by James Silke
All Gath could see was the back sides of the wooden buildings surrounding the court. From beyond them came the sounds of hysterical young girls and the clang of steel on iron. Gath leaped down to the lower roof, then into the empty street below. Up through twisting alleys he charged to the Heights.
He wound his way through ranks of drying yellow, gold and orange cloth, heading towards the bedlam of sound. Stepping out from behind a yellow cloth, Gath came across a Skull soldier who failed to notice his arrival. The soldier was preoccupied. He had a half-naked Cytherian maiden pinned under his kneeling body. Handfuls of her blonde hair were clenched in his sweating fists, and protruded between his fingers. Her big eyes were muddy pools bubbling with mindless terror as she stared past the soldier’s metal-clad shoulder. Her expression told the soldier he had company, and he turned to see who it was.
Being a civilized man, the soldier had removed his helmet in order to more fully enjoy his pleasure, but he had not bothered to remove his dagger from between his clenched teeth. It was a poor place to keep a dagger.
Gath kicked the soldier flush on the mouth. He flew off the woman in one grunting piece, landed with a metallic crunch, and rolled five feet clawing down orange bolts of cloth. When he stopped, his head was turned far enough around to look down at his buttocks. Three inches of dagger blade protruded from his left cheek.
Gath stepped over the girl, moved through the sheets of cloth, and stopped in the concealing shadows near the edge of the sheer bluff. Below him was Weaver Court.
The battle was over.
Brutal eruptions of lust, murder, torture and pillage were breaking out spasmodically about the white marble courtyard. The raiders were taking the payments due victors, rewards best collected when the blood was still hot with the kill and the mad terror of death was still fresh on the flesh.
Upended, spread-eagled Cytherian women were being raped both in the shadows and in the sunshine. Nails raked naked backs. Hands groped. Spines were bent over stairs and barrels. Mouths were gorging themselves on wine, cheese, fresh fruit and raw meat. Intransigent prisoners were being kicked to death slowly, while the reasonable were being drowned just as slowly in the well. The dead and dying, sprawled among the living, added to the hellish celebration by spewing fountains of blood and emptying their bowels into the slippery, stumbling chaos. The stench perfumed the rioting passions, and the large wooden temple provided appropriate music. There the screaming was a chorus.
Gath’s stomach bubbled and churned. His muscles throbbed, eager to throw his body into the Kitzakk hell. But he remained motionless.
A group of Skull soldiers burst out of the broken doors of the temple herding bruised and bloody young girls, many with their tunics torn away, clutching the shreds to their naked bodies.
Gath leaned forward, eyes steady and patient.
Robin was at the center of the group, framed by five of the smallest girls, young things from nine to thirteen. They clung to her tunic and arms, sobbing and hiding their faces against her. Robin held them close covering their eyes. Her legs wobbled, but the pressing weight of the girls kept her upright.
The soldiers prodded the girls across the yard toward a lacquered black wagon parked facing the main access street. When the girls reached the wagon, a small, fat priest emerged and greeted them with an unctuous, openmouthed smile. He probed their breasts, teeth, buttocks and flat stomachs with shameless fingers, mindless of their cringing and sobbing. Reaching Robin, he had the young girls driven away from her, and clapped his fat hands in relish.
Robin reeled back, as if confronted by a serpent. Two temple guards promptly seized her arms and held her in place. The priest took hold of her tunic, ripped it open exposing her breasts, then looked at them as if they were pretty peaches. With a lewd laugh, he turned to the guards and spoke to them, his voice lost amid the constant screaming.
Robin, struggling and sobbing, was forced into the wagon, and the priest proceeded through the whimpering, shuddering girls making additional selections.
Gath watched all this without showing any sign or taking action, then scanned the activity in the court, and again saw the two metal-clad commanders.
They sat on the steps of the temple consuming cheese and wine, aloof to the bedlam around them. Every so often one lifted his head, looked off at a shadow or alley as if he were expecting someone. Sitting beside their weapons, they looked like a party of four.
Gath’s world again filled with blood and light, and became devoid of sound and reality. But he shook the enchantment off and looked back at the lacquered wagon.
Robin sat in the front left corner. Her small fists trembled as they clung to the bars. Her head was down, and red-gold hair trembled in tangles over her face.
Past the wagon was the narrow street by which the vehicle must depart. High dirt walls cast deep shade on the street. The shade was filtered with steam which drifted down from huge dye vats positioned along the top of the walls.
Gath hesitated thoughtfully and stepped back into the concealing red cloth. He dodged through the bolts of cloth at a steady, quiet trot, circled around the bluff above the court, and emerged from the opposite side. In front of him were two of the massive steaming vats that lined the narrow road. They were wooden with iron bottoms heated by fire pits. Gath moved between them to the edge of the dirt wall. The narrow street below was empty. A racket of unholy pleasure and misery came from the upper end of the street, then the tramp of horses’ hooves moving slowly and the creak of wagon wheels joined the racket. He waited and a team of horses emerged around the sharp turn pulling the black lacquered wagon.
Gath settled in place. His armor heaved and glistened as his chest swelled with his racing breath. The thrill of battle slashed through his nerves and muscles. The time to abandon patience was at hand. He hefted his spear over his head, arm cocked and biceps throbbing.
The fat priest sat beside the driver of the wagon. The temple guards rode on seats built at the sides of the wagon.
When the wagon cleared the turn, the driver rose to whip the team of horses and a leaf-shaped spear blossomed on his chest, slammed him back into his seat. The whip and reins spilled from his hands, and he pitched forward, fell among the traces.
The priest’s soft-boiled eyes bulged and rolled. His head bobbled helplessly on his feeble neck as the wagon jerked to a sudden stop, then he whimpered, something he did superbly, and with reason. Gath was standing beside the lead horse, holding its bridle. The priest wheezed low in his throat, grabbed the reins and flicked them frantically, squealing at the horses.
The lead horse started to bolt, and Gath hit the animal flush on the jaw with his fist. It fell sideways, driving the horse beside it into the dirt wall. The rest of the team panicked, rearing and bucking forward, each in a slightly different direction. The wagon lurched and crashed from side to side crushing itself and the screaming temple guards against the narrow walls.
The priest struggled back over the roof, falling and crawling most of the way, then dropped off the end and dragged himself back up the street toward Weaver Court.
Gath, ignoring the priest, moved for the jolting wagon where the sounds of screaming captive girls and splintering wood mixed with the crackle of breaking bones. Nearing the wagon, a horse butted Gath against a wall. His head hit the dirt and the iron bars of his helmet sprang loose. The steel bowl flew off, and the mask fell to his shoulder. He tore off the mask, bullied the horses to a stop, and hauled himself up onto the driver’s box. From there he climbed to the roof and, working with his axe, made a hole in its front left corner.
He had figured accurately. Robin was looking up through the hole with big wondrous eyes and splinters on her face.
Gath reached into the hole and pulled her out as if she weighed no more than a leather belt. Carrying her in his arms, he jumped from the wagon roof to the top of the dirt wall, and they vanished between the vats.
The lead horse, recovering from Gath’s blow, got back onto its feet and plun
ged mindlessly forward. The other horses followed, and the wagon full of screaming girls plunged down the street as a crowd of Skull soldiers came charging around the sharp turn and raced after it.
A! the last soldier jumped over the fallen body of the driver, a vat fell away from the dirt wall above him and spilled a steaming yellow bulk of water the size of an elephant into midair. The water caught the soldier in the back, drove him facedown into the ground, scalding his arms and legs to the bone. Then it sluiced forward leaving his steaming body behind with raw exposed bones and pulpy muscles dyed a bright yellow.
Gath, who had pushed the vat over, stood heaving in place on the wall above the street. Robin trembled behind him. He laughed once, a dry rasp, and moved to the next vat. Flexing and straining, he pushed it over into the vat beside it. Both broke apart, then lurched into the third and fourth vats, and all emptied their contents into the street. Robin shuddered in his shadow, her eyes as terrified of her demon rescuer as of the Kitzakks.
A vivid-colored flood slewed down between the high dirt walls taking away parts of it, then caught up with the charging soldiers. Most of them ran faster. Several foolishly slowed and turned to see what was happening, and the gaudy fluid splattered over their startled faces, then hit them with its entire weight and carried their scalded, screaming bodies down the street.
The steaming liquid traveled the length of the street gathering mud, and spilled into Market Square depositing scalded and blistered bodies in all directions. Then it slewed sideways, washed down alleys and over the southern side of Weaver putting out the fires which the Kitzakks had started there. It was now a dull bloody brown.
Gath watched all this with pleasure, then took Robin by the wrist and pulled her into the rows of hanging cloth. Reaching the Heights, they looked over the village. The black wagon had crashed into a mud wall at the edge of Market Square and turned over. Three girls, who had crawled out the hole in the roof, were limping into shadowed alleys. Five were still pinned inside.
At the south end of the village, Cytherian warriors, who had been hiding in the village, now came forward and began to butcher the blinded, scalded, brightly stained Skull soldiers.
The two commanders, the priest, and a group of Skull soldiers were racing down a footpath. Reaching Market Square, the two commanders helped the priest onto the supply wagon, and the driver took off toward Weaver Pass with five mounted escorts. The commanders then led their men toward the sounds of battle at the southern side of the village. By the time they reached the area, the Cytherians had vanished and the scalded, stained soldiers were all dead.
Gath growled with satisfaction, then dragged Robin back through the ranks of colored cloth to the north edge of the Heights, and they looked down at the village and forest beyond. The smell of blood and steam hung heavily over Weaver. Below, to their left, beyond tiers crowded with alleys and buildings, they saw an open yard at ground level. At the far side of the yard footpaths angled through low buildings to the tall Forest Gate. Gath pulled Robin down off the Heights, then into the tangled alleys heading toward the open yard.
Nineteen
FIGHT AT WAGON YARD
At the intersection of two alleys, Gath and Robin stopped. The alleys appeared deserted. One descended through shadows to ground level, then twisted toward the open yard. The other came from the direction of Market Square. Through it they could see dust swirling above the southern side of Weaver where it met the bridges.
He led her quickly across the open intersection and down through the shadowed alley to the edge of the open yard. There they stopped again, still concealed in the shadows.
The irregular oval of the open area was filled with sunshine and the familiar odors of warm dirt and straw. Stables and stalls surrounded the yard. At the opposite side of the yard two footpaths angled through the low buildings toward the high Forest Gate beyond. The stalls and stables were empty of everything but shadows. The dusty ground was cluttered with straw, stacks of buckets and several unharnessed wagons.
Gath started forward, but paused at the sound of iron tinkling against a metal bucket somewhere. It made Robin shudder, but to him it was a strangely pleasing sound, as if belonging to another time and world, like tiny silver bells tied to a child’s ankles so he cannot get lost.
Gath pushed Robin back up the alley a stride, and held her against the wall listening. The sound of the bells was replaced by the distant snorting and stomping of the retreating Kitzakk soldiers and the faint unintelligible chatter of their voices.
Gath’s body heat became so intense it made Robin’s cheeks flush, and she cringed. When he turned to her, she gulped. His eyes held no more warmth than a tomb. His cheeks were dark pulsing hollows. Black vertical gouges cut into them, drawing the corners of his lips down low.
He found a side door nearby. He opened it quietly, peered inside, and pulled her in closing the door behind them.
They stood in a small, dirt-floored room with saddles, tack and blankets hanging from the log walls. Crossing it, they moved through a doorway into an empty stable. Its roof was low, forming a hayloft above. Shadows filled it. The front doors were open, letting light from the sun-filled yard partway in. Staying in the shadows, Gath crossed to a ladder lying on the ground below an opening into the loft. He drew Robin close, pointed up at the loft. Avoiding his eyes, she nodded docilely. He leaned his axe against the wall, raised her over his head, gave her a slight toss, and she landed on the hay in the loft. He picked up the ladder, handed it up to her, and she looked down at him.
An unnatural battle hunger glittered in his eyes, and his breathing was like a starved panther cat’s. But, as she took the ladder, his hand embraced hers with a gentle but firm reassurance.
He picked up his axe, crossed the stable and the small tack room, and moved back into the alley. There he looked out into the sun-filled wagon yard and waited.
What came was the strange pleasant tinkle of metal brushed by the wind. This time Gath knew where the faint, mysterious music originated. From somewhere in the yard where there was nothing but dust and sunshine.
The first thing that informed Gath that there was indeed someone else in the area was the scent of a hardy male body odor. His nostrils wrinkled at the scent, and his eyes widened with another mystery. He recognized the smell. It was his own.
The hair on his neck stiffened. Then the world of silence, blinding light and bloody sky again consumed him. It filled the open yard. He snarled silently, feeling his blood gorge through his arms and thighs.
He shortened his grip on his axe, and marched deliberately out into the sunshine to the heart of the magic world, stopped, and the real world returned. The yard was empty. But he was on killing ground. He knew it. Every tissue in his body wanted it.
He glanced about the emptiness, body cocked and eyes wary, and peered into the shade of a covered stall. Two vague silhouettes of figures were crouched just beyond a shaft of sunshine spilling through a crack in the roof. Slowly they stood, to become two massive figures which turned toward Gath, as if he had called out to them. The spill of sunshine caught their shoulders, made one burn bright red while the other glittered as if made of coin silver. The rest was shadows.
They picked large objects off the ground, then moved out of the stall into the sunshine. They carried axe and sword. The two commanders.
One was short and thick, big jawed, and wore a red helmet with a cagelike mask of steel bars. The other was close to two hundred and fifty pounds of trouble, not counting his full-length suit of chain mail which undoubtably outweighed most men.
The two commanders looked at Gath almost with pleasure, as if he had come to polish their metal. But there was no amusement in their weapons, or the steel studs which decorated their knuckles. As if they had a single mind, each put a foot on the top rail of the stall, pushed it over slowly and stepped into the yard.
Gath moved for them, and they separated. Gath kept moving, got between them, and charged the steel suit. He blocked the giant’s
sword with his axe and jabbed him with the butt end driving him back. Using his momentum, Gath pivoted and swung an arching blow at the red helmet. But Red Helmet’s axe deflected Gath’s blow, momentarily bringing him to a stop. Gath bolted sideways, but not before the tip of Steel Suit’s sword had buried itself in the meat of his left shoulder.
Gath reeled with pain, then suddenly stepped in again bringing his axe around in a backhand blow aimed at Red Helmet. The blade landed with a terrific clang flush on the steel cage, drove the owner fifteen feet back, and left Gath’s axe vibrating in his hands. The center of its cutting edge was caved in leaving a wide half-moon-shaped gap.
Gath snarled and backed up to a wall. Blood ran down the back of his arm, and dripped off his wrist in measured beats.
Red Helmet had recovered, was moving for him. The sunshine made a slight new scratch across the steel bars of his cagelike mask glitter.
Steel Suit was also advancing with a heavy plotted pace, holding his sword in two hands in front of him. He tilted it so that the blade caught the overhead sunshine and reflected it.
The bright bar of light caught Gath in the eyes, blinded him briefly. When his vision returned, both champions were bearing down on him, weapons raised over their heads. He stepped in under the blow of the sword, deflected Red Helmet’s axe with his own and again drove Steel Suit back with the butt end. Butting Red Helmet in the chest with his head, he spun and drove a shoulder into the wooden wall of a stable, splintering it, and fell through the hole into the darkness beyond.
The two commanders shared an annoyed glance and moved for the hole, but stopped short as Gath emerged from the adjacent stable. His left arm now carried an old circular wooden shield belted with iron bars. The Kitzakks grinned, then moved for him hard, weapons working.