by James Silke
When they emerged from the forest, they were beside a fast-moving creek, one of the many which fed the river, and the sounds of the singing were vague, distant.
Brown John, gasping for breath, set the wrapped body down on a rock, then sat down beside it, peeling the blanket away from the head.
Robin Lakehair was gagged. Her short red-gold hair was in disarray, and the rouge on her cheeks and lips, as well as the thick lines of kohl outlining her big hazel eyes, was smeared. The eyes themselves were windows to a shocked body and mind, and angry. Nevertheless, as far as Jakar was concerned, her beauty radiated like sunlight striking through drops of morning dew, and the corners of his finely wrought lips turned up in a smile.
Brown John, between gasps, said, “I’m sorry about this, Robin. Terribly sorry. But I must leave the gag, just in case something might cause you to scream and reveal where you are. I’d explain why, but there’s no time. I have to warn the others, and you have to hide.” He looked up at Jakar. “I think you know Jakar… he’ll stay with you.”
Robin looked up with frightened eyes at Jakar and suddenly stopped thrashing, just stared.
Jakar bowed, with aristocratic reserve, and said, “It is a pleasure to serve you, my lady.” Then, behind a slightly mocking smile that failed to hide his concern for her, he added, “But I must say, you surely manage to stir up a fuss.”
Robin turned her eyes on the bukko and complained unintelligibly behind her gag, her eyes pleading.
“Just trust me,” the old man said as he stood, “and go with Jakar. Your life may depend on it.” Jakar, forcing a light tone, said, “She’s a pretty bit of fluff, isn’t she?”
Brown John scowled at him. “That will be enough of that. You’re going to have to keep your head about you now, lad, and if looking at her is going to make you behave like a popinjay, then don’t look at her.” Jakar blushed, and the bukko added, “Now listen to me. I am honor bound to protect Robin… and duty bound as well. My friend, Gath of Baal, depends on her, and the entire forest depends on him. Do you understand?”
Jakar nodded, once, deadly serious now.
“Good. Take her upstream to the falls.” He pointed them out, explaining how to find a hidden chasm behind the falls, then added, “She’ll be safe there. Now get moving. I’ll find out what’s going on and meet you there later.”
Jakar watched the wiry old man dash down the boulder-strewn stream, thinking to himself that the bukko was taking a lot for granted, even for a king. But he liked him, and for reasons he could not explain, trusted him. He hesitated uncertainly, then put his soft charcoal eyes on Robin’s consuming beauty and gathered her gently in his strong arms. She struggled slightly, then gave up, and a shiver swept through him as her softness came against his lean hard body. He felt color flooding into his sun-dark cheeks and tried to look away, but could not. For a moment their eyes met, then a smile warmed his thoughtful eyes as he spoke.
“Something tells me, fluff, that you are going to be a whole lot of trouble.”
Eleven
READHEADS
Brown John emerged from the bushes overhanging the creek and stepped onto the river bed.
It was thirty yards across, an undulating white bed of gravel and boulders carried down from the mountain by centuries of spring floods. Narrow slow-moving channels of water meandered through it, and twenty yards away, on the far side beyond nearly impassable boulders, the main channel flowed swiftly, churning its liquid-green body into white foam as it crashed against large rocks lining its sides and rising from it.
Gathering his torn, stained tunic above his knees, he scrambled across the gravel and splashed through a shallow channel, heading downriver toward faint sounds of drums.
He fell twice, the second dropping him into a deep channel. Its current swept him forward, bounced him off a large boulder and deposited him in the tangled branches of a dead pine tree which had fallen into the river. The sharp branches played with his face and back for a while, then he climbed onto the trunk and scrambled across it to the river bank.
Puffing, soaking wet and wearing a scowl that cut so deep into his wrinkled cheeks it could have supplied enough tragedy for an entire act of one of his own melodramas, he ran along a bald dirt footpath siding the river and saw his dancing girls in the distance.
They were far out on the river bed, tiny colorful figures against the white rocks. Their trim bodies were now wrapped in diaphanous yellow-green cloth, and they wore green-gold dragonfly wings on their naked backs. They stood beside the main channel where it narrowed into a funnel of white-water rapids for about twenty feet, then spewed out over a wide flat rock forming a natural slide which flowed around a bend in the river. Unseen beyond the bend was Clear Pond, and the waiting audience and musicians. But he could not hear them now. The crash and spill and roar of the rapids was deafening.
The girls looked anxiously toward the wagons on the spur, as if expecting Robin to join them any minute, and held their small rafts steady in the water, waiting to jump into them when they were cued. The sunlight glistened on their bouncing curls of red-gold hair, and at that distance they all looked remarkably like Robin Lakehair.
Realizing this, Brown John groaned with fresh panic, dropped his tunic and cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting, “Zail! Belle! Wait! Don’t go in the water!”
The girls did not hear him.
Brown John, slipping and sliding and jumping, descended the sheer bank and started across the rocky bed, shouting, “Zail! Wait! Wait!”
The girls took no notice, and he ran recklessly forward, fell facedown, and boulders kissed his cheek, chest and shins. Slightly dazed, he climbed painfully onto his hands and knees and held still. The shrill clear notes of a horn were rising above the roar of the rapids. The cue.
Brown John jumped up and screamed, “Wait!”
The girls still did not hear him. Zail, the lead girl, kneeled on her raft and, hanging on to its rope handles, rode it, squealing and laughing, down the funnel of water. One by one the others followed, bobbing wildly and nearly spilling over as the water tossed their small rafts about and washed over their lovely bodies and laughing faces.
They swept onto the natural water slide, swirled around the bend in the river, and the unseen audience waiting at Clear Pond roared approval.
In reply, each girl raised an arm, unclenched a tiny fist, and streamers of glittering yellow and green unfurled behind them.
The audience applauded, and tambourines and drums caught the rhythm of the streaking beauties, turning the ride into a dance.
Brown John stood limply, his exhausted body heaving for breath. He could see Clear Pond now, and the girls were performing beautifully, just as he had trained them to. But without that extra sparkle he had planned on. Only Robin Lakehair had the skill, and nerve, to ride her raft in a standing position.
One by one the girls splashed into the large pond and rode the current, twirling their rafts and posing provocatively for the audience lining the shore.
Grillard strongmen, standing on a shelf of rock several feet under the water, waited where the pool widened. More shelves of rock rose out of the water behind them to form a natural stage which faced the audience on the opposite shore. The stage was backed by boulders which rose like massive stepping-stones up the blunt face of the mountain spur. More strongmen stood in a chainlike line which wound its way across the stage, then up over the boulders to a promontory rock out of which grew a scrub oak.
Brown John knew the spot well. It was here that he had first seen Robin Lakehair and asked her to help him save the forest from the Kitzakks.
As the girls neared the waiting strongmen, they lay down on their backs, crossed their arms across their breasts and held themselves as rigid as arrows. The first strongman plucked Zail off her raft, raised her over his head and passed her to the next strongman. In this manner she traveled across the stage and up through the boulders to the promontory rock where the two largest strongmen waited. As she began
her ascent, her body was rolled over and over, and her diaphanous wrap began to unravel colorfully, much to the delight of the men in the audience.
When she reached the top, one of the strongmen took hold of the end of her wrap while the other raised her arrowlike body high over his head. With a grunting heave, he threw her out over the deepest part of the pool a hundred feet below. Just before she began to fall, the strongman holding her wrap gave it a hard yank, and Zail spun around in mid-air. The wrap swirled away from her body in a flurry of colorful circles, and she dove out of their center, naked except for the glittering yellow jewels gracing breasts and groin, and plunged into the water.
The crowd rose as one body and applauded, whistled, wanting more, and one after the other the girls obliged.
Brown John could not refrain from smiling, then suddenly his blood ran cold.
Two strongmen on the promontory had pitched forward and were flailing awkwardly in the air. One landed safely in the shallow water, but the other hit a rock with a loud grunt. He rolled several feet, then lay still. The audience gasped. The girls, now all in the pool, screamed. Then all movement stopped, and a hush fell over Clear Pond.
A huge man, nearly seven feet tall and massive, had emerged from behind the scrub oak and now stood poised on the promontory rock. A plain tattered cloak covered him, but his stance was proud, arrogant, regal. With a deliberate flourish, he removed his cloak and let it fall to his feet. His armor was smooth, a rainbow of plates fading from indigo at his shoulders to smoky blues to roses to white at his legs. A silver-white helmet graced his big-jawed head, and he stood in a whiplike stance. Rising off his back was a silver-grey stump, like the dorsal fin of a shark.
Brown John almost whimpered.
The audience gasped and edged back.
The Grillards, as if driven by unseen adversaries, fled off the spur and gathered together on the stage. Among them were Brown John’s sons: Dirken, in his black tunic with its grave umber patches, and Bone, in his giant codpiece as red as his hair. They moved to the front of their tribe, facing the demon spawn standing above the stage, and stopped short.
A small hooded man with a smooth grey face had appeared beside the huge warrior and laughed mockingly. Suddenly he stopped and raised a fist, shouting in a language the bukko did not understand.
A dozen short, thick men promptly appeared along the rim of the spur, and the shadows of more could be seen among the trees behind them. Their flesh was a greyish brown, and their faces had nostrils but no noses. Their tiny ears were pointed, and tufts of fur sprouted between the seams of their leather armor at their shoulders and elbows. Swords and quivers and knives rode their belts, and they held loaded crossbows in hairy hands.
The audience on the far bank, hushed and trembling, began to back away from the pond. Those in the rear of the crowd were already fleeing into the forest.
The Grillards gathered on the stage shifted anxiously in place with their eyes on the crossbows aimed at them, and raised their arms.
Brown John, stumbling forward in desperation, moved for the natural water slide.
Three of the noseless soldiers moved down off the spur onto the stage and, grunting and waving their crossbows at the Grillards, made a passage between them as the small smooth man, with surprising agility, bounded down the rocks. He strode between the Grillards and waded into the water until he stood among the bobbing faces of the terrified dancing girls.
He grinned, scratching his groin with both hands, and his lewd voice rang through the silence.
“My, my, you are the pretty ones! You’re not going to make it difficult for me now, are you?” He chuckled. “Which of you is Robin Lakehair?”
The girls moaned and spoke all at once, saying Robin wasn’t among them, that they didn’t know where she was, and pleading not to be hurt. Then Zail shouted them to silence and brazenly and defiantly rose partway out of the water, taunting the small man with her half-naked beauty. “She’s not here, little man. You’ll have to come back for tomorrow’s show.”
“Don’t play with me, whore!” he snarled. He waded close to Zail, examining her, and shoved her back in the water, grunting, “You’re too old.” He glared at the others and they whimpered, clutching each other in fear. “Be smart, girl, I know you’re here,” he growled. “So you might as well give yourself up… and save your friends a whole lot of pain.”
The girls wailed and hugged each other, babbling incoherently.
Grumbling, he waded as close to the girls as he could without falling in the river, and leaned over studying their upturned faces. “Damn! You’re all so bloody pretty, I can’t remember what you looked like.” He straightened. “You have one last chance, Robin Lakehair. Show yourself now, or these pretties won’t stay pretty much longer.”
The girls screamed that Robin wasn’t there, and the Grillards on the stage shouted the same thing.
The small man didn’t listen to them. He grunted, “What a waste,” and waded back onto the stage. He looked up at the huge man, lifting empty hands, and shouted, “I’m sorry, Lord Baskt, but they won’t cooperate. And I can’t pick her out. They’re all redheads.”
Baskt nodded and strode to the edge of the promontory rock. There he gathered, and dove out over the pond. He easily cleared the rocks below and plunged down toward the water. There was a flash of light and a roll of thunder just before he hit the water, and it splashed in a flurry of geysers which could only have been made by a man three times his size.
What remained of the audience fled screaming into the forest.
The Grillards stood staring helplessly at the pond, holding each other.
Brown John, finally reaching the water slide, plunged in, and slid for the pond, his eyes fixed on the girls.
Their heads were turning and twisting as they watched something moving under the water. Then their eyes filled with horror, and they screamed.
A shark fin cut through the surface and moved toward them.
Screaming and flailing, the girls tried to swim and climb out of the water.
The fin slashed down into the water, vanished for a moment, then a pointed snout erupted from the liquid green, followed by the huge barreled body of a great white shark.
Two girls wading onto the stage saw it and fainted, falling backward into the water.
Brown John screamed, “No! No!” and hit a rock with head and shoulder. Nearly unconscious, he splashed into the pond and went under. The current caught him, brought him back to the surface, and gasping for air, he looked across the pond with dazed eyes.
The water seemed to be churning itself into geysers of white foam flecked with red streaks. There was screaming, a soaring crescent-shaped tail, flashes of huge teeth in an underslung jaw. Pieces of young girls were impaled on them.
The old man moaned pitifully, passed out, and the current carried him away.
Some time later, when he came to, his paunchy belly was hung up on a shelf of rock which formed part of the stage, and he was drowning in a foot of water. He raised his head out of the water, coughing and spitting repeatedly, and dragged himself onto dry rock. Gasping for air and shaking with exhaustion and terror, he looked around.
There was no sign of the shark. Clear Pond was void of sound and movement except for the flowing river, as if he had dreamed the entire thing. Then he saw them.
At the far end of the pond, where the river spread out and trickled through a man-made rock dam, the noseless, furry soldiers were wading in the shallows. They held pronged spears, stabbing them into the water. When the spears came back out, unidentifiable bits and pieces of bloody bone and flesh were stuck to the prongs. These they matter-of-factly removed and dropped in sacks slung over their shoulders, then went back to stabbing.
Brown John, snarling with fury, tried to rise, but dizzied and dropped back. He blinked his eyes and stared at the rock below him as a swirl of water washed under him. He lowered his head to drink, but stopped, and white showed around his shocked eyes.
T
he water was red with blood.
He tried to crawl away from it, as if it would contaminate him, and the effort drained his strength. He dropped facedown on a dry shelf of rock, and blackness filled his mind.
Twelve
GOODBYE
An hour later, Brown John sat huddled in a blanket facing his sons, Dirken and Bone, across a small fire. Around them, the Grillard women and children were gathered, faces tear-stained and bodies trembling and sobbing. Behind them, the men were noisily forming the colorful horse-drawn wagons into two lines on top of the spur. The wagons were loaded, ready for the trail.
“How many were there?” Brown John addressed the question to Dirken.
“I counted nine in the wagon when they rode off, seven on horseback, and I don’t know how many in the forest standing lookout. But they weren’t trying to hide. You could still see their dust when they were a mile from here.”
“Heading which way?”
“Northwest. I’d say toward Small Tree.”
“What are the filthy demon spawn after Robin for anyway?” growled Bone. “What good does it do them murderin’ poor helpless girls?”
The women nodded and murmured, asking the same questions.
“I don’t know,” Brown John said evenly, “but I’m going to find out and put an end to it.” He stood. “You two will take charge of the wagons.” The brothers nodded and he added, “You’ll split up and leave this part of the forest. Folks around here are superstitious. They’ll think you’ve got some curse on you now and will drive you away from their villages. So head east. Bone, you take the southern road. Dirken, you take the northern.” He lowered his voice. “In a week or two, after everyone has had a chance to get over this, start looking for some new dancing girls.”
“New girls?” Bone blurted in outrage. “You’ll never replace…”