Avenger, page 5
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
The leader spat out a contemptible wad of phlegm. “Cthan is no more than a lying desert snake and double-talking torturer. He promised us our lands back under the last treaty—that we may pasture our goats and llamas upon the lush oases. He waves instead a charter of forged signatures in front of our noses, saying that we agree to forfeit our lands to his prospectors and overlords.”
The Thrule chief’s eyes flickered with fury, but then he pulled back his hood to reveal wisps of long steely grey hair. His eyes softened into wide pools as he crept closer to examine Lehundr’s map. “Maybe. Can it be...? Yes. It must.” He traced his gnarled fingers across the ancient fabric. “This looks more like the inner sanctum of the old temple, that of the ancient Dhraken. A tomb of exotic mystery.”
“It is,” assured Lehundr with triumph.
“There—” Zaln stabbed a finger “—the key in the tomb.” His eyes glazed, passed swiftly over the ancient dragon script, as if he knew the gist of that ancient dead language. “A key that would open the great fortress, Dragon Forge?—one closed for an age.”
Lehundr wagged his head; a hushed whisper was on his lips.
“I don’t know if anyone’s been up to the fortress for years. ’Tis hallowed ground—”
“Some say it is cursed, but ’tisn’t,” Lehundr cut in. “The dragon-lords were wise; they hid their treasure from the likes of greedy, ambitious overlords.”
Zaln wasted no time in arguing. “Take captain Dunon and Gefzad along and five others. Assemble packbeasts with water bladders to head north. The rest will stay here to defend the Ring of Pain and the Oasis from our foes.”
Dunon motioned around the scattered bodies and still burning wreckage. “Are you sure we should split our forces at this time? The Behundrians will be on the move soon enough.”
Zren shook his head like a wild dog. “Aye, I say we slay this rabble, take the map, and search for the treasure at a later time.”
The chief laughed sharply. “There’s enough death here today. I’m sure you can see that.”
Vetra shrugged, casting a sad look around him. As much as he despised the pesky Thrule, he had to agree with him on one point. They had enough on their plate without watering down their forces. Somewhere he had a bad feeling that these resistance fighters were living on borrowed time.
On cue, the attack came sooner than expected.
No sooner had Gefzad organized the team when the hoofs of enemy horse and camel came raising clods of dirt and the chorus of vindictive wails of men came howling like wolves. A team of camels came pouring over the rise; men were pointing and gesticulating and sabres swinging in their hands. Others loped on foot, wielding crossbows and maces.
The Thrules jolted to attention, raising weapons and forming ranks.
Vetra swore. “Down!”
Bolts came whizzing by. Crossbow men from the attackers were kneeling in the sand, ready to arm and shoot again. A volley of lethal iron whooshed by and thudded into date palms and Thrule flesh like the swarm of many bees.
Camels burst out of the dunes with snarls on their lips. Men atop the beasts hacked down on the surprised Thrules.
The little robed figures scrabbled on their knees, ducking strikes and stabs and hacking at the legs of the cantering camels. Thrules died under those hoofs, but three of the ornery beasts fell hamstrung, spilling their riders to the sand where they were quickly despatched with glinting, gore-flecked Thrule knives.
“Stay back! And follow my lead,” Vetra roared at Jhara.
“Fall back!” Dunon cried. “Take cover in the scrub, damn you. Use the cacti as shields! Rake them with bolts!”
In the melee Vetra recognized such rogues as Rafa and Vilivet and several other rough-looking characters from the depot—the bullies and cutthroats who ran the town.
Vilivet snarled, spittle flecking from his fleshy lips: “It’s that damn bitch from the market,” he cried, “the same whose brother has been stealing from our honest merchants. Get her! She carved up a bunch of Rafa’s men.”
Cthan and his men gave gusty curses, made the quick leap that Vetra and the girl had joined ranks with the rebels, seeing him rubbing shoulders with Zaln and Lehundr.
A cry came from a sandy-haired ruffian waving a broadsword with leather helm flapping down his cheeks. “Aye, and it’s that meddlesome outlander. Take him alive! I want him alive.”
Vetra gave back an insulting roar. “Only in hell’s last inferno will you take me alive.”
They charged into the Thrule huddle. Vetra and the others scattered. Jhara scrambled forward to grab a sabre from a fallen camel rider. Cthan rose in his stirrups and looped back with a snarl, smashing down blade to send a Thrule running alongside to oblivion. “First the Thrule leader, you jackleg fools,” he bellowed. “The girl’ll be spread-eagled on a mattress before long.” He arched out a swinging strike and ran a Thrule through the mouth who scrambled beside his camel. “We’re here to slay the oasis robbers, not some ragbag trio of thieves.”
Cthan pushed his camel through the defenders. The Thrule charge had lost its momentum and the sheriff mowed down Thrules like wheat. His sword raged up and down taking cuts and parries, hewing crimson bodies with it. Bolts whipped around him. Two of his henchmen fell from their beasts pierced through the hearts, but not him. Rafa at his side rode one-eyed with a patch over his left eye. His sleek roan bucked and snorted in battle lust. The sands bloomed red. Footmen of the oncoming host chopped and stabbed down at bodies that lay twitching and bleeding.
Jhara wielded the two-foot sabre two-handed. She blocked a cut, ducked, and a Behundrian’s whistling blade glanced off her forearm, drawing a thin line of blood. She wailed, and shrank back.
“That young slut with him is an accomplice. Take her! She’s a dervish with knives.”
Vetra, fighting whistling cuts of his own, smote alongside her, shouldered his weight in to block the slash that would have taken off her head. He jerked a hard, disembowelling thrust that lay the Behundrian attacker howling in his own blood and entrails.
Lehundr gasped and flailed with awkward mobility. He stumbled on his branded left leg. He struggled in an arm lock with a Dragonskull guard who tried to twist the short blade from his hand. Thrules came clambering up and plunged their knives into the aggressor’s back. Lehundr rolled free.
Vetra winced as a glancing blow from the flat end of a Behundrian’s sword laid open a gash in his scalp. He shook the blood out of his eyes. He and his allies were hopelessly outnumbered and it looked as if they were all dead men. Like it or not, he was caught in a war which he wished no part of. In his dim vision, he caught a glimpse of the unmoving Ring of Pain and the raging beasts trying to escape, terrorized by the stench of blood.
It gave him an idea, albeit a risky one. He staggered to the ring, spurred by a sudden inspiration. The bulls were pawing at the dirt, snorting, ready to tear the whole harness and hitch off their heads if they must. With vicious hacks of his blade Vetra loosed the first yoke and the bulls stormed out, razor-curled horns lowered in offence. They shook their heads and bellowed while Vetra hewed the yokes off two more of them.
These were wild bulls, chosen for their powerful pulling ability and their dogged endurance to withstand the extreme heat of the Behundrian wastes. The dreaded bullocks were mean creatures in their own right with eight-inch horns and powerful hindquarters. They went mad, kicking hind legs and rearing with foam on their muzzles, drunk with the delight of freedom.
Four more Vetra freed, and he leapt aside to avoid their goring horns and trampling hooves. He roared at Jhara to get down. She narrowly jerked aside in time, as a raging, bucking beast fled by and aimed straight for the warring Behundrians. Four more beasts were stampeding their way into the Behundrian fray, mowing down Thrules who could not get out of the way fast enough. In a bloodlust frenzy, the bulls’ natural instincts to gore and trample was whetted.
Smashing horns into camels, the beasts ploughed on like battering rams, toppling anything in sight. They were unstoppable. Men fell shrieking, dying, gored and bowled over only to be trampled by the hoofs or the wild rush of the camels.
Bolts flew and felled two of the monsters. But not before other bulls had broken through and done significant damage. A dozen camels had been gored or lay groaning in streaming, blood-drenched heaps.
Two younger bulls fled into the scrub, bloodied and rearing with wrath, while the remaining three beasts, still caught in the fray, kept heads down and charged anything in their path.
Cthan’s camel, impaled by horns, lay in a twitching heap, bleeding out in the sand, while both human and bullock trampled over its belly and the other corpses littering the sandy plain.
Vetra’s steel split the skull of a charging Behundrian. He turned in time to clash swords with Cthan who came charging at him like a bull. The sheriff’s strength was phenomenal, uncanny in the suffocating heat and the stench of blood as the fighters struggled in a death dance. Their leg muscles knotted, swords quivering in deadlock over their heads. Cthan, the near bald giant, heaved Vetra back and he staggered away from the broken length of pipe. Vetra looked up as in a dream, dwarfed under the shadow of the dragon-lord statue tipping his cup in mocking salute. He shook the haze from his head and parried Cthan’s strikes as his obstinate enemy came in again, roaring a curse. The strident clang of their swords resounded but was lost in the noise of the jostling bodies and dying shrieks of men who slashed and hewed, oblivious to the baying and bleating of brute beasts and the roar of battle and thunk of their horns as they found flesh.
In a sudden burst of volcanic strength, Vetra plunged forth and forced back Cthan’s advance. A surprised grimace fled over the rogue’s face. Wide-eyed, he careened back, but with a grotesque laugh. He was actually enjoying this, wallowing in blood! Vetra thought with amazement.
“So, you have some fight in you after all, outland scum. Thank the gods! I thought you were just a spineless imp like these Thrules.”
“Come and find out,” spat Vetra. He twisted sideways and lashed out, kicked the sheriff and sent him reeling backward into a ghastly pile of dead bodies. The sheriff sprang to his feet and Vetra lunged in to run the lawman through, put steel through his gullet. But one of Cthan’s men edged in, brushing aside the mercenary’s stroke and raised steel for his own mortal strike. Denied vengeance on the sheriff, Vetra bellowed. He wormed forward, breaking half the protector’s teeth with a jabbing elbow before running him through to the heart, blade standing out of the back of his chest like a spike. The glaze-eyed figure fell and Vetra pulled the dripping steel free with a snarl. He kicked the corpse away, blocking in time to parry Cthan’s follow-up thrust.
Two Thrules came smashing in to send Cthan staggering. A group of Behundrians joined the fray. A seethe and roil of bodies made it difficult to make sense of who was friend and who was foe, as the fighters were swept away in a tide as a dying camel crashed headlong into the attackers. Vetra plunged his blade into a man’s back, wrenching his sword free in a gush of blood. Taking deep breaths, he crouched, looking about. Nearby Lehundr defended against Rafa’s whirlwind of blades, beaten back mercilessly like a scarecrow.
The Dragonskull thug yelled, “I’ll see you in hell, half Thrule! You’ll give me that cursed map now, or I’ll peel each layer of skin from your sorry hide and stuff them down your throat! You’ll beg me for mercy to kill you.”
Despite his loss of an eye, the gang leader was about to carve Lehundr to pieces, when silent and deadly as a viper, a thong laid into his side and he jerked around with a gasp. Jhara pulled the weapon free with its flap of flesh. Holding his ribs, Rafa screeched and doubled over and Lehundr kicked him away, his sword barely moving up in time to block the thrust of another bloody shaft as one of Rafa’s bravos came chopping down at him in blind fury.
It was a fierce free-for-all in every sense of the word, where only the rules of the wasteland prevailed. The Thrules, disorganized and disheartened and weaving in and out of the chaotic skirmish like rabbits, were fading fast. The wreckage and slumped bodies were appalling, and without any leadership or direction, the defenders fled in terror.
“Retreat! Into the brush,” shouted Vetra over the mad slaughter. “There are too many of them.”
Some heeded his advice while others kept on fighting. Those who backed their chief Zaln, parried and blocked sabre blows, but were quickly surrounded by howling enemy and put to the sword.
“Fools! They’ll die in vain,” grunted Vetra. “Why don’t they pull back, hack their way through?” Rage and frustration soured his blood lust. “All for some water, and futile moments of holding a doomed position?”
Gefzad cried through his teeth, “We gain victory over an age-old enemy!”
“You die in your glory. Quick!” he pulled at Jhara and shouldered Lehundr back toward the hill. “We must get to cover. We will fight them in the scrublands—on our own terms!” They cut their way through Cthan’s scattered flanks.
Up the hill they scrambled—the same from whence they came. The crash of camels thundered after them.
Dunon saw the practicality of the mercenary’s plan and hurried after, though he was torn by the image of his chief who fought a valiant fight, a last stand, but for a lost cause. With a bolt shivering close to his ear, he put a hand to a jagged cut on his forehead and clambered after Vetra, Jhara and the others, dodging missiles while Gefzad and his kinsmen stumbled at his heels.
What others of the miserable Thrule band scrambled after, Vetra did not know, for he was clearing a path up the hill through bush and stump. But a band of blood-dripping Behundrians joined in pursuit.
III: Road to Nowhere
The whine of bolts and savage cries rang long after their headlong escape. Vetra and company weaved their way through stump and scrub bush, in an attempt to lose their pursuers.
Vetra pushed on, panting in ragged gusts, blazing a trail for his allies along the thicketed ridge, hacking spiky fronds and low desert thorn. How he hated to be chased like a wounded animal, but this was the reality of the day. They had been heavily outnumbered. The fact that any of them were still alive was testament to their combined skill. The sounds of pursuit faded. He moved amongst the company, taking a head count and scanning for injuries.
Lehundr was cut and scratched; his limp had gotten worse. Jhara looked battered and sore, flexing the fingers of her left hand whose wrist bore a raw wound, but she held her head high, her fierce pride shining through. The ragtag of Thrule infantry were in no better shape, scrabbling and gasping with wounds, cuts and injured pride. One warrior’s arm was broken, others were torn, dishevelled, bleeding and dehydrated from battle and the harrowing escape. Twenty-eight of them stood sullen and bedraggled amidst the foliage, dragging two packbeasts laden with gear. Zren the truculent bowman, scowled and cursed, whipping his sword about, shredding cacti. Dunon and Besu conversed in heated tones, spittle dribbling from their lips. Aus, a squad leader and his aide Gefzad kept eyes trained on the hillside, while the magician-priest, who Vetra learned was Samos, twirled his stave and muttered chants to his amulets. Vetra reflected that his magic had done little to protect the beleaguered rebels. Amongst the dust-bitten Thrules, there were maybe a dozen bowmen, all armed with swords or knives.
From his cacti-strewn dune, Vetra and the others crouched on their hands and knees. They gazed through a screen of juniper at the corpse-littered battle plain below. The party of Behundrians that had been sent out to kill them returned and gesticulated to their leader, the bald-headed Cthan and the sword-wielding Dragonskull constabulary. The Behundrians, washed in blood and grime, assessed the gushing rent in the pipe, and knelt to repair it with what tools they had brought with them.
“They don’t know where we are,” whispered Dunon with gratification.
“They will soon,” grunted Vetra. “Look.”
“Zaln!” cursed Aus.
They had stripped and beaten the Thrule leader. Those on the hill recognized him only by his ragged wisps of grey hair.
“They’ll torture your leader before long,” said Vetra. “He’ll tell them of your strategies, secrets and hidden lairs.”
“He will not talk,” asserted Gefzad stubbornly.
Aus, whose hood had been torn off, gave fierce acknowledgement of his comrade’s assertion. His hair was matted with blood and Vetra could see his teeth gleaming white in the sun.
“They’ll make him,” assured Vetra.
Dunon looked away. He was a man grown old and weary from these desert feuds.
“We’ll travel together toward the canyons of shadows, in the vale of Zabenzar,” he said in sober voice. “Let me see this map again.” He lifted Lehundr’s desert robe. “Aye, see the eagle’s croft on this left tear above the dragon head? Only on the bluffs could be where tombs lie. They must have been looted or destroyed by tomb robbers by now.”
“We’ll travel as a group and hope they’re intact,” agreed Besu. He was one of the taller, leaner members of the Thrule company. “Well, by Besthra! We might as well head for this ridge to get to the key. It was Zaln’s last wish that we set forth. A treasure like that’ll allow us to buy an army and crush Cthan and his scum. The dragon treasure is to be discovered by Thrules, not Behundrians.”
Vetra grinned at the snarl that spilled from Lehundr’s lips. Evidently the half Thrule resented the prospect of splitting the treasure multiple ways.
Aus clicked his tongue with scepticism. “There hasn’t been a jackleg prospector come through Dragonskull that tried to discover the treasure and succeeded.”
“But this time there’s a map,” said Besu.
“But likely a fable too,” assured Samos the priest-shaman. His bone-carved femur-staff bobbed in his hand while magical amulets draped on gut-cord around his neck jiggled with his every motion.
“If we don’t try,” Jhara said, “then nothing is to be gained.”
The Thrules looked at her with surprise. Some peered with envy at her sleek, toned body which was glitter for the eyes; the swell of her high breasts pressed in appealing fashion through her tattered jerkin and she held herself erect like a young barbaric queen.
