Savage

by James Alderdice

  “Drop-off,” said Gathelaus, halting Sigurd.

  “Anyway around?”

  “No, black as the abyss down there, but a tunnel continues on the other side.”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting we try and climb around to that?”

  “I couldn’t on my best day, nary a handhold at all.”

  Sigurd looked about the swollen chamber. “How about this?” he suggested, grasping a plank. It was a grey old hardwood and as long as three men were tall.

  “How would that even get in here? What’s it for?”

  “Isn’t it obvious. It’s a bridge to get around this passage for escaped slaves. Once they’re done, they pull it back so they can’t be followed by the slavers. We’re just lucky it’s on our side of the abyss.”

  “Yeah, but could we trust it? Looks real old.”

  “So am I,” said Sigurd, with a laugh.

  The shouting of the Merovians grew louder as they traveled closer to the passage offshoot that the two refugees had taken.

  “They’re good trackers, they’ll know we took a side route soon enough.”

  Gathelaus grunted and took the plank and slammed it across the divide. “You want to go first old man?”

  “I am the lighter.”

  “Then you carry the torch.”

  Sigurd edged onto the wood, scraping his feet as he went. The plank bowed slightly but did not creak.

  “Hurry up and fall, old man.”

  “Give me a moment. I haven’t walked the straight and narrow like this since before I left Shagreel’s priesthood.”

  Gathelaus watched the tunnel behind them, saying, “You don’t hurry it up, you’ll be wanting to remember those prayers.”

  “You would have given up your vows for a roll with Angel-Marie too.” About the time Sigurd reached the center of the plank, a crack sounded like thunder, rippling through the darkness. “Aww sheeit!” Sigurd shouted.

  Echoes bounced down into inky blackness and came back up like the laughing of the Lord of the Underworld, or at least Sigurd’s curses did, though the plank remained steadfast.

  “Way to go old man, they heard that!”

  The muted shouting of the Merovians changed pitch and grew louder.

  “Get moving!”

  Sigurd was still frozen midway across. “Gimme a moment, I thought that was it.”

  “It will be if you don’t get moving!”

  Wiping beads of sweat from his forehead, Sigurd edged along, again scraping his feet mere inches this time, hunching more than usual, as if being lower would change the pull of the pit.

  The Merovians’ shouting came closer, reverberating off the stone walls.

  “Now damn you! Leap the rest!” shouted Gathelaus.

  Sigurd hesitated as palpable darkness moved inside the open tunnel before him. “Something is on the other side.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Sigurd took the final two steps off the plank, scanning the darkness. “Whatever it was is gone.”

  Gathelaus took his first few tentative steps across the plank. His weight caused it to bow and flex more than Sigurd’s weight had. Halfway across and light appeared behind him.

  “Ah Yarkoosh! The Usurper is here!” shouted a Merovian hunter to his comrades. Men swarmed into the antechamber behind.

  Gathelaus took two more steps as the plank creaked and bounced under his weight.

  The Merovians daren’t follow, but they had other plans. Two nooses were thrown at Gathelaus.

  One missed.

  The other caught Gathelaus about the calf as he stepped.

  The Merovian yanked and took Gathelaus off his feet, slamming him chest down onto the buckling plank, his outstretched hands caught by Sigurd.

  “Let’s pull him in!” shouted Sigurd.

  Gathelaus grated through his teeth, “Nuh uh, knife!”

  Sigurd drew his throwing knife and struck the Merovian holding Gathelaus’ rope dead in his bare chest.

  The dusky man coughed and dropped the rope, allowing Gathelaus to scramble across to the relative safety of the other side.

  Before the other Merovians could tug on the rope, Gathelaus slashed himself loose.

  Sigurd grasped the plank threatening to push it over the brink, should any of the Merovians attempt to cross.

  They wisely hesitated, though one took hold of the plank on his end to gain possession. He yanked, almost bringing Sigurd with it.

  Gathelaus grabbed Sigurd and the plank and pulled back. “Hold onto me!” he shouted, as he twisted the plank to and fro, breaking the Merovian’s grip.

  Unperturbed, the Merovian retained his own hold and continued pulling.

  Always the sly one, Gathelaus pushed with all his might, knocking the plank into the Merovian’s gut, then twisting it, knocking him in the face before yanking it back across the divide.

  Both Gathelaus and the senseless man were jeered by the Merovians upon loss of the bridge. They tried tossing a few more ropes but caught nothing save empty air as the refugees disappeared down the tunnel.

  As the shouts of the angry Merovians faded, a rankness to the air grew yet fouler.

  “Where do you suppose we are Gathy?” asked Sigurd, as he wiped away a wide strand of webbing.

  “Call me that again and I’ll gut you myself. Somewhere below Mankares’s slave pens. I wager we can find a gutter to crawl out of and keep going before those Merovian bastards know where we are.”

  Sigurd grimaced. “I don’t know that I care to crawl from the stinking filth like some damned animal.”

  “Haven’t got a choice, now do we?”

  “Not since you stole Lyana’s sacred Pipe we don’t.”

  Gathelaus cuffed him and the old man grumbled but said nothing for another few minutes as they trudged into the darkness until, “There in the shadows, I saw something again.”

  Waving the torch and spotting nothing but webs, dust, and gloom, Gathelaus gibed, “You’re chasing shadows, old man.”

  “No, there!” Sigurd pointed at retreating grey nightmare shapes.

  “Probably just a rat.”

  A slender finger along the ground withdrew into the gloom.

  “I hate rats,” muttered Sigurd.

  “As if anyone likes them.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  A single click echoed once from the darkness, answered by a score of similar clicks, as if a cohesive legion suddenly stood at attention answering a demonic summons.

  “Shut up,” snapped Gathelaus, holding Sigurd back from any further steps.

  A collection of spindly grey fingers danced across the flickering torchlight, crouching just beyond the visible in taut anticipation. A legion of close-set eyes caught the torchlight like dark stars in an ebony sky.

  “Those aren’t rats.”

  Sigurd shuddered as movement erupted from every direction. “What do we do?”

  Dozens of greedy-eyed spiders, the size of housecats, advanced into the flickering torchlight. Mandibles clenched in and out, fuzzy hairs twitched upon exaggerated brows as their own apprehension of flame faded at the sight of the two tasty men.

  “Run! Back the way we came!”

  Gathelaus struck a score of the leering arachnids with his spatha as he retreated from the hungry horde.

  A soft clicking grew into a crackling roar, following them back down the tunnel.

  Gathelaus’s foot kicked the plank they had pulled over the abyss and Sigurd stumbled past. The old man leaned over the precipice as Gathelaus caught his belt and yanked him back, saving the old man from gravity poisoning.

  A lone Merovian sat with a dim oil lamp, astonished at their sudden return.

  Slamming the plank back across the gap, Gathelaus rushed across with his spatha bared.

  The Merovian raised his club, but his eyes grew wide with fear at the sight of the multitude of spiders. “Balah! Kar Samoosh!” he cursed in the tongue of his fathers. He turned and ran back down the exit as Gathelaus touched down an
d turned to usher Sigurd on.

  “Run old man!”

  Sigurd hesitated and it cost him, a spider latched onto his thigh and the twitching fangs sunk in through the canvas trousers. Crying out, he almost stumbled off the plank but lurched into Gathelaus’s waiting grasp.

  Dispatching the fell creature, Gathelaus then kicked the plank over the edge, letting a dozen hairy beasts go with it. Silk erupted from their hind ends, slowing their fall and near as Gathelaus could venture a guess, the oversized spiders would likely survive and latch themselves onto the cavern walls somewhere far below.

  Sigurd coughed and tore at the bite.

  Gathelaus cut open the pant leg and glanced at the oozing wound. Already a putrid odor permeated the twin punctures.

  “I’ve no time left. Don’t let me go like this into Valhol! Let me grip my blade and die a man!”

  “Shut up. You’re going to make it. You’ve had far worse before.”

  “No, this burns. My heart is fighting it, but I can’t keep this up.” Sigurd cringed in agony, his fingers flexing in unholy pain.

  “You will make it, you didn’t come all the way to the Mankares to be laid low by spiders. You slew named men like Thorfinn the Skullsplitter at Sterling Point and then Grimnor Gorehead in Fundy, you’ve lived full yet and will live on.”

  Sigurd spat foaming blood from his lips shaking his head. “No, we ain’t been good men, but at least let me have a good death. Give me a warrior’s death. Let my blood flow from clean steel and quench the parched earth.”

  Gathelaus hesitated, then drew his blade and held the tip above Sigurd’s shoulder for a quick clean death. “Til we meet again my friend.”

  He readied the edge to dive into giving flesh when a noose fell around his own throat, pulling him away from his dying friend.

  A trio of Merovians grinned in the half-light. “Ah Yarkoosh! We have the Usurper!”

  “You bastards!” snarled Gathelaus in a strangled whisper.

  Sigurd coughed once more and expired.

  A red rage flowed over Gathelaus at his comrade’s sudden damnation. Sigurd could not go to Valhol, not with such an ignoble death. The old Gods of Vjorn would not recognize a decrepit old man who succumbed to a mere spider’s bite, not even one who slew Thorfinn the Skullsplitter and Grimnor Gorehead. Those bastards at least were in Valhol.

  No mercy in the afterlife for a man who didn’t die a warrior.

  Swinging the spatha behind, the edge bit the taut noose line, severing the strangling cord. With blood maddened fury, Gathelaus fell upon the Merovians like a lion among jackals.

  Screaming, the first took a slash across the chest, the second had his right arm involuntarily amputated.

  The third pushed back with his club against the marauding madman, but Gathelaus took hold of the club and knocked the zealot into the cave wall, slamming his foe’s head into the cavern in a fury until it split like a melon. Then, yanking the head hunter backward, he sent the lifeless body into the waiting precipice.

  The armless Merovian scrambled backward to flee, but met only the cavern wall.

  Gathelaus charged, slamming his blade down to finish him.

  The clicking grew, and staring behind at Sigurd’s corpse, Gathelaus saw the faint glimmer of torchlight reflected in hundreds of greedy eyes.

  The spiders swarmed around the abyss walls, coming for the warm flesh.

  Gathelaus clasped Sigurd’s dead hand on a dagger and sunk the blade into the armless yet still breathing Merovian. “Votan recognize this man!” He then dashed the oil lamp over Sigurd’s corpse so he wouldn’t be a meal for spiders.

  Picking up a torch, he rushed from the chamber as spiders crawled over the edge to feast upon the carnage.

  Carefully entering the original tunnel, Gathelaus watched a moment, until he was sure there weren’t more Merovians lying in wait, but not too long, as he was sure the spiders would come soon as well.

  Satisfied it was as safe as possible, he rushed toward the expected exit. It was more than a mile underground in stifling smoky air and he determined that the Merovians had already passed by to watch the exit. Here and there their tell-tale bare foot prints were mingled with dust as well as the Khat drug they would chew and spit.

  Nearing the end of the line, Gathelaus slowed as he recognized a grim trap. What had been a false door used by the Lotus-eaters, was broken and left ajar by the Merovians. If he attempted to use it, there was little doubt he would be met with a spear in the gut for his troubles.

  Retracing, he went back to the third tunnel to the left and glanced inside. It was empty and had the footprints of Merovians entering about three feet in, to be sure that he had not somehow gone inside himself earlier.

  Still watchful for traps and spiders, Gathelaus eased himself in and went along a gloomy path for some time until he heard the braying of animals overhead and the occasional shrill call of a Wazuli tribesman barking his wares.

  The city bazaar must be somewhere above.

  Here and there, shards of daylight granted senses back to civilization along with the hint of waste, always at an angle to the right. Guessing he was somewhere near the stables and docks once again, Gathelaus watched for an opening that was sure to come for the sake of not only smugglers but possible legitimate city workers.

  Sure enough, a rickety ladder made of cast-off pen lath hung limply against the wall near a thatched trap door.

  Hearing nothing but the grumble of animals, Gathelaus slowly crept up the ladder and eased the trap door open.

  As he slid his head up for a view, he was met with a face full of cow piss. It rained down, soaking his face, collar, and shirt.

  Swearing in a dozen languages, he climbed out and swatted the bovine’s hind end for all the good it did.

  “I’m coming back for supper here!” he snarled.

  Grabbing a milk maid’s rag from a post, he vainly tried to dry himself.

  Outside the stables, the bazaar was alive with early morning vendors calling and preparing their wares.

  Sheathing his spatha and drawing his hood, Gathelaus paused, pondering the best way to get out of the city from here. The Merovians were sure to be thronged about the city gates, but what about the docks?

  Surely some would be watching them as well. He took hold of a horse blanket and cut it into a poncho for himself. A worn, wide-brimmed hat hung on a peg. He took that too. It was the best disguise he could make now. Something to look different from what the Merovians had seen him in the night before.

  He made his way toward the docks. He was without coin now and could not return to his apartment and hidden valuables where surely his enemies lay in wait. He was without friends who knew the city, the same friends who had owed him the favor of a ship’s passage. How would he escape now?

  He cursed himself for this predicament of his own making. All because he had stolen the Pipe for Lucifugis yet from the queen, a queen whose affections he had spurned in years past. And a woman scorned that would have soon put him out of her employment. Trying to do right was the cause of all his troubles.

  Gathelaus walked hunched over, trying his best to hide his size and regular gait from those that might recognize him. A pair of Merovians patrolled the crowded bazaar not far to his left, coming toward him.

  He decided to brazen it out, and just keep hunching toward them as if he had no care in the world for them being the most notorious of manhunters.

  The Merovians strode carefully through the market, examining the shopkeepers and crowd. Their black skin gleamed with sweat against their white kilts. But Gathelaus paid more attention to how they held their spears and kukri’s. He held the hilt of his spatha inside the poncho, ready if they made the slightest move toward him.

  One of them looked at him with a narrow, dark-eyed gaze, but said nothing to his companion.

  Gathelaus passed by them, continuing the hunched limp. He had made it past them. He breathed a sigh of relief and went on without looking back.

  The pie
rcing scream of a woman made Gathelaus wheel and crouch on the balls of his feet, spatha drawn.

  A brazen spear ripped a massive gash through his poncho as it lanced just below his left arm. An unfortunate passerby took the point in his bowels and cried out in a gasp as he fell forward. Both Merovians charged with their kukri’s drawn. “Ah! Yarkoosh! We have you, Usurper!”

  Gathelaus cursed himself for trying to fool them but praised the gods that their attempt to fling a spear in him had caused alarm enough for a shopkeeper to scream. The crowd was packed and tried to push away, but the narrow-curved street made this difficult.

  His blade was a fraction longer than theirs, but it was still two against one. Steel clanged as the first feinted high, hoping to open Gathelaus’s belly for his comrade.

  Ever wary, the exiled general caught the blade and directed the swing into the other foe’s path, blocking the cut from both. His punch dagger slammed into the Merovians shin, pulping muscle, sinew and bone. Like a cat, Gathelaus leapt back as the other Merovian swung his attack.

  The other blade swept along and caught Gathelaus’s ear and hat.

  He thought he had gotten away clean until he felt the hot, wet kiss of blood running down his neck. His ear was notched, the hat and a wisp of hair lay on the street before him.

  One of the Merovians was on the ground howling at his wound, but the other was still coming, swinging his kukri back and forth, light dancing across the edge.

  Gathelaus sprang at him, eager to end this. Their blades crossed and batted each other aside, but Gathelaus slammed his punch dagger into the man’s chest, crunching through the sternum and heart beside it. He roared spittle into the enemy’s face, while shaking his head, splashing his own blood across the stunned Merovian who slumped and fell dead.

  The other crippled Merovian stared wide-eyed. He scrambled to get up, but Gathelaus chased him down and struck him a terrible blow across his exposed back and spine beneath. Standing over the top of his dead foes, Gathelaus cried aloud at the crowd gathered about, “Anyone else?”

  They moved back and away from him, but as they parted, others filled the gap. A troop of the city guard, crossbows and poleaxes at the ready.