Avenger, page 18
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
The priest extinguished his torch, and once again, they trudged in semi-darkness. The sky opened up to admit a wash of silver moonlight. Iokru pushed ahead and turned to scowl at Balir and Vetra: “You two had better muffle your grunts and sighs.”
The monkey god loomed over them, several man-heights in size, crudely carved into the sheer cliff. Bulging lips curling back in a scornful snarl showed a gaping mouth of square-blocked teeth. The god-effigy exulted in some inside knowledge, Vetra thought, its grisly eyes dark pools into another world. To his relief they passed the face and Iokru signalled them down a set of stairs under the monkey’s rounded chin. The ledge’s curve of narrow rock continued where the stairs left off, looping down to a place only triple a man’s height above the canyon floor.
On quiet feet the troupe followed the priest on this exposed vantage, smoothed by thousands of passing acolytes. The avenue below, they saw, was a natural floor, partly sandy, the rest stone.
Laskar cocked his crossbow, as if sensing the weight of acute danger.
The torches guttered and the sound of chants rose ahead in a low, murmurous thrum that brought the hairs up on Vetra’s back.
Despite his eccentric habits, Iokru led the company with an air of stealth. His plumed headdress bobbed in noiseless tribute in the windless air while the red glare of torches gleamed and the first hint of crackling flames came to their ears.
Three priests with bison masks appeared in front of them. They moved swiftly, casting furtive glances over their shoulders. With brisk grunts, they squeezed past the load carriers on the high ledge in the ruddy gloom. A tense moment passed when Vetra and Balir halted, setting down their burden and gripping their swords in their free hands. Iokru indulged the trio with a serene nod, which they returned with a chilling stare. The priests passed by without comment.
Iokru grimaced as the men resumed their heaving, Vetra somewhat perplexed by the bison-headed priests’ haste. Iokru steered the company closer to a group of forty or more figures massed below on the other side of the canyon. They were dressed in bizarre animal costumes and rodent-like masks, red furred with pointed ears and black snouts. The figures’ backs were to them, and the throng gathered about a glaring fire, observing their ceremonious rite with the absorbed attention of slaves fulfilling a task for an unforgiving master.
“We must pass near them,” Iokru hissed. “There’s no other choice but an hour’s detour through unlit tunnels that drop to steep crevasses. Even then, the way is not sure. If you value your skins, utter no word. Do not insult these acolytes or get caught in the middle of their ceremonies.”
“Who are they?” inquired Vetra.
“Members of the Rat Fang sect. The Ratmangers.” His teeth glinted. “A gang of extreme fanatics, prone to blood sacrifice and kidnappings.”
“How enchanting,” murmured Balir.
Vetra took note of the unpriestly weapons belted at their hips, including knives, hooked bills. Spears were clutched in white-knuckled hands. The muscled guards who moved amongst them were stationed at disquieting intervals.
“’Tis the celebration of dark Dathra they hold,” Iokru whispered. “To commemorate the five hundredth year of their cult. They resurrect their god every season. Tonight is the first ceremony of the year, spring yule, on the full moon.
“Just our luck,” muttered Kalaman.
The pungent smell of incense and herbs drifted in the night air, along with the stench of burning blood. Vetra’s lips peeled back in distaste. He winced at the cliff looming up in front of him, sporting a gigantic rat sculpture, sixty feet high, rearing upon its hind legs, sniffing the air with ham paws outstretched—the embodiment of the Rat Fang god. The effigy stood on a massive stone dais below which spread a colonnaded court whose flaming interiors teemed with the priests who were conducting their macabre ritual.
Along the far side of the cliff the five crept, with Vetra and Balir taking care not to jiggle their load. Sounds echoed in the valley and Vetra had no doubt the priests had the ears of wolves, despite the low, background chanting and shuffling feet that masked the company’s progress. Vetra caught a glint amidst the gathering, of chains fastened on heavy rings bolted into the polished stone. Those iron loops held back some obscene rat creature, grown huge beyond imagining. It had something of an aardvark’s body and a mix of fur and iridescent scales on hide and flanks.
The rodent swished its powerful tail and pawed at its furry behind, fretting and gnashing at its bonds. Plumes of flame kept the creature contained in a tight, fiery circle. If the creature could emerge from that circle...Vetra shuddered. Whoever tended the creature was surely endangering his life.
Whenever the creature stalked too close to the flames, its rodent-like snout bore a blast of heat. And when it did, the crowd ululated in a wave of awe. Torches guttered; fires raged around the ring. The acolytes bowed and murmured dark supplications to their flesh-and-blood rat-like god, “Ratang! Ratang! We worship you in death and with this crimson elixir of life we bathe our souls.” Such glories extended to the looming behemoth that towered above in carven glory. Bowing and falling prostrate in devotional vacuity with each sizzle and flare of the sacred flames, the followers then doused their spears and sharp gleaming knives in vats of blood to the side and smeared it on their brows gleaming above the masks. Others smeared their thighs. Several gripped live rats despite the creatures’ struggles and squeaks and gnashing teeth questing their fingers. The throats of these creatures they quickly cut in sacrifice to the great rat poised in hideous splendour above them, and the devotees let the blood spill over their grotesque masks. Some stuck out tongues to drink of the rodents’ blood. Then the rodent carcasses were hurled to the great stone dais before the rat creature which devoured them in noisy gulps.
Vetra felt the sweat bead on his brow. Snuffling and pawing, the thing rose on its hind legs as the devotees’ voices rose in a chant of shade-possessed unison.
On a signal to Balir, Vetra paused to wipe his brow. He twisted to get a better grip on the strap, clutching his sword, but the wretched thing had the ill timing of unravelling just as the chant’s refrain ended. Before he could catch it, the conch slipped out of his grasp and thudded to the ground.
Vetra grunted a vile curse. A few heads had turned from the gathering, alerted by the sharp, echoing clap of shell on stone. On a rancorous gesture from the priest, the men of the party dove headlong and fell flat on their bellies.
Vetra stifled more oaths and sank in a grim crouch. The toxic glare of Iokru felt like a flaming knife in his back from ten feet away.
The collar he carried slipped from his pouch and lay gleaming in plain sight. Though Vetra swept a hand out to retrieve the item, Iokru’s keen eyes glistened in the darkness. The priest’s body stiffened, his gaze drinking in the sight of the corroded, but magical ring-collar. Vetra did not miss the envious sneer.
“If high priest Rojarsh knew you had the ring of Dapi, the falcon man,” he hissed, “he would have gutted—”
“Would he now?”
The priest scowled and bit his tongue, knowing he had said more than he should have.
Kalaman and Laskar scrambled to help Vetra and Balir drag the shell several paces past the ratmen’s rite but Iokru jerked a thumb back toward the monkey temple. “Go back the other way, fools! ’Tis safer that way.”
The shell’s two halves had wrenched ajar and within they could see the dusky outline of a hawk-like idol. Vetra snapped it shut with a grimace.
Iokru crept at their heels, face a ghoul-like mask, urging them on faster. Whether the ratmangers saw their mad scramble up the path toward the monkey’s face, or the glint of green and red light off the strange gems on the collar, Vetra did not know. He hastily stuffed it back under his belt, glad to hear no swift scud of feet piping after them, and glad that his crew was somewhat concealed, squatting in the inky shadows.
Nonetheless several priests pointed blood-soaked fingers up at them and gave voice to hoarse jeering calls. Spears hurled from below clattered up the cliff to strike rock and seashell. A steel tip brushed Vetra’s mail and skittered harmlessly off, prompting him to grunt and curse.
The rat-masked acolytes shambled forth but they could not scale the cliff, the ledge was a dozen feet above their heads. Others were already scrambling up the steep stairway farther down the avenue that gave access to the ledge.
“Quick!” hissed Iokru. “Up! Into the eye of the Jeering Monkey. We can outwit the rat-priests in the tunnels.”
Another flurry of spears clattered up at them, one jabbing Laskar’s boot above the ankle. The archer plucked it out of the leather and hurled it back down at them. There came a shrill cry as a man was impaled by a steel tip. Harsh voices sounded in the fiery gloom: shouts and promises of doom.
Iokru’s eyes bulged in dismay. “Now you’ve done it!” he wailed. “You’ve drawn blood against the ratmangers. If they associate me with your aggressive handiwork, there’ll be war amongst the clam worshippers and the ratmen!”
Laskar shrugged, not seeming to mind either way.
Vetra set down his load and frowned. He signalled Balir and the two edged their way down the path toward their enemies, drawing weapons. Kalaman, grinning fiercely, was close on their heels. A crew of forerunners had gained the ledge and were clambering up at them. Vetra saw four furred and masked figures come charging up the slope, spears in hand. One hurled a shaft at close range, narrowly missing Kalaman. But it slammed into Balir’s chest mail just above the left breast. In a rage, he pulled it out and with an angry grunt hurled the spear back at the offender with terrific force. The missile caught the attacker on his bare thigh. He snuffled out a cry and sank to his knees, clutching his leg. His three rat-masked comrades pressed around him, white teeth flashing in the gloom through their masks.
Iokru moaned. As Vetra and Kalaman rose to meet them, Laskar trained his crossbow and loosed, as calmly as if he were practicing in a noonday meadow. A bolt hissed through the air and took the nearest one in the chest. He fell back howling into the arms of his fellows.
“Stop! Stop!” Iokru hissed. He clutched his headdress, stamping his feet like a spoiled child.
But there was no stopping. Kalaman twisted sideways and brought back his blade. Ducking a lightning-fast spear tip, he took a two-handed swing and the dusky, rat-faced priest went down in a wash of crimson. He booted the croaking, gasping man down the ledge. Vetra stepped past Kalaman’s hulking frame and parried the glinting spear that came whistling for his own throat. His blade came fast over his shoulder, smashing down onto the man’s spear. Dumbly, the man blinked at his cloven weapon. Vetra ran cold steel through the man’s belly before he knew what hit him.
Iokru, panting, jaw-agape, cried out in misery, “Do you not know what you do?”
“Shut your mouth, priest!” thundered Vetra. “Or lend us a hand. Do you expect us to sit here and get pincushioned by your cronies?”
Iokru shook his head in blind frustration. “Hardly, but...don’t you see, don’t you know?—Fools! They will flay us alive. The ratmen will feed us to their god. Did you not see the thing? Quick, into the monkey’s cave!”
Sheathing his dripping sword, Vetra stalked gloweringly back to the shell and he and Balir hauled it on.
The whole episode had taken less than two minutes. More ratmen were on their way, judging from the feverish clamour and sounds of boot heels and men’s shouts, but they were a minute or more distant. Iokru grimaced. He shuttled the men up the path in a very black mood, herding his charges toward the dark monkey-god face that loomed like a monster out of a ghostly dream.
Vetra’s gaze caught the reflection of torchlight on the spears and the flashing of knives. He had a split-second vision of dozens of ratmen crawling up the switch-backed ledges after them...with a shake of head, he ducked back into the shadowy gap of the monkey’s eye and staggered on with his cargo.
The darkness closed about them. Iokru lit the torch with shaky hands and prodded them along with the hopeless resignation of a condemned man. The eerie tunnel reached out like a dusky glove, a passage with no end. Down the smooth stone, they lurched, Balir and Vetra panting with their ungainly load. Many smaller side passages gaped to left and right. Some of these the priest took, others he ignored with a wrinkle of his nose. His choices seemed almost arbitrary—ill-hewn, chill, damp, and depressing passages with no markers or carven glyphs or signs of human hewing to identify them. He weaved down side passages, ones which looked to have seen no human foot for decades.
“What’s with all this plunging hither and yon?” demanded Vetra. “Don’t we have a destination in mind?”
“The roundabout scramble is necessary, if we wish to survive.”
“We should have taken that hour-long detour,” growled Vetra petulantly.
The priest said nothing. There were no signs of pursuit. They had either lost the ratmen, or the rat worshippers had given up.
The tunnel widened, to their good fortune, and open air rose again above their heads.
The sour-faced priest urged them down another intersecting canyon lit only by dim moonlight that streamed down from a rocky gap. The canyon itself, however, felt dead of life and dark as a tomb. Laskar and Kalaman took up the idol and struggled with their burden. The party came down into a smaller avenue than the last—silent, dry, sepulchral, with only the whisper of a cold draught on their cheeks.
They passed under a massive arch that blotted out the moon. Iokru, looking back, nodded in new satisfaction.
Vetra’s strong fingers closed reflexively about the collar. Muttering second thoughts to himself, he swallowed back a bitter taste in his throat.
Caglios had given him the collar. A thing that made him feel dread. Green gems glowed dimly, yet felt cold as ice in his palm. A voice sprang out at him in his mind’s ear. Caglios’s? It was as if from a dream he heard the wizard’s words echoing like the roar one hears in a seashell:
“Douse the idol in the magic spring. Ring the collar round the winged one’s neck. A reward awaits when I have the idol in my hands. Be wary! Dapi bears little mercy...”
Vetra scowled at the words and the memory of the wizard’s imperial way of speaking. He shrugged it off, thinking it no more than apprehension, or some inner noise of foreboding.
Iokru studied the outlander, as if reading his thoughts. His dusky complexion turned a shade darker. “Hither—” he pointed eerily. “The temple of Dapi resides down this alley, past the winged arch. Inside you will find your god. Be swift!”
“You are not coming?” pressed Vetra.
The priest glanced at him as if he had not heard the question.
A flicker of distrust crossed Balir’s face. “Why is it your master, Rojarsh, who worships the clam, possessed something belonging to a competing god?”
Iokru paused, his face inscrutable. “Best for you not to ask. You are priest killers and will all die. I await you here at the entrance to the god’s sanctum. Return when you have performed your deed.”
Balir snorted a curse. “You fear the dark judgements of your gods, don’t you, priest? Can’t stand a little blood? A coward, like the rest. The mystic mumbo jumbo of Dapi—’tis all a front.”
Iokru showed yellow teeth in a sneer. “You speak the words of a fool.”
Balir chuckled at the cleric’s reaction. But an evil glint pierced the priest’s eye, and Vetra saw the left incisor was filed like a vampire’s.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Iokru. “I’m just practical.”
“Practical, eh? We’ll see,” Kalaman snorted. “Not afraid of anything except the ratmen’s toothy god.”
Iokru stooped to light a spare torch concealed on his person. He pushed the thing into Vetra’s hand which guttered in the chilly drafts that wafted up the corridor. Kalaman and Laskar took up the conch and moved on like wraiths.
Vetra’s eyes traced distrustful paths into the gloom. A few moments later, he snatched a look back. The priest, like the silent ghost he was, had vanished. And with him his malignant aura.
Vetra glanced about, tracing his fingers on the eerie porous walls around him. The rock was scored with the faintest markings, cryptic runes and figures. “Something must have spooked our priest.”
“Like the rat men and their blood lust?” gusted Balir sourly.
“Well, he’s gone now,” muttered Vetra. “We’ll have to find the blasted pool on our own. He did give us directions to follow.”
“Without the priest I don’t think we can easily find our way out of here,” said Balir, “especially with those ratmen crawling about like beetles. Not to mention if Iokru slinks back to Rojarsh babbling about some collar...”
“And what of it?” growled Vetra. “By sunrise, we’ll be able to see our way about these defiles—ratmen, collar or not. Hopefully our rodentish enemies will have crept back to their burrows by then.”
“We’re stuck like rats in a maze,” observed Kalaman. “Forgive the pun. I never knew these temple grounds were so extensive.”
“I would hope to be out of here before sunrise,” muttered Balir.
“Caglios gave specific instructions on how to ‘activate the idol’,” Vetra echoed, his mind elsewhere. “Put the collar on first, lest the falcon’s wrath burst.”
“What’s with the banal rhyme?” grunted Balir.
“How am I to know?” grunted Vetra, jarred from his daydream. “The ways of wizards are beyond me.”
II
Side passages branched everywhere but led nowhere. The four mercenaries kept to the main way on the priest’s advice, with Vetra pausing at each cross-tunnel to listen for the hostile pad of ratmen. But no sign of babbling voices or bobbing torches came from the dimness. The priest perhaps had lost them in all his taxing twists and turns. As for Dapi’s sanctum, they would see...
