Rise of the Death Dealer (35 page)

When she caught sight of him, a rush of excitement flushed her cheeks, and
she hurried to catch up. After three strides, she slowed abruptly, shocked by
her actions. She was acting like a slave, and enjoying it.

THE HUNTED

C
oncealed by a boulder, Cobra stood knee-deep in the forest pool bathing.
Moonlight filtered through the surrounding pines, dappling her creamy shoulders
and back. The rest of her was as dark as the night, invisible against the forest
shadows. Finishing, she waded quietly to the boulder and, bracing herself with
her hands, raised up on her toes and peeked over the crest.

A campfire flickered in a small clearing beyond the boulder. The remains of a
roasted deer were spitted over it. Beyond the fire, Gath sat against a thick
oak. His weapons and armor were piled beside him, and he was naked except for
loincloth and helmet. The headpiece hung heavily between his massive shoulders,
and his burnished chest heaved impatiently.

Cobra stared in awe and wonder, marveling at the mere sight of him. Huge.
Male. The most deadly force to walk the earth, and he needed her, was dependent
on her. The knowledge made her senses wilt with unruly pleasure. It was almost
girlish, not only enslaving her senses, but her mind and heart.

Realizing that a decidedly unqueenly blush had risen to her cheeks, Cobra
slipped back behind the rock. She dipped her hands in the cold water and held
them to her hot cheeks, then did it again and again until they cooled. She
splashed her body with water so that tiny droplets flickered on her flesh like
moving moonlit jewels, then waded out of the pool into the firelight. There she
stood drying herself with her back to Gath, wearing her nudity with the same
audacious glitter with which midnight wears the shooting star.

She could hear his helmet grate against its chain-mail cowl, then his dry,
harsh voice growled, “Hurry it, bitch.”

Stroking the drops of water off her body, she asked, “Is it growing too heavy
for you?”

“Just get over here.”

“I’m coming,” she said, but it sounded like a long, time-consuming trip.

Piled at her feet were ragged garments and a small dish of rose-tinted rouge
she had made from talidda and tamal berries gathered from the forest. She
applied the rouge to cheeks, lips and breasts using her little finger, then tied
her hair back with a scarlet rag and dressed herself in silver loop earrings,
indigo robe and cloak and rawhide boots. She tied the robe about her narrow
waist with a scarlet rope, then moved toward Gath.

The stallion, standing in the shadows of the oak, moved restlessly as she
approached, and she glided to the animal, reached out a soft hand to its muzzle.
“Do I disturb you, pet?” She glanced down at Gath and sidled toward him,
deliberately stopping in front of the fire so that it cast a red-orange halo
around her hair and shoulders, and her shadow over his body.

The helmet’s eye slits glowed hot and menacing in the darkness. “What are you
waiting for?” he snarled. “You’ve had what you asked for.”

“Yes,” she said evenly, “and I am strong now. But first, I want to say
something. I can help you, Gath of Baal, help you in ways that no one else can.
And I will take risks for you… risks that you can’t even conceive of.” She
moved beside him and slowly sat down, straddling his thighs. Sensual. In
control. His hands took hold of her hip and armpit, drawing her close, and she
came willingly. Her hands slid along his arms to his shoulders, caressing them
as if she had sculpted them herself, and her voice purred heatedly. “You see,
even now I am tempted to risk making love to you before removing the helmet, if
that is your desire?”

Flames spit from the eye slits, singeing her hair, and she ducked, but did
not pull away.

“Don’t hate me because you need me,” she whispered. “It’s not my fault…
and I won’t betray you. It will be our secret.”

The helmet’s flames licked her throat, and she flinched with pain, but still
did not pull away. “Yes,” she murmured, her voice breathless, “I’d take that
risk, and cherish it. But I can give you more than momentary pleasure, Gath of
Baal. I can find the Lord of Death’s most powerful demon spawn for you, and my
sorcery can help you conquer their kingdoms, take their wealth and power for
yourself.” She hesitated, then her fingers and words stroked him. “Let me help
you Gath, and you can build an empire… one that will rival the underworld
itself.” His fingers bit into her flesh. “You’d use me to rebuild your kingdom,
is that it?”

“No,” she protested firmly. “I want nothing for myself… except to serve
you and enjoy the game of death, the pleasures of victory.” She leaned forward
within his grasp, daring the helmet’s flames. “I hunger for them, just as you
do.”

“Remove it.” A flat command.

She nodded and took hold of the horns. Flames spit from the helmet, but she
held on and called out in a howling hiss to the Master of Darkness. She dropped
forward onto her knees and her back arched, throwing her head back. Her eyes
closed, and she pulled. Pebbles bit painfully into her kneecaps. Perspiration
moistened her palms, and she tightened her grip, knuckles turning white.

The helmet abruptly inched up, exposing his neck, and Gath heaved beneath
her, sensing impending relief. She strained against the horns, pushing now, and
the helmet rose higher, the stubble of beard on his chin appearing. Suddenly a
flash of fiery pain went through her neck, and the horns seemed to grow within
her grasp. She tried to hold on, but her body suddenly emptied of strength, and
her arms dropped away lifelessly. The helmet sank back in place, and she fell
against his chest, sobbing.

“I can’t… I can’t do it.”

“Yes you can.” he growled, and pushed her erect, drawing her hands back to
the horns. “I’ll help you.”

His fingers crushed her hands against the horns and pushed, but she felt
nothing, no pain, no strength, only numbness from fingertip to elbow.

“Push!” he grunted.

“It’s no use, I… I haven’t the strength anymore. I… I’m empty.”

He dropped her hands and stared at her. The glow had fled from his eyes. They
were white and cold with shock behind the eye slits, and she could see why. Her
eyes, reflected on the helmet’s shimmering metallic surface, glittered wetly
with tears that were all too human.

“You’ve lost your powers.” An accusation.

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I… I…” She stopped, not knowing what to
say. Her nerves and emotions were jangled, and she suddenly had no appetite for
blood, no hunger for the triumph of the clandestine kill, no queenly majesty, no
carnal desire. All she felt was shame for having failed her lover.

The flat of his hand caught the side of her face and she hit the ground,
rolled over on her back amid his weapons and glittering chain mail. When she
looked up, he was on his hands and knees straddling her. “You lied,” he snarled.

“No,” she pleaded. “I didn’t know. I… I thought my powers would return,
but…”

“You’re dying?”

“No, no! I’ll be all right. But I’m no longer the queen. I’m powerless,
returning to my normal nature.”

His eyes questioned her. “Normal?”

She nodded bitterly. “Soon I’ll be nothing again. Just as I was when I first
entered his service. A penniless, helpless woman!”

He hesitated, then asked, “Can you get your powers back?”

She shook her head. “Only the Nymph Queen of Pyram can do that, and her
castle is many days from here. The helmet would kill you before we could reach
it. Besides, she serves the Master of Darkness. She’d do everything in her power
to kill you.”

“Then you’re useless.”

“No,” she protested, “I can still help you.” Ignoring her, he picked up his
axe and stood over her, placing the cutting edge against her throat. She caught
hold of it, trying to force it away. “Don’t be a fool! You need me. Robin
Lakehair is the only one who can remove the helmet now, but she’s in danger! You’ve got to go to her
before it’s too late. Now!” He glared at her, unrelenting.

“You’ve got to believe me!” she pleaded. “She’s in terrible danger.”

He laughed at her.

“Then trust the helmet. If I were trying to deceive you… if there were any
threat to you in me at all, the metal would sense it. But it doesn’t. If it did,
there would be fire in your eyes and the horns would be hot.” He relaxed the
pressure, and she added, “Trust me, Gath. The Lakehair girl is your only hope,
and I can help you save her.”

“How?”

“I lied to you. I didn’t tell you everything the soldier told me.” She took a
breath. “The Master of Darkness, before destroying his altar, commanded my
servants to go to the Great Forest Basin and hunt her down… kill her.”
Another breath. “Some of those who survived hunt her now, and they are three,
four days’ ride ahead of you.”.

A glow showed behind the helmet’s eye slits, and its horns pulsed with life,
growing hot. He stepped away from her.

She gathered slowly, feeling faint and weak, then rose, bringing his chain
mail with her. Offering it to him, she said, “Apparently he thought it would be
the surest way of destroying you.” Taking the chain mail, Gath began to dress,
and she added, “There’s no time to lose. The helmet is like a screaming infant.
The longer you feed it, the more it will demand, and the stronger it will
become.” He thrust his arms into the suit of mail and picked up his sword belt,
began to buckle it hurriedly. She watched him a moment, then said, “Take me with
you.”

Continuing to dress, he said, “The helmet’s hungers have entered my blood and
bones and are drawing me to a new place… a land, or a country… it’s not
clear.” His eyes met hers. “Do you know where it is?”

“No,” she said openly, “but I can help you find it, if anyone can.”

In reply, he pulled on a boot.

“Damn you,” she snarled, “you can’t leave me here!”

He put on the second boot.

“You fool,” she growled. “You’re still a clumsy forest lout, aren’t you?
Still too proud to breathe air from the sky because it doesn’t come from your
own magnificent self.” Her eyes turned molten, and she shrieked recklessly, “You
won’t survive without help, can’t you understand that? Nobody can. And I have
the cunning that can hide your precious virgin. I can keep her safe and teach
her to use her powers instead of squandering them! In time, I could even show
her how to tame the helmet enough for you to remove it by yourself.”

He looked at her, and a smile leapt onto her cheeks, unsteady, immature, but
honest. “Think of that, Gath. Then you wouldn’t need her… or me. You’d be
free. That’s what you really want… isn’t it?”

A short time later, as the stallion galloped through the dark night, Cobra
sat behind Gath clinging to his metal-clad chest and smiling with satisfaction.
She felt strangely like a young girl again, one moment sublimely content, the
next desperate and confused. Realizing this, she resolved not to let her
feelings show, but to keep the cool composure which had come naturally to her
when she was a queen. Consequently, she put her smile away and closed her eyes,
resting her cheek against the Barbarian’s back. After a while she believed she
could feel his heat through the metal, and the smile, without her noticing,
returned.

They were headed east, in the direction of the Valley of Miracles.

GUESSWORK

G
he two riders thundered through the morning sunlight at Pinwheel Crossing,
veered onto Weaver Road and raced under the overhanging oaks and willows. Robes
billowing, whips lashing and faces as sober as grave markers.

They had been on a dead run since leaving Rag Camp in the Valley of Miracles.
At dawn, a traveling tinker had wheeled excitedly into the village and awakened
them, telling them that he had seen a wagonload of suspicious-looking foreign
mercenaries riding through the night toward the village of Weaver. The pair now
headed for that village, eager to investigate the strangers and possibly prevent
another murder. In the last seven days there had been five.

Each of the victims had been a young girl, well known for her beauty, who
belonged to one of the Barbarian tribes occupying the western end of the Great
Forest Basin. Each had disappeared, then been found deep in uninhabited parts of
the forest with their bodies crushed and bitten by snakes and lizards. The
behavior of the reptiles was easily explained. Weeks earlier there had been a
series of volcanic explosions in the distant heart of the forbidden lands. Ever
since, hordes of animals and creatures had been migrating into the basin in
search of food. But the fact that reptiles did not selectively abduct pretty
young girls added an unholy atmosphere to the growing mystery which, until this
morning, had provided no clues or suspects.

Old Brown John led the two riders.

He was the
bukko,
the stagemaster and leader of the Grillards, a tribe
of traveling performers whose home base was Rag Camp. In the spring he had
convinced Gath of Baal to defend the Barbarian tribes, and together they had
raised an army and defeated the marauding Kitzakk Horde. As a reward, the
Council of Chiefs had confirmed upon him the kingship, at least in times of
crisis, and now there was one.

The king was short, wiry, bandy-legged, and did not look like a king. He wore
a bone-brown cloak with dark brown patches, the mark of his clan, brown boots
and a belted short sword without decoration. His white hair fluttered in silky
ringlets around his large ears, and his tangled white eyebrows arched low over
alert brown eyes. He was a genial man who much preferred ordering about
large-hipped, big-breasted dancing girls to solving crimes, and he would have
much rather been traveling with the Grillard wagons which were now on the road,
providing music and laughter to the forest tribes. But he was also a man of
responsibility with the gift of foresight. He could see things coming, and
within the murders he could sense a great and terrible impending tragedy.
Consequently, he urged his already lathered horse on and, the performer showing,
did so with gusto, noise and excessive gestures.

The second rider followed the
bukko
on a dappled grey stallion,
sitting his saddle seemingly without effort, like the pea riding the pod. He was
young, not more than twenty summers, and lean of body and face. A Kaven
aristocrat, but without the pious rigidity and narrow-eyed greed common to that
tribe of moneylenders. He was darkly handsome. Flowing chestnut hair, soft
charcoal-grey eyes, prominent nose and sensitive lips. He wore soft leather
jerkin, tights, boots and cloak, each item carrying its natural umber, sienna or
ochre hue. A crossbow was slung across his back, and his belt carried pouches,
two daggers and a quiver of steel bolts. The glint of their metal was slightly
less deadly than the expression on his face. His name was Jakar, and his only
living relative, his twin sister, had been the first to be murdered.

The two riders flew past the stand of apple trees marking the halfway point
to Weaver, turned off the road taking a shortcut and dashed right and left
between the trees with twigs and leaves slashing chests and cheeks. Retaking the
road, they galloped on. Within the hour they reached Weaver.

The sun sat high in the morning sky, shining down on the hill that formed the
village. Older women herded small groups of sheep in the clearing fronting the
wooden palisade wall. Beyond it, thick steam billowed from huge wooden dye vats
lined up on the rising tiers. There the Cytherian villagers moved about at their
various tasks of weaving and dying. Above the vats, the steam gathered into a
single spreading cloud, muting the deep earth-reds, rusts and siennas of the
freshly dyed cloth hung out to dry on the heights. The stench of urine and lime
was rich in the air.

Brown John and Jakar slowed as they crossed the clearing, not wanting to
alarm their suspects if they were still in the village, and moved to the Forest
Gate. There they dismounted, and approached an old man sitting on the ground
with his back against the palisade wall. He was whittling on a piece of wood.
Marl, the gatekeeper.

He looked up with a smile of recognition at the king and nodded, saying,
“Welcome,
bukko.
What brings you to Weaver on this fine day?”

“Nothing good, Marl,” Brown John said flatly, and squatted facing him. “I’m
investigating these vile murders and heard that some suspicious-looking foreign
mercenaries were headed this way. You see them?”

“Haven’t been no soldiers here, not today, leastways. I been sittin’ right
here the whole time, and bein’ as this is the only gate we leave open nowadays,
I’d seen ’em sure.”

Brown John frowned, glanced at Jakar, and the young nobleman said, “Perhaps
they didn’t look like mercenaries?”

Marl looked up, giving Jakar the same smile he gave the
bukko.
“Didn’t
see no strangers at all, lad, except for one, and he couldn’t a been no soldier.
Little bit of a man, and kind of emaciated.”

“Is he here now?” asked the
bukko.

“Nope. Left a little while ago. Wanted to see that pretty gal you made into a
dancin’ girl. Was real set on it, he was. So, since she doesn’t live here
anymore, I sent him on his way.”

“Robin Lakehair?” Jakar asked. His tone was low and cultured, and he spoke
without haste. But there was a tense concern in it. During the war with the
Kitzakks, Brown John had seen the young nobleman among those men who had
appointed themselves as Robin’s bodyguards, and ever since Jakar had started
helping him in the investigations, the
bukko
had observed him staring at
Robin whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Marl, sensing the young man’s interest in Robin, chuckled knowingly and said,
“That’s the one, and I’d feel the same way about her, if I was as young as you.
Prettiest little thing I ever saw, and always was, ever since she was a mite.”

“What was his interest in Robin?” Brown John asked briskly.

“Adores her, that’s what his interest is. Worships the ground she walks on.
And he’s never laid eyes on her, or so he said. Came here all the way from Small
Tree, just to thank her for her part in getting the Dark One to defend the
forest, and save his tribe from the Kitzakk cages.”

“A Kranik?”

“Don’t think so. Every Kranik I ever saw was near naked, and this little
fellah was fully clothed. Even wore a hood. He was dark-skinned like a Kranik,
though. But slick and shiny, like he was wet or something. And he wasn’t loud
like them savages. Hardly opened his mouth when he spoke, wouldn’t open his
lips. I figured he had bad teeth. You could barely hear him.”

The
bukko
and Jakar shared a thoughtful glance, and Brown John asked,
“Where did you send him to find her? Rag Camp?”

“Nope! Sent him to Clear Pond, where I saw her perform day before yesterday.
Why? Isn’t she there now?”

“She’s there,” Brown John said, as Jakar leapt back into his saddle. Turning
to him, the
bukko
said, “Hold on a minute, son. It’s only a half hour
ride. We’ll get there well before he does.” He turned back to Marl. “What else
did this stranger say?”

“Well, he did ask an awful lot of questions about Robin. I figured he was
like some of the folks here in the village who think she’s possessed with some
kind of unnatural magic or something. You know the ones I mean, those that made
life so unpleasant for her here she had to leave.”

“I know,” said the
bukko,
encouraging him to continue.

“Anyway, he wanted to be absolutely sure he could identify her. I told him he
wouldn’t have any trouble, that she’d be in the opening number of today’s
performance, and would be the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. That
seemed to satisfy him.”

Brown John nodded. “You’re sure he was alone?”

“Was when he left here.”

“Thank you, Marl,” the
bukko
said, rising.

“You want to thank me,
bukko,
you just see that pretty little gal
keeps on doin’ what she’s doing. She dances like the singing wind, she does.”

They said goodbye, and Brown John mounted his mare, walked it over beside
Jakar’s stallion.

Jakar said, “Bad teeth?”

“Or forked tongue,” Brown replied.

They headed off at a gallop, taking the forest road heading north toward
Clear Pond.

As they rode, the older man glanced thoughtfully at Jakar. The young man’s
eyes were desperate now, but under control. Haunted. Carrying a cargo of
bitterness and pain far greater than that which wrinkles the faces of the old
and wise.

Brown John shouted over the din of horses’ hooves. “You’re right to be
worried. Robin has enemies the likes of which you are too young to imagine…
and they may have finally come for her.”

“That doesn’t explain my sister.”

The
bukko
agreed, and they rode on, the colors of Weaver growing faint
behind them. Then Jakar pointed up ahead at a clump of crushed bushes at the
side of the road. They reined up beside them and examined the ground. There were
muddy tracks of a heavy wagon and a group of riders coming out of the forest and
heading up the road.

“They’re fresh,” said Jakar. “The mud’s still wet.”

The
bukko,
suddenly white of face and gasping, nodded. “Apparently
this strange little man isn’t alone.”

“I count at least twenty. That’s a lot of men for one girl.”

“Not if she’s important to them.” Brown John spurred forward shouting,
“Follow me! I know a shortcut!”

They plunged up the side of the mountains, crashing through shrubs and
ducking the limbs of pines and oaks. Reaching a grassy meadow nestled among the
tall trees, they galloped across and rejoined the road, heading for a distant
tree-covered ridge rising in front of a sheer wall of jagged rock.

There were scattered travelers on the road, local tribesmen heading for the
performance at Clear Pond. But no sign of the suspects.