“Looks like some form of assembly place.” said Valerie, and Barf nodded. Across on the other side of the square rose a large, ornately carved and pillared building, balconies jutting from many of its storeys.
“Let’s hope the vaults are unlocked.” smiled Barf, “Or we may have to knock those doors down as well. Come on, let’s go!” He strode out across the stepped auditorium with Valerie keeping pace beside him.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a large pillar in the centre of the clearing. It was she estimated a good twelve feet high and seemed to have a multitude of what looked like spikes hammered into it on one side.
“I don’t know.” said Barf, “I didn’t notice that as I was too interested in the palace. Let’s go and take a look.”
They approached the pillar, it growing larger as they drew closer and as they did so they saw that it was made of wood. They paused and examined it, though looking at it they could see no obvious function it performed, or found no reason for it to be there at all. On one side of the wooden stake they saw that a multitude of long, vicious looking blue nails had been knocked into the wood about half way. Underneath, in what looked like chalk, was written “199” in a neat, concise manner. The other side of the pillar was empty.
“Blue nails?” queried Barf, “Why are the nails blue?”
“No idea.” said Valerie, scratching her head, “But then there is a lot of this place that makes no sense.”
“That’s true enough.” said Barf, “Shall we carry on and go and investigate the…”
The barbarian never had a chance to finish his sentence as from across the square raced a small figure screaming in a deep, loud voice racing towards them. The initial shock of seeing anyone alive in the city in the first place startled them both, but now the man was nearly upon them and they both drew swords as he closed on them. He was dressed in a long red outfit that seemed to be of cloth, and on his head, he wore a tightly wrapped red dyed turban, a red neckerchief covering the lower part of his face. In his hand, he held upright a short-curved sword, and in the other hand a long, sharp looking knife.
“Hadaway, Yeh bastards!” he shouted in a strange, guttural accent, “Or I’ll make tatties oot of ye fingers, yeh keening bag of bull’s bollocks!”
“What?” asked Barf, and as the man launched himself at him, Barf neatly side stepped him, swinging his sword viciously through the air as he did do, removing the man's head completely. Its impetus carried the now beheaded body a little further forward though, but it soon dropped to the ground, blood spurting from its neck. The head rolled a little further, coming to a rest eventually about ten feet away, its eyes flickering and the mouth twitching until finally that too stopped.
“Oh, I say!” they both heard someone shout from across the arena and as they turned to look a short figure dressed entirely in blue was racing towards them. Barf growled and raised his sword again as the man drew closer and closer, though unlike the other man this man seemed to be cheering as he approached.
“He has no weapon raised, Barf.” said Valerie, pushing the barbarian's sword down as she did so. As he approached they saw that apart from the colour, the blue clad man was wearing almost exactly the same outfit as the very recently beheaded man who had been dressed in red. He was however carrying what seemed to be a small shoulder bag and as he stopped in front of them he suddenly lunged forward and kissed Valerie. He turned to do the same to Barf but the barbarian growled and he tapped him on the back as far up as he could reach instead.
“How wonderful!” he exclaimed, pulling a small wooden rattle from his hand and waving it around loudly, performing an extremely odd little dance as he did so. Eventually he finished, shouting a loud, “Hoo-Rah!” across the auditorium as he did so. He then pulled a hammer from his bag, at the sight of which Barf placed his hand on the poniard of his sword, but then the man pulled a red nail from the bag and then he hammered it into the empty side of the pillar halfway so that a single red nail stood from that side in pillar in contrast to the one hundred and ninety-nine blue nails jutting from the stake on the other side. Finally, he placed the hammer back in the bag and removed a small piece of chalk. Underneath the red nail, he wrote, “1”.
“Yes!” he said, pumping his fist into the air and then coming to a complete stop.
“One.” said Barf, “Just one.”
“Yes.” said the man in the blue robes, grinning wildly, “After five hundred years as well! Who would have thought it? The tide is turning my friend; the time is jolly well turning indeed!”
Barf reached down and lifted the bag from the man’s shoulders. The man made to protest, but looked at the barbarian looming over him and changed his mind. Barf turned the bag over and threw the contents onto the floor. The hammer and chalk fell out, followed by a large quantity of long red nails that clattered to the ground, the sound of the metal objects echoing around the silence of the area as they dropped to the floor.
“One hundred and ninety-nine perhaps?” asked Valerie and the man nodded.
“Still. A step in the right direction, I say. Could be level pegging by tea time, or better! What do you think?”
“The city is occupied?” asked Valerie and the man smiled.
“Not as such. There are us, and there are the red chaps. Nasty lot. You can tell by the colour of their hair, you know.”
“Really?” said Valerie, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh yes!” he said matter of factly, and leaned in closer to whisper, “Ginger.” he said and nodded once, a serious look on is face. “All of them.”
“And how many exactly is, “all of them”, then?” smiled Valerie sweetly. As if on cue from across the square came a loud succession of shouts as a stream of red clad figures burst from the palace doors and began to race towards them, weapons held high in the air.
“I’ll hold yeh doon and beat yeh brains oot with mah bare hands!” could be heard echoing around the square, along with several other almost unintelligible curses.
Slowly the palace side of the square began to fill with red clad figures who were waving weapons and shouting at them as loud as they could, their broad accents and bloodthirsty screams echoing about the sullen silence of the crimson shrouded city.
“Is that one over there baring his arse at me?” asked Barf, pointing to the far side of the crowd.
“Oh, they do that, old chap.” said the blue clad man, “Frightful behaviour to say the least!”
“Freeeeeeeeeeeeedom!” came chants from the red dressed warriors.
“Would their number be somewhere around one hundred and ninety-nine, by any chance?” asked Valerie and the man nodded dumbly, his eyes never leaving the red clad horde rapidly approaching. Valerie smiled. “And how many soldiers on your side?” She glanced at the forest of hammered blue nails.
“Just me.” he gulped.
“You have a place that is safe?” asked Barf urgently, the tribe of red clad warriors that were rushing towards them now being considerably closer than was comfortable.
“Yes.” gulped the blue clad man and began to run towards the further side of the square. “Follow me!” Valerie and Barf needed no further instruction and raced after him as the crowd of red chased after them, the buildings on the far side of the square drawing near.
“This way!” shouted the man in blue, swinging a wide door open and then standing aside to let them through. Once inside the man closed in and shut the door behind him, locking it with a small key he pulled from a side pocket in his jerkin.
Barf looked around. It looked like any other of the many buildings he had entered in the city so far, but larger. He pointed at a large arch on the other side of the room.
“This door will not hold them for long! Where does that lead?”
“Follow me!” shouted the man, running through the arch and disappearing into the gloom. Loud thumps began to make the door tremble on its hinges, and remembering how easily the main gate of the city’s bolt had shattered, Barf pushed Valerie befor
e him and ran to follow the man in blue. Loud curses and further crashes against the door followed him.
“I am Jeremy, by the way.” said the man in blue as they raced through another room and then down a wide set of steps into what looked like a dusty cellar. “Pleased to meet you. Sorry about the inconvenience and what have you.” He reached the far wall and reaching up he touched one of the stones in the wall and a door spun open.
Jeremy walked through it and Valerie and then Barf followed. They were in a long low corridor now, a small guttering sconce lit on the wall. Jeremy pushed the door shut and taking the torch from the wall, began to walk along the corridor at a much slower pace.
“They have never tried to break that door down before, never mind find this corridor, so I rather suspect that all is tickety-boo.”
“Tickety what?” grumbled Barf as he strode along behind them both.
“Boo.” said Jeremy, and Barf jumped slightly. From his sword belt a loud chuckling began to be heard. Barf reached down and closed it with a snarl.
“By Crump’s holy socks lad, best tell me what is going on here or I’ll tear you from gizzard to toe.” snarled Barf. Jeremy turned a distinct pale colour that even the torchlight could not hide.
“Very well. We are two tribes forced to slay each other by a great sorcery that overtook this city some five hundred years ago. Kept alive by dark sorcery the dark God will not return to give us eternal rest until all of one side are killed. This is his vengeance on a city that cast him out for those who would worship his foul majics all of that time ago.”
“Where did the people of the city go?” asked Valerie as they came to another door. Jeremy paused and placed the torch back in the sconce and opened the door, looking both ways before stepping outside.
“The great and angry dark God Xoovermatic sucked all the people into a murderous hurricane and were never seen by us again. All that was left were the two tribes of two hundred souls each, unnamed other than one is dressed in blue, the other in red. We neither eat nor sleep nor grow old. Death is our only final release. When all of one side are dead, then Xoovermatic will return.”
“Why don’t you just leave?” asked Barf. “The gate was no problem for us to open from the outside so I imagine from the inside it would be even easier.”
“It’s the dragons.” said Jeremy. “We cannot escape them once out on the plains and the forest that surrounds the city in all directions.
“Dragons?” said Barf, a weary tone filling his voice. The barbarian turned and spat noisily on the floor. ““Dragons”, you say?”
“Yes.” said Jeremy, his voice almost a whisper, “You must have seen them. Big creatures. Lurk in the forest. Dragons.”
“Fond of a horse or two, not so good at climbing?” asked Barf.
“That’s them.” smiled Jeremy, “No way can you get past them. It would be damned foolish to try, I’ll have you know.”
“They are not dragons.” said Barf, coming to a halt.
“I should say they are.” said Jeremy, looking at the barbarian carefully, the look on his face very much framing the question as to why they had stopped.
“No.” said Barf, a smile crossing his face that stated perfectly that he was in possession of just enough patience to explain to Jeremy exactly why he was talking nonsense. Valerie felt her temperature began to rise.
“Oh I think you will find that they are dragons, old chap.” said Jeremy, smiling awkwardly at Barf.
“No. Where are the wings first of all, never mind the fire breathing and flying around. Your lizards can’t even climb up a small crag! A dragon it most definitely is not!”
“It is.”
“Isn’t.
“Is.”
“Look.” said Valerie, feeling her whole body shaking with anger, “Can we leave the bloody dragon argument for now? Unless you have forgotten we are being pursued by a bloodthirsty band of cutthroats who will be upon us any second now? Can we not just go?”
Jeremy nodded and took off, Barf following him reluctantly once again.
“Still not a dragon.” he said
“Is.”
“Isn’t.”
“Is.”
Valerie decided to try and change the subject, if not to achieve anything other than to preserve her temper. “So why is it that there are one hundred and ninety-nine blue nails hammered into the spike, but only one red one, and in fact, you only just hammered that one in.” said Valerie. “If you are registering the number of red kills with that nail you just knocked in then technically speaking I think you will find that that one was Barf’s.”
‘Still counts, old boy.” said Jeremy sulkily.
“You’re not doing very well, are you?” asked Valerie and the man in blue scowled angrily as they reached another door and stepped out into a narrow street.
“It was hardly a fair matching!” he exclaimed angrily. “The blues were made of the artists and poets, the cloth makers and actors. The reds were of the army, mercenaries and worse.”
“Bad luck.” said Valerie, “Are we far away from your place of safety?”
“Nearly there.” said Jeremy as they rounded another corner. Across a small alley stood five red clad warriors, swords drawn.
“Looks like it was a good idea for us to split up, laddie.” said one to the other, laughing as Jeremy slunk behind Barf and Valerie to hide.
“Sneaky blighters.” he hissed from his hiding place behind the barbarian, “Hardly fair now, is it? What rotters!”
Barf lunged forward, his size and ferocity of attack taking the red clad soldiers by surprise. Two screamed as his sword cut through them, one staggering against a wall and sliding to the floor, another falling to the ground, blood bursting from his chest. Valerie jumped high in the air and pushed her legs halfway up the wall, pirouetting through the air and striking one of the red warriors across the neck with her sword. Blood gushing in a fountain from him as he fell to the floor, gurgling loudly as blood pooled about him. Barf swung his sword sideways with a stroke that had all his weight into it, beheading the last man where he stood.
“Oh, my!” shouted Jeremy behind them, “I do wish I had picked up my nails! Still. There is always tomorrow!”
“This way!” came a shout from the top of the alley as more red clad soldiers came into view, “They've only gone and done for auld Angus, so they have!”
Jeremy sprung to life and instantly mounted a stair that led up the side of a house and up to a balcony that ran down the length of the street. He beckoned them to follow him, which they did, moving rapidly to keep on his heels. They reached the end of the street and descended back to ground level as several more red soldiers began to appear from all directions.
“Faster, man!” shouted Barf and they all raced across the street and into a large building. They hurried through chamber after chamber inside it. Jeremy kept twisting his head on his shoulder to listen for the sounds of pursuit, and he stared into every doorway that they passed with a burning intensity. They ran as fast as they could, but even so the sounds of pursuit, and the numbers following them slowly drew nearer and nearer.
“This way!” shouted Jeremy, “The chamber beyond lies in near darkness. We may help to throw the ruddy blighters off our scent there!”
Softly as phantoms they descended a long stair and came to the mouth of a corridor that was as black as night.
“Semi - darkness?” began Barf but Valerie hushed him to be quiet and so he fell into an awkward, sullen silence. They edged along, feeling the walls as they went. Behind them the sounds of pursuit descended into confusion, footsteps sounding as if they were racing in every direction.
“Here is the stair!” shouted Jeremy, and they rose through darkness, “The door to the chamber of safety is beyond! Run!” From the dark corridor below them Barf could hear hardly anything for concern, but his instinct grabbed hold of him, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He turned on the steps, his instinct screaming that some enemy was behind them, but
that the sounds it made were not of human feet.
Something came rushing and writhing up the steps, a thing that slithered and rustled and brought with it a chill in the air. Barf lashed out with his sword, for though he could see nothing behind him in the darkness of the stairs, he felt its presence. He slashed down again and felt the blade shear through something that might have been flesh and bone, and then the sword passed though whatever it was and bounced off the stone stair beneath. Something cold and wet slithered across his foot and then the darkness below was disturbed by a hideous thrashing sound and a man cried out in agony as the creature, whatever it was, lashed out in its death throes.
“One more nail for the blues!” shouted Jeremy gleefully, “What a wonderful day I am having!”
“What was that thing?” asked Barf, “It was no man! It was a beast that slithered and crawled. I gave it something to think about though!”
Jeremy looked aghast as they raced across a final large chamber towards a round wooden door at each side of which stood a lit torch.
“It can only have been the crawler!” he shouted back to them as they raced towards the door, “A monster that the red soldiers brought out of the catacombs to slay the blues! What it is we knew not, but we have found our people hideously slain by it! Bloody cheating if you ask me, but there is hardly a referee now, is there?”
They reached the door and Jeremy turned another key in it and held it open.
“It locks behind you.” he said as he stepped into the darkness. “I will go in and light a torch. Watch the first step, please. It’s a bit of a bugger.” He disappeared into the gloom as Barf and Valerie came through the door.
“Arrrrgh!” they heard followed by a loud crack. Barf pushed the door back open a little and grabbed one of the torches from outside just as many of the red warriors arrived in the chamber outside, looks of disappointment on their faces as the barbarian let the door slide firmly shut again. Barf raised the torch high. At the bottom of the stairs where he had fallen lay Jeremy, his head at a very strange angle. Valerie ran down the stairs carefully, and put her hand on the man's wrist. She shook her head.
Barf the Barbarian in Red Nail (The Chronicles of Barf the Barbarian Book 2) Page 4
