Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Page 18

  Dereas cringed in awe—afraid of what he might witness.

  Greta grew expectant. She raised her neck to the roof, uttering another celebratory roar.

  Peck, peck, peck. A tiny beaked snout jabbed its way through the top of the shell—a three-fingered hand clawed out of a triangular crack, followed by a slimy forearm. The shell cracked straight down the middle and a thin milky liquid poured out on the stones. The occupant washed out with it, a swollen gelatinous mass, black and green, covered in a whiteish-yellow fluid. Dereas’s stomach heaved at the sight of a vague human-like shape with shifty eyes, rat brow and cheeks similar to Draba.

  A miracle! A creature smaller than Draba, but larger than the lizard folk. The thing sprawled there, tail and claws amongst bits of shell, staring with alien wonder at the world around him.

  Dereas stared in perplexed dismay. The mother stomped over to lick the lizard-man clean of his yellow slime and nudged him forward to crawl and learn, as would any reptilian mother encourage her young fresh from the womb. This he did with surprising speed.

  A gang of lank-limbed reptile-keepers came loping onto the scene, thrusting long speared poles through the gaps in the pen. Greta was forced to leap to the side, thus separated from her newborn. A crew of ten independent lizard-keepers held her in this posture and prodded her back with serpentish hooks should she try to hop the spears. Inevitably she did, hoping to crush the interlopers who scrambled within. It was dangerous work and scratches and bruises escalated amongst the keepers, but in a matter of minutes, they pulled the confused Draba away from his mother with expert claws. Only one careless lizard had the idiot lack of foresight to get too close to Greta and had its front limb ripped off, which she shredded in a spray of blood and mash as would a frenzied wolf, much to the toothy chagrin of the gathered lizards.

  The lizards put Draba, or what was once Draba, in the other pen with the ‘juveniles’, which gamboled about near Dereas and his dazed crew. The lizards stared at the newcomer with excitement, this new runt of the litter, though he was a hand height their superior already.

  At this proximity, Dereas experienced a feeling of heavy dismay, particularly when the lizard that was Draba hopped over to the posts to stare down at him with a disturbing intensity, with a hint of familiarity that was unsettling. The big, piercing, black-slanted eyes blinked in the same way as the old Draba and shifted from man to lizard and back to the men again. The ugly gash on his right arm had completely disappeared; the lizard birth had healed his wounds. With tiny teeth and toothy grin concealed in those fleshy, slick reptilian features, Dereas could not help but get a glimpse of the old Draba whom he wished to forget.

  The scrutiny was soul-stressing and Dereas’s innards tingled. He could only reflect with the utmost revulsion that the lizard-lords had corrupted an entire race and were a scourge upon the natural universe. They achieved a new level of depravity in this cycle of ages. The obscene birthing had taken its course. Not only did a strange doomed sense of fatality fall over Dereas, but a sadness for this degenerate race.

  The lizard Draba lost interest in the roped men outside the cage and began to cavort with his peers who fixed their avid stares on their new playmate.

  Jhidik’s face, meanwhile, underwent a series of dramatic emotions as he struggled to come to terms with his rapidly-approaching fate. He bucked and swayed with wild strength, lashing at the lizards and his constricting bonds; only to be buffeted back by one of the keepers. Lizardish snorts and admonitory grunts indicated that he was to wait his turn.

  The ceremony did not commence—at least, not right away.

  The compound remained at rest, or in hiatus. Despite the birthing, normal life went on and Dereas guessed the lizard king slept still in his lavish hall or was preoccupied with other matters.

  Many fruitless hours had been spent trying to saw through his bonds, and in his most despairing moments, Dereas realized that such bonds were not to be broken. Even with Draba having gnawed through some cord at his back in a fit of whimsy, giving his arms, pinned at his sides, some more slack.

  With a bowed head, he loosed a sulfurous curse, muffled by his gag, eyes pressed shut, formulating a silent wish. “Balael, if you can hear me now, you deaf laggard, then grant us release from this abominable hell! If you are any god at all, or have any influence over this age of Saeth, then let me carry my companions from this nightmare! If you are not just some blue wolf-headed idol of mortal’s imagination, grant me vengeance on my enemies—this demented lizard king and his ghouls. If you don’t, then sit in the egg for all I care. To Zecrates’ Hell with you!”

  The fevered warrior opened his eyes and tore his gaze about, looking with sad resignation about his dreary surroundings that spoke of death and lizardom.

  Without warning, a hot flash arced up his spine...his hair stood on end. In his mind’s eye he saw himself back on the blood-red battlefield, a sullen glower smouldering in his eyes. Mayhem was brewing and his warriors were gathered in tight ranks, and the enemy, a brood of huge helmed foemen, stood in long lines before their ranks, glistening pikes at the ready. Dereas Baroth-o’-Bear was about to ride into battle and engage those armies of doom! He could see the standards bristling, the bloody banners waving glory and victory. His heart flamed and the blood boiled in his veins like the champions of old. Lurid memories filled his spirit like the roar of a gale and the war cry of his people sounded on his lips like a baleful horn-call.

  Dereas exulted, for any invocation to Balael empowered his warrior spirit and enabled him to fulfil his destiny and command victory over his enemies. He had learned that from his countless trials in the field of war, the charnel grounds of combat, those bloody pastures of triumph and sorrow. He licked his lips with savage relish, for no sooner had he uttered the prayer than a simple, daring plan came to mind—which started with getting free. He saw the elegant potential of it, as the guard-patrol approached, unsuspecting...

  Wheezing an awful curse, Dereas sat still, a great smirk spreading on his bronzed features. His faith in his one god had rekindled his heart, and the old fire had stolen back in his veins, the blood of cunning and the stealth and guile of his stormy ancestors.

  Like a dead man he slumped, letting his head roll and his parched lips reveal a tip of a sallow tongue lolling.

  Tureen in hand, the guard bent over the slumped man curiously, examining the dazed Amexi first, then prodding Dereas with a tulwar. The sentry received no response and it turned its dog-like snout to peer at a wheezing, nearly comatose Hafta. It was then that Dereas scissor-locked it. Clamped it in a merciless grip around the neck. The squirming body was dragged onto the stone, its scaly back bent into Dereas’s lap. The lizard rapped the tureen hard against Dereas’s ribs, but it slipped from its grasping hand and its choking cry rang out in the sinister dark. A grim struggle of fiendish strength ensued, with a lizardish flapping of arms and a bone-crushing grip of thews...Dereas heard a neck snap. He flipped the inert body over on its side, close to his face and bent his own neck low, rubbing his blackened lips up and down against the lizard’s rough belt to peel off his gag. He dipped his unencumbered head down—to grab at the dead lizard’s belt-knife with his teeth, hoping to work some of his bonds loose.

  The three young lizards in the adjoining pen stared mesmerized at the sudden violence. They started to grunt and chitter in their native language, running amok in circles and roughhousing each other.

  Derea hissed, knife clenched in molars. “Quiet, cretins!” He glowered with distaste and peered about anxiously. Bending his arms at the elbows, he went to work on the cord securing his wrists. The last thing he needed were these rambunctious lizards alerting the castle guards at the front gate.

  Dereas worked fast, his heart beating like a hammer. If another sentry came to discover the contorted body of its colleague, the opportunity would be lost.

  Hafta and Amexi stirred from their lethargy, inspired by the violence that had turned in their favour. Dereas pressed his lips in a grimace, mot
ioning them to be silent. He pulled free his arms, gripped the knife and kneed the slack body out of the way. Once he cut the cords wrapped round his chest, he could slide himself up and then...All the while Draba watched abstractedly through the lizard pen with the google-eyed curiosity of a child. Dereas felt the press of his vacant, drooling gaze and bent to his task uneasily.

  Suddenly he felt the weight of a grim, silent shadow hovering over him. He looked up. A large stealthy figure grabbed the knife out of his nerveless jaw and stared down at him with impassive scrutiny.

  Dereas squinted in surprise. The skulking brute’s face showed a glower that radiated a grim grin of pleasure.

  “You live?” mumbled Dereas, his voice strange to his own ear.

  The New Wolves’ chief uttered no sound; he just stared broodingly at his brother, ignoring the excited rustle of Hafta and the startled croak of Amexi at his side.

  Dereas’s features bent in a twisted smile. Rusfaer! He must have slid slowly down the base of the wall closest to them, masked in black shadow. The crafty bastard! How did he get all the way here?

  Rusfaer, the wolfish warrior, whose shadow-haunted face was now an emotionless mask, freed his man Hafta, then he gazed meditatively at his brother and the mountain king. Hafta raised himself to a kneeling crouch, massaging the blood back into his wrists. Rusfaer saw the half-spilled tureen and sniffed it with suspicion, upending it in one heave into his bearded maw. “I’ve a mind to leave you here with the lizards,” he snarled after a time while he chewed the leafy gruel in wincing gulps. His voice was a bleak crow’s caw. The figure in front of him was a harsh echo of the Rusfaer Dereas knew. He saw his arms and face were a mass of swollen bruises and cuts. “Kizoi, I haven’t eaten in two days!” the big warrior growled. “Even this slop tastes good. And yet, not even my worst enemy would I leave to the likes of these scavengers...”

  Dereas worked his blackened lips into a crooked smile. “I thank you for your high opinion of me.”

  Hafta glared expectantly at his chief, but the warrior who had come back from the dead did not immediately respond. On a signal from his chief, Hafta snatched up the dead sentry’s bone-carved knife and freed Dereas’s bonds. Dereas stumbled awkwardly into a rude crouch, nursing blood back into his limbs and coaxing life back to his prickling legs. “Ahhh,” he groaned.

  Rusfaer hitched himself closer to cut the mountain king’s bonds. Scowling, he went to work on Amexi’s with a truculent word passed between the two. The blond warrior fixed him with a questioning glare, but cracked his knuckles, smoothing out the raw red rings around his wrists where the lizards’ cords had stung deep.

  Hafta observed, “You look like you’ve been through Zecrate’s six hells to elude that lizard net.” His hand gripped his chief’s shoulder in gratitude.

  Rusfaer grunted in a low whisper, “I watched from that high perch on the other side of the cavern.” He lifted a blood-caked finger. “The rituals were interesting, you being tied to the posts and that eldritch business with Draba.”

  “How did you get down?” murmured Dereas.

  “The damnable darkness was my worst foe,” the big man rasped. “After escaping those frog-hopping devils, I snatched up a chipped vessel lying in the tunnel a ways up. I scooped up some light-giving Vitrin. The fools—the watch near where we got nabbed, were not expecting me to return this way. They left most of the corridor unmanned. They all rushed to find me. Overconfident numbskulls! I slipped through their checkpoint, took another winding path, found the main aqueduct junction, a source down which I snuck. This was much later when the lizards seemed to have retired within their ‘fort’.” He frowned at the memory. “The horrors I saw there! The unborn things struggling, wriggling, floundering...I never want to see that sight again!”

  “You were in the fort?” muttered Dereas, awestruck.

  The New Wolf chief clamped his lips in a sombre scowl. The sweat dripped down his lacerated brow.

  Dereas turned away. He stripped the lizard corpse at his feet of its mail, hoping that something could be salvaged for Jhidik. He snatched up its tulwar and beckoned them forth. They snuck on their hands and knees toward the raised place where the Pirean sat slumped, bound too close for comfort near Greta’s cage. All avoided the cone of dim light that slanted down from the castle wall.

  They untied the Pirean and crouched there sullenly, alert for any signs of detection. There were none. Jhidik lifted a shaky hand to his head. He massaged his aching thigh. “I thought you’d never get here.” He looked the two chiefs up and down. “You two vagabonds are looking the worse for wear. A sight for sorry eyes.”

  Dereas felt a smile break out on his face. He helped his friend to his feet and watched Jhidik hobble in a hangman’s circle, careful to stay out of the stain of the nearby lamp. Dereas was not oblivious to the throbbing pain he saw his friend hiding. He could only guess the agony he had endured, even now suffering to put on a cheerful face, yet still ready to help them in any way he could. Dereas admired his friend’s fortitude and he clasped him on the shoulder. “Here, Jhidik. You need some protection.”

  Jhidik wrinkled his nose in disgust. “It’s too small.” He shuffled to a place not far away, crouching in a painful totter to retrieve his mail shirt heaped in the dust, which his keen eyes had spotted from afar. He swung it hastily over his head and Dereas turned to his brother. “What of the castle? Obviously it hides some horrible secrets. We must get past the guards!”

  “The castle...” Rusfaer’s grumble faltered and his eyes went glassy. His cheeks slackened in a pale rictus of recollection. In a low voice he painted an obscene picture of the clutch of hybrid creatures hidden in the castle’s undercroft, crouched behind wooden pales and stone grates: a haunted horde of jabbering misfits, part squid, crab and lizard, crayfish-men he described them as, and of the diseased crossbreeding the lizards had dared with other abominable species. Their demented king had put such abysmal schemes into effect, with the atrocious assistance of his priest-queen’s black sorcery. There were other unmentionable things the lizard king kept confidential in the bowels of the keep, but of these, Rusfaer would not speak.

  The others listened, dumbstruck, forgetting momentarily where they were.

  Rusfaer went on in a hoarse voice. His giant frame shuddered. “I took the aqueduct down past the court and under, where the water flows to the cellars. ’Tis below the court level where that infernal egg sits propped like an ugly boil. Lizards and other creatures—salamanders, rodents, you name it, hunch behind bars, but the bulk are kept in cruel conditions, wallowing in filth and rot, wailing and gibbering like demented fiends. It’s a damnable menagerie there, a whole dungeon of abominations. My reeling brain could not take any more of it, nor make sense of the miserable, ill-fated wretches at first, only conclude that the mad priestess who put the lizard inside Draba, uses these ‘misfits’ or dysfunctional ‘rejects’ of the lizard birthings to experiment on their own kind.”

  “But why? How..?” Hafta trailed off feebly.

  “For their unholy alchemy in birthing their race. What else? And with her accursed dusts and potions. It’s all so repulsive, and yet a long leap in evolution. Truth be told, that’s what I saw, so I swear on the grave of Kizoi!”

  “Never mind,” Dereas growled in revulsion. “We have other things to worry about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Getting out of here?” responded Jhidik.

  Dereas acknowledged Jhidik’s quip and waved the others away from the castle wall. He was impressed that Rusfaer had come back, even if it was for self-interested motives. It was not a stretch to say he was moved, considering that not twenty four hours ago, they would have cut each other’s throats. With grudging camaraderie, he put his hand on his brother’s sturdy shoulder, glad that some trust had been built. The briefest of grim smiles passed between them and they scanned the common ground, searching for a plan of action, but the New Wolves’ chief pulled Dereas back.

  “Hakar’s devils! The patrol
has returned.” He ran his fingers through his matted locks. His nostrils flared and his fists clenched in frustration. He motioned the others aside. Dereas squinted up the cavern to see a glint of metal and a dark rectangular cave where a distant aqueduct met mid-level up the dome of the cavern wall.

  “See there?” Rusfaer intoned. There was a flash of steel glinting off tulwars of the patrol adjacent, marching in lock step. “That’s where we need to go.”

  “No chance now,” grunted Dereas. “They must have awakened or gotten suspicious. We need to find another route.”

  “Wait here,” advised Rusfaer. Before any could object, the warrior rushed off toward the ominous rampart which was draped in velvety shadows.

  Several tense moments passed and the dark figure returned, panting. “Too many treading on the upper walks,” he growled. Dereas saw his left leg trailed blood. “I doubt if we have enough stamina to try the trick I was thinking about. Already a stir is coming from the fort. The lizard king no doubt. I heard him screeching some baneful words earlier below. He will be making his presence known before long. My plan needs to be revised.”

  “There is a stone bridge behind the castle,” suggested Amexi.

  “Aye, but it has an evil look to it. ’Tis guarded too.”

  “I know this bridge.” Dereas squinted at the stir of movement beside the stronghold—a long line of toiling lizards, carting jewels, or glints of what looked like light reflected from the distant black tunnel, across the bridge and to the postern gate of the castle a stone’s throw away from their hiding place. The raw, grim faces of the barrow pushers looked anything but content, faced with their arduous task.

  “What in Balael are they doing with all those crates of raw crystals?” muttered Hafta.

  Rusfaer waved a fist. “We can’t worry about that now. Probably for some hatching of their wretched sorcery. Judging from the masses of crystal and the rude mirrors, the use of elder sorcery numbers amongst their plans to perpetuate the monstrous legacy of their birthing.”