Wrath of Kerberos tok-9

by Jonathan Oliver

  “The ink is that of the chasm squid,” Kelos confided in Silus. “It has unique properties that will make the translocation that much smoother. Really, you’ve no idea how fascinating it is for me to see a practitioner such as Keldren at work.”

  Silus would have shared in his friend’s enthusiasm, were it not for the memories of the pain the elf wizard had inflicted upon him in the course of his experiments. But Kelos trusted him, and that was what mattered.

  Emuel didn’t appear quite so convinced by the wizard’s performance. The eunuch stood slightly apart from the group, his arms wrapped tightly about himself, his face closed. Out of all of them, Silus felt that Emuel had suffered the most. He was still barely in his teens and already he looked like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders.

  “Gather close,” said Keldren, “and link hands.”

  The last time that Silus had been involved in a ritual circle, most of the participants had been immolated, so it was with some trepidation that he took Katya’s and Dunsany’s hands. Keldren stood in the middle of the circle, the paper in his hands.

  “If you close your eyes, you may find this less disorientating.”

  Even so, Silus kept his open. And when reality began to fold around him in a fractured and nightmarish origami, he wished he hadn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY- TWO

  Khula had seen it come down several days ago. Its impact shook the mountain and set off a landslide that would have buried their village, had it not been for the intervention of one of their shamans. Early one morning, part of the sky had simply disappeared, with a sound like a great sheet tearing, revealing a ragged black patch of… nothing. Khula had looked into the void, wondering whether the whole of the heavens was going to tear away, when a light had blazed out of the darkness, burning with such intensity that she had to shield her eyes against the glare. Through the gaps between her fingers, Khula made out the suggestion of wings and a horned snout, and she thought she knew what was falling to earth. When the mountain had finished groaning and the dust had settled, Khula sent a party of scouts to report on what had just landed in their territory.

  Several hours later, only one of them made it back. Yana staggered into the settlement, holding her guts in with one hand and waving desperately to get the attention of the matriarch with the other. Black blood streaked her torso and her dark-green skin was swiftly turning a pale apple. Despite her obvious pain, she still managed to drop to one knee before Khula.

  “Matriarch, as the prophecies have foretold, the beast has returned to our world. It slew eight of my comrades and dined on their flesh, yet even this did not sate its monstrous hunger. Though I am a dead woman walking, I find the strength to tell you that the day of the dragon is upon us. Look kindly upon your servant.”

  Having finished, Yana dropped her hands and allowed her innards to spill onto the ground at her leader’s feet. Khula examined the steaming loops of intestine and scattering of dark organs, as though searching for confirmation of the prophecy, but she knew that Yana had spoken the truth.

  All in Khula’s tribe knew the story of Scaroth the Inept; the legendary orc king who had fed his people on the flesh of his wives when food was scarce, and even when food wasn’t. The cruel patriarchal society under his reign had almost been brought to its knees when Scaroth’s wives finally turned on their tormentors and a mighty battle ensued. Though the rage that drove on the women was pure and awesome to behold — and though a great many men were slain that day — many of the wives themselves were killed, the remainder forced to flee into the hills, or follow their sisters into death. Yet even separated from their people, the wives remained nearby, to observe the tribe from which they had been forced. They were delighted when that which they had awaited for so long — the destruction of Scaroth and his men — came to pass.

  That Scaroth led his people’s death directly into their midst spoke volumes of his ineptitude, and the women in the hills made sure to record every detail of the massacre that ensued.

  The dragons immolated Scaroth’s men, breathing flames that clung to those they touched, reducing them to ash in seconds. The orc wives breathed a thankful sigh as the black dragon opened its mouth, exhaled, and consumed Scaroth with its cleansing fire. From that day on, they swore that if they ever had to face a dragon themselves, they would fight and defeat it, thus proving themselves Scaroth’s betters.

  The wives of Scaroth, now finally free of the shackles of their tribe, formed their own community. Aware that they would not prosper as women alone, they sought out other orc tribes and took their men by force, before fleeing back into the hills. Their prisoners were well treated — they did not want to repeat Scaroth’s mistakes — and after the men could breed no more, they were allowed to go their own way or remain with the tribe. Each female orc born was greeted with great celebration and feasting, and each daughter — once she was of a certain age — was inducted into the secrets of the matriarchy. They were told of Scaroth the Inept, the scouring of the wives and the dragon that had come to kill a king. They were told that — as the shamans had read in the stars — a dragon would come again, and when that day came the Great Matriarch would do what Scaroth had so spectacularly failed to achieve, and slay the beast.

  Despite the prophecy, those first mothers never encountered a dragon. Still the story was handed down until it became a vital part of the tribe’s beliefs: images of dragons decorated every home, trinkets depicting the great lizards were worn as good luck charms and wards again evil, and ballads were sung in the honour of each successive matriarch, detailing how the leader would slay such a beast.

  Khula almost couldn’t believe that it was she who had been chosen for the task. The prophecy and the stories of those first wives and Scaroth the Inept had become such an ingrained part of her culture that she almost didn’t notice them any more — they were children’s stories. It was only when the first of the shamans knelt at her feet and burned the sacred lichens that the realities of the task hit home, and Khula realised that she was afraid. Not that she would let her people see this; she strode amongst her tribe, proudly holding aloft the enchanted sword that had been crafted many generations ago from midnight steel, mined from the deepest seams in the World’s Ridge Mountains. She allowed each of the women of the tribe to kiss the blade and — as a gesture of goodwill — she allowed the men a reprieve from their nightly couplings.

  That night, the shamans joined together to perform the story of Scaroth and the dragon for the last time. The children screamed with delight when the beast of sticks and dyed skins lumbered from one of the caves, manipulated by the shamans hidden within its belly. They giggled as it stomped into the crowd, sniffling this way and that for naughty children to devour, and cheered as it closed in on the cowering Scaroth, with his goofy wooden teeth and bulbous nose carved from a turnip. When the dragon opened its mouth and the shaman in its belly roared for all she was worth, the faux dragon’s call was answered by another; this one far more real, chilling the blood of all who heard it and sending many running for their homes. After that, nobody felt much like continuing with the charade of costumes and make-believe, and as the thing in the mountain roared again, all eyes turned to Khula.

  Looking at the women before her, she made her decision.

  This task should not be hers alone, but the duty of all the women of the tribe; for within each of them burned the spirits of Scaroth’s wives. It was they who had kept alive the contempt for that long-dead idiot king, they who had raised up a new society founded on the principle of avoiding his mistakes. The killing of the dragon was as much their right and destiny as it was Khula’s.

  When she explained this to the women, there was a moment of silence in which she thought she had lost them, but then Yana’s sister — Lynca — came and knelt at her feet. Khula stared blankly at her until Lynca nudged the blade of the enchanted sword and held out her right hand, palm up. She marked Lynca’s hand with the tip of the weapon and as the black blood dripped onto the
rocks, each female member of the tribe came forward in turn to be similarly marked.

  The women hissed and howled as a strange, dark passion overtook them; they beat their chests and tore their clothes — some even mounted the men not swift enough to flee the mania that gripped the tribe, leaping on them and rutting with savage desire in the dirt. Next, the dragon costume from the play was pulled apart and burned, and the ashes from the pyre used to mark the women’s flesh. Finally one of the men of the tribe was dressed as Scaroth, the women circling and taunting him, clawing at his face and arms — hissing and growling, panting and shrieking — until, with one decisive blow, Khula removed his head from his shoulders.

  The women bowed their heads in silence as a warm rain fell.

  From somewhere in the mountains the creature roared again.

  Looking at those gathered before her — bloodied and marked for battle — Khula raised the obsidian sword and answered the dragon’s roar with one of her own.

  “Did you hear that?” Silus said, bringing their party to a halt.

  They looked up at the high walls enclosing them, but all they could hear was the sound of their own breathing echoing through the narrow canyon.

  Keldren’s translocation spell had brought them to deep within the World’s Ridge Mountains. So high and forbidding were the peaks here that even at its zenith the sun barely rose above them, leaving them to scrabble and stumble their way along in an almost perpetual darkness.

  “Hear what?” Dunsany said.

  “It doesn’t matter. I thought I heard a cry.”

  “Couldn’t you have located us somewhere closer to our target?” Kelos said, turning to Keldren.

  “I can assure you that the dragon is somewhere within these very peaks,” he said. “I have it on very good authority. Alymere the Amazing wouldn’t lead me astray.”

  “Sorry… hang on,” Dunsany said. “You took advice from someone calling themselves Alymere the Amazing? What is he, a children’s entertainer?”

  “Yes. But he used to be one of the most respected sorcerers in Miramas’s Red Cadre, until a certain unfortunate event. After his expulsion he remade himself as an entertainer. Even so, he knows these peaks like the back of his hand, and often comes into the mountains to conduct his arcane research.”

  Dunsany shook his head and continued along the canyon.

  After they had gone not much more than twenty yards, Silus raised his right hand sharply, bringing them to a halt again. This time, however, there was no question that something lay ahead of them; all could hear the inhuman wails and growls from beyond the next turn.

  Certain childhood tales came back to Silus then — stories of goblins and ogur, things from the mountains that occasionally ventured into the human realm to snatch babies and mutilate livestock. He had never given such tales much credence, even as a small boy, believing them to be nothing more than the cider-fuelled folk fears of a simplistic people. Now he wasn’t so sure. After all, nobody he knew had ever been into the World’s Ridge Mountains. The peaks that defiantly bordered the far east of the peninsula were so hostile, and seemingly endless, that not even the hardiest of adventurers dared approach their foothills. There could be far worse than goblins and ogur here.

  Dunsany and Kelos joined Silus, all drawing their swords as quietly as possible before, as one, cautiously peering around the corner.

  Ahead of them the canyon opened out onto a boulder strewn plane. Swarming across this barren landscape were creatures straight out of the horror stories of Silus’s childhood.

  “Orcs,” Kelos whispered. “Or, to be more precise, orc women. Strange, I’ve never seen so many gathered together in a group like this. Usually they’re to be found in their settlements, tending to the needs of their menfolk, or kept as broodmares. What we have here would appear to be an-”

  “Army,” Keldren finished, pushing past them to get a closer look.

  “Careful!” Kelos hissed. “We don’t want to be seen.”

  But it was too late; a fearsome creature wearing only a tattered cloth shift about her loins and wielding a battered sword turned as the wizard edged out of the shadows of the canyon. She hissed, revealing needle-like teeth in a mouth as dark as night. The twenty or so women behind her showed their own teeth in warning, yet they made no move to attack.

  “How curious,” Keldren said, as though he were doing nothing more than examining a particularly interesting work of art or an ancient text. “I have never heard of orc women banding together in this manner.”

  Despite her ferocious appearance, the leader of the orcs made no move towards the wizard. Instead, she looked at him with an inquisitive expression, her head cocked to one side.

  “I should like to examine one of these things.” Keldren held out his hand and muttered something under his breath, and a malnourished-looking orc came stumbling towards him, bone knife dropping from suddenly limp fingers. “But transporting a live specimen would be problematic.” He snapped his fingers and the orc dropped to the ground, blood-specked mucus frothing from her lips. “There. We’ll come back for this one later.”

  Keldren looked round at his companions, only to be greeting by a host of shocked expressions.

  “Oh, the rest of these creatures you can kill. I have no use for them.” He gestured, dropping another orc with a quickly worded spell.

  The creatures attacked, their cries resounding from the surrounding peaks, making it seem like there were more of them than there actually were. They fought fiercely and with determination, and when the leader clashed swords with Silus he had to defend himself against a furious rain of blows. But he knew something of the monstrous himself and, staring into the demented eyes of the orc, he found the well of savagery deep within and drew on it, fighting back with animalistic glee.

  Katya had hurried Zac away at the first sign of trouble. Alongside Silus, Dunsany, Kelos and Emuel now held the line, using the narrow mouth of the canyon to their advantage, preventing the orcs from flanking them. Even outnumbered, the humans were a match for the orcs, though much of this may have been down to the magical support supplied by Keldren. Any creature not killed by a sword was slain by sorcery. Only the leader of this tribe seemed unaffected by the magic, each spell seemingly absorbed by the black sword she wielded.

  Silus’s opponent was tiring, but so was he. The pause between each exchange grew longer as they circled each other. Any openings were quickly closed by a feint or a parry and it was becoming clear to Silus that his opponent was his equal in every way. As they moved out onto the plain, he became aware that the rest of the orcs were dead, their black blood slick on the pale rock. This fact only dawned on the leader when a wide swing of her weapon brought her around and she could finally see what had happened to her army. A look of such human sorrow crossed the creature’s face that Silus arrested his next blow.

  He scrambled to raise his guard, realising that he had left himself wide open, but the orc didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. She was making a strange mewling in the back of her throat, her sword dropping from limp fingers, as she knelt and examined one of the corpses.

  Silus knew grief when he saw it, and he remembered that it had not been the orcs that had started the fight, but Keldren’s indiscriminate killing.

  He stepped back and left the orc to her grief, sheathing his blade.

  “What are you waiting for?” Keldren shouted. “Kill it!”

  Katya and Zac had emerged from the canyon now. For a moment it seemed as if Katya would shield her son’s eyes from the slaughter, but she dropped her hand, realising the futility of the gesture; the boy had seen so much already.

  “For the love of Kerberos, man, stick it before it sticks you!” Keldren said, striding towards Silus, an ochre glow wreathing his right hand.

  This creature didn’t deserve the pain of the death the mage would give her. As the orc leader leaned over her comrade in grief, Silus drew his dagger and cut her throat. The tide of blood splashed over the body beneath he
r and washed up against Keldren’s boots as he came to a halt. The wizard looked down with contempt.

  “For a moment, I thought you were going to show pity for this mongrel.”

  Silus looked down at the dagger, then up at Keldren. With a self-control that everything within him fought against, he sheathed his weapon.

  Khula hoped that when they found her body she would be honoured with the rites granted to her predecessors — her bones boiled clean, dried and bleached in the sun, pounded into dust and smoked by the shamans of the tribe. Somehow, however, she doubted it. For wasn’t she as much a failure as that long-dead orc king? Hadn’t she led her tribe into death, rather than glory?

  As the drumbeat of her heart slowed, and the flood pouring from her throat became a trickle, Khula wondered by what moniker she would be remembered.

  The dragon roared, its cry echoing from the peaks and reminding her shamefully of that name she had desperately wished for, but would now never attain.

  Khula the Dragon Slayer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY- THREE

  “I can’t help but notice that you suddenly seem a bit reticent,” Kelos said.

  The dragon’s roar came again and Keldren took another step back.

  “Surely you’ve fought dragons before?”

  “Actually, no,” Keldren said. “And as such, my magic isn’t going to be of any use. But I’ve led you to the beast, so now — once you have acquired what you need — it will be down to you to uphold your end of the bargain.”

  As they walked deeper into the shadow of the range, the azure disk of Kerberos was beginning to rise over the mountains behind them. Blue light washed over the peaks, falling into crevasses and filling hollows, moving down the mountain in a brilliant waterfall of light. This time, when the dragon called, there was music in its voice, as though it were greeting the dawn with song. Besides Silus, Emuel gasped as the tattoos that covered his body began to move.