The young woman who arrived with them was, if not beautiful, certainly striking in appearance. She was so thin that Iolanthe thought her figure might have been mistaken for that of a boy without a corset and bustle. Her wavy black hair reached well past her shoulders, and framed a cute face with a small nose and extremely large, sad eyes. Her olive skin was far more tanned than was considered fashionable, no doubt due to the lengthy journey from Freedonia, and she had a deep scar across her left cheek down to her chin.
“Miss Hertling, I presume,” said Iolanthe, stepping forward to shake hands.
No sooner had she taken the young woman’s hand than a dozen gunshots rang out in the distance. It was obvious that they came from beyond the protective wall. Iolanthe broke into a broad smile.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Zeah, it looks as though we will be having a celebration tonight.”
“Yes, Miss. A welcome one.”
A young soldier burst into the tent, running into the back of Miss Hertling, and knocking her forward. She would have fallen completely to the floor had not Professor Calliere caught her.
“Kafira’s eyes!” snapped Iolanthe. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
“Sorry ma’am,” said the soldier, nervously. “Sergeant Clark’s compliments, ma’am. There is a large force of lizardmen approaching from the southeast. The sergeant has already called for all troops to man the ramparts. And the lizardmen have rifles, ma’am.”
“Where the hell did they get rifles?” wondered Calliere.
“From our troops,” said Iolanthe, gravely. “How many lizardmen are there?”
“We don’t know, at least a thousand.”
“Tell the sergeant to hold the wall,” she ordered. The soldier then ran out of the tent. Turning to the women, she said, “Thirty-five men aren’t going to hold the wall for long. Get everyone moving. We’re evacuating out to the end of the peninsula.”
“What are we going to do there?” asked Dr. Kelloran.
“We’re going to make our stand. Zeah, get some of the men and distribute as many guns and as much ammunition as we have. Go. Mercy, come with me.”
Iolanthe stepped out of the tent and marched purposefully toward the wall. Professor Calliere followed along behind her. When she reached the wall, she gathered up her dress and extensive petticoats into her left arm and used her right to climb up the ladder to the walkway that served as a firing platform twenty feet off the ground. Sergeant Clark was there.
“Where are they?” she asked, panting for breath and peering out of a firing port.
“Still mostly in the trees, but they’re out there.”
“And your men?”
“I’ve got them spread out fifty feet apart, but that means we’ve only got a fifth of the wall covered.”
“I can do the math,” she snapped. “You aren’t going to fight them from here. Just make them think you are. I want you to keep them cautious long enough for the colonists to get out onto the peninsula. Send four men to break the machineguns out of storage and set them up at that bottleneck four hundred yards north of the dock. That’s the only place we have a hope of holding them off.
“Mercy, you know the place, don’t you?”
Calliere nodded.
“Good. You supervise. Get those machineguns set up.”
Calliere nodded again and rushed back down the ladder. Sergeant Clark called four men and ordered them to follow the professor. Iolanthe turned back to the soldier.
“I’ll send word to you when to fall back,” she said. “Remember Clark. You cannot fall back until those colonists are out near the coast. If those tribesmen get past our trap, it will be a bloodbath.”
“I understand.”
Iolanthe climbed back down the ladder and walked briskly back to the tent. Hundreds of people were now rushing here and there. Children were crying. Men were swearing. There was some panic. At least the bulk of the people were already moving north up the length of the headland. Stepping past the tent flap, she went behind the desk and opened the lowest drawer to pull out a large revolver. Turning around, she opened a trunk on the ground behind the desk and pulled out a belt with an empty holster. She slung it around her hips, tightening it to the furthest belt hole. Then she stuffed the pistol into the holster. Finally she reached back into the chest and pulled out her twelve gauge shotgun. Popping it open to make sure it was loaded, she flipped it shut again and headed out of the tent.
Outside, Iolanthe ran into Suvir Kesi, almost literally. The wizard, dressed as usual in his bright colored Mirsannan clothing and fez, looked befuddled, as though he had no idea of what was going on.
“Get up on the wall!” she yelled at him. “Make yourself useful, for Kafira’s sake.”
She marched north along the white gravel path that led to the tip of the peninsula. Along the way she called out orders to colonists nearby. “This way! Hurry Up! Somebody get that child! Move!” As she walked, she overtook Saba Colbshallow, who was leading a string of children, locked hand-in-hand, northward.
“Saba. As soon as you get these children to safety, find me.”
“Yes, Miss,” he said.
She reached the point in the finger of land jutting out into the sea, where it narrowed to half a mile. Professor Calliere and the four soldiers were already there with two large wooden crates. She pointed.
“One here and the other at the other side of the rise. I think that will give us the best possible coverage.”
A sudden volley of gunfire erupted to the south.
“Hurry up,” she ordered.
The rush of people passing the bottleneck in the peninsula thinned and then slowed to a trickle. Saba Colbshallow popped up at Iolanthe’s elbow.
“I have a dangerous mission for you. Are you up to it?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Good. Run up to the wall and inform Sergeant Clark that it is time for him to fall back. Then get yourself back here as quickly as you can run. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Miss.” Saba took off at a full run, directly toward the attacking lizardmen and the defending soldiers.
Iolanthe watched the young man running south, and then turned to examine the progress of the soldiers. The two men near her had set up a machinegun on a tripod and were busy loading the end of a belt of ammunition into the side. The two other soldiers along with Mercy Calliere had just reached the distant spot for the second machinegun. As she well knew, having paid for both, the two gunmetal blue and gold weapons were Victory M1896 water-cooled .303 calibers, capable of firing two hundred sixty-two rounds per minute. Turning and spotting Zeah, Iolanthe ordered him over to her.
“How many guns did you find to pass out?”
“A few dozen. Most of the rifles went with Master Terrence and Master Augie.”
“Have them line up across here.” Her fingers formed a line between the two machineguns and some thirty feet behind.
No sooner had she said this than she observed Saba Colbshallow running back towards her from the south. Close behind him came the first of the soldiers, though he soon left them behind. Sergeant Clark’s men hurried along, but there was quite a bit of space between them, and only twelve had reached her when she saw the first of the lizardmen headed in her direction. The aborigines were moving much more cautiously and hence more slowly than the humans. Even so, Iolanthe saw a couple of the men cut down from behind as they ran.
“Take charge of the firing line,” she ordered Sergeant Clark, when he reached her.
Glancing to her left, she saw that Calliere had the machinegun station ready at the far end. There were no more soldiers headed her way, but the lizzies were advancing en masse now. They had apparently breached the protective wall, which after all had been designed to keep out roaming dinosaurs, and not as a military fortress. Many of the reptiles were moving through the barracks and storage buildings and the tents, no doubt looking for plunder, but hundreds were moving on the colonists.
“Fire,” ordered Iolanthe, when the
reptiles were within fifty yards of her.
The deep staccato sound of the machinegun split the air and a wave of death spread across the promontory. Seconds after the first had begun, the second machinegun joined in. The lizardmen had faced gunfire before. Some of them even carried rifles, which they pointed and fired awkwardly toward the humans. None of them had faced the horrifying devastation of a machinegun. Some turned to run. Scores were cut down. The rest dropped to the ground and found cover where they could. The closest began to launch their own missiles in the direction of the machineguns. Some of those were cut down. Hundreds of other lizardmen moved forward, now low to the ground, to join their fellows.
“My turn?” said a deep voice in Iolanthe’s ear.
She turned to look into Zurfina’s large grey, charcoal-lined eyes.
“It’s time you earned your keep.”
“Very well.”
Using both hands, Zurfina plucked the air near her face, as though she were plucking invisible objects from around her head. Then she squared her feet, straightened her shoulders, and raised both hands. When she spoke, her voice seemed to reverberate through the air as though it were mechanically enhanced.
“Uastium uuthanum destus pourthanium paj uutestos err.”
Nothing seemed to happen for a moment. The machinegun continued to fire. The colonists with guns, and the soldiers who were sprinkled amongst them, fired their guns. More lizard men began throwing spears. Iolanthe looked at Zurfina with a raised brow.
“Wait,” said the sorceress, smiling serenely. “This will be really good.”
Iolanthe wouldn’t have noticed how it started except that she just happened to be looking at a particularly garishly colored lizzie warrior, painted one side completely black and the other side with red and black stripes. Blood began to run from his large mouth and both nostrils, and she thought he must have been hit by a bullet. Then pustules began forming all over his body, which burst, spraying a ghastly purple ooze on the warriors around him. Finally his eyes popped out of his head, and he sprayed the same purple ooze from the eye sockets. Those tribesmen who had been near him began to experience the same symptoms and then others spreading out from that spot. Soon scores and then hundreds of the lizardmen were perishing in a most disgusting way. Iolanthe noticed that even the plants around the unfortunate victims were dying and decomposing into rot and decay.
“I need some survivors,” said Iolanthe.
“Oh, there are always a few,” replied Zurfina. “I’m going to go lie down. Oh, don’t go over there for a while.”
Two hours later most of the colonists were back near their barracks. The soldiers were again manning the walls and watching for trouble, this time with the machineguns mounted and ready on the battlements. More than a hundred people had been detailed to pile up and burn the rapidly decomposing reptilian bodies. As instructed, they wore heavy gloves and didn’t touch the purple puss oozing from the corpses. The final count was one thousand twenty dead lizardmen. Nobody knew how many had run away back into the redwood forest. Iolanthe couldn’t even stand to think about the putrescent bodies. When she had seen them close up, she had lost her breakfast. Twenty-seven humans had died—sixteen soldiers who had fought to hold off the cold-blooded hordes and eleven colonists who had not managed to get to safety.
Fifteen captive lizardmen, tied hand and feet, knelt in a line near the headquarters tent. Iolanthe stood in front of the first, her shotgun cradled in the crook of her arm. Sergeant Clark and two of his men stood behind her. At a greater distance, dozens of colonists watched, many of them still armed.
“Do you know Brech? Do you understand me?” she asked. The lizardman made no move of recognition. Pulling the shotgun stock to her shoulder, she shot it in the face. If flopped over dead, with little left of its head. Heedless of the splattering of blood on her face and dress, Iolanthe took one step to the right and faced the next lizzie, who was fairly dripping with the blood and bits of brain of the first aborigine.
“Do you know Brech? Do you understand me?” she asked. The lizardman began to hiss. She shot it in the face too.
“This is going to take forever,” she said, opening the breech of the shotgun, dropping the two spent shells on the ground and reloading it.
“I can probably help,” said a small voice behind her. Iolanthe turned around. “Senta, right?”
“Yes,” said the sorceress’s young apprentice, like her mistress, all decked out in black.
“How can you help?”
“I can understand what they say.”
“That’s right! She can!” called a brown-haired boy from thirty feet behind the girl.
“If you can understand what I am saying,” said Iolanthe to the lizardmen, slowly and with emphasis. “Nod your head.” Two of the painted creatures nodded.
Turning to Sergeant Clark, she said. “Take these two to my tent. Kill the rest.”
Iolanthe guided Senta by the shoulder into her headquarters tent. She took the girl with her behind her desk. Two soldiers dragged one of the lizardmen into the tent and Sergeant Clark and two colonists dragged the other in after. Moments later a flurry of gunfire announced the execution of the remaining reptiles. Sergeant Clark stayed, but the others went back outside. They were replaced by Zeah, Yuah, Mercy Calliere, and Egeria Lusk, who stepped into the tent and moved to stand in a row along the side.
“Can I speak to you, Miss Dechantagne?” asked Zeah. He stepped close enough to whisper in her ear. “One of the bodies, I mean, one of the women found dead. She wasn’t killed by a spear. She was stabbed. She was stabbed like Egeria and the women on the ship.”
“I don’t have time to deal with this now,” said Iolanthe.
Zeah looked unhappy, but he stepped back in line with the others.
“What do you need to do?” Iolanthe asked the girl.
Senta stepped out from behind the desk and walked fearlessly over to the lizardmen.
“Sembor Uuthanum,” she said, then touched first one lizzie and then the other, on their shoulders, with her right index finger.
“Do you know what happened to the soldiers that left here thirteen days ago?” Iolanthe addressed the lizardmen.
They both began hissing in their language. Senta listened and then translated.
“They say the soldiers fought their king and his warriors near the city of Suusthek. All of the soldiers were killed, except two, who were captured.”
“Terrence,” said Iolanthe and Yuah at exactly the same moment. Then at the exact same moment, they both said. “Augie.” The two women looked at each other.
“Are the two captives still alive and uninjured?”
“They said that something happened to them or something was done to them, but I can’t figure out what they mean. They say that ‘their power’ was taken away.”
Yuah made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob.
“They say,” continued Senta. “The men will be sacrificed to their god Hisssthisss….Histuthuss… I can’t pronounce his name. Anyway, they say they will be sacrificed to him on the next bright face. I think that means the next full moon.”
“How long till the next full moon?” asked Iolanthe.
“Thirteen days,” replied Calliere.
Iolanthe turned around and opened the trunk on the floor. She pulled out the wooden sword, encrusted with tiny blades made of volcanic glass, which had been presented to her by the lizzie chief. She hefted it in her hand to test its weight. She slowly stepped around the desk to stand in front of her two prisoners.
“Now we are going to find out exactly where the two soldiers are being held,” she said, “and we are going to find out exactly how to get there.”
Chapter Twenty-One: The Rescue
Senta walked up the steps of the stone pyramid, her bare feet making no sound. She moved quickly and carefully. Though there were lizardmen guards placed on either side of the stairs on every tenth step, they did not see her. Her body was completely invisible and didn’t even
cast a shadow in the bright light of mid-morning. Up ten more steps, between two more guards the little girl continued, constantly watching to see if the reptiles would notice something—a sound, a moving pebble, her scent. But they didn’t notice anything. The sounds of the vast city drowned out any small sounds that she made. The smell of wood fires burning, beasts of burden on the streets, and most of all the waste of fifty thousand primitive people safely obscured her smell. Up two hundred forty steps, past forty-eight guards, she finally reached the top of the bloodstained, stone staircase.
At the top of the pyramid, Senta looked around and shivered. The square, white stone temple that sat on top of the immense structure was carved with bizarre and inhuman forms—combinations of lizardmen and other animals, engaged in all manner of disgusting activity. Far more distressing however, were the human body parts hanging above and to either side of the open doorway. Human arms and legs and human heads, attached by the hair or through protruding tongues were tied up with thin ropes made of woven grass. The temple entrance was dark and frightening, like the gaping maw of some bloody and horrible creature.
Shaking, Senta moved into the darkness of the structure anyway. The horrifying look of the place outside was nothing next to the horrifying smell of the place inside. The stench of urine, both human and reptilian, was overwhelming. She could also smell sweat, human sweat, since the lizardmen being cold-blooded did not perspire. And she could smell blood, mammal blood, reptile blood, new blood, old blood, forever blood.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see that the walls were decorated with carvings very much like those on the outside of the temple. Here in many places they were covered up though by colorfully painted and died animal skins, stretched wide, and in a few places by blankets of brightly hued bird feathers. Two men were in the middle of the room on their knees; their arms stretched straight back behind them. Ropes bound the men’s wrists and then stretched up to a stone in the ceiling, twisting the men’s arms back cruelly. Looking up, Senta could see that the stones in the ceiling, one directly above each man, had been carved into the likeness of a lizardman or dinosaur face. Each face had its mouth open and a tongue sticking out. The ropes that held the men in their kneeling positions, no doubt at the cost of tremendous pain in their arms, shoulders, and chests, were attached through holes in the tongues of the carved faces.
The Voyage of the Minotaur Page 30
