Bloodstone (32 page)

A weird and unexpected barrier abruptly stood before him. In a soaring arc, the sorcerous disk lofted itself across the embattled encampment, seeking the alien force in obedience to the priestesses' conjuration. No visible agency moved the shining disk; like a miniature image of the moon, it swung across the nighted sky, hovering at the height of a tall man to obstruct Kane's passage.

Kane paused, for a second uncertain. Dead-white as the full moon of winter, the cold circle of light hung in the air before him, a challenge to his advance. Here loomed sorcery, potent sorcery whose nature was unknown to Kane. That its presence threatened him was undeniable, but the character and the potential of the menace he could not guess.

Destroy it! came the sneering whisper to his mind.

No longer hesitant, Kane struck. A bolt of shimmering violence streaked from the bloodstone ring and speared the center of the hovering disk.

The circle of light seemed to vibrate, its luminance more brilliant for an instant, like an inconceivable silver gong that when struck, emitted a frequency far beyond human perception. It should have flared into a spewing mass of fused metal. Instead, its burnished surface bore no blemish.

Kane recoiled, his arm weak with numbing chill. The energy screen wavered, almost extinguished. With vampirish greed, the pale disk had absorbed the destroying beam of energy, sucked in the stream of power with a lusting hunger for more. Almost it seemed to reach for him with an awesome thirst.

Feeling the first shadow of alarm, Kane returned to the attack. Again the lance of green fire leaped forth--brighter, more powerful than before. A mighty wall of stone would have been pulverized to molten cinders by the blast, yet the saucer of light only increased its pale brilliance. Prepared for its reaching hunger, Kane's shimmering energy shield braced him against the leech-like force.

Kane retreated, aware of the peril he faced. The soldiers had paused in their flight, daring to hope that Selonari's magic promised succor. Shaken by the failure of their god to destroy this sorcerous shield, the Rillyti croaked nervously. The battle held its breath.

Angrily Kane signed to his servants, wondering if physical force might prove effective. Spears and clubs hurtled against the lustrous disk. Its cold effulgence grew more intense, and the missiles that streaked toward its surface silently vanished at the instant of impact. His mind grappled with the dilemma. Thus far, this wizard's shield seemed to be only a defensive weapon--although this made it dangerous enough. Without the destructive power of the bloodstone ring, his inhuman allies would be heavily outnumbered by Dribeck's army. Victory could easily desert him.

The torchlit knoll drew his attention--the brightly patterned pavilions beneath the Temple's pennant, ringed by heavy guard. Fantastically gowned priestesses postured about the glowing altar, their distant chant inaudible, but their attitude of invocation expressive. Recognizing the source of the power which challenged him, Kane responded decisively. Turning from the metal disk, he directed a tremendous flame of energy toward the figures on the knoll.

Faster than thought, the luminous circle flashed before him. The destroying emerald bolt struck the interposing disk and was absorbed into the sorcerous shield. Reeling at the numbing, suctioning force, Kane redirected his attack. Again and again the lance of death leaped from his fist. Relentless as a shadow, the hovering disk followed his every movement, drawing the searing energy into its being with magnetic certainty.

Kane sensed Bloodstone's bated rage. Destroy it! Tonight my power grows almost limitless!

Determined to end this impasse, Kane turned upon the hanging circle of light. No probing test of strength, no intercepted thrust, this! Now let their sorcery feel the awesome might of Bloodstone!

A blinding torrent of coruscating power poured from Kane's fist, energy far greater than that which had shattered Malchion's fortress, beyond that which had blasted a deep channel through the width of Kranor-Rill. Into the hovering disk tore the full destructive force of Bloodstone. Kane vanished in the consuming flow of energy--a humanoid point of incandescence that stood at the gate of this devastating release of unimaginable power.

Incredibly, the metal disk withstood the onslaught, defied a continuous beam of destructive force whose diameter was greater than that of the pale saucer. Now indeed it seemed a diminutive simulacrum of the moon. Its dead-pale light waxed brighter and brighter--reached out. Was the disk not growing in size as well?

Suddenly it came to Kane that the luminous disk was not merely absorbing the energy blasts--it fed upon them! Bloodstone's incalculable energies were. not overwhelming it--rather, the simulacrum was drawing power from the rays. Like an inconceivable vampire, the disk sucked in the cosmic energies of Bloodstone, grew larger, brighter, more powerful. Hungrier.

Its silver-white luminescence crept toward Kane, reached out for him, as the blinding disk drew closer, closer; ravening down the torrent of energy that fed its lust. Kane felt the cold brush of its caress now; even through the energy web, he felt its deadly, devouring chill. The pale fight of a demon moon swept over him, relentlessly seeking to engulf him in its consuming vortex.

Kane cried out. Bloodstone understood the trap into which it had fallen--knew this vampirish simulacrum was feeding on the very power that should have destroyed...

With shattering finality, the shrieking barrage of energy ceased. The explosive silence was a shock; eyes blinded by the incandescent torrent saw painful afterimages, stars of blackness.

The moon disk hung alone on the causeway. Of the Master of Bloodstone there was no trace.

"What happened?" demanded Dribeck. "Is Kane dead?"

"If not dead, then defeated... for the moment," Teres put forward grimly. "I think Bloodstone snatched him back to Arellarti at the last instant--Kane mentioned that the causeway is an extension of Bloodstone's power radius. If so, we'll likely see more of Kane before the night is spent."

Dribeck glanced toward the hovering moon disk. "If he returns, our shield awaits him. For now, his army still threatens us."

Leaderless, the Rillyti had shaken off their stunned hesitation, so that once more they pressed their assault. Fearful to pass close to the luminous disk which had defeated their master's seemingly invincible power, the batrachians clambered from the causeway short of the menacing light and churned through the fringe of the morass to reach the dry ground. Purposefully they advanced, the fearsome legions of Kranor-Rill, obedient to Bloodstone's silent command.

Now the combat surged in fury. Men poured back to the yet smoking ruins of the bulwarks, blades slashing with a fierce will. The power of Bloodstone was broken; the all-conquering bolts of destruction had been defeated by the magic of their goddess. After the banishment of such horror, near hysteria gripped the soldiers. Even the once terrifying Rillyti seemed no more than misshapen, bestial swordsmen after this cataclysmic confrontation of alien science and dread sorcery.

No milling rabble of sleep-fogged, unprepared soldiers, no fear-crazed mob, unmanned by Bloodstone's murderous power. These were battle-ready troops, fully armed and fighting with feral spirit, from seasoned veteran to fuzz-cheeked youth. The Rillyti now were committed to desperate combat, pitted against men who fought for more than life--who battled to preserve their land and people from Bloodstone's evil shadow.

To the smouldering bulwarks the batrachians rushed, their golden blades aflame with hatred for mankind. In their savage brains burned the unrelenting command: Kill the human intruders! Kill the soft-fleshed weaklings! Kill them all!

The struggle swept over the sundered fortifications and drove the men back as ever more Rillyti lurched from the swamp. Armored as they were, their weapons of deadlier reach than the blades of men, the bufanoid killers tore through the line of soldiers like blood-lusting devils. Their greater stature, their inhuman strength--coupled with a total disregard for their personal safety--made the creatures the equal of any four human warriors.

Steel against alien bronze! Steaming human gore clotted with cool bufanoid blood in spreading stigmata across the torn earth. The soldiers fought doggedly, attacking the amphibians in small bands, while the Rillyti battled each for himself. To the humans was the advantage of intelligence over the bestial savages, and they were further aided by their greater agility. The awkward amphibians were unstoppable in head-on combat, when their powerful slashes could batter down any guard, split a man half in two. But if their vicious lunges could be evaded, a quick blade might thrust deep and recover before the creature could parry. Once the strategy proved itself, soldiers harried the towering monsters like a snapping, snarling pack, engaged their weapons long enough to let another man swing a hamstringing blow. Crippled, not long did a batrachian flop upon the forest earth before vengeful blades hacked out its life.

In uncanny, desperate battle the degenerate remnants of an elder race--one that had mastered the stars--locked in mortal strife with the young race who boasted to be Earth's new masters. In darkness they fought, beneath the deeper shadow of the forest, where the wan light of the stars, the smoky flare of the fires dared not creep. Chaos ruled the battlefield as combatants slashed blindly, swinging wild blows, dying from unseen wounds. Here the Rillyti had an edge, for their bulging eyes pierced the darkness more surely than human sight. But their looming bulk could not be mistaken, even in the near absence of light. In blind ferocity man grappled batrachian, slew or was slain. The ground became strewn with the fallen, though no man knew for certain the number of the dead, nor witnessed the manner of their passing.

Crempra had scrambled up a tree early in the strife, and from this vantage he could view such of the swirling struggle as could be discerned. Dribeck's nimble cousin was an indifferent swordsman, and the roaring melee was not to his liking. Five quivers of arrows dangling in near reach, he braced himself on his perch and loosed his bow with deadly effect on any Rillyti unlucky enough to enter the light of the bonfires.

So it happened that the gigantic batrachian whose half-deflected stroke had driven Teres to her knees in a daze halted its killing blow at the top of its arc and howled in death agony as a feathered shaft spouted black ichor from its eye. Teres rolled away from the toppling monster, scarcely taking time to wonder at this last-instant succor.

The harried remnants of her soldiers closed about her once again, while she shook the fog from her head and recovered her sword. The blade was sticky with bufanoid gore, and the shield she bore was chopped and beaten. Only her sudden speed had spared her life in numerous duels with shambling assailants thrice her weight. Undaunted by yet another brush with death, she cursed her men for pausing to rest when the murderers of their nation waited to die. Her words spurred them on. Led by-this vengeful she-wolf--whose snarling face showed the scar of past combat, but no shadow of the fatigue that tortured them now--the haggard handful of Breimen's perished army stormed back into the struggle.

Dribeck fought shoulder to shoulder with Asbraln, who made it evident that he considered Selonari's lord an unblooded stripling consigned to his protection. There was yet firm strength in the aged shoulders--or Dribeck had always thought of him as aged--and the doughty chamberlain swung his archaic two-handed broadsword with greater skill than Dribeck could equal. The younger man forgot his chagrin when twice Asbraln's heavier weapon struck back the Rillyti blade that would have ripped Dribeck apart.

The Selonari lord had waded into the thick of the battle, his personal guard thinning as the fighting roared and clashed through the night. Strategy? Only to kill--to kill your foe before you died in his place. There could be no other strategy; the darkness cloaked this war to the death, and with both forces totally committed, it was a grappling contest of brutal ferocity. Dribeck loathed the primitive savagery of the battle--it offended his reasoning nature. But his mind now abandoned its concern with tactics, so that he fought with the instinctive logic of survival.

Who lived? Who lay dead? The living were anonymous writhing shapes in the darkness nearby, bestial curses and yells beyond the close perimeter of vision. The dead--they were the limp and slippery debris that rolled beneath your boot. Only where the priestesses' knoll shed a circle of light could a fair glimpse of the battle be caught. There, Dribeck noted in relief, the cordon of soldiers still formed an unbroken ring, bulwarked now by scores of the slain.

Long ago he had planned this battle with care, counted the numbers, directed the preparations. Then it had seemed that his army well outnumbered Kane's minions, that it was only a matter of tempting Kane to come to him, that without Bloodstone the battle would be fought on human terms. But this smothering darkness made victory an invisible prize, and to know whose hand now closed upon it required speculation for which he had no time. The puddles of light gave no more than tormenting hints. For all Dribeck could be certain, he and his men battled alone, an island lost in the Rillyti tide.

Asbraln staggered and fell back beneath an amphibian's charge. His broadsword rang as it blocked the descending blade of bronze, but the man was winded. Automatically Dribeck lashed out his sword and severed the webbed fist halfway up the forearm. The creature howled, blinded him with its spurting blood, and as Dribeck hesitated, the spear in its other hand skittered past his shield. Its point had force enough behind it to tear through the mail tunic and gash his twisting side.

With a gasp of dread, Asbraln laid open the Rillyti's belly with an upward thrust through its crotch. Ignoring the monster's death throes, the chamberlain clutched his lord's shoulders. The other heard Asbraln cry out the name of Dribeck's father, whose name the older man seldom spoke. "The spear! Milord, you're a dead man!" groaned Asbraln.

Dribeck wiped the stinging blood from his eyes, dully waited for the first searing lancination of the Rillyti venom to creep through his limbs. But fatigue was the only agony, and the shallow gash on his ribs seemed less a pain than this breathless weariness. His men were watching him in stunned pity. It seemed appropriate that his final words should be such to stir future generations, if he could utter something immortal before consciousness left him. "Well, damn it," he muttered, unable to compose his thoughts.