Outlanders 15 - Doom Dynasty

by James Axler

  Jaramillo named it Gideon and conditioned his peo­ple to pay it homage, to love it unquestioningly, even when it killed three of them in a four-year period. It was a damnable choice for Jaramillo to make, since for the holy serpents to be served properly, they re­quired people to attend to their needs.

  Sometimes if the hunting was poor, Gideon would slither into their village. The clansmen and the wom­en dropped to their knees and passively awaited their fate as the great snake selected a meal, as if his family of worshippers were nothing but a pack of rats. But by strict interpretation of the Ophidian Way canon, Gideon's venom slew only the ungodly, even though one of his victims had been a two-year-old child.

  Jaramillo convinced himself and his followers the sacrifices were part of a very old tradition. He knew the history of the Ophidian Way, as set down in Brother Mote's texts, did not derive so much from the Christian fundamentalist snake-handling sects of rural predark America as from ancient times—from.the days of Montezuma the sorcerer king and his sacred serpent, a biboron, a monster rattlesnake.

  The great divine serpent was worshipped in the black shadows of Aztec pyramids long before Amer­ica was discovered. The priests raised huge snakes, believing them all to be messengers of the gods. Ac­cording to the folklore of his people, the Indians of the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico sheltered one of Montezuma's divine serpents. The tale also main­tained that on special feast days infants were fed to the gigantic rattlesnake. Whether or not such a story was true, Brother Mote had promoted the same belief in sacred snakes when he created the Ophidian Way more than a century before. It was only a continuation of native American religion, and he borrowed heavily from the mythography.

  However, not only had the Ophidian Way lost many of its holy serpents since Mote's time, but the faith had lost almost all of its popularity, as well. Acolytes of the Ophidian Way were considered crim­inals, so the congregation didn't dare venture too near Port Morninglight and certainly not even within sight of the ville of Snakefish itself.

  Jaramillo was deeply offended that the ville bore the name of the birthplace of his religion, but its baron saw no hypocrisy in dispatching black-armored her­etics to hunt down adherents to the very order that the original ville had venerated. Some of the younger people occasionally wondered what it was like in the big-walled ville, but Jaramillo insisted the world be­yond their canyons and desert was filled with soul-shredding dangers. Their land was the only true land, and now blasphemers invaded it. Even the nearby ru­ins of the old predark town were forbidden to the clan. Seeing the houses, as overgrown and dilapidated as they were, could give them ideas of another way of life.

  Jaramillo continued to exhort his congregation, but he knew that mere words, no matter how passionately they were spoken, weren't sufficient to motivate the people to attack armed men—especially if they were the armored 'forcers in service to Baron Snakefish.

  Although it was not a holy day, Jaramillo took the medicine brazier from beneath the makeshift altar and prepared it for the ceremony of commitment. The bra­zier was a the huge, bleached-out skull of Azarel, one of the sacred snakes deified by Brother Mote during his ministry and elevated to the status of a holy relic.

  Despite its age, the skull still retained the pair of long hollow fangs curving down from the upper jaw. From a wooden box beneath the altar, Jaramillo took fistfuls of a dried, brownish green herb and crammed them into the empty sockets that once held Azarel's venom sacs. He touched a torch to the herbs until they began to smolder, then he blew gently to fan the sparks. A pungent, sickeningly sweet odor arose.

  Grayish white smoke boiled from the tips of the hollow fangs. As the vapors thickened, the women shook diamondback rattles and chanted, "Blessed be the fang and the hollow needle. Blessed is the crush­ing and the coil."

  Jamarillo called the men of the congregation for­ward and directed them to place their lips on the fangs and inhale the smoke. In pairs they did so, bending and sucking deeply, more than one succumbing to a severe coughing fit. The vapors produced by the burn­ing herbs were astringent and powerful.

  The herbal concoction had many names, but it was best known as Cannabis lupus, the werewolf weed. It was a rare narcotic, hard to find even in the hindmost regions of the Outlands. Composed of a mutated form of marijuana and mixed with peyote and telache, the weed stimulated the hindbrain, sometimes known as the reptile brain. It triggered an atavistic regression, allowing those who inhaled the fumes to wallow in ruthless bestiality. Its influence made men fearless and bloodthirsty, but while in its brutal grip, they could just as easily turn on their comrades as on an enemy.

  When it was his turn, Jamarillo deeply inhaled the hot, acrid smoke and felt the first deadly thrill of its effects touch him. He felt the hunger in him, the blood lust, thcstirring of the beast that lay so close beneath his skin.

  The torchlight danced on the upturned faces of his followers, their eyes glowing with the beautiful mad­ness. They laughed slobberingly, sounding more like yipping coyotes than riotous humans.

  At Jamarillo's command, they shambled to their wickiups and returned with their weapons, a collec­tion of stone-headed axes, clubs, chert knives and spears fashioned from lightweight wood. The women would not accompany them, since the order could not afford to lose any of mem. They were needed for breeding. Besides, in a struggle against infidels, they had no sense of proportion or restraint, even though a number of them could throw rocks with deadly ac­curacy.

  Mind clouded, madness singing in his blood, Jar-amillo screeched, "If they have defiled the sepulcher, you know what we must do!"

  His clan howled back, shaking their weapons to­ward the sky. "Righteous sacrifice!"

  Chapter 7

  Kane didn't completely lose consciousness, nor did he fall, but only because of the stone-knobbed wall at his back. Still, he wondered absently for a few sec­onds why the constellations wheeled so wildly in the heavens.

  It required another few seconds for the whirling, vertiginous feeling to settle down into an insistent throbbing, reminding him of a hangover he had suf­fered a year or so ago, just prior to his escape from Cobaltville.^

  Blinking hard to dispel the amoeba-shaped floaters swimming across his vision, Kane's night sight showed him monochromatic shaggy figures bounding from the top of one wall to the other, snarling with discolored, gapped teeth. They heaved rocks over their heads and hurled them down with fierce cries. They were all fairly small in stature, with slitted coal-chip eyes and leathery sun-browned skin that gave them the look of Amerindians.

  He heard Grant roar angrily, "No blasters! No blasters!"

  Struggling back erect, putting his feet beneath him, Kane began a shambling run toward the far end of the pass. The rocky ramparts were like the jaws of a trap, inexorably closing on the four people. He warded off stones falling from above, but a couple of heavy rocks struck him on his polycarbonate-encased shoulders and made him stagger drunkenly.

  He heard Domi yip in pain and anger, followed by a breathless cry from Brigid. He worried about her taking a blow to the skull, and he momentarily con­sidered dropping back to protect her with his armored body. But to do so would jam up Grant and Domi.

  Kane reached the mouth of the cleft and sprinted into open, sand-covered terrain. His surge of relief was instantly replaced by a jolt of fear. Digging in his heels, he rocked to such a sudden stop that Grant nearly slammed into him.

  Spread out in a semicircle, a horde of small, shaggy figures shrieked hysterically, throwing fist-sized rocks at the four outlanders. Kane caught only a few of the words, garbled as they were, but the crazed accusa­tions had something to do with slaying the sacred snakes and dragging shit over holy ground.

  More of the figures moved in, emerging from the shadows wielding stone-and-wood clubs. Their mo­tions were animalistic, partially bent over, eyes jerk­ing back and forth furtively. Though small in stature, their limbs rippled with twisted, knotted sinew and stringy muscle tissue.

  One of them thr
ust at Kane with a crude spear, the sharpened flint shard fitted into a notch at the end of the wooden shaft jabbing toward his face. Slapping it aside with his Copperhead, Kane delivered a snap kick to the man's groin, driving his testicles almost up to his navel.

  Another savage who came too close suffered a milder fate with the heel of Brigid's jump boot to the jaw, which splintered a few of his already rotted teeth.

  As the two shaggy men staggered away, one bent double and the other spitting blood and bone, stones began whizzing again. Grant and Kane put Domi and Brigid between them, forming a protective bulwark. Rocks bounced from their black exoskeletons without doing serious harm. Kane could not help but allot the half-naked wild men a certain amount of credit for their cunning—by dumping stones on them in the nar­row pass, he and his companions were forced out into the open, literally into the arms of the larger body.

  The barrageof stones ceased, and the small people glided around them, hefting spears and bludgeons in rope-muscled arms. A quick head count showed Kane at least twenty of them, perhaps more skulking out in the shadows. Even though the primitive weapons couldn't penetrate his and Grant's armor, they would be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, and the stone knives would seek weak points in their poly­carbonate sheathings.

  A man wearing a short, ragged mantle over his gaunt frame shrieked a torrent of gibberish at the four outlanders, his eyes blazing from beneath a wild tangle of hair. He bounded, leaped and gesticulated as if he were suffering a spastic fit. The wild-eyed and -haired savages slowly advanced, blood-chilling hissing noises issuing from their lips. Although they sounded more like imitations of faulty steam valves, Kane guessed they were sibilant vocalizations in­tended to emulate the hissing of serpents.

  "Blades," Grant snapped, drawing his combat knife from his boot sheath.

  Kane did likewise. Domi hadn't resheathed hers, and Brigid unsheathed her own knife, a Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger. As the hissing hit a high, whistling note like a score of teakettles on full boil, a knot of savages suddenly made a concerted rush, trying to bowl them over through numbers and mo­mentum.

  Grant lashed out with the barrel of his Sin Eater, the heavy frame crashing against a skull and shatter­ing it. The savage yelped, hands clasped to the bleed­ing split in his scalp and bone. Screaming, he fell to the ground in the path of two of his comrades. All three toppled in a tangle of thrashing limbs.

  Domi wielded her knife like a butcher's cleaver, chopping a thrusting spear haft in two, then driving the pommel into the wielder's face, breaking his nose. Her lips creased in a smile, and her eyes blazing, she moved like a wraith, constantly shifting position and stabbing and slashing as she did so. Two men went down, a belly and a throat spurting blood, with Domi's mocking laughter in their ears.

  A crude stone ax swung out of the mass of men toward Brigid's lower belly. She dodged it and kicked the savage's kneecap loose with the metal-reinforced toe of her boot. He hopped away, plucking at his maimed leg and howling in agony.

  Kane swung his razor-edge blade in a flat, fast arc. He felt the point drag through flesh, and a savage reeled away, his hands at his deeply gashed throat, blood bubbles bursting on his lips and squirting from between his fingers. Crimson droplets splashed over Kane's visor.

  The savages engaged in a reluctant, stubborn re­treat, snarling and hissing in rage. The wounded backed away, whining. Five near-naked bodies lay on the sand in widening pools of blood. The survivors didn't retreat far, just out of reach of the deadly knives in the fists of the four people. They glared through matted screens of hair, and the hissing sounds began anew."

  "We've got no choice now," Grant side-mouthed in a panting whisper. "We were lucky that time, but now they know what to expect. We'll have to use our blasters, or they'll chill us all."

  "I know," Kane agreed gloomily, gulping air. "Let's open up on full auto, cut a path, then run like hell. Brigid, Domi, you cover our backs."

  Domi nodded, finger curling around the trigger of her Combat Master. The fire of combat still burned brightly in her eyes.

  "So much for catching Pollard by surprise," Brigid said, breathing hard.

  "If nothing else," Kane replied, "maybe we can make it back to the redoubt before Pollard, and lay a trap for him there. But we have to stay alive long enough to do that."

  Grant nodded curtly. "Just give the word."

  Kane's gloved finger hovered over the trigger stud of his Sin Eater. The savages began another slow ad­vance, moving in a measured tread, spreading out around them in a wide circle. Their swart, dark faces were masks of implacable ferocity, their eyes glitter­ing with homicidal rage.

  Kane did not enjoy killing outlanders—he had done too much of it as a Magistrate—but now that blood was spilled, there was no hope of talking their way out of the situation. For whatever reason, these people had devoted their lives to this hard land. All they knew was that it belonged to them, and they'd keep it at the price of their own blood.

  Shooting to wound was not an option. The Sin Eater's rounds impacted against flesh at 335 pounds of pressure per square inch. Even a bullet striking a limb resulted in heart-stopping hydrostatic shock, so in order to escape the savages they would probably have to slaughter the majority of them.

  Brigid murmured musingly, "Most of those people look like they're related to an Indian tribe…interbred with indigenous Hispanics."

  "I don't give a shit if they've interbred with Mor­mons," Grant rasped. "Look at their eyes. They're fused out, flying high on something."

  "On three," Kane announced impatiently.

  Grant nodded shortly, raising his blaster. "Set."

  Kane eyed the distance between his Sin Eater and the nearest group of savages, took a deep breath and said, "One—"

  Even over the hissing emanating from more than a dozen mouths, a vibrating thrum was clearly audible. Kane caught only a brief, almost subliminal streak of movement flashing overhead. With a resonant, meaty thud, an arrow nearly four feet in length drove into the chest of a spear-wielding savage. It almost went completely through his torso.

  The impact smashed him backward, bowling three of his people off their feet. Another shaft was speed­ing through the air before the first target's body had settled to the ground.

  It struck a man in the clavicle with a grisly cracking of bone, penetrating into the lungs. He screamed like a wounded animal and went over on his back, blood fountaining from his open mouth.

  The savages uttered cries of confusion, which swiftly turned to fear when a third arrow struck a man in the upper thigh. The barbed point protruded from the other side of his leg, a squirt of bright, arterial-red blood accompanying it. The little man writhed, clutching convulsively at the shaft. Kane knew if he removed the arrow, the femoral artery would open up like a faucet and he would bleed to death in a matter of minutes.

  The shaggy-haired horde began a disorganized, clumsy retreat, hooting in terror at the murderous pro-jectiles that had felled three of their own in almost as many seconds. Kane did not dare turn his head to locate the source of the deadly arrows, but he could tell by the quality of workmanship, from the steel tips to the fletching, they weren't of Native American or­igin. The wood of the shafts caught highlights from the moon and stars, giving them the impression of being lacquered.

  The man wearing the ragged mantle screeched at his people, shaking his fists, obviously exhorting them to do their duty. The savages hesitated in their retreat, heeding his words if not anxious to immediately obey them.

  Another arrow flashed overhead, then punched through the right eye socket of the man in the mantle. The back of his head broke open, the point driving a wad of brain matter ahead of it The greasy mass spilled onto the sand, followed an instant later by his spasming body.

  A wail of horror exploded from the throats of the small, dark men. Almost as if they had rehearsed the action, the entire horde turned and raced away across the hard-packed sand. Kane figured the skull-impaled man had been a chief or
someone of importance, and his sudden death broke the nerve of his followers.

  Swiftly, he and his companions turned, their eyes seeking and then fastening on the ornately armored figure poised atop the rocky ramparts. It stood in a bizarre, almost hallucinatory contrast to the barren surroundings.

  Each segment of the armor was made from wafers of metal held together by small, delicate chains and overlaid with a dark brown lacquer. The overlapping plates were trimmed in scarlet and gold. Between flar­ing shoulder epaulets, a war helmet fanned out with twin sweeps of curving metal like dark wings seen edge-on in flight. The helmet bore a sickle moon on top, positioned between a slender pair of foot-long antlers of softly gleaming alloy.

  The face guard, wrought of a semitransparent ma­terial, presented an inhuman visage of a snarling an­imal, either a lion or a tiger. Obsidian eyes glittered through the slitted eyeholes.

  A quiver of the long arrows dangled from the fig­ure's shoulder. Two slightly curved long swords in black scabbards swung back from each hip, thrust through a broad_blue sash.

  Even as the four people gazed in astonishment, the masked figure raised a very long laminated bow, holding the string by an ivory thumbgrip. Surprisingly delicate hands and slim arms extended the bow for­ward, bringing it down from above the sickle moon mounted on the foreport of the helmet and to eye level in one smooth motion. The arrow was released, leav­ing the string of the bow humming musically.

  All of them heard the smack of impact and a gar­gling cry, but they did not take their eyes off the figure above them. Grant was the first to speak, in a hushed, hoarse whisper. "What the fuck is that?"

  Brigid supplied the answer in an equally muted tone. "Samurai."