Avenger, page 3
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
Vetra brought his sword high and gleaming steel crashed toward the man who was pressing his foot on the innkeeper’s neck.
The thug swung a silver falchion and nearly chopped the innkeeper in two, but Vetra’s stroke caught the blade. A rasp of metal and Vetra’s weapon shimmered in a blinding arc. The sweaty grin froze on the swarthy face as three feet of glittering steel ploughed through his chest and up out his back. He crumpled in a bloody heap.
His colleagues gaped at the sudden violence of the attack and scrambled back in horror. Two circled in to lay swords to their new enemy.
Vetra dodged his foes, parrying strikes which would have impaled him like a hog. He stepped over the body—then smote with savage strength. He followed up with a lightning-fast riposte, a bellowing roar on his lips.
The half Thrule scurried out of the fray to help his uncle, but was drawn into a vicious swordfight with the fourth man. They circled and shuffled around like barbarians, grunting, clashing, muscles bunched and triceps straining, while Vetra contended with his two foes.
Vetra’s temper grew. The heat burned down on his head, tapping wounds of raw rage and frustration. He hewed and smote like a wild man. His temples throbbed; every muscle in his body rippled and stood out like lumps of iron. Ever since he had come to this wretched hub, men had been trying to kill him, and it made his blood boil. He grunted and whirled about, ducking, stabbed steel at the figures. They grew warier, their eyes widening at the efficient skill of this enemy they faced. His closest attacker feinted, a crafty, drawn out lunge. The man was a lean, hawk-faced fighter, and pretended to fall while his comrade came in leering with upraised blade.
Vetra saw the plan in an instant. He crouched low—and before his head went rolling across the sand, he twisted, surprise registering on their faces. He jammed an elbow in the kidneys of the jeering man that Lehundr now faced.
The half Thrule ripped blade across his attacker’s throat.
Two down.
Vetra was bowled over in the rush by the two others in the brief moment it took him to make that rippling thrust. He staggered across the dirt, narrowly avoiding a mortal jab and follow-up boot heel in his face. A grisly vision of death swept across his mind as a desert rogue’s blade slipped past his guard. But Lehundr came in grunting with weapon raised and swinging two-handed over his shoulder. The blade met the assailant’s and the gleaming steel only glanced off Vetra’s arm, slicing his forearm. The mercenary winced, but he shot his blade out to meet the man’s desperate counterstrike even as he felt the throb of the wound up to his elbow.
Vetra’s blade rang without mercy, a flurry of cuts that were too fast for his foe to follow. The groaning man fell to his knees, choking on his own blood. Vetra put his boot on the dying figure, pulled his blade free and used his left heel to mangle the man’s face.
While the other bled out on the sand, the remaining rogue fled wheezing and grunting up the alley, holding his flayed ribs.
“Coward!”
Lehundr sought to chase after him but Vetra pulled him back. “Forget that scum, we have to leave!”
“But he’ll blab to Rafa—”
“Forget Rafa! Dergath weeps, but warm blood runs everywhere your cursed map goes!”
The half Thrule grimaced, acknowledging the truth of it. He stumbled over to his crawling uncle.
“Go,” his uncle croaked at him, pushing him away. “These swine will bring more with them. Better for you to be far away from here. I’ll close the cursed hostel and hide away in Cyr-Down.”
Lehundr hung his head. Vetra gathered the ponies and barked at Lehundr to get a move on.
The half Thrule struggled up onto his mount, blinking, squinting back his rage and frustration, muttering at the ill choices he had made.
Vetra sat his pony, a figure of silent wrath. He bandaged his arm, wrapping the sleeve of his caftan in a rude sash around his bloody wound.
Lehundr and he cantered back out the alley with the packbeast in tow. The great eastern road, now a ribbon of white satin shimmered in the drowsy heat through the gaps between the plaster homes. They left the rowdy sounds of Dragonskull behind.
II: The Ring of Pain
Their progress was stalled by the presence of a bearded rogue watching the eastern gateway: two flanking walls of loose sandstone blocks piled one on another, crossed by a wooden gate. Not much of a barrier, Vetra thought, but it was what Dragonskull had to offer. The man leaned on a spear, fingering a long blade clutched in a brown fist. His eyes were trained on the horizon. Vetra recognized the thug from the alley, so he signalled Lehundr to a halt.
Quicker to split the man’s skull and be done with it, Vetra mused. But that would leave a clear signal to Rafa and his gang where they were headed. No, better to double back through town and dispose of the spy who was predictably stationed at the western entrance, thus throwing off the scent. But he rejected the plan: too risky. It entailed a complex detour and chance for a run-in. Easier to make a roundabout route and escape by stealth, winding around Dragonskull.
He and Lehundr ducked low in their saddles, and threaded their way back through narrow alleys and deserted service yards, leaving by another unguarded exit that Lehundr knew of. On the way they passed the stone water reservoir and its snaking pipe which swung out over its wide, glaring lip.
Vetra recalled that Dragonskull had once been a thriving mining community named New Thoria after the famed metal Thorian. The mines had dwindled since and Dragonskull would have become a ghost town, had it not been for the trade route, and ultimately the discovery of a water source.
Where water would normally gurgle from the pipe to fill the reservoir’s basin, the spout was dry as desert bones. Vetra saw men clustered at the reservoir’s base trying to sort out matters about the stopped flow, arguing and gesticulating, and the local constabulary was having a tough time trying to stop panicked locals from climbing the rungs up the vessel to fill bucket and barrel and drain what was now a scarce resource. Not a trickle came from its stony mouth; the work of the rebel Thrules, if the informers were to be believed. How they pumped water that distance was beyond Vetra. He shook his head, figuring it must by sorcery or some esoteric science.
Breaking through a rickety fence and a stand of eucalyptus swaying in the afternoon breeze, they took a goat path north and east that crossed the dusty highway, not two bowshots away.
Past the edge of town, the well-worn track led to the Great Highway, a twin rutted path that snaked in a straight, lonely line for leagues to come—as far as Dalispar in distant Mekutomia.
The oasis that graced this ore-rich area had dried up, much to the disappointment of the early prospectors who pumped water from the nearest water source—a massive oasis some five leagues out. It was here where Vetra and Lehundr fled, and turned their treasure-seeking eyes.
They passed wagons, driven by camels, sometimes teams of desert bullock, many a mean-eyed blue-black ruminant with huge horns and flaring, flat-faced snouts. They snorted and bawled, swinging heads back and forth in their yokes, nursing bellows deep in wattled throats.
They were no more past these when the white tips of bones appeared, peeking up from the sand. A gigantic dragon skull lay on its side, twisted askew. Eye sockets gaped like empty pools.
From where the creature had come, Vetra could hardly guess. He only knew that the beast was one of the great winged fliers that came from an age well in the past when dragons ruled the skies. This parched region had been a dragon haunt.
But now the ignorant Behundrians had affixed wooden signs and crude placards on the magnificent beast’s brow. Carven characters were etched on its gleaming white skull: “Dragonskull. Now entering the golden settlement: Dragonnook, of old.”
“Why’d they scribe the old skull? Nobody around here can read.”
Lehundr shook his head, muttering his distaste for the lurid script. “The old ones would roll in their graves if they were to witness such sacrilege.”
Vetra’s brows rose, wondering what attracted the half Thrule to dragons.
He saw only a few of the larger vertebrae of the dragon peeking through the sand, indicating the creature’s massive girth. The rest of the bones he assumed were scavenged long ago by the locals to be made into souvenirs.
He could not help but marvel at this awesome creature that spanned twenty wagons’ lengths.
“It’s the largest in all of Behundria and Sahir,” remarked Lehundr. “So was the town named, Dragonskull. Whether they could fly is not known. What is left of their wing bones are shrunken parodies for beasts of their size.”
Vetra rubbed his sweaty brow.
“It was said their empire stretched as far as Lausern in Lvendar to Mekutomia in the far east. That their lords were half human, half dragon with bodies of men and feet, head and necks of dragons.”
“I am glad to live in this age, rather than theirs,” muttered Vetra.
“Are you sure?” challenged Lehundr. “What makes you think this age so much better?”
Any argument he realized would not alter the Thrule’s opinion. What did he really know about the dragons anyway? Their lords, half man, half dragon? He was about to snort out a response when Lehundr added:
“’Twas their half human-dragon lords that held a reign that lasted a thousand years. Legend says they came from a faraway world. I don’t personally believe it. There are as many tales of their existence as there are grains of sand in this desert. A certain chilling legend speaks of a time when dragons flew to earth from a distant world beyond the moon. Others say a band of wizards created the lords and morphed with the dragons themselves through wizardly agencies to become the hybrids we see in the crumbled statues poised before us.”
“If the old dragons were so masterful, why did they die? Why would a dead race have treasure?”
Lehundr gave a sullen shrug. “Their empire was vast. Their riches as lavish. Dwelling on earth so long, they lost their powers, ’tis said, and the dragon-men came to lord over them in their weakened state, and thus become their masters. The new dragon-lords were fortunately somewhat of a benign force, as far as lords go.”
Vetra struggled to control his contempt at such a concept. “Men masquerading as dragons. Putting on headdresses and dancing around a fire in the dead of night. I’ve seen it from tribe to tribe, temple to temple. Men or dragons, if either had such treasure, they would have kept it well hidden.”
“Perhaps, but as to which age is better, if you live long enough here,” said Lehundr sharply, “you come to believe otherwise.”
The miles passed, the sun a beating scourge, and the clop of ponies’ hooves a monotonous beat on the packed sand. The old dragon ruins jutted more frequently out of the scrub, and the dunes took on a shimmering quality—sheltering half-fallen fanes, monuments and temples carved in crumbling stone: eerie statues of dragon men, or weathered full dragon, carved with uncanny skill.
A rambling cart with rickety wheels carrying silks and olives from the east came trundling in a cloud of dust: turbaned Guirites driving a team of desert horse. The outriders stood in their high, leather-padded saddles and coloured caftans, with crossbows raised. Vetra lifted his hand in greeting.
Seeing no threat from two lone wayfarers dawdling along the road on their ponies, the caravan men lowered their weapons. “Akzam San!” they chorused in a lively shout, meaning “Peace go with you.”
Vetra and Lehundr tipped heads in respect and moved off the road to let them pass.
They drove their ponies in a leisurely trot, squinting into the bright glare off the sand, a hot dry breeze in their face bringing sand flies and dust into their eyes. Alongside the road and twisting through the desert came the stone pipeline that carried the lifeblood water to Dragonskull. Vetra stared at it, shaking his head in curious wonder. He marvelled at the human engineering and ingenuity that could create something of this magnitude.
They encountered various traffic, from single caravans, to long trains of covered wagons and bulls with camp-following doxies and footmen wielding pikes. But never solo travellers or even packs of two. Two lone wayfarers with their light packs and blood-stained garments and blithe salutes caused many a suspicious look—and interest.
A painted harlot approached Vetra who had paused to rest his pony, her hips swinging, and cheap bangles tinkling on ankles and wrists.
Vetra scanned her long bare legs and her inviting, full lips and quickly declined the unsaid offer. “Business over pleasure, princess. I’m sure you’ll find many a dog in Dragonskull that’ll lap at your well-mounted behind.”
“Not nearly as manly as you.”
“Perhaps.”
“What about your little friend?” the trollop followed up with a suggestive wink, her smirk hardened around the edges. “Half price for him.”
Vetra laughed. So did the trollop. But Lehundr did not laugh, miffed as he was at being compared with such harshness to the mercenary.
Vetra reached over and slapped Lehundr playfully on the back. “Don’t take it so hard, Thrule. These sluts are ignorant.” He gazed in amusement as another of the doxy’s painted friends slunk by. “I know better wares in Lausern who would practically give it to you for mug of mead.”
A ghost of a grin touched Lehundr’s dry lips, and he shrugged off his sudden resentment.
They made progress east with their sweating hides and panting mounts with the sun glaring at their backs.
No sign of Rafa or any headstrong, galloping host of his. It was a bare, desolate place, these outlands. Sand-scorched and dust-swept, as wild as the wind, with animal tracks zigzagging every which way across the parched landscape. The moan of the wind around carven rocks or twisted gumtrees caused Vetra a lonely shiver. His keen eyes saw the odd footpath of nomads, a distant low ridge strewn with boulders and dotted with the spiky azenia shrub, brown and faded green, and some faint yellow desert flowers.
Not a bowshot off the roadside, the remains of a stone dragon’s tail curled around a huge sandstone man-shaped god with bicorn crown and hooked stave. The symbolism implied some form of an alliance perhaps—denoting a period when men and dragons had been at peace. Flanking the other side of the thoroughfare teetered a gigantic toppled statue with a dragonish head and tail, fangs and detailed scales, but the legs and torso of a man holding a trident.
It brought an eerie chill down Vetra’s back, for reasons he could not name. Lehundr and he rode past the monument in solemn silence, the Thrule bowing his head in honour of the old lords of the desert.
Vetra frowned. “Why do you bow?”
“Why not? I pay obeisance to the ancient ones, like all the Thrules do.”
“The Thrules—a people without a leader, beaten down and treated like curs by the Behundrians.”
Lenhundr grunted, “I could say the same for a dozen races across the lands.”
Vetra shrugged. He rubbed his eyes while Lehundr rode on in silence.
They stopped an hour or so later off the beaten caravan trail to rest the ponies. Both were tasked by the late afternoon heat and vigorous ride.
Dismounting to stretch his legs, Vetra gazed around warily at the desolate surroundings. “I almost feel as if ears are listening to our every conversation. Though we are nowhere near that hive of Dragonskull. Are there sprites hiding behind each cactus waiting for their chance?”
Lehundr gave a chuckle. He leaned elbows on thighs as he crouched. “You have a tall imagination for a fighter of your standing, Vetra. Still, it pays to be vigilant.” The Thrule darted his own wary glance over his shoulder.
The heat waves shimmered with a wanton fury. Cactus and low, spiked shrubs merged to the eye on the horizon to dance with the rhythms of the hot, dry wind. The land of the ancient dragons was a harsh environment, thought Vetra.
He gained his mount and heeled his pony on, taking only a sparing draught of water from his canteen. He was grateful that Lehundr had packed extra water bladders on the packbeast.
A band of five horsemen riding hard for Dragonskull, slowed and on a signal from their leader, reigned in and surrounded the two men.
The leader squinted with curiosity at the mercenary and Thrule. “Afternoon, outlander. Mighty hot for a pilgrimage. You bound for Sunswatch?”
Vetra said nothing, sizing up his questioner, sitting his mount in easy, carefree manner. Lehundr stared hard at the men: cruel, sardonic bullies with iron at their hips, whips in their hand, axes and water bladders strapped at their mount’s sides. The Thrule’s pony backed up a few steps.
“The desert’s a dangerous place,” the tall Mosete continued in an easy drawl. His finger twirled his sandy-coloured moustache. “Man can get his valuables robbed, his throat cut. What do you say? Me and my deputy Needs here can protect you—for a fee, of course.”
Vetra gazed on in amusement. “Funny, I was just going to extend the same offer to you. The oafs we killed back in Dragonskull were slow in accepting our token of friendship.”
The man’s scarred face went hard. “Really? How many?”
“A dozen, I reckon.”
The rider snorted. “Well, I think you’re a liar.” On a signal of his leader, his deputy Needs came charging in, blade swinging.
Vetra leaned back in his saddle. A vicious sweep, too fast for the eye, slashed into the rider’s shoulder, slitting flesh from neck to ribs.
A ghastly spray of blood wetted the sand, and the man toppled off his brown bay, writhing in blood.
With a malicious roar, another rider came reeling in. Lehundr pulled away, his falchion gleaming, but Vetra was faster, and his blade hissed out, parrying sword, and Vetra’s left fist crashed into the man’s jaw, breaking teeth and bone.
The man slumped in his saddle. Vetra turned hard and drove steel through the man’s chest. The bandit’s horse fled off into the desert, dragging the dead man by the heel, whose foot had caught in his stirrup.
The leader took off his cap and wiped down his brow. “Well, that’s an unexpected turn of events. What to do, what to do...” With an ugly scowl, the expectant looks of his men hot on his back, he urged his mount forward, hand reaching for his hilt.
