by Ty Johnston
Men rolled from their tables, toppled to the floor, screamed out in grief and surprise. The place was no longer silent and dull, but turmoil and mayhem reigned. Flames appeared dancing along one wall. A shrieking figure rolled into the fires, catching his tunic ablaze. Everywhere there was dismay as the unaware were brought abruptly to awareness with pain.
Bayne continued to swing his sword. More shouts and cries followed. The fire spread, growing along the long wall and spreading across the floor as if oil had been poured out. Shadowy figures struggled to their feet and made their way toward the exit or behind the bar or into the deeper darkness of the tavern that extended into the mountainside, anywhere there could be a possibility of freedom. Smoke was growing, building up gradually at first then rushing forth from burning wooden floors and walls and tables and chairs and burning people and their garments.
Algr used a chair to climb to his feet. He clutched at the air, his fingers clawing to reach for Bayne. “Stop this! Please!”
The warrior was some distance away by then, having shattered dozens upon dozens of the magic stones, but he heard Algr’s cries and swiftly returned to the man.
Flames illuminated the anger on Bayne’s face, the glow giving him a demonic appearance. “Flee form here, you fool,” he shouted to the tavern keeper, “and be thankful I do not gut you where you stand.”
A shove sent Algr reeling toward the front of The Knotted Mesh. The man was quickly lost in the disorganized chaos of the fleeing customers.
Bayne glanced about. The crowd was gradually forming into lines of the fearful, but the scrabble for escape was too intense to bring order to the chaos. Men were crawling over one another, their shouts cries for their mothers and fathers. The few women present were trampled or shoved up against the bar. Several enterprising patrons knocked aside bottles and mugs and climbed atop the bar itself, reducing the flow toward the exit but not enough.
The tavern had become like a bottle with the entrance the neck of the bottle and the crowd the cork. Bayne could see little at the doorway other than a mass of scrambling and clawing madmen fighting their way for the exit.
Meanwhile, the flames were fluttering about his heels and overtaking the ceiling above. Something had to be done. Bayne would have to remove the cork himself.
“Move!” the warrior yelled over the heads of the slinking mob.
As frustrated and desperate as the crowd was, a verbal assault did not help. They were all attempting to squeeze through the doorway at the same time, some fighting between themselves or climbing or scrambling over and around one another. Bedlam ruled.
Bayne cursed as he put away his sword. Then he charged. He would try not kill any more of these fools, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t rough them up. With a yell he slammed a shoulder into the back of a man, reeling the fellow off to one side. The momentum in Bayne’s muscled legs continued him forward where he shoved against another man, this one sent flailing over the top of the bar. Then another man went flying, and another was thrust atop a table. A woman was pushed out of the way.
Sensing something was happening, was approaching, cries went up among the mass of corked bodies. Terrified eyes gave fleeting looks back to the monster in chain wading toward them.
Bayne kept up his rush. A man went down beneath his boots. Another fellow was elbowed out of the way. A youth was lifted off his feet by a forceful shove and sent fluttering over a chair.
Those between Bayne and the door saw their doom approaching.
As if a demon were on their very tails, they pushed and twisted and shoved and kicked and thrust.
There was an audible popping noise. Then bodies began flailing their way through the door. Most were propelled outside by the force of those behind. Some were walked on or stomped on or ran upon. All wanted out of the way of the beast bearing down on them.
For the first time since entering, Bayne could see daylight. It was weak, but it streamed through the door over the heads of those scrambling away from him.
He kept pushing and shoving, bashing and punching.
Then, suddenly, he was at the fore of the mass. Those in the crowd remaining between Bayne and the exit charged out of his way or jumped aside. The door stood before him mere feet away. It was now empty of all.
Algr appeared from outside. He stood in the doorway, a dagger gripped underhanded, the weapon hoisted for attack.
Bayne did not hesitate. He snapped out a hand and grabbed Algr’s wrist, crushing bone with a squeeze of his fingers. Throughout this action Bayne did not stop moving. His left shoulder slammed into Algr’s nose, breaking it and spraying blood and sending the man rolling back into the sunlight off the tavern’s porch into the grass and dirt.
And Bayne was through. He was outside on the stone stoop. He stood atop the few steps there and stared about. Those from the tavern were running, fleeing the madman and disappearing into the woods or down the mountain trail. There were still others making their way out of The Knotted Mesh, but they gave good distance to the warrior and continued their own flight.
Algr lay on his back several feet from Bayne. The owner of The Knotted Mesh had dropped his flimsy weapon and was holding his nose with his good hand while clutching the broken wrist to his chest. Tears streamed down his face.
Flames were beginning to flicker through the slats of the tavern’s shutters and black smoke was already rolling out the top of the open doorway.
Eventually there were no former customers fleeing the establishment, all having made their way elsewhere along the mountain, and Bayne found himself alone with Algr.
The tavern keeper had not moved. He lay on his back, his eyes wet and staring at the smoke drifting over his head from the flames now snaking out the front door and making their way up the outside of building.
Bayne strode over to the man and stared down at him.
Algr blinked and rubbed away his tears with his good hand.
“You are welcome,” Bayne said.
“Welcome?” Algr sat up, propping himself on the ground with his good hand as blood continued to trickle from his nose to coat his chin. “For what should I thank you? For obliterating all that I held dear?”
“For freeing you,” Bayne said.
Algr sputtered, his anger and pain relinquishing his ability to form words. He appeared only capable of spitting and cursing and kicking at the ground.
Bayne waited patiently.
Eventually Algr calmed himself and was able to speak once more. “I did not need your freeing! I was happy and content as I was, as were the others under my care.”
Bayne snorted. “Not all who are slaves recognize the chains that bind them.”
“Slavery to what?” Tears sprang alive in Algr’s eyes again as he cried out, spittle flying from his lips and his tears and snot mingling with blood to form a stream of gore down the front of his shirt.
“It was a false world, Algr,” Bayne said, “a world without true meaning. A world of lies.”
The owner of the burning building went silent and lay on his back. His eyes closed. If not for the jerky rising and falling of his chest, Bayne would have believed him dead.
“As you wish,” the warrior stated, then he turned and walked away from The Knotted Mesh and its wounded owner.
Algr did not rise, nor did he speak or open his eyes. The flames continued clawing their way to the sky. Soon the structure that had been The Knotted Mesh was no more than a pile of blackened, broken timber along the mountainside.
If Bayne had looked back, he would have found Algr no longer there. But Bayne did not look back.
The warrior continued up the mountain road, a road of gravel that now rose sharply. Eventually he had to stop, but not because of any wish to do so.
His path was blocked. Boulders upon boulders, along with tons of soil and broken trees, now served as a wall against him.
There had been a road slide, an avalanche of unbecoming power.
Part IV: The Cave
The wall of rock
s would have seemed an insurmountable obstacle to overcome for any other man, but Bayne was not one to surrender to hopelessness. He stood with hands on hips for a lengthy while, studying the slide.
Bayne’s first attempt to circumvent this new impediment was the most simple. He tried to go around. But the mountain road was beyond being blocked. It was destroyed. It was as if a new, smaller mountain had been built along the path. There would be no simple bypassing of this new, smaller mountain. To go left meant a plummet to the treetops, now gray and cloudy and far below. To go right meant climbing straight up the side of the mountain, which Bayne was not opposed to attempting but only as a last resort.
Next the bald warrior put his muscles to work. He began lifting, one rock at a time, and tossing those rocks over the side of the mountain. His strength was beyond that of lesser men, thus he was capable of moving much heavier stones than might be expected, but even Bayne found his match with the largest of boulders. Also, whenever he would manage to move much of the rock, dirt and broken trees and scrub brush would roll or rain down from above to fill the hole he had just created. There seemed no way to win.
After an hour of tossing rock and seeing little progress, Bayne gave up on that route of attack. He remained fresh despite his limbs being oiled by sweat beneath the sun, but digging and moving rock was not the answer. There was too much rock, and the mountainside seemed to hold a personal grudge against Bayne, filling in wherever he had managed to create a fissure.
Climbing was the next option. Instead of tackling the mountain itself, Bayne opted for trying the lesser task of climbing the slide. His fingers reached up high and pulled as he planted a boot against a boulder the size of a small horse. Rocks came tumbling down. Grit and grime dropped into the big man’s eyes. Bayne cursed and backed away, spitting dirt. He eyed the situation further. If only he could find a spot that would hold him without dumping the slide’s contents onto his face.
A possibility appeared to one side, furthest out from the mountain proper. Bayne scanned the potential climb. It would be dangerous. His legs would be hanging in open air for most of the climb, and the fall was one he did not know if even he would survive.
No. That way held too high a risk. There had to be another route. He drifted to the far side of the avalanche, against the mountain itself. His eyes followed the top of the slide, over each boulder and rock and piece of grit. He couldn’t climb the slide itself for it would just fall apart beneath his hands and feet. He didn’t want to dare scaling the outside of the avalanche because there was too much risk, though Bayne did not fear his own death as much as he did never catching Verkanus.
He glanced up. The rim of a flat outcropping lingered in the haze high over his head. That rim ran left and right to disappear along the flanks of the mountain. It was the familiar road, continuing its route. It had to be.
Bayne glanced back the way he had come. The only other alternative open to him was to retreat down the mountain in hopes of finding another path. But he had seen no other paths. No, going back was not an option.
He reached out and gripped the side of the mountain, his sturdy fingers digging into dirt. He raised a boot and pressed it against stone. He pulled with his hands and held himself with his booted feet.
He was climbing.
The wall here was more sturdy than that of the rock slide. Next to no dirt came toppling into his face. Gravity was the main enemy, but Bayne was strong and his climbing skills showed experience. Fortunately it was not a sheer wall, but offered handholds aplenty in branches and crevices between rock.
Never once did he look down as he climbed. There was no need. He was going in the other direction, hand over hand and boot over boot.
Inches at a time did Bayne make his way up the side of the mountain. Rarely did he pause for more than a few seconds, and then he was scanning for a new, proper placement for his next grip. More than once he was hanging only by his fingers, and more than once was he balanced only on the tips of his toes or the balls of his feet.
It was a perilous ascension. Without aid of ropes and tools or magic, no mortal man could have accomplished such.
At moments, as his chest scraped stone and forced the chain links of his shirt to sink into his flesh, Bayne pondered his own ability to survive such a climb. After some little time, blood was beginning to seep from the ends of his fingers, making his trip all that more perilous. Scrapes too appeared along his bare arms and more than a few tears appeared in his garb, including a new rent along one side of his leather boots.
Still, he climbed on, his eyes always on the immediate task or staring up and ahead to what he reasoned must be another route along the mountain road.
A little more than halfway to his destination, Bayne finally rested for longer than at any other time during his climb. Despite the sweat dripping from his chin and running along his arms, he was not exhausted. He had paused, his feet planted solidly on separate flat rocks, to wipe away the blood now staining his palms. Leaning forward so his chest rested against the mountainside, he kept one hand gripping a hanging root while lowering the other hand to wipe it clean on his leggings.
The root snapped, broke.
Bayne fell.
He shouted as he clawed at the air and the side of the mountain. His fingers tore into dirt and scraped against rock, tearing away a half dozen finger nails and leaving scratches and slashes in the flesh of his hands.
What saved him from a longer fall was that he did not turn onto his back or side as he plummeted. Bayne’s feet always remained lower than the main of his body.
His boots landed on dirt then skidded out from under him. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Bayne lashed out with both hands, scrambling for anything to hold. His fingers clamped upon a branch, really a small tree, sticking straight out of the side of the mountain.
There was another snapping sound and a creak as the big man’s full weight caught on the end of the branch, but the branch held.
Bayne was suspended over the side of the mountain, his arms wrapping around the tree to hold him in place as his legs dangled. He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly, giving his mind and body a moment of relief from the shock of the sudden drop.
Slowly he opened his eyes and glanced down.
He had not fallen half the distance he had already climbed. There was that much for which to be thankful. But his hands were a near ruin, and as long as he needed them to hold onto the branch, his natural healing abilities would not prevail. There was still strength in him, enough even to finish the climb, but his fingers and palms looked as if they were raw meat. Even if he could withstand the stinging pain, the blood was washing over the flesh of his hands and would offer him no ability to form a solid handhold. And here, hanging by the strength of his arms alone, there was little to no opportunity for him to attempt tearing makeshift bandages from his own clothing. Nor did there appear to be any other options for covering and soothing his hands.
Worse was the fact that though he might not be able to climb up further, he was also in little condition to climb back down. He couldn’t hang there forever; his weight would eventually break the tree upon with he rested.
Bayne cursed. He was not one to deny the existence of the gods, though neither did he arbitrarily accept their being. Still, that day on that mountain, he cursed every one of them he could remember. From the Almighty Ashal who walked among men to the heathen gods of deepest, darkest jungles, Bayne lay his curses upon them all.
Then he closed his eyes and breathed in slowly to reserve his strength. Stronger and more sturdy than other men, he could hang from that branch for the longest of times. But eventually he might tire, or more likely the branch would break. But he could not do nothing. Bloodied hands, scraped flesh and all, he would have to try to climb.
Something brushed against his face.
Bayne opened his eyes. Hanging before him with one end laying across his arms was a rope of sorts, a braided cord appearing to be made of some sort of dark hair. He loo
ked up. The rope continued its length up the side of the mountain, disappearing over the lip of what Bayne guessed to be a furtherance of the road.
“Foolish little boy,” a silky feminine voice said from above, “for what are you waiting?”
Bayne asked himself the same question. Then he reached out and took hold of the braids. Being no fool, he tested the strength of the line before putting his complete weight and trust into the thing, but he found it sturdy and serviceable. Still, his hands were slippery from the blood and he feared the cord would slide between his fingers and leave him to a fall. To prevent such a tragedy from happening, he wrapped the rope of hair around his waist beneath his arms and tied his end into a knot. Then he tested the rope one more time. It seemed to hold.
Planting his boots against the side of the mountain once more, Bayne began to climb. Hand over hand he made his way up. Every so often one bloody hand would slip, but Bayne’s luck held and his other hand always kept a sturdy grip. The higher he rose, the easier the climb became. It was more like walking the side of the mountain than actual climbing, the rope of hair obviously aiding in his ascension.
Finally, after many tired minutes, Bayne reached the edge of the slip of stone above. He threw one leg over and pulled himself up, the strands of locks still wrapped around his trunk.
The surprise of what he found must have been evident on his face by the laughter of the woman seated before him. She was a beauty, dark-haired with coal-rimmed eyes shaped like almonds; she wore a simple black chemise that outlined her body well and revealed the pale flesh of her arms and neck. Her lips were like a flower, a rose, as red and seemingly as smooth as petals.
“Dumfounded?” she asked. Then laughed again.
Bayne stood and untied the hair rope from around him, letting it fall to his feet at the edge of the cliff. He glanced about and admitted to himself that yes, he was quite dumbfounded. Little here was as he had expected.
A woman he had expected, but not this exotic beauty who appeared as if a queen from a fairy tale. More surprising and of more immediate interest were his surroundings. Yes, he was on the side of the mountain, but there was no road here. The ledge upon which he stood was as wide as a small field but as narrow as the distance he could toss a rock. No road or path meandered away from either sides of this flat plane. It was disappointing.
