Avenger, page 23
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
Iokru lay sprawled in his own blood, his sightless gaze trained upward. Scattered torches lit feathers and fur and now dead bodies crawled with flame. The clam worshippers were trapped in the chamber, facing gruesome death as the demon god flew about in wrathful abandon, augmenting its power with each being it sucked.
Looking out over the fray, Vetra saw, from the bottom bill of the osprey’s parted beak, a fiery maze of smouldering corpses and scurrying figures. Many grotesque, creeper-like limbs of Nimeska slung everywhere. Dapi flew among all, choosing hapless victims at will. The lower bill of the osprey’s beak was wide enough for Vetra to manoeuvre, yet the back part of the bird’s throat was hollowed out; some gloomy passage ran down the beast’s throat. Thuds, shrieks, clinks of weapons, the sound of pounding feet and frantic men’s shouts echoed about the polished stone.
Vetra kicked priests clambering up the trunk back into the mob to die skewered by Dapi’s beak as the god-bird flew back and forth like a ravenous dactyl. It wreaked mad destruction that knew no end. Laskar helped Balir worm his way up the trunk then struggled to shimmy up on his own, hanging off a priest’s boots who was almost already up. Some spears flew up at him, but they whistled wide. The archer kicked gibbering priests in the face who grabbed at his ankles.
Balir heaved a tortured gasp and clung to the osprey’s bottom bill, his maimed arm hooked at the elbow over the bird’s beak.
A warrior-priest jumped up to hang off Balir’s legs. Balir roared in rage and pain, but Vetra stamped down and smashed the priest in the teeth. Bone and broken teeth crunched and sent the man flailing back, shrieking through a mouth of bloody froth into the howling mob.
Vetra knelt to pull the wheezing Balir up. A frantic, climbing priest competed with Laskar to monkey-scramble up the trunk. In blood-fueled lunacy, the priest gained the osprey’s lower bill, where its beak hung carved in a silent cry.
Vetra ducked the man’s arching blade snatched from Vetra’s seashell belt and blocked a quick strike to his throat. He took hold of the quivering wrist and yanked it, splintering bone and tearing tendon.
The knife dropped from the madman’s wrist. Vetra gutted him with a disembowelling chop. Dragging out his knife, he slashed at another who tried to hamstring him. Another snarling figure gained the mouth of the osprey. They struggled in the cramped space, elbows hooking jaws, their backs to cold stone walls, grunts and curses loud and echoing off the walls.
Vetra staggered back, drawing gasps of breath in his lungs. Balir crawled on all fours, wincing with the pressure on his mangled hand. The mercenary struck out at a priest’s legs which now crowded in to kick at Vetra. Laskar, crossbow strapped at his back, was just pulling his wracked body over the stone-carved lip when a torch came twirling up from below and it rolled at Vetra’s feet; he looked at it dazedly, the smoke stinging his eyes. The grinning priest tackled Vetra’s legs and loosed an anguished howl, sinking now with Vetra’s knife protruding from the middle of his back. Balir wrestled madly at Vetra’s side against another attacker, and both felt themselves slipping down a smooth, steep grade into the god’s throat. All three toppled down the black gullet of the stone god.
End over end they tumbled—down a series of polished stone chutes, crying out in the blackness.
Vaguely did Vetra remember his head spinning like a kite in a windstorm. Somehow the torch tumbled with them. He caught flashes of beastly images carved in stone, boot heels flashing in his face, hands like claws reaching for his eyes...
There came a thud, and an echoing crunch of bone.
IV
How far the hapless men fell, Vetra did not know. Bereft of senses, he tumbled through the tunnels of solid rock down some zigzagging chute to land in a strange, darkened pit.
Wump! A fourth body thudded on the dead priest—the was it Laskar? Balir’s howl rang out as the latest falling figure caught the edge of his leg.
The bone-jarring impact knocked the wind out of Vetra and he wheezed air back in his lungs. A growing lump throbbed behind his ear. His helm had saved him from a cracked skull—and by landing on his side.
Two torches dropped next, sizzling the men’s jerkins now wet with blood. Swords had slid out of their scabbards during the plummet down the chutes, and they lay gleaming in the flickering light.
Vetra crawled to his feet, nursing bruises and a dazed skull. He swatted the flames from his torn coat. Blinking in the gloom, he ran his fingers over the ugly dent in his helm.
He glared about him, suspicion rising at the half inch of water that lay three feet from where the twisted body of the priest lay—its wide eyes staring in ignoble death. Vetra shook his head, amazed he himself was still alive.
Another thought slowly registered: if Dapi had not taken out so many of the enemy, Iokru and his minions might have overpowered them, taken them as fodder to their clam god.
Vetra’s shoulders tensed at the memory of the murderous battle and Iokru twitching in his death throes with Dapi.
The torches on the mouldered stone sputtered and hissed beside him like angry snakes. The ends had just missed the water. He snatched one up and caught chilling glimpses of chains coiled in the shadows on the floor strung on the walls. All were draped with thick webs. Corroded vats of stone and bronze cauldrons loomed in the wavering torch-shadows. The peg-like stumps of columns reared ominously out of the shadows, columns arranged in a circle. Cryptic symbols lay engraved in the circled pit with a seven pointed star, six feet from where he stood. It was a demon worship pit, he thought. Now that his eyes were adjusting to the dimness, he walked more boldly amongst the ruins and perceived sarcophagi ranging about the perimeter. Seven lay on low slab-like pedestals and were scrolled with goat’s horns and serpent coils. All were inscribed with ancient symbols. A series of glass tubes and metal pipes extended from sarcophagus to sarcophagus in some incomprehensible lattice-work.
Vetra stopped short. To transfer elixirs, fluids and magical airs? The concept seemed unreal. What was this place? Possibly not a worship pit. A wizard’s spell-chamber then? A priest’s deranged laboratory? Though somewhat indifferent to sorcery, Vetra felt a black pall of death surround him in this place of darkness and decay. Most of what was labelled ‘spellcraft’ in his mind was really only mummers’ tricks or manipulation of men’s belief and hypnotism over weak minds. But this, and the recent macabre transformation of both Nimeska and Dapi—? His skin crawled with unease.
Oblivious to the stirring of his comrades, Vetra swallowed back anxiety and admitted that part of him could not resist the lure to peel back the lid of one of those dust-caked sarcophagi. He lifted off the broken tube that linked one of the vessels with its silent neighbour. Biting his tongue, he chiselled off the lid of a cracked one with his knife.
He held his breath. Staring within, he saw the withered corpse of some vaguely human thing inside, lying like some spider-eaten carcass of a bygone race. It was webbed with thick brown crinkled flesh, long dried and cured from ages of settling. Sunken cheeks mantled the moth-eaten face. Worm-withered lips peeled back, and the skull was framed by wisps of grizzled hair.
It was the claws on the end of the shrivelled arms that piqued Vetra’s attention—like the paws of a mutant wolf. The legs stretched to the sarcophagi’s end, protruding with what looked like talons. There was some monstrous tail that descended from the rump, akin to an alien hawser, curling over the creature’s waist. Perhaps this is what those dark-minded priests of old were doing back in distant ages, Vetra thought—manufacturing god-hybrids to provide the mindless acolytes something to worship and drive their fanatical cults. Through necromancy, they concocted aberrations like this, he mused, like the rat-god of the ratmangers? Like Dapi?
The ghoulish hulk had died long ago, or perhaps its wretched hatching had gone afoul. Vetra shuddered to think what else lurked under the lids of those other intact vessels, but he had no time to ponder. The muffled thuds of sliding bodies and shrieks of terror echoed from the oval gap in the ceiling.
He stared up. The chute from which they had tumbled stared back at him blackly. The opening looked revered, gilded around its edges and set with massive jewels, shaped like the birth-hole of a female animal. A chill shivered his marrow.
He knew they must have tumbled into some lower section of the temple complex, below the Temple of Osipres, a cave of sorts, or some primordial cavern formed by the ocean—when seawater had risen up as far as the chasms of Gyzia. The ceiling rose rough-hewn, like the inside of a whale’s mouth, damp with moisture.
Balir was stirring and Laskar was already poking his bow about the refuse, his baldric hanging loose over his back. His head jerked to the sounds of imminent death above him.
Even in his half stupor, Vetra realized that only through the providence of the keeper’s magic had they even survived Dapi’s deadly skirmish. The god beast had meant to finish them all—as Iokru and many of his crew had discovered.
He looked up again at the chute. Should other priests pass through that dark opening, another fight would be upon them—unless they were to hightail it. A death clash with the flesh-champing Dapi would be inopportune at this time. With clenched teeth, he moved on to the hither wall.
Laskar signalled the others. Vetra hobbled over to where the archer stood, extending a finger at something in the dimness. Chains and bones lay in the filth. A skeletal hand and an animal skull poked up from the debris, and still, something else—an ancient broadsword, leaning up against a fallen block of a ruined column. The weapon was magnificent. Vetra’s face lit up with awe. He scooped it up at once and wiped off the layers of dust and cobwebs. He hefted it, tested its weight. The weapon was well-balanced and fashioned in the style of one of the old Belarion blades of the wizard-kings. He grunted with appreciation.
Another skull and a headless skeleton lay a few yards away, strewn amongst lesser weapons—knives and rusted scimitars. These caused Vetra a crawling unease. Perhaps the mishmash of bones belonged to a warrior of some distant age? Not unlikely—nor implausible that the fallen man had suffered a gruesome fate like Kalaman. Vetra’s teeth flashed in a grimace. At all costs, he must not fall prey to a similar doom.
The sword lying almost hidden in the moulder felt like a gift from the gods. Despite the age and size of the weapon, it had the feel of power in it. Stark, cryptic runes lay engraved in the gold-worked hilt, in a language that Vetra guessed was a lost tongue from the east. The guard on the hilt curled with serpents’ heads. The blade was fine steel, of a silver-colour, with a faint shade of green, the like of which had not lost its colour or rusted into uselessness after all these years. It narrowed to a fine tip at its end. A strange skewering instrument, Vetra thought. The ancient weapon quivered with a unique energy, almost mystical, as if wise gods lent force to it when he made mock thrusts.
“That’s a fine blade,” Balir remarked.
Vetra started at the sound of Balir’s voice that crept from behind him out of nowhere. “It’ll replace my lost Magnelian one,” he declared, “smashed by Dapi’s beak in that wretched skirmish.”
Balir looked a royal mess, as did they all, torn and bleeding from dozens of cuts. Strained tumult continued to rumble from above—muted screams and now the clatter of spears—from where the dark chute gaped all the more like an obscene birthing canal. Balir looked up, his spirit full of gloom. “If I’d known that our bane Dapi would have caused us all this mischief, I’d have tossed that idol down the canyon long ago. Or never agreed to the wizard’s commission in the first place.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” said Vetra hollowly. “If I know that fiend, it will break down walls of rock to skewer us.” His lips peeled back in a bleak grimace.
Balir combed his bloody beard. “I don’t understand why it has it in for us, Vetra. Are we are not somewhat its fathers?”
“We’re as much its birth fathers as those damned ratmen,” he growled. “Don’t kid yourself, Balir. Didn’t one of their cult members kick the idol over into the magic pool?”
Balir grudgingly accepted the logic. He moved around, poking bits of rubble with the rusty scimitar he had dug out of the rot. It looked as if this chamber hadn’t been disturbed in centuries.
Vetra watched the proceedings with a sleepwalker’s daze. More than ever he felt like a man in a dream. Should he not be finding a way out of this pit? The thought came as a vague stirring in the back of his head. He thought to discern an arched exit lurking somewhere at the back of the chamber. But it was such a wash of murk over there that he wondered if his eyes were not deceiving him. He shook his head, tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind, but he could not shake the feeling of doom clutching at his soul.
There came a smack of bone as a man plummeted through the gap in the ceiling, his leg twisted unnaturally.
Vetra saw the flash of other grisly figures struggling above. Somehow they were jammed in a great knot in the narrowing chute. Then he heard the shriek of the god.
The man who had fallen cried out in a pitiful voice. “’Tis the pit of Ocelos! Kill me now, before the ghost of the warlock king comes to rip my heart out. Or that beastly bird comes to rape me of my soul!” His fingers clawed desperately at the clammy rock, pulling his body away from his dead peer.
“Gladly, priest,” grated Balir. He staggered over to where the man crawled. “Any last prayers?”
“Just to Meru, my clam god. You must pray for me—without Meru, I will—”
Balir ran him through, before the priest could utter the last words. “That’s better. The man’s keening was starting to irritate me.”
Vetra grunted. “Come on.” He started to pull Balir away from the corpses, then had an idea.
Hunkering down to strip the dead men of their priestly capes, he scowled and cursed. They could be used for subterfuge if they ran into more of their kind on the way. Laskar winced at the blood and donned the most tattered and filthy one. Balir slung the other over his shoulder. The shell helm one wore, was cracked and of limited utility. A brownish face gazed up vacuously under the mask.
The tangle of men caught in the jam above twisted and writhed with terror, unable to free themselves. A muffled cawing reverberated through their tight clot.
Vetra and the others stumbled back in horror, almost overcome by a blast of Dapi’s bloody reek as the creature skewered priests and attempted to squeeze past the trapped men.
Off they plunged to the archway, hoping for a connecting passage. Into a large chamber they fled: one equally dark and sinister.
“Dapi will strip our souls if it catches us!” cried Vetra. They pushed their way through the moulder and refuse. Laskar, crossbow nocked, trailed behind, his weapon slung over his shoulder. Further behind they could hear the thud of more bodies smashing on their fellow cultists. The fugitives were not a few hundred yards in before the echoes of falconish shrieks rattled in their ears. Vetra shook off the images of that chilling bird temple and its horror and death: victims forced up a ramp and plunged down the osprey’s maw to fall into the wizard’s pit, never to see the light of day again.
While the moans and screams of doomed men faded behind him, he edged fingers around the collar, feeling a pang of guilt over the vicious slaughter of Kalaman. Had the thing caused his death by his keeping the sinister half ring? It seemed to bind the bird-god in some inexplicable way. He could not jettison it; he had already tried that. Every time his fingers curled around its broken edge, with the aim to hurl it far away, a quivering palsy stayed his hand. Every intuitive fibre of his being screamed at him to get rid of the thing. Then why hadn’t he? Only could he cling on to it tighter. His tongue felt swollen when he tried to talk about it, like a beggar’s cloth were wrapped around it.
The passage split and the brush of fresher air on their cheeks had them choosing the rightmost passage. They came out under a low, crumbling arch. In his haste, Vetra almost toppled to his doom, for the path ended in an abrupt drop. One of the cross canyons loomed below. The night sky reared above them and they felt naked and insignificant under its vastness. A narrow ledge ran along the cliff at their feet, cut starkly in the rock face. Torches winked in the wells of darkness below, lighting more of the various temples which Vetra believed connected to the main Way of Temples. At least they had some semblance of direction, he thought. A buzz of activity stirred below, a low murmur of priestly voices which morphed into a drone of devotional chanting. The priests had not yet been alerted to the horror that was Dapi at their doorstep. Vetra looked down bleakly. He guessed the canyon had once hosted a raging torrent, but had not seen a flash flood in years.
The moon, far in its sweep across the sky, stained the crumbling landscape a ghostly grey, and they trudged up the shale-flaked path with heedful steps. Any misstep meant doom, a swift tumble down a headlong drop over fifty feet below. The world that they knew loomed yet a hundred feet higher still: tantalizingly close, but no way to reach it by way of those sheer, ominous cliffs.
Sweat poured from Vetra’s pores. The prospect of eluding Dapi’s lusts for yet another hour was too horrifying to ponder. The bird evidently had no intention of abandoning their flesh; recent experience spoke that it would pursue them forever, at whatever cost, and for what—the collar? Besthra’s sluts, but he could not get rid of it!
Balir and Vetra groaned. Not forty feet ahead along the ledge rose another impasse: iron bars meshed for untold feet up the side of the canyon, at whose feet sat some sort of chained gate.
Vetra gave a sour grimace. He strode up to the barrier and halted to glare sullenly at the chains—chains which he seized in both fists and rattled like a prisoner. The lock was cast iron, not to be shattered with any easy hewing. The gate was only twice a man’s height, but the iron mesh riveted into the rock rose up into the gloom, lost from sight. The barrier was meant to keep wanderers or curious priests out. A forbidden zone? Likely. Ocelos’s work area, however long ago that dreaded figure had lived. Half way up the cliff, they could see another ledge running parallel in rough-hewn fashion over their heads. It intersected the mesh at a high point and a dark entrance showed in the cliff several yards down the ledge. A cave? Some tunnel into the canyon face?
