Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Page 19

  Dereas gazed reflectively to the parapets where the wretched eggs glinted in ghoulish procession. “Where do they get the humans from to birth their foul race?”

  Fezoul, who had said nothing thus far, struggled in his near catatonic state to supply an answer.

  “From stray wanderers like yourself, no doubt,” he wheezed. “Most who have had the bad luck of venturing into the mountain’s maw,” he added darkly. “I believe the Eaklyds bring offerings in the form of eggs or humans to the north portal where scouts, fastest and leanest, can fetch them before Pygra learns of the morsels.”

  “What an evil environment you cultivate here,” grumbled Rusfaer.

  “I can only abide in the fact that I have slept through most of this nightmare,” sighed Fezoul. “I wish you had never wakened me!” His words ended in a moan.

  “And miss all this fun?” quipped Dereas. “Where next from here?”

  “Listen, I have a plan,” cried Rusfaer. He pulled his brother aside. “Curse that lamp!” He waved a fist at the lurid censer strung on the pole near the high wall. “See those pike-bearing sentries guarding the nearest parapet in the tower?”

  “Aye, what of it?”

  “They will make dogmeat of us if we try to creep by the nearest corner. This scuppers any plan for escape. If we knock out the light, they will become suspicious.”

  “Too high to knock out the tower watch,” admitted Amexi.

  “Which is why we need a diversion,” mumbled Rusfaer. He smacked a fist in his palm. “We need their attention on something else, maybe two things in case one backfires, then we can make our escape.”

  “But how?” barked Hafta.

  Rusfaer motioned toward the pass, the eerie aqueduct sluicing down its Vitrin-green wash, and the zigzagging stairway that led up higher than the level to the way out, black as ravens. A gleam of burnished steel glinted from a lizard sentry’s helm. “We will not easily evade those devils,” he predicted. “There are over a dozen of them, and I remember how many of them, armed to the teeth, with tulwars and knives and clubs waylaid us before. They had nets and grapple hooks when they forced you down to this depraved colony.”

  “I will concentrate on the lizards here,” announced Dereas magnanimously. “I’ll light a fire under Greta’s hide if I have to. The bitch is restless and ruts again for an egg. She is out for blood since all her eggs are despoiled. I’ll take Jhidik, Amexi, and Fezoul and whoever will act as watch. You take your man, Hafta, if you need to. Climb the parapet, you’re good at it—” He said this without guile, sensing his brother’s intense scrutiny on the wall. “You were always good at climbing trees—remember the forts we used to build in Elk’s woods near the buzzard cliffs?”

  “Aye, and so—?”

  “Listen! Scale the front face where it’s in shadow. The stone blocks are crude there and hewn haphazardly, ideal for climbing. There are lots of cracks, handholds and iron rods to make your ascent. I’m sure you like those royal eggs no more than I.”

  Rusfaer grinned unpleasantly. “No need for Hafta. I can do this on my own.”

  “Take him anyway. It’ll do no harm. He can hurl rocks at the eggs.”

  Rusfaer mulishly looked off into empty space. A curt grunt indicated he would stick to doing it on his own.

  Jhidik jerked a thumb back at the fledgling lizard cage where Draba wandered mindlessly. “Looks like our friend, Draba, has got himself in a predicament. Wonder how he fared inside the lizard’s gizard? It’s amazing he survived—though I think I would have rather given up the ghost, than be where he’s been.”

  Rusfaer gusted a heated snarl. “Don’t joke about him.” A brief spasm fled across the warrior’s face as he caught a glimpse of those once human features of his henchman staring through the bars.

  Hafta shifted on his heel. “What of our little Draba then?”

  “What of him?” growled Rusfaer harshly. “He’s a freak. Can’t you see? We can do nothing for him.”

  “We could kill him,” suggested the nose-ringed warrior. “Put him out of his misery. What do you say?”

  Rusfaer wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. After a time he pressed the heels of both palms hard into his bloodshot eyes. “The fool has got us captured by these vermin and has otherwise been an eerie and troublesome nuisance. He was one of us at one time, remember? I think there is sad irony in this situation—only a fool would be blind enough to not see it. Draba would approve if he had sense and could see the humour in it.”

  Dereas watched him study the primitive face that peered through the mesh at him, through the shadows and spaces between the posts. During that time he saw his brother shiver uncharacteristically.

  “Leave him!” Rusfaer grunted.

  Dereas made a silent affirmation. “Even as a lizard, Draba deserves life...”

  “So be it,” muttered Hafta darkly, though it was obvious that the nose-ringed warrior did not approve of the decision.

  “Make it good, brother,” Dereas mumbled under his breath.

  The big man turned away, his eyes strangely lit. They were distant and glimmering like stars on a moonless night. He squared himself off to face the lofty ramparts not far distant.

  A sudden sound...a clink of metal. The huddled men crouched in a tense silence. Their questing eyes squinted in the gloom. Lizards crawled and shuffled to and fro near the portcullis, ranging in and out of the castle.

  Rusfaer pushed Dereas away, hissing harshly in his ear. “Go, quick, Ratslayer! You do your part and I’ll do mine!”

  “What do you mean?”

  But the heavyset warrior was off on his feet in a loping, half-bent run. Into the shadows he drifted like a ghost, not bothering to share his solo mission. His wolfish figure was a blur in a greater swatch of darkness, his husky frame brimming strangely with a hallowed light, as if Balael favoured him alone of all. Hafta crept after the lithe warrior, far enough back to avoid his chief’s notice, and with no more noise than an owl on the hunt.

  While Rusfaer scrambled off on his dark deed, Dereas, Jhidik and Amexi took the mountain king around back of Greta’s cage. They slunk like weasels, for a menacing rattle now gurgled from the saurian’s wattled throat. Amexi, careful not to rile the beast, was successful at stealing a pot of animal fat and a torch from a nearby bracket on the wall back of Draba’s pen. The beast’s muscles rippled beneath its enormous hide. Dereas took pleasure in grabbing a filthy rag from a sconce pole nearby. A fidgety Fezoul kept lookout.

  Hunching in the shadows, the conspirators divvied their spoils. Dereas grinned like a wolf. He used the bulk of the oil and doused about a half of the mother lizard’s posts, while Jhidik winced in stiffness behind and touched the flame tip of the wooden torch to each.

  Greta glowered fixedly at the intruders, making nervous mewling sounds in her throat as they slunk by on their dark business. When the flames crackled at the dry wood, she strutted around her pen in foul humour. Suddenly the posts erupted in towers of flame. She reared back on her hind legs, hot red tongues licking up the posts like writhing serpents. The reptile went berserk. She burst through the flaming cage on all fours, scattering burning chunks every which way.

  Dereas and the others shrank back, grimacing as the flames seared her spiny, bony back.

  A roar, a shriek...a trumpeting cry. The lingering lizards in the common ground were up in arms. The raging creature bellowed forth a terrific roar. She took to rioting in the outer court, smashing lizard stragglers that got in her way, taking them down in her teeth or shaking them like a dog would and flinging them wide.

  On all fours, the companions crawled and set fire to the smaller cages near the mother’s pen, also the outbuildings, using oil and grease from the lamps.

  Jhidik looked toward the pen farther away that housed the large male lizard. “Poppa’s too?”

  The giant male lizard glowered steely red eyes upon them.

  Dereas gave an impish nod. “Why not?”

  Jhidik laughed despite himself. W
aving his brand, he scrambled with Dereas, Amexi and Fezoul in a bent-kneed hobble toward the cage. Under no circumstances must they get trampled underfoot by Greta or her agitated mate.

  Lizards had finally pinpointed the source of the commotion. They gnashed, stomped their feet and brandished weapons. Toward the leaping flames they came shambling, a group of heavily-armed sentries which pointed lizardish claws at the escaped rebels who slunk back into the shadows.

  “Quick! Let’s get this business over,” hissed Dereas. “By the scores they will swarm us! Hopefully poppa, once free, will keep our hosts at bay.”

  Straggling lizards put bare feet to stone to join the horde and Dereas bared his teeth. “Draw back!” he shouted in a hoarse voice. “They’ve already spotted us.” Other lizards were drawing weapons and tramping toward them, not the escaping saurians. The beastslayer, stumbling forth in dismay, whispered a prayer to Balael.

  In the time it had taken Rusfaer to slink over to the bailey wall, pandemonium had broken out in the outer court. Forced to crouch in the gloom, he had cursed and fumed in the agonizing wait for the guard to look the other way—but then he took to scaling the wall. Up the bestial bas-reliefs he toed his way, row on row of them, using the iron rods that protruded out of the stone for footholds. With panther-like strength, he pulled himself a quarter way up the wall. A final toehold had him pushing his boots into a stony serpent’s mouth, then heaving to clench fingers around a protruding lizard claw.

  Hidden by shadows crawling up the stone walls, he clambered up the nearest corner farthest from the spiked oval gate. Rusfaer paused to look down at the confusion below. Mayhem reigned. Dereas and the others had made good progress, he thought with a snarl; they had fired the male lizard’s pen and now the startled beast swung its heavy neck back and forth like a bear, splintering the flaming posts to gain an avenue of escape. With snout singed, it hopped in agony on a rampage, racing for its mate, eager to join her carnage.

  Rusfaer blinked dispassionately; his emotion gave way to gradual approval. He could not help but feel a certain fierce pride for his stalwart brother. Albeit a flawed personality, Dereas was industrious, even clever. With a mirthless laugh he reached for the stony snout of another carven lizard and swung himself up over the lip of the parapet. He crouched there waiting, the blood in his temples throbbing. Nose to nose with the bestial faces, he experienced a wash of memories he wished to forget. Likewise, he could not help but ponder what diseased imagination had inspired their carving.

  He grimaced, feeling his strained muscles tremble under the trials of wall-scaling. He hesitated, careful not to slip and impale himself on the sharp rods that protruded below. The treasured eggs loomed in bare view on the parapet: strung out in a line, ripe targets. The goal of his mission lay before him, and glittered in the glare of torches. The fools who walked and guarded these parapets were distracted. They were not looking for an outlander creeping up the castle wall, or as he was now, crawling before their precious eggs, and he chuckled with a rancour that echoed his primitive vindictiveness.

  The outer court sprawled in squalor and chaos. Rusfaer noted the male lizard took care of any resistance to his human companions straggling below. The attackers fled in terror from the path of that behemoth. Kruger swatted the stragglers out of the way with its front forelimbs or bashed them with its hind legs or chased them past smoking cauldrons and burning pits. Those who fought, stabbing at its nose or elephantine legs with their toy-like tulwars, were crushed or grabbed up in its greenish teeth and devoured.

  Greta lurked at the cavern’s end directly opposite the winding footpath—the same from where they had entered. It was evident she hoped to find some route up the cliff face, but could find no such escape. The stairway was too cramped and narrow for her bulk. A gory sport she indulged in, mangling the lizards that fought on the switchbacks up the cavern walls and that waved ineffectual weapons or bone sticks. Rearing up at the foot of the stairs, she snatched them in her teeth and flung them to their doom on the stones below. Rusfaer shrank back, his muscled shoulders tensing at the might of the saurians and the magnitude of that butchery.

  While he blocked out the carnage, he dragged himself away from the precarious drop and hunched on the parapet, chest-heaving.

  The tramp of enemies came from a short distance away.

  He jerked round and wormed his way behind an egg. Many of the vile things were illumined in ghostly light from torches hung on iron brackets. He drew his long weapon from its scabbard. An armed guard had heard the scrape and gave a snuffling grunt. Its yellow eyes blazed upon the human hand and blur of movement before the skulking warrior could react and fling himself on the defender. Ducking the whirling blade was not enough—there came a dodge, a stabbing of lunging flesh, a grunting hack and a flash of steel. The New Wolves’ leader chopped the legs out from under the hapless lizard and it toppled headlong onto the stone floor in the outer court. Brains and entrails sprawled in a grisly heap.

  Rusfaer ignored the gore and din below. He peered without, saw the inner court bustling with fevered lizards which dragged heavily-laden carts and barrows of riches and chests, overflowing cauldrons, baskets and urns of gems and smaller eggs from the repositories scattered around the court’s perimeter. The first hint of trouble had spooked them, Rusfaer concluded, and with a fiendish grin he loped down the parapet. The giant egg in the centre court loomed like a cyclopean sentinel: a great hallowed eye directly in sight below. Cursing, Rusfaer could not help but experience a cold shudder as he scrambled forward, imagining what perverse colossus dwelled in that terrible egg. Torchlit bone towers spired up from the parapets at intervals of fifty feet, and teemed with sentries posted in the upper tiers.

  Rusfaer ducked, but he knew there was little that he could do. He must work fast, make his exit before one of their deadly tulwars found his breast! These primitives had luckily not perfected the art of arrows, otherwise he would have been peppered long ago, a sitting duck in an open field.

  The blood-letting continued below and Rusfaer busied himself with dislodging the nearest egg from its golden harness. Straining in the dim light, he found the egg heavy as iron, what with its eerie contents and all the garlands of jewels draped around it. But it took his superior strength to move it, being almost his own height and girth. He got the egg rolling and heaved it off the edge with a thrust of his shoulder.

  It fell, spinning in midair for a second or more. Splat! It splintered in myriad pieces only paces from the mangled sentry. Rusfaer savoured grimly this small victory. For the rude assaults and digusts he had suffered at the hands of this filthy lot ran in high numbers. One, two, three, and more of the devil-spawned eggs he knocked down with an animal satisfaction. Plenty to go, he guffawed! A hundred to choose from. His smirk became a twisted leer, but he hadn’t much time. Soon the slippery fiends would be out swarming in numbers and he did not wish to be caught centre of attention on this narrow ledge.

  Even as he entertained the thought, a host of the angry reptiles coursed down from the nearest tower to intercept him...

  Dereas watched from below, crouching transfixed as his brother was forced to lay blade to the multiple foes that assailed him. The first went down in a sticky spray of blood. Rusfaer, thick with gusty snarls, easily took care of others, hip-checking them off the parapet into the inner court, or tossing them into the common ground on the other side. The cries of the dying were loud and furious and alerted more guards from the towers. Within the fortress came a rustle of movement.

  Another egg dropped, releasing its contents, smashing on the stone. Dereas watched restlessly from behind an overturned cauldron, yet he thought twice whether he could help his brother or not, for the things that had crawled out of those broken eggs were not pleasant to behold. The carnage had created some furor amongst the reptilian spectators who stared appalled.

  From one cracked shell, out rolled a gelatinous, mummy-like creature, once-human, thought Dereas. It was a ludicrous, pupa-like corpse gestating int
o what looked like some moth-butterfly transmutation. The thing was so disgusting that Dereas had to turn his head. Some, he witnessed, were in more advanced stages of gestation. Only one seemed semi alive and voiced a demonic outcry before it rose on its pulpy legs and began snapping at necks and ripping out the throats of snarling lizards. Had the priestess’s magic gone awry? Seeded humans with caterpillars or moths instead of newts? In those eerie seconds he recalled Draba had hatched in less than a day...Whether her eldritch magic employed alchemy to produce such obscene larval intermediates during longer-spanning gestation periods, he had no time to speculate. The lizard king had been vague regarding the lizard magic.

  By the time the lizard king emerged from the castle, his outer court was in a smoking ruin. Dereas’s fist clenched the hilt of his lizard blade with murderous force. The king’s shrill expostulations amounted to little more than obnoxious noise as he scampered about, his white and crimson robe flashing and beady eyes bulging at the destruction of his treasured eggs and the chaos in the courtyard. He denounced the deeds of the outlanders with the utmost vehemence. “Crokcaws! Badgebakes! Our sacred eggs smashed! Kill the intruders!” he panted. Screeching, dancing around in a mad circle, he provoked his subjects to wrath. “Our royal brethren would have gone on to become magnificent lizard captains! Look at what these defilers have done! Kill them all! Bring me their heads—and especially that Egg Slayer!” He shafted a jewelled finger at the blood-soaked Rusfaer who now fought alone on the parapets against a dozen or more fiends.

  All eyes rose to where the mailed giant crouched to meet his new attackers. He was a fire-swinging fury of passion. Swift bellows rang on the warrior’s lips. He cleaved and hewed to the bone lizard foes and spread red ruin in the frantic ranks of the defenders. The black-green lizard horde was getting slaughtered. But he had taken many hits, mere surface ‘wounds’ as he would have called them, but enough to draw blood and make him look haggard and battle-torn in the wake of the opposition.