Beneath Strange Stars

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Staying awhile?”

  “Haven’t seen anything to make me stay for more than the long night.” He raised an eyebrow. “No offense intended.”

  “None taken, wanderer,” the barkeep assured him. “We’re plain folk, us of Bylan, honest folk. We trade with caravans, few as they be. As I said, we don’t get many solitaries.” The one-eyed man nodded approvingly. “You be doing the right thing, lad, passing the long dark night here. By day, the land’s safe enough, except for murderers and thieves, but at night…” He shuddered. “Demons stalk the darkness, dire alchemical beasts, and sometimes things do come down from the stars, some what used to be human in the way back, some that never were.”

  Jason sipped the bitter ale and thought of the strange spoor he had seen outside the gate, along the palisade. The Earth’s dying star was little more than an ember in the hearth of space, but its twilight was yet strong enough to keep the darkness from a final victory, to keep the demons and nightmare beasts in their burrows and warrens. Eventually, Jason knew, the light would fail, and when that came to pass not even the godlike powers of the Engineers, the enigmatic beings who had rearranged the solar system when Sol swelled, could forestall eternal night.

  “I can set you up with a small room at the top,” the barkeep said. “Not much, true, but not much to pay, and the straw is dry and not ticky. Six coppers, or two silver demi-obols. Eh?”

  The price was low, though still probably paying for more than he would actually get, but at least he would be inside, not out.

  Misunderstanding Jason’s pause, the barkeep said: “Usually wouldn’t have more than a curl-space at the hearth for a solitary like you, but we’re between caravan runs.” He leaned across the bartop and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You could try to put up in a private home, but, well, you know…”

  Jason counted out copper coins. He was not about to show any silver, nor hint at all of his gold, platinum or plastic.

  The barkeep scooped the coins into a pocket of his apron and pounded hard on the counter three times. A girl, slender and huge-eyed, seemed to appear from nowhere. She could not have been older than fourteen or fifteen, and her features held an ethereal, almost elfin, quality that set her at odds with her coarse surroundings. With a start, Jason realized he had seen that distracted, unworldly expression before. But the girl for whom he searched had hair had been as pale as spun starlight, and this girl’s was dark as blue midnight. Still, there was no denying the familiarity of that expression.

  “Fix a room for the man,” the barkeep growled. “Blue one, top. Move it, girl!”

  The girl hesitated and cast a furtive glance in Jason’s direction. A threatened blow from the barkeep’s gigantic hand, however, sent her scurrying.

  The barkeep noticed Jason’s gaze upon the char-girl. “Not for six copper, lad, but if you’ve two more…”

  Jason shook his head.

  The barkeep shrugged fatalistically. “Strange one, that girl. Hears right enough, or seems to, but doesn’t talk none.”

  “Can’t talk?”

  “Or won’t.”

  “She’s not from around here, is she?”

  “Left by a caravan master who ran up a bill he couldn’t pay,” the barkeep explained. “Took her in lieu of his head, but a bad deal it was. Doesn’t bring in the trade like I’d want, and men complain. Still she does what she’s told…mostly.”

  “Some might call it a good deal,” Jason remarked. “A servant you don’t have to pay.”

  “Still got to feed her and clothe her.”

  From what Jason observed, the man did poorly enough at both.

  “Let her go for…six obol eleven,” the innkeeper suggested.

  Jason drained the last of the ale, set the stone mug on the counter with a faint click, and reached into his pouch. He tossed over two more coppers.

  “Another. Over at that table. and some food.”

  Jason doffed his heavy pack and leaned it against the wall near his chair. The unseen musicians droned on behind their screen, pausing only when the serving girl, returned from preparing his room, eased a large bowl containing raw meat beneath the curtain.

  As the last of the sunlight died behind the small high windows of cut glass more torches were lit, conversations became louder.

  The barkeep brought Jason another ale and a bowl of thin stew mixed with rice and fired with spices. As he set the food on the table, a clarion call cut through the night, waxing till it became a wail, like the call of a hunter’s horn, finally subsiding into a menacing silence. The hairs at the back of Jason’s neck rose. He noticed the barkeep’s hands trembled more at the silence than at the sound itself. It was some moments before the common noises of the inn surged back, but they now seemed muted.

  “What was that?” Jason asked. “Never heard anything like it.”

  “The Horn of the Hunter,” the man replied hoarsely. “That’s why you don’t want to be abroad this night. You might be safe enough in an armed caravan, but alone…” He shook his head. “Not even your fine weapons would protect you from the Hunter. We would find your skin nailed to the gate, your bones marrow-dry and the brains sucked from your skull.”

  “Who is the Hunter?”

  “Or what,” the man said with a shrug. “It haunts the valley. Has for a long time. It may go away for a while, but it always comes back. We call it the Hunter for what it does. And it waits.”

  “Waits? For what?”

  “Us. This village. The walls to fall. Who knows?”

  “Have you tried to kill it.”

  The man uttered a sharp derisive laugh. “Kill the Hunter? You’d have more luck trying to kill darkness. You can only make sacrifices and hope for the best.”

  The keep left Jason to his food and his thoughts. This was a village of small men with small minds, but large fears. Their terror had a name and a sound, but from what he’d been told he doubted it possessed a shape.

  The low hours of the night dragged on and a vague uneasiness settled over Jason. In many ways these men were like any other men he would encounter anywhere on the dead Earth, men who told stories and mocked the dying gods, but there was a furtiveness to their movements. Most small villages were inbred to a certain degree, wary of outsiders, but there was usually some acceptance of travelers since they were all humans and all alone in the long night. But these men were completely involved with themselves. It was a wonder that any caravan could overcome the ill-concealed rancor of the villagers to find enough profitable trade among them. And he did not like the way their eyes lingered upon his weapons and pack. He was glad when the day’s weariness finally overcame him and he quit the common room.

  “Up the stairs,” the barkeep called. “Top. Left.”

  A pale shape passed him on the stairs away from the light of the main room. By reflected torchlight, he saw the wide expressive eyes of the serving girl turned briefly upon him. She paused before a doorway three flights up.

  Jason pushed past the girl into the room beyond. She lit a tiny lantern with a blue shade to reveal dolorous blue walls.

  “Who are you?” Jason asked. “Where are you from?”

  The girl stared silently.

  He flopped onto the straw-stiff bedding and threw one arm across his eyes. When he looked up she still stood in the doorway. She gestured for him to come with her.

  “I’m tired,” Jason murmured. “Leave me alone.”

  She crossed to him and pulled on his arm.

  “Sleepy,” he moaned, weakly pushing her away. “No one can sleep the seventy hours of night, but I might. So sleepy. Everyone wakes…makes you wonder at the old tales…fleeting nights…only twelve hours…silver moon instead of the Moonbow…”

  Jason’s eyes closed, but they opened when he felt a softness against his arms. The nameless girl was trying to pull him to his feet. He pushed away her serpentine hands.

  “Get back to whatever you’re supposed to be doing,” he growled lowly. “I don’t take l
ittle girls. You’re not on the bill of fare, not at six coppers.”

  The girl whirled at a sound and shuddered when saw the burliness of the innkeeper framed in the doorway. She shot Jason a haunted, fearful expression, then fled.

  The man smiled and closed the door.

  Despite the great fatigue unaccountably wearing him down, Jason forced himself to stand, glided through nebulous blue shadows to a multi-paned window of isinglass hung with blue tatters. He pushed against the window, then harder, forcing its rusted resisting hinges.

  The cold air hit him, momentarily reviving him. Searing stars filled the sky. Even the sun’s coruscating streamers had completely vanished. The orbiting fragments of the Moonbow blazed like a band of argent fire-crystals. The sky’s awful incandescence was mirrored flawlessly in the lake’s surface, which he easily saw over the palisade from his high vantage point. Strangely shaped rocks and pinnacles rose along the lake’s shore. Small lights moved distantly across the dark land. Again, the horn of the Hunter sounded. Shadows lurked about the village.

  Even at night from within Bylan seemed like a coiled serpent.

  He felt as if he were in a nest of vipers.

  He turned away from the window and staggered toward the bed. His weariness could not be denied, but he wondered that he should be so tired. The journey across the mountains, through the demesne of the snow-people, had been arduous, but such hardships were ever part of his life.

  He yanked off his boots, kept his sword at his side and slipped his revolver beneath the hard pillow.

  So tired…

  What powders and philters, he wondered, might be hidden by a stew’s pungent spices?

  He fell through miles of luminous blue space into oblivion.

  Hands pulling at him…rough chuckles like the rattling of a snake’s beaded tail…the buzzing of a green-carapaced beetle scuttling through the ruins of his skull…

  Jason forced his eyes open, but saw only shadows. He reached under his pillow for his gun, but it was gone. Then he saw the gun floating in the grip of a shadow.

  “Fine weapon,” the shadow murmured. “Very ancient.” The barrel of the revolver swung around in Jason’s direction. “I would blow your brains out, young solitary, but bullets are hard to make and powder even harder to come by. Besides, as I said earlier, you make sacrifices and hope for the best when it comes to the Hunter and his minions. Up with him, lads! This gun is mine, but you’ll have a share of all else…later.”

  Jason thrashed about, but he was held too securely and his mind was still fogged by whatever had lurked in his stew. They carried him down the stairs and straight through the common room, not making any attempt to conceal their villainy. Not a single voice was raised in protest. He heard mocking laughter.

  The visage of the sad-eyed serving girl floated through his field of vision. He realized too late what her intentions had been.

  They entered the star-clotted night. The innkeeper, at the head of the procession, waved the revolver around, as if at any moment he might fire a precious round into the air. The others sang drunkenly. The coldness of the night swept away the last dregs of the drug’s influence, but though he struggled mightily he could not break their hold upon him. He saw faces at the windows of the houses they passed, but not a single voice was raised in protest. His shouts for aid were mocked.

  “Been awhile since I got me a good-laden solitary,” the innkeeper said, grinning into Jason’s face. “The caravans we let pass bring a measure of prosperity to all, but I live and breathe for you poor wanderers who can’t rest on the dead Earth. By the gods, I love you solitaries!” He slapped the gleaming revolver against his palm. “Makes me so happy I just got to shoot someone…later.”

  By means of an angled stairway they carried the struggling Jason to the top of the palisade, past sentries who did nothing to stop them, and unceremoniously dumped him over the edge. He hit the earth and rolled.

  Gibbering shadows moved around him. When one came too close he struck out with his first, sending it scurrying. Raucous laughter sounded from the summit of the village wall.

  Jason broke through the ring of gathering shadows before the forces of the night land had a chance to marshal themselves against him. He slipped around the shadows he could evade, and pummeled those he could not. At his escape, even if it were only momentary, a collective groan of disappointment rose from the men clustered upon the wall. They knew he would still surely die, unarmed and alone in the night land, but they would not see his blood glisten in the frosty starlight, would not hear the rending of his flesh or the crunching of his bones.

  Jason ran away from the village and toward the lake’s shore where there were fewer shadows and the rock formations might provide some cover and defense. His bare feet hardly made a sound as he ran. Some creature of the night loped after him, but he ambushed and killed it among the rock formations, easily and noiselessly breaking its neck. In the vague starlight he saw it was a feral man with skin painted blue and wearing a necklace of tiny skulls. Jason took the man’s steel-tipped hardwood spear and held up among the rocks.

  There was no pursuit other than the blue feral man. When Jason looked back he saw the walls of Bylan were still shadow-infested, with misshapen figures probing defenses and leaping about, trying to find a way in.

  The Horn of the Hunter sounded very near to Jason. He sank into concealing shadow. An apparition interposed itself between Jason and the lake, silhouetted against its starry surface. Jason gripped the spear tighter as he saw the form of a man atop a riding beast, or at least something like a man, a man wearing metal armor adorned with filigrees and spikes, strange bulges and inexplicable protrusions, and a horned helm bossed at the back as with an eruptive tumor, merging with the contour of the rider’s spine. He lifted an oddly shaped horn to his unseen lips and sounded the Hunter’s ominous call.

  The Hunter’s head suddenly swiveled in Jason’s direction. Jason hunkered down in the darkness, shuddering at the gleam of yellow eyes amid the blackness. He did not dare even breathe. In a moment, though, the Hunter’s gaze swept past him. Man, if man it was, and beast thundered on toward beleaguered Bylan.

  Jason crept to where he could spy upon the assault. The shadowy forces of the Hunter were unable to make any incursion against the village, so high and thick were its protective walls. Whenever any of the feral men or manlike beasts attempted to scale the walls, they were repulsed.

  The forces of the night land, Jason realized, wanted the village, not him. While in the star-shadows of its walls those forces had considered him part of their objective, but now that he had moved away he had passed out of their interest, at least for the moment. Their concentration upon the village put a lie to the innkeeper’s hint that sacrifices might appease the Hunter. For some unfathomable reason, the Hunter wanted to destroy the village, and in that at least he and Jason were allies…of a sort.

  The innkeeper had been right about the scarcity of the powder used in the old weapons. One could never have enough of the black stuff. Had they searched Jason more thoroughly they would have discovered the pouch strapped securely to his left thigh.

  Jason loosed it, put it upon a rock and chanced a run to the edge of the water for malleable clay. He formed them into egglike shapes and poured a good measure of powder into each when they were dry. It was a terrible waste of the precious substance but he did not care. He covered the openings, then inserted fuses made from hemp impregnated with gunpowder.

  He weighed the three deadly objects somberly.

  The Hunter wanted Bylan; so did Jason.

  The savage ill-trained army of the Hunter was clustered in those areas of the palisade where there was at least a slim chance of slipping over. If he tossed his grenades among the attackers, Jason mused, he would have likely ended forever the threat, but helping the villagers was not Jason’s goal.

  Totally ignored by defender and attacker, Jason made his way to one of the tallest portions of the palisade. He planted his devices at the b
ases of huge logs sunk into the earth, lit the fuses with a sulfur-punk. They flared and hissed. He retreated swiftly to a huddling place among the rocks.

  Long moments passed. Finally Jason’s anxiety was ended by three thunderous explosions. In the silence after the blasts there came the sound of cracking timber, followed by cries of alarm, shrieks of terror, the peals of warning bells. Covering his ears, Jason settled down to wait out the long night.

  Before dawn, a dead silence gripped the land, but Jason did not stir, not until the dull sun sent its coruscating streamers above the horizon, which frightened the last of the night’s terrors to their lairs. The stars began to fade.

  By that dim bloody light he approached the village.

  The gates hung open.

  Jason cautiously entered.

  There were few bodies in sight. Some had been skewered by spears or cleft by stone axes, but most were curiously mangled and bloodless. Mostly, though, the village was depopulated.

  The doorway of the Were-Jaguar Inn was smashed open. Inside, Jason found the innkeeper near the cold hearth. He pried his revolver from the man’s stiff fingers, pulled on his boots and found his pack where he had left it in the blue room.

  He pushed aside the blue rag curtains and overlooked the village. The stillness gripping it was absolute. They had not all attacked and robbed him, but in their apathy toward his fate, they were all equally guilty. Jason might eventually convince himself that the mass fate was deserved.

  All guilty, he mused.

  All but one.

  He found the large-eyed mute girl in a storeroom at the back of the inn, where she had hid. But she had not sought shelter from either the enigmatic Hunter or the forces of the night. In the center of her pallid forehead was a neat hole formed by a single bullet.

  Jason abandoned the silent village and struck eastward along the caravan road, beneath the dim stars of dawn. Before the fat red sun finally crested the horizon, Bylan was nothing more than a shadowy smear of upon the land.

  When writing fantasy fiction based in antiquity, a writer who is far too obsessive (some even say “anal”) might spend an inordinate amount of time perusing old maps, reading annotated copies of ancient travelogues, and charting the paths of rivers or the changes in coastlines. He might also look for place names that inhabitants forgot long ago, or make connections with people and events which are celebrated under better known, but quite erroneous, names. But, as I mentioned elsewhere, I have great faith in the intelligence of my readers. Not that I would venture into obscurity. Well, not too far.