The Steel Ring
Page 37
Zardi ignored all these impediments to reaching his goal: scrambling, falling, picking himself back up. Always moving forward as quickly as he could.
Nor did he feel Nogi grab the collar of his tunic from behind until the hulking servant yanked him roughly off his feet and backward. Barely had he opened his mouth to reprimand the Dravidian for this affront than he saw a large boulder crash to earth directly atop the spot where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
“A dead man is of no service to his people,” Nogi stated simply in his voice of deep authority. He took his master’s hand and helped pull him erect.
Even when he arose, Zardi maintained his grasp on Nogi’s hand. “You saved my life, old friend,” he said. “And not for the first time.” He tightened his grip.
“Surely any debt you may have owed me has long since been repaid. I gladly release you from your vow of servitude.”
Nogi scowled, as though offended by the notion. “It’s not in your power to do so, my prince. The vow remains until I rescind it. And I never will.”
Still retaining his grip on the hand of his servant – his friend – Zardi smiled tightly, clapped him lightly on his upper arm, then turned and set back off up the valley.
It took time to climb around the boulder that had nearly killed him and the avalanche of smaller stones it had carried with it. The farther into the valley they pushed, the more such stony obstacles there were to slow them down. Zardi grew frantic at the delay.
Dawn barely filtered into the valley as the sun at last tried to fight its way through the dirty haze of particulate material that still hung suspended in the air. Each breath the men drew brought torture to their lungs.
Zardi knew they were close when he saw the walls of the valley were shrinking in height, the gap between them narrowing. Finally they seemed to converge together before rising back up gently to form the hill atop which sat Zardipore.
The prince froze in his tracks as he got his first clear view of the hill. He was stunned and horrified beyond imagining at what he saw as his eyes lifted to the top of the groundswell.
Zardipore was no more.
It looked as if some giant, angry god had brought his massive fist crashing down upon the very heart of the once-proud city. It had been crushed like a clod of sun-baked dirt between the fingers of a despairing farmer.
Of the high, thick walls that once protected its majesty from all invaders, virtually nothing remained. Large pieces of it had been flung about the sides of the hill. Some had flown so far as to now dot the floor of the valley.
Long before he and Nogi could reach the crown of the hill, Zardi saw that not a blade of grass remained in a wide circle around the ruins. All had been blackened and burned to lifelessness.
Zardi’s sandals made an odd slapping sound with every stride he took on the wide dirt road that led to what had been the city’s main gate.
He knelt and touched the surface of the road. It was not like dirt at all now, but rather it had the hardness and sheen of clay that had been fired and glazed by a master artisan.
As disturbing as the sights all about was the near total lack of sound. The noise of their own passing was the only one to be heard. No other creature of either land or sky growled or shrieked or chirped or crowed.
To be met by blanketing silence in a city that should be teeming with hundreds of people seemed akin to a mad delirium.
Not one stone appeared to have been left standing atop another. Every building had been blasted to pieces by a power close in strength to that of the sun.
And now they began to see the bodies.
Whatever force had decimated the city must have taken them all by surprise. The corpses seemed to be frozen in place and time, as if they had been stricken while they went about their evening rituals totally unaware that in the next blink of an eye they would be dead.
You could tell by size and general shape which was man, woman or child, but beyond that they were totally unrecognizable as the individuals they had been. Each was so horribly burnt, so blackened beyond imagining that no other identification could be made of them.
Even for these two men of such strength and travel hardness, the overwhelming stench of roasted human flesh was enough to raise bile in their parched throats.
As they moved deeper through the city, only pieces of bodies could be seen, even more charred and blackened. Finally, mere twisted strands of ash were all that remained of living flesh and bone.
At the crest of the wide and gentle slope had stood the royal palace of Zardipore. In all his journeys thus far, Zardi had yet to see a structure erected by the hand of man that was as grand and magnificent.
But to him it had always and simply been home. And now it too was gone.
It was less than nothing. Clearly the epicenter of the monstrous burst of energy, its granite walls had been pulverized. A gaping, smoking crater occupied the space where once had stood the royal throne room.
Strength gave way to emotion, and tears began to well in the young prince’s eyes. It was clear that no one could have survived this catastrophic event.
“Zardi?”
He turned at the sound of his name being softly invoked, by a voice that did not belong to Nogi.
The cloud of dust still hung heavy over the landscape, limiting his vision. Casting his gaze about, he at last spied a shadowy figure obscured behind a veil of swirling dust and ash, moving toward him on unsteady legs.
Emerging from the cloud came a teenaged girl. The dirt cloaking her did not disguise the fact that her raiment had been of finest quality. Nor did the shocked expression on her face totally distort features that made Zardi think of his beloved mother.
“Musephra?” he gasped.
Not waiting for an answer, he raced toward her, circling her in his arms and pressing her to his bosom.
Together, they fell to their knees, sobbing uncontrollably. Watching with a heavy heart, Nogi took several steps back, to respect this moment only the two should share.
Zardi held his sister tightly, while gently stroking her hair. Suddenly, she stiffened and her slender form began to convulse in his arms.
She tried to pull away, but he grabbed her head in his hands with tender firmness. Her face looked subtly different to him now. Thin lines, as came inevitably with the passage of time, spread out from the corners of her mouth and eyes. Normal in a woman of forty summers, but not in one who had yet to see twenty.
“What is it?” he urged. “What happened here, sister?”
“I’m sorry,” she moaned. From the base of her scalp, strands of gray began to spread upward through her dark hair.
“I didn’t know!” she cried, tears spilling from her eyes and rolling down over the ridges of a face now bearing the wrinkles and sunken cheeks of a grandmother.
“Know what?” her brother pled. “Who did this to you?”
Her mouth flapped soundlessly, ejecting brown teeth from within. Her hair was totally white and brittle; her eyes nothing more than faint spots of light deep within cavernous sockets.
Zardi’s own eyes widened at the unspeakable horror to which he bore witness but could do nothing to halt. Musephra’s head lolled lifelessly to one side, the girl having sped through the remainder of her existence in seconds.
Flesh and hair turned to dust, falling from bone and leaving the stunned Zardi holding the skull of his dead sister. Then it turned to dust as well, sifting through his numb fingers.
A swirling wind howled over the hilltop, sweeping away even those ghastly remnants of the girl.
But it could not howl so loudly as to drown out the anguished screams that tore from the core of Prince Zardi’s being.
Wails of sorrow and agony that would continue throughout the day, and well into the night.
R. A. JONES
A native of Oklahoma, where he still resides, R.A. Jones has been a freelance writer and editor for the past thirty years.
His credits include newspaper and magazine columns, art
icles and short stories. He has been a movie and television reviewer and commentator in newspapers and on radio.
He assisted actor Gary Lockwood (STAR TREK; “2001: A Space Odyssey”) in the writing of Lockwood’s autobiography, 2001 Memories: An Actor’s Odyssey. With Michael Vance, R.A. co-wrote the syndicated comic book and comic strip review column “Suspended Animation”.
The readers of Comic Buyer’s Guide magazine voted him “Favorite Writer About Comics” in 1985, and in 2006 he was inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Collection Hall of Fame.
He has scripted more than 100 different issues of various comic book titles for virtually every major publisher during his career. Among the more noteworthy are WOLVERINE AND CAPTAIN AMERICA for Marvel Comics; ALAN SCOTT, GREEN LANTERN for DC; HARLAN ELLISON’S DREAM CORRIDOR for Dark Horse Comics; and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE for Malibu Comics. Other titles he produced for Malibu include: DARK WOLF; SCIMIDAR; FIST OF GOD; PISTOLERO; MERLIN; SINBAD; WHITE DEVIL; NIGHTMAN; PROTOTYPE, and; PROTECTORS. The latter title employed many of the same Golden Age superheroes now appearing in his prose novel The Steel Ring.
He also co-wrote, for Image Comics, BULLETPROOF MONK, which served as the inspiration for the 2003 movie of the same title. He wrote the English adaptation of 26 volumes of the Korean comic book series KING OF HELL, which was published in America by Tokyopop.
His comic book short story “Cold Hard Facts”, which originally appeared in the magazine METAL HURLANT, was adapted to film and served as the pilot episode for the current French television series THE METAL HURLANT CHRONICLES.
In addition to The Steel Ring, R.A. has also written the heroic fantasy novel Deathwalker for Airship 27. Other novels include The Equation (co-written with Michael Vance) and Global Star (with Michael Vance and Mel Odom).