by Chris Turner
Draba, for all his nugget-chipping motives, rained blow after blow upon the gnashing horde. But to their seemingly never-ending supply of strokes, he was smothered under a press of their slimy numbers.
Gripped by lizard claws, Fezoul shrank into a protective ball, his face sick with terror. Unable to stop the horde from twisting his thin hands and binding them with stout cord, he screeched, flailed and gibbered.
Hafta and Amexi parried the furious clubs and tulwars, but too many snarling enemy lashed out at them. Amexi sagged on his knees. Hafta fell soon after in a haze of sweat and blood.
Blackened and bruised and scored with cuts, the company was gripped and bound. Rusfaer had barely managed to carve a swath through the crush of lizards. The last Dereas had seen of him was a flailing figure in a fierce swarm of confusion, raining stroke upon stroke on the skulls of lizards, cleaving through mail, sinew, and bone. Whether the New Wolves’ chief won free of that press, Dereas did not know, pushed as he was on his stomach, face down on the stone.
The creatures did not want to kill them. The beastslayer felt raspy cord lashed about his arms and wrists. His muscles strained and writhed against it, but their seething numbers gave him no room to manoeuvre. Too easy for the lizards to kill them outright, Dereas thought morosely. No, they just wanted to capture them. For what purpose, he could barely guess, though he assumed it would be for some horrific enterprise.
The five companions were hauled up, clammy lizard hands gripping and tugging at their limbs. The enemy chittered in their abominable language, a tongue or dialect of some unknown origin, snorting, grunting. They babbled amongst themselves, licking jowls, flicking out tongues, chirping in half-snapping fury. But strangely human were the words that came drifting to Dereas’s ears. Uttered words that became somewhat intelligible.
“To the sacred eggs!...Ode to the sacred King...back to the King’s stronghold. Long live our Lizard King!”
Dereas winced, bound like a trussed deer as he tried to filter the human from the reptile, struggling in the grips of these chest-high, repulsive, salamander-like things.
His dragnetted peers quailed. They kicked and clawed as rancid nets twined over them like spider webs and enveloped their blood-grimed faces. By sheer weight of numbers the lizard people dragged them down the winding tunnel, through a section too narrow to admit the snake. The tunnel was cramped and rank with humid breath, staired with more of the strange wood. The procession weaved down to the open cavern through a startled gathering of lizards; Dereas caught glimpses of blackened cauldrons, smoking pots, rude carts being pushed by gawking lizards. He heard the rolling of wheels, the heaving of heaps of stones and sizzling liquids. War machines hung in the periphery like giant sleeping crickets, some looking like bailey rams or compact catapults in stages of construction, for whatever purpose Dereas could hardly fathom. Innumerable eyes fixed on the captives; some had stopped to gape and grumble in peculiar, guttural speech. Many reptilian stares later, the captors dropped the outsiders in an open area at the foot of the fort. The terrace was obscured in shadow cast by the flickering torches bracketed to the long black wall. The rude pens housing the two giant primeval saurians lurked not a stone’s throw away.
A group of two dozen castle guards hoisted the five of them up and marched them down through the throng. Dereas’s skin crawled and his heart burned with sick frustration. He saw the light was even redder here in the common ground, casting the fort in a lurid glow. The fort, he saw, actually doubled as a black, twisted citadel decorated with reptilian gargoyles. Several lank lizards had gone inside to emerge with a retinue of lizards-at-arms and their leader.
Droves of them swarmed the common ground and Dereas and his company were caught up in a chaotic rush, pulled along closer to the outer rampart. Too many foes crowded the spaces and even if he could break free of his immediate captors, he realized he could no more thrust through that surging throng than a minnow could fin its way up a waterfall.
The sentries attempted to halt with their charges in a wide area laid with smooth stone, but were jolted back. Dereas could see they had come to a holding ground or rude terrace, worn over the years by countless clawed feet. Not more than a dozen yards stretched to the fort’s wall, a bowshot to the farthest cavern wall. The reptile pen was a squalid square, reeking of dung. Behind the fort, a long stone ramp spanned a deep chasm. Squinting his eyes, Dereas could dimly make out a walkway running on a slight arch that disappeared in a high tunnel carved into the rock on the far wall.
The leader approached while club-wielding attendants beat a way for him. His jowl was firmed in a terrible glower, and with knees bent he sported a slight, primitive air. His coronet of pure gold was tilted on a rakish angle, his lizard-hide gown dishevelled. His eyes were a golden hue and radiated a feverish intensity upon the expectant gathering. In no time, the commanding figure was surrounded by a retinue of fawning followers and green- and yellow-liveried bodyguards, threatening overzealous subjects back with curved blades.
“Who are you? Speak!” the lizard shrilled.
Dereas and Jhidik exchanged startled glances, bewildered at being addressed in their own language; they expected a purely primitive creature. They wrestled with their captors, each trying to wrench an arm or knee free to brain one of them or gouge out an eye, stubbornly pursuing any avenue of escape.
No luck. The lizards were not to be thwarted. They kicked and buffeted the prisoners back in their place. Cursing them, Dereas murmured grave appeals to Balael, while reprimanding himself for the foolish decisions that had brought them to capture. He hated this dim uncouth place. The mad thump of his heart strengthened his resolve to suffer whatever fate was in store for them. He put on a brave face.
A pike-lizard addressed his leader in a solemn voice with bastardized speech. He was undoubtedly a lieutenant of the guards, judging from his attire, a surcoat with a lizard insignia under mail now stained in blood. Dereas’s eyes narrowed in dislike. “Sire, we, citizens of Yarim-Id, bring you intruders and lay them at your feet—offerings also, Great One, to the hallowed Rgnadon!”
The king looked from face to face sternly. No acknowledgement of the lieutenant’s announcement came from his lips.
The pike-lizard gulped back his unease and he paled, undoubtedly lower in rank than most which addressed its monarch. To conceal his awkwardness and perhaps to better please, he ordered the prisoners prodded forward with pikes and clubs and personally paraded Dereas before their monarch with the shoves, bites and club taps of his henchmen.
“Hold off!” roared Dereas, piqued at being goaded forward like a common mule. He pulled at his bonds with mounting fervour, avoiding the slaps and ceremonious prods of the flat ends of the lizard blades.
The guard-lieutenant snapped, “We arrest you in the name of His Majesty for trespassing, thievery and blood-letting! Look at this, Great One—” he hissed, and made a presumptuous motion of supplication “—We found this big, light-haired cretin in the observatory—while the short one, with the grinning face, we found with sacred stones hid in his pockets.”
“What?” bawled the king, his voice blaring like a horn. “That is treason!—” His eyes blinked several times. “Crowcock! Bear dung! Thief of infamy! You dare sully the secret possessions of Yarim-id? They are not to be snatched as common pocket items by outsiders!”
Draba began to snort and utter profane words, the blood dripping from the cut on his forearm. Dereas jerked forward, straining his weight to headbutt the insolent warrior whose insults could get them killed.
Draba fixed him with a look of menace, uttering a surly growl.
“You are as guilty as a snake,” intoned the king. “The sun does not shine on you here, man-things. You walk the land of Yarim-Id—realm of shadow, and yet you skulk about like common thieves without permission. Look yonder, what do you see?”
Dereas looked up to the looming towers and scowled. “A fortress of carved black stone, with overlarge eggs crowding the parapets.”
; “Those are the sacred eggs of Yarim-id!” the king roared.
Dereas bared his teeth. “No doubt, lizard, but what’s that to us? We are ignorant of your customs; furthermore, I demand—”
“You demand nothing! We hatch those eggs after ripe ages to become the royal citizens of our race. Each is a royal monarch in his or her own right. Ten years per egg. The highest born of us season for even lengthier periods to become sires of the morrow.”
Dereas grimaced, the cords about his forearms and shoulders stretching with the strain of his muscled arms. The lizards swayed and grunted, and looked on Dereas with awe. “Vastly interesting, but what does this have to do with us?”
“Silence!” the lizard king ordered. He clanked his staff threateningly on the bare rock. He flourished curtly at his servants. “No outsider walks Yarim-Id without our notice. How you survived the tunnels is a mystery beyond me, but I smell the hand of the Eaklyds in this.”
Dereas spat savagely, wondering what they could be if not the filthy, dreaded Eakors. This inquisition was not heading down a path in his favour.
“In fact, my lizard nose detects that you have the blood of the Eaklyds on your hands!” He pushed out his chest in righteous indignation. “Do not try to deny it! I see everything!”
The lieutenant frowned nervously. “It is odd, your Grace, that the humans managed to penetrate the mountain so far. The west face is lost, has been for an age, and old Balbikor would have made short work of them.”
The king shook his lizardly head. “The stone birds are guardians to our kingdom at the north gate. Recall, the weaker ones send us sacrifices, humans or beasts, dead or live as per our agreement, but they could not have gotten past them—unless—” and here he narrowed his eyes evilly on his lieutenant.
Fearing the wrath of his sire, the lieutenant gave a hasty reply, “We have offered the stone birds ample gifts. Our scouts regularly appease their lusts—”
“Obviously you have neglected your duty, and the Eaklyds have allowed intruders to win past our borders, which means—” he trailed off suggestively.
Jhidik deigned to add, “If by Eaklyds you mean those obnoxious vultures, yes,” he grunted in his most sarcastic voice. “We put the lot of them to the sword. Filthy things they were—which died in the horror they deserve.”
The lizard king’s eyes bulged with outrage. Staring fixedly at the Pirean, he rounded on him with a wrath that they thought might have his staff ringing off the warrior’s skull. “The Eaklyds share a strained alliance with us!” he bellowed. “If you have harmed them in any way, then so we must harm you. If it is destined to die by their beaks, then you must submit. To be torn by their talons is an honour. Do not seek to vex our guardians or skulk about thieving and killing here in Yarim-Id!”
Dereas cried out in an exasperated voice, “We are not skulking about! Only a simple act of necessity brought us—”
“Cease your lies! Didn’t this earthworm bring you?” He pointed a clawed hand at Fezoul. “Did you not tell him, mountain goat man, that we have many secrets and wish no visitors?”
Fezoul looked away guiltily.
The lizard king grew pink in the face. “I stand by my words! By Jeron!” He rose on the tip of his toes to flourish a clenched fist. “Our living and fallen lizards demand restitution!”
The guard-lieutenant licked his mouth. He addressed the king in delicate tones. “Sire, some other distressing news comes to my attention. I can relay it now or—”
“Speak!”
“One of the outsiders—” he cleared his throat “—a big ox of a brute with a bush of rusty hair, escaped our net. He wielded one of our poles as if it were a fire stick and by Jeron, he fought like a demon! He’s not a normal human. He killed off two of our lieutenants and went on a rampage to maul or slaughter a dozen of our ensigns. We figure a score of other lizards-at-arms fell to his blows before he escaped back into the tunnel. They have not returned. How, we know not, your Grace, ’tis a mystery. We tried to flush the brute out, but he slipped through our webs like an eel and must have lain hidden in the Borsom tunnels. By some uncanny luck or craft the fiend evaded even Ribik’s and Gron’s keen hunting snouts. I was lucky to escape his bloody handling myself, only having my chest-guard punctured and my rib fractured and this telling gash on my left side.” He lifted a painful arm to show the gaping wound to the king.
The lizard king danced a jig of anger. “I don’t care if Mazoma himself gouged out your heart, you weakling pip,” he screeched. “Find the cretin! I’ve heard enough about your petty bruises—” and his jaw moved in hostile motions, champing, making feral, grinding action like a surly boar. His snout showed blackened gums and rank rows of red teeth. “Take all the scouts you need, Lolik,” he bawled, “or it’s on your head, by Jeron and the Rgnadon, that your skull will adorn the fort’s gate this week, replacing your grandsire’s sacred egg!”
The guard bowed obsequiously. He loped off, sweating visibly, scrambling on all fours to carry out his duty.
The lizard king turned his feral attention on Fezoul. “I remember you of old,” he hissed, scrutinizing the dwarf with intense disfavour. “I remember you when you were a chubby-cheeked cherub of a young man. You were steward to the Consul-Crown of Yarim-Id, weren’t you? The Keeper of the Seven Keys.”
Fezoul’s eyes lit with surprise. An inarticulate sound slipped past his pink mouth and he tried to make himself smaller in his captors’ grips.
“What are you talking about? I know not of this role of steward,” he stammered.
“Don’t play the idiot with me! You are surprised?” The lizard king smirked in an effort to goad the dwarf to terror. “Through lizard potency and my priestess’s sorcery I have lived well beyond my years. I became leader of this forbidding realm and the savant I am today. For an age, I have watched my kingdom grow and the number of highborn eggs atop Minulzon’s keep’s parapets swell. Growing, brewing, gestating,” the king mused darkly . “I see by the royal purple of your belt that you have attained high status. Very good. Also the Vizon amulet around your pale neck—indeed, a stately token...and you have risen high, master Fezoul,” he said with false respect. “For Fezoul, is it not? Do you not remember me?” The reptilian eyes of the king narrowed in shrewd and mocking amusement.
Fezoul shook his head like a dog, his whole body racked with spasms. “I was keeper of the keys—once—and then holder of the crown,” he admitted weakly. “But I am no steward. I am the present king of Yarim-Id...”
“You? King? Never!” roared the lizard leader. “I am king! You are but the memory of some leader of the past, of a lost people, a broken race, transformed and merged with the blood of ours. Yours is but the bud of the pupa to us.” He let the enigmatic image roll off his tongue—to the horrified understanding now of Fezoul. “You forget Yarim-Id of old includes the lizard realm, and the House of Rgnadon. The true king shall rise again. Now on the back of a great beast which shall rule this mountain and the lands without!” The lizard king’s eyes bulged with fervour and he stood on the balls of his feet while his orbs had grown luminous and fanatically glassy. He stood up to his full height, arms spread and his followers’ voices rang softly aloft in a thin murmur.
Fezoul, flummoxed to the point of swoon, tried to stall for time. “For a fact, you seem familiar to one I knew long ago, a certain Xabren, a clever but wayward rebel. But that could not be, for it was decades ago, and he was never seen again.”
“Crokcow! Snake slime!” the lizard king laughed.
Fezoul recoiled as the lizard king collected his self composure. “I see you are not without wits. Very good, Fezoul. Very good....even if you did achieve your exalted position only by the grace of your father you are still somewhat of a king.” The lizard scowled and continued in an indulgent voice: “The Vizon is a token I have not seen for an age. I have mind to snatch it from your pudgy neck right now and keep as a memento for my collection. But from this I shall refrain. No, you guard it, my weakling king. You will need
it where you’re going—on a voyage home, to lizardom!”
Neither Dereas nor the dwarf liked the sound of that ominous prediction. Fezoul blinked rapidly several times. Dereas could hardly understand half of what was said, but he noticed Fezoul looked like a man aged much beyond his years.
The lizard king made an abrupt motion of arm. “Swiftly! Take these two heathens—” he motioned to Rusfaer’s quivering men “—to the beast chamber—you, with the bestial ox rings in your nose and this one who has stolen our property...No wait—better this one here—” and he stabbed a claw at Jhidik who bore the lank mat of dark hair and nursed the dark scowl. “He has an evil look to him and he has put brash words before me. I will question the others at my leisure. These two—” he made a curt inclination of head to Draba and Jhidik “—will be the first to become ‘one with our blood’.”
The guard-lieutenant nodded an acknowledgement. “Gladly, your Grace.”
Dereas snatched a horrified glance at where the king was gesturing—toward a litter of giant, cracked eggs not far from the beast stall and staked-off pen where a brood of lizard imps ran about, champing wildly and snapping at each other like monkeys. What could he mean? Dereas thought wildly.
In the closest pen, the beastslayer saw that the large beast snuffed and glared with evil, red eyes and pawed at the filth. It would be thrice the height of a man should it rise and stand on its hind legs. The pens were not made of stone either, Dereas noticed—they were crafted of wooden posts only, with twined slats fastened with oiled cord between them.
Jhidik made an objection, “Here, now! We wish no part in your abominable rites.”
“Silence, knave! ’Tis too late for that.” the lizard shrilled. He hoisted his sceptre high and stamped his wide, clawed feet on the rock. “Swiftly! The rites must be enacted posthaste! Jogen, see to it, immediately, if not sooner, for there is not a moment to be wasted.”