And then things got very confusing very quickly.
The maiden vanished. Or something. She was, apparently, instantly replaced by a spray of blood and a glabrous mass of dripping tentacles, writhing out from the window as if reaching for the sky itself. They curled and gripped like fingers around the edge of the window and ripped, tossing the stones away. The tower cracked like a snail’s shell, and a massive, pulsing body oozed out. The thing was far larger than ought to have been contained by the tower that had until recently stood there.
It smelled of swamp and despair.
The chief castle builder came up to Lancelot, shoulders slumped, a defeated look in his eye. His men were running, screaming in terror. One of the tentacles grabbed one of the workers and thrust the poor screaming soul into what was presumably a mouth. It wasn’t entirely clear.
“I told you,” the chief castle builder said tiredly. “Cursed.”
“Huh,” Lancelot replied.
Well, he was here to either rescue maidens or slay monsters. He could no longer attempt the former, but at least he still had the latter. He drew his sword, which would have glinted nobly in the sun, but undulating black clouds had roiled in from every horizon and now covered the sun utterly. An unbreakable darkness fell upon the land.
Lancelot wanted to drop his weapon and weep uncontrollably, but that just wouldn’t do. He was a knight. Of Camelot. And he was here to slay monsters. This encounter would be legendary.
He gave his sword a swing, and it whistled as it sliced the air. He squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and knew that this was what he’d been born for.
One of the dozen — three dozen? three hundred? — gray and veined tentacles came for him, cracking like a whip, curling as if weightless, ready to snatch him and squeeze until he popped. But Lancelot was ready. With a quick lateral cut and a slash down, he separated the tip of the offending limb from the rest of it, and stabbed it where it lay writhing on the ground. The monster groaned, a bone-leeching noise that rattled the very earth. Thunder and lightning rocked the air continuously.
The next awful limb attacked before he could catch his breath, and he dispatched this one as well. His heart was proud, his arm strong, and his sword true. He turned to the panic that had erupted throughout the clearing.
“Men! Draw weapons! To me, to me!”
But these were workmen, not knights and warriors. Not a trained soldier among them. These were men who might pick up a pitchfork to defend a homestead from marauders, but they were not his vassals to call to some greater need of war.
Still, at his voice they paused at the edge of incipient madness. They looked at their hands and saw their tools, looked at Lancelot and saw his sword. And they saw what might be possible. They raised a cheer and turned to face the monster that was now sprawling over a great swath of countryside.
For a while they rallied. Axes, saws, awls, and hammers in hand, the workmen formed a line, slashing and stabbing until the thing’s fetid blood soaked the ground. The shattered stone of the tower seemed to melt in the acid ooze of it. More tentacles grew to replace the old, but for a time they seemed to keep ahead of the onslaught, and drove back the creature from whence it came. They learned to brace against its howls and screams. They somehow grew accustomed to the stink of its slime.
But the thing had an eye. A great, muddy, golden eye. And when it opened and turned its gimlet gaze upon him with all the power of its unholy origin — that was when Lancelot finally dropped his sword and screamed.
And then it was over. All of it.
Trespassers
A. Scott Glancy
“Rider approaching!” called out Havildar Thapa.
Captain Henry Conder, late of the Corps of Bengal Sappers and Miners, stood up from his collapsible camp desk and stretched. Recording the expedition’s progress could wait; Conder was intrigued that anyone could be so bold as to travel alone through the Kulun Shan. He did not for a moment think there was some mistake: his Gurkha Riflemen were unerringly precise in their observations and reports. It was one of the reasons he’d worked so hard to get as many as he could on this expedition. The Kashmiri Sepoys were sturdy enough, well trained and diligent, but even the lowest Gurkha treated his duties with all the seriousness of a regimental sergeant major.
Conder fished a pair of binoculars out of his rucksack and strolled to the edge of their camp. Havildar Thapa stood peering off into the distance without the aid of binoculars, simply shielding his eyes from the waning sun. Like most Gurkhas, Thapa stood just over five feet tall. Conder towered over him at five foot eight. Should some Uyghur bandit decide to pick off the officer from among the Gurkhas, Kashmiri and Balti of Her Imperial Majesty’s Expedition to the Eastern Chinese Turkestan, he wouldn’t have much difficulty sorting the white man from the Asiatics.
Havildar Thapa hadn’t bothered to unsling his Lee-Metford rifle yet, which told Conder the rider was still thousands of yards away.
“Where is he, Havildar?” Conder asked in poorly accented Nepali. Thapa, the five other Gurkhas, and the seventeen Kashmiri Sepoys under his command all spoke decent English, so speaking a few words of Nepali was an unnecessary, but appreciated, courtesy.
Thapa pointed back down the valley they’d been reconnoitering the past week. Conder immediately saw the flicker of movement. Bringing his binoculars up, Conder recognized the rider immediately. The giant man had stood out in Baron Savukoski’s party, even among the other Cossacks. Even at this range his size was apparent from how far down his legs hung along the flanks of the small, tough pony he rode. What had his rank been? Uryadnik? Senior Warden? It was definitely Baron Savukoski’s chief NCO, unless there was more than one sixteen-stone Cossack to be found in the Kulun Shan.
Before departing Srinagar, Conder had received intelligence that a Russian expedition had left Tashkent, a party of Cossacks and Tuvans led by the redoubtable Baron Arvid Erik Savukoski. The Finnish noble was well known among the cartographers striving to fill in the great swaths of nothing that occupied so much of the maps of Central Asia. Conder had enthusiastically read of Savukoski’s exploits in the press and various scientific journals, but his secret reports to the Russian General Staff strained Conder’s meager Russian. When a brace of Cossack riders arrived, carrying a letter of introduction and an invitation to bring their expeditions together for an evening of dinner, drink, and talk of empire, Conder could hardly have refused such an invitation, but it still stung that the Baron had found him first.
Baron Savukoski set a good table, even if the plates and cups were simple lacquered wood. The Cossacks roasted a goat for the occasion, seasoned with the last of their expedition’s spices. Both Savukoski and his Balto-German ethnographer, Otto Eichwald, presented themselves in worn but well-preserved officers’ uniforms. Conder contributed some sugar, tea, and his closely rationed brandy with which to toast the health of Her Imperial Majesty Victoria and Czar Alexander III. After dinner, conversation began with good-natured jabs concerning the inevitable clash of their empires, but ended with Savukoski revealing his familiarity with Conder’s published work for the Royal Geographic Society, and complimenting Conder on the thoroughness and precision of his observations. The next morning both parties assembled so that Eichwald could take a couple of exposures with his folding camera to commemorate the meeting of the two great explorers — a perfect tableau of worthy adversaries exchanging their respects during a momentary lull in the Great Game.
The crunch of boots on frozen rock signaled the approach of Conder’s Pathan surveyor, Malik Dost Khan. A Risaldar in the 1st Bengal Lancers, Khan had crossed the Pamirs with Conder three years previously, and scouted alternate approaches into Tibet just two summers ago.
“Can you see who it is, Henry?” Khan asked in English.
“One of Savukoski’s Cossacks… the really big scoundrel. Do you remember his name?”
“No. Those brutes did nothing but sneer at the ‘moosulmanyes’ and stroke the pommels of their sabers.” The shared la
nguage of Conder, Eichwald and Savukoski had been French, which had left Khan out of the conversation. “You don’t suppose it’s another invitation to dinner?”
“As eager as I am for another lecture on the inevitability of the Czar’s Cossacks watering their horses in the Ganges, I don’t think that’s very likely.” Conder glassed the approaching rider again. The last time Savukoski dispatched a message there had been two riders and they had carried lances flying red pennants. Today there was only a single rider, and no such weapons were displayed.
“You sound certain.”
Conder lowered the glasses and looked Khan in the eyes. “When we broke camp I did the Russians a bad turn. I told them that the Tsang Pass was easily traversed. That we’d mapped it, and that it would cut two months off their march to the edge of the Talamakan Desert.”
Khan looked genuinely taken aback. “Do you think they took your advice?”
“We’ll know in a minute.”
Khan shrugged. “Well, I suppose someone was going to be the first to explore the Tsang Pass. Might as well be Baron Savukoski. Perhaps he discovered something he can name after his Czar?”
“Best case, he wasted a lot of time and had to retrace his route.”
“Worst, he found our elusive marauders,” Khan suggested. “Did you hope to use the Russians to flush them out?”
“No. Nothing so calculated,” Conder sighed. “I just got it in my head that I should make some effort to confound him, even just a little. We’re enemies, after all. Well, no matter. However their merry dance turned out, I suspect we shall be spared a second invitation to dinner.”
“That seems certain, Henry.”
The rider was finally close enough to make out details without the binoculars. The pony’s thick hair was caked in frost, its gait was short and rubbery, as if it had been run to exhaustion. The saddle pack seemed unusually light, with no bedroll in evidence, and the saddlebags were empty. As the Cossack approached, he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped himself into a purposeful walk, without appreciably slowing his mount. The huge man was armed to the teeth, although that was not unusual for anyone traveling in this brutal land. A long, slightly curved kindjal dagger was thrust through his silk belt. A guardless shashka saber hung from his left side. Carried barrel-down across his back was a cut-down Cossack version of a bolt-action Berdanka carbine. Strangely, his cartridge belt, slung across his broad chest, was empty of shells. His sheepskin greatcoat was torn and frayed, and spattered with fine black stains, as was his tall, shaggy kubanka hat. The man had come from a fight, the blood of his foes drying black where it had landed.
Havildar Thapa unslung his Lee-Metford and held it at port arms. Thapa stood more than a foot shorter than the Cossack brute, but showed no sign of hesitation as he stepped in front of him. The Cossack stopped and looked at Conder over the top of Havildar’s flat-topped Kilmarnock cap. Conder didn’t much care for the set of the huge man’s jaw, nor the sunken look of his eyes. The giant was unsteady on his feet, exhausted.
The Cossack pulled off his heavy gloves and produced a folded piece of paper out of the cuff of his greatcoat. He held it out and announced, so far as Corder’s limited Russian would allow, that it was a message for the “anglise kapitan.”
“Let him advance, Havildar.” Thapa reluctantly stepped aside; the Cossack shouldered past and held out the folded note. As Conder reached for it, his eyes dropped to the Cossack’s left hand, just in time to see him draw his long kindjal dagger. The captain rocked back, avoiding the sweep of the blade just beneath his chin, but he caught his heel and stumbled. The Cossack flipped the kindjal in his hand, from an upward sweep to a downward stab, and lunged before Conder found his footing. He would have been on top of Conder had Malik Khan not got both his hands around the Cossack’s forearm and wrist, turning the blade away. Thapa smashed the Cossack’s calf with the butt of his rifle. Roaring, the Cossack went down on one knee, and drove his right fist into Malik’s face.
Conder righted himself and went at the Cossack like a rugby tackle, putting the big man on his back. As the Cossack’s head struck the ground, Thapa delivered a second blow with his butt-stock, breaking the giant’s nose and spraying Conder and Malik with blood. The Gurkha NCO was drawing back his rifle when Conder waved him off.
“No! No! Wait! This man has a story to tell and I mean to hear it.”
Malik peeled the unconscious Cossack’s fingers away from his kindjal and tossed it aside. “Let’s hope you haven’t killed him.”
“Most assuredly not, Risaldar Khan,” said Thapa. “Had I meant him dead, his skull would be open.”
“Quickly, Havildar,” said Conder. “Let’s do something about his wrists before he gets his senses back.”
They didn’t move fast enough. By the time they had rope to bind the Cossack’s wrists and ankles, it took five Kashmiri Sepoys to hold him down.
When Conder and Khan rummaged through the Cossack’s possessions they found the man’s supplies were exhausted. He had no food for himself or his pony. His canteen was equally empty. No cartridges remained for his Berdanka carbine, but the barrel and action were fouled with burnt black powder. His kindjal knife and shashka saber had been recently oiled and sharpened, but their blades were chipped and bent from hours of hacking through bone and sinew. The Cossack wasn’t much better off than his pony, physically exhausted and on the brink of collapse. Conder didn’t care to think how much faster the Cossack’s knife would have been had he eaten in the last several days.
Even so, every attempt to examine the Cossack’s injury required the Sepoys to violently restrain him. He fought his captors until he collapsed. When the Cossack awoke after dark, he found himself on a blanket near the campfire, two Sepoys standing over him with rifles.
Conder thawed some snow over the horse-dung fire, sprinkling in a pinch of their remaining tea leaves. It wouldn’t be the strong brew of a Russian samovar, but he offered the tin cup to the Cossack. At first he received only a baleful stare, but soon the Cossack relented and permitted Conder to tip the cup to his bloodstained lips, and he quietly drank.
“Your name?” Conder asked. The Cossack said nothing. Conder’s Russian was weak, but he knew he’d spoken correctly. “What is your name, Kozzaki?”
The snarled response was something about how when Conder arrived in Hell, he could tell the Devil that Uryadnik Shkuro had delivered him.
“Why?” Conder asked, holding up the kindjal. The Cossack spit on the ground in front of him and launched into a tirade in something utterly unlike the textbook Russian Conder was barely familiar with.
“Did you follow any of that?” Malik asked, when the torrent subsided. He squatted nearby, one hand on the butt of his long Kyber knife, the other absently testing his swollen left cheek.
“Yes,” said Conder. “Something killed all the Russians and he blames me.”
The interrogation moved slowly and carefully, like a verbal autopsy, hampered by Conder’s Russian and Uryadnik Shkuro’s near total illiteracy. It was well past the witching hour when Conder felt he’d gotten the fullest account from Shkuro.
Exhausted by the ordeal, Conder knew he would not be able to sleep until he shared what he’d heard. He woke Malik Khan after helping himself to the last bottle of the medicinal brandy.
“Did you learn anything?” Khan said, struggling out from under his wool blanket.
“I sent those Russians to their deaths. That Shkuro fellow is the only survivor.”
“But there were over twenty armed men in their party.”
“Twenty-two. Shkuro knows of no one else who got away.”
“Could it be the raiders we’ve been looking for?” Malik asked.
“We’ll need to see what’s left of the Russian camp to be sure.”
“Then we depart in the morning,” Malik said casually, and rolled back under his blankets.
“There’s more,” Conder said. He uncorked the bottle of brandy and took a pull. He didn’t offer any to Khan, i
n deference to the laws of the Prophet. “The Cossack says they were attacked under cover of night. By dwarves.”
Khan sat back up. “Dwarves? What do you mean?”
“He used the work ‘karlik,’ the Russian for a person afflicted with dwarfism. But… the dwarves I’ve seen are bent, malformed creatures. Such hapless unfortunates couldn’t overwhelm twenty heavily armed Cossacks.”
“Perhaps he meant pygmies? I hear tell of such peoples in the Andaman Islands.”
“You are remarkably well informed, Malik. Yes, there are pygmies in the Andamans and in the Congo, but I doubt our illiterate Cossack ever heard of such things. Russian aristocrats are quite taken with dwarf entertainers, so perhaps ‘karlik’ is the closest equivalent in his experience.”
“Did he say how these dwarves fought?”
“Quiet. Moved well in the dark. Got inside the sentries and let loose volleys of heavy darts launched from something like a woomera or an atlatl. No musketry at all. The Russians didn’t even know they were under attack until someone was struck — and soon dropped. The darts were poisoned. Then the devils rushed the camp. Shkuro says they shot down plenty of their attackers, but those single-shot Berdankas were too slow. The Baron ordered the men to their ponies to break out of the ambush, but most of the horses had already been struck by darts; they collapsed under their riders. Shkuro carried another Cossack behind him for a while, but the man took a couple of darts. He lasted until first light and then died badly.”
“No rifles? Not even flintlocks or matchlocks?”
“Just darts, knives, and spears. Shkuro said they pursued him day and night. On foot, if you can believe that. They kept up with his pony when he walked it, gained on him when he tried to sleep. He spent all his ammunition keeping them at bay. Hasn’t seen them in weeks, but can’t be sure they gave up.”
Swords v. Cthulhu Page 6