Bazil Broketail (48 page)

Braziers burned with a hot light along the walls. Armed men stood beneath them.

The trolls wheeled the cart across until it was almost beneath the black sphere. Baz could raise his head slightly, and when he did he noticed that the cart was at rest on the edge of a deep black abyss, a pit that went straight down.

Then he heard a rumbling of chains and pulleys and the sphere of blackness was descending.

Down it came, rattling the chains that it hung in until at last it loomed over him, huge and menacing.

Now he saw that it was nothing but a rock, a piece of black lava, polished and smooth, and held in a lacework of steel chains. He had heard much concerning this bizarre creation of the enemy but had somehow never accepted its existence as real until now.

This was no ordinary piece of rock. There was such a palpable presence in this stone that even an ignorant dragon could feel it—vast, implacable, malevolent. A great intelligence was now focused on him.

A red spot about the size of an apple was emerging on the stone. It pulsed and suddenly there was a rattling of smaller chains and three tall, narrow cages rose from the pit to hang in front of the great black rock.

In the center cage was a gaunt man with no ears or eyelids. He clutched the bars and stared with bulbous eyes at Bazil.

In the cage to his right was a monstrously fat woman whose flesh bulged through the bars. She was blind and her mouth had been sewn shut, but she had large, prominent ears.

Suddenly the large man in the third cage grabbed the bars and spoke in a loud voice.

-“Welcome to my city, Master Dragon.”

The Eyes of the Doom were suddenly dropped and swung to dangle very close to Bazil. The Mouth ceased to boom and purred instead.

“It is a rare pleasure to be able to welcome one of your race. Seldom indeed have we been so honored.”

The Mouth became suddenly querulous. “Indeed, usually dragons die rather than accept the opportunity to come before us in my city.”

The Mouth calmed. “But now you are here and that is wonderful, even if we do have to put you to death.”

Bazil tried to see what mechanism controlled the cages in which were held the Eyes, Ears and Mouth of the Doom. He peered down into the pit.

Far below he made out shadowy movements and heard the crack of a whip. Great trolls organized slave gangs there to toil over the ropes and blocks.

“You are interested in the workings of our apparatus, Master Dragon?”

Bazil looked up at the rock but said nothing.

“Well,” it went on, “no matter. You are here and we shall have a great deal of fun with you, unless of course you are sensible and see reason…”

The Eyes jerked away and the woman with the ears was swung close to Bazil. A response was clearly required of him.

Play for time
, said a small voice in his head.

“What is all this? Who are you?” said Bazil.

The Eyes were back, bulging close.

“Who am I?” boomed the Mouth. “You do not know? Can this be possible?”

Bazil felt his anger stirring.

“Yes, who are you? All I see is naked man in cage. Naked dirty man.”

The voice laughed, a horrible sound.

“You see nothing, reptile. These are
my
eyes.” Chains rattled and the gaunt man with bulging eyes swung up.

“And these are
my
ears!”

The cage with the fat woman rose and jerked to a halt.

“And this is
my
mouth!” and the big man was jerked up and down.

Baz let a moment of silence pass.

“So you live in rock, that’s what you say.”

The voice laughed horribly again.

“For a reptile you are quick on the uptake at least.”

Baz bristled. “Reptile” was a human word that most dragons disliked intensely.

“But dragon, you should listen to me. Listen, my friend.”

“I am not your friend, rock. You release me and I show you that pretty damn quick.”

Again the laughter.

“Oh yes, I can imagine, but fortunately you will not get the chance to do me harm, oh no. That is inconceivable. However, you will get one chance to save your miserable hide and continue to live. In fact, your conditions could improve immensely.”

More time.

“How?”

“I will set you free and set you up in splendor if you will promise to obey me and fight for me.”

This idea was so preposterous that Bazil felt his rage rise at the scale of the insult.

“You kill dragons, kill people, make slaves. I have nothing to do with you.”

The voice was back to the purring tone.

“Oh come now, don’t waste this opportunity. You will not get another. Think about this: you can either die miserably for the entertainment of a crowd, or you can have more life as my servant, proud and protected.”

Bazil’s throat had become hard with hate.

“Since I hatch from egg I know that you and your Masters are evil. I never serve you. You waste your time, rock.”

But the Doom was not quite finished.

“I certainly hope not. Come now, reconsider this. I will make you a general of troops, we will gather an army of dragons to fight for our cause.”

-Bazil erupted at that and almost heaved the cart over.

“Dragons never fight for you. You think we fight alongside trolls you breed to kill dragons? Never, stupid rock, never!”

There was a long silence, the red spot pulsed. Then the Mouth jerked back to life.

“Well, in that case I must accept that you are as stupid and pig-headed as they said you would be. Well. So you will die for our pleasure. Good, the crowd needs a new thrill.”

The Mouth lifted its head with a snap.

“Take him away!” it roared.

They sat together in the darkness and chewed the oats that Relkin had brought back. It was hard work, but it was the first food they had had in a long time.

Lessis was a slender shape lying across the rock. She was dying and there was nothing they could do about it.

Lagdalen was fighting the urge to weep. The situation seemed utterly hopeless and terribly sad. Relkin had tried to comfort her, but she had recoiled at his touch. Since then they had sat close but not touching and concentrated on chewing.

For some unknown reason Relkin was filled with a strange sense of hope. His journey through the underworld of Tummuz Orgmeen had given him the mad idea that they could somehow escape this place.

Beyond that he could not bring himself to think much. There was too much pain waiting there. A lost dragon, possibly dead, possibly in agony. He had to find him, somehow.

Of course this led to further unwelcome questions. What if he did find him? How was he going to rescue a dragon that if it lived might well be badly wounded? That might not be able to walk?

Relkin sighed inwardly. He would concentrate on simply getting out of this place. That was the first step. He chewed and swallowed and took a little sip of the water. From the corner of his eye he noticed that something was moving in the darkness.

He looked up and felt the blood freeze in his veins.

Eyes! By the million, all around them, glinting like evil little gems.

Lagdalen had seen him stiffen, she glanced up and a little shriek exploded from her. The cavern was now carpeted in fur. Thousands upon thousands of rats had appeared silently out of the dark around them. A solid, living mat of rats that was creeping in towards them.

Relkin’s mouth and throat were dry. He drew his sword and slowly got to his feet although he felt his knees shaking. This would be a terrible way to die, no doubt of it. Devoured by an army of rodents.

The silence was broken by the harshness of his and Lagdalen’s breathing, and out there, a susurration of rat feet on the stone.

“Oh Mother, help us now,” said Lagdalen.

The rats crept towards them, silent and implacable until there was a sudden, explosive interruption. With a shriek of feline anger, a black cat leapt down from the rocks at the side of the cavern right into the midst of the rat horde.

The rats scattered back, leaving a clear space for the cat, a torn, which while still heavily muscled was clearly old, with white around his mouth and many scars upon his head. But with those ears flattened and those eyes blazing rage and fierce yellow teeth exposed, he was still a cat to respect. This was no plump house cat, no pet for human hands to gentle.

He yowled again and rats scurried out of his way, but not quickly enough, and the cat’s right paw smacked out six times in the blink of an eye and sent rats flying in all directions.

Relkin noticed another odd thing, the cat did not use his claws and no blood was spilled. The rats that were struck landed safely and dove into the protective mass of their fellows.

The rats crowded back and the cat moved towards the young man and woman standing in front of the body of Lessis the Great. There it hissed, ears Flattened, body tensed as if ready to spring on the youth.

Relkin stared, amazed, but he hefted his sword in front of him. This was a fearsome cat, but still it was only a cat and Relkin was no novice with a blade. If it came at him, it was going to be a dead cat.

As for what the rats might do at such a point, Relkin didn’t want to imagine. But what were they doing now? It was all quite inexplicable. Was this cat a king of rats? Why were such implacable enemies behaving like this?

The cat hissed and darted in, he swung the sword at it but missed, and it was past him and up on the stone beside Lessis in the next second.

Relkin raised the sword. The cat crouched there and hissed at him but made no move to escape. He hesitated.

The cat let out a long mournful wail. Lagdalen suddenly squeezed his arm.

“No. I don’t think it’s a good idea to kill this cat.”

He let the sword drop. “Alright. It’s not harming her, but what the hell does it want?”

Lagdalen had no answer to that.

“And what about them?” He gestured towards the rats.

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Relkin.”

The cat now turned from them and focused its attention on Lessis. It sat near her shoulder and appeared to study her carefully, settling into a position of feline immobility.

“I don’t understand,” said Lagdalen, looking back at the massed rats. She was shaking like a leaf and her insides felt strange. She didn’t think she had ever been this scared in her entire life, not even when that troll turned on them in the cellar of the Blackbird Inn.

Relkin reached out and took her hand. For once she did not pull away. Relkin was shaking too, but somehow holding her hand helped to steady him.

“Don’t know, don’t know what to think,” he mumbled.

The cat turned back to them, hissed and flattened its ears again, then it leapt from the rock and yowled and struck out at the rats around it, smacking them hard and knocking them about. But there was no blood, the cat’s claws were still retracted. Nor did the rats who were dealt with like this protest or attempt to defend themselves.

A wave of tension built up in the air, and then it broke and all at once the rats moved; the entire horde flowed forward around them, through their legs and up onto the rock where Lessis lay.

Lagdalen sucked in her breath.

“No,” she said.

But the rats took no notice. They burrowed under the lady, hundreds of them, forcing themselves underneath her body. In a few seconds she was lifted up and carried to the side of the slab of rock.

Thousands more rats were mounded there to receive her body. Gently she was shifted onto them and then the mound subsided, carrying her forward.

The black cat snarled and struck out again, and once more rats were tossed in the air but not killed. No rat did so much as snap back at the cat, and those that were struck simply picked themselves up and went on with their business.

The lady’s body was borne away on a river of rat backs.

“No,” sobbed Lagdalen.

Relkin was on his feet. “Come on, follow them. I don’t think they intend to harm her, or us.”

Lagdalen stared, could this be possible? Lessis had many friends, especially in the animal world—but all these rats? Still, there was nothing else to be done and Lessis was being carried away from them.

She stumbled after him, and together they followed the horde of small brown figures that moved across the cavern floor and vanished into a narrow cave.

Here the cat paused to rake the two of them with those blazing yellow eyes again. Relkin approached slowly, carefully. The cat made no movement, gave no growl of warning.

When Relkin was within a sword’s thrust, the cat gave a series of small, plaintive miaows, turned and ran on into the narrow little side cave. Relkin and Lagdalen followed.

After a few yards they came to a place where the cave dwindled to a hole just two feet high and three wide. The cat slipped through this and miaowed from the other side.

“It wants us to follow—come on.” Relkin crawled in. It was a close fit, but after about six feet of narrow tunnel he emerged in a wider space. The same pale luminescence was at work here from the ubiquitous slime weed.

The rats had placed Lessis on a pile of hay that had been brought there by unknown hands.

Rats were grouped up around Lessis in a sea of little bodies, but none approached closer than the edge of the straw. Their discipline was extraordinary, even when the cat leapt in among them and lashed out, again without using its claws. They merely darted away from it and made no attempt to retaliate.

The cat moved close to Lessis’s face, sat down and gazed at her in the most solemn way.

Relkin and Lagdalen exchanged startled glances. There was a long silence, and around them they could feel a rising sensation, a power that emanated from the horde of small animals. The air seemed to tingle and the hair rose on their hands, arms, the back of their necks, and all the way down their spines.

“Can you feel it?” asked Lagdalen after a moment.

“Feel it? It’s almost lifting me off the floor!”

“It’s for her—they are doing it for her.”

“But what is it? What are they doing?”