Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands (41 page)

Looking more closely at the vines, she saw that they were pulsing, very slowly. With the fingers of one hand, she managed to pry loose part of a vine from her opposite forearm. A thin trickle of blood ran down her skin.
 

Then she saw what was hanging among the vines higher up in the tree: the desiccated bodies of several animals. A rabbit the size of a small dog, a snake as long as Hercules, and what looked like an elk, as best she could tell from what little remained of it, all hung suspended by webs of tendrils. Beyond the obvious bodies were other oddly shaped lumps where the tendrils had completely enclosed their victims. The lumps got smaller the higher up they were in the tree as the tendrils entirely consumed their prey, bones and all.

With a cry of horror, she began to struggle. As she did, the vines began to tighten their grip, drawing so tight she was afraid her bones would break. Forcing herself to relax, she turned to the only weapon she had at the moment: her teeth. Swallowing the bile that rose to her throat, she began to gnaw through the vines that bound her hands. While the individual vine she chewed on tightened its grip, the others didn’t. Ignoring the bitter taste of the sap that was mixed with the coppery tang of her own blood, she severed the first vine and freed her right hand. Reaching down to her waist, she drew her dagger, which somehow had stayed with her through the frightful battle with the sea. Carefully, methodically, she began cutting through the other vines.
 

As she did, she saw in the corner of her eye yet more tendrils dangling down, hungrily reaching toward her. The tree did not wish to be denied its meal.

“May you burn in Vulcan’s forge,” she spat as she sawed through the last of the pulsing vines. Ripping their amputated remains from her body, she rolled away before the others could reach her. She fell to the ground and slithered like a snake under the dense outer wall of vines, breathing a sigh of relief when she at last emerged into blinding sunlight.

Pausing to spit the rancid taste from her mouth, she took a moment to check her body. Aside from the bruises and several puncture marks, not to mention the loss of some of her blood, she appeared to be all right.
 

Looking around her, the scene was much the same as she remembered from the previous night: the surf, much calmer now, washing against the sand of a lengthy stretch of beach that ran into a wall of rocks. Turning the other direction, her heart fell, for she was confronted with another wall of jagged rocks. Turning to face the inland approach, she looked up…and up…to the top of a huge escarpment.

She thought to call for Hercules and the others, but as she opened her mouth to shout, something made her stop. It was as if she instinctively knew that it might not be the best idea to draw attention to herself. She wasn’t sure how she would find the others if she didn’t call out for them, but for now she let it go. If they had reached these same shores, they would be faced with the same choices as to what to do. Actually, there was no choice at all. She couldn’t stay on the beach where she had neither food nor fresh water, and she knew now that the jungle, which grew tall and thick as it rose up the escarpment, was not a place she wished to seek refuge.
 

The only choice was to climb to higher ground.

Clutching her dagger, she headed back into the jungle, careful to avoid the blood sucking trees as much as she could while wondering what other horrors might be awaiting her.

***

Hercules moved with instinctive ease through the thorny vines, and steered clear of the tendrils hanging from the enormous willow trees where possible. Karan remembered from his visit to this region that the Swords who lived here were fearful of these trees, but they would not say why. He was content to trust Hercules and followed in the big cat’s footsteps.
 

They made their way up the escarpment at a steady pace, although they were forced to begin zigzagging in switchbacks to negotiate the ever-steeper slope.
 

At one point, they emerged into a clearing in the shape of a near-perfect circle, perhaps thirty feet across, where Hercules paused, snuffling at the air. At the center was an enormous flower of breathtaking beauty rising from a bulbous, bright green base that was nearly as massive as Hercules. The ground around the flower was covered by a dense mat of grass that only grew about an inch high.
 

Karan moved up beside Hercules as the big cat warily sniffed the clearing, drawing in the strange scent of the flower. It was a mixture of sweet and savory that was at once intoxicating and repellant. Kneeling down, Karan reached out with a hand to stroke the grass that had such a well defined boundary with the jungle floor on which they stood that it could have been a carpet. The blades were stiff, crunchy, and reminded him of one of the trials during his training where the acolytes had to crawl over a bed of shattered glass shards. Taking his hand away, he looked at his palm and was shocked to see that blood was welling up from dozens of tiny pinpricks in his skin. Pressing a finger from his other hand to the injured palm, he felt a tingling sensation, but no pain.
 

He stood up, silently giving thanks that he had used his left hand to touch the deadly grass and not his sword hand. Once the grass’s numbing effect wore off, he suspected he would have to face considerable pain.

“If the grass does that, I do not wish to find out what the flower might do,” he said uneasily. “Let us go around.”

Hercules, clearly spooked by the flower, growled low in his throat as he followed Karan back into the relative safety of the jungle.

After skirting the strange flower, they continued their climb. They encountered several more of the strange flowers and their enclaves of deadly grass, although the higher the two adventurers went, the smaller became the flowers.
 

It was late afternoon, and they were in the midst of negotiating a particularly steep slope, with Hercules scrabbling for purchase and Karan climbing on his hands and knees, when they heard a deep grunting sound. Hercules went rigid and Karan silently sank to the ground, his ears trying to pin down from where the sound had come. The big cat’s nose twitched and his eyes darted around. They were more exposed now than they had been at the lower elevations, for the great willow trees did not grow this high. Most of what they struggled through now were ferns, dense patches of gray-green moss and bright orange lichen, and the ubiquitous thorny vines.
 

The grunting came again from somewhere above them. Hercules began to stalk toward the sound, his body held low, and Karan followed. The steep upward slope suddenly ended in a plateau of indeterminate size that led to another rise toward the top of the escarpment. But here on the plateau the ground was relatively level.

The grunting grew louder, more urgent, and was answered by a chorus of grunts, and Karan could hear something large moving through the jungle up ahead.

Hercules paused and sank slowly to the ground. Karan wriggled up beside him. He saw shapes moving through the brush on the far side of a large clearing (thankfully bereft of the strange flowers and deadly grass). Hercules was staring at them with feral intensity. He licked his chops as a wild pig emerged into the clearing. Another one, then another, came after it, then several more, all females except for two immature males. A group of piglets trailed after their sow, squealing with delight as they chased after their mother.
 

Karan’s stomach growled. He was famished, and he knew that Hercules must be, as well. His stomach growled again at the thought of a haunch of meat, roasting over an open fire, dripping with fat.

Hercules turned his great head to look at him, then returned his attention to the prey.

The sow and her piglets came closer. Like the others, she rooted along the ground of the clearing, which had clearly received attention from the pigs in the past, steadfastly ignoring the antics of the piglets.
 

It was only then that Karan realized how big the sow was. He had seen pigs often enough before, for they were often used for meat to nourish the Swords, but had never seen one this large. It was the size of a small horse, and the piglets were nearly as big as a typical adult pig. Karan reconsidered his desire for roasted pork, for he knew that feral pigs could be ferocious opponents, and he had neither spear nor bow. While he had never faced one himself, pitting the lower level Swords against animals, including feral pigs, was a common entertainment for the Masters. Karan had seen enough of his companions die that way, gutted by the tusks of a pig, trampled, or both. But none of the pigs he had ever seen in the coliseum could compare to these magnificent specimens. The wise thing, he knew, would have been to quietly retreat and wait until they could find a less deadly meal.
 

Unfortunately, Hercules, being the supreme predator that he was, saw the pigs only as juicy prey to satisfy his ravening hunger. With his attention riveted on the sow, he gathered his legs under his body and tensed his muscles. His tail swished nervously, then went still an instant before he launched himself from his hiding place, exploding through the brush as he leaped into the clearing.

Drawing his sword, Karan charged after him.

The piglets screamed and wheeled around, tearing back to the foliage on the far side of the rutted ground as their mother fearlessly squared off against her attacker.
 

Hercules had covered half the distance when another pig burst from the ferns on the other side of the clearing. It was a male with tusks longer than Karan’s extended arm. If the other pigs were huge, this one was titanic, easily twice the size of the largest sow and larger than Hercules himself.
 

The male drew the attention of Hercules, but only for an instant. Turning his attention back to his intended prize, the hexatiger swatted the sow’s head with a huge forepaw, knocking her to the ground, senseless, before clamping down on her throat with his jaws. His momentum carried him forward, and he rolled to the ground, flinging the struggling sow onto her back in a great spray of dirt and mud.

With a squeal of challenge, the male lowered his head and charged not at Hercules, but at Karan, who skidded to a stop, now totally exposed in the clearing. Wide-eyed, he stared at the porcine doom thundering toward him. The beast was so large that he could feel the reverberation of its footsteps through the ground as its vengeful stride ate up the distance between them. He knew he had no chance to outrun it. All he could do was stand and fight.

Mustering his courage and resigning himself to the inevitability that Death had come at last, and ignoring the ignominy of being killed by an oversized pig, he knelt low and held the handle of his sword near the ground. His only chance, slim though it was, would be if he could force the beast to impale itself on his weapon. But as it came for him, he realized that its maw was deeper than his sword was long. The best he could hope for would be that the huge pig would swallow the weapon as it speared Karan with its tusks or crushed him underfoot, and would later die from a ruptured stomach.

He watched it come, determined to keep his eyes open until his spirit fled from his body. As if in slow motion, the beast thundered closer, closer, lowering its head for a vicious upthrust of its tusks that would tear Karan’s body apart.

A great roar split the air as Hercules, lost from Karan’s sight as the male boar charged past where the hexatiger had been wrestling with the sow, appeared, flying through the air to land square on the male pig’s back. The claws of all six of Hercules’s great paws sank deep into the swine’s flesh, followed by the hexatiger’s canine teeth as he fastened his jaws on the pig’s spine and bit down with bone shattering force.

The huge pig shrieked, and Karan leaped out of the way as the stricken beast stumbled and went crashing to the ground right where he had been standing.
 

Hercules released his victim and sailed clear. Even before the pig had finished its tumble to the ground, Hercules had whirled around and pounced again, seizing the pig by the throat while his claws again sank into its flesh, but this time in its soft underbelly. His mid- and hind-paws tore into the tender flesh to spill the organs from within. The pig thrashed and squealed in pain and rage as Hercules simultaneously suffocated and disemboweled it.

Karan gawked, for Hercules looked like a kitten clutching a far larger foe, but there was no doubt now about the victor of this match. With a final gasp, the pig shuddered, then went still, dead.

Hercules clung onto it for a few moments more, wary of some trickery on the part of his prey. Then, satisfied that the pig was indeed dead, he detached himself and got to his feet. After giving Karan a satisfied look, he bent his head to the spilled innards and noisily began to feed.
 

Beyond the grisly scene, the sow had gotten to her feet. Injured and bleeding, but alive nonetheless, she limped after the other pigs and her piglets that had fled the clearing.
 

Karan came and knelt beside Hercules, facing him, and raised his sword in both hands in salutation to his god. When he was done with a long prayer of thanks, he got to his feet and began to search for dry wood with which he could make a fire. Only after Hercules had eaten his fill would Karan take some of the pig’s flesh to satisfy his own hunger. For now, Karan was content to be alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Valeria looked up from her latest battle with the insidious thorny vines as a primal roar echoed across the jungle. It was faint, obviously far away, but she would have recognized it anywhere. “Hercules,” she breathed.
 

The roar was followed by a scream of agony, but not from Hercules, nor from any human lips. Then the jungle was again silent except for the sound of buzzing insects.
 

She wanted to scream out the hexatiger’s name, but knew it would be pointless. His roar could carry for several miles under the right conditions, and she had no sense from which direction the sound had come. “But he’s alive,” she said aloud to herself. “And if he is, the others might be, too. I just need to find them. And I will. Somehow.”