Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Page 16

  Could the lunatic king actually rely on such a creature being sympathetic to their cause? His breath caught in phlegmy rush; for such idolatry was too repugnant for his mind to entertain and his reeling brain balked in hopeless despair.

  He gazed around up to the vicinity of the portcullis for signs of activity. Double guards were posted at the castle gate, but nowhere else. The forbidding rampart seemed relatively empty of troops, and no returning patrols roved. Instinctually, Dereas began to grow worried about Rusfaer. His eyes strayed to the various outposts stationed along the upper rim high in the cavern, where shadowy walkways and the aqueducts shimmered under the odd torchlit censer.

  Indeed, it was curious that the lizards had not discovered Rusfaer yet. Somewhat hope-instilling at least—maybe his darkhorse brother could do something to help them—but just as easily, he might have fallen to Pygra’s fangs, or been butchered long ago by the gleaming-edged tulwars of lizard patrols, that blade-happy rabble, who were perhaps only afraid to bring to their domineering king the remains of a mutilated corpse.

  The queen-priestess had emerged, all decked out in flowing gown and green Arozoi leaves festooned in her hair. The lizard king was prideful of her presence and he stood zealously explaining to several citizens the story of the magic of the lizards’ heritage. Dereas could see the priestess clutching her jewelled box of live newts with an unhealthy fervour. She held it to her breast in a way that was both fascinating and macabre to watch. Dereas saw, too, by the vacant gaze in her eyes, that she had lost touch with reality and perhaps a sense of identity. Was such the cost of being transformed into a lizard?

  Dereas shivered. Her once human features seemed shrivelled, betrayed a distinct look of something coldly inhuman, a detached mask of hybrid alienness.

  The king’s voice trailed on: “’Twas explained to us by the ecstatic, delirious witch of Katra Cavern, long ago in the mists of time that our alchemy of lizard gestation was a simple thing, belonging to the realm of elemental magic. So it was further enlarged upon by old Hela, our blind seer, and finally perfected by Jamuo here, our resident priestess-queen. We call it ‘Neo-lizard Birth’. And all of you—” he swept an arm to encompass his subjects “—were once humans, like these brazen heretics who crouch here like filth.”

  The king stabbed out a clawed hand at Dereas and the others and a ripple of uneasy murmurs echoed from the gathered crowd.

  Dereas stirred in his bonds with teeth gritted. “Your twisted views do not coincide with mine.” He licked his parched lips with a tongue swollen and dry.

  “Silence!” The lizard king’s cheeks puffed and he purpled under the ears. “If you have nothing beneficial to say, refrain from giving tongue. Gizard, Frekt! Gag these brutes. I grow weary of their outbursts. Cretins as these shall be transformed into higher life forms before long. See that they are prepared. The heretics must watch!...Each will have his turn in the egg before long!”

  Struggling, Hafta, Dereas and Amexi thrashed out, their muscles bulging, fierce cries on their lips while they strained to headbutt the guards.

  To no avail. Lean, sinewy arms circled them round the necks and clawed hands worked to gag the intruders. Fezoul was bundled up like a leaf and strung up by his toes to the delight of the lizard spectators. They threw him in a heap beside the others and he hung his head in resigned fate, offering no struggle whatsoever. The four were tied together like hogs and roped before the newborn lizard cage in postures of total degradation. The young lizards pawed at them through the posts and licked the back of their necks, causing Dereas no end of miserable anguish. The foul rag of cloth that was squared in his mouth, was sodden with animal oil or some noxious substance. Exactly what type of oil, Dereas shuddered to think. But likely it had some association with the cardinal humours from the hideous Greta who raged not far away. Being gagged meant no communication with his peers, a serious blow.

  Three other budding spry lizards that looked definitely younger than the other lizards of their kind, rustled in the nearby cage. They gnashed and clawed, chased each other around, roughhousing like fledglings.

  Two cages down, Greta paced the confines, strutting around in a foul heat and she plunged her snout in a trough of brownish yellow slop, food likely—nourishment doubtless for her final ‘gestation’...

  Dereas shuddered to think of how Draba was faring inside the monster’s womb, if he dared use such a word.

  In the tomb-like tunnels above, Rusfaer limped along grimly, panting, head down and caked with blood. A poleaxe had snapped on the skull of a lizard-captain, useless in Rusfaer’s blood-drenched palm. He had hurled it away with a snarl and ran, having no time to drag his heavy, rusted sword from the scabbard. But the attacking lizards had fallen back in a jumble of confusion, their wide-eyed lieutenant disembowelled shortly thereafter by a headstrong sweep of the tulwar he had snatched up from the nerveless claws of a trampled lizard as he had staggered on. True, he had broken through their slimy ranks with pure brawn—nay a pure reckless fury—which had saved his life. Now, outdistancing them, he faced a long and perilous journey through the tunnels, a warren of unfamiliar crypts, groping in the near darkness and cursing his ill luck. It was a trek he would rather not do solo, plagued by the ache of perpetual hunger.

  Examining his surroundings, Rusfaer discovered he was in a place of rough, damp walls crowding him two feet to either side. A thin stream of Vitrin trickled under his blood-caked boots that at least provided some weak light. The tunnel rose often shy of his six foot height, forcing him to duck many times, squinting helplessly in the murk, or risk bashing his skull on the jagged rock overhead. Such rugged passage had him cursing and wheezing for breath. It was a course ideal for lizards, thought the New Wolves’ chief.

  He fingered his sleek weapon, the tulwar, admiring its material, some sort of hard, polished bone of whitish-grey. If it hadn’t been gummed with the crusted, reeking, pale-cinnamon blood of a dozen dead, it would be a flawless, cutting instrument of death.

  A sound?

  He hunkered down, baring his teeth like a wolf.

  Hakar’s ghosts! Had the wretches sniffed him out again? He heard the distant pad of a dozen slick feet on stone in a passage not far distant.

  Balael, but these devils had the noses of hounds! They were devils in green-black skin.

  He steeled his nerves. Gripping his weapon, he could feel the sweat beading on his palms, and he slunk along as noiselessly as a panther. Nimble steps had him scampering out of range.

  Through smaller and cruder tunnels he passed. Rusfaer scowled. Though shorter and lighter than a man, they were tenacious fighters, these lizards, or whatever they were. They would fight to the death with teeth clamped on a throat and were as quick as any lizard, as evidenced by the numerous bites and claw marks that scarred his forearms and shins. He endured their burning itch with sober contempt while he kept to his stiff, half-loping run, recalling the dozens of feints and lunges parried to dodge such toothy attacks, ultimately ending in sprays of their own blood and hewed skulls.

  He gave a silent chortle at that last thought.

  The echoes of feet persisted and seemed to be coming from a place up ahead and in greater numbers. Rusfaer’s face creased in a sneer. With increased wariness, he backtracked on swift feet to a place where he had passed them at the last junction. He was not three dozen paces away when he tore a patch of his blood-stained wolf-hide cloak off his clammy skin and wrapped it around the lizard weapon he carried, hoping it would act as sufficient lure. They would find his bloody garment and the naked tulwar and think the snake had eaten him. Binding it close to the haft and another at the razor tip, he then hurled it gingerly up the path as far as he could.

  He fell back in a crouch, hearing the weapon clunk audibly on the damp stone. The broadsword he wore still bore its notched edges in its blood-stained scabbard, which he regarded with grinning approval.

  There came a halt of sudden steps. The big warrior smiled in grim expectancy.

  Sidli
ng quickly down the adjacent corridor, he ducked off at a sharp angle.

  The creatures had detected the sound, that was for sure, for he could hear their miserable feet pounding and the gnashing of their loathsome teeth and lizardish grunts. How he hated that babble. He hurried on, in an attempt to get as far as possible from the dogged pursuit by that horde and from the weapon he had left as decoy.

  Threading his way through the tunnels came with a vigilance born of the warrior’s instinct and he felt a sense of dismay creep over him at the extent of the catacombs.

  He halted, listening for pursuit, but none came, and the harsh wheeze of his breath sounded strange in his ear as he dared to breathe once again.

  Another ghost of a sound?

  The slither of wet scales on stone drifted down the tunnel carried by the dank tunnel air. His blood froze in his veins. Muted echoes of scuffling and clinking weapons faded back into the folds of darkness. It must be his imagination, he thought wildly. The light was dimmer here. The stream had dried, or taken another path of eerie meandering. There was neither dampness nor welcome purl of mountain water.

  Then screams. And a hopeless pitiful whining, as tortured sobs and insane caterwaulings careened about the chamber.

  Rusfaer leapt back. He closed his ears to the horrid thrashing and the breaking of stone.

  The horror that was Pygra was on the prowl and his marrow turned to water.

  Though he could not see what transpired in the corridor ahead, the symphony of ghastly tumult told all; he could put images and visuals to every scream, howl, and breaking bone, or fang crunching into lizard flesh, eye, skull or joint. The whimpers, the endless moans, the thick thunk of tulwars and snapping pikes, continued on and on in the dimness.

  The snake was devouring lizards in droves, swallowing them whole, as if they were but bitesize nibbles before a grand feast! The memory of his last encounter with the snake was enough to make his stomach heave and his knees shake—for he knew that death by that hell was far worse than being put to the sword by any ruthless warrior. Even the seasoned fighter that he was, he remembered with grisly horror the heaving, writhing bulk of those iridescent loops, the thinnest of which was gifted with the strength of ten Azamalaen pythons.

  He dared poke his head around the crumbling corner and caught a glimpse of a sight that melted the marrow in his bones—a prehistoric thing revelling in gluttonous slaughter. It circled a half dozen lizards, wrapping them in strangling loops and was crushing the life out of them, popping eyeballs, splitting skulls, wrapping grouper-like jaws about their torsos, before licking up the remains with its fetid tongue two at a time.

  How could the creature be so close? thought Rusfaer with bleak terror. He scrambled back wildly. What kind of creature could possess such hunter-killer sense to scout out prey so easily, and with incredible diabolic stealth? It must be some demon! Some fiendish thing born out of the pits of the underworld. It was like the blubbering mountain king had said: when, as a young snake, it had burrowed deep in forbidden crevasses to suck on the nectars of poison and filth from the earth, not meant to be sipped. What knowledge of the map of the world did the thing have to know these tunnels so well? It had to be possessed of uncanny powers...

  These and other ghastly realizations burned in Rusfaer’s mind. He swallowed his darkest fears; indeed, he began to rue the day that he had mocked the squeamish king and his florid account of a monstrous snake, almost as if now he had put a curse on himself in the presence of every god Darfala had ever known.

  Grimly he directed his gaze upward and mouthed every prayer to Balael that lurked in his memory. This and more—for shelter, protection, asylum, pricked with the ugly suspicion that even those feebled, rushed invocations were not enough to help him in the greatest hour of his darkness...

  Two passages, one up, one down. Rusfaer looked longingly at the one that wound up, for it had a hopeful gleam to it, but then, as his brother and others had inevitably echoed, things were never as they seemed.

  Riddled with doubt and dread, the New Wolves’ warrior had mind to take the upper passage, flee these tunnels and never see the cursed lizard realm again. But he hated to see his brother mauled by the lizards, hardly knowing why. Nor could he leave his own men behind in the clutches of those scaly devils! Like it or not, he must remain or go back. He needed the mountain king and his inexpert guidance to forge a way out of this infernal warren. Going by gut instinct alone, up or down a random corridor, was not going to get him to safety, least of all not with that blood-guzzling serpent swinging her foul bulk around, ready to devour anything that moved.

  His mind tumbled fitfully over the gearworks of fate that had brought him to this abysmal predicament. His shameless father who had baited him and his idiot brother, and refused to appoint a successor, had started a chain of events that had led to the exodus of their family and the loss of Pameel. Of them all, Dereas bore the brunt.

  How he despised the name of Dereas, even more than ‘Beastslayer’ which at least was an honorary title earned by the person he had known from long ago. He hated his brother more than anyone for what had befallen Pameel, and no less, the demise of the Crow Clan. Despite his brother’s honey-coated protests to the contrary, the facts remained. These maunderings about a silly wizard chafed him to no end and were obviously fabricated to gain the beastslayer sympathy. That his brother could have battled slavering zombies and winged fiends by the dozens and still survived was a yarn even Skalka, the Clan’s bard, would have had trouble spinning.

  Rusfaer felt a shiver of heat. He was not like his brother. He was not a straight-laced benefactor, always eager to save the world, an eternal straight shooter, always playing the hero and protector. Balael’s teats! How he hated this thinly-veiled sanctimonious myth in which Dereas shrouded himself.

  It was a wonder the two had lasted this long in these close quarters, he thought, without his tearing out the other’s throat. He recalled a particularly galling time during the Spring of the Goat, the competitions in the Asgolin ‘coming of age’ rites years ago. They had been young then, but it was an important, honoured event and seriously treated by members of the tribe. Feasting and dancing to stringed instruments and the beat of deerskin drums, all the young females were decked out with flowers in their hair and looked their most sensual, casting moon eyes on the young warriors, ogling for suitors. Dereas was the better archer and thrower, Rusfaer knew, but his brother had idiotically, unpredictably forfeited his prize, a trophy of the jewelled antlers of the morningstar bison. Why? cried Rusfaer, still cringing at the memory. To save face, owning up to a disqualifying foot fault on the archery ground? It was imbecilic and had left him, Rusfaer, the victor, even though he had been runner up—a fool’s winner.

  If that wasn’t galling enough, there was the axe throwing contest right after. Many elders were present, accomplished hunters of the seasons, some who had led the clan in days of the ‘Great Hunts’. His arm was bruised from a tumble from a horse the previous week and he had placed badly, missing the red mark on the tree—by an embarrassing four-finger widths. How bad he had looked then! even though he had unwittingly won the contest prior and carried home the bison to his family. Their peers and clansmen had cheered Dereas on, clapping him on the back for his noble forefeiture, while he, Rusfaer, received nothing but embarrassed salutes and apologetic murmurs, lukewarm nods and tilts of the head. A little thing perhaps, but it had always irked Rusfaer, as had many other things irked him in their past.

  Regardless of these sour memories he could not leave Dereas alone, or his own men down there to rot and face whatever gruesome fate awaited at the hands of those obnoxious, contemptible lizards. If the beastslayer was to die, it would be by his own hands, and in a fair fight. This he vowed, and would be the last honour he would bestow.

  The glowering warrior crept along the corridor like a hunted lynx from the elder woods. He grit his teeth through the ghastly tumult, hoping beyond hope that the terror not two stones’ throw away, did not
sniff him out and come looping after to ensnare him.

  Not a hundred paces down the corridor and he bumped nose first into an iron mesh.

  What’s this? he murmured. A grate—a section below too—and a trickle of water seeping down a wide upright shaft.

  A garbage pit left by the lizard folk?

  Why the barriers? Odd...The rusted bars seemed older than what he reckoned the lizards would have wrought; perhaps it was another race’s doing.

  The New Wolves’ chief peered suspiciously through the grate, for he thought to detect movement below.

  A shadowy figure.

  A guard with an unsettling lizardish snout prowled the corridor, nay a dim-lit pit, one of the lizard veterans, he gathered, taking noiseless steps, leaning forward as all good hunting animals do while on the prowl. Obviously the creature had smelled his man sweat and broken from the pack, hoping to catch the intruder single-handedly and make a name for itself.

  Rusfaer scowled, though he could understand the ambition, having been there himself.

  The lizard paused just under the grate and looked up the tunnel. Something in its gaze betrayed its indecision. Perceiving no threat, the lizard knelt on all fours and sipped water from the stream, like a wary dog.

  The New Wolves’ chief’s face creased in a sardonic grimace. Easy pickings for any novice, if not for the grate. His bladder was bursting from all this dodging about with no chance for release and a sudden idea gripped him. He quietly emptied his bladder into the rivulet, the sound masked by the stream’s own trickle.

  Seconds later, the lizard jerked away from the warm water, sensing an acrid tinge to the greenish fluid and Rusfaer’s lips curled in a wolfish leer. The lizard made choking sounds; its jaws parted in a grimace and scanned up the stream suspiciously, then scrutinized the folds of darkness, as if sensing an intruder hunching in the stillness, but then it settled back into its four-legged crouch and drank its fill. Rusfaer shook his head in wonder. How stupid could a beast be? He lay flat on his belly against the grate for several instants, before he loosed a breath. Should the creature cry out and alert its fellows—that could spell disaster, if there were any lizards left—for the snake was not far away. The lizard, despite its apparent inattentiveness—was still a threat should others swarm on him from above or below.