02 - Lords of Destruction

by James Silke - (ebook by Undead)

  He had surrendered to the helmet.

  The headpiece hung low between his shoulders, its hot metal steaming in the grey wet air. The horns pulsed with life, subtly bending and turning like the antennae of some huge bug as they hunted out the nearest danger. His hand responded to each turn, tugging on the reins and guiding the huge horse under arch and down goat path.

  He followed a narrow ridge, turned a corner, and a road appeared at the base of a steep incline. He rode down onto it, the clatter of hooves becoming dull thuds as the draft horse moved onto dirt. The tongue of bald ground ran fairly straight for about forty feet in both directions, then vanished behind jagged black rock.

  He sat motionless, waiting. The horns pulsed. Suddenly the helmet turned his head, and black smoke billowed from the eye slits. Flames. He turned the horse, and felt it. The vibrations of hooves reverberating in the road. Then he heard them. A group of horses, not coming hard, but steadily. He gathered the traces tight and propped his axe upright on his thigh.

  They came around a turn two abreast. Bat soldiers. A patrol of six riders on small horses with long-haired manes and tails. Seeing the smoking, flaming Barbarian, they reined up, chattering to each other. Then two plunged forward, spears in hand.

  Gath prodded his mount forward. His breath came in heaving gasps. His blood was hot and the air cool on his sweating flesh. His mind was clouding as helmet dominated man, blotting out sight and sound, forming a tunnel of vision focused on the scent and sound and sight of the living meat coming at him.

  The two soldiers reined up, rising in their stirrups and screeching, and threw their spears.

  Gath kept coming. Eyes on the furry, leather-clad bodies, yet watching the streaking spears. He turned a shoulder out of the way of the first, and leaned the helmet into the second. It clanged off harmlessly, and he kept coming.

  The demon spawn drew their swords and charged. High-pitched squealing rang from their throats, and their four watching comrades added their voices to the unholy battle cry.

  The helmet knew the song they sang, and responded with a harmonic howl unnatural in its beauty.

  The music chilled the bat soldiers. Sword arms fell slack. Mouths dropped open.

  The draft horse slammed into the first small horse, and it went down backward, throwing its rider. At the same time the helmeted Barbarian turned the axe flat, swung it and caught the second bat soldier full in the chest as he galloped past. His hollow, birdlike bones disintegrated on impact, and he was driven out of his saddle. He hit the ground with a slap, the middle of his body as shapeless as a bloody leather sack.

  The helmet howled its approval.

  The four remaining bat soldiers turned their mounts and galloped back the way they had come. The fifth horse followed dragging its rider, whose foot was caught in a stirrup. The riderless horse continued in the opposite direction.

  Gath, his mind briefly clearing, saw the horses and saddles he hunted riding off, and gave chase. But the smaller horses quickly pulled away and vanished around a turn in the road. Gath leaned forward on the draft horse, body loose and pliant, and prodded the animal forward, compelling it with the heat and intensity of his touch and weight. The horse galloped faster and faster, churning up the dirt road, then added more speed. A thundering boulder of meat and bone.

  When the bat soldiers saw the huge horse gaining on them, they spurred their small horses hard, drawing blood. But the big horse kept gaining. In desperation, the bat soldiers turned off the road onto a narrow, rocky trail and vanished among the dark jagged terrain.

  Gath followed, dashed through gut and gully and reined up on a slight rise. The four mounted bat soldiers milled in a boxed hollow thirty feet below, while the fifth lay dying on the ground with his foot still caught in the stirrup. They were trapped. Two riders tried to goad their mounts up a steep slope, but the slippery rock denied them passage. Then, seeing the huge horse and its rider start for them, the bat soldiers jumped out of their saddles and scrambled up among the rocks. They tore their flesh on the sharp rocks, then vanished, bleeding, among them.

  Gath walked his horse halfway down the slope toward the waiting horses and saddles, then hesitated. The helmet was growing hot again, the horns pulsing. The smell of blood swirled around him, hot and humid, and his vision once more clouded, his body heaving for breath. Savage. Animal. Wanting the taste of the frothing wet redness on his lips.

  He leapt off the horse, dashed through the boulders, and the euphoria of the death hunt spilled through every pore and nerve. The thrill of the kill.

  The helmet leading him, he ran down one bat soldier and pulped him against a flat rock, then ran down a second and caught him on the horns of the helmet, threw him into a crevasse. He cornered two more, their backs against a wall of rock and their hands empty. Helpless. Craven. Living meat without a chance or challenge. They were simply more useless kills. Nevertheless, the helmet howled for satisfaction, and pushed the Barbarian’s body two strides closer.

  The soldiers whimpered and went to their knees, their eyes and bowels emptying.

  The man-pride in Gath snarled and revolted, and his body came to a stop. His mind demanded control of itself, defying the helmet’s hungers. The metal steamed and the horns writhed, sending pulses of desire into the flesh of his body. His pride denied them, then shame came to its aid, and once again muscle and sinew, revolted by themselves, contracted, bending his huge frame.

  Fighting the helmet, he backed up the slope, turned and walked away, listening to the bat soldiers crawl in the opposite direction.

  Following a trail of blood left by one of the bat soldiers, he found his way back to the boxed hollow. The five saddled horses still milled about, chewing on short rain-fresh grass growing in pockets of earth. He tied them in a string, mounted one, and led the string to the top of the slope where the draft horse stood idly. He took its traces in hand and guided the animals the short distance back to the road. There he looked around for a long moment and realized he had no idea where he was or in which direction he should head to find his comrades.

  He rode back the way he had come, passed the dead bat soldier and reined up where he thought he recognized the gut by which he had first reached the road. He led the draft horse into the gut and gave it a sharp slap on the haunch, hoping it would head back for the wagon. The animal trotted through the gut, then found another passage back to the road and ran off.

  Gath, his eyes hunting the ground for any sign of his passage, led the string of horses into the gut. He found a scraped rock, a hoof print in soft earth, then nothing, and stopped. Rocks the color of shadows and shadows the color of rock surrounded him, and endless natural trails heading in all directions. He dismounted and led the string forward a few feet, portioning off the ground in squares with his eyes and studying each carefully. Finding nothing, he moved forward and began again. He did this until the already dark sky grew darker, the daylight dying behind it, and the truth could not be avoided.

  He was lost.

  The helmet suddenly lightened, the metal mocking him with laughter. Then it quickly grew heavy again, forcing his head low between his shoulders and making him spread his feet for balance. Smoke and heat showed in the eye slits, and the horns pulsed, sending commands into his body. The helmet was choosing a path to the right between low spreading boulders.

  Gath fought it, holding his place, and the metal’s hunger increased. It was not danger the metal sensed and wanted to guide him to. Another, stronger desire fed it now. Revenge. It wanted to feed on the creature which had denied it satisfaction and control for so long, and it was pointing the way to that creature. Gath heaved and sweated, holding back, then surrendered to it and started forward. He had no choice, even though he knew it now hungered for Robin Lakehair.

  Thirty

  LIAR

  Cobra climbed up the interior stairwell to the second story of the wagon and asked, “Any sign of him?” The bukko, standing at the window looking out, shook his head. “Not yet.” He
turned, bringing his boyish smile with him, and said comfortingly, “You’ve got to relax. We’re going to need all the energy we can muster for the trail tonight.”

  “I should never have put the helmet on him,” she despaired. “It was stupid.”

  “You had no choice.”

  “I’m not so sure. I was frantic. I behaved like a mindless girl.” She threw herself across his bed, hiding her head in her arms. “Oh, Brown, it’s so maddening. Once I would have known exactly what to do, and done it without hesitation. Sent an army to help him, or concocted some demon, or poisoned him to quiet his hunger.” She lifted her head. “I did that once before, you know. I actually poisoned him. But I’ve got no poisons now, and no skills to make them. I’m helpless, and alone. And I don’t know how to wait. I’m going crazy.”

  She buried her head again and shuddered the full length of her voluptuous body.

  Brown John hesitated, then said quietly, “You’re not alone.”

  She looked across a bare shoulder at him, as if he were a world away.

  He stood with his back leaning against the sill of the open window. Outside it was silent and growing dark. Nothing moved. The wall of lava rising above the wagon was black against an indigo sky, and Brown John’s face, lit by guttering candlelight, was bright against the darkness. He had obviously been pondering their desperate situation himself, tearing at his hair with his pudgy fingers. But as he spoke again, his voice only carried its normal puckish optimism.

  “Robin, I presume, is safely out of his sight, in case he should show up suddenly?”

  “Yes,” she said emptily. “She promised me she would not let him see one finger.” She chuckled hollowly and sat up with her back against the wall. “She’s such a simpering fool. She wanted to make me stop worrying, so she assured me that Gath would not only come back, but that we were going to succeed. Not only steal the jewels, but solve all the world’s problems with them.” She chuckled with humorless ridicule. “Then she went to sleep, as if there wasn’t a worry in the world. She’s down there now.”

  Brown John asked casually, “What do you think about the jewels?”

  “I don’t,” she said flatly. “It’s pointless if Gath doesn’t come back.”

  The bukko smiled carefully and said, “You would make far better company if you could forget that for a while.” Getting no reply, he asked, “What do the jewels look like, exactly? Are they ordinary gems, or do they have their own particular qualities?”

  “I don’t know, Brown,” she sighed impatiently. “What difference does it make? There is no point in discussing them now.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said lightly. He sat down beside her, and his brown eyes glittered recklessly. “How old are you?”

  “What?” she asked, startled.

  “We’ve got to pass the time somehow, so tell me. How old?”

  Thrown off guard, she asked, “Does it show that much? Am I beginning to look my true age, is that it?”

  “No,” he said, “only more accessible. Now, how old, or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said candidly, her grey-gold eyes meeting his brown. “I was fourteen when I gave myself to the Master of Darkness, twenty-six when he made me a queen, and I was a queen for twelve years. I guess that makes me thirty-eight, almost thirty-nine.”

  He grimaced. “That’s awful. Nobody should have to be that old.”

  She laughed with a burst of relaxation, then sighed again and said quietly, “That’s not the hard part. I can deal with the added weight and a few wrinkles. But inside I’m mixed up. I have no experience or skills as a mere woman, and when I least expect it, my emotions run wild on me, like I was still fourteen.”

  “How wild?” he asked, not with a provocative tone, but a deadly serious one.

  She hesitated, growing tense, then suddenly turned and sank facedown, avoiding his eyes. Her voice turned low and brutal with self-mockery.

  “When he didn’t come right back, I was going to kill myself. Really. I’d never felt so full of self-pity. I didn’t even think it was possible. It just overwhelmed me and I had to end it.” She laughed bitterly, deep in her throat. “But I couldn’t find my knife, and it passed.”

  He smiled, drew a dagger from inside his belt and held it up. It was hers. She looked at it, and again put her eyes on his, holding them this time for a long moment before she spoke.

  “You knew!”

  “I see things coming sometimes,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing someone coming down the road. “Particularly if I am deeply involved with… or care for someone.”

  His change in tone made her hesitate, then she said, “You shouldn’t care, Brown. You should have let me do it.”

  He shook his frowsy head. “Couldn’t afford to. After this is all over, I’m going to need a snake charmer, and you have rather unusual qualifications.”

  She couldn’t repress a smile, and shook her head, amused at the timing of his humor.

  He shrugged and ran a hand over the boot hiding her scales, then over her calf, patting it gently.

  She said, “Brown, I can’t believe that a man as wise as yourself is actually making plans for the future at a time like this.”

  “But this is precisely the time to make them,” he said emphatically. “And you should be doing the same. You have a lot of lost time to make up for. Twelve years! The prime of your life!”

  “They weren’t lost,” she said absently. “I was a queen. I had the finest clothes, food, jewels. And an army! Power! Don’t forget that, I had everything I wanted.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said softly.

  He leaned over and removed a strand of hair from her cheek, looking into her eyes. “Don’t, Brown,” she purred. “Don’t look inside. You’ll… you’ll see things you don’t want to see.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” he murmured. “Besides, I don’t have a choice anymore. I know you’ve been playing with me, and leading me on, but I don’t care.”

  “I wasn’t leading you on. You saved my life! I was grateful, and I don’t know any other way to behave with a man.”

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that. You want to control me, because Gath depends on me. But that’s all right too. I don’t know what you’re up to, why you really want to go to Pyram, but I don’t care anymore. Sometimes I think I don’t even care about the jewels anymore.”

  “Brown, don’t,” she pleaded. “I’ll be all right now. You don’t have to say that.”

  “I do,” he said, suddenly breathless. He kissed her cheek, and she trembled at the heat in his lips. “I’m going to help you make up those lost years. All of them. One by one. I’m going to show you the other side of every mountain, show you the ways of the rivers and the wind… and make you days like you have never had before.”

  “Don’t, Brown, please. I’m… you can’t. I’m not made for the kind of dreams you dream.”

  “It’s too late,” he whispered. “You are their bright cloth now.”

  He kissed her softly, and she wanted to protest but could not, and surrendered to his touch. There was magic in his lips, a tender soothing magic she had not known existed, and it surged through her. Then she pushed him away, her voice pleading.

  “Stop! Please stop!” she gasped. “You don’t understand. You can’t trust me. I’ll let you down. I’ll hurt you. And I don’t want to.”

  He shook his head and said it again. “It’s too late.”

  Silence came between them, and a sharp groan came from somewhere outside the wagon.

  Cobra sat up wide-eyed and gasped hopefully, “Gath!”

  They listened, once more in the middle of the fear and anxiety, but no sound came. They leapt up, and Cobra raced down the staircase as Brown John grabbed up his sword and followed.

  The bottom room was empty. Robin was gone.

  Cobra moaned and flung open the door, rushed through it.

  Outside the wagon they looked up a
nd down the narrow ravine and up at the crests of the lava walls siding it. There was no one, only silence and shadows and darkening sky. They shared a worried glance and held still, listening as a whispering voice echoed up and down the ravine.

  “Don’t bother with it, it’s fine now.” It was a courteous, male growl.

  “I’m not leaving until I’ve finished.” A girl’s voice, full of zeal, and decisive.

  “Yes, you are. Now get back in the wagon before he comes back and sees you.” Male again, sharp and sensible.

  Cobra and Brown John backed away from the wagon, their eyes aimed at the roof.

  Jakar sat against the sideboard and Robin was kneeling beside him, wrapping a length of tom cloth around a wand she was using as a splint. The groan had obviously been made by Jakar when she reset the bone.

  “You fool!” snarled Cobra. “Get back in the wagon.”

  Robin and Jakar, momentarily shocked, looked down at Cobra and the bukko.

  “Do as she says,” blurted Brown John. “Hurry!”

  “In a minute,” Robin said, and started knotting the cloth in place.

  “I’ll finish,” said Jakar, pushing her off, but she wouldn’t quit.

  Cobra, desperate, climbed up the rungs of the driver’s box heading for the couple, as Brown John shouted, “Robin, get back in the wagon.”

  The girl pulled the knot tight, stood, and the sounds of horses’ hooves filled the ravine. Quiet, moving slow, but nearby.

  Cobra froze, and the bukko, his voice suddenly weak, whispered, “Horses.”

  Jakar jumped up, taking Robin by the elbow, and pushed her toward the trapdoor. Suddenly she gasped, seeing something beyond the ridge above the roof, and pulled back. Jakar, seeing the same thing, stepped in front of her, shielding her body with his, and picked up his loaded crossbow, leveled it at the ridge.