttered an unconvincing assent. Wilf had taken the farmer’s measure on more than one occasion.
“Michael,” Roric called out gingerly, causing the protege to blink self-consciously. “This is a time of sorrow for you, I know. But we need to hear—what’s your opinion on our course of action?”
Michael gazed across a panorama of faces etched with doubt and fear, anger, bewilderment, compassion. His thoughts leapt and eddied as he rose, groping for the right words, choosing among those he wished to speak and those his station demanded. But he was spared the choice.
The heavy oaken trap door to Flavio’s cellar suddenly sprang open. The council members gasped and jerked up from their seats. All stared in the dim luminescence at the figure that descended the stone stairway.
“Perhaps I can help illuminate the way, butcher.”
All eyes focused on the bearer of the compelling voice known to all in Vedun. On the hewn staircase stood the prophetess Tralayn, she of the sparkling emerald eyes and ever-shifting raven hair. She descended with a soft rustle of jade robes and stood before them, gazing at each man in turn, her fathomless eyes aglow. Tralayn never attended council meetings, and her presence now bespoke the gravity of their situation.
&
nbsp; “You have been choosing a course of action,” she said matter-of-factly. “What has the council decided, Flavio?”
Flavio recounted the night’s debate. Tralayn listened with keen interest, and several other council members, again caught up in the moment of the portentous meeting, added their feelings to the account. At length Tralayn halted them and spoke.
“It would seem that both sides are right, Flavio—and wrong. Sacrilege and murder have been committed in our city. The practice of our faith has been threatened. And the creature which even now plies the night sky is a familiar demon of the sorcerer Mord. The Lord God would not have us countenance such outrages. That should be enough to determine our direction.”
Whispers crept among the council members.
“Then we must fight!” Phlegor announced triumphantly.
“Yes...but not as you would have it, Phlegor,” the prophetess cautioned. “As these others have said, it would be suicide to rebel ill-equipped and untrained. For the nonce we must be patient.”
“You speak in riddles!” Phlegor cried.
“Listen to me, all of you,” Tralayn said, her eyes of emerald ice flashing. “Listen, and I will tell you the tale of an accursed city, a city seated on the ledge of an escarpment, shunned of men, hunting ground of benighted horrors....
“How often have you wondered, Flavio, at the discovery of this citadel, intact yet unclaimed for centuries. Whence came such a magnificent work of the hands of men? Was it not, then, a gift to you from the Almighty? Nay, I say to you that twice before did God-fearing men dream as you dreamt. Twice since the time of Christ did the worshipful seek to build a stronghold in these mountains....”
The prophetess stepped closer to her rapt audience, lowering her voice to a whisper.
“Twice did the god of this world—the Despondent One!—swallow them up without a trace! These mountains are a bastion of Satan! Did we not see his very image in the sky? The simple folk of neighboring regions fear to tread in these environs. Even the heathen Turks fear to exact tribute here. We thought to be free from dark intrusion because of our faith. But the powers of evil are strong....”
She raised her voice to conversational level. “Flavio, those who hewed the stone of Vedun, who shared your dream of a holy citadel, were destroyed in a single day and night by winged things which preyed on them from above!” Gasps and whispers. “And centuries later another community of the Lord’s children, pilgrims even as we—overrun and slaughtered by rakehells who swarmed over them; driven to frenzied madness by possessing wraiths!”
Tralayn paused, her features contorted by fervor. Most watchers—wide-eyed and breathless; others—clucking and shaking their heads skeptically.
“And at each tragedy,” she continued, “there presided the Dark Enchanter, henchman of the Fallen One....”
The council members looked from one to the other with terrible apprehension. It was Roric who crystallized their grim thoughts into words.
“Didn’t the magician say that he’d been to Vedun before?”
“Do we live under a curse, Master Flavio?” Boris fretted. “Why weren’t we told before?”
“Your Elder knew nothing of this,” Tralayn said, “for it was revealed to me of the Lord this very night. For the rest I can only speculate. These are the times of manifest evil. Such epochs are cyclical. I surmise that in each of these far-flung times the Lord God inspires the devoted with the need for a righteous stronghold in the very midst of darkness. Our community is the rampart which stands against evil in the present time!”
Flavio rose, painfully aware of the shift in thought from local disturbance to cosmic evil.
“I am...bewildered, Tralayn,” the Elder admitted. “If earlier outposts of the faithful were obliterated here before, then what are we to do now? How can we succeed against evil where they failed?”
“A disturbing question, my friend.” The prophetess grew pensive. “Perhaps...perhaps their faith was weak, or their human courage failed them. Or perhaps the agencies of righteousness were unable to concentrate their might, as we may yet succeed.”
She raised a hand to the staircase and the shuffling steps which had begun to descend. As the brooding councilmen turned at her gesture, they viewed a sight that made their hearts leap in their breasts. The familiar bearded face seemed older, troubled. A heavy, ragged dressing on one shoulder displayed a crimson stain from a wound beneath. But there was no mistaking the charge of hope that galvanized the catacomb as they watched their benefactor ease downward, steadied by a battle-scarred retainer. His name burst from a score of throats:
“Baron Rorka!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Panther-quick and silent as poison, Gonji loped through the mazelike canyons of high-walled alleys in Vedun’s southern quarter.
One fist clutched the bow and quiver, the other gripped the sword hilt above his shoulder as he ran, encountering no one. Now and then a stray dog would bark at his swift passing or a cat would scurry from its forage. The city had grown quieter now, save for the wyvern’s rushing flight and the distant lowing of cattle. The alleys smelled of damp rot and trench offal; he was near a sewage culvert.
Gonji’s feet skidded to a halt on the cobblestones at an egress to the broad lane abutting the southern quarter of the city wall. His breath came in short gasps, and his heart raced. He listened intently, panned the wall for soldiers: one burgonet glinting in moonlight, strolling this way in opposition to his partner, now far to the east.
The wyvern soared over Gonji, shrieking once sharply. Gonji felt a chill as he turned at the unearthly sound. He ground his teeth and fixed the beast in his vision with rays of loathing. It flapped twice hard, accelerating with alarming speed. Then it spat, blasting something from the sky—a hawk or an owl. The Llorm bowman, disciplined, ignored it and pursued his duty. At the top of the stairs he did an about-face and marched back eastward.
Footsteps approached along the lane. A soldier, Llorm, heading toward the stone stair to the allure, perhaps fifty paces away.
Changing of the guard? Gonji cursed. This wasn’t getting any simpler.
The Llorm clumped over a narrow wooden culvert-span, stopped and spat into the trench. He started up the stair to the crenellated battlements, then paused to adjust a tasset strap. He heard the soft scrape behind him, felt the warm draught of body heat at his back. A snaring arm locked about his throat, choking off his breath. Gonji yanked off the burgonet and knocked the soldier senseless with his own helm. He dragged the unconscious Llorm into the shadows, then looked up: it had gone undetected.
A moment’s indecision: to kill or not? No, no killing. No sense stirring up reprisals. These people had enough trouble already. He’d just have to be swift and silent. Not to mention cautious: he glanced at the downed soldier. He’d be asleep for some time, Gonji told himself confidently, then dismissed all thought of it as he vaulted up the steep stairway to crouch atop the allure.
He scampered up into an embrasure and peered over the brink into the valley below. Far, far below. The valley floor shimmered softly a long way down. In the distance Gonji could make out the seeth of a river; to the east, the hissing rumble of an unseen cataract that fed it. The cold wind tore at his clothing. He wished he’d worn another layer. But comfort was soon forgotten.
The air overhead parted, cloven by the rushing bulk of the wyvern. Gonji hunkered down in the cover of a battlement. He closed his eyes and held his breath, and his imagination served up the momentary vision of flesh seared pulpy and crackling by foul fire. He was angered by the atavistic fear’s power over him, and he drew strength from the clean solid feel of the wooden bow in his right hand.
“You’ll get yours, slime-spawned bastard!” he whispered, watching the monster’s soaring course.
Furtively he peered around the stone blocks of the merlon. Sweat stung his eyes; his face and hair were by now soaking under the dark wrap. The Llorm guards could both be seen now, nearing each other just beyond the roof of the slaughte
rhouse. Soon they would turn, and the bowman on Gonji’s side would be facing in his direction.
Gonji traced the wyvern’s arcing flight. Already it was approaching diametric opposition to him above the northern rampart. Its improbably aerodynamic bulk swam almost lazily on the air currents, supported by some awful magick he cared not to ponder. It would zoom overhead again while the Llorm sentry was far off....
Sure, damn it, why not?
Gonji sat back in the cradling crenellation, legs braced against the battlement. Craning his neck to follow the flight path—a wild unreasoning glee shouting down the alarm bells in his mind—he nocked an arrow and half-drew the bow along his side above the abyss. An action shot. Difficult. A fine challenge—
The beast glided up from behind. The great wind surged in time with Gonji’s adrenalin rush. Predatory hind claws raked, scant yards overhead.
He pulled hard, tracked, and fired.
The arrow whistled skyward—tore through a wing—
“Skreeeeee!”
A gurgled laugh of triumph, and the samurai pounded granite with his fist. “How’d that feel—good, eh? Hee-heeee!” he whispered shrilly through clenched teeth.
The wyvern flapped jerkily with the shocking pain, reared its head and flailed its barbed tail.
Down the allure a stone’s throw, the sentry stopped and regarded the beast’s frenzy, automatically readying his arbalest.
Uh-oh, Gonji thought. He rubbed his stinging eyes and looked from the guard to the angry monster, which had skewed into an ungainly, lopsided flight pattern. Its great gaping jaws probed and snapped at the embedded shaft, its supple neck coiling in hideous contortions.