Rise of the Death Dealer (36 page)

A BIT OF FLUFF

R
eaching the vicinity of Clear Pond, the two riders left the road again and
galloped up through thick pines to the crest of a mountain spur. It was thick
with trees and strewn with boulders and thin streams of water draining off the
mountain. They could hear sounds coming from the base of the spur, the steady
movement of the river and the garbled voices of those gathering for the
performance.

They had not seen a wagon or riders on their ride, and now, as they searched
through the shadowed trees, they found no fresh wagon tracks or ground cover
crushed by horses’ hooves.

Moving covertly, they walked their horses down between massive boulders and
trees into a natural enclosure formed by towering rocks. Leaving their horses
there, they continued covertly down a gully. The sounds of the river and the
chatter of the gathering crowd grew louder, then the jangle of tambourine, the
vibrating notes of harps and the wail of flutes being tuned.

Jakar and the
bukko
shared a worried glance. The performance was about
to begin.

Reaching exposed ground, they dropped on all fours and scrambled forward to a
cluster of large boulders set in a bed of brown needles. They climbed the
largest boulder and inched forward, looking over it.

Twenty feet beyond the rock, the Grillard wagons were parked among a thin
spread of pines and oaks. Just beyond them the spur thrust bluntly out into the
river forcing it to make a sharp turn, and forming the pond. The entertainers
were moving animatedly among the trees on the crest of the spur, taking their
positions. They moved with their normal excitement, indicating there had been no
trouble and that they expected none.

Brown John and Jakar relaxed slightly, relieved, and the young nobleman could
not repress a grin.

The wagons were all painted and decorated with florid pinks, yellows, purples
and greens, and the Grillards themselves were adorned in an even more vivid
fashion, in lemon-yellow feathers, rouged breasts, formidable codpieces and all
manner of baubles, bangles and bells. The cumulative impression was that of an
unreal world where color and laughter were the staples, instead of steady work
and regular meals.

Brown John whispered, “We’re in time.”

Jakar nodded and started to edge back off the rock. “I’ll go warn her.”

“No! You stay here and keep out of sight. I want her safely hidden until I
know who and what we’re up against. And I know how to handle her. You don’t.”

The sounds of beating drums and tambourines rang through the trees in a
musical fanfare, and the unseen audience on the opposite side of the river
cheered excitedly, howling and whistling.

“It’s starting,” blurted Brown John, and slid back down the rock, scraping
his hands and chest.

Jakar’s grin was gone now. “Hurry, old man,” he whispered. “Hurry!”

The
bukko,
holding his tunic above his knobby knees, ran and leapt
through trees and rocks like a jackrabbit in heat, vanished behind shrubbery,
then reappeared at the back of a large yellow house wagon. Gasping and puffing,
he rose stiffly and walked carefully toward the wagon’s door. He reached it
without being seen, opened it and hurriedly climbed in, closing it behind him.

Jakar waited, taut and frowning with concern, then looked about sharply as
drums boomed somewhere.

Above the tree canopy, showers of arrows soared into the sky directly above
Clear Pond. Streamers trailed behind them forming a rainbow of greens that
arched against the sky-blue void, then started down. Before they vanished beyond
the trees, their arrowheads were whistling as air passed through them. The crowd
cheered. The drums boomed. Tambourines, flutes and harps began a rousing song,
and everyone, Grillards and audience, began to sing the bawdy lyrics of “The
Women of Boo Bah Ben.”

Jakar chuckled with youthful mockery and watched as five nubile girls burst
out of an orange wagon and scattered through the trees toward a position
upriver. They carried small wooden rafts with rope handles and wore just about
enough scalelike jewels to clothe their natural jewels, not counting their
backsides, which were marvelously naked. Their hair had been dyed a luxurious
red-gold, in exact imitation of Robin Lakehair’s.

Jakar rose slightly, making sure Robin was not among them, and the girls
disappeared over the rim of rock. Lying down again, he looked back at the yellow
wagon and held still.

Brown John, using the noise and commotion to cover his movements, had exited
the wagon and was now racing through the trees toward Jakar. In his arms,
wrapped in a blanket, was a small struggling body with tiny feet which kicked
furiously.

Jakar climbed off the rock, and the old man raced past him without speaking,
heading for the horses. Jakar peered between the rocks to see if he was being
followed, saw no one and moved after him.

Just short of the horses, Brown John veered north toward the base of the
sheer wall of jagged rock which showed slightly between the tall pines.

When they emerged from the forest, they were beside a fast-moving creek, one
of the many which fed the river, and the sounds of the singing were vague,
distant.

Brown John, gasping for breath, set the wrapped body down on a rock, then sat
down beside it, peeling the blanket away from the head.

Robin Lakehair was gagged. Her short red-gold hair was in disarray, and the
rouge on her cheeks and lips, as well as the thick lines of kohl outlining her
big hazel eyes, was smeared. The eyes themselves were windows to a shocked body
and mind, and angry. Nevertheless, as far as Jakar was concerned, her beauty
radiated like sunlight striking through drops of morning dew, and the corners of
his finely wrought lips turned up in a smile.

Brown John, between gasps, said, “I’m sorry about this, Robin. Terribly
sorry. But I must leave the gag, just in case something might cause you to
scream and reveal where you are. I’d explain why, but there’s no time. I have to
warn the others, and you have to hide.” He looked up at Jakar. “I think you know
Jakar… he’ll stay with you.”

Robin looked up with frightened eyes at Jakar and suddenly stopped thrashing,
just stared.

Jakar bowed, with aristocratic reserve, and said, “It is a pleasure to serve
you, my lady.” Then, behind a slightly mocking smile that failed to hide his
concern for her, he added, “But I must say, you surely manage to stir up a
fuss.”

Robin turned her eyes on the
bukko
and complained unintelligibly
behind her gag, her eyes pleading.

“Just trust me,” the old man said as he stood, “and go with Jakar. Your life
may depend on it.” Jakar, forcing a light tone, said, “She’s a pretty bit of
fluff, isn’t she?”

Brown John scowled at him. “That will be enough of that. You’re going to have
to keep your head about you now, lad, and if looking at her is going to make you
behave like a popinjay, then don’t look at her.” Jakar blushed, and the
bukko
added, “Now listen to me. I am honor bound to protect Robin… and duty bound
as well. My friend, Gath of Baal, depends on her, and the entire forest depends
on him. Do you understand?”

Jakar nodded, once, deadly serious now.

“Good. Take her upstream to the falls.” He pointed them out, explaining how
to find a hidden chasm behind the falls, then added, “She’ll be safe there. Now
get moving. I’ll find out what’s going on and meet you there later.”

Jakar watched the wiry old man dash down the boulder-strewn stream, thinking
to himself that the
bukko
was taking a lot for granted, even for a king.
But he liked him, and for reasons he could not explain, trusted him. He
hesitated uncertainly, then put his soft charcoal eyes on Robin’s consuming
beauty and gathered her gently in his strong arms. She struggled slightly, then
gave up, and a shiver swept through him as her softness came against his lean
hard body. He felt color flooding into his sun-dark cheeks and tried to look
away, but could not. For a moment their eyes met, then a smile warmed his
thoughtful eyes as he spoke.

“Something tells me, fluff, that you are going to be a whole lot of trouble.”

READHEADS

B
rown John emerged from the bushes overhanging the creek and stepped onto the
river bed.

It was thirty yards across, an undulating white bed of gravel and boulders
carried down from the mountain by centuries of spring floods. Narrow slow-moving channels of water meandered through it, and twenty yards away, on the far
side beyond nearly impassable boulders, the main channel flowed swiftly,
churning its liquid-green body into white foam as it crashed against large rocks
lining its sides and rising from it.

Gathering his torn, stained tunic above his knees, he scrambled across the
gravel and splashed through a shallow channel, heading downriver toward faint
sounds of drums.

He fell twice, the second dropping him into a deep channel. Its current swept
him forward, bounced him off a large boulder and deposited him in the tangled
branches of a dead pine tree which had fallen into the river. The sharp branches
played with his face and back for a while, then he climbed onto the trunk and scrambled across it to the river bank.

Puffing, soaking wet and wearing a scowl that cut so deep into his wrinkled
cheeks it could have supplied enough tragedy for an entire act of one of his own
melodramas, he ran along a bald dirt footpath siding the river and saw his
dancing girls in the distance.

They were far out on the river bed, tiny colorful figures against the white
rocks. Their trim bodies were now wrapped in diaphanous yellow-green cloth, and
they wore green-gold dragonfly wings on their naked backs. They stood beside the
main channel where it narrowed into a funnel of white-water rapids for about
twenty feet, then spewed out over a wide flat rock forming a natural slide which
flowed around a bend in the river. Unseen beyond the bend was Clear Pond, and
the waiting audience and musicians. But he could not hear them now. The crash
and spill and roar of the rapids was deafening.

The girls looked anxiously toward the wagons on the spur, as if expecting
Robin to join them any minute, and held their small rafts steady in the water,
waiting to jump into them when they were cued. The sunlight glistened on their
bouncing curls of red-gold hair, and at that distance they all looked remarkably
like Robin Lakehair.

Realizing this, Brown John groaned with fresh panic, dropped his tunic and
cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting, “Zail! Belle! Wait! Don’t go in the
water!”

The girls did not hear him.

Brown John, slipping and sliding and jumping, descended the sheer bank and
started across the rocky bed, shouting, “Zail! Wait! Wait!”

The girls took no notice, and he ran recklessly forward, fell facedown, and
boulders kissed his cheek, chest and shins. Slightly dazed, he climbed painfully
onto his hands and knees and held still. The shrill clear notes of a horn were
rising above the roar of the rapids. The cue.

Brown John jumped up and screamed, “Wait!”

The girls still did not hear him. Zail, the lead girl, kneeled on her raft
and, hanging on to its rope handles, rode it, squealing and laughing, down the
funnel of water. One by one the others followed, bobbing wildly and nearly
spilling over as the water tossed their small rafts about and washed over their
lovely bodies and laughing faces.

They swept onto the natural water slide, swirled around the bend in the
river, and the unseen audience waiting at Clear Pond roared approval.

In reply, each girl raised an arm, unclenched a tiny fist, and streamers of
glittering yellow and green unfurled behind them.

The audience applauded, and tambourines and drums caught the rhythm of the
streaking beauties, turning the ride into a dance.

Brown John stood limply, his exhausted body heaving for breath. He could see
Clear Pond now, and the girls were performing beautifully, just as he had
trained them to. But without that extra sparkle he had planned on. Only Robin
Lakehair had the skill, and nerve, to ride her raft in a standing position.

One by one the girls splashed into the large pond and rode the current,
twirling their rafts and posing provocatively for the audience lining the shore.

Grillard strongmen, standing on a shelf of rock several feet under the water,
waited where the pool widened. More shelves of rock rose out of the water behind
them to form a natural stage which faced the audience on the opposite shore. The
stage was backed by boulders which rose like massive stepping-stones up the
blunt face of the mountain spur. More strongmen stood in a chainlike line which
wound its way across the stage, then up over the boulders to a promontory rock
out of which grew a scrub oak.

Brown John knew the spot well. It was here that he had first seen Robin
Lakehair and asked her to help him save the forest from the Kitzakks.

As the girls neared the waiting strongmen, they lay down on their backs,
crossed their arms across their breasts and held themselves as rigid as arrows.
The first strongman plucked Zail off her raft, raised her over his head and
passed her to the next strongman. In this manner she traveled across the stage
and up through the boulders to the promontory rock where the two largest
strongmen waited. As she began her ascent, her body was rolled over and over,
and her diaphanous wrap began to unravel colorfully, much to the delight of the
men in the audience.

When she reached the top, one of the strongmen took hold of the end of her
wrap while the other raised her arrowlike body high over his head. With a
grunting heave, he threw her out over the deepest part of the pool a hundred
feet below. Just before she began to fall, the strongman holding her wrap gave
it a hard yank, and Zail spun around in mid-air. The wrap swirled away from her
body in a flurry of colorful circles, and she dove out of their center, naked
except for the glittering yellow jewels gracing breasts and groin, and plunged
into the water.

The crowd rose as one body and applauded, whistled, wanting more, and one
after the other the girls obliged.

Brown John could not refrain from smiling, then suddenly his blood ran cold.

Two strongmen on the promontory had pitched forward and were flailing
awkwardly in the air. One landed safely in the shallow water, but the other hit
a rock with a loud grunt. He rolled several feet, then lay still. The audience
gasped. The girls, now all in the pool, screamed. Then all movement stopped, and
a hush fell over Clear Pond.

A huge man, nearly seven feet tall and massive, had emerged from behind the
scrub oak and now stood poised on the promontory rock. A plain tattered cloak
covered him, but his stance was proud, arrogant, regal. With a deliberate
flourish, he removed his cloak and let it fall to his feet. His armor was
smooth, a rainbow of plates fading from indigo at his shoulders to smoky blues
to roses to white at his legs. A silver-white helmet graced his big-jawed head,
and he stood in a whiplike stance. Rising off his back was a silver-grey stump,
like the dorsal fin of a shark.

Brown John almost whimpered.

The audience gasped and edged back.

The Grillards, as if driven by unseen adversaries, fled off the spur and
gathered together on the stage. Among them were Brown John’s sons: Dirken, in
his black tunic with its grave umber patches, and Bone, in his giant codpiece as
red as his hair. They moved to the front of their tribe, facing the demon spawn
standing above the stage, and stopped short.

A small hooded man with a smooth grey face had appeared beside the huge
warrior and laughed mockingly. Suddenly he stopped and raised a fist, shouting
in a language the
bukko
did not understand.

A dozen short, thick men promptly appeared along the rim of the spur, and the shadows of more could be seen among the
trees behind them. Their flesh was a greyish brown, and their faces had nostrils
but no noses. Their tiny ears were pointed, and tufts of fur sprouted between
the seams of their leather armor at their shoulders and elbows. Swords and
quivers and knives rode their belts, and they held loaded crossbows in hairy
hands.

The audience on the far bank, hushed and trembling, began to back away from
the pond. Those in the rear of the crowd were already fleeing into the forest.

The Grillards gathered on the stage shifted anxiously in place with their
eyes on the crossbows aimed at them, and raised their arms.

Brown John, stumbling forward in desperation, moved for the natural water
slide.

Three of the noseless soldiers moved down off the spur onto the stage and,
grunting and waving their crossbows at the Grillards, made a passage between
them as the small smooth man, with surprising agility, bounded down the rocks.
He strode between the Grillards and waded into the water until he stood among
the bobbing faces of the terrified dancing girls.

He grinned, scratching his groin with both hands, and his lewd voice rang
through the silence.

“My, my, you are the pretty ones! You’re not going to make it difficult for
me now, are you?” He chuckled. “Which of you is Robin Lakehair?”

The girls moaned and spoke all at once, saying Robin wasn’t among them, that
they didn’t know where she was, and pleading not to be hurt. Then Zail shouted
them to silence and brazenly and defiantly rose partway out of the water,
taunting the small man with her half-naked beauty. “She’s not here, little man. You’ll have to come back for tomorrow’s show.”

“Don’t play with me, whore!” he snarled. He waded close to Zail, examining
her, and shoved her back in the water, grunting, “You’re too old.” He glared at
the others and they whimpered, clutching each other in fear. “Be smart, girl, I
know you’re here,” he growled. “So you might as well give yourself up… and
save your friends a whole lot of pain.”

The girls wailed and hugged each other, babbling incoherently.

Grumbling, he waded as close to the girls as he could without falling in the
river, and leaned over studying their upturned faces. “Damn! You’re all so
bloody pretty, I can’t remember what you looked like.” He straightened. “You
have one last chance, Robin Lakehair. Show yourself now, or these pretties won’t
stay pretty much longer.”

The girls screamed that Robin wasn’t there, and the Grillards on the stage
shouted the same thing.

The small man didn’t listen to them. He grunted, “What a waste,” and waded
back onto the stage. He looked up at the huge man, lifting empty hands, and
shouted, “I’m sorry, Lord Baskt, but they won’t cooperate. And I can’t pick her
out. They’re all redheads.”

Baskt nodded and strode to the edge of the promontory rock. There he
gathered, and dove out over the pond. He easily cleared the rocks below and
plunged down toward the water. There was a flash of light and a roll of thunder
just before he hit the water, and it splashed in a flurry of geysers which could
only have been made by a man three times his size.

What remained of the audience fled screaming into the forest.

The Grillards stood staring helplessly at the pond, holding each other.

Brown John, finally reaching the water slide, plunged in, and slid for the
pond, his eyes fixed on the girls.

Their heads were turning and twisting as they watched something moving under
the water. Then their eyes filled with horror, and they screamed.

A shark fin cut through the surface and moved toward them.

Screaming and flailing, the girls tried to swim and climb out of the water.

The fin slashed down into the water, vanished for a moment, then a pointed
snout erupted from the liquid green, followed by the huge barreled body of a
great white shark.

Two girls wading onto the stage saw it and fainted, falling backward into the
water.

Brown John screamed, “No! No!” and hit a rock with head and shoulder. Nearly
unconscious, he splashed into the pond and went under. The current caught him,
brought him back to the surface, and gasping for air, he looked across the pond
with dazed eyes.

The water seemed to be churning itself into geysers of white foam flecked
with red streaks. There was screaming, a soaring crescent-shaped tail, flashes
of huge teeth in an underslung jaw. Pieces of young girls were impaled on them.

The old man moaned pitifully, passed out, and the current carried him away.

Some time later, when he came to, his paunchy belly was hung up on a shelf of
rock which formed part of the stage, and he was drowning in a foot of water. He
raised his head out of the water, coughing and spitting repeatedly, and dragged
himself onto dry rock. Gasping for air and shaking with exhaustion and terror,
he looked around.

There was no sign of the shark. Clear Pond was void of sound and movement
except for the flowing river, as if he had dreamed the entire thing. Then he saw
them.

At the far end of the pond, where the river spread out and trickled through a
man-made rock dam, the noseless, furry soldiers were wading in the shallows.
They held pronged spears, stabbing them into the water. When the spears came
back out, unidentifiable bits and pieces of bloody bone and flesh were stuck to
the prongs. These they matter-of-factly removed and dropped in sacks slung over
their shoulders, then went back to stabbing.

Brown John, snarling with fury, tried to rise, but dizzied and dropped back.
He blinked his eyes and stared at the rock below him as a swirl of water washed
under him. He lowered his head to drink, but stopped, and white showed around
his shocked eyes.

The water was red with blood.

He tried to crawl away from it, as if it would contaminate him, and the
effort drained his strength. He dropped facedown on a dry shelf of rock, and
blackness filled his mind.