by Terry Marcel
“The thread of destiny, Chak,” Voltan said to him mysteriously once. Chak had drawn his steed up shoulder to shoulder. “It can be spun so easily and yet be a fragile thing. Once it snaps, it cannot be retied and so we must tease it out gently, strand by strand.”
Chak was silent. Metaphysical ideas gave him a headache. He had a simple code of life—total obedience to Voltan regardless of the involvement. With such a code, there was no need for argument or discussion.
“What of your own destiny, Chak?” pursued Voltan. “Had I not set you free of the devil wheel. What then?”
Chak remembered that day, seven years ago, for the memory was carved deeply in his mind.
The villagers of the little town of Cappen Tor had sentenced him to death for murder. That he was guilty of the crime there was no doubt and Chak would have been the first to admit his guilt.
He had knifed the man ten times before he died whereas the woman had only required one swift blow. They had deserved to die. Both of them. A price had been agreed and he had accompanied the woman back to her dingy lodgings. The stupid troll had aroused his suspicions by continually forcing him to keep his back to the bedroom door and it came as no surprise when it crept open and her accomplice stood there, cudgel in hand. Chak had watched his entry from the reflection in a dirty mirror beyond the woman’s shoulder. He flung her to the floor and, ducking his assailant’s first blow, drove the knife under the ribs but it jarred against bone. Again, his opponent tried to chop at his head but Chak was a street fighter of old. He danced away and cut at the man again and again until he dropped to the floor. It had been so easy and so exhilarating. His opponent had been slow and ponderous so that it had been child’s play. When the slut began to scream enough to quake the house, one quick lunge had been sufficient to silence her squawl, but insufficient to make his escape. Two vigilants had manacled him in the narrow cobbled street outside.
The sentence of death in Cappen Tor meant execution on the devil wheel.
Like a huge cartwheel it jutted from the town’s high wall, circling free above a drop of three hundred feet into the gorge below. Felons were strapped to it with tough but pliant leather thongs and left there; either to die lingeringly of exposure or from the pecking wounds of carrion eagles who swooped about the canyon always ready for their next meal. The leather fastenings would harden and contract with every weather change and if a criminal were lucky he would be strangled by the tightening bonds; or they would rot and snap, hurling him to the valley floor below.
And all the while the inhabitants of Cappen Tor had their free entertainment of turning the handle which, through a mesh of wooden gears and cogs, rotated the giant wheel round and round.
Chak had spent half a day on the infernal machine, twisting and heaving to frighten away the curved beaks of the birds which threatened to peck out his shiny eyes before he was hauled to safety by Voltan’s band of raiders.
Had it been three days earlier Chak could well have been dead at their hands, for they had shown no mercy putting to the sword all full grown men in town. It had been touch and go even then. In the wink of an eye Voltan could have decided to leave him on the wheel. Instead he gave Chak a choice. He could burn down Cappen Tor with its surviving inhabitants penned inside, the old men, the infirm, women and children, or he could remain where he was.
Chak had positively itched to lay his hands on the fire torch and had felt the rush of fiendish excitement as he watched the funeral pyre that had once been Cappen Tor burn and listened to the frantic screams which issued from the flames.
Voltan chose his men well. For Chak it had been an easy decision.
“What of your own destiny, Chak?” pursued Voltan. “Had I not set you free of the devil wheel. What then?”
“I would have ended up in the gizzards of crows and eagles,” Chak answered sourly.
Voltan laughed inwardly. “Maybe I cheated you of a fine destiny, my friend,” he confided. “Think! Even now, you could be wheeling in the sky, looking down on the rest of us through a thousand pairs of eyes.”
The track kinked round a bend and, tucked into the crook, was a tavern. Rickety poles propped up a lean-to awning over some badly-made wooden tables, but the place itself was no more than a flat-topped outcropping of rock on which a crude shelter had been fashioned.
A crack in the rock face had been chipped away and within the man-made cleft a fat, roly poly man sat, watching over his small domain. His long girdled tunic was greasy with foodstains and spilt beer and his apron was as filthy as the rest of him. He kept shouting up at an equally dirty cook who manipulated a spit over a brazier on the upper floor.
“More ale, cook,” bellowed the tavern keeper.
He only had the two customers, both of them rough and ill-kempt with beards in need of scissors.
However much the tavern keeper shouted, the cook paid not the slightest notice but kept on turning the fatty meat over the red coals, jerking back with a curse each time it spat a hot greasy globule at him and all the while muttering dark obscenities at his fat employer down below.
The tavern keeper quailed on seeing Voltan and his entourage of five men, wetting his lips constantly as they tied their horses to the hitching rail by the side of the inn.
Chak smiled. He could smell the innkeeper’s fear from thirty paces and it wrinkled even his nose. This was something which never failed to give him satisfaction, the sight of rapacious porkers like this merchant turning to jelly at the approach of his master, Voltan. He hated them all, the grubby peasants, the bovine farmers, the seller of this and that, the pimples and warts who thought they were superior to such as he. But they all quaked in the presence of naked steel and when they died they all pleaded their importance as a reason for living.
“You have news for us, porkmeat,” he called out to the tavern keeper. “Do not keep my master waiting. What tales have you to tell today?”
The innkeeper attempted a light laugh in greeting but it dribbled out of his mouth like leaking water. Upstairs, the meat burned on the spit but the cook paid no heed. Afterwards, he would get belaboured about the head by the fat one but, now, he enjoyed every second of porkmeat’s obvious fear. Porkmeat! He would remember that with joyful spite.
“I am honoured by your presence,” blabbed Porkmeat, wiping his hands over and over on his apron. “Let me fetch you ale. Perhaps a morsel to whet your appetite?”
Voltan loomed over him and his words stammered to a close.
“My liege lord would rather sup with hogs than eat in this hovel,” said Chak threatening to strike the foolish man. “Your ears are larger than your stomach. What gossip have you stored in your blubber body that my master should hear?”
“Master,” the innkeeper whined. “I am a wretched man and keep myself to myself.” He raced on, hopeful that his words were appropriate. “Never would I be party to spiteful slander or malicious rumour—”
His voice squeaked up in pitch and was choked off as Voltan caught him by the throat.
“Tell me of the rumours,” Voltan whispered, loosening his grip so that the other could talk.
“I swear I know nothing for sure,” squealed the fat man. “But they say—”
“They say what?” Voltan urged.
“They say that a one-armed man is searching far and wide.”
Voltan smiled his private smile. “Searching for what?”
“I know not.” The innkeeper almost cried in panic. “I swear it.”
“You will tell us immediately if he comes here.”
Voltan smoothed the innkeeper’s apparel then thought better of it. Something had been bothering him and he looked about and stared at the two roughs who talked and ate loudly out front. They dipped chunks of bread into their bowls of mutton broth and sucked the soggy dough, slurping noisily.
Chak looked at his leader’s face and understood his irritation. He strode over to the two louts, drew his sword and pointed it down at them.
“Animals!” He slapped the
blade flat on the table to mark his words. “When Voltan is in your presence you do not continue to eat.”
One of the roughs looked at Chak goggle-eyed.
“Nor do you sit on your greasy backsides.”
The goggle-eyed lout was prepared to stand but his friend put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Sit!” Feral eyes poked out beneath shaggy eyebrows. “I rise to no man. Save the man who pays my wages—”
His overweening tone faded as he became aware of the movement of men about him.
“And who pays your wages this night?” asked Voltan in a deceptively friendly tone.
“My master is Sped, the Hunchback,” said the rough warily. “We are slavers on the River Shale.” He gained confidence as he spoke and a little of his bluster returned. “And we do not take kindly to strangers trying to teach us good manners.”
“Watch your mouth, dog,” spat Chak. “You speak—”
Voltan shushed him and Chak for a moment was puzzled.
“No, no!” said Voltan. “I like a man with spirit.”
The silent lout giggled at this and Voltan put a comradely hand on his back. Abruptly, steel-like fingers gripped the nape of the idiot’s neck and squeezed. Not a sound came from his yawning mouth and his eyes dilated. His body was completely paralysed.
“But remember this and remember it well,” went on Voltan, but the affable tone had shaded into ice. “Voltan owns everything. The table, the chairs, the very food you eat. I own everything including your useless life. Remember it well.”
He released his grip and the wide-eyed simpleton slumped on to the table, his head at an awkward angle, neck snapped.
“Your friend has lost his appetite it seems,” Voltan commented to the gawping rough whose cowed expression was turning to one of rage at his comrade’s death.
“The Hunchback will have something to say about this,” he blurted.
“The Hunchback may have many things to say, but you have already said too much.”
Voltan was bored and he turned to Chak. “Cut the tongue from his head. It tires me.”
Chak signalled to two men who quickly pinned the unfortunate man and forced his mouth open. With a grin Chak stroked the edge of his knife against the ball of his thumb.
Voltan stopped in front of the shaking innkeeper on his way to gather his horse.
“I trust you have learned something from this.”
Porkmeat’s chin wobbled up and down.
“I will be kept informed of any strangers passing this way or of any unusual occurrence, you understand?” While he spoke, the rough’s cries had risen in agony and then an appalling, shorn silence.
The innkeeper felt his plump stomach heave and it now felt as if his own tongue had swollen inordinately for his mouth.
8
THE FOREST OF WEIR
Hawk and Ranulf warmed their chilled bones at the fire they had summoned out of the few dry branches they could find in this wet and inhospitable terrain. Dusk was falling and it would soon be dark but they still had far to go.
Ranulf leaned against a tree checking the clips which contained his crossbow bolts, every so often glancing over covertly at his silent companion.
“The Dark One will not be easy to overcome,” he said eventually.
Hawk only nodded.
“Have you ever crossed swords with this devil?” Ranulf was hesitant with his question.
He waited in vain for a response while Hawk sank deeper into a melancholy mood.
A leaf fluttered down from above, was caught in the updraught of the fire’s smoke and jiggled against the bole of a tree facing Ranulf. Without thinking he aimed.
“When I had Voltan in my sights,” he said to no one in particular, “I should have fired.”
He pulled the trigger and the red pointed shaft flashed from the string and pinned the restless leaf neatly to the tree.
The whizzing crack jumped Hawk from his brooding.
“I could have killed him, you know,” repeated Ranulf.
“The Black Ones protect their own.” Hawk roused himself and patted his sword harness. “Come!” he said. “Our horses have rested enough. I have others to find—comrades who have fought by my side before.”
“We have little time left,” agreed Ranulf.
“There is one who will help us find them. But the way lies through the Forest of Weir.”
A momentary expression of fear shadowed the veteran’s face as the two men mounted their horses.
“The shortest route is often the most dangerous,” confirmed Hawk.
The forest floor muffled the plodding hooves of their horses and as the fading light drained from the sky they followed the edge of the Great Wood northwards. Now, the creatures of the night made themselves heard. A wolf howled its whooping call and somewhere its mate repeated the sound.
Ranulf’s muscles were tight with tension and his legs ached from squeezing against his steed’s flanks. Even the hoot of an owl had him peering pointlessly into the darkness of the trees. They broke free of the forest and in the fast failing light galloped across a tract of scrubland, steadily outrunning the pack of grey shapes which had slowly materialised behind them, slavering jaws agape.
Looming out of the shadows ahead of them, the dim outlines of a massive portal shimmered: two great slabs of stones, gigantic dolmens which supported a third horizontal block. And emanating from the inky darkness of the entrance a whistling noise swirled like the vibrations of rippling metal ribbons.
Their horses high-stepped with unease.
“Beyond the gate,” cried Hawk, “It will be as darkest night but the mindsword shall light our way.”
Ranulf swallowed hard and nodded albeit apprehensively.
“Leave the circle of light and I may be powerless to help you.”
Hawk cocked his head and raised his eyebrows to look at the old warrior pointedly. Ranulf’s shrug told him everything and he felt a warm glow of camaraderie for the grizzled warrior. He held up the mindsword by the hilt, stared in concentration and with a suddenness the mindstone flared with a green nimbus which bathed the stone of the gateway with an olive hue. Spurring their horses, they passed through the portal into the Forest of Weir.
Within, there was total darkness and the only light was the luminescence cast by the mindsword. A glacial cold which rimed the facial hairs with frost sat on the back of a continual, sleety gust.
They rode close together. Sibilant hisses and chittering stridulations ebbed and welled around them, coating the night with menace.
“The Land has changed,” breathed Hawk. “Wolves hunt where there were none before. This was once a green forest, full of sunlight. Now it is a place of darkness and evil. What has happened to the Land?”
It was a question which could not be answered.
“Tell me of the companions you hope to find,” said Ranulf, changing the subject to something he thought might be a bit more cheerful in this dreadful place.
“The men we seek are the last of their kind: Gort, a giant from the mountains at the edge of the world; Crow, an elfin bowman from the silver forests, now burnt and blackened; and Baldin, a dwarf from the Iron Hills.”
A long, elongated, furry thing bolted across their path scaring their mounts and Ranulf’s horse reared and retreated from the pool of light. Immediately the inkiness was scintillated with a thousand eyes which moved with a concerted rush towards him. Hawk swung the sword by its tip in a broad arc and the spraying radiance made the eyes wink out and cower back into their protective gloom.
Whiplike, a snaking tendril rippled out and raked the withers of Ranulf’s horse. Nostrils flaring, it scrabbled in the air with its front hooves and would have unseated Ranulf had not Hawk swooped across and seized its straining bridle.
Terrible staring orbs of eyes swam in the half light and snarled from a maw spiked with needle teeth. There was a glimpse of a pink hairiness and a huge grotesque head, spatulate fingered hands of enormous size and power.
Fo
r an instant it tried to take advantage of Hawk’s preoccupation with Ranulf’s struggling steed, but the one-handed man let loose a string of bolts from his repeating crossbow. Some whistled past harmlessly but two sank into the pelted body and a third bored into a screaming eyeball. Its high-pitched squeal scaled up beyond human hearing and it plunged back into the night.
“Ride!” urged Hawk.
Their horses needed little bidding but leapt forward and galloped towards a second portal which glimmered ahead. They fled from a fast-gathering storm, pursued by the menacing frenzy of some unseen host. A fetid odour threatened to engulf them and they took pinched breaths to avoid the stench. The clamour and din of the following furies was now deafening and Ranulf’s sanity boiled beneath the pressure.
He wanted to fall off his horse, to slide down its foam lathered shoulders and rest on the cool earth. A hundred sweet voices told him they would warm and caress his fevered body of its aches.
“Don’t listen!” screamed Hawk. “Shut them out!”
Dimly, Ranulf could hear the young Lord shouting absurdities at the top of his lungs, whooping and hollering, a man possessed. Like a man drugged, Ranulf sucked himself back out of the clutches of the siren voices and with sudden comprehension began ullulating as insanely as Hawk.
Still bawling meaningless sounds they raced through the gateway into the normalcy of a fresh dawn of a new day.
Breathless and panting, they slowed to a trot, their adrenalin still pumping furiously through their bloodstreams. Their gibberish madness made them look at one another sheepishly and they soon dissolved into helpless laughter.
“By all that’s holy in Kavalar,” wheezed Ranulf, “What was that back there?”
Hawk took a deep breath and resheathed the quiescent mindsword.
“Krites! Flesh eaters.” He looked at the veteran with a twinkle in his eye. “Come—old warrior. We shall reach Meena’s cave by the end of this day.”
Ranulf flushed with pride at the “old warrior”. They really were comrades now.
“What happened to all of last night?” he queried. “We were but in the Forest for a short time although it seemed like it would cost me the rest of my life.”
