Prisoner of the Horned helmet dd-1

by James Silke

  Earlier, when the Wenchmaster had seen the tail of the column stop far down the pass ahead of him, he had halted his wagon train. He was now barking orders, organizing a hasty retreat. The horses were unhitched. Both wagons and horses were turned around in place. Then the horses were hitched to the wagons they had formerly followed. This left one wagon without horses. It was unceremoniously shoved into the pass. The Wenchmaster then started his wagon train back up the pass toward the desert.

  Several miles down the pass from the retreating camp followers, General Kayat, tire commander of the invading column, still sat his horse at the head of the rear third. He had sent orderlies forward at five-minute intervals to investigate the delay, but none had returned. He had also ordered himself some hot tea. As an aide arrived with it, he dismounted and took the steaming cup. He walked casually to the edge of the gorge and raised it to his lips, glancing uneasily over the rim.

  He was standing on the section of the pass after which The Narrows was named, a thin stretch of road barely wide enough for the passage of one wagon. The open mouth of the gorge beside the road was no wider. Both road and gorge were walled by sheer rock cliffs rising toward the watching sun.

  The road ahead descended gently as it twisted down through the pass. General Kayat could see the entire middle third of the column with its large wagons of cages and chains, but only the rear end of the front third, a regiment of Spears in bright fuchsia armor positioned at a sharp turn. The soldiers were shouting and arguing. He watched several run back across the gap separating them from the middle of the column and gesture wildly to the commanders of the Chainmen and Cagemen. An argument began to roar loudly up the pass.

  Kayat tilted an ear toward these uncharacteristic sounds and carefully returned the half-empty cup to the waiting aide. Behind him, mounted and at attention, waited the three successful old campaigners who had advised General Yat-Feng on the raids against Coin, Bone Camp and the village of the Barhacha. Their eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Dedicated Kitzakk invaders in blood, bone and mind.

  Kayat remounted and turned his eyes to the front. His head was shadowed under the wide brim of his helmet, a place of grim resolve. For ten minutes he did not move or speak, then suddenly he stiffened with shock.

  At the sharp turn in the road ahead, the regiment of Spears had started moving back up the pass. Behind them a Black Hand regiment appeared around the sharp turn and ran wildly in among the retreating Spears. Both regiments promptly panicked, plunged across the wide interval of empty road separating them from the wagon train of cages, and pushed into and over the wedged wagons. Their drivers, showing no skill at backing up, panicked the horses. Several threw themselves, their drivers and the wagons they pulled off the edge of the road into the gorge. As they fell, they ricocheted off the narrow rock walls again and again. Before they had fallen halfway, there was little left of them for the sun to shine on.

  The remaining wagons backed up into each other, and into the side of the road. Wheels broke and wagons collapsed, causing a huge roadblock. It continued to grow as more and more soldiers retreated around the sharp turn, propelled by still unseen regiments retreating down the gorge. It was a formation the sun had never seen the Kitzakks use before, but which it knew well. It was designed by panic.

  Blocked by the broken crowd of wagons and cages, the soldiers quickly jammed up all the way back to the sharp turn. There they collided with the surging crowd behind them. Fighting broke out, and bodies began to drop away from the bunch like overripe grapes to fall into the gorge. Others dangled from the road edge, clinging to one another. Suddenly the bunch buckled, burst apart and fell in clusters into the gorge.

  At that moment the huge Barbarian and his strongmen began to heave rocks down from the cliffs above.

  General Kayat, seeing the shadows cast by the descending rocks, stared up in horror as the young commander of the wagon train of cages reached him. The commander, sweating and shaking, saluted, then started to speak, but stopped as he heard the falling rocks arrive and looked back at his wagon train. His cages and wagons were being smashed by huge boulders. His drivers were being crushed and knocked into the gorge. He turned to General Kayat for instructions.

  General Kayat’s saddle was empty. The general was half buried in the road under a large boulder. A bigger boulder hit the general’s boulder and sent it rolling toward the edge of the road taking the Kitzakk with it. Bits of the general’s bloody armor were crushed and wedged in cracks of the boulder. He pounded the rock incessantly as it fell into the gorge.

  The young commander, aghast, turned in desperation to the old greybeards. The expressions on their faces made it clear that they would not, could not, consider retreating. The commander could only stare in bafflement, but the sun understood. The golden orb had seen and admired such men before, men who had made the Kitzakk Horde strong, who had built the empire. A Kitzakk never panics. Never turns back.

  The young commander groaned with despair and fled past the old men. As he did, a boulder flattened him. A moment later an avalanche swept the greybeards out of their saddles and all four sailed resolutely into the gorge.

  As they fell the expressions of the old soldiers did not change. Not until they met the rocks far below. But this was not their decision. It was made by the rocks.

  Fifty

  HIGH BRIDGE

  In the late afternoon, a team of four hauled an olive green wagon up The Narrows. It was well above the section of the pass where the Kitzakk column had panicked. The road was empty except for a cloud of brown dust chasing the wagon. Cool shade now filled the gorge giving it a savage unity and size. The wagon was infinitesimal against the sheer rock cliff, like a roach skittering over the wall of a great hall. Nevertheless there was a plunging vitality to it, as if the same forces of nature which had conspired to wrench open the earth to create the gorge had been brought into play for the single purpose of providing the wagon with a road.

  The wagon caromed and skidded around a sharp turn, and pulled up short of Bone, Dirken and the Grillard strongmen who blocked the road with their weapons leveled. The dust billowed over the wagon, concealing it and the driver as he roared with delight within its dusty embrace. The hard faces of the Grillards broke with smiles and chuckles, and they crowded forward as Brown John rose up out of the dust with widespread arms, shouting. “Victory! The pass is ours! From here all the way to the forests!”

  He bowed, and they, knowing a cue when they saw one, cheered wildly and began hugging, dancing and throwing caps and weapons into the air. The celebration had begun.

  Brown John, in a soaring voice, pronounced over the joyous din, “My brave, brave, brave Grillards, this is a day of days! The world has been turned upside down and we, you, and our champion, have done the work of it.”

  He pivoted in a dance to the music of their joy and glory. Then a drumming, pounding beat, rising out of the pass below, joined in. The Grillards rushed to the side of the gorge and looked down into the pass.

  The Barbarian Army, draped in the fuchsias, scarlets and vermilions of plundered Kitzakk armor, were tramping up The Narrows at a loud steady pace, a confident one. It now carried weapons of hard steel.

  Behind the army trailed horses and wagons heaped with plundered provisions, armor and weapons. In the distance new arrivals were running up the pass to join the victors.

  Bone and Dirken climbed up beside the old man for a better view. Brown John threw his arms around them. “The Gods are in attendance, lads, and our cast is swelling.”

  Bone and Dirken turned their awed, flushed faces to their father. His cheeks were apple red and his smile as reckless as an infant’s. They had never seen him like this before, and it unsettled them.

  “I do not boast,” Brown John continued, “but it is as if the birds themselves had played a part, carrying word of our victory to the world. New volunteers were arriving even before we had time to rebuild Thin Bridge. I truly believe that before nightfall our ranks will have doubled!”
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  The sons, making sure their father could see them, winked at each other playfully, mocking his childish exuberance. Catching their exchange, Brown John’s eyes twinkled. Then they sobered as he looked thoughtfully at the whole scene: at his clan shouting encouragement, at the advancing army, at the dark stains of blood around the clearing, at a scatter of Kitzakk dead, at two new graves heaped with rocks. Then, solemnly, he raised his eyes to High Bridge. It was still standing, undamaged. His Grillards, by advancing over the cliff tops, had reached it before the escaping Kitzakks and saved it. He caught his sons’ attention and with a calm yet significant gesture, indicated the structure. “You have done a brave piece of work,” he allowed. “Not having to rebuild it is going to save precious time. Now, where is Gath?”

  Dirken was quick to answer. “He went on ahead, to the fort at the top of the pass.”

  “Oooh!” Brown John’s brow crinkled.

  “He’s gone after the girl,” Bone added.

  Dirken pointed at a Kitzakk tower mounted above the pass. “They’ve got signal towers all the way to their fort.”

  “They’ll see him coming hours before he reaches it,” the old man muttered to himself, “but that may be to his advantage.”

  He stepped up onto the wagon seat with extended arms and in stentorian tones demanded attention. When he got it, his voice resounded through the hushed crowd.

  “You are to be congratulated. All of you.” Cheering interrupted him, and he paused, smiling, until it stopped. “There is an entire Kitzakk column lying dead back there in the pass. A full sixth of the Kitzakk Desert Army.” There was more cheering, but he continued, shouting over the rapturous response. “The Outlanders have not suffered such a defeat in a hundred years!”

  The group went wild, hooting and whistling, and he let them. When the hysteria had subsided somewhat, he raised a triumphant finger to the sky and bellowed, “From this day forth, our champion, Gath of Baal, is going to be known forever for what he truly is. The Lord of the Forest! Invincible.”

  The Grillards cheered and chanted. “Gath! Gath! Gath!”

  Dirken frowned nervously at his father, and whispered, “That’s crazy. If the Kitzakks are up there waiting for him behind palisade walls, not even a nine-armed god would stand a chance.”

  “We will see,” Brown John replied. “We will see.”

  There were tears welling in his eyes, and his sons shifted uncomfortably. But they knew why. His Grillards were no longer merely strutting actors, but real men who had worked the brutal stage of life. The equals, perhaps even the best, of all the men in the forest.

  Dirken fidgeted, then brought his father’s indulgent musing to an abrupt stop. “Are we just going to stand around and cheer, or do something?”

  Brown John blinked, then wiped a cheek with the back of a hand and looked sternly at his sons. “You stay here, Dirken. When the army arrives, keep it moving at a steady pace and don’t let any of the Wowells, Cytherians or Barhacha get ahead of you. They are desperate to rescue their women and children, but if they race ahead and try to do it by themselves, we are lost. The army must be held together.”

  Dirken asked respectfully, “What do we do with the prisoners?”

  “There aren’t any.” The bukko watched with satisfaction as Dirken’s and Bone’s mouths dropped open. They both swallowed hard, then Dirken hurried off to meet the arriving army as Brown John hollered at a group of strongmen, “You five, get up in the wagon. The work’s up ahead.”

  The Grillards piled aboard. Bone cracked the whip and the wagon rumbled south across High Bridge waving its tail of dust behind it like a proud banner.

  Fifty-one

  THE FANGKO SPEAR

  Gath stood motionless in the deep shade. He was several hundred feet from the heights of the cataracts. Here the trail no longer followed the gorge. It zigzagged up through rock walls to an opening about twenty feet wide and thirty feet high at the top of the pass. The mouth of The Narrows. It was closed by a wooden palisade and gate that glowed with the orange-gold light of the evening sun.

  The helmet sagged heavily in front of his heaving body so that he looked like a bull ready to charge. His chain mail steamed. His eyes, hard slices of white within the shadows of the metal, were active and wary. Sensing danger, yet not seeing it.

  A wall-walk formed the top of the gate. It was crenellated, as were the palisades running along the tops of the cliffs on both sides of him. No soldiers stood on the ramparts. No glitter of steel betrayed any hiding behind them. Above the gate and along the palisades poles stood at regular intervals. Dangling from them were smouldering shreds of cloth; charred, stringy remnants of Kitzakk regimental flags. They fluttered timidly on the light breeze. Their modest flapping gave the silence size and weight.

  Beyond the gate spires of smoke rose against the yellow sky, caught the breeze and were carried down the pass. Gath sniffed at the familiar cedar aroma, then his eyes focused on the top of the signal tower rising beyond the gate. It was only a small open-topped wooden box standing on a single tall wooden pole, and there was no sign of anyone there, either.

  He looked back down the pass at an identical signal tower where the gorge turned away from the road. He had seen no sign of life in it before, and there was none now.

  The prospect of having no one to fight maddened his blood, and his muscles convulsed as smoke drifted from the helmet’s eye slits. Then his head began to throb with pressure, and he strode recklessly to the gate with his axe slightly to the front, eager for blood. He pushed at the gate, but it was locked. Frustrated, he hammered it with the blunt end of his axe, then kicked it. No one responded. He slung his axe on his back, and drew two daggers. Holding them overhead, he jumped up and drove one into the wood. With that dagger bearing his weight, he lurched higher, driving in the second with his other hand. He pulled the first dagger free, stabbed it higher into the wall. The muscles of his back bunched; the tendons of his arms corded with power. The chain mail shirt kicked up like metallic wings around his hips as he lurched and swung. Reaching the crenellations above the gate, he hauled himself onto the wall-walk. Panting, with sweat dripping from the edges of his chain mail, and smoke drifting from the helmet, he studied the interior of the fort.

  Billowing smoke obscured the center of its large courtyard, but he could make out a second gate at the far side. It was open, and a section of the palisade beside it had been torn down to widen if. Beyond it the flat bone-brown body of the desert spread toward a distant horizon where golden dust clouds tumbled in the fading sunlight. Former residents leaving in a hurry.

  Apart from a few vultures perched on the walls, the fort appeared deserted and barren. The corrals, stalls and shops built under the palisade ramparts appeared empty, as did scattered piles of cages. Abandoned sacks of grains, baskets of eggs, dried meat, hay and wine jars spilled from the storehouses. Here and there were hastily discarded saddles, harnesses and wagons. Fires had been started under racks of spears and a wagon full of crossbows and bolts in an attempt to destroy them. But they had been built too hastily and gone out. Only the one at the center of the fort smouldered with dense smoke.

  Gath waited until the pressure in his head abated, then jumped into the yard and entered a storehouse. He poured a half-dozen raw eggs into his mouth, smearing the sticky mess over the face of the helmet. He pushed in two handfuls of dry meat while emptying a wine vessel. Gorged and sated, he looked around uncertainly for a cistern to wash off the mess, but saw none. Unnerved by the silence and lack of movement, he lumbered impatiently toward the smoke-filled center. A wind swept in through the desert gate and, with a swish, lifted the cloud of smoke like a curtain to reveal a muscular black stallion standing on a dirt mound at the precise center of the yard.

  The animal was huge and thick chested, with legs the size of knotty tree trunks. A powerful, rounded neck supported the short-nosed, blunt head. Its eyes were intelligent but wild. Its forelegs straddled a dead Kitzakk officer clasping a pole mounted with
two red horsetails.

  In a row beside the dead man were four more bodies, Kitzakk officers uniformed in the bright reds of various regiments. They were facedown except for one who kneeled as if praying. Sprawled half off the front of the mound was a soldier of the Skulls. He held the hilt of a bloody dagger in his right fist. The blade was buried in his chest.

  Gath recognized the style of spear used for the executions. It was a Fangko, a spear designed with heavy barbs to pull out the rib bones and heart muscle. The spear, thick with the gore of human organs, lay beside the soldier. A ritual killing performed by their own.

  The animal snorted and stomped the ground as Gath approached, obviously not caring for his messy appearance and smell. Or was it audaciously and foolishly defending its fallen master?

  Gath kept coming.

  The stallion reared. Its neck corded with muscle; its distended nostrils blew. Its hooves beat up the sky and plunged down, hammering the earth between the officer and Gath.

  Gath halted three strides short of the stallion and looked it dead in the eye. “It’s useless to argue. I need your help.”

  The horse bolted forward, snorting and kicking up dust. Gath stepped in and drove a fist into the side of its head, like a hammer. The resounding impact made the stallion concede no more than an inch of ground. It charged and butted Gath in the chest with its head. Gath conceded no more than the horse had, and grabbed two fistfuls of mane. The stallion lifted its head bringing Gath off the ground, kept charging and drove Gath into a wooden railing. It splintered, and Gath dropped to the ground. Not liking it there, he leapt up and circled the horse’s neck with his massive arms, taking a firm hold on its mane. The stallion snorted and whinnied. Gath, with his legs driving and arms twisting, forced the animal backward, then with a growling surge of strength, threw it down on its side beside the dead officer and held it against the ground.