by James Silke
The scouts, with swords and shields working in front of them, surrounded the Barbarian. He did not appear to mind. Turning quickly from side to side, he watched them from behind his shield with the eyes of a man who had worked crowds before.
He choked up his axe handle, as if expecting the scouts to work cautiously in order to avoid striking each other. But they showed no hesitation and attacked in a bunch. They cut up his shield, nicked his axe and cracked his helmet. In the process, bridge posts were hacked apart, floor beams splintered, and supporting ropes severed to fly skyward, their tension released.
The dark Barbarian’s blows clanged majestically against steel breastplates and helmets drawing blood from panting lips and removing one of Yat’s ears. But his success was limited. The scouts deliberately allowed him to attack their steel armor, and it resisted his blows. No matter how great his effort and cunning, his axe could not reach their vital parts. Finally his axe head tangled in Yat’s fringe skirt, and the Sergeant threw himself down, using his body weight to yank the axe from the Barbarian’s grip.
Instinctively, the Barbarian swung around, hammering with the flat of his shield, and bought himself a little room. As he did, the bridge sagged under him. He leaped back and the planks splintered. His legs and body crashed through them, then came to a sudden stop as his shield, too wide for the hole, caught against the floor of the bridge.
He dangled under the bridge, hanging desperately to the shield’s handle. Below him the jaws of the gorge, a thousand feet below, waited. Above him his shield concealed him from the scouts.
Sergeant Yat, the area of his missing ear spitting blood, moved over the Barbarian’s shield and began hacking at it as he shouted, “Crossbows! Crossbows!”
The scouts, limping and trailing blood, retrieved their crossbows and loaded them, then struggled back onto the bridge and peered over the side. They could not see the Barbarian, so they joined Yat as his blade splintered the shield. It crumpled apart, tumbled through the hole in the bridge, and dropped into the gorge. But it was making the trip alone.
The Barbarian, by swinging back and forth on his shield’s handle, had been able to propel his gasping body onto a supporting beam. He now straddled it as he looked up through the hole at Yat.
The Sergeant, snarling and spurting blood, drew a dagger from his belt. He flipped it once, caught it by the blade, and raised it to throw. Abruptly, the fountain of blood spurting from his ear lost force, sputtered, and became a dribble that spidered down his chin. It was the only color on his face. His expression was even less communicative. His knees buckled, and he folded up like a rope, pitched forward, crashed through the hole, and dived for rocks far below still holding his dagger.
The Barbarian did not watch him fall. He scrambled over the cross beams toward a cliffside ledge from which the bridge’s main support beam protruded.
The scouts dropped to their knees above the hole just in time to see Yat hit the rocks and explode like a flung tomato. They winced audibly, immobilized for a moment, then leaned into the hole aiming their crossbows. But they held their fire. The Barbarian was out of sight.
Akar growled, “Mother of Death!” He squirmed over the hole, shouted, “Hold my legs!”
The scouts took hold of his knees and feet and lowered him into the hole.
When Akar saw the Barbarian, he was sitting on a cliffside ledge beside the main support beam. His legs were raised and he was leaning back against the cliff. The rocks were cutting into his meaty back, tearing his flesh, but he did not appear to notice. Suddenly he kicked with both feet, hammered the main support beam and splintered it.
Akar was still leveling his crossbow when he heard the loud crunch of tearing wood. He looked up, white eyed. The entire bridge sagged, groaned, then crumbled apart and fell into the gorge taking Akar and the scouts with it. They fell like soldiers, with faces snarling, and arms and legs flailing against the air. As silent as the timbers and splinters which fell beside them.
Young Hands, who had remained at the south end of the bridge with the horses, trembled in his saddle as he watched, then looked across the gorge.
The Barbarian was gasping with relief, then a falling timber caught him in the back and another across the shoulders to knock him off the ledge. He dropped five feet, hit a piece of protruding cliff, slipped another ten feet, then clawed his way onto another ledge and lay there gasping. He lifted slightly, as if he would have liked to turn and watch the scouts hit the ground, but collapsed instead. His eyes were glazed, as if thunder had taken up residence in his brain.
Young Hands tied the horses in a string, then again watched the Barbarian as his head lifted dizzily. The big man stood, looked around, then dragged himself back up to the road and sat down tiredly in the dirt. The top of his helmet was severed and dangled at an angle to his broad shoulders. He looked around, then across the gorge and into the rookie’s eyes. The lad drew his crossbow and loaded it, but the Barbarian did not move. Young Hands angrily raised his weapon to fire. But he quickly reconsidered, turned his horse and rode off the way the scouts had come leading a file of eight horses, their saddles empty.
Four
NEW TOOLS
It was sundown before the Barbarian reached the bottom of the gorge. A family of vultures was already at work on the bits and pieces of bodies protruding from the wreckage of the bridge. The birds eyed him angrily, screeched and flapped about making a show of their gore-specked beaks and neck feathers. He kept coming and they took flight, winged back up the narrow gorge, almost beautiful in the fading orange light.
The birds came to rest on the remnant of bridge, then looked back down, their beaks dripping.
The Barbarian found his axe and picked it up. The handle was broken off a foot short of the head. He moved to the first body, drew a knife, bent over, then hesitated as if sensing life. Then he saw it.
Twenty feet away, a serpent colored with gold, brown and black diamonds slithered down a large rock towards a dead arm protruding from a pile of fallen timbers. A Sadoulette, the mother breed of the python. It was not yet fully grown, but big enough to have a squad of Kitzakk scouts for supper.
The reptile approached the arm, saw the Barbarian and coiled back, nostrils flaring. It appeared more than willing to wrestle for its dinner, then suddenly lost all confidence, slithered up the rock and tumbled awkwardly out of sight.
The Barbarian listened to the sounds of crunching gravel and breaking grass made by the retreating reptile, grunted with contempt, then glanced around again. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. He searched through the rubble of the bridge, shoved timbers aside, found the source of what he sensed.
Soong lay on his side, jackknifed over a rock. He still lived, barely breathing with short, wet gasps. One eye was smashed closed. The other watched fearfully as the Barbarian lifted his short-handled axe and moved for him. As the shadowed face of the Barbarian loomed close, Soong’s eye opened wide, white with wonder, and the axe struck.
The dark savage checked the other bodies, but they were dead. What remained was work for vultures and ants.
He stripped each body and made a blanket from their leather tunics. He heaped their armor and weapons along with his broken axe and helmet on the blanket, tied them in a bundle. He drank from the stream in animal fashion, and washed most of the dry blood and gore off his body. Then he picked up the bundle, heaved it to his back, and started down a narrow trail beside the stream.
The family of vultures watched until the man-animal had vanished around a bend, then glided down and came to rest on broken timbers beside the naked dead bodies. They eyed them warily, then the largest screeched, leapt on Yat’s back driving his claws into the flesh, and stabbed his pointed beak at a shoulder muscle.
The other vultures screamed and moved for the meat. There was a loud crack of breaking wood. The vultures, screeching, took flight. Above them, a heavy timber broke loose from the remains of the bridge. It tumbled through the air, hit the side of the cliff and dislodg
ed several large rocks. A small avalanche followed, and covered the birds’ dinner.
Reaching the sky, the vultures looked down and cried out in rage, then flew off, still complaining.
Five
BROWN JOHN
The three men riding the wagon had not intended it to be a shy vehicle. Its flatbed, side boards, driver’s box and shaft were as red as a harlot’s lips and trimmed in a pink and orange so bright they would have made the same harlot blush. The men were Grillards, a clan of outcast and outlawed entertainers. Their wagon was designed to serve as a traveling stage, but at the moment it was on its way to do, hopefully, some serious hauling.
Heading south, it danced through the tall pines at the southern end of the Valley of Miracles, crested the mountain, and raced across a glen that was a riot of greens in the early morning sunshine.
Old Brown John sprawled in the bed of the wagon, and despite the clattering wheels and bouncing boards, dozed comfortably on a pile of ragged blankets beside a clutter of coiled ropes. He was the bukko, the boss and stage manager of the Grillards. He wore a ragged brown tunic with large patches which, in addition to covering holes, were the clan’s sign. He was short, wiry and bandy-legged. At first glance he appeared no more impressive than his patches, but on closer examination, even in his prone and snoring position, he had a surprisingly alert, in-charge and genial manner.
His bastard sons rode the driver’s box.
Bone, the older, held the reins. He wore bright red patches, was big all over and proud of it. Regardless of the role his father cast him in, on- or offstage, he played it as a swaggering, braggart soldier whose brain was just slow enough to make him suspicious of everyone and everything. Dirken, the younger, was short, lean, and favored deep umber patches. He picked his own roles, was always on stage, and cherished playing vile, treacherous villains, so long as he could play them well groomed.
All three men wore leather belts hung with pouches and short swords. Not stage weapons, but working tools which protected them during the cold wet season when they had to survive as thieves.
The wagon rolled clear of the forest, skidded to a stop where Thieves Trail met Lemontrail Crossing, and Brown John glanced over the side board.
His white hair fell in smooth silky slopes down over his large ears and bristled with feathered tufts at his neck. His tangled white eyebrows, rising at sharp angles, gave his face a slightly satanic expression. It was deeply cut with all varieties of wrinkles, but they only gave a vague indication of the complexity of his wrinkled mind.
Seeing the crossing, he chuckled with far more amusement than any bridge, particularly one which had been destroyed, deserved.
Father and sons got down from their wagon, moved onto the battle-scarred remnant of the bridge, and peered down into the gorge at the pile of dirt. The tips of splintered timbers protruded from it.
“There they are,” Brown John said with exhilaration. “Go to it, lads.”
“Now just a minute,” Bone said with grave caution. “If the Dark One and his axe did all this work by themselves, it’s something a man should think on some before messin’ about with it.”
Dirken, barely moving lips as thin as fork blades, asked in a theatrical whisper, “How many did he say he killed?”
“He did not say,” their father said in an instructional tone, “because I made certain there was no discussion of bodies. It would have made him suspicious. I simply inquired, while your brother traded our wine for his meat, as to where he got his new armor. All he said was, ‘Lemontrail Crossing’. Two words.”
“Then where are the bodies?”
“If you were more interested in the work, Dirken, and less in the drama, you would have noticed by now that the hyenas and jackals have already been at work on one of them.”
He pointed at the bottom of the gorge about fifty feet to the east of the wreckage where a gutted rib cage rested among rocks. It was black, and the blackness moved vaguely. Ants.
“Well now,” Bone announced, “that sure enough used to belong to something that drank from a cup, and it sure enough is dead.”
“Not completely,” Brown John corrected him. “His Kaa is exceptionally strong.”
Bone and Dirken hesitated, then nodded thoughtfully. They knew that the Kaa, the spirit of the victor, could be infused within the bones of his victims at the moment of death. It could live there for days, weeks, even months, depending on its strength, and they normally did not question their father’s evaluation of anything. Brown John had “vision”. He saw many small, insignificant things and put them together into great and important things that common people like themselves could not see. Nevertheless, they were wary. Brown John had told them the Dark One’s Kaa just might be strong enough to be contagious, and that kind of strength usually only lived in legends.
Brown John, ignoring their hesitation, pointed at the dirt pile. “You will more than likely find the bodies under that rubble. I’d say you’ll find five, perhaps even six Kitzakk scouts.”
Dirken put two sharp, black, skeptical eyes on his father.
Bone blurted, “That is a whole mess of muscle and metal for one man to murder, to say nothing of it being Kitzakk!”
“That, lads,” Brown John glared at them impatiently, “is precisely why we are here.”
Bone scowled with his entire face, two chins and both ears. “Well, if there are five scouts down there, the Kitzakks are coming for certain.”
“Yes,” said Brown John solemnly. “It is no rumor this year. They’ve been sighted in all the passes. So get to work. The kind of magic we now trade in can not be made by tossing dancing girls about a stage. It’s man’s work. Best done unseen and fast. We don’t want the Dark One, or anyone else, to know what we do until it is done.”
Brown John and Dirken glanced up and down the crossroads to make certain they were unwatched. But Bone stared at the dirt pile.
“Now just a minute.” He put his fists against his hips, looked at his father and brother. “If they’ve been down there two whole days and nights, they’re going to be nasty ripe.”
Dirken grinned darkly. “We’ll bring them up in pieces. If you forgot your spoon, you can borrow mine.”
Bone winced.
The old man said, “Bone, you bring up the large pieces. Let Dirken handle the arms and heads, we don’t want to lose any fingers or teeth.”
Bone grimaced sickly, but obediently helped Dirken drag blankets and ropes out of their wagon and down into the gorge.
Late that day, when the Grillard’s wagon was rolling west on Border Road, Brown John sat between his sons in the driver’s box. Silent. Grave of expression except for a faint flicker of pride behind his eyes. His sons were filthy with dust and blood, exhausted, and grim faced. Their expressions had not been fashioned by their theatrical training, but by the day’s work. Today they had played roles they had never played before, roles they were going to have to master, and had taken to them nicely. The colorful wagon had also taken to its new duty: It now hauled the slimy, swollen cadavers of eight Kitzakk scouts tied down under a blanket on its bed. It was doing a real wagon’s work, and doing it in style, sporting a nauseous perfume.
Six
COBRA AGAIN
In the midnight darkness of The Shades, the Glyder Snake was as black as a buried stick, as invisible as a creek meandering through the ocean depths. It hid at the edge of an open track twenty feet wide and many miles long which ran in a straight line through the tall spruce, hemlock and pines. Faint moonlight cast a glow on the track’s ground cover of fallen leaves. The snake wiggled into the moonlight, lifted into an arc of a cold blue and pointed across the track. The glowing blue light revealed the jagged stone about two feet high supporting the tiny snake. The sounds of crushing leaves and twigs came out of the forest behind the Glyder Snake, then a massive blackness the height of the stone appeared beside it. The blackness had two fist-sized yellow eyes. It was the head of a full-grown Sadoulette python. Its body receded into t
he darkness for forty feet. The Glyder Snake was not big enough to serve as its tongue.
A graceful figure emerged from the forest, stopped in the yellow glow of the python’s eyes. The Queen of Serpents.
Her enveloping black robe was travel stained. Her almond eyes were cold and calculating. She studied the opposite side of the track. There spruce and hemlock rose to towering heights supported by thick exposed roots taller than herself. Between the roots were shadowed caves and passageways.
When Cobra’s eyes found what the Glyder Snake pointed at, they flickered with the first satisfaction she had felt since having sent the Dark One to Lemontrail Crossing seven days earlier. It was a wide section of roots grown together to form ribbed walls that were covered with moss, vines, plots of grass and beds of needles. These walls rose nearly thirty feet to vanish into black shadows cast by the branches of the trees they supported.
Cobra bent and stroked the Glyder Snake. “Well done, small one,” she whispered. “You may go now.”
She pulled her hood over her face and stepped into the moonlight, moved like a drifting shadow across the track. The python followed, a serpentine blackness as thick as a young pine. Reaching the wall of roots, she crept up one of its natural trails, and the giant snake slid up the roots into the darkness of the trees overhead.
The moonlight had left the sky by the time the Queen of Serpents found the cluster of hanging vines which concealed a recess big enough for a crouched man to enter. She felt around inside the recess, touched the edge of a man-made door, a string latch. She pulled it, pushed quietly on the door, but it resisted. She lowered the latch, placed her fingertips on the door, then moved them about until she sensed the thickness of a locking beam on the other side.
She took a breath, blew on the tips of her fingers and placed them carefully against the spot. She closed her eyes. Her body began to tremble. When the trembling reached her fingertips, she slid them across the door, and the sound of the sliding locking beam came from within. There was a dull clack of something falling to the floor beyond the door. Her eyes snapped open. She held still, listened for a long moment. No sound. Her tongue darted eagerly between her scarlet lips. Then she slid the unseen locking beam clear of the door.
