Avenger, page 34
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
Vetra felt the urge to retch.
One of the emaciated captives wandered over to gaze with curiosity at the newcomers. He held a battered hoe in hand, wiping snot from his wizened face. In crazed fury, Vetra grabbed the gawker and shook him like a rag doll. “What are you thinking? You callous idiot! Why didn’t you hack the wretch free?”
The ragged man squeaked out a hoarse objection. “Are you crazy? Have that madman Grebu hack us to bits for harming his pets?” The gaunt slave blinked and struggled in the mercenary’s grip. “You don’t know the half of what goes on here! You understand nothing of the workings of this hell.”
Vetra released him, appalled.
The slave ruffled out his tattered garments. “Grebu grows monsters in this hell pit,” continued the malnourished man. “We are all part of his madness, his menagerie, destined to die in the belly of one of his fiends—like this one, when we are too old to work.” He stabbed out a gnarled finger at the vile sprawl of vines, bulbs, and sucking, plant-like tendrils, the ends of which were graced with obscene lips crusted with tiny teeth.
Basineus sneered. “Seems to me as if your ghoul Grebu needs to be put down, like a sick dog.” He took up his sword and hacked at the offending vine, shredding it to pieces. A hissing shriek exuded from the mini mouths of the stalks. Pus and gases flowed, causing Vetra and Basineus to gag.
Vetra stalked deeper into the open compound, holding his nose, shaking off his nausea, a man in a trance. He raked at his chin while Basineus trailed behind, a sullen frown on his face, lips slightly parted.
It was a veritable slave colony, Vetra thought dismally. Up the cliff to the right, a metal hoist and conveyor belt held a system of baskets heaped with harvested bulbs. The rig was a rudimentary apparatus designed to haul the maja from the pit to the summit. At the crest, a crude wooden crane outfitted with chains transported the cargo to a large circular vat and millstone which caught and crushed the bulbs.
Squinting against the reddening sky, Vetra could see a stone outbuilding with a long, crooked chimney, part of a roasting assembly. Likely it cured the crushed bulbs and extracted the precious, lethal oil. As to what hellish sorcery Grebu applied to his seedlings, was anybody’s guess. All Vetra knew was that sorcery demanded fire. And Grebu would have plenty of it.
He gazed about with growing dismay. The cliffs were insurmountable. If not for a narrow staircase that ran a partial way up aside the conveyor there would be no access. Now the operation was inactive, as the overlords were engaged elsewhere.
Vetra gave little heed to these hoists and baskets stretching up the cliff wall. His attention was focussed on the dispirited huddle who squatted listlessly about a penned-in area. A rustling field of maja buds adjoined the pen. Vetra guessed these wretches harvested the maja stalks before they became man-eaters.
Basineus motioned Vetra aside, inclining his head toward the primitive drays scattered about the fields: “Seems to me those chained slaves grow and harvest the plants, while the others cart them to the conveyor.”
Vetra grunted. And as suddenly, a sharp memory assaulted him. A memory buried deep but which cut like a fiery knife. The night Umbrian slavers had stormed his father’s villa and captured his sister Retia. Where she was now years later, he could not guess, if she were even still alive. The scum of slavers he had never found, but he vowed someday he would extract his revenge though the trail was long cold.
He trailed in grim silence as Basineus hopped the staked-off fence of ropes and hewed through the thinly chicken-wired pen. His crimson blade hacked some slaves free of their balls and chains. The two mercenaries stared meaningfully at the mouldy potato peels and fruit rinds that lay at their feet in heaps. Haggard faces peered up at them, but in spite of the bony limbs, a fierce light shone in their eyes, inspired by the presence of the liberators and the sudden hope of escape.
“We’re the sons of slaves,” came the voice of the man Vetra had shaken. Vetra saw half his teeth had rotted away. His tattered garment reeked of piss and sweat. “I remember once working in a dim cave somewhere,” he croaked. “Long years ago, then a harrowing journey by cart to this forsaken pit. The plant ogre Grebu told me to work as my fingers have never worked before! Otherwise Bekroma, the gluttonous plant monster you slew, would make a meal of me. Picking plants, peeling bulbs, though the oil stung my eyes and made my skin burn.” He held up both hands, all raw and pink from the plant excretions. His nails were dirty as pig wallow, caked with years of grime. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks haggard, and he walked with an irreparable limp.
“So why do you not fight back?” growled Basineus.
The man shrugged his crooked shoulders. “Grebu threatens us with death—fodder for Bekroma—forces us to pick the bulbs and fill the baskets. Sometimes the plants grow large.” He lifted a palsying finger to the crop at the outer edge of the compound. “Those grandfather plants, they take one or more of us regularly, for the wretched things must eat too.”
“But Grebu always finds replacements,” said another.
“From where?”
“From these neighbouring hills. There are plenty of wandering tribesmen. But he will go as far as the plains of Galashad to get more. Sobui here, comes from the village of Urkue in a dusty valley.”
Basineus asked, motioning to the primitive drays: “So these barrows—”
The man nodded with resignation. “Crude drays on stone wheels pulled by ropes. Raw contraband hauled by us to be transported to Lausern. Those who don’t get eaten, at least.”
Vetra craned his neck, imagining the odious process, as drug lords worked above on the flat top, curing, processing, while the slaves toiled below like ants, hauling cart and drawing stone bucket up the cliff via rope and pulley to meet Grebu’s avaricious demands.
Vetra shook his head in disquiet. He struggled to grasp the madness of it all. But it was too deranged to rationalize, recalling the desiccated corpse being digested in the vine’s pulpy middle.
“No matter,” he said, snapping out of his reverie. “If you want your freedom, then join us! Fight this madman, though it may mean your deaths. You’ll die, one way or the other, anyway.”
Some shook their heads with vigorous refusal and cowered back, as if the very thought of crossing their master was unspeakable. Others ground their rotting teeth, licked blackened gums, their eyes glittering like dying embers.
“We were Karkassians and Galashadians!” cried one fiercely. He beat his hollow chest. More joined in the chant, clutching beat-up buckets: “Stripped of our humanity by a despot who reduces us to living corpses! Let us fight! Fight!”
He and Basineus pursed their lips grimly. They set to smashing the chains of those whose ankles were fastened together with a few feet of slack. A long line of them. Only a few roamed free, like the skeletal man who gaped at them, as if he were dreaming that rescue was just possible.
Vetra tensed as a crunch of boots on stone signalled the approach of a figure—Tas, who came trudging down the pebbly path, breathing heavily, his hair tousled and tawny locks matted with sweat. Something was not right about him, if there ever had been anything right about him.
Vetra motioned to Basineus. Both saw two more bottles of the dark green bulb maja oil at the ranger’s belt. “Where did you go?” he demanded.
Tas shrugged lazily. “I guessed there would be more scoundrels lurking about, so I lay in wait and gutted them like fish. What’s it to you? You should be thankful there’re now a half dozen fewer villains to plunge knives in our backs.”
“Appreciated, but unasked for. I see you got your maja juice,” commented Basineus.
Tas gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Good resale value?” quipped Basineus, enjoying the rise he got out of Tas.
Tas’s face burned with anger and his fists knotted. “I am collecting evidence,” he growled, advancing on Basineus. “What’s your beef? It’d be a waste to leave the contraband behind.”
Vetra flashed an unpleasant smile. “You’re a dark soul in a dark world, Tas. Or perhaps just a simpleton in total denial.” He watched the ranger grit his teeth and his facial muscles tighten, but he held his ground. The ranger’s fingers hovered over his axe handle. The man looked like a feral animal of the forest, hungry for blood. His bloodshot eyes scanned the brood around him with critical contempt. His breath hissed out in short wheezing pants. Judging from the half empty bottle at his hip, Vetra believed he had downed the other half. A haunted, unkempt craziness lurked about his expression, reminiscent of the plant king’s.
The ranger gripped his freshly blooded axe and swung it in threatening loops. “I’d give my eye teeth to slit that nutcase’s throat,” he cried, glaring with contempt at the gross privation of the grime-caked beings around him.
“You may get your chance,” Vetra grunted. “Look.” He gestured a hand to the lip of stone above. A ponderous shadow flitted above, like some grotesque bat.
“The plant king,” howled a cowering, wasted man, stumbling about the littered yard, awkward in his new found freedom.
Others of his band had drifted over and quailed in the shadow of the sinister being.
Vetra glared in wonder. He and Basineus pushed past a pile of decayed bulbs, reeking of rot and crawling with insects. A low growl burst from Basineus’s throat. He kicked over a lopsided, rusted dray with one wheel missing.
Grebu’s stocky silhouette hopped with spry energy on the ridge’s edge. The madman threw up his hands and some weird pods began to drift down as would lazy leaves in an autumn wind. Was he a magician?
On the high lip of crumbled rock, more figures emerged at his side and scooped up handfuls of the husk-like pods to cast them down to the slaves below. Like a predatory eagle perched on his favourite eyrie, the plant king gazed on the scene below with impassive savagery.
Vetra squinted up in curiosity, then he gaped. Some of the foolish slaves, being dependent on their master for food, reached up to grab at the floating pods and stuffed them hungrily in their maws. Their faces at once turned bright red and their eyes burned like coals. Horrible moans ripped from their throats.
“Stay clear of them!” cried Vetra. “The fiend’s cursed bulbs will turn you into ghouls!”
Basineus needed no convincing. He lurched back on his heels, as one of the slaves snapped at his arm.
Tas looked on in resignation, his axe falling limp in his hand, as if part of him knew the ultimate horror that was upon them.
The slaves affected, jerked like flesh-eating marionettes and attacked their peers, taking whole chunks of their throats out with brown-gummed teeth. Their fingernails clawed and reached, elongated like a werewolf’s, which they used to scratch and rend their fellow slaves’ skin and flesh like badgers.
Grebu’s head tipped back in a fiendish cackle as another hideous laugh ripped out of his veined throat. The echo rang off the surrounding stone. He hurled down more of the pods, and his tentacled minions at his side aped his obscene action.
The plants below which had been brushed by the pods, rustled, as if touched by an unnatural wind. The ensorcelled seedlings drove the plants mad and gave them sinister life. Roots ripped from the ground, pulling pebbly rock up with them. These maja took tentative steps in unison, like caricatures of demons possessed. To Vetra’s horror, they jerked toward him, like an advancing army of corn stalks.
The figure on the ridge was gone and Vetra stared aghast, hacking at those slaves who had turned against him. As for the plant king, no doubt the fiend would be back.
“Take cover, quick—back the way we came,” Vetra yelled at Basineus who edged away from the advancing stalks and the infected slaves.
Basineus sliced the arm off a rampaging worker. The maja stalks quivered forth with fiendish energy, with a moaning whistle to stir the very demons of hell.
The stairway up the cliff face came up to a place thirty feet beside the conveyor, ending in a brass-bound door etched into the stone. Bolted from the inside, thought Vetra. Not likely a place of escape.
From this door burst a triumphant figure. Grebu! He stood squared in the doorway, his face cast in a ghoulish grin.
“Come, my pets!” he crooned. His tentacle feelers swayed in synchrony with the leaves on his head. Pushing his bulk forward, he spread his arms and slowly sauntered down the crooked steps, like the king of a twisted domain. He halted to survey the effect of his machinations.
A stream of two dozen henchmen poured out of the portal after him, hefting axes, swords and crossbows. Feral grins shone on their faces. Most were clad in mixes of leather and light armour, but a few were budding mutants like Grebu himself with tentacles rippling on their shoulders
A portion of the slaves whom pods had touched, charged into the marching stalks which tore at their limbs, sending tendrils through their eyeballs, up through their noses and into their mouths.
Vetra’s roar rose over the inhuman shrieks: “Get away from them, you fools!” He shoved one of the unaffected wretches roughly aside who would have been speared. Basineus dodged an invasive stalk that came perilously close to his ear.
Vetra turned a glance over his shoulder at the sinister maja stems shambling closer still, moving as one, dry leaves rustling in nightmarish warning. Behind them lay a strewn trail of mangled bodies.
At last Tas took up his axe and hewed down a row of the zombified stalks.
Strange alchemic accoutrements tinkled on the plant king’s jerkin, which Vetra could make no sense of. Whistles and bells carved of bone and shell to invoke spirits. Metallic emblems of coloured metals he had never seen before, smoking with a strange, kelp-like reek. Doubtless, these adornments had infused the pods with life. Perhaps the same instruments the plant king used to ensorcel his man-eating strains?
With the stealth of the plant-spider, he came weaving toward them. His keen eyes swept the area with wrath. He stopped at the mangled vine. His face blazed with menace.
“Fool!” he growled at the lead slave. “I told you to guard Bekroma with your life! Now, look at her lying maimed! My oldest, most revered pet!” He took the last few steps down and flew at the gibbering idiot who backed away in jerky hops.
Vines lashed out from Grebu’s shoulders and lifted the slave off the ground. The man only had time to let out an inhuman scream before a white tendril went through his ear to tickle his brain. Another curled around his eye and entered to come out the back of his head. “That will be your reward,” he raged.
“And now you all shall die!” Grebu cried fanatically. The skewered man dangled inches off the ground and gave a final involuntary twitch then the mutant threw him aside in a lifeless heap.
He turned on Vetra who swung his sword with vindictive purpose.
Grebu dodged the strike. “How do you like my slaves?”
Vetra snarled, twisted sideways to unleash another savage blow. At the advancing slaves and the red welts on their brows he could not help but gape. Infection showed on their bare shins and scrawny arms.
“I have tainted them with the bulb, so that they remain enslaved to me, only to me.” He leered at the pitiful opposition that faced him.
A slave frothing at the mouth raked his fingers into the eyes of one of his ensorcelled brothers. Whether in defiance of Grebu’s dominance or out of self-preservation, Vetra could not tell. He lurched sideways to avoid one of Grebu’s white tentacles of death.
“They’re not as obedient as you think, Grebu,” howled Tas, lifting aloft his axe, cutting menacing loops at the plant king’s minions. “You’ll lie chained ere dusk with one of your monsters ingesting you alive.”
Grebu laughed. “I’ll hold you to your boast, ranger.”
At a gesture, a dozen swarthy, steel-helmed henchmen circled about to block the exit from the compound. The advancing stalks guarded the other flank closer to the edge of the pit. The remaining crazed slaves joined their ranks.
Vetra and Basineus crouched like panthers. Back to back, they circled, weapons gripped in white-knuckled fingers. The mass of enemies that crowded closer with each passing second eyed them like ripe lambs. Grim faces of mesmerized men, a few with vines rippling on their shoulders, grunted with the immediate pleasure of gutting men and the reward their master would give.
Tas joined their side like a hunted wolf, his dripping axe a bane for human and plant alike. His face radiated a demon-possessed glow. He ripped one of the bottles from his belt and downed it in a single gulp.
“What in Dergath’s name are you doing?” hissed Vetra.
“Break through!” he snarled at them. “To the exit—don’t wait up for me.”
He underwent a disturbing transformation then, as sinister flesh formed and rippled on his face and arms. His face took on a green cast, his eyes dilated, sightless orbs into nowhere. He wobbled on his feet and rasped, “Go, I say. Fools! Slay as you’ve never slayed—die valiantly.” This was the last croak he made as he rushed in giddily to face the monsters approaching from all sides.
He ripped through Grebu’s ranks like a storm-tossed wind, shredding vines and human flesh, while tentacles and stalks rippled out to take chunks out of him.
With wincing horror, Vetra guessed the ranger’s enchantment wouldn’t last long. He would be a bloody mess of flesh before the plant king could tilt back his head again in ghoulish laughter.
Yet amidst Tas’s bloody diversion, his strokes fell true and Vetra gave a war cry enough to chill the blood of any Karkassian warrior. Blade lifted and fell and tore into the enemy massed before him.
Corded muscle rippled; steel slashed through ripe flesh and howls came from men’s mouths. Vetra braced his corded thews and swung again and again, the massive sword taking howling foes with it.
“Straight on, you rogues!” he yelled at Basineus who was at his side, scrambling and hewing and needing no prompting. Basineus’s blade sliced foes like butter and he kicked bodies out of the way before dashing through the narrow rent in their ranks toward the exit.
