Avenger, page 22
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
The keeper’s face remained unmoved. “You’re no different than the other ambitious simpletons of your creed. Your master was the vilest snake of all, an extortionist, and a tyrant and murderer—” She left off on that, stabbed a finger at the cursed, whalebone idol-amulet in the form of Rojarsh riding the sacred clam that hung round the priest’s neck. “Beware! Dapi does not forgive fools, nor does he fear to ride the heels of those and make sacrifices of us all ere the setting of the moon.”
“Take her, and these sputtering fools!” Iokru bellowed in rage. The priests muttered and advanced in dark knots. But Laskar knocked a bolt to his crossbow and aimed it at the foremost priest. The three in the front halted, wary of the archer’s steady hand and his merciless, unwavering gaze.
“You’ll be judged by the gods you worship!” warned Nimeska. “Stand back! My deities will protect me.”
“Your deities?” Iokru laughed. “Just like your precious Jano? I don’t think so.” He snorted out a breath through flared nostrils. “They’ll drag you through pools of your own blood and then eat out your eyeballs! Dapi will be under my control.” He jerked a finger at his underlings. “Seize this wench and take her to the pit of clams! The witch will feed Meru—our great, old clam.”
“The old Clam of our god!” cried one of Iokru’s faithful followers who shook a fist and hailed his priest-superior.
“First one touches her dies,” growled Vetra. His sword raked out, slashing the man’s garment and drawing a line of blood under the rough fur on the man’s partially naked brown chest.
A cry rang out and a spear clattered to the stone. Nimeska nodded in triumph, her visage coming alive with wrath and her priestess-like form seeming to rise a foot off the ground. Vetra marvelled at her trust and faith in her god. Another warrior-priest jerked forward, thrusting spear in her face, angry at the challenge and the injuries of his fellows. But she didn’t flinch.
Vetra sprang forward and turned aside the metal tip of the spear that would surely have pierced her breast. “Knave!” he snarled at Iokru. “Would you kill a defenceless woman?”
“If I must,” Iokru grunted. “Kill them all, every last one of these dungmites.” His priests rushed forward and lifted spears to hurl at the defenders.
Balir’s throat rumbled an oath while Laskar loosed a bolt into the advancing throng, taking the first running priest square between the eyes.
His body fell like a limp rag and a dog-eyed priest thrust his gleaming shaft at Kalaman. Balir barrelled into him and kneed the weapon out of the startled priest’s hands. The mercenary slashed a murderous stroke down on bared flesh, eliciting a shriek of agony.
The hall erupted into a wild melee, men yelling as spears thrust and swords cut.
A lunging priest feinted at Vetra while another, crouching, sprang with a furious yell. A knife stabbed for Vetra’s groin. He parried both and booted the crouching man in the teeth as Iokru surged forward, wresting the collar from Vetra’s belt.
Vetra wheeled like a cat, evading the first springing attacker and swinging out a lashing cut. But the blade fell on empty air. It struck the paves, and as quick as a snake, Iokru darted back with the prize in his grip, gloating venomously.
“With this piece, Dapi will be mine to control!” He laughed, foam dribbling from his lips. “You will feed our clam!”
“Not just yet,” came Nimeska’s explosive challenge. She held her hands over her head and her dark face grew fierce—and Vetra saw in her wild eyes something sinister, rising like a terrible wave.
The warrior priests drew back, eyes widening as if sensing something unearthly. Iokru stared at the temple-keeper in puzzlement. A dim understanding dawned in his expression.
“I am not without magic, priest! Watch!—Nimeska becomes the embodiment of her goddess.” And with a sudden stamp of heel, greenish light coursed around her in a flaring aureole, deeper than all the plants of the wildest jungles of Taro, as she invoked the spell and power of Jano, her patron goddess.
Iokru gave a snort pf rage. “You, the incarnation of the priestess of Mith? Never!” He grimaced in denial. “The treed one has been dead for an age.”
Nimeska guffawed, obviously enjoying the rich discomfort of the priest and the intoxicating wave of power flowing through her. “My power will make Dapi’s look like a worm in the swamps of nameless jungles.”
Nimeska’s body then glowed yellow and she began to pulse. Her thin body surged upward—growing taller, wider, her rhythmic movement like one of the big snakes of deep jungles from the south. Her legs stood rooted while arms sprouted slender limbs, like those Vetra had passed earlier, with dead leaves crackling on the ends to fall in crisp heaps at her feet. Writhing like vine tendrils, roots displanted toes and thrust in the age-worn stone of the temple and upheaved the pavestones.
The screams of dying men echoed up the corridor from the hidden exit.
Vetra could not decide which was worse, this ill scene or what transpired in the nearby corridor. He watched with dismay, priestly fingers close on weapons, eyes dart about with thin, wary fervour, men gauging the fragile balance that existed in this gloomy hall of the ancients. None knew what Iokru’s henchmen would do. Or what the treed horror would do next, nor what the menace progressing up the secret tunnel was. But it sounded like Dapi’s bloody handiwork.
Vetra turned a feral glance at Iokru who gripped the collar with growing doubt. Vetra launched himself at the priest, his blade promising swift death.
Iokru ducked under Vetra’s strike then scrambled away from the wrathful tree. “Wield your obscure magic, witch! Turn into a tree and regale us with a gaudy trick for all we care.”
As if in response, a newly-budding limb sprouted from the trunk Nimeska lashed out at him and sent priests flying. It blocked the hidden exit where Iokru pumped long legs, hoping to escape.
Five of his priests were down. The others legged it in a mad rush to win past Nimeska’s thrashing limb and flee the chamber. But the tree-keeper clapped her branches together like hands and the deserters fled back gibbering in awe at the quivering statues hovering over the lintel that suddenly fell with a crash at their feet. The priests stumbled around in confusion as a cloud of dust and moulder washed over them. Howling and scrabbling amongst themselves, they groped for safety. Broken masonry now blocked the passage.
Nimeska’s plumage was now a violent fan of loose branches, alive and bristling in the air like angry snakes.
Her tree-deep voice boomed over the din. “Sons of Rojarsh, you shall get your wretched wish. Entombed and encaged—protectors of the halls of the damned!” With a gruesome crackling of expanding wood, the trunk bulged and grew. New branches snaked off in unison like vines from faraway jungles, sealing off the entrance forever.
The smile froze on Iokru’s face. He held up the collar and strung it around his neck abreast the amulet. “I am not done yet, witch! Pay heed, I guard the talisman. ’Tis I who have power over the god!” These words he croaked with a hysterical vindictiveness.
“No you don’t,” whispered Balir, reeling up beside him.
Iokru hissed. “You! Get away from me!” He dodged past Balir toward the last passage. Only to come to a crunching halt. Something untoward hovered in the dimness. Iokru’s heart seemed to leap in his throat. From the passage that Vetra and his men had emerged, burst a red-eyed ghoul.
For a naked second, the entity paused, with its stone talons clacking on the aged pavestones. Then it leaped in the air, with wings beating a horrendous din.
Dapi loomed over Iokru like a winged avatar. Down it came tearing at him; he struck out with his stave. The bird wavered, did a half roll in the air, stunned by the rod’s magic and Iokru gave a rasping chuckle. Quickly he reached up, and the pulsing iron collar latched on with magnetic force to something metallic in place around its neck—but which did nothing in the shadow of the falcon god, to the priest’s inconceivable disbelief.
Iokru paled. The segment of collar had failed and he tore off, staring at it in dismay. His exultant haste had led him astray. Now he realized that it was but a half ring he held, not the full...that the god had the other half fused to its neck, something he had overlooked.
The red eyes glowed dusky balefire. A bloodstained beak aimed straight for the villain’s throat.
The priest gave a shrill wail. He twisted sideways and lurched as the stony thing sideswiped him by a hair. The talisman went flying from his hand, torn from the priest’s trembling fingers like coins in a mob’s rush, to clack against the nearest wall and lie rolling on the floor.
Kalaman made a grab for the fragment. Iokru, dazed but not witless, scrambled for it like a crab. He sank his teeth into Kalaman’s wrist. The mercenary’s agonized shout rang above the din. The priest’s strength was three-fold.
Kalaman struggled with his blade and only swung a glancing blow to Iokru’s painted face. Iokru parried with a jerk of his stave. Then, like some screaming banshee, he raced around Kalaman and sank his teeth into the nape of his neck.
Kalaman clawed back, bellowing in agony. He threw the priest to the ground, blood streaming from the back of his neck.
Vetra swore and dodged the assaults of Iokru’s minions, scrambling through the horrified wake of Iokru’s Clam-cult priests. He grabbed the collar from the floor, then bolted to the back of the chamber, while Kalaman bled and the god battled Iokru’s minions.
Iokru gurgled froth. A foamy shriek rasped on his lips. Distracted by the loss of his talisman, he fell sideways, buffeted by Dapi’s smashing beak that came again to ram him, but this time full in the face.
The beak pushed through the snarling teeth of the defenceless man and thrust down his throat. The priest’s eyes gaped; his jaw cracked and the bird started sucking—blood, innards, the whole works of life out of him. Iokru’s back arched. His legs dangled in dancing death over the paves as a gurgle of dark crimson streamed from his wide-stretched mouth. His body went limp, then he hung there like a ragdoll while Vetra watched in numb horror. The god-bird held him suspended in the air, then slung the lifeless body to the side then turned its fiendish attention to the wild-eyed company.
Dapi slowly descended to the ground, eyeing the scrambling men who surged every which way. With impassive detachment, the god-bird watched—its eyes flicked briefly over its brother god-statue, Osipres. The bird burned and radiated a lambent heat, which Vetra felt, its bloody beak stretched wide. Red, inhuman eyes pierced the humans, as if they were but plump hares.
The moments passed in a blinding flash of blood and death as all hell broke loose and the god tore through the ranks of priests and outlanders alike, taking the slowest first.
Vetra pitched backwards, knocking Kalaman on his side. Balir weaved in and out of the bloody fray like a crazed lynx, his foes knocked about like pins. Crimson blade thunked into priestly flesh while he avoided death by instinct alone. A priest’s spear snapped on the stone beak as the bird rammed it into the attacker’s face. The victim mustered a flesh-curdling cry, before the creature began sucking the life out of him as it had Iokru before him. The fear-maddened priests clawed their way across the stone, struggling to get away from the monster, but there was nowhere to go. The exits were blocked. Nimeska’s magic limbs had sealed them in. The tree stopped its infernal swaying and the face of the keeper, now a misshapen oval in the trunk, uttered spell-ridden incantations.
There came a stony spray of debris showering down from on high as the enchanted trunk raked limbs across the upper half of the chamber. Statues dropped like flies. A beating of godly wings, and the hint of ignoble death, then the monstrous shape of Dapi emerged behind them.
Laskar aimed his weapon for the swooping shape but his bolts clattered uselessly against the stone-hard body. He raced amongst the screaming mob, kicking priests away with his spiked boots, or smashing them with the butt end of his crossbow. He avoided a swipe from Dapi’s beak, but then his expression turned ashen as the beast veered in toward him. With a flicking wing, it sent him crashing back in a litter of fallen stone.
Vetra could not watch. In swift panic, he leapt through the throng of dazed, blood-stained priests, wondering if his stride could close the gap to Laskar in time. The archer struck again, the butt end of his crossbow splintering, but it had no more effect than a broom wisp on solid steel. For an instant Dapi came alive, surging at him—a vile fiend of insuperable force. A scrambling, grunting skirmish was in play as demon flapped forward and back, pressing gore-flecked beak into Laskar’s face. The archer’s shriek was thick on his lips...then Vetra’s blade struck home.
The savage chop had distracted the crimson beak from penetrating Laskar’s gullet. Vetra whipped aside to intercept the terror and now he smote another clanking blow off its invulnerable beak. The bird turned with an inhuman shriek, looking more like a man with a hideous beak than a god-falcon. Vetra heeded not. Again his fine Magnelian blade rose and fell until it was scored and notched. Yet the indomitable stone of Dapi’s hide remained unblemished. With a hissing curse, Vetra pulled his blade away and Laskar stumbled on through the litter of mangled bodies, freed for an instant from his pinned position, while the god-bird turned its wrath on Vetra. The archer shook his head, reached for his cracked but serviceable weapon, but a priest kicked the thing out of the way. Laskar thrust a boot up into the priest’s gut and the enemy doubled over. Scrabbling, Laskar retrieved his bow, pulled a bolt from his belt, and loosed it into the fray. A scream died in a rattling gurgle.
Vetra staggered back as Dapi turned, snapping its beak at him. Vetra crouched, blood-dripping, flailing with his ruined sword. Twice Dapi’s reeking beak came perilously close to stabbing into his mouth. But back he beat it with a furious pounding of blade and fist. The murderous bill clamped on the glistening metal and chomped hard. The steel snapped in two.
In dumb fascination, Vetra felt his broken hilt sag in his hands. He threw it back at the bird in snarling despair. He leapt sideways, caught himself in time from stumbling over a dead body, narrowly dodging a soul-sucking lunge. Down he ducked, barely escaping another bout of death.
Lost was his priceless Magnelian blade, sword of a master craftsman, but he was at least alive.
Pulling out his knife that was strapped above his boot, he crouched behind a chunk of broken statue, sucking in a ragged gasp of air while waiting for death.
Nimeska’s lashing branches had subsided. Her power, it seemed, had waned. Only her face showed, a gnarled oval of aged eye and cheek sunken in the black trunk. But those eyes twinkled with the power of god-like magic. The trunk was scored, riven deep by Dapi’s beak ramming it time and again. The roots still drew sustenance from the ancient blood under the temple, as spoken in the legends of old.
The tree-keeper laughed, barely a coherent sound. “Into the mouth of Osipres, you fools! Down the chute of oblivion!”
Vetra ran, knowing that to comply meant survival, though he could not stop the bloodthirsty god that was Dapi. Nobody could.
Nimeska lashed a last mighty limb out at the ceiling and a large mass of stones fell straight on the bird-beast. The creature lay engulfed in a cloud of rubble, pressed into the dust. A follow-up patter of rocks fell from on high, blocking the last remaining passage beyond hope. The bird had already pinned priest and mercenary down like flies. Its ramming thrusts had crumbled the chamber in beat with Nimeska’s magical terror.
The dust dissipated. Now the rubble moved, and a dusty wing knifed up from the ruin. Dapi fluttered free, wings flapping upward, tossing massive chunks aside.
Vetra crouched in the smoke and ruin, staring in disbelief. He watched the thing, a prince in devil’s disguise, move about in drunken hops while more debris tumbled from the ceiling. So, Dapi gained the air again.
Nimeska’s limbs had writhed to new life. While those gods warred, Vetra grabbed up Balir and the two struggled to reach Osipres’ beak. Kalaman and Laskar still battled priests further in; though Vetra called to them, his shouts were lost in the din. Dapi struck over and again and priests fell and lay still. The stone tree that was Nimeska blocked the assaults with more of her wavering branches, while the god-fervour was on her, and she lashed out limbs which hit Dapi sideways and sent the bird reeling. It crashed against the wall, crushing another priest underneath it. Dapi had grown stronger with all its sickening soul-suckings and now it coursed to life with new devilry. It sprang airborne and roared, whistling through the air on notched wings to smash a thrashing limb off the treed Nimeska.
Nimeska uttered a dismal cry. A new member grew in its place. Such was the power of Jano and her faith burned strong in her one god.
With the exits blocked, only one way existed out of this burrow—through the mouth of the demon god Osipres. Vetra had long rallied his men to gather at the base of the trunk that rose alongside the shoulders of the stone god’s likeness. The statue towered thirty feet over them; the older tree’s twining branches invaded beak and eyes in symbolic desecration. In its dark shadow, Vetra saw the dusky crimson beak of the effigy hook toward the hall’s middle. The open bill loomed several feet over their heads. The petrified trunk was mirror smooth and not to be climbed so easily.
Kalaman gripped Vetra’s shoulder. He cupped both hands and motioned for him to slip a boot in the crook of his palms so that he could climb up into the great beak.
Vetra stepped in Kalaman’s hands. Grunting, Kalaman pushed him up a foot higher. Vetra, hanging over the lower bill, thrust down a hand to pull Kalaman up. But he was denied.
A spear hurled with terrific force slammed into Kalaman’s back. Vetra saw the look of sheer agony cross the swordsman’s face. Kalaman saw no more, for he fell like an ox, and the enemy was on him, the killing shaft projecting from between his shoulders.
Vetra gave a foul cry. Balir and Laskar gazed on in horror. Desperate priests were trampling on Kalaman’s back, trying to scale the osprey’s stone face themselves, having seen the only means of escape was via the god’s mouth.
