Wolf's-head, Rogues of Bindar Book I
Page 22
He had not reached the half-way point before he stopped, sharpened his ears. A sudden noise had disturbed him: a heavy wheezing—or perhaps a raspy, laboured murmuring. ’Twas quite incongruous with the elegant grace of the asphodel and caused him to frown.
Glancing left and right, Baus could not help but feel an unnatural awe at the urge to stagger off the path and wade knee-deep into those strange, yellow plants.
He ventured not twenty paces before the flowers seemed to stiffen and coil about his ankles as if alert for his escape.
Baus stamped a foot. Arrogant creatures! Was he mistaken, or were the flowers rearing their heads at him, big as ham fists?
He uttered a carefree laugh, chiding himself for his alarm. Checking the rising of hairs on his back, he found though there was something to his former concern. The flowers had reared up imposingly, reminding him of those that he had seen on the path just outside of Rudik’s farm. The petals had suddenly flared outward and spread: a lofty flower-giant emitted a soft sucking sound. Baus recoiled. A cloud of sulphurous air puffed forth. He coughed, almost gagging on the fumes. A strange low hum seemed to exude from the flowers’ mouths.
Baus began to back out of the glade. His alarm only increased when he stumbled over a rigid object. He crawled to his feet in terror, staggered back when he saw a familiar bulky shape. A thatch of red-beard wisped up—’twas a rogue lying face up and arms slumped over his chest! He was wet and soggy, obviously deposited here for some inexplicable reason, with his blue dungarees torn; his cheeks scratched and his scarlet beard gone miserably limp. A stout beobar limb denoting a club lay partially hidden in the grasses.
“Valere! Up, I say!” cried Baus in a frantic voice. “What has gotten into you? Up, up, little birdie. ’Tis time for Flanks!”
The figure responded not in the least.
Baus nudged the sprawling frame with his boot.
No reaction.
The sea captain was obviously comatose, perhaps even dead for all he knew and Baus become suffused with apprehension. Baus could see no mark or outward wound presented on his pasty skin. The circumstance brought him a ripple of dread. Surely the red-beard’s enemy, if such there was, remained lurking nearby, to spring on him.
Baus darted glances left and right, ducked low, trying to shield his figure from a prying figure in the wavering flowers. He saw no one. Wrath and suspicion warred in his brain.
How long had the captain lain here?
Baus tried to rouse his comrade, but to no avail. The inmate was damp, heavy as a brick, and in no condition to rise. He seemed under the influence of an evil reek that rose from his skin. His underside seemed almost cold as death too, as if he had lain here for some time, a day or more.
Baus fretted. Could he just leave his fellow inmate here? No! He must rouse the seafarer, get him to his feet or he would die. No longer would his conscience allow him to abandon another soul to an indeterminate fate. The clammy bulk refused to budge. The heavy form turned, the mouth slowly opened, offering a gibber or two, as if bewitched.
Baus reeled back in startlement and reassurance. His mind strayed to Rudik’s cryptic warnings—about the presence of fey things about . . .
He suddenly felt a curious and not so pleasant sensation crawling over his skin: something akin to insensate hunger—or a peculiar craving—for a sweet thing or two. He thought the urge bizarre. He fought the ludicrous feeling that he was being bewitched. It was inconceivably impossible, considering that he had just ingested a generous meal The fact that he was not normally enthused to such sweet things of scent or taste began to rankle on his brain . . .
Oi! There was a tug again! How deliciously fragrant the flowers were!
Reaching out a hand, he touched the petal of a particularly winsome one that had leaned forward and almost fondled the back of his hand.
Baus sniffed with contentment. The flower bobbed in a tempting pose. He caressed its leaves. The plant took a leap, landing close. He took a deep draft, and smelled the most wondrous fragrance he had ever smelled—’twas of a woman’s scent, seductive and irresistible: lavender, anise, olive balm, spindleswoon. How had he missed these exalted essences? The mark of singular incompetency! Baus snapped his fingers with joy. He must be an oaf!
He tore off the flower’s petals and with an absurd delight began to devour the leaves in gulps and smacks. Incomparable! Sweet as molasses and honey, and better! . . . His brain reeled. The grandness of it all. Such palatability! Such flavourful-ness! His desire wailed siren song; mad spurts of it traveled across the canvas of his mind and let him journey to a land unheard of . . .
VI
It could have been hours or days that passed, such was the torpor that Baus felt lying there like a bloated snogmald in the grass. Dusk was falling; it appeared as if there would be more lying around to do.
Such was not to pass. A gigantic figure, clothed in hunter’s garb with a coarse leather hood, swung out of the furze and strode into the glade with imposing majesty. The gentleman, if such be, sensed something amiss within the patterns of the pernicious flora. There was an inconsistency that had him sniffing at the air and pulling at his enormous sideburns. He looked this way and that, hooking a great knobnail of a nose with his finger, before he came restlessly heavy-footing it over to the two mounds that lay senseless in the meadow.
As if from a dream, Baus remembered the figure stooping low, peering into his eyes and blinking with an ironic pity. Baus peered back into the dun-coloured face. He saw a loose, eel-like mouth, greenish eyes, a hooked, hog-like snout. The vision was absurd—a monstrous, coarse visage, all gnarled and grinning with a head as bald and domed as an egg, with a nose as large as an old parsnip. But, Baus remembered the figure dipping down to inspect him with significant interest. The leather fit him well, his boots were tough and wide, the jerkin and baggy brown pantaloons neatly pressed—well, what was there to say? Yellow belt and black buckles—all were imprinted in his mind with despite the dreary state.
How many fistfuls of the magic flowers had he devoured?
Gods and demons! The outlaw winced. He felt exceptionally nauseated as if it pained him sorely to think in such numbers.
Baus noticed further that the figure seemed to carry with him some long bow, complete with three freshly killed hares tied to his belt. A hunter the giant seemed . . .
A low-pitched rumbling suddenly filled the air, words which were not spoken unkindly, but which went unrecognizably unheard insofar as the meaning was concerned.
The ogre picked up the seaman Valere’s club and placed it oddly in his teeth. He then dragged the two of them through the glade by a leg each. Pulling them through the hazy hollows and fallow fields such, he whistled as if the fellows were of no weight. Everything sheened—gold, yellow, mustard, flaxen to Baus’s blurred eye; inchoate forms, a dream-ridden maze, hazed in and out of his memory: golden blisterbush, yellow crackthistle, lemon asphodel, and golden falling leaves. By the time he found himself laid down on his back, his skin was raw and edged with cuts and his cloak was stained from sliding along the turf. He was completely exhausted, but he was aware that he and Valere lay sprawled before the old byre where he had taken his lunch. Through filmy lids, he saw the giant retrieving the wagon and hitching his wegmors, thrusting his new catches onto the back like bags of flour.
The giant sang in a booming voice: some eerie song rendered in an archaic seaside dialect, this while he hopped in the front and urged his wegmors on to speed.
Baus was not sure where they were headed; he only guessed that they were heading in a southerly direction, back through the leagues to the old city. He grimaced. As the day drew to an end, the dreamy orange haze grew to copper and grey. The incongruous party reached the old stone ruins that stood forlornly as before, this time in the early light of evening. Baus’s eyes adjusted and wandered over the rubble like sluggish marbles. He perceived a series of wind-worn skeletal slabs and vine-crawling alleys—the same as the forsaken city offered earlier.
The cart rolled endlessly on—o’er broken stone pathways, through weedy plazas, under cracked archways. The wegmors wilfully tugged their load with earnest. In what seemed a never-ending odyssey over rubble and ruin, they arrived back at the fort-abbey containing the mysterious spheroids—not to Baus’s surprise. The maze of black turrets lofted high with ever more macabre authority in the waning light and had Baus struggling to thrash some more.
With a mighty flourish, the giant alighted from the wagon and drew out a set of ringed keys from his inner sleeve. He plunged a large key into the fort’s portal, set it heaving ajar with an excruciating creak. The door was no orthodox door—it sagged too heavily on its bronzed hinges, one of massive girth and fabricated with only the forethought of wizardry.
The ogre gathered up his charges. He carried them into the gloom and tossed them with indifference on the floor. They wallowed in the litter spreading as wide across the dusty beobar planks as could be imagined. The giant set four wall sconces to light, then closed the mammoth portal and barred it tightly with a stout brass beam. He scooped up Baus and Valere and slumped them into chairs alongside a monstrous table. This table spanned the greater part of a high, dark hall which seemed fabulously large. Baus remembered his paralysis, watching spellbound as his host repaired to a side chamber, gripping his slaughtered hares. There was a tumult that followed: of pots and various cooking instruments in motion, then a sizzling of frying meat along with idle jabber. The smells of stewed hare wafted in from the pantry, and Baus’s tongue was tantalized with the aromas of promise.
He tried once more to jerk his limbs free but found he could not. His brain was muddled—much too heavy, his stupor, and signals could not be sent. Valere was no exception and gaped vacuously at Baus from a round, pale face from across the table.
The giant returned some time later. His expression was curt, prompted likely from the listless droop of his guests which implied a disparagement of his hospitality.
Muttering reproaches, the giant rummaged about a repository and emerged with a flask of amber liquid which he took pains to thrust forcefully down Valere’s throat. Baus suffered no more gentle treatment. With revulsion he felt strong fingers drive the liquid down his gullet with no more scruples than an ailing pet might feel a worm pill being force fed down its gullet.
After he had swallowed, Valere’s eyes grew waxy. His lips compressed into slits. Baus’s nostrils no less flared out like a brute beast’s and he plunged his fingers down his throat as if searching for the serpent that had tumbled down.
“There, that’s better!” the giant laughed. The knotty features of his aged face achieved an earlier tone of joviality. “By Gladien’s flowers, you two jacks have been bewitched! Lucky that I happened along—else your limbs would be part of the scenery by now. Welcome to Bisiguth!”
As completely awed as the two were, they could not help but feel a suspicion. The potion had brought them vigour. Now they offered each his own ironical examination. Baus and Valere’s eyes acustomed to their surroundings where they discovered themselves in a spacious hall, rich with dark shadows. They were at the extremities of a long table; carven goblets of crystal graced placed immediately before them. Under the space of a vaulting, iron-filigreed ceiling diffuse maroon light filtered down from small diamond-shaped oriels to reveal a barbaric iron-grouted chandelier hanging from a chain over the table. The ancient staircase hunching to the side with its gargoyled banisters wandered up somewhere in the gloom, perhaps to a second or third floor. Along the walls, hung three coats of armour thick with grime. Other artifacts made themselves known: bronze shields, medallions, brass gongs, garnet-mantled sceptres, musical instruments, fantastic oars, shelves, antique platters, porcelain cutlery.
Baus peered about with interest. The floor lay littered with refuse: planks, pulleys, ropes, sacks of meal, bits of furniture, mouldering plaster, shards, glass, detritus and neglect. The place stank of mice. Dust and decay had accumulated beyond the measure of reason. Musty webs hung rankly from the corners; the wainscoting was peeling and something from the antique past. Despite Baus’s preoccupation with getting far from this place, he could not suppress his revulsion.
The ogre gestured. From an ornate antique flagon came heady vapours; the huge figure poured wine lavishly. His ministration was perfect, if not placid; a jocular smile twitched the lower lip. He stood monstrously over them like a great gnarled oak, casting an enormous shadow, stark and imperial. Despite the large potbelly dangling over his wide black belt, the bare forearms were thick and scabrous, built of not insignificant muscle, a feature that left Baus unnerved and that he studied with care.
Bisiguth’s lord plopped himself down at the table’s head and gusted out a weary sigh: “Well! Now that you are yourselves, swains, come drink my wine! It is of excellent vintage—pure and red, which I dare share with you. Secured from the finest wineries of New Krintz, when times were nobler! Yet I offer it freely.” He topped up their goblets with generous cordiality, then laced his own.
Valere uttered a poignant remark but the figure held up a hand. “Drink, my barrel-butt, drink! Let us conduct explanations later. I am the Dakkaw of Krintz—or more accurately, the Dakkaw of Old Krintz.”
“Dakkaw? What’s that?” demanded Valere.
The ogre ignored the expostulation. “Once I was a law-abiding grandee of the modern village, but since then I have given up that tendentious identity. I reign now as denizen and lord of ‘Old Krintz’, whose realm includes all that you see about you—ruined grandeur abounding in antiquity and atmosphere.” The Dakkaw’s eyelids drooped as if scrutinizing his guests for the first time. “And who might you rascals be? Do you have multiple lives? I have surely not rescued you from death for the first time?”
Valere creaked back his chair with force. “I am Valere—renowned Illimer and Captain and expert seaman.” He stared coldly at the giant and no less Baus, who regarded him with an equally surprised reaction. “If my eyes do not deceive me, here is Baus, our shellames-stealer from Heagram prison—vandal and conniver, and also my recent comrade at the Yard. Fancy this familiar rogue in a crypt of such dungeon-like quality! Light and Lords! Have a better torch will you, Dakkaw? We might all better scrutinize ourselves in pitch black!”
The Dakkaw twitched cheeks with annoyance but the seaman would have no rest: “I am as much bewitched as you are! The last I remember, was trudging through a field of dazzling light—brilliant yellow, so rich of mischief that it blinded my senses! The dreaded flowers reached up at me; I could not help but become hypnotized by their allure. I inhaled their loathsome fragrance the like of which I have never smelled before. Now I find myself squatting dazed in this disorderly hovel!”
“Have a mind at your words,” gusted the Dakkaw.
Baus bounded to his feet, apprising his friend of a similar fate. “I no less. I discovered you in a great glade of asphodel! You were lying wet as if dead. I tried to revive you, but only found myself eating of those same eldritch flowers, then tumbling into a moist, but incapacitated dream.”
“Patience!” commanded the Dakkaw, holding up a hand. “I enjoin you both to take your seats. After all, you are guests at Bisiguth and it is only polite to defer to the host. You have both raised matchless questions, which will be answered in due time.”
“Well, how about it now?” Valere glared odiously at the giant and did not seat himself. His eyes wandered about the chamber seeking exits and egresses.
The Dakkaw chuckled, “Ah! I see you gazing fervidly toward the front entrance and side doors, Valere. Understand that those doorways are brassbound and secured by deadbolt from within, the key to which I hold in my very waist pouch. It is difficult to retrieve, Captain, trust me. In so saying, while I am alive, none might take the key. Likewise, below these floors exists nothing but a maze of repositories whe
re I store my possessions, a place of no kind portent for visitors to wander about uninvited.”
A low wail issued from below, ’twas a muffled and ragged sound, much as a gagged person might make struggling to break free from bonds. Baus recognized the outcry instantly as one similar on his earlier pilgrimage to Bisiguth.
The Dakkaw reared back, roaring, “Shush, Cedrek! I am entertaining guests and this is no time for outbursts!”
Valere shook his head, embittered with the understanding that began to dawn. “So you wish to keep us here, do you Dakkaw?—Well, what do you want with us?”
The figure laughed but ignored the question; instead he appraised Baus, who had taken pains to inspect the ogre with languid amusement. “Mind that I have stowed your gladius yonder, Baus.” The ogre lifted a thumb to a wicker basket tied well above the sconces out of reach. He gave a ludicrous smile and made a casual remark, “It is a fine weapon—as fine as any of its size. And that buff club of yours, Valere. Really! You are quite the bone-cracker, aren’t you? But ’tis of no import.” He gestured up to the web-haunted heights as if lost in thought. “Where was I now? Oh yes, your club! I have stashed it away in an unobtrusive place below in the tombs, lest it be discovered and end up causing mishap to someone’s crown. The last, or rather, second last guest who sojourned at Bisiguth attempted a footling prank of some comparable nature and met with a bitter reward which I care not to describe.”
“And what was that?” inquired Baus hotly.
The Dakkaw brought up a large hand to dab thoughtfully at his chin. “Well, if you would like to know, that would be dear ‘Mearl’. A dandy came knocking at my door about this time last year. How avid the spice peddler was to pay a visit and perhaps scout out my valuables! It was rambunctious! How avid I was that he could board with me for a time, but the cad simply refused!”
Baus put a hand to his mouth of shocked surprise. “Whatever for? Surely such a brief visitation is not too much to ask?”