02 - Lords of Destruction

by James Silke - (ebook by Undead)

  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 sat
isfaction. 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 jaws, 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.

  The bat squealed and twisted, darting away from the blunt side of a mountain, then twisted and darted directly for it.

  Gath took no notice. He was working.

  The bat turned, but too late. It had somehow lost its uncanny sense of direction and distance, and a wing collided with the rocky side of the mountain, breaking with a brittle crack. The vampire bat plummeted.

  Gath stopped work, and stared down at the earth coming up at him. The helmet roared in rage, and his body instinctively gathered up in a ball, protecting itself within the membrane and cartilage of the huge ear.

  The bat landed headfirst against a boulder with a crunching crash, and the skull exploded on one side allowing the boulder to enter. Gath shuddered at the impact, but hung on. The bat’s body stood upright, quivering twenty feet in the air, then toppled over and thudded against the ground.

  Stunned by the impact, Gath sat numbed within the protective embrace of the mammoth ear. When his vision cleared, he saw that the skull on his side still held its shape, while the other side had been pulped. The ground was not five feet below him. He wiped his bloody hands on the furry membrane, �crawled to the rim of the ear and dropped to the ground. His legs gave way under him, as if they had never stood before, and he sprawled awkwardly.

  From the ground, he looked around. He did not know where he was. Then, far off in the distance, he saw vague figures on a moonlit slope of loose earth. He could not tell who they were.

  He crawled away from the bones and gore, and held himself up on hands and knees, naked and bleeding. There was no sign of his belts and sword. They had been torn away, he did not know when or where, and he had left his knife in the bat’s ear. When he had gathered enough strength, he slowly stood, and a terror unlike any he had felt during the battle shot through him. It was the same fear the helmet had felt when it had seen the small bite on the dead girl’s severed arm. Foreboding. Cold. Without remorse. Then he saw the source of that fear.

  Hovering against the moon was a cloud of bats, small but numbering in the hundreds. They looked like layers of finely wrought black lace in constant motion, as if they were weaving their bodies together in a flawless pattern. A frantic pattern. Mad.

  Gath’s body lowered instinctively, and the horned helmet flamed, but the fire was weak, and only served as an invitation.

  The bats dove en masse, a blanket of tiny teeth.

  Thirty-Four

  THE BLOOD TRICK

  The blanket dropped over Gath, staggering him. Biting. The bats clawing for a perch on arm, chest, leg, back. Then more descended, mindlessly landing on those already feeding, and their weight bore the Barbarian to his knees. He tore away furry handfuls, crushing them. The helmet’s flames charred wings and incinerated bodies, but the frenzied creatures kept swarming and biting.

  Far above the action, at the top of the slope of loose earth, Brown John and Jakar winced with horror, and Robin cried openly, her tears spilling on Jakar’s circling arms, while Cobra stared helplessly, devoid of tears and color and hope.

  “They can’t whip him! Not a few bats,” Brown John asserted. But his voice lacked sparkle, and the hot spots which normally flushed his cheeks were no bigger than a baby’s fingertips.

  Jakar glanced off at a distant line of to
rches moving their way, and said quietly, “We had better get away from here. They know we’re here now.”

  They nodded, but made no move to leave.

  Far below, Gath suddenly staggered back to his feet, thrashing wildly and throwing off bats. His bloody body glistened in the moonlight for a moment, then was again covered with the moving black blanket. He went down on his knees, arms flailing.

  Bits of flame spurted between flapping bodies, then it died to an orange glow.

  Cobra groaned in frantic despair and erupted from Brown John’s grasp, flinging herself forward. She got ten feet, lost her footing in the loose ground and fell, her arms grabbing at the air. She hit the ground, rolled over twice, and her head came to a stop against a protruding boulder.

  Brown John reached her in three strides and gathered her limp body in his arms, cradling it tenderly and stroking her forehead. It was cut and bruised above her left eye.

  “It’s no use, beauty, you can’t help him,” he whispered.

  She didn’t hear him. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth hung open. Holding her close, he looked back down at the moonlit battleground.

  Gath was now on his hands and knees, teetering like a dying animal. The bats clung to all sides of him and circled around him, darting at him whenever they saw flesh. The helmet lifted, glowed brightly for a moment, then the light faded and the headpiece dropped between his shoulders.

  Robin and Jakar came up behind Brown John, and Jakar tugged at him urgently. “Come on, Brown.”

  The bukko nodded but did not rise. He could not remove his eyes from his friend.

  Small and indistinct in the distance below, Gath howled, low and forlorn, and collapsed on the ground. The bats scattered and screeched, those pinned under the body flapping for release. Then they again dropped on him, and heaved and surged like boiling tar on his carcass.

  The troupe stared, immobilized with horror. In the silence they could hear the bats drinking, and Robin sagged against Jakar dizzily. He held her close, and suddenly turned sharply.