by T. C. Rypel
He fired.
The creature’s shriek exploded in his ears as he flung away the bow and dove like a gymnast to roll under the oaks. Arrows spilled about him from the quiver. He looked up quickly as the cold rush of reeking wind pelted at him.
The beast had dropped down, hit the water with its raking hind claws, slogging through the stream, now, at an awkward run. Wings flapping madly, its beaked jaw twisted downward toward its underbelly, where Gonji’s thirteen-fist armor-piercer arrow had sunk to half the length of its stole. Splashing through the moon-glinted water like a downed seagull, the wyvern cried to the skies in panic to feel the swift spread of the earth elemental’s deadly venom.
Approaching the blockading tree bridge, the stamping horror increased the length of its stride, unfurling its rodent-furred wings for the great push it would need to again become airborne. It launched upward, hind-claws still gouging mud and water, lofting over the fallen oak.
As it passed the massive trunk, Simon Sardonis broke from concealment in the forest and bounded up the oaken bridge and onto its back with an eye-popping leap.
Gonji shouted in wild glee to see the bold maneuver. Laughing with battle frenzy, the samurai scooped up his arrows and dashed down to the brook. He grabbed up the bow again to sprint after the nightmare struggle. For an instant he lost sight of the fray, cursing in frustration. Then he passed under the oak and picked up speed along the bank, the forest again yielding up snatches of the battle to his fevered vision.
Simon straddled the wyvern’s serpentine neck as it labored to gain height. He struck repeatedly with his blade, slashing it open so that inky fluid sprayed in the wind. It shrilled in pain. When it coiled about to spit or snap at him with its razor-sharp, chitinous beak, he would cling close and stab at an eye or at its soft throat glands, which bulged behind its lower jaw.
They floated ponderously through the groping branches, only the creature’s frenzied wing-lashes keeping them aloft. It craned its head sharply and hissed at Simon. Its barbed tail whipped forward wickedly but could not reach him.
There came a fierce snap as the man’s steel struck full force against the familiar’s beak, splintering it. Squalling in pain, it lost its concentration, and its left wing tore through an ensnaring pine, skewing the beast and its unwanted rider groundward.
Tearing over the rugged terrain fifty yards behind, Gonji howled in bloodlust to see the object of his hatred and shame brought to earth. Sweat poured into his burning eyes as he pounded to catch up.
The beast ripped out of a pine thicket and into another small clearing beyond. Still Simon clung fast, climbing to its antlers now, slashing with the aroused fury of a starved mountain cat.
The wyvern leapt and bounded about the glade, the trees imprisoning it with its turnabout prey. Blatted clumps of searing excrement splattered the ground.
The monster shrieked its terror into the wind.
Gonji nocked another arrow and guided his bow, sighting on the savagely wounded beast. But at this distance he might hit Simon while the thing scrabbled about. He had to engage it head on.
He ran nearer, awaited its turn. The unearthly cries of the demon-spawned beast electrified the night. And now it turned at last—Saw him. Remembered.... Gonji could see the recognition in its eyes, the ophidian eyes of Mord that supplanted the monster’s own.
And it bore down on him, energized by its hellish hatred of the human that had brought it such pain.
“Damn you, Mord!” Gonji cried, sighting along the shaft. “Damn you to the foulest chamber of Hell....”
It lumbered near, spraying its burning saliva in a weak semicircle, unable to direct the stream of yellow death. Simon dropped off its back, and Gonji fired—
“Arrryeeeee—!”
The wyvern spun down with a heavy thump. Its great hind legs had gone totally numb. Black ichor spewed from between its snapping, curved jaws. Still it lived, though it bled from a hundred places. It pushed up on its wings and crawled toward Gonji.
Cholera, the thought harped. What if it can’t die? What if—? Gonji reloaded, sneered, pulled....
“Sado-war-aaaaa!” Roaring his clan’s mighty battle cry, he unleashed another arrow. It chunkered into an eye, sank six fists deep into its brain.
Its final cry choked off, the wyvern was stilled at last.
Gonji dropped his bow and drew the Sagami. Running up to the fallen beast in a crouch, he circled it once warily, heart pounding. He stopped when he had returned to its gargoyle’s head. Gasped in a shuddering breath.
He mopped the sweat from his eyes and assessed the girth of the sinewy neck: too thick. His gaze falling on the left outcrop of its strange antlers, he raised the katana high in a huge arcing strike, lopping the antler off cleanly. Bobbing his head curtly, he returned the Sagami to its scabbard.
In that instant he wondered at the meaning of what he had seen just before the final arrow had struck the creature’s brain: Mord’s evil obsidian eyes had departed, leaving the creature’s own volcanic red orbs to lance down at its attacker, feverish with animal fear.
But then Simon had moved up beside him, panting heavily from his valiant exertion. He was bloody and slashed, and in spots his clothes had been burned through, the skin beneath raw and blistered. But in his eyes Gonji could see the twinkle of triumph.
The samurai turned and bowed to him. “Shall we begin again?” Gonji advanced. “Simon Sardonis, I presume?”
Simon’s eyes narrowed, softened to a warm liquid gray. He nodded and extended his hand, which Gonji took firmly. Gonji smiled, and Simon’s lips became a fine line, unreadable. A moment later they sank to their knees, exhausted, each man dealing with the aftermath of the event in his own way.
But both in respectful silence.
* * * *
Still quaking, Mord lay on the stone slab, the minutes parading by in mockery of his helpless confusion. Frustration, loathing, and unwonted terror alternated across the arid climate of his bleak soul.
It had almost dragged him under. The wretched wyvern had resisted his efforts at departure as it twitched in its death struggle, clinging to him against the loneliness of the death experience like a frightened child to its mother’s skirts. And it had nearly pulled Mord’s consciousness into the gathering darkness.
But no.... No, that was impossible. He had been a fool to fear. Had not the Dark Master promised him immortality? He could not die. His fears were unfounded.
He collected his senses and laughed, finally, a throaty cackle that echoed in the dank dungeon chamber. Echoed hollowly as Mord recalled the intrepid attack of the meddling pair. That despicable, arrogant oriental. And the other. The powerful stranger, he of the superhuman abilities who had once dared to invade the castle fastness itself. He, who was likely the legendary Deathwind, that name which was whispered in the mountains and the conclaves of secret plotting. Toward him Mord felt a gnawing fear and perplexity. He sensed the contentious spirit trapped within the human frame, that shape of evil that cried out to its dark brothers in a nameless voice that pleaded for freedom. What allegiance could it possibly owe these cross-worshippers?
The simple resolve formed: Now both must die. Quickly, without fail.
The agonizing memory of the worm-venom welled up, infuriating him. How dare they employ his own effects against him! Puny mortals! But now they would know....
They’d piece it all together, reason that Mord worked at cross purposes to both the city and Klann. He hadn’t counted on their destroying both the worm and the wyvern. Now they’d be inspired by their accomplishments—which could work in favor of the Grand Scheme, if Klann could be moved to swift military retaliation against their future efforts.
But most vitally he must prevent the king from meeting with any citizens who might broach their suspicions of Mord’s treachery. Must prevent Klann from receiving any messages.
Soon. In three nights—the full moon, the faith rite, and a new imputation of power that would render him omnipotent. He would bl
eed the faithful of their life forces when they pledged him their belief on that night of nights, and he would additionally provide for the vital mana he would need by claiming the human sacrificial victims the effete king had denied him. Then the Plan would be complete, and the Dark Master glorified.
And the sorcerer’s centuries-old desire for vengeance would be satisfied.
He removed the golden mask, moved to the dingy silver mirror on the moss-and-slime-streaked wall. Gazed at what the ancient priests had done. Trembling, he smiled to think of what was now within his grasp.
When he had presently pondered the problem of the mysterious stranger, he gave thought to the ambitious invocation he had never dared consider before. Would there be power enough on that night? Almost unthinkable, yet....
Seductive. In that way only the challenging powers of evil can be. Yes, he was ready for it. Ready to call up a fragment of Hell itself.
But only—only after his powers had been revitalized in the full-moon faith rite.
CHAPTER TWO
“Traitor....”
The word hissed out of Simon like the escape of some vile thing, and Gonji was relieved that the dark mood it provoked in his outre companion was not directed at him.
The samurai was overwhelmed by the strangeness of his surroundings. He had awakened at mid-morning in the concealed cave after a fitful sleep that left him aching and un-rested. Simon had long since roused himself and prepared a meal of broth and rabbit meat—cooked over a fire beneath a natural chimney in the rock that acted as a flue—plus a coarse dried bread and a rather bland Hungarian wine with which they washed it all down.
They spoke as they ate, Gonji filling in Simon on the details of the Vedun situation. The cave-dweller revealed by stages a compelling curiosity about gaps he hadn’t been able to fill via his own clandestine investigations and actions. This apparent reversal of his declared disinterest he covered with alternating shifts between petulance and stoic blankness that Gonji read easily and found amusing despite the sense of danger in the man’s presence.
Simon was clearly at a disadvantage in social circumstances, his unease obvious. As a social outcast in his own right, Gonji entered into an easy empathy with him. Yet he carried it only to a point; Simon’s bizarre existence and the tale of his enchanted birthing and curse engendered in Gonji a shameful feeling of superiority on a human plane. Yet he intuited that the feeling was mutual: Simon seemed to take a perverse delight in Gonji’s infidel status among European peoples.
It was just possible, the thought occurred to Gonji, that he alone among all men might penetrate the barrier of Simon’s shame and enlist his powerful assistance.
Gonji sat sipping wine, cross-legged, listening to the ringing echo of that single word “traitor” the other had just spoken, gratified that Simon, too, held treachery insufferable.
The samurai glanced about him at the effects of a hermetic existence: the sagging cot and crude table and stool; the oil-stained lamps on the walls; the bundled clothing; two stacks of books and scrolls of Scripture, poetry, philosophy, art, and science—a survey of the collected accumulation of current knowledge; in a wall niche, the tiny figures carven of wood, which drew his eye repeatedly; and the broken chains, the heavy manacles he had failed to notice on his first visit to the cave with Tralayn, covered with clothing in a clumsy effort at disguising the embarrassment of an accursed life.
Gonji watched Simon as the latter moved about with animal grace despite his six-and-a-half-foot stature. Watched the rippling of the sinew under his skin at every slight movement. The bristling of his coarse two-toned hair. The flash of his swept-back silvery eyes, eyes that reminded one of tales of the little people who dwelt in forest fastnesses no man could delve. The menacing dagger-point his hair formed above and between those eyes. The occasional twitch of a gently pointed, lobeless ear in response to sounds Gonji couldn’t hear. The hands, long and wiry, the nails blackened at their centers. Now and again when they were opened, Gonji could discern the white cross that blazoned, scar-like, in the palm of the left. His upper body was covered with burns inflicted by the foul blood of the wyvern, scars of assorted shapes and sizes, and Gonji winced to scan the two most recent: one on the upper left arm, the other—dealt him by Gonji—slashing the right shoulder. Both were sewn raggedly shut with ugly catgut sutures.
Gonji felt a pang of sympathy when struck by the forlorn image of a warrior extracting missiles from his own body, excruciatingly closing his own wounds.
Simon Sardonis spoke, cleaving the spell of Gonji’s thoughts.
“So Rorka and his knights are dead,” he said. “What will you do now that this traitor has undermined your planning?”
“As I said,” Gonji replied calmly, “we believe Mord works behind Klann’s back. Probably against him as well as the city. He seems moon-maddened with a lust for power and a hatred for Vedun. If he resists reporting what he’s learned to Klann, then we may yet attack them with a measure of surprise.”
Simon snorted, tearing off a chunk of bread and dipping it into his broth. “Utter folly,” he scoffed, “to plan an attack against a force of superior power that may well know all your plans—”
“We would seem to have little choice,” Gonji countered. “Mord is determined to destroy the city. Tralayn has assured us of that all along.”
“You ought to be wary of what she tells you,” Simon observed with a trace of bitterness.
Gonji ignored it. “Anyway, whatever his ultimate intent, Klann has allowed enough outrages that our casus belli are sundry and sound. The city must fight back.” Gonji pounded a fist on his knee for emphasis but at once changed his tack when he realized that he was allowing emotion to interfere with clear-headed thinking again. “Of course,” he continued sedately, “there are also sound reasons for favoring an avoidance of fighting. Garth will try to speak with Klann about Mord’s treachery, if he can gain an audience.”
“Difficult words to frame,” Simon reminded, “without telling the king of your own planning against him.”
Gonji nodded. “Quite true,” he said glumly.
“Garth...,” Simon began pensively. “Who would have thought he’d have ridden with this mongrel army?”
“Hai,” Gonji agreed, “and I think there’s more he can tell us. If I can, I’ll learn from him what else he hides.”
Simon grunted. “Tell me what happened the night you rode out with the thirty—the madness in the city—the martial law that night.”
“Ah,” Gonji said, smiling. And he proceeded to relate the Zarnesti raid; and the tale of Klann’s seven lives, the legend told by Garth’s ancient parchment; and of the king’s murder and apparent resurrection as a new personage on that night. Simon absorbed the tale eagerly, with a more consuming interest than he had shown in anything Gonji had had to say before. At the story’s conclusion the mysterious warrior’s brow furrowed, a faraway glimmer drawing his eyes beyond the simple reality of the cave.
“So...that is why I couldn’t—An enchanted king, a being who cannot die, whose sibling kin reside within him....” Simon chuckled harshly, less a laugh than a gurgle of ironic triumph. “Oui,” he continued in French, “that is why—if this is true, then he’ll be a different man now from the one I saw—”
“So sorry,” Gonji cut in, frowning, “but you’re losing me. Speak German, dozo—did you say you saw Klann? When?”
Simon smiled, the first time Gonji had seen him do so, the angles of his face taking on a feral set.
“I’ve been inside the castle.”
“Ah, so desu ka?” Gonji intoned in surprise. “You’ve been in there and gotten out again? Why in hell didn’t you kill Klann or Mord, if you’re so foolish—”
“That was my objective,” Simon interrupted impatiently, “after I’d seen what they did at the monastery. Only I—I couldn’t go through with it. I found Klann’s chamber, killed his guards, and then I had him. I had him—there—as close to me as you are. But I couldn’t finish it. I didn�
�t know why then, but now it’s clear. The reason I felt that strange empathy with him...and the other feeling...that precognition that killing him would be futile, that my anger would be misdirected. By then Mord must have sensed my presence. He began calling out to the—the thing—the beast in me. And it to him. And then the whole castle was awake, and even by moving in shadow I couldn’t escape all of them. So I was forced to flee, leaving my good wishes with the bailey guards. I took this, though—”
He absently stroked the savage wound stitched together on his arm like the map of a jagged red mountain range. Gonji stared at him, spellbound at the man’s valor and capabilities. And Simon went on in a maundering fashion, his voice lapping the stillness like wind-swept waves.
“So that’s the reason for the purpure circles on the Klann crest...one for each dead brother. And the reason I felt the empathy. Misdirected anger...Mord...so it’s Mord, then....” His eyes abruptly became sharp silver lances, meeting Gonji’s squarely. “There is a thing of evil here...like few I’ve felt anywhere. There be signs of ill omen. That’s the reason I’ve stayed in the territory. Holy Word Monastery....”
He gently touched the burns he’d taken in the fight with the wyvern. The ointment he’d spread on them gleamed dully in the firelight. Gonji could smell its pungent tang. The samurai’s abdomen ached in reminder of the other’s tackling blow that had saved him from the searing strafe of the wyvern. Neither man spoke for a moment. Then Simon rose and took the jar of ointment from a carven niche in the rock.
“When were you at the monastery?” Simon asked suddenly. “And what exactly did Father Dobret tell you?”
Gonji was stung. He sat in the lotus position with arms folded at his chest. Sweat coursed in chilly traces down his ribs, but he met Simon’s gaze levelly.
“After the wyvern had done its...abomination. I spoke with your priest friend. He told me to tell you to help, not to seek personal vengeance.”