Avenger, page 9
part #2 of Swords and Skulls Series
Almost with reverent grace and trembling hand he lifted the chain and amulet off the lord’s jewelled head. Why, he did not know. Perhaps all Lehundr’s talk about ‘keys’ and treasure had affected him. This was the third dragon claw, and intuition told him it was more important than the others.
Vetra turned to peer in suspicion. Rows of spectator-seats rose up tier by tier along the back wall, connected by aisles of stone steps at some ancient time. It was a vast auditorium, a honeycomb-shaped dome, hollowed out and built like an amphitheatre into the cliffside.
The vents above were too distant to make out—but had all been long sealed with stone slabs by expert masons. All except one had crumbled. Vetra wondered if these vents admitted light when the dragon lord was alive. Perhaps this was his oratory.
His eyes flicked back to the statue.
Another glint in the thing’s eye?
No sooner had this flash of light dawned, than a slither of movement disturbed the silence. He wheeled around. What was it? A distinct set of glowing eyes peered from the gap he had crawled through. Teeth gnawed at the edges of the rock. Wild fear stung his gut. It was one of the reptilian leopard statues—struggling to squeeze through. What eldritch sorcery was this? A thing come to life upon the robbery of the dragon claw? Fool! How could he have been so stupid to think he could snatch an item like the dragon claw and not be punished? Frantically, he cast eyes around him for some avenue of escape. The rock he had hewn through would hold the creatures for now. But there were more of them, sawing and biting their way at the edges of the rude opening, like hounds digging for a favourite bone. The hole widened with every gnaw and bite. A snout was almost already out, and with it a bellow and snarl.
Besthra take him for sacrificing his sword! Could he put the claw back? Hardly—the guardians were awake, and likely deadlier than vipers.
He took up the pickaxe and raced over to hew the creatures back. He smashed the iron tip into the skull of one of the slavering beasts. It died, thrashing, but the first guardians of the tomb burst through, waddling on all fours like lizards. The monsters blinked and made small hissing sounds and glared at him with repellent eyes. They spat a foul black liquid that sizzled on the stone like acid and scored holes in it.
With a gasp of horror, he hopped back, scrambling for the stairs heading up to the semicircle of spectator seats. It may be his only hope, the high ground. Some globs came shooting at his chest and he jerked aside and narrowly avoided getting splattered by it. He lurched, struggling to stay erect. He could not help but tread in a pool of acid before the first steps. The sticky goo stuck to his boot and melted part of it away before he could fling it off. With a ghastly moan he leapt back, clawing at the air, aghast at the nightmare around him.
Up the stairs he bounded.
One came at him up the crumbling steps, maw agape, tongue ready to lob another foul, sizzling dollop at him. He swung—the pickaxe smashed straight through the thing’s ear. He pulled his axe free, eyes burning with satisfaction that iron tip had passed through claylike flesh and pierced the brain. The leopard-lizard jerked in a bray of bellowing agony, then slumped to the stone. It gave a final spasmodic shiver then lay sprawled on the steps, tongue splayed. Vetra turned and blundered up the steps past the first tier, leaping like a deer, though he bashed his knees on fallen rock that lay obscured in the murk. Others came shambling up, tails sliding over their dead brother and rustling the crumbled heaps of stone blocking the steps.
The curve of rough-hewn ceiling where the vents glowed must be near the cliff face to afford such light. Years of erosion and quakes had loosened the rock.
Vetra scrambled up the steps where the middle section lay in ruin, stomach reeling from the heights. At one time this auditorium had been packed with dragon folk listening to a lord’s speech, or being entertained with some other performance. He had to squat and catch his breath. How he hated high places. Dergath was always putting them before him! He bit back the bile that crawled up his throat, grimacing at the cruel irony of the god.
He mounted the steps, two at a time, pushing through dust and moulder. He groped this way and that past fallen rock and cracked benches. His blundering rush had started a cascading tumble of rocks and debris underfoot. A whole section of seats gave out, heaving up a maelstrom of dust.
Vetra lay there clinging to edges of benches, legs dangling in space, while chunks of seats fell underneath him. His lungs heaved to the smell of dust and decay. More creatures were scrambling up after him along alternate routes. It was lucky for him they were more lizard than leopard and that their climbing was limited. The range of their spit balls was no more than eight feet, else he’d have been peppered full of holes.
Dust motes drifted like listless fireflies. He pulled himself up and checked the racing of his heart. On he crept, pick clutched in hand while the dragon-lord from far down watched with impassive deliberation.
Two guardians had now cornered him. They had sidled up from nearby stairways and flanked him, licking jowls in anticipation. Vetra hacked and slashed, snouts and claws flying, black goop spraying everywhere and him ducking the slime. He watched, heard it lap into the other beast’s face, blinding one of its eyes. The thing bellowed in agony. Some sprayed on his desert cloak and sizzling smoke clouded him, momentarily blinding him. He tried to brush it off with his sleeve and nearly gagged at the rank odour. He sprang upward to the next tier in a nail-clawing attempt to save his life. An eyeless head came lurching up, fangs seeking to rip into his arm. He smashed down on it with the pickaxe. The dragon creature fell back, its face and neck still sizzling with goo. The shelf of seats gave under the monster’s weight, and the rock crashed down, crushing a half dozen of the brutes that struggled to get at him. Bestial whines filled the spacious arena, highlighting the madness of the scene.
Scrabbling with the best of his speed, he crawled through the rubble. At last he made it near the vents. Every stumbling step up those crumbled, haunted steps was like a herculean effort. Sunbeams traced dust-streaked rays in the air. He leapt up on the carved, polished backs of the highest stone benches. Bracing his feet, he began chipping with mad fervour at the cleft that admitted welcome sunshine. It was not wide enough to let him squeeze through. His muscles burned with the effort. The precipitous drop showed the ruined section of amphitheatre yawning below like an abyss that made his senses swim. Clang! He struck again with mighty swings. Ever did the dragon beasts below slip on the rubble and blocks of masonry, unable for the moment to edge their way higher and closer to flank him. He could hear the sinister rustlings amongst those shattered, broken, clogged steps, slipping and sliding on debris and emitting ominous bellows. Should they clear a path... Vetra shuddered and smashed at the flaky sandstone. His tool sent hard flakes and chips flying. He closed his eyes to avoid stray fragments. At last he cleared an area large enough for him to squeeze through. With a grunting gasp he pushed his way through. At the same time he dragged axe and feet, ducking the black spitballs of beasts that were at his heels.
A wash of blazing sunlight stung his eyes. He could make out a patch of white clouds somewhere greeting his beleaguered sight, and he hauled himself on through the gap, his feet wriggling in air. The hisses and red snouts and black teeth came angling up.
They could not get past the narrow gap.
He crabbed his way on hands and knees down the slope, gulping breaths into his lungs.
He hung on the side of the cliff, up higher than where he had entered the dragon tomb. Below the familiar canyon spread like an engorged snake. He blinked, squinting into the sun. Untold relief flooded his body, and yet, the feeling of height sickness still clung in his gut and would not abate.
Farther below he could see the vestiges of a steep, crumbled stone trail that connected to the path in the ravine. He wormed his way on his belly down toward it, pickaxe lodged in crooks to brace himself should he slip.
After painful effort his feet touched the gravel path. Approaching the mouth of the broken dragon that marked the tomb, he heard not a sound. Not a soul.
Quite a different space than before. A pall of death hung over the sepulchral chamber. The floor was up—and the wall was back to its regular place, exhibiting no sign of having moved at all.
New bits of gristle and bone lay clumped in ghastly heaps in the floor’s centre, now awash in a thick pool of blood...
Vetra grimaced. The sphinx-like guardian lurking by the sarcophagus had vanished. Bloody crimson pawprints stained the floor where it had walked...on towards the eerie, ink-stained tunnel at the back of the sarcophagus. Where had the Thrules gone? What had happened to Lehundr and Jhara? He shuddered, his mad thoughts reminiscing on who or what it had dragged to that mouldering corridor.
He reached down to touch the warm substance staining the rock, and knew before he touched it, it was blood.
He heard a spine-tingling slithering of non-human feet from the eerie tunnel and he backed away, feeling a shiver up his limbs. A suicide mission should he go back there.
A hundred grotesque thoughts swarmed in Vetra’s mind. Likely whatever had created that heap of flesh had dragged the victim or victims down that tunnel. He would be next if he lingered too long. Ill would he fare against such a grisly guardian. Could ancient iron continue to prevail against demons that came back to life to haunt the living?
He dragged himself away from that gruesome chamber. His fingers clutched the dragon-claw in a death grip.
Not a hundred paces down the trail he knelt and swayed dizzily. He let fingers pass over what looked like crimson drops on the dusty soil. Another fresh blood trail—maybe two hours old. A hope flared in his chest that there were survivors.
V: Dragon Forge
Vetra squinted south with longing. The sun’s flaming orb had swung significantly westward since he had taken up his peers’ trail. From his wobbly crouch on the hillside his weary eyes struggled to discern movement. An endless plain of red dirt and sand lay before him, lost in a shimmer of haze. A blur of something else: dust clouds on the horizon, caravans and camels wheeling in a long line. Supply caravans of war? Whether Behundrian or Thrule Vetra could not tell. All practicality screamed at him to leg it back to the great eastern road and hire passage back to Lvendar. He should give Dragonskull wide berth. With what money was a concern, considering his emeralds were still back on the pony. But the thought of Jhara stayed his hand. She could be wandering or enslaved by cruel lords, likewise, Lehundr.
Yet without food and water he would not last long. He looked down at the dragon claw. The fort was far to the north of this desolate valley. That’s where they would be heading, if they were still alive and if they held the other dragon claw keys. Should the Behundrians catch them, that would be another matter: the scum would either kill everyone on sight or take them prisoner, or force them on to the Dragon Fort to unlock the treasure. Rafa knew about the map and Vetra was under no illusion that they would torture them for the truth. Vetra took a calculated risk and pushed on, past the cacti and windscarred shrubbery, ever north.
The road that he had come up on with the Thrules was nothing more than a narrow, dusty track, winding up the broad, shallow valley dotted with small boulders and husks of ancient eucalyptus. He staggered on, feeling the fire of thirst, keeping a path well off, but parallel to the road.
A disquieting stillness lay over the land. Only the low moan of wind that crept around crumbled rock forms. He gazed into the distance. At his feet trailed a vague set of prints, lightly dusted over.
Before long his lips were parched and split from the heat and his legs burned, but he stumbled on despite his half-mangled boot.
Black smoke—perhaps phantom mist for all his delusion—rose over the low hills to the east. More fires? Vetra guessed the Thrules had been busy burning the Behundrian mines to the ground. He swept a hand over his sweat and blood streaked face where a claw had raked his brow and torn his left arm above the wrist. He shook the fatigue from his mind, shook out the throbbing in his arm. His belly ached with a fierce hunger and his tongue scraped around his dry mouth.
The grunt of a condor intruded on his thoughts—merging then back into the background thrum. He stumbled on a loose stone, collapsed, got up again, stumbled again. A scorpion scudded across his path, a foot from his head. He cursed, staggered up to his knees, slashing at it with his rusty pickaxe. His head spun in a dizzy spell of heat.
His vision blurred. What was this? Puppet figures in the distance shimmering of heat? At least fifty of them—ragged nomads, no more than five feet tall.
Thrules! No mirage.
Vetra stood to his full height and seemed a giant. He squinted in amusement. The desert Thrules either lacked ponies or preferred walking on foot.
“Where go you?” one demanded brusquely.
Another strode forward and passed hands over Vetra’s empty scabbard. Vetra saw that they kept scimitars belted at their hips. A group of them fanned out, covering him with bows.
“Kill him if he tries anything.”
Vetra weighed the advantages of trying to conceal the truth of his mission and realized there were none. Bluster would not hurt. “Fools!” he snarled at the leader. “Would you slay the bearer of the Dragon Claw?” He took a step, wielding the claw. The Thrules shrank back. “What would your gods think of you then? Slayers of the holder of the key to the Dragon fort—Dragon Forge!”
The Thrule’s eyes widened. “Where have you learned that name?” With fascination they stared at the claw and suspicion swarmed over the Thrule’s features. A murmur of astonishment rose from the gathering.
“He lies!” sneered an angry voice.
“’Tis a mummer’s trick,” others cried, lifting bows and weapons.
The archaic pickaxe with wooden handle seemed to disturb and fascinate the Thrules at the same time. He lifted it with its dried black blood. They rotated around him in a circle, murmuring in awe and indecision.
“Where have you come from? Why do you trespass on our lands?”
“Water,” croaked Vetra. “Some Thrules and I, from Dragonskull, we entered a tomb back in the valley. Give me water.” A familiar light-headedness threatened to have him swaying and sinking to his knees.
“We have water, but you may not get any, outlander,” snapped the leader. “At least until we discover more about this sacred relic you hold. You came from the Valley of the Dragons you say. Maybe you stole this dragon claw from some wealthy collector and are fleeing the law, feeding us a lie, only to slit our throats in the night and steal our gold.”
“Aye, Nhfer,” affirmed another, “but so odd is the tale that it may be true. Look! Here are tracks of the band that he talks about. The prints head toward Dragon Forge.”
The one called Nhfer gave a grudging assent.
Vetra snorted. “If you believe anything of slitting throats and stealing gold, you’re as simple-minded as those damn Behundrians. Help me find my friends.”
The leader scowled.
“What was in this tomb?”
“Guardians, blood, secrets of ages past. It’s guarded by ancient creatures—dragon leopards. Their skin was black and they came to life from some foul magic.”
The Thrules looked at him in wonder. “You survived the Guardians?”
Vetra grunted.
The Thrule leader fidgeted. “I knew there was some truth to the old tales. You are lucky to have seen them, outlander. Only the aged mystics who induced visions by chewing the sacred mushroom have claimed to have been graced by their presence. They crawl into caves for months on end.”
Vetra shrugged, a lackadaisical droop to his lips. He was hardly thinking straight, after being hunted by dragon-leopards, yet he was used to the blind reverence with which these people clung to the long dead race of their dragon people.
“And the others?” grunted Nhfer.
“I don’t know what happened to them. I was trapped in a lower wing of the tomb. One of them was surely killed as I saw bones and fresh blood. You haven’t seen sign of a band of twenty, travelling light with a girl?”
“No.”
“She may be wounded,” mumbled Vetra. “I must find them.” He turned to leave.
The Thrule blocked his path and trained his bow. “You smell like lizard piss.”
Vetra recalled the thick black acid that had almost engulfed him.
“There are hot springs not a league from here. You can soak your dirty hide.” He gazed at the dragon claw with kindled interest. “If there is a chance, we will take it. There could be great riches to aid us in this wretched war. We must go to Dragon Forge.”
Grumbles and mutters ensued and several raised their bows and shook their heads with animosity.
“Listen, you fools!” said Nhfer. “The long lost key is legendary. Many have died, starving and perishing of thirst in the desert looking for it. I will call for the brothers in the north. We have stirred up a hornet’s nest here in these parts. We will need reinforcements.”
Vetra saw that Nhfer sent no scout but reached for some beat-up instrument in his pack. “With what?” Vetra called. “Talk into the wind?”
“No, with this.” Nhfer produced a lacklustre horn from his back. “Zaln from Sunswatch gave it to me, should I need it.”
Vetra stared at the horn—it was small, sleek, archaic, coiled with antique tubing, like a bugle from a far off time.
The Thrule climbed to the top of a boulder and pushed the unimpressive thing to his lips. Vetra frowned, for it made no sound, but a hollow whooshing of air, yet it was strangely lit in glorious gold when he blew into it.
“’Tis done. The Thrule bands will come before sundown tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?” Vetra shook his head in doubt. “How will they find you?”
“An old Thrule secret, which you would not understand.”
Vetra shrugged, indifferent to the truth of it. “I came from Sunswatch, the pump site. ’Tis lost, and Zaln is dead. I saw him tortured before my eyes.”
