by James Silke
He set Tiyy down against a smooth rock, and the two sat gasping for breath. Her head hung limply, and her exhausted body heaved. A loud clicking sound came from the cage, and their heads snapped up, fear tearing at her tyrannical beauty.
Smoke was swirling high in the gallery, like moving shadows. Flames blazed within their dark embrace, and thunder roared from it, dispersing the greyish-brown clouds. They swirled down over the throne, filling the cage. Gushing sounds and shrieks followed, then the smoke drifted between the bars of the cage, dispersing itself throughout the cave. Slowly, through the thinning smoke, a huge creature could be seen perched on the throne.
Its body was thirty feet high. A monstrous vampire bat with wing thumbs as long as Tiyy’s legs, and as thick as sapling oaks. A predator descended from the primordial past, a creature of ten thousand years of breeding and dark magic.
A Lord of Destruction who was also Lord of the Night.
The monster whipped his wings wide, bowing subserviently to the savage nymph, and the force of the wind they created made Tiyy and Schraak gasp for breath. When the wind subsided, Schraak looked fearfully at the creature in the cage, then at Tiyy. Her color was back, and she was smiling.
“This Barbarian cannot protect her now,” she whispered.
Thirty-three
SLAUGHTER
Gath climbed silently down a gash in the side of the cliff. Shadows filled it, hiding his movements except for pins of orange fire thrusting from the helmet’s eye slits. Wild fire held in check by the pride of a man. Twice his chain mail tinkled on the night’s silence, then he reached the shelf of earth overlooking the lower road and squatted there. Listening. Watching.
He did not hear a sound, or see a sign of anything that was alive on the road. But still he waited. Murder rode the night the way the winter wind rides through the forest canopy.
He was in the middle of the towering Breasts of Veshta. Far above him, beyond the boulders lining the shadowy crest of the cliff, his four companions hid as they awaited his return. The troupe had crossed the plain and, following Cobra along almost undetectable goat paths, moved high into the mountains without incident. Then the white eye of the full moon came out from behind the cloud cover and cast its cold light on a frightening sight on the road below, and they decided to hide while Gath investigated.
Still hearing and seeing nothing, Gath crawled to the edge of the shelf and looked down at the road. Slowly the light went out of his eyes.
What lay silent on the road was not like any caravan he had seen before, or hoped to see again. There was something disturbingly unnatural about it, something out of place.
Dead horses, baskets and overturned wagons were strewn for fifty yards up and down the road, as if the caravan had panicked and fled in both directions. The gear on the animals had not been removed, and the baskets and wagons had not been pillaged. The dead bodies of the travelers were lying in two neat rows at the center of the debris, as if lined up for inspection. The men were of mixed races, and also did not appear to have been robbed. A few wore robes and turbans, the others wore rags and chains. But they were not separated. Slaver was lying beside slave. The women, however, were set apart, and had been stripped naked. All wore chains, and were healthy and attractive, the kind who normally survive a long trail. Their bodies were bloody, and wore dark wounds.
Gath studied the gruesome scene carefully. As horrible as it was, it was still just a scene of slaughter, and he could not detect what made it appear so unnatural.
He stood, intending to descend to the road, but hesitated, hearing someone descending the gash in the cliff above him. A figure landed quietly on the shelf, and Jakar stepped into the moonlight, nodding in greeting. He held his loaded crossbow with his splinted broken arm. Robin had rebandaged it, and it now served him nearly as well as his good one. Whispering, he explained his presence.
“Brown John told me to take a look… in case I might see something you might miss.”
Gath took no exception and nodded down at the road. Jakar moved to the edge of the shelf and studied the scene. After a moment, he whispered, “Uh-oh! I saw this kind of madness once before. It seems to amuse certain kinds of savages… the heads are on the wrong bodies.”
Gath looked back at the caravan, finally understanding where the unnaturalness came from, and they moved silently down to the road. There they advanced to the bodies, and Jakar grunted in shock, “Mother of Death!”
The heads were indeed on the wrong bodies, but that was not where the cruel joke ended. The legs, arms, feet and torsos of the men had been hacked and torn apart, and then reassembled with no effort at getting the arrangement correct. On the contrary, a skillful and successful effort had been made to make the dead men appear as preposterous freaks. Whoever had done the work had had a sense of humor, but it was not the kind that would make a normal man laugh.
A less imaginative effort had been given the women. They were only partially dismembered. Head matched neck, leg matched hip, and arms belonged to the shoulders. The women had been healthy, young and attractive, and in death were cruelly beautiful.
Jakar moved away, and was sick in a shadow. When he rejoined Gath, the Barbarian was squatting beside one of the women, holding her severed arm. It was almost white. He used it to point out to Jakar that each of the women also had one severed white arm, then handed the arm to Jakar.
Jakar took it gingerly, examining it. There were tiny punctures in the flesh above the veins of the wrist. He returned the arm to Gath, pointing out the small holes. “Something sucked out her blood.”
Gath’s lightless eyes asked for an explanation.
Jakar lifted empty hands. “I don’t know what kind of bite it is, maybe some kind of trained snake. But if whoever did this is hunting for Robin, then they took their blood for a reason. Probably to show to this Nymph Queen.”
Gath’s eyes asked what reason.
“If her magic is as strong as Cobra says it is, it could be one of the ways she can identify her.” Jakar’s voice was low and hollow with foreboding.
Gath stood and studied the tiny bite carefully. His breathing was harsh, then it quickened, and the orange glow came back into his eyes. The helmet was sensing the presence of danger. He and Jakar quickly backed into concealing shadows and looked up and down the road. There was still no sign or sound of anything living. Gath looked back at the arm, and his eyes flamed slightly, sending a tremor of fear through his swart frame.
It was in the tiny bite that the helmet sensed the danger, and within the shadows of the helmet his hard eyes tightened thoughtfully.
Never before had the helmet warned him by showing him a wound, but that meant nothing. The headpiece’s powers were continually growing as if they had no limitations. It appeared it could see into the future and was telling him to beware the creature which had made the wound. But he could not be certain, and there was no time to seek an explanation. He tore a length of cloth from a dead girl’s discarded tunic, wrapped the arm in it and they climbed back up through the gash in the cliff.
They found Robin, Brown John and Cobra where they had left them, huddled under an overhanging boulder on top of the mountain. The horses, muzzled with rags, were tethered in a nearby gully.
Gath and Jakar greeted them silently as they emerged from the rock to stand in the bluish white moonlight, and the Barbarian unwrapped the arm, handed it to Cobra. The serpent woman turned it over and spread the stiff fingers, handling it as casually as she might examine a fresh vegetable. But Robin blanched at the bloody appendage, and had to sit down and hide her face against Jakar’s chest. Brown John took no note of this, his eyes intent on Cobra, curious, expectant.
When Cobra found the tiny bite, she lost all trace of casualness, and her hands trembled. She forced herself to explore the tiny wound, feeling its shape with sensitive fingertips, then withdrew her hand abruptly, looking up at Gath and the bukko. Her eyes were puzzled and her whisper uncertain.
“It’s the bite of a bat.”
; “You mean a bat soldier,” said the bukko.
She shook her head. “A bat. And a small one. Tiyy now hunts us with bats.”
“Because they can see in the dark,” Brown John volunteered.
“Yes,” the serpent woman’s voice trembled, “but no bat could have killed the owner of this arm.” She held it up. “It’s been torn out of the shoulder. No bat can do that.”
Jakar nodded. “And whoever attacked that caravan down there on the road was not small, but big. Very big. One of the men was torn in two, just above the hips. But the curious part was the girls: they were young, and each one of them had had the blood sucked out of one of their arms, just like this one.” Robin trembled, hiding her head against his chest as Cobra and Brown John looked at the young man thoughtfully, then at Gath. He confirmed what Jakar had said with a nod. They all sat silent for a moment, thinking, and a shadow passed over them, blocking out the moonlight.
They looked up, grateful for the added darkness, and gasped. The darkness blocking the moon was growing larger and larger against the indigo sky, dropping toward them.
Gath jumped up with flames bursting from the horned helmet, and Cobra shrieked, “Look out!” She grabbed Robin, hauling her roughly under the overhanging boulder. Simultaneously, Jakar and Brown John faced the night sky, crossbow and sword ready, and Gath stepped directly under the descending shadow. His body was cocked and his head was tilted back with the helmet sputtering fire. Then flames spewed into the sky.
The hot light blanketed a monstrous vampire bat with wings easily forty feet wide, and claws and fangs as long and thick as table legs. It continued its drop, its grotesque eyes turning red in the firelight. Then the flames licked its feet and the steel bolt from Jakar’s crossbow drilled its leg. Squealing, it darted back into the sky, with its wings flapping loudly, like breakers slapping a hard beach. Bits of the full moon could be seen between them.
Jakar quickly reloaded as Cobra, staring in horror, gasped weakly, “Menefret!”
A whooshing sound came out of the night sky, followed by a blast of wind. Dust swirled into the air, obscuring their vision and stinging their cheeks and hands. Jakar and Brown John backed under the protecting rock with the two women, and covered their faces with their arms, squinting over hands and elbows.
Gath ignored the dust. His arms rippled as he two-handed his axe, his calves cording under browned flesh as snarling smoke drifted from the helmet. It was black and cut with spears of flame which illuminated the sky above him, under control.
The whooshing grew suddenly loud, and the monstrous bat again burst into the burning light, not twenty feet above the Barbarian.
Gath’s body convulsed like a bellows, and contracted, blowing flames into the face of the black-brown monster.
The flaccid flesh hanging loose on the jaw of the bat had been drawn up and attached to horny protuberances on the sides of its forehead, so that it now shielded the eyes. But the flames ate into the flesh, and it wrinkled, then crackled with flames, exposing huge wet eyes. They instantly smoked and clouded over as the flames seared them to blind the diving creature.
Gath roared with satisfaction. But the demon spawn did not dart away.
It drove at Gath as if still able to see, its right wing reaching for him like a hand with ten-foot fingers and clawed thumb. The thick membrane crinkled at the joints like thin parchment, and the horny appendages closed around Gath’s body.
Gath sank low trying to avoid the hand, and hacked at the lower edge of the wing. The blade bit into fingerbone, cracking it, and the wing twisted and unfolded, causing it to pass above the center of Gath’s body. Instead of gripping him, it caught him in the shoulders and helmet, lifting him off his feet and driving him backwards He hit a rock with the back of the helmet and a shoulder, and tumbled down an embankment, clinging to his axe and kicking up dust.
Robin screamed. Cobra leapt up to help, but Jakar and Brown John held her back, and she yelled at them, “Help him! Help him!”
Gath rolled to his feet just past the natural enclosure where their horses were tethered, and the bat darted back for him feet-first. The claws were as long as the Barbarian’s arms.
The horses panicked, snorting and kicking, and two bolted free, running directly across the bat’s path. The bat’s claws ripped one animal open from withers to shoulder, and carried the other into the sky, then dropped it in three pieces. The creature dove and came swooping across the ground, heading for Gath.
Gath backed away snorting flames, then suddenly charged. He got inside the wings before they could close, and pivoted, swinging his axe. He hammered one wing aside with an ear-shattering clang, kept pivoting with lightning speed and buried the axe into the chest of the bat.
The beast screamed in pain and bowled Gath over, ripping the axe out of Gath’s hands. Then it darted skyward, carrying the weapon off. The creature whipped about within the concealing darkness, flapping loudly, then darted back into the moonlight having discarded the axe.
Gath rose in a crouch, flames spitting. Waiting. Hungry.
The vampire bat again swept low across the ground toward him, somehow still able to see. Its wings were spread, filling the darkness on either side.
Gath turned and ran, leading the bat through a cluster of huge boulders. It slowed, having to make sharp twisting turns, and the helmet snarled with satisfaction. Suddenly Gath jammed to a stop, pivoted and dove for the onrushing belly of the demon as it came around a boulder. Its massive wings came sweeping toward him, somehow sensing precisely where he was. Gath’s hands grabbed for the body, but it pulled away, and he fell. A wing passed over him, hit the helmet with the crack of splintering bone and caught on the horns. Gath was ripped backward and thrown through the air as the bat swooped back into the sky.
Gath hit the ground with a metallic clang, and rolled over the edge of a steep slope, tumbled down. He thrashed and grabbed for balance, but there was only loose earth to hold on to, and he continued to roll and clang down the slope amid billowing moonlit dust.
He heard Cobra scream and caught a glimpse of her as she suddenly appeared at the top of the slope. Brown John was with her, holding her back. Then the bat came for him again. Rolling and thrashing down the slope, Gath could not defend himself or escape and the bat’s right wing plucked him off the ground as easily as a mother retrieving a fallen doll from the floor of her hut.
Cradled in the furry membrane, and dizzy from the blow of the wing, Gath saw the ground retreating beneath him. He was airborne. His body was held tight, but his feet dangled freely. He heard screaming coming from the ground below: it was growing fainter and fainter. Ahead, the full moon was growing larger and whiter.
His chest heaved under the painful pressure of the claws, and he gasped for breath. The claws were shearing into his chain mail at shoulder and thigh. He struggled, but it only helped them. He blinked dizzily and waited, gathering strength. Then he spewed flames from the helmet. But his head was pinned, and the fire only scorched the night air. He roared in frustration.
The mountains, black and round, now looked small below him. Specks of fire were moving through them, troops of bat soldiers hunting Robin. Around him, spreading into infinity, was star-filled sky, a vast world of air ten thousand times the size of the one made of earth.
A claw sheared away most of his metal skirt and exposed his legs, freeing them. He yanked them away from the reaching fingers and squirmed up inside the clutch of the furry membrane. He wiggled and kicked and shoved until his arms and shoulders were well above the top finger of the wing’s grip. He discarded the clumsy remnant of his chain mail and padded tunic, leaving himself dressed in boots, loincloth and helmet, then drew his knife. The vampire bat somersaulted onto its back in what appeared to be its feeding position, and the clutching wing swept him toward its open jaws.
Gath turned the face of his helmet toward the jaws, and sent flames into the waiting mouth.
The bat shrieked in pain, drawing its human morsel away from its jaw
s, and darted down in a dive.
The Barbarian turned his head away from the rush of air, but it swept by so fast he could not breathe. With his lungs bursting, he drove the blade of his knife into the huge knuckle of the bat’s thumb, working it furiously. The knuckle gave a little, then its grip relaxed, and the bat abruptly darted to the side, again somersaulting.
The wing again folded up, drawing Gath toward the waiting mouth, but the movement further loosened its grip, and Gath hauled himself onto the back of the wing, out of reach of the bat’s jaws.
The bat dove again, trying to dislodge him. Gath drove his knife and fingers into the wing membrane, tearing it open, then thrust an arm into the wound, seizing a wing bone with it, and hung on.
The bat twisted as it neared the ground, and darted at a mountain. Then it twisted again, avoiding it, and darted along its rock face. Its flapping wings came within inches of the rock, and Gath was raked by the stone. But he was not dislodged.
The vampire bat darted and twisted through the indigo sky, and Gath slowly hauled himself toward the head until a huge pointed ear was within his grasp. Gath got a hold of the bottom edge and waited. The bat somersaulted and Gath used the roll of the creature’s body to let himself fall into the ear. There he pulled himself into the narrowest section and hung on.
The bat continued to dart and twist, no more than forty feet above the moonlit ground. Screaming came from the monstrous rodent, but Gath did not hear it. The helmet’s hunger was a roar inside him. He gathered his body close to the ear hole, breath and smoke heaving from the helmet, but forced himself to wait.
The bat darted and twisted, driving through narrow chasms of rock and passing between boulders, blind but uncanny with vision. Then it suddenly hovered in mid-air, as if needing time to think.
Gath instantly forced his body in amongst the tangled cartilage of the ear and drove the full length of his thick arm inward. The arm’s hand held his knife, and its blade penetrated the eardrum. Gath turned and twisted it, tearing and cutting. Blood washed out of the ear hole, drenching him, but still he cut.