The Temple of Baal-Zebub (Tale I of the Valruna Saga)
Page 4
Vana wasted no time, but shook Jerob awake and bad him ready the horses for a return trip to Bel-Athis.
Soon both Thunrasar and Nightwind were saddled up and the two riders mounted their steeds and headed back to the city at a gallop.
Nightwind was the swifter of the two horses, for unlike Vana’s mount (and as Jerob presumed, the other horses of the north), the steeds of these realms were small, light, and graceful, as they were built for speed across the desert sands rather than for hardiness in battle. Nevertheless, tonight Thunrasar strove as never before to keep up with the mare, as though he could sense his mistress’ need for haste.
Jerob was alarmed at how pale Vana was looking, and how red and swollen her eyes were. It was obvious that she was ill, yet incomprehensibly she drove them on, unwilling or unable to explain why it was so urgent that they return to the city. Then, as they stopped for a brief rest just beyond the city walls, she swooned and would have fallen off her horse had Jerob not seized her arm.
“Vana, what’s wrong?” he asked for the third time since they had broken camp, but the warrior woman made no reply. She had never been one to waste words, nor for that matter time and energy, and now more than ever she felt she could spare none, for already she could feel a growing chill in her heart that threatened to spread to her entire body, and she was breaking out in a cold sweat.
When they reached the city gates they were promptly challenged by the gatekeepers, but that challenge was swiftly met with sharp steel, and despite Vana’s infirmity Icebreaker effortlessly claimed the lives of two more hapless citizens of Bel-Athis that night. But these would not be the last by far.
The streets of Bel-Athis were utterly deserted, as though the entire city had been given foreknowledge of the likelihood of the warrior woman’s return.
Jerob kept his hand on the hilt of his dagger, his eyes searching the shadows uneasily, for he was almost certain that they were walking into a trap. Yet even as they entered the temple courtyard, they met with no resistance.
As the two riders approached the Temple of Baal-Zebub, Vana shivered, feeling the cold fingers of death upon her. Turning to Jerob, she commanded him to wait for her there. As he gratefully nodded his assent, she turned toward the temple and with a flick of the reins, urged Thunrasar toward the foot of the great stone ziggurat.
Just then the doors of the temple swung open and from out of the murky depths behind there issued a score of priests, drawing their swords of bronze almost as one. As soon as they were clear of them, the heavy doors slammed shut behind them again with a deafening boom. But almost before this advance guard knew what was happening, the horsewoman was upon them, for at her urging, to the astonishment of all but his mistress, up the steep black stairs Thunrasar bounded, with a speed only matched by his fury!
There was a brief clamour as he sought purchase near the top of the stairs, his iron-shod hooves clattering and scraping against the narrow steps, but he reached the top safely, if somewhat clumsily, sliding to a halt before the temple doors less than a foot from the foremost of the armed priests guarding them. Had Jerob not seen it for himself he would never have believed such a stunt possible, even for the more graceful steeds of his own country.
Having witnessed this remarkable feat, and faced now with the terrible furor of both horse and rider, the priests quailed before the fearless warhorse and the wild woman wielding fierce steel—and with good reason, for their hacked and mangled purple corpses soon piled high before the doors they had sought so vainly to defend, their blood running in crimson rivers down the temple steps.
Enflamed by the blood-fury of she who rode him, over these ruins of men the stallion trode, and the cracking of bones and skulls echoed sharply in the still night air; whereupon he lifted his mighty forelegs, and with one thunderous crash of his hooves against the massive doors of the temple he battered them down, crushing beneath their great weight six or seven priests who had been attempting to bolster them from behind.
Then into the Lord of Flies’ benighted charnel house of a temple he plunged, that valiant steed, undaunted by the foul reek that issued from its infernal depths, for the will of his beloved mistress spurred him on.