Rise of the Death Dealer (53 page)

Tiyy stumbled down the rocks, and Schraak gathered her in his arms, then
carried her out, kicking the gate shut behind them.

He set Tiyy down against a smooth rock, and the two sat gasping for breath.
Her head hung limply, and her exhausted body heaved. A loud clicking sound came
from the cage, and their heads snapped up, fear tearing at her tyrannical
beauty.

Smoke was swirling high in the gallery, like moving shadows. Flames blazed
within their dark embrace, and thunder roared from it, dispersing the
greyish-brown clouds. They swirled down over the throne, filling the cage.
Gushing sounds and shrieks followed, then the smoke drifted between the bars of
the cage, dispersing itself throughout the cave. Slowly, through the thinning
smoke, a huge creature could be seen perched on the throne.

Its body was thirty feet high. A monstrous vampire bat with wing thumbs as
long as Tiyy’s legs, and as thick as sapling oaks. A predator descended from
the primordial past, a creature of ten thousand years of breeding and dark
magic.

A Lord of Destruction who was also Lord of the Night.

The monster whipped his wings wide, bowing subserviently to the savage nymph,
and the force of the wind they created made Tiyy and Schraak gasp for breath.
When the wind subsided, Schraak looked fearfully at the creature in the cage,
then at Tiyy. Her color was back, and she was smiling.

“This Barbarian cannot protect her now,” she whispered.

SLAUGHTER

G
ath climbed silently down a gash in the side of the cliff. Shadows filled
it, hiding his movements except for pins of orange fire thrusting from the
helmet’s eye slits. Wild fire held in check by the pride of a man. Twice his
chain mail tinkled on the night’s silence, then he reached the shelf of earth
overlooking the lower road and squatted there. Listening. Watching.

He did not hear a sound, or see a sign of anything that was alive on the
road. But still he waited. Murder rode the night the way the winter wind rides
through the forest canopy.

He was in the middle of the towering Breasts of Veshta. Far above him, beyond
the boulders lining the shadowy crest of the cliff, his four companions hid as
they awaited his return. The troupe had crossed the plain and, following Cobra
along almost undetectable goat paths, moved high into the mountains without
incident. Then the white eye of the full moon came out from behind the cloud
cover and cast its cold light on a frightening sight on the road below, and they
decided to hide while Gath investigated.

Still hearing and seeing nothing, Gath crawled to the edge of the shelf and
looked down at the road. Slowly the light went out of his eyes.

What lay silent on the road was not like any caravan he had seen before, or
hoped to see again. There was something disturbingly unnatural about it,
something out of place.

Dead horses, baskets and overturned wagons were strewn for fifty yards up and
down the road, as if the caravan had panicked and fled in both directions. The
gear on the animals had not been removed, and the baskets and wagons had not
been pillaged. The dead bodies of the travelers were lying in two neat rows at
the center of the debris, as if lined up for inspection. The men were of mixed
races, and also did not appear to have been robbed. A few wore robes and
turbans, the others wore rags and chains. But they were not separated. Slaver
was lying beside slave. The women, however, were set apart, and had been
stripped naked. All wore chains, and were healthy and attractive, the kind who
normally survive a long trail. Their bodies were bloody, and wore dark wounds.

Gath studied the gruesome scene carefully. As horrible as it was, it was
still just a scene of slaughter, and he could not detect what made it appear so
unnatural.

He stood, intending to descend to the road, but hesitated, hearing someone
descending the gash in the cliff above him. A figure landed quietly on the
shelf, and Jakar stepped into the moonlight, nodding in greeting. He held his
loaded crossbow with his splinted broken arm. Robin had rebandaged it, and it
now served him nearly as well as his good one. Whispering, he explained his
presence.

“Brown John told me to take a look… in case I might see something you
might miss.”

Gath took no exception and nodded down at the road. Jakar moved to the edge
of the shelf and studied the scene. After a moment, he whispered, “Uh-oh! I saw
this kind of madness once before. It seems to amuse certain kinds of savages…
the heads are on the wrong bodies.”

Gath looked back at the caravan, finally understanding where the
unnaturalness came from, and they moved silently down to the road. There they
advanced to the bodies, and Jakar grunted in shock, “Mother of Death!”

The heads were indeed on the wrong bodies, but that was not where the cruel
joke ended. The legs, arms, feet and torsos of the men had been hacked and torn
apart, and then reassembled with no effort at getting the arrangement correct.
On the contrary, a skillful and successful effort had been made to make the dead
men appear as preposterous freaks. Whoever had done the work had had a sense of
humor, but it was not the kind that would make a normal man laugh.

A less imaginative effort had been given the women. They were only partially
dismembered. Head matched neck, leg matched hip, and arms belonged to the
shoulders. The women had been healthy, young and attractive, and in death were
cruelly beautiful.

Jakar moved away, and was sick in a shadow. When he rejoined Gath, the
Barbarian was squatting beside one of the women, holding her severed arm. It was
almost white. He used it to point out to Jakar that each of the women also had
one severed white arm, then handed the arm to Jakar.

Jakar took it gingerly, examining it. There were tiny punctures in the flesh
above the veins of the wrist. He returned the arm to Gath, pointing out the
small holes. “Something sucked out her blood.”

Gath’s lightless eyes asked for an explanation.

Jakar lifted empty hands. “I don’t know what kind of bite it is, maybe some
kind of trained snake. But if whoever did this is hunting for Robin, then they
took their blood for a reason. Probably to show to this Nymph Queen.”

Gath’s eyes asked what reason.

“If her magic is as strong as Cobra says it is, it could be one of the ways
she can identify her.” Jakar’s voice was low and hollow with foreboding.

Gath stood and studied the tiny bite carefully. His breathing was harsh, then
it quickened, and the orange glow came back into his eyes. The helmet was
sensing the presence of danger. He and Jakar quickly backed into concealing
shadows and looked up and down the road. There was still no sign or sound of
anything living. Gath looked back at the arm, and his eyes flamed slightly,
sending a tremor of fear through his swart frame.

It was in the tiny bite that the helmet sensed the danger, and within the
shadows of the helmet his hard eyes tightened thoughtfully.

Never before had the helmet warned him by showing him a wound, but that meant
nothing. The headpiece’s powers were continually growing as if they had no
limitations. It appeared it could see into the future and was telling him to
beware the creature which had made the wound. But he could not be certain, and
there was no time to seek an explanation. He tore a length of cloth from a dead
girl’s discarded tunic, wrapped the arm in it and they climbed back up through
the gash in the cliff.

They found Robin, Brown John and Cobra where they had left them, huddled
under an overhanging boulder on top of the mountain. The horses, muzzled with
rags, were tethered in a nearby gully.

Gath and Jakar greeted them silently as they emerged from the rock to stand
in the bluish white moonlight, and the Barbarian unwrapped the arm, handed it to
Cobra. The serpent woman turned it over and spread the stiff fingers, handling
it as casually as she might examine a fresh vegetable. But Robin blanched at the
bloody appendage, and had to sit down and hide her face against Jakar’s chest.
Brown John took no note of this, his eyes intent on Cobra, curious, expectant.

When Cobra found the tiny bite, she lost all trace of casualness, and her
hands trembled. She forced herself to explore the tiny wound, feeling its shape
with sensitive fingertips, then withdrew her hand abruptly, looking up at Gath
and the
bukko.
Her eyes were puzzled and her whisper uncertain.

“It’s the bite of a bat.”

“You mean a bat soldier,” said the
bukko.

She shook her head. “A bat. And a small one. Tiyy now hunts us with bats.”

“Because they can see in the dark,” Brown John volunteered.

“Yes,” the serpent woman’s voice trembled, “but no bat could have killed the
owner of this arm.” She held it up. “It’s been torn out of the shoulder. No bat
can do that.”

Jakar nodded. “And whoever attacked that caravan down there on the road was
not small, but big. Very big. One of the men was torn in two, just above the
hips. But the curious part was the girls: they were young, and each one of them
had had the blood sucked out of one of their arms, just like this one.” Robin
trembled, hiding her head against his chest as Cobra and Brown John looked at
the young man thoughtfully, then at Gath. He confirmed what Jakar had said with
a nod. They all sat silent for a moment, thinking, and a shadow passed over
them, blocking out the moonlight.

They looked up, grateful for the added darkness, and gasped. The darkness
blocking the moon was growing larger and larger against the indigo sky, dropping
toward them.

Gath jumped up with flames bursting from the horned helmet, and Cobra
shrieked, “Look out!” She grabbed Robin, hauling her roughly under the
overhanging boulder. Simultaneously, Jakar and Brown John faced the night sky,
crossbow and sword ready, and Gath stepped directly under the descending shadow.
His body was cocked and his head was tilted back with the helmet sputtering
fire. Then flames spewed into the sky.

The hot light blanketed a monstrous vampire bat with wings easily forty feet
wide, and claws and fangs as long and thick as table legs. It continued its
drop, its grotesque eyes turning red in the firelight. Then the flames licked
its feet and the steel bolt from Jakar’s crossbow drilled its leg. Squealing, it
darted back into the sky, with its wings flapping loudly, like breakers slapping
a hard beach. Bits of the full moon could be seen between them.

Jakar quickly reloaded as Cobra, staring in horror, gasped weakly,
“Menefret!”

A whooshing sound came out of the night sky, followed by a blast of wind.
Dust swirled into the air, obscuring their vision and stinging their cheeks and
hands. Jakar and Brown John backed under the protecting rock with the two women,
and covered their faces with their arms, squinting over hands and elbows.

Gath ignored the dust. His arms rippled as he two-handed his axe, his calves
cording under browned flesh as snarling smoke drifted from the helmet. It was
black and cut with spears of flame which illuminated the sky above him, under
control.

The whooshing grew suddenly loud, and the monstrous bat again burst into the
burning light, not twenty feet above the Barbarian.

Gath’s body convulsed like a bellows, and contracted, blowing flames into the
face of the black-brown monster.

The flaccid flesh hanging loose on the jaw of the bat had been drawn up and
attached to horny protuberances on the sides of its forehead, so that it now
shielded the eyes. But the flames ate into the flesh, and it wrinkled, then
crackled with flames, exposing huge wet eyes. They instantly smoked and clouded
over as the flames seared them to blind the diving creature.

Gath roared with satisfaction. But the demon spawn did not dart away.

It drove at Gath as if still able to see, its right wing reaching for him
like a hand with ten-foot fingers and clawed thumb. The thick membrane crinkled
at the joints like thin parchment, and the horny appendages closed around Gath’s
body.

Gath sank low trying to avoid the hand, and hacked at the lower edge of the
wing. The blade bit into fingerbone, cracking it, and the wing twisted and
unfolded, causing it to pass above the center of Gath’s body. Instead of
gripping him, it caught him in the shoulders and helmet, lifting him off his
feet and driving him backwards He hit a rock with the back of the helmet and a
shoulder, and tumbled down an embankment, clinging to his axe and kicking up
dust.

Robin screamed. Cobra leapt up to help, but Jakar and Brown John held her
back, and she yelled at them, “Help him! Help him!”

Gath rolled to his feet just past the natural enclosure where their horses
were tethered, and the bat darted back for him feet-first. The claws were as long
as the Barbarian’s arms.

The horses panicked, snorting and kicking, and two bolted free, running
directly across the bat’s path. The bat’s claws ripped one animal open from
withers to shoulder, and carried the other into the sky, then dropped it in
three pieces. The creature dove and came swooping across the ground, heading for
Gath.

Gath backed away snorting flames, then suddenly charged. He got inside the
wings before they could close, and pivoted, swinging his axe. He hammered one
wing aside with an ear-shattering clang, kept pivoting with lightning speed and
buried the axe into the chest of the bat.

The beast screamed in pain and bowled Gath over, ripping the axe out of
Gath’s hands. Then it darted skyward, carrying the weapon off. The creature
whipped about within the concealing darkness, flapping loudly, then darted back
into the moonlight having discarded the axe.

Gath rose in a crouch, flames spitting. Waiting. Hungry.

The vampire bat again swept low across the ground toward him, somehow still
able to see. Its wings were spread, filling the darkness on either side.

Gath turned and ran, leading the bat through a cluster of huge boulders. It
slowed, having to make sharp twisting turns, and the helmet snarled with
satisfaction. Suddenly Gath jammed to a stop, pivoted and dove for the onrushing
belly of the demon as it came around a boulder. Its massive wings came sweeping
toward him, somehow sensing precisely where he was. Gath’s hands grabbed for the
body, but it pulled away, and he fell. A wing passed over him, hit the helmet
with the crack of splintering bone and caught on the horns. Gath was ripped
backward and thrown through the air as the bat swooped back into the sky.

Gath hit the ground with a metallic clang, and rolled over the edge of a
steep slope, tumbled down. He thrashed and grabbed for balance, but there was
only loose earth to hold on to, and he continued to roll and clang down the
slope amid billowing moonlit dust.

He heard Cobra scream and caught a glimpse of her as she suddenly appeared at
the top of the slope. Brown John was with her, holding her back. Then the bat
came for him again. Rolling and thrashing down the slope, Gath could not defend
himself or escape and the bat’s right wing plucked him off the ground as easily
as a mother retrieving a fallen doll from the floor of her hut.

Cradled in the furry membrane, and dizzy from the blow of the wing, Gath saw
the ground retreating beneath him. He was airborne. His body was held tight, but
his feet dangled freely. He heard screaming coming from the ground below: it was
growing fainter and fainter. Ahead, the full moon was growing larger and whiter.