Standing at the edge of the bed, holding her whip, was Helga, the tall muscular German, bare breasted, her bronzed skin glowing. Taken at thirteen from her tribe in a border war with the Romans, unfit for life in a harem and enrolled in the Ludus Magnus, the largest gladiator school in all of Rome, Helga had bought her freedom after much success in the coliseum, then hired herself out as an assassin to any politician willing to meet her price. Hired by Catus, a man with tastes as debased as her own, the amazon was barking orders now at the mother and child as the procurator laughed and squealed with delight, anticipating what he planned to do with the boy, his usual practices.
Helga took hold of the mother’s leash and yanked her away, leaving the boy in the company of Catus.
Bunduica looked away in disgust. This was what she had endured when she was raped.
Thorn withdrew the glowing heart and replaced it in a small pouch at his belt. “The worlds have met. I know where he is. Before your sun rises again, Catus Decanius will begin screaming in eternal agony.”
“I want to see it.”
“You will see it all.”
“Then I will come with you?”
“No, Bunduica. You move too slowly. My time is only until daybreak. I must be seated on the throne of Hel-Valha before it is again daylight in this world. But I will return to show you my work before your accurst sun rises. But you—once I have left, wait here inside the cottage. Do not leave for any reason. This is the law.”
Thorn departed through the arch of the cottage. The rain had dwindled now to little more than a drizzle.
Bunduica, however, daringly followed behind him, standing just beyond the threshold of the cottage.
Outside, waiting on Thorn, was an enormous horse with the giant, veined wings of a bat and eight legs. Oddly, when Bunduica looked at the eight-legged steed, she saw four men moving beside it, carrying a corpse in a casket. She was reminded of her father’s funeral ceremony. He had died leaving half of his kingdom to the emperor, hoping by that generous gesture that the Roman officials would show respect to his family and tribe.
Thorn mounted his great winged steed. It reared on its hind legs and kicked its hooves while flapping the mighty leathern wings. The horse screamed its terrible jubilation to the sky and bared awesome fangs. To be away into the fray of carnage and bloodshed—these excited the beast nearly as much as they did his demonic rider.
Thorn held the fanged, flying beast’s reins in one hand and thrust his mighty war hammer, Jolnir, above his head in the other. He screamed the primal war cry that had felled armies and destroyed nations. “Away, Sleipnir,” he shouted, and horse and rider soared into the air, mounting the sky of night as though it were a solid road beneath them.
They would fly far to the south, three hundred millaria, to the Gallic town of Lugodunon. As Bunduica watched, lightning flashed high above her, and a door with many corridors opened in the sky as Thorn waved his hammer and roared a loud incantation. A door that traversed time and space. He steered the winged beast through the door, and the tear in the sky closed behind them.
Bunduica saw them vanish in the middle of the sky, and she wondered in despair if the demon truly would return. Or perhaps she was indeed dead, now. Or was it that all that she had seen and heard this night had merely been the musings of she herself . . . finally gone mad?
Chapter IV
Revenge
Catus Decanius’ sleep was fitful. Although he had satisfactorily spent himself in a long evening’s debauchery with his slaves and now lay in his comfortable bed, covered with a warm downy blanket to stave off the Gallic autumn chill, something was wrong. His dreams had begun pleasantly enough, with the procurator recalling how he had forced himself on the two daughters of an Iceni noblewoman, taking turns with each before he was spent. His pleasure had been heightened by the fact that their mother was bound, stripped, and alternately whipped and molested by Helga while forced to watch his performance with her daughters. His exhibitionism sent a surge of pleasure coursing through him, and in this pleasant dream, just as Catus was starting to build to another climax, the scene changed.
He was still in his sleeping chambers, but he was in the present, awake. Two burning red eyes looked down on him in the darkness. The head of the horned watcher pushed forward from the darkness. The horrible head hovered in the room and now erupted silently in a flaming inverted star and stared down on the Roman disapprovingly.
Catus mumbled, still certain that he was asleep, “No, no, not me. I was just taking what was mine to take.” His bed and blanket were now drenched in his feverish sweat. Finally, he cried out and awoke.
Weeping, he slowly let out a sigh of relief. A bad dream. Perhaps he had overexerted himself tonight. Too much wine.
But as he went to call for a slave to enter and change his sweat-soaked bedclothes, the procurator heard a faint sound. It was the odd noise of someone in the distance beating on a wall. With each strike, the noise sounded louder and came nearer. Now it was like a giant battering ram, crushing stone and splintering marble.
Catus pushed himself from his bed to investigate, but then paused. The room had abruptly gone quiet—which was shattered by the crashing of a giant war hammer through the wall opposite his bed. Catus fell backward, onto his fine blankets. Another blow—and an alabaster giant with long red hair and jutting horns appeared where the wall had been.
The stranger’s terrible face, fixed in a rictus of hate, was the same face Catus had seen inside the hovering, burning pentagram a moment ago in his dreams.
The snow-colored giant bellowed, “It is time, Catus Decanius. I’ve come to carry you home.”
Catus began weeping again and, in fear, wet his comfortable bed. He called for his guards, but no sound came from his throat. Was he still inside a dream?
His sleeping chambers were situated in the middle of the upstairs in the villa. The guards’ chambers were off to each end. The two guards on the south end of the hallway slept in the same room, and they were asleep now: Helga had given them the grieving mother slave to play with after she herself was done with her. They heard their procurator’s commands, but his voice at first was no more than part of their own dreams.
The giant leaned close. Gripping Catus by the face in his powerful right claw, Thorn dug in until the head dripped blood, then dragged the Roman through the doorway that opened onto the massive hall of the villa.
The hallway was illuminated by torches ensconced at intervals along the walls. Thorn, still holding Catus by the head, slammed him down onto the stone floor of the hallway, pushing him and knocking the breath out of him. Each time the shivering Catus tried to get up, Thorn threw him down again, and each time, bones broke.
Thorn had his back to the first guard who managed to reach the doorway. The delighted giant was watching Catus trying once more to get to his feet despite some freshly broken ribs, a shattered collar bone, and mangled right arm. Thorn leaned with his left hand wrapped around the handle of Jolnir, his war hammer, with his right arm crossed over his left. The head of the hammer rested on the floor.
As the first guard charged in from behind to run Thorn though with his spatha, Thorn swung his war hammer up and, without even turning to look, smashed in the soldier’s face with a backhanded blow. Bones crunched and teeth and blood flew all over the hallway. The soldier, spinning around, slumped to the stones face first, into a widening pool of his own blood.
A second guard arrived. He hadn’t had time to get into his armor, but he had managed to come armed with a shield. He was further armed now with knowledge of his foe, having just seen for himself the deathwork of this giant, truly the most formidable opponent he had yet faced in his service to the procurator.
Thorn slammed a booted foot onto Catus’s lower left leg, and more bones crunched. Catus brought up his insides, emptying his guts and doing his best to wipe the remaining vomit from his mouth with his jittery left hand.
Holding the procurator to the floor, Thorn watched the circlin
g guard. Sweat washed down the Roman’s face as he tested Thorn’s reflexes with a jab toward the abdomen. He moved in several times, feinting, then quickly drew back. The rune was amused, watching this Roman trying to calculate how best to deal with the demonic figure before him.
Then came the wild war cry of the German amazon as she rushed over the top of the stairs at the other end of the hallway.
Moving so quickly that the motion was a blur, Thorn hefted his war hammer and threw it. The great weapon slammed full force into the Roman guard’s shield. The force of the blow carried the fighter through the open wall and into Catus’ sleeping chamber, the impact breaking his neck and back and crushing his internal organs beneath smashed bones.
The naked, charging Helga fell into a crouch. Thorn crossed his arms and stood as still as a statue, watching her. Quick as a panther, Helga threw three pugios, one after another. Thorn quickly caught the leaf-shaped daggers in his left hand. Nostrils flaring, the amazon, dressed only in her weapon belts and scabbards, drew two swords, one with each hand, and spun them in a blinding whirl that cut the air and made whistling sounds as they moved.
The rune was clearly not as moved by her exhibition with weaponry as he was by her nudity. Whatever else he was, the rune was male, with instincts for women, and aside from her close-cropped blonde hair, this fighter was an attractive woman. It was apparent that she didn’t care for body hair, however; the only hair she tolerated was the little on her head. She was more than six pedes tall and was muscular, yet still retained just enough body fat to be appealing in a feminine fashion. Her breasts were large with big nipples, and her skin was well tanned; surely she spent much time naked in the sun. The rune approved.
Thorn’s simultaneous indifference to her display of martial skills and clear appreciation of her body infuriated Helga. She snarled, a wild beast. No man had ever stood before her in battle, ogled her bare body, and lived. This demonic figure, whether he were a specter or a man—he would die. His head was that of a demon, but his body was that of a man and would surely bleed like those of all the other men who had had the misfortune of confronting Helga at arms.
By now all ten of the procurator’s remaining guards had donned their armor and arrived from the north end of the hall.
Helga hissed at them, “Stay back! He is mine!”
All stopped where they were. Aside from the procurator, Helga largely ran the household; and if the truth were told, every man in the villa feared her as he had never feared any man.
The German shifted her weight onto her right foot, slowly rolling the short swords in front of her. Both swords had been made especially for her. They were each two pedes long, the length of a normal gladius, but these blades had jagged edges spaced six thumb-lengths, six unciae, apart, going all the way down them on both sides. Wielding such blades in battle gave Helga an immense sense of pleasure, as they caused her victim so much more pain than the clean death of a stab wound from the standard gladius.
Thorn calmly unfolded his right arm from his left; his mighty war hammer shot back from the crushed guard’s corpse in Catus’ bed chamber into his fist, seemingly of its own volition.
Helga winced, a look of wonder on her face. Sweat rolled down her body, and her sienna skin glistened as if she had been rubbed down with oil. “Who are you?” she growled. “What are you?”
She was used to being answered immediately by anyone within the sound of her voice, but the giant rune did not react at all. Thorn’s silence set her off; as superbly and swiftly as she had ever moved in her fighting life, Helga swung the right-handed sword around for a decapitating blow as the left came up to gut him. No one in the hallway saw Thorn’s sword rise, but there it was, in his left hand, deflecting the blow aimed at his neck just as the handle of the massive war hammer knocked aside the German’s left-handed sword.
Immediately Thorn lashed out. The head of Jolnir struck Helga in her chest, above her moving breasts, knocking the air from her. Before she could recuperate from that blow, Thorn punched her in the face with his left hand. The German dropped her swords and folded at the waist, staggering backward.
Her nose was broken; the bottom half of her face was red with the running blood. The guards in the hallway stood unmoving then as Thorn retrieved Helga with one hand around her face, lifted her, and tossed her. When she landed farther down the hallway, she rolled headlong down the stairs, out of sight, making a final loud thud as she hit the bottom, then letting out a long moan.
The procurator, seeing this and nearly out of his mind from pain, shouted, “Guards! Fools! Take him!”
Swords slid from their scabbards in the torch light as the score of guards came charging in, shields in front of them. Thorn threw the war hammer into the cluster of men. Howls lifted as men were crushed beneath Jolnir, chests and backs and legs broken apart and heads crushed beyond recognition, as the force of the flying hammer pushed them backwards into walls or caused their own blades to cut them backwards along the throat and face. Thorn held out his left hand; Jolnir returned to his fist; then the rune drew his sword and waded into the seven Romans left standing.
The first man came charging in with his head down and thrust his sword low in an attempt to disembowel the demonic warrior. Thorn brought Jolnir down on the man’s head; the helmet cracked like a nut, and the legionnaire’s brains came out and slid down his neck as he dropped. Another Roman stepped forward to thrust his sword, point first, into the giant’s heart. Thorn parried the blow with his heavier blade and slit the man’s throat with the backhand return.
Two others, wielding daggers, tried to tackle Thorn and drag him down; Thorn laughed as the two thrust the daggers into his sides. These were men well trained in their craft, but their cuts were an annoyance to the rune, nothing lethal. As the two continued to strike, another guard jumped onto Thorn’s back and tried cutting his throat with his spatha. Thorn reached back behind him and plucked the man from his back, digging two fingers into the screaming man’s eye sockets to get a grip. He lifted the guard over his head and dropped him onto the floor in front of him. The man groaned, eyeless and bleeding to death from the empty sockets. Thorn then grabbed the two digging steel into his sides, gripping them by their heads and slamming them together. Skull and neck bones cracked, and the two dropped strengthless to the floor.
Three remained—one of whom had survived the force of Jolnir’s initial blow. Now he was trying to rise. Thorn grinned, stepped over the two corpses on the floor before him, and swung his sword at the guard’s heavily muscled neck. In a moment, his head slid from his shoulders and rolled onto the stones, his face locked in an expression of great surprise.
The two Romans left standing now ran for their lives.
Catus, only somewhat lucid, crawled weakly on the floor. Thorn was showing blood down his sides and legs, but already the wounds had closed up and turned to scars, and the scars themselves were vanishing as if he had never been stabbed. The rune grabbed Catus Decanius by the hair and started dragging him down the stairs. “Your time has come, Procurator.”
Regaining consciousness, with a broken nose, smashed left hand, and the multiple cuts and bruises she had suffered from her fall down the stairs, Helga fought to get to her feet. She heard the din of battle and screams coming from upstairs. The demonic stranger was slaughtering everyone in the household. Her ankle was sprained, but she had survived much worse. She hurried away from the stairs, down the corridor, half dragging and half running on her lame foot. I can be free of this place in a moment, she told herself. Rouse the local praetorians. Not even the demon can stand before an army of disciplined Roman steel.
Ignoring her pain, Helga reached the arched doorway. The portico. The stables. Then I am free. She threw the bolt and was through. Outside. Free—
She let out a piercing scream.
There was a flurry of hooves. The two remaining household guards lay one to each side of the doorway, mauled and mutilated. Helga saw the giant, eight-legged horse as it flapped its memb
ranous wings and bared its terrible fangs. She saw its burning red eyes.
Then it was on her.
Chapter V
“You Are the Witch.”
Bunduica had pulled a chair up to the small fireplace to bask in its warmth. She had been drowsing for only a few minutes when the door to the cottage slammed open again.
She was sure she must be dreaming. Could Thorn have returned so soon? Because it could have been no more than half an hour when the rune had taken to the sky on his flying beast, headed for Gaul.
She came wide awake as Thorn snorted, pushing his way through the opening, and dropped Catus Decanius at her feet. The Roman was bound hand and foot and grimacing in pain from his broken bones and lacerations.
Bunduica stood, looking at her enemy—“Open wide the Gates! Manifest Rune Thorn!”—and slowly drew the athame from her belt.
Thorn threw up his hand. “Hold, woman!”
Bunduica stopped close, looking up at him.
“A hunter hunts for food to fill his stomach,” said Thorn, “but he does not discard the hide. He needs it to cover himself against the elements in winter. Every death serves many purposes for the hunter. A god is no exception. Know this: It is a god’s pleasure to feed on the spirits of human beings. Their lives—every pain, sorrow, and misery—each of these is a delicacy for the god’s consumption. A sorcerer possessing the knowledge of a god can do many things.”
Thorn walked outside and reached into the saddlebag on Sleipnir. He returned and threw a large book onto the cottage table. It was identical to the Book of Dead Runes, the grimoire from which Balor had taught her the runic incantation.
Bunduica was puzzled. “I don’t understand. Balor’s book?”
“My book,” Thorn told her. “It was I who brought it to your world. I wrote it. There are two other copies of it in your world now, but the only one in the possession of a human is the one your druid retains.”
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