Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Read online

  The overwrought men stumbled about, boots crunching on the ancient egg shells in frantic unison; all tried to gather as many useful items as possible before quitting this chilling pit while the sounds raged above. The tunnel that housed the greenish glow seemed the most hopeful avenue but this was dubious, for it carried a reek of the ages, an evil rising among other disturbing airs. As to the crawlspace, it looked as if the stone blocks, cut by human hands, had been piled deliberately to block the tunnel.

  Dereas frowned. If the portent of the bones and mismatched stray armour were any indication of past events, it did not bode well for their survival. He stalked about warily; he and his brother avoided each other like bristling badgers, each keeping as much distance as possible and combing the area with distrust but calculated level-headedness, arming themselves with knives, swords, small shields, anything that could be of use. They mumbled curses at the intolerable dimness and lack of proper torches here in this musky place. All eyes scanned the darkest crannies for any activity. Any extra rusty weapon was better than none, Dereas asserted, peering distantly into the shadows. Nor did the beastslayer like the pernicious look on Draba’s face when he unearthed a curved scimitar from the rubble—a murderous weapon with a broad, double-edged blade as long as his forearm. The rogue rejoiced in the find, a man Dereas would not trust farther than his eyelid.

  Lost in a fevered reverie, the wanderers sifted madly through the layers of rubble, an accretion of years of forgotten hopes and sundered dreams.

  Amexi and Hafta discovered a pair of double-headed axes which at first glance seemed like prizes, but soon they discarded. Lighter weapons were better matches for such fugitives.

  Rusfaer advised them all harshly to take a mix of weaponry: tulwars, maces, cudgels—in case they needed them to use as tools.

  Dereas could find no fault with the argument and gave a curt nod.

  Rusfaer fitted himself with a tarnished, dented steel cap. He tamped it on his wild locks to replace his lost wolf helm and also a pair of silver greaves to replace his torn leather shin guards. Dereas commandeered a wicked two-pronged spear that felt light and easy in his grip.

  The two turned their back on the crawlspace, mentally saying farewell to their life of sun and wind.

  “Without food and fresh water, we won’t last,” remarked Hafta. “Maybe two days at most.” The warrior glared around the chamber, tugging at his nose ring. Dereas saw he was the most heavyset of Rusfaer’s crew and had a sardonic twist to his mouth with the many scars there.

  “Never mind, it can’t be far to the end,” Rusfaer grumbled, “if an end is where these cursed tunnels will take us.”

  Jhidik mustered a cryptic murmur. “If we don’t run into more jackals like those bird-fiends who hunger for our blood.”

  The sounds of the grisly croaking receded as the brood realized it was next to futile to break through the solid rock without shredding their wings and dulling their beaks.

  “Wretched beasts,” rumbled Rusfaer. He looked disgustedly over his shoulder. “Though I have heard of this filth, worse than Haghordian harpies in legend, I have never heard of them roving so far north.”

  “Nor I,” muttered Dereas.

  “Or I,” agreed Jhidik.

  “So why come for us then?” demanded Amexi, scratching his throat.

  Dereas waved a fretful hand. “Stranger things have happened. Let us be thankful to have our lives.”

  Hafta and Draba were absorbed in their rummaging, oblivious to the conversation. The two almost knocked heads stooping to seize the same jewel, an almost perfect oval that glinted luridly in the rubble. Their eyes had set right away on the prize of the topaz which had been staring up hypnotically from the debris, and their argument over it grew to blows. The fight did not abate and they almost ended up knifing each other for possession.

  Rusfaer sprang forward to bang their heads together. “You dull sots. No sooner are you out of the beasts’ jowls and you are fighting over a miserable bauble. Ah, Kizoi—these are the mates I recruit by necessity.”

  Dereas shook his head in disgust.

  Rusfaer wiped his sword on a mouldering garment and exclaimed in a blustering voice. “Out of the fire and into the cauldron’s broth, eh, brother? Saeth’s teeth! Are we then to grope about this cursed darkness forever while ill beasts gnaw on our heels?”

  The remark earned him no reply. Hafta muttered indecisive grunts, Draba rude murmurs; he rubbed his aching head.

  “Let’s see then where this other tunnel goes,” advised Jhidik, “and what this glow is.”

  Out of the pit they climbed, straining to squeeze their bulk through the opening that housed the greenish glow. They peered into the eerie tunnel beyond.

  It ran far off up into the shadows, a dim and uninviting passage to nowhere. The deep gouges in the rough walls could have been the mark of primitive tools as easily as elder beasts’ claws. Before it twisted out of sight round a sharp bend, they caught a glimpse of the thin rivulet of pale greenish water trickling down its middle, to disappear into a narrow cleft at their feet. The strange thing about this water was its magical phosphorescence, the same that bathed the entire corridor in its weird greenish radiance.

  Dereas felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck. Magic? Elder sorcery? An eerie waft of danger sent the hairs rising further on edge. An evil drifted in the dust and a silence of the past. Casting uneasy glances about the bleak flanks of rock, he regretted that the black passage ahead seemed the only choice for them at this moment.

  “All in favour to follow the stream?” grunted Jhidik.

  The remark received no comment.

  Dereas stooped in front to take the lead and Rusfaer jostled his rival’s shoulder and sent him sprawling into a small pool which massed at the foot of the stream.

  “Watch where you’re walking, you clumsy oaf!” yelled Dereas. He sprang to his feet, face infused with anger. His tattered cloak dripped water and he bared his dirk.

  Jhidik planted himself firmly in between the two. “Easy now! Let’s have no more roughhousing. No cause for bloodshed!”

  Dereas’s breath heaved in and out. His tigerish pant marked a man seething from the effort of masking an already pent up rage. Rusfaer maintained a telltale smirk, entertained at the sight of his brother so riled by what he considered a small offense.

  The thick silence between the two grew, a pall thick enough to be cut with a knife. In between the spasms of rage he felt, Dereas would swallow his violence, if only to ensure their mutual survival by upholding an unspoken truce.

  There was a subtle, or not so subtle vetting going on here in this group. Two chiefs vied for power, and leadership. Dereas was glaringly aware of this.

  The warriors were affected by the sparring; Jhidik leaned on one leg, assessing the two chieftains with sober tugs on his chin; the others gathered in a huddle and traded low murmurs, unsure how to handle this situation. Dereas was of mind that it proved better to show allegiance to one’s respective master. Leadership and loyalty were fragmented in this small group, and the more support for a strong leader or leaders, the better. It was evident that Rusfaer’s two wild riders worshipped him in a savage way and that Rusfaer’s own wild ferocity was to blame, known across the outlying tribes as a force of impulsive action. And yet, fragmentation was never a good thing in a group where danger reared its ugly face.

  The sun-weathered leather baldric slung on Dereas’s shoulders wafted a sulphuric odour on contact with the water. In his nagging thirst, every instinctual cell screamed at him to kneel and scoop up handfuls of the cool water trickling at his feet. Yet he resisted the urge, knowing not what poisons or contaminants the strange liquid might contain. A man poisoned was no good to anybody. He thrust the desire from his mind; he tended to Jhidik, who actually was far worse than he looked.

  Further examination revealed a festering wound on Jhidik’s left thigh, causing the hardy Pirean to wince with every movement.

  “That leg needs attention,
” Dereas told him seriously.

  Jhidik grunted offhandedly. “We need to find a way out of here, not fuss about with a minor flesh wound.”

  “I admire your selflessness, Jidhik, but it won’t serve here. Squat down. There’s a fellow!” Dereas set himself to fashioning a splint from the flat edges of two short swords he had appropriated from the rubble pile earlier. He smeared the wound with a rude poultice of mud from the stream’s edge and secured the blades about his friend’s thigh for which the Pirean gave a relieved sigh. The warrior’s crinkly grin was one of genuine gratitude.

  Rusfaer and his ruffians stared on with sour disfavour, grumbling at the display of warmth before trundling on up the tunnel. They left the others in the heavy shadow.

  “To Zecrate’s two-toed sloths with Rusfaer,” grumbled Dereas. “The lout obviously can’t spare a moment for the wounded.” After binding the splint, Dereas snatched up the spear and with a motion to Jhidik and Amexi, stumbled on to catch up with the others.

  The bitter silence grew—to breaking levels until finally Dereas burst out at Rusfaer, “Well, ‘brother’, why have you not tracked down these depraved kidnappers of yours and put them to the sword? Instead you waste time hunting me?” The beastslayer’s snarl was a lash on the thick air.

  Rusfaer whirled on him, his face a maelstrom of uncontrollable fury. “If it was so easy, brother, I would have done that by now, don’t you think? The cowards who fled and left me for dead with nearly a split skull were long gone. The only thing that saved me was an extra layer of steel I put in my helm, which my father, our father, always told us to have. I wrapped a cloth around my aching head and stumbled on. But the trail was two weeks old before I could get onto a mount without pain bringing me to my knees. I remember the faceless riders, nine of them—beneath their black cowls, I could read the sneers on their ugly faces, the lust in their bodies and what they planned to do with my beloved Pameel. Most of all, how they had planned this crusade from the very outset!”

  Dereas grimaced. He felt his brother’s anger; he would wish no such pain on anyone. He remembered Pameel of old, a queen and beauty amongst women, her dark burnished hair flowing like a river down her shoulders, a mass of springy foam, and her eyes a spellcaster’s flame, as sultry as a cat’s, shining with a bright intelligence. Her delicate features were warm, her lithe movements rich and her scarlet lips and curvaceous body only perfect parts of a seamless whole. The image burned in his brain with surprising clarity, and he felt strangely tainted, knowing that his actions had indirectly played a part in her tragedy. For once, he did not have words to answer his fiery brother.

  Rusfaer had not always been like this. A lost year of wandering tribeless and with family broken and heart split had buried his carefree wildness, bred in him an angst beyond conception, shrouding any sparkling zeal that might have burned brightly before. Perhaps his brother’s loathing of himself and his failure to protect his tribe, and his family, had pushed him to a level of anger beyond bitterness. Dereas shuddered at the concept, for he did not share this awful weight on his brother’s shoulders—even his vague conjectures of what his brother had endured were nothing compared to the reality.

  Dereas tore himself away from Rusfaer’s glaring scrutiny and moved warily up the tunnel. The scowl on his face deepened. Every footstep in this inhospitable passage raised the hackles on his back. His eyes narrowed and roved the shadows, searching for pits and traps and any signs of sinister movement that might spring out at them at any moment. The seemingly bare and desolate corridor with its droppings of egg shells every fifty feet or so did not inspire much confidence. Things long dead and a threat long vanished seemed to haunt the very air and stir the ancient moulder that dusted the tunnel.

  He shook off the cloying feeling. He went over the details in his mind of what he knew of Pameel’s kidnapping and the events leading up to her capture. He had done it a thousand times over since he had returned to Asgolin.

  It was strange that the clanswoman’s disappearance had ultimately hinged on the demise of his and Rusfaer’s father, Xanithe, over a year ago.

  Rusfaer quivered in rage not two steps away with blazing eyes, a sworn enemy, and even as he turned to lock eyes with his brother in the tunnels under Vharad, he remembered the night Rusfaer had lost the confidence of the clanmembers during the great gathering of the peoples. Denied chiefdom and the fool he was, Rusfaer had left with his wife and mother on a cloudy evening. His small band had been waylaid by the members of a rival clan, who, hearing of the upset in leadership of the Crow Clan’s reign, had planned an ambush. Their motive, to gain control over the fertile antelope-rich lands by undermining the clan’s bloodline, was dastardly. How they had accomplished this, he did not know. Yet such tactics had proven common amidst the nomads...

  As if reading his brother’s thoughts, Rusfaer crept close to Dereas and whispered evilly in his ear, “Harken, Dereas Barath-o’-Bear, after they snatched Pameel, they failed to put an end to me. The last vision that swam before my eyes, I saw two black-cowled riders leading the others, one with tapered, coiled beard, another with a star-shaped scar on his left cheek—leaders, overlords, cowards and filth, with the emblem of the Snarling Cougar and the Horns of Victory on their breasts. I vowed I would take vengeance on those cravenly marauders. They left me for dead, my life force bleeding out!—I also vowed to deal with you, brother, for forcing me and my mother and my wife out of the clan!”

  Dereas pushed himself away in exasperation. “Lies! We never forced you out. You opted to go of your own accord.”

  “Did we? What other choice did we have? Do you not know what it is like to be second in the clan? What it is like to wear the mantle of shame, when you, the eldest son, are denied your own chiefdom? No, not you, you pretty cherub, the golden apple of my father’s eye, the one who could do no wrong.” A harsh shadow crept over Rusfaer’s face; a mocking tone had worked itself into his deep-throated voice. “I have always been the dark horse of the family. Let’s not deny it! So I have always been, so I will always be.”

  Rusfaer had a way with words and Dereas felt it now; such impassioned testimonial pushed others to sympathy. Now the giant seemed to master his grief, and went on in a threatening voice:

  “Take heed, brother. I have not yet finished. Did you ever care to ask how I survived that nightmare? They had no interest in my mother. The marauders left her for dead sobbing in the dust. If it weren’t for her bravery, neither of us would have made it to safe ground.”

  “Then she lives still?” asked Dereas with incredulous wonder.

  “Aye, but we were sorely tasked to make it to Knotran. She was never the same after that.”

  “Ill tidings, indeed. Closayne is a good woman.” Dereas paused, frowning, afraid to ask of his own mother. “Where is Klaistrous Barath-o’-Bear then?”

  A flicker of unresolved tension fled past Rusfaer’s face. “You have no need to worry for her. She is safe, with the others, at Azim.”

  Dereas could not help but experience relief, also a panged memory of Closayne and Klaistrous battling it out at the council of peoples over which son would be chief, testament of the power and status women had in the clans. He wished it had been Rusfaer’s mother who had won.

  “Most of the women and children got horsed out before Asgolin was burned,” admitted Rusfaer, “so I heard. It was the Spotted Lynxes who attacked Asgolin, maybe others, curse their rotten hides!—killed many of our warriors and fled with our belamyl and supplies and burnt our fanes. They meant to make an example of us—because of our father who defied them. Whether it was they who waylaid me, I do not know. I have no definite proof.”

  Dereas’s jaw hardened. A thousand thoughts fled through his mind.

  Amexi’s deepening scowl indicated Rusfaer’s words affirmed his own suspicions. “Aye, before my brother Brar fell to a Lynx arrow on the day of the raid, he told a tale of betrayal within our ranks—of Lynx sympathizers living amongst us, bribed by gold dust. We were alerted by rider
s mobilizing in the hills. Jequen ordered the women and children spirited away in your absence, Dereas. We thought it best that it should be so and his hunch was correct. I wandered weeks in the steppes after the battle, hunted and wounded before you found me. I haven’t been able to verify that our womenfolk survived, nor was I able to track them down.”

  Dereas’s pulse hammered in his head. Despite Amexi’s testimonials from days before, the combination of facts was overwhelming. “Then we have a common enemy,” he murmured.

  Rusfaer only grunted with an offhand wave of hand.

  A wave of sorrow hit Dereas. Asgolin and a thousand childhood memories stirred in his heart. Asgolin, his village of a hundred yurts spread along the Nascombe river, the sacred fire grounds burning strong with the antlered fanes to Balael and bronze cauldrons smoking herbs and animal fat...Asgolin, whose great fires ever stayed lit, roaring, celebrating life and the fruitful tenure under Balael!—now razed to the ground, only a cold windswept ruin. He had seen it so many weeks ago when he and Jhidik rode in, and he couldn’t believe his eyes—a blackened charnel ground, his people dead or enslaved by enemy tribes or wandering the plains lost and forgotten.

  “Your father always was a hothead,” muttered Amexi wistfully, “and a fool, pitting you two against each other. ’Twas his private joke at the camp feasts in fits of drunken revelry, naming first you then Rusfaer to rule when he was gone. Then, when he was sober, he bantered that you two should hack it out between yourselves. Always a gigantic guffaw quick on his lips.”

  The flame in Dereas’s eyes smouldered and Rusfaer shouldered forward, his face lit in a cryptic grimace. “He was a fool, and a womanizer, but an iron one, and a man great among men.” He stood in the dim light, chest heaving, and his face flushed, heavy with the urge to charge on with his heady tirade. “So I recovered, with my mother’s aid, with a wicked scar across my scalp.” He rumbled on about how a shaman had wandered leagues to find him and had coaxed him back to life with magical herbs and sickening pastes ground from mushrooms. “Aye, this man also gave me much more to hope for—teachings, wisdom on the path of life and death—teachings that you will never learn, brother, teachings that I will use as hammers, when this world is consumed, to crush any enemy in my path! This I vow on my grave—or when the Saeth takes us all!”