Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Read online

  Dereas saw his watery gaze fall loosely in a half-dream, echoing shock and terror. Amexi looked to be a man alive courtesy only of Balael. He shrank back from the cave’s cold grey shadow, and like Jhidik, he peered at him with dull wonder. Dereas thought him half-minded to turn tail from that dank place and its clutch of cloying vapours.

  Snapping boughs and a reckless whoosh of air caused them to reel back. Dereas looked up, saw an obscene flock of black shapes tearing a path for them through the leafy treetops. Other birds wheeled a bowshot away, furious upon seeing the carnage of their kin.

  The blood drained from Jhidik’s face. “We’re done for,” he gasped, wide pale eyes scouring desperately for an alternate refuge along the weed-grown cliff. “Make for cover!”

  “Into the cave!” thundered Dereas. He shoved them past the threshold, the straggle of boulders likened to a witch’s hex ground. The three dove through—a sanctuary of blackness that swallowed them like a whale.

  Their first sensation was a dampness, then the feel of loose stone beneath desperate feet as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. Dereas braced himself and shouldered his comrades onward, nerves still frayed from the harrowing fall through the trees. The sounds of flapping wings and vulturish squawks were fast on them and ominously muffled. They slowly clawed their way past boulders and tinkling streams deeper into the eerie confines. It was a tunnel as wide as a bailey’s gate, and as it opened up, as wide as it was tall. Their ears rebelled at the tumult and the shrieks of pain that gathered behind them.

  Looking back, Dereas caught a glimpse of one of Rusfaer’s axemen hooked by a nightmarish tusk and hauled aloft.

  Dereas clenched his weapon with numb dismay; he suppressed an urge to scramble back. The howls and rending flesh and cries of terror of Rusfaer’s remaining belamyl guard flung wide about the entrance to the cavern, sent chills up his spine, as they were tossed into maws and fed to the chicks which scrambled about in hopeful numbers. It was enough to bring a lesser man to his knees. Dereas had also caught a glimpse of Rusfaer himself and two of his last mercenaries brought to senseless unreason racing into the black confines of the cave.

  The beastslayer turned his head; he bit back a gushing nausea, loathing to think what the bird creatures would do to his brother. He pulled Jhidik along gracelessly. Amexi stumbled but a few feet behind. The bird-beasts devoured whoever remained in their path and clawed and smashed at the rock of the cave entrance and stalked on up the tunnel, heaving their loathsome bodies against the stone like battering rams. There was sharp clacking of sharp talons, then croaks and clucks as the fiends hopped and flapped their way deeper into the blackness, hoping to snag some remnant of the fugitives.

  The warriors scrambled on in gasping frenzy, clawing their way in what little light penetrated the cavern. But there was nowhere to go—only a high pile of rocks barring their path, black and chiseled. At the summit Dereas spied a small crawlspace, fit for maybe a man at a time, and with it some hope. The pile spilled down dark crumbling debris and old decayed egg shells, and bore an evil cast about it.

  In the darkness behind, Dereas saw dim ruby red eyes bobbing in feral intensity. He felt shivers of doom tickle at his back. The coldness of the Eakor’s gaze could not help but bring a sheen of sweat down the back of the staunchest warrior, but neither could it gain the beasts passage past what looked a Y junction. The small boulders they had passed seemed to have been caved in from above—or perhaps they were man-hewn blocks.

  “Follow me!” Dereas yelled, not knowing whether anyone would. He clawed his way up through the musty closeness. A frantic scrabbling clamoured at his heels. Through the crawlspace he pushed himself down into the unknown gloom.

  He slid down a slippery slope of pebbles, bones, shells and varied rubble into a shallow pit. At least one form came skidding after. Where were they? Dereas shook the daze out of his eyes. Amexi wallowed at his side. Jhidik groaned painfully in the nearby litter. A dim greenish glow bathed the area in uncertain light. At one time the pit appeared to join the tunnel on the other side but now it was nearly sealed. Why? Above their line of sight reared a dusky opening: a side way? Above and to the left showed another side way, almost too small to pass, but from which issued the curious green gleam, of source unknown. Muffled gurgles ran from deep within the burrow that hosted the trickling water. Yet Dereas felt a strange comfort in the faint greenish glow, which in itself encompassed the seeping water. At the head of the cave mouth, five feet above their heads, a cryptic sigil carved by rude tools pointed in a direction roughly east, toward the sea. The actual ceiling remained a blur of darkness in the vaulting heights.

  The chamber was mysterious and brought a puzzled frown crinkling his haggard face. The musty, ancient odour cloying at the air carried with it a feeling that nothing had crawled here in an age. Dereas trailed his fingers along the wall, feeling the grooves of stacked blocks. So, not a rockslide, but cut stone blocks piled up in the direction of the junction to deliberately block the tunnel. Yes—deliberately done, almost as if intelligent hands had been at work blocking the entrance to prevent creatures from invading the cavern. Another question surfaced in Dereas’s mind. Which creatures were being blocked, and from which side? The large broken egg shells crunching immediately underfoot indicated that some menace lurked deeper in the darkness.

  Dereas shivered. In face of such evidence he felt sweat drip from his brow over the implications the new surroundings provided. A quiver of raw exhaustion raked his aching muscles. Luckily for the fugitives, no creature larger than a man could pass through the cramped hole. This much he mused, along with the recurring suspicion that this side of the cave had been unoccupied for years...

  A clatter of pebbles broke the eerie stillness and a sudden shape burst through the crawlspace. The intruder slid down the pile of debris, panting and gasping raggedly. A man! A fresh wound glaring out from his forehead indicated a close scrape with an Eakor. Another figure came tumbling after, a small knife clutched in hand, coughing blood-flecked phlegm and cursing. Both were men of Rusfaer’s band.

  The last to crawl through was Rusfaer himself, and Dereas sucked in a hostile breath. He gave a half-choking cry and leapt to face his nemesis.

  Rusfaer, sliding down the ramp of pebbles, landed with his boots on the backs of his men to brake his descent. The ruffians didn’t seem to mind. He sprang to his feet like a cat, a three foot blade gripped in his twitching palm, his knotted fingers cutting loops in the thick half gloom.

  The big warrior was bareheaded and his rusty hair trailed down past a massive set of shoulders. A grimed, scarred face gleamed saturninely burnt with years of sun. His eyes glittered like balefire and in the weak light, looked slitted like a pike’s. His right arm was bloodied from elbow to wrist, and the leather padding beneath his mail was torn and soaked with blood.

  The warrior grunted and faced his enemies, blinking in the gloom to which his eyes were readily adjusting. He saw Dereas and clenched a fist on his hilt, his mouth set in grim anticipation. The two warriors circled each other. Jhidik and Amexi crouched in the shadows, breathing in gusts, Amexi clawing for some rusty weapon in the debris. Dereas saw his rival’s face crinkled with a neatly laid out grin of false mirth. His eyes took in the situation in a ruthless pass, assessing in a glance the domed chambers and its blackened ceiling glistening with quartz crystals and geodes of amethyst and celestite.

  “Well,” he gusted blithely, “what a pack of rogues we have here.” His voice boomed like a throng of hammers in a smithy. “Shall we draw straws then to see who cuts whose throat first?” With that quip he let his sword trace jocular circles in the air, and his ragged men followed suit, huddled at his side, brandishing knives.

  “Let’s start with yours,” Dereas rasped. His fingers flexed and his blade swept no less menacingly.

  Rusfaer rushed to meet him, his sword raised and dripping to the hilt in Eakor blood.

  Dereas sprang to cut him down. Their swords met in a ringing clangour that sent e
choes rocking about the chamber. Rusfaer’s blade, rippling from low to high and raking mail rings, cut a quick stroke for Dereas’s jugular, but the beastslayer dodged the swing, rolled under that strike and parried with a sense of calm deliberation. He stepped away unscathed from a dismembering sweep, quite used to his brother’s flamboyant but brutal attacks.

  Rusfaer, cheeks red with anger, turned and came reeling in for a definitive strike. Dereas’s dodged. His light mail caught the rake of steel. His counterstrike hit home and his brother blinked in surprise. Normally such a blow would miss by a half inch; now it grazed eight ringlets, nearly shearing them.

  Dereas spun in a wide circle, ending in a catlike crouch and the twang of Rusfaer’s blade still resonated off his mail rings as he planned his next move. He could smell the sweat on his brother’s wolf skins draped over his mailshirt, amidst the blood and bestial heat of hate brimming from that awesome figure’s form, but the lighter man pushed back, elbowing his adversary in the ribs, disarming him with a cunning jab and tight wrist lock. Rusfaer grunted, his long blade slipping from his fingers, clanking on the litter of shattered skulls and thigh bones underfoot.

  Dereas saw his traitor-chief brother assessing him with new respect, but with a blank-faced smirk that was born of a false look of surrender. The bigger man spun backwards and roundhouse kicked the loose blade out of Dereas’s startled fingers. The two circled each other again like maddened bears. Dereas stared into the bearded face, his chest heaving. He heard his brother laugh, a cracked, gravelly sound that sent the hairs rising on the back of his neck. He returned the same blank stare he saw glowering through the creases of his brother’s wolfish countenance. The two were now weaponless, Rusfaer panting and masking his violent impatience. He charged, hands clawed like an eagle’s, and he grappled Dereas, muscles strained like bowstrings. They fought in near darkness, rolling in the detritus and filth, the bones, skulls and victims’ tattered garments kicking up generations of dust and moulder into each other’s eyes. All the while Rusfaer’s entourage feinted in and out, cheering and uttering rude taunts, waiting their turn to chop and boot Dereas at an opportune moment.

  Blades whistled aloft and Jhidik and Amexi held the two rogues back.

  “Stay your blades, you dungmites! Let it be a fair fight,” bawled Jhidik.

  “I’ll kill you, you bloody bastard,” Rusfaer yelled in Dereas’s face in hate, trying to chew off his brother’s ear. “You don’t deserve to live!”

  “You couldn’t kill a newborn lamb,” sneered Dereas. He gripped his brother’s head in an arm lock even tighter. He too was rolling, wallowing in bones, helms, weapons, anything of the rubble underfoot—and starting to feel the giddy rush from the weight and tireless strength of his brother’s pythonish grasp.

  “You would have been plugged full of arrows already,” Rusfaer mocked, hissing through bared teeth, his thrashing starting to loosen Dereas’s iron-like grip, “but we spent a dozen quivers already, fighting off those cursed marauders from Kembashwe clan.”

  “Your boast is shallow, brother,” wheezed Dereas, trying to reaffirm his grip. “We would have gutted you long ago, had not some foul wizardry played its part on your side.”

  “Foul wizardry?—” the rival warrior spat, his thick lips frozen in a mirthless snarl “—You are mad! Just simple tracking skill.”

  The beastslayer felt an explosive anger threatening to betray him, also a fervent desire to tear out his brother’s throat, but his eyes widened in recognition of the truth of his brother’s claim. He felt his grip slacken; his mind warred in a sea of conflicting thoughts. A bestial snarling and pounding of wings reverberated across the stone without, prompting a curse from Jhidik, and then Amexi to wield his blade and they rushed to pull the two apart. “Hold up, you stupid sods!” called Jhidik.

  The fighters staggered to their feet, chests rising and falling like blacksmiths’ bellows. Their eyes rounded on the cavern’s domed middle, from where the sounds had welled. Each glared in confusion. Nose to nose, sweat dripping from their bruised and blood-caked limbs, they were two kings in a small tomb—a reign which would never be. It would be easier to have two lions pacing the same den.

  Sudden angry tumult grew to a sliding of pebbles and broken shells. An awkward, malign shape burst from the crawlspace.

  It was one of the smaller chicks which had managed to squirm free, and now bore down on them. Its webbed wings were spreadeagled and raked at the rubble as it scudded down toward the exhausted men.

  The thing sprang at one of Rusfaer’s warriors, beak parted and pecking at the man’s blood-grimed face, nearly taking out his eyes in a reckless assault.

  “Talemeon’s ghosts!” the man bawled. He turned his head, slashed out blindly. This tall grim-faced warrior was one of Rusfaer’s senior clansmen. “Is there no end to these vile creatures?”

  Rusfaer snatched at the dripping blade at his feet and speared the squawking killer. The others set on it, hacking and stabbing with unfettered contempt, taking up femurs and using them as clubs to pulverize it to red ruin.

  The sounds of a pounding fury rocked the chamber: a hundred wings smashing on the ancient stone. A blood-flecked beak snapped through the crawlspace, then a single red glaring eye, furious at not being able to squeeze through. The chick’s dying only seemed to infuriate the malevolent brood on the other side of the wall. The death of one chick would be the death of them all, thought Dereas. Dust fell in sheets from the very ceiling with every crunch of the fiends’ beaks and tusks on stone. The beat of their mighty wings crashed against the black tunnel walls. The blocks seemed ready to cave in and crush them all to death and each man mumbled prayers to their favourite gods and ducked instinctively.

  “We can’t stay here,” muttered Amexi, his weapon quaking in his grip.

  “You think?” growled Rusfaer sarcastically.

  The brothers glared at each other. Not one trusted the other any more than a famished beggar could toss a mouldy crust of bread to a gull. Fierce figures they were in this stifling murk with the blood of chieftains running in their veins—skilled warriors and leaders in their own right.

  Jhidik snapped, “You may want to kill each other, but I suggest we pool our resources in favour of staying alive.”

  “What do you suggest then, Pirean?”

  “Lots! Obviously Balael has spared us. Agreed? So, let’s see what we’re in for then?”

  For a tense moment, Dereas, Rusfaer and Jhidik stared one another down, shafting daggers and grumbling oaths. Rusfaer slammed his weapon in his scabbard, muttering a foul grunt of disgust.

  Gripes grew to cursing murmurs, but even the most foolhardy of enemies could see the logic of the Pirean’s argument. Glares gave way to hopes of survival and what more they might do to save their necks.

  Dereas saw Rusfaer’s rabble wore leather pants—torn and ripped and grimed with blood and offal. Their beady eyes blinked in the murk. Rough, unsmiling faces returned Dereas’s chill glare. Despite their ordeal, Dereas remarked that these stalwarts of Rusfaer’s band seemed afflicted with only superficial wounds—cuts, scratches, bruises, scrapes and abrasions. Yet the newcomers, Hafta included—for Hafta was the surly warrior who had been near clawed by the chick—seemed traitorously on edge and ready to plunge a dagger into anyone’s ribs, be it friend or foe. The other man was short and red haired with a small tail of unkempt hair, a rogue called Draba. He wore short ankle boots and leather chest armour in the fashion of a Tluthian plainsman. He seemed by nature to be more important than he was. His quirky smile was a sour slash on a thin face, an indicator of one who fought dirty, and with conniving and crooked intent. His sardonic stance and pocked face denoted a slippery foe who tended to bluster, trickery and roguery. Indeed, the beastslayer wondered where Rusfaer had recruited these rogues, for this short rascal had more the look of a Yemestan thief than a windblown, free-spirited man of the steppes. His mate, shifting on limber legs at his side, the one they called Hafta, was blue-eyed and dark-haired and
had fair skin with a nose ring and cropped ear lobes after the fashion of the rebel hunters of the eastern climes, possibly a Scidonian of the old spear-hunting tribe on the Pzison coast and its neighbouring isles. This was a man in sharp contrast to Jhidik who was dark-skinned, hawk-nosed and wore only a loose jerkin of oiled leather under his mailshirt as most of his Pirean brothers favoured. Amexi kept his distance, a man born and bred of Asgolin, his fingers flexing on his hilt with nervous anticipation at the croaking sounds without. His mailed chest moved to the rhythms of the code of roguish honour that lurked within these adventurers.

  In a haste of panic the survivors fell to examining their surroundings. Blinking like owls, they searched this way and that for a way out and in the process stumbled across all manner of helms, rusty swords, old bits of clothing, gold-trimmed tabards, frayed ropes, harnesses, broken cuirasses, musty accoutrements, chin guards, and a myriad other things that may or may not have been useful at that time—amidst the litter of egg shells. One great domed shell was half intact, suggesting an egg as big as a watermelon.

  “Eakor’s eggs!” snorted Rusfaer with disgust. “Whatever was in here, obviously cracked these eggs and feasted on them.”

  “And on men too,” Jhidik growled. “Judging from these gouged helms and ancient weapons and bones, warriors fought and died here.” He gave rise to a scowl. “This looks like a grown man’s femur here. Look at this batch of skulls! Bones smashed as if the meat was sucked out of them. How long has this ghoulish feasting been going on?”

  Rusfaer shook his head in distaste. “Who knows, Pirean? We can assure ourselves it has been for a time, perhaps decades. There’s no fresh meat here that I can see, or smell. Just an indicator that—”

  Dereas barked, “What’s that?” At the sounds of talons clawing on stone they tensed. It seemed more of the bloodhungry birds were attempting to surmount the pile of rubble and squeeze their way through the opening. Another beak gnawed halfway past the crawlspace, flaking rock at the edges. Dereas saw a trickle of speckled motes of dust fall and flakes of stones. The rock shivered in a disconcerting convulsion over his head like the tremor of an earthquake.