Avenger, page 36
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
Arrows suddenly skidded from on high and clattered on the stone around them.
Vetra yelled. The slaves flung up their arms in panic. Two crumpled in anguished heaps, writhing, quivering shafts buried in their throats.
Tas gave a strangled curse. A long black-fledged shaft skidded into Vetra’s mail, just below the left shoulder and knocked him back a step. He extracted it, grunting an oath. “On! Don’t look back, if you value your lives! Across the gap.”
Tas ducked a whining projectile. He staggered in a daze, urging them on toward the bridge. The span swept two-hundred feet across the canyon—white-washed planks built upon a timber trestle. He and Basineus ran, stumbling for the sagging structure that lay draped in mist and shadow.
Vetra gripped his sword. He faced the band of two dozen fresh Karkassians erupting from caves in the overloooking hill with fur on their backs and axes in their hands. The plant king’s influence must have been large to include such fierce tribesmen on such short notice.
“After them, you fools!” Grebu rasped, as he raced at their heels.
Too many of the enemy for Vetra’s eyes and he sheathed his sword and sped on with the others, heart pounding with the thought of escaping this nightmare. The bridge lay only a stone’s throw away.
If they could gain the bridge, Grebu would lose his advantage. Vetra hoped the horses were still cached amidst the rocks and weeds on the other side of the bridge.
But he and Basineus ground to a sudden halt. Vetra’s jaw dropped. Before the first timbers of the bridge loomed a formidable shape, feeding on the fresh corpses left sprawled about from the last slaughter. The sinister shape lifted its head, wild, huge. The savage Karkassians also halted in their tracks, grunting with dismay, trading shocked murmurs at the sight before them.
The plant king hitched himself forward. “Why do you stall, you cowards? Move on!” His boot laid into the shin of a shaven-headed warrior.
“The troll, lord, it is feeding,” croaked another. “It’ll—”
“To fiend’s hell with the troll! Slay them! I want them all dead!”
The tendrils on the plant king’s shoulders flicked out in white riot. The hillmen shied away from their bristling overlord, teeth grinding, rather than choose to face the lurking troll.
“No, wait—I have a better idea. I want them alive!” cried Grebu. “They will be fed to Zbeus, my successor grandfather maja. I’ll watch these rebel scum worm in his vine-belly as his fluids eats them alive. Zbeus will seed the next generation of our plants! He needs human flesh to seed my crops!”
Ominous were the plant king’s words, but more frightful yet was the formidable troll that hunched like a shadow of woe cast by one of the great beasts of yesteryear. It was ten feet tall, hairy, and the top of its egg-shaped skull was bald and yellow while long wisps of pale, witch-like hair ran down its shoulders. On massive bare feet the thing poised, wooden club in hand, dressed in oiled leather and riveted iron. It surveyed the cringing men as if they were mere, insectoid curiosities.
A grimace froze on Vetra’s face. His knuckles clenched on his hilt. There was no battling this primeval beast. It would amount to an attempt at suicide. If any of them could get by it would be a miracle. Likely the beast had been attracted by the smell of blood of the corpses from afar. Vetra had heard rumour of these creatures loping for miles to feed on fresh flesh.
Tas sought gingerly to edge around the troll, giving the creature wide berth while it continued to feed, as the slaves behind kept a sidelong course to the bridge. Vetra and Basineus made no more noise than slinking rodents on their heels. Grebu howled an order; his band surged forward.
The sudden motion alerted the beast. It lifted its bear-like snout and emitted a feral roar, blood and rotten offal trailing from its crimson jowl. The troll hitched its lumbersome bulk toward Tas who was closest, looming up in his path like a ghoulish monstrosity.
The ranger skittered for safety, axe in hand, up the bridge.
The troll caught up in three bounds. A massive paw swatted at him, sending the fleeing man careening into the bridge railing like a rag doll. Vetra rushed forward onto the bridge and laid a sword into the beast’s matted hide. He leapt back in time to avoid the snapping jaws that sought his throat. Basineus charged in to hack at the troll’s leg, prompting a spurt of black blood from the wound. The troll’s nostrils flared as it lurched forward on its good leg. It smashed down with its club. The mercenaries ran. While the hillmen charged in, Vetra and Basineus split in either direction, leaving the hillmen exposed to the monster’s teeth.
The troll threw its bulk into the fur-clad men like a battering ram, crushing limbs and heads like grapes. One victim it lifted over its head in one hand and broke his back over its knee, gnawing the man’s head off. It snapped out a dripping fanged maw and tore a chunk out of another’s ribs who came too close.
Grebu, grunting curses, hopped about in frustration. “Kill it! Kill the beast! Are you imbeciles? A hundred talons for the live heads of the rebels.” One of his men tripped over his own feet, only to be stomped by the creature as he tried to rise. “Bekroma’s blood! Must I do this job myself?” The plant king slipped around the bloody back of the fighting men and tore after the escaping mercenaries, arms and tentacles outstretched like the plant aberration he was.
In spite of their initial hesitation and devastating losses, the Karkassians were not cowards. By sheer numbers they beat the monster back onto the bridge. Each struggled to reach the greater prize, the fleeing rebels and Grebu’s promise of reward.
The combined weight of troll and men set the timbers groaning. The rush of more enemy feet increased the sag. And still, the planks held.
Vetra and Basineus leaped over fallen bodies, dodging blades in their lurching scramble away from the teeming foes. They must break through the net, get past the troll and his club to cross the bridge. The straggling slaves who had not made it already, fell with bolts in their backs or reeled back with gaping sword wounds.
Tas and the first wave of slaves stood panting midway across the bridge. The ranger shambled across the remaining distance, a stretch of no more than hundred feet. But Vetra saw Tas hesitate. He had only a stone’s throw to traverse and disappear into the foliage.
Vetra’s eyes grew wide. The ranger came loping back to savage the troll from behind, fixing his axe head in its tough hide.
The beast turned in a shuddersome roar, lunging for him. Tas rumbled out a laugh. He ducked to skirt its swinging club, then prepared for another blow. He was an addict with nothing to lose.
Vetra watched him guzzle the last bottle of maja in a single gulp. The ranger staggered back, shaking his head like a rain-soaked dog. His eyes turned upward as an ecstatic man would, but those same eyes opened in wide, fearsome vengeance. Then his bloodshot eyes turned from red to yellow as his brow burst in a crop of red welts. His face greened like algae. It seemed as if Tas felt not his hurts from the troll. Rather, he stared down the thing, as if it were no more than a huge, overstuffed rabbit.
The troll paused, hissing out a stinking breath, not used to such boldness. Even its primitive brain seemed to struggle with the concept of a creature much punier than itself facing off eye to eye, neither cowering nor fleeing in the wake of its fierce might.
Its jaws opened wide and it threw back its head. Despite the bolts thwacking into its back, it loosed another thundering roar and charged, its breath blowing Tas’s tawny hair back like straw.
The ranger did the oddest thing then. He ducked that sweep of hairy clawed arm and swung under its legs like an acrobat. Brandishing axe in bloody salute, he smote its gleaming head on into the startled Karkassians. It was as if the maja had invested the daredevil Tas with insuperable courage.
Grinning ear to ear, Vetra and Basineus sprinted forward, running right up the middle of the parted line. They hewed and roared war cries. Heads flew from shoulders while blood sprayed in crimson sheets.
Grebu charged in, shrieking orders to his slack-jawed men.
While the Karkassians recovered their wits, and trained crossbows, troll and mutant faced each other. The troll shuddered and wheeled about with a death-defying snarl as bolts thunked into its hide. It cast about, blinking at the audacity of the ant-like vermin that dared to harry it and tempt death.
Arrows buzzed like bees around Vetra. In panic, he flung the plant man to his side and shielded himself from the storm. Pale tendrils whipped out from the creature’s shoulders and lanced into Vetra’s ribs. He cried out in agony as one found the hole in his enchanted mail. He whipped his body around and cut the offensive festoons loose. An arrow slammed into Tas’s arm and his face contorted in a grimace, but he just rained more terrible blows on his snarling, bearded foes. Basineus caught a bolt in the ankle and he blundered sideways, groaning in pain, almost knocking Vetra off his feet. The plant king’s tendrils lashed out and caught Basineus’s left arm, piercing leather and flesh.
Basineus loosed a howl. He slashed out at the offending shoot with his free arm. Rolling free, he staggered to a crouch, pulling the hateful, writhing shoot free from his arm.
Fire pulsed in Vetra’s veins. The figures before him were like so many waxed dolls. In a dream haze, he hewed and hacked at them like a doomed avenger. In slow motion, his mighty thews laid steel into flesh and he leaped over broken bodies and pools of blood.
His blade arched scything loops. Grebu, who crouched gore-splattered before him like some grinning toad, was a monster who needed to be put down. How he would love to be the one to do it!
Grebu moved in to spring, but the troll’s shadow fell upon him like a chill rain.
The creature tore off Grebu’s rippling tendrils from his left shoulder and flung the offensive creepers into the canyon below.
The plant king uttered a dismal screech, as would lift the hairs on a hyena’s back.
Vetra sprang in with wild triumph, dodging the troll’s mallet-like hand and club and drove forth to stab through Grebu’s other shoulder.
The plant king hardly felt it. The man had the vitality of a jungle tiger and he lunged in to ravage Vetra with his remaining tendrils. The mercenary ducked those lashes and dove behind the troll.
Grebu’s tentacle stumps flapped in useless cords, slapping at faces and arms, leaving cuts. Victims lay on the ground, some blooded, some dazed, most crawling painfully to get away.
The troll grabbed Grebu by a leg and whirled him round then threw him headlong into the Karkassian horde. They toppled back, crushed and maimed. The plant king lifted himself up in dazed agony, shaking the black blood out of his eyes.
Tas still menaced the Karkassian throng and took them all on at once, so juiced was he on the maja. Basineus was at his side, flailing jerkily, revelling in the invincible ally he had. The ranger’s axe rose and fell in red sweeps, cleaving heads, arms and shoulders.
Basineus stabbed and skewered. From time to time, he stomped boots into faces of men who fell reeling before Tas’s murderous sweeps; other times he plunged axe into fallen men’s hearts. Gore flew in four directions. Vultures wheeled on high, in frenzied anticipation of the ghastly feasts to come.
A shudder coursed through Vetra’s body. He swung his sword in a bloody, two-handed grip and cracked a Karkassian’s skull like an egg. Now it was time to flee this nightmarish carnage.
He vaulted over fallen bodies while Basineus and Tas parried enemy blades in their stumbling rush away from the swarming tribesmen and the trollish teeth of death.
A roar from behind alerted him. The bridge timbers quivered to thundering footsteps. Vetra wheeled briefly to see a godawful shape punctured by dozens of wounds, lurching in to rend them. Despite losing blood and weakening, the troll was in no way yet a dismissible threat.
The last archers amongst Grebu’s company made the mistake of peppering the monster with more black-feathered shafts. The onslaught only angered the creature all the more. The arrows stuck in its tough grey hide but did not penetrate the pulsing organs beneath.
The troll had lost its club but it swept out a mallet paw at Basineus, who ducked, but not fast enough. The massive fist grazed his side and sent him sprawling. He lay on his back, hands clutching at his vitals. More arrows came whizzing out of the thinning mist. Still the troll came on, oblivious of its wounds.
Men it mashed like flies.
But a fierce cracking and snapping of timbers brought new cacophony to the chaotic scene. Vetra whirled, gasping as a wide crack spread under his feet.
Desperately he took two quick bounds toward Basineus and pulled the supine man along by an arm down the bridge.
“Leave me, you fool. I’m a dead man,” croaked Basineus.
Vetra snarled. The planks buckled under his feet. “Never! I’ll not leave you to that fiend.”
“You’re as stubborn as an ox!” the mercenary growled.
Vetra’s right leg plunged through the timbers. Cursing a venomous oath, he pulled himself up and dragged the wounded mercenary down the heaving, shuddering way. He lurched and fell again. Under the troll’s weight, the planks crumbled fast, taking men and half-plant mutants with them.
Tas reached safety first and grabbed Vetra’s arm. He hauled him the last few feet before Vetra slid down the buckling way. Vetra rolled on his stomach. Then swung out a hand and barely caught Basineus’s wrist in time before the timbers shattered and ripped away, sending screaming tribesmen plunging to their deaths. A roaring troll and flailing plant mutant smashed on the jagged rocks far below.
Vetra roared, “Quickly, help me get him up!”
Tas grasped Basineus’s blood-soaked waist and helped him drag the injured man to safety. The mercenary lay wheezing on his back, moaning and gasping. Tas and Vetra crouched in the dirt like battered wolves, trading grimaces, panting and muttering.
The few enemy stragglers who halted at the other side, stood stranded on Lvendar territory. They stared dumbstruck at the destruction, wondering if they still owed a dead master their allegiance.
Evidently not. They loped into the wastes while a few surviving Karkassians shook fists at them from the other side of the ruined bridge. Bolts flew from this assemblage but landed without effect at the mercenaries’ feet.
Vetra laughed; his vindictive wrath reached an apex. Their opposition was reduced to no more than a half dozen. He pulled a shaft from his boot; one had lodged also in his side, stuck within the leather and rings. Tas had a black-fletched arrow protruding from his upper arm, passing out the other side, but it was if the man felt no pain. Vetra stared with incomprehension. Tas and what few slaves remained hobbled toward the wooded hillside where the horses lay tethered. Vetra hoisted up Basineus’s hulk, an arm wrapped around his shoulder. He joined them, feeling the wild beating of his heart and aching in his temples subside to a dull throb. His ears were oblivious to the sounds of dying and mayhem below from those who still clung maimed to the canyon walls.
A few of the slaves managed to clear the bridge and bobbed at Vetra’s side like abandoned children. “Give us food—food and water, it’s all we ask.”
Vetra glared. “Unless you want to munch on decayed flesh, or troll’s fare, there’s slim pickings.”
“There’s food up in the outpost stores,” murmured Tas, flicking a hand toward the wooded slopes. He was still in a delirium of the battle. “A league or two yonder maybe. Unless your Karkassian brothers have looted it.” He scratched absently at a blackened wound on his neck.
The survivors scrambled up the broken path like starving coyotes.
“Wretches,” mumbled Basineus. “You should have left them back there to rot in the slave pit.”
Vetra’s upper lip twitched. “Even slaves deserve a chance at life.” He moved toward the horses.
“And you, mercenary,” Tas said to Basineus, “you look in bad shape.”
“You’re not much better, ranger.” Basineus laughed bleakly, spitting blood. “I’m glad of your insane charge back there. I don’t know how you pulled it off, as you should be dead with all that maja juice and the beating you took. So what now?”
“I already am dead,” groaned Tas fatalistically. “The Lvendar justice will hunt me down with their bounty hunters for this cock up.”
“Why is it a cock up?” Basineus grunted with a pained grimace. “The plant king is dead.”
“Yes…dead.” Tas shook his head. “But like a bad weed, the trade will start up again. All that matters is that there’s more maja to harvest here. There’ll be others who answer the call. All the lords want is their stupid scrap of paper. Without it, they’ll treat this mission as a failure, and me to blame.”
Vetra shrugged as if in silent accord. Basineus admitted as much.
Tas was peppered with gashes and ugly wounds. By all odds, he should be three steps in the grave, yet the man was still standing. Vetra frowned. “Are you a ghoul or some mutant like Grebu?” He looked at the man with awe, yet not without a certain wariness.
“Let’s move,” Tas grumbled. He staggered up the path toward the stand of boulders where the first horses stood, while he bled from a dozen suppurating wounds. “Let’s just say I have nine lives.” His blood-flecked grin flashed in the sunlight, as bits of flesh still clung between his teeth, remnants of his chewing through a Karkassian’s neck in a close quarter death-wrestle. Vetra shuddered, stepping a pace back.
“It would have become obvious to my lords and bosses that I’m messed up with the bulb and that it contributed to the blunders and the bowmen’s deaths. I’d be court-martialed before the sun rose and strung out to dry; maybe even put to the executioner’s block.” He turned a bitter face toward the mercenary. “So, your job I take it, was to despatch me—or bring me in.”
“Yes,” admitted Vetra. Lying to the man would accomplish nothing. “But I have no desire to do so.”
