by James Silke
Baskt lay on top of Gath. His upper jaw was raised and protruding, as if it were not attached to his skull. Gath held it off with both hands squeezing Baskt’s throat, and the jaws snapped in front of the Barbarian’s eyes. Two rows of saw-toothed teeth stood upright in the lower jaw as it swept up to meet the upper. They collided with enough force to remove a forty-pound bite of castle wall, but only fed on strands of stray black hair.
Gath, still holding on with both hands, rolled across the stone block, trying to kick the demon off. But Baskt liked it where he was, and stayed. Still rolling, one of Gath’s hands dove for his knife. Its fingers closed on the hilt, and Baskt changed tactics. He wrapped his arms around Gath, pinning the hand between their bodies, and began to convulse, shaking and snapping.
The spiky protuberances on the sharkman’s armor, like hundreds of small teeth, raked the Barbarian’s arms, chest and legs. Pain seared into flesh and spine. He began to roll in his own blood, and the moisture sloshed over his pinned arm, making it slippery. He pulled hard on the knife, and the blade came out of its sheath. Gath turned it as they rolled, and used the sharkman’s convulsing body to help him drive the blade deep into the living belly armor.
Feeling no pain, the demon spawn continued to spasm, and the blade drove in repeatedly. Blood drained from the wounds, then suddenly erupted in fountains, and they rolled in that. Locked together. Howling.
The onlookers stared open-mouthed, stunned.
It was at that moment that Gath felt a surge of satisfaction shoot through him, a sense of fulfillment that spilled over him, coming from all directions. He was immersed in battle; at the core of the chaos and pain and blood and howling, and he felt a kinship with this territory as he had felt with no other. Not in the lair of the wolf, not in the rain forest at the dark of midnight, not marching at the head of a tramping army. Here death was the only escape, and the only release. He had found the world he searched for. It was that wild place at the center of a battle to the death, and he was home.
Thunder rolled in the sky above. The ground below shook. Darkness blotted out the sky. The sounds of scurrying men and snorting frightened camels and horses erupted nearby, and a whimpering cry of dread fear. Cobra’s. Then cold wetness pummeled Gath’s struggling back and legs. Rain. A sudden desert torrent was descending from dark clouds overhead, and its heavy drops filled the air, blurring all vision.
Baskt, growling with cold satisfaction, and seeming to take strength from the downpour, shook with renewed effort, stronger and stronger. The pain of the hundreds of biting teeth numbed Gath’s mind. His grip weakened, and his knife was bludgeoned from his hand by the Lord of Destruction’s twisting hip. It tumbled across the stone and splashed in a puddle of diluted blood.
Baskt glanced at it triumphantly, and their bodies slipped slightly apart. Gath thrashed for release, tearing at the sharkman’s arm, and it came out of the shoulder socket. Gath discarded the lifeless arm unconsciously, kicked free and rolled across the stone, jumping to his feet. Rain pelted his bloody hide and washed him clean in seconds. But fresh blood came as soon as the old was washed away, and he teetered weakly in place, his strength ebbing.
Through the sheet of rain, Gath could barely make out Baskt kneeling about five feet away. His guts were streaming from his stomach, and he was matter-of-factly stuffing them back inside. The fact that he now had only one arm and hand made the work slow.
Gath started for him bare-handed. His knee gave way, and he dropped onto all fours. He pushed up, then staggered backward. He kept at it, fell off the auction block and splashed in a puddle at its base. He flung himself over onto his knees, head low and wary. Exhausted. Gasping. The blinding rain obliterated everything beyond three feet. Its roaring splatter covered all sound.
A softness pressed into his back. The body of a woman. It contrasted so sharply with the world he now inhabited that the pleasure was sublime, enervating. He dizzied at it. Then he heard a grunt of hard effort, as if someone were lifting a weighty object, and Cobra’s arms and upper body fell heavily against his back. He knew her curves and scent. She was heaving something toward his head. He reached up, felt the rim of the homed helmet just as it touched his hair, and stopped it there.
“You must,” she begged. “He’s too strong. He’s getting back up.”
Her voice was frantic, suddenly so void of her normal cunning and subterfuge, that it confused him, and he thought for a moment it was Robin behind him instead of Cobra. In that moment he relaxed slightly, and the helmet slid down over his head, imprisoning him.
He rose instantly, sensing the rush of approaching danger, and darkness and blood hunger boiled through his body. Here within the confines of the helmet was a world beyond the wild place. Here battle held no laughter. The last tie with civilization was broken, and he hungered for the taste of frothing blood on his lips.
His head snapped up, and directly above him he saw a massive convulsing darkness dropping out of the rain-filled sky. Baskt.
Gath thrust up with his head through the driving rain, and the horns of the helmet speared up into the descending belly. The force was such that both horns and helmet impaled it, the metal sinking into demon flesh until the flaming eyes of the Death Dealer were washed in blood.
The horns worked into gut and organ, spearing and tearing, then ripped from side to side. Flames blazed out of the helmet’s eye slits, incinerating the gore, and an acrid scent of burning fish mixed with the humid air.
Gath’s hands caught hold of throat and leg, and crouching low, he drove forward blindly, ramming the sharkman’s body against the side of the auction block. His legs kept driving, holding the flailing body in place. His helmet twisted voraciously. Then the demon came apart in the middle, falling away in two pieces, and the helmet bit into the stone.
Gath backed away in a low crouch, leaving the separated remains of the demon behind. The legs and hips lay motionless in one puddle of water. The head and arms and chest thrashed violently in another.
Gath felt Cobra move up beside him and take hold of his elbow and shoulder with feverish fingers. She was trembling, then she gasped.
Fumes were issuing from the demon spawn’s gory chest cavity. Smoke followed, and snapping eruptions of flashing light chased each other within the smoke. The flashing stopped, and the rain quickly dispersed the smoke, revealing the upper half of a great white shark shuddering on the ground.
The rain started to lighten and thin out, revealing vague figures in the surrounding distance.
Cobra moved in front of Gath, holding his stallion’s reins, and looked up at him with the rain splattering over her white face. “We must leave. Now! While the rain covers our escape.”
He shook his head. “Better they all die.”
He moved to his fallen axe and picked it off the auction block as she followed leading his stallion. “That won’t help,” she said forcefully. “Schraak is here, one of my former servants, and he’s seen me.” He turned to her, his eyes thoughtful. Her face was different, almost girlish with fear and excitement.
Cobra said, “He came out of the black tent while you were fighting. He recognized me immediately and loosed his carrier eagles with messages. Before dark, Tiyy will know everything, and her regiments will be hunting us!” Her breathing heaved. “Let Robin remove the helmet, then we must flee.”
He hesitated and said, “It’s too late for that.” He took the reins of his stallion and swung up into the saddle. “Hide her in the wagon. I must not look at her. The helmet is too strong now.”
Cobra gasped. “Noooooo!”
He nodded. “The helmet wants her even now. Hide her in the wagon.”
Fear blotted Cobra’s face, but she controlled it, saying, “I’ll hide her… you can trust me. She’ll be safe.”
He looked down at her, and knew he could trust her, but had no idea why.
Moments later he was riding through the blinding rain with the wagon rumbling behind him as they headed out of the camp. Behind them, va
gue bodies raced about and hollered ineffectually in the surrounding gloom.
Twenty-eight
THE HELMET'S SLAVE
Cobra crawled halfway out of the trapdoor on the roof of the bounding wagon, and looked around anxiously. The bloom of girlish fear was still on her white cheeks, but her intractable will was back behind her eyes.
The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the brilliant mid-day sun streamed down on the vehicle as it splashed through steaming puddles and raced between walls of rock at the western extremity of En Sakalda. Up ahead was a wooden bridge. Gath galloped across it. His broad back was caked with drying blood, and bits of gore dangled from the helmet’s horns.
The structure spanned a man-made channel which separated the island of rock from the main land mass, and linked the two dry river beds which curved around the island. Long ago the two rivers had filled the channel with water, providing a defensive moat, but now it was dry.
Kneeling on the roof, Cobra started to close the trapdoor, and Robin’s frightened face popped up out of the shadowed opening. Her eyes were desperate, pleading. Cobra, shaking her head, closed the door in her face, then looked about the roof with vigilant eyes.
Everything, wood, bodies and clothing, was soaked and glittered in the sunlight. Jakar lay at the rear end in a puddle, with one arm tucked against his chest. It looked broken. His other arm aimed his loaded crossbow over the backboard. His hard eyes were on the road, waiting for whoever might emerge from the rocks of En Sakalda. Brown John stood in the driver’s box, whipping and shouting at the horses with all the gusto he could muster, as if they had suddenly become the principal players in his greatest production.
Cobra’s face made a circumspect smile, then she held still, listening.
A churning roar was rising above the sounds of the wagon. It came from the hills to the south where the center of the storm had been, and was growing louder and louder. It blotted out all other sound. Then a crashing, spilling deluge rushed into the channel. A fifteen-foot-high wall of water, rising in waves and dropping on itself to rise again. A flash flood. Before the wagon had crossed the bridge, the weighty torrent was battering the posts supporting it.
Gath reined up on the opposite side of the bridge and turned toward the wagon with his arm extended, pointing at a trail leading toward gnarled black hills in the distance.
The wagon bounded off the bridge, and the bukko pulled on the reins, guiding the horses toward the desired trail.
The trapdoor suddenly burst open, and Robin’s head again popped out. “What’s happening?” she blurted. “Where… ?”
Cobra fell on her, pushing her back inside the wagon and silencing her with a hand over her mouth. Then she turned sharply and looked over the rim of the sideboard at Gath as the wagon swept past him. Her big almond-shaped eyes were desperate with fear.
Gath did not look at the wagon. He had not seen Robin. Nevertheless the eye slits of the horned helmet were smoking and flickering with raw fire, and his swarthy muscles had swollen brutishly. The helmet was still feeding him, not only with its powers but with its diabolical appetites.
When the wagon had left Gath a good fifty feet behind, Cobra pushed herself away from the trapdoor and put her harsh gold eyes on the girl’s upturned face, snapping discordantly, “I told you! You must not let him see you!”
“It’s always helped him before,” Robin protested, her lower lip protruding.
“It won’t now!” Cobra shouted. “The helmet has him. You can’t remove it now! And it wants you! He told me himself.” Robin gasped, sinking weakly to the next rung of the ladder: Cobra nodded fatefully.
“He’s fighting it… but you’ve got to help. If he sees you, he won’t be able to control it.”
Robin shuddered and nodded repeatedly. Then she obediently climbed down into Brown John’s room, where she shuddered some more.
Cobra shut the trapdoor and found Jakar’s young handsome eyes on her. Their corners smiled with defiant irony. His voice rang with the same sentiment as he shouted over the rumbling, squealing wheels, “It’s hell being beautiful, isn’t it?”
She grinned, finding his levity strangely relaxing, and shouted back, “Is your arm broken?”
“I hope so,” he shouted lightly. “I’ve always wanted to be crippled.” He grinned at his own joke and looked back at the trail.
Chuckling at his self-mockery, she climbed into the driver’s box beside Brown John. He was sitting now, and his cheeks were flushed with effort. She patted his arm by way of assuring him she was glad to be beside him again, then held it, and looked back at the bridge.
Gath was walking his stallion onto it, indifferent to the fact that it twisted and shook under him, the full force of the flood now attacking the supporting timbers.
“Has he destroyed the bridge yet?” Brown shouted without looking at her.
“No,” she hollered, “he’s waiting for them!”
The color drained from the bukko’s face, and he looked back over his shoulder at the bridge. “The reckless fool!” he snarled. “He’s not only risking his neck, he’s risking ours. He should have torn it down!”
“Gath would have,” she shouted, “but once again we are dealing with the helmet, not Gath.” The bukko looked at her, fear hard in his brown eyes, and she added, “He can’t resist a fight anymore. The helmet won’t let him.” She sank slightly in the box, and her voice dropped. “Look… see for yourself.”
Brown John glanced back again and grimaced painfully.
Mounted bat soldiers were galloping out of En Sakalda. They were shouting unheard in the roar of the flood, and their small horses spattered mud in all directions as they charged for the bridge.
Gath now waited at the center, patient and motionless, even though the bridge was weaving back and forth, promising in every way to fall.
The flash flood had risen almost to the crests of the channel’s dirt walls, and was sloshing over the flooring of the bridge. Then a huge wave rose up and crashed across the structure, taking out railings and staggering the stallion. Gath did not appear to notice. He yanked the frightened horse back under control and turned it sideways, blocking the bridge.
The furry, shouting demon spawn thundered onto it and bore down on him with spears leveled.
He waited, bare chest and naked legs glistening wetly in the sunshine. As the spears arrived, he suddenly pivoted in his saddle and swung his axe in a wide arc. With uncanny accuracy, he clipped off short lengths of spear, and their blades fell off just before they reached him. The splintered butts wavered, some gouging him, but most missing altogether. Simultaneously, two spears, which had ducked away from his blow, drove deep into the chest and rump of the stallion.
The stallion reared and whinnied in pain, banging the smaller attacking horses to a snorting, thrashing stop. At the front of the melee, Gath cleaved with his axe and again hauled his snorting, kicking mount under control. Then he plunged into the center of the confusion. There his axe worked to advantage, and the spears were rendered harmless, too long and awkward to wield in cramped quarters.
Several smaller horses were driven into the rush of the flood below, taking their screaming riders with them. The remaining bat soldiers dropped their spears and reached for their swords. Too late. The axe blade ate head and gut, and bodies dropped onto the bridge. Another wave washed over it, carrying off the lamed and wounded and dropping Gath’s bleeding, dying stallion to its hocks and knees.
Gath jumped free, and stood in the middle of the mayhem with his body and weapon whirling in place.
Chests and necks and joints were severed, and he vanished behind eruptions of blood and body parts. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the cascading flood fell away, and the bodies of the soldiers and animals crumpled to lie writhing on the bridge around Gath’s blood-red body.
Cobra watched with no expression on her face, except for the pride and passion hidden deep behind her molten eyes.
He stood in the middle of t
he carnage, like no other man had stood before. His stallion had toppled over on its side beside him and was kicking mindlessly at the air. Then another huge wave rushed down the belly of the channel and washed over the bridge, carrying away most of the bleeding, screaming clutter.
Gath, bending low and staggering, fought against the wall of water and held his place, but his stallion vanished amid the deluge. When the wave passed, the Barbarian stood motionless, angrily staring down at the rushing water below. His bloody hands held his axe across his thighs. His chest heaved.
Smoke and fire leapt from the helmet’s eyes, crying out his loss. Then the fire died, abruptly, and his body jerked, as if his heart had taken the full thrust of a sword.
Cobra gasped out a sharp scream, feeling the pain he felt at the loss of his animal companion. Brown John looked at her, not understanding, then back at the bridge, and groaned in fear.
The old man gathered the reins in his fists, pulled back hard, and the wagon rumbled to a stop. Then he gathered Cobra in his arms and held her trembling body, as they and Jakar watched helplessly.
The bridge was crumbling under Gath, but he did not move. He seemed incapable. The remains of the railing splintered away, and floor boards appeared to rip themselves free, exploding and twirling into the air. Then part of the main body of the bridge folded up behind Gath, and was carried away in the frothing torrent, cracking and exploding with breaking timbers.
Floor boards and supports started to give way under Gath, and he leapt nimbly away from them, started toward land. He seemed to be in no hurry, as if the helmet could measure the exact extent of the danger he was in. Then the bridge collapsed, and Gath dropped out of sight with it.