Dark Crusade (5 page)

"But a new general would be expected to make a personal appraisal of the situation," Esketra persisted.

Jarvo stood silent. The breeze rustled his fine blue cloak and cooled his silvered mail. It carried a scent of her perfume upon the breath of roses, and his palms still sweated against his tight trouser. Esketra remained an arm's length from him and showed him her exquisite profile.

"You were badly burned by Kane's fire?" she wondered, gazing sidelong at his bandaged face.

Jarvo's mouth felt dry. "The surgeons applied unguents and compresses to soften the scarring. They say my left eye will never know day from night."

"Blinded," mused Esketra with a shiver. "Maimed because you sought to preserve my name from blemish. I owe you a great debt of gratitude."

She held her slim fingers over the surface. An iridescent-scaled body lurched from the pool, nuzzled for her fingers. She held nothing in her hand, and, still groping, the bright fish tumbled back into the pool. The other goldfish, assuming it had accepted a morsel, set upon it.

Esketra laughed with the willows and the fountain. She extended her fingers for Jarvo's kiss.

"Be certain to come see me," she smiled. "When you return from your your of the northern frontier."

From deep within the forests, terror crawled forth. It's tentacled advance was as crushing and relentless as the numberless and strangling roots of the shadowy forestland--massive roots that twined endlessly through the soil, pried apart the crumbling rock beneath. Terror was power. Irresistible power of uncounted arms raised to destroy; power directed by one sinister mind that commanded its numberless creatures to pillage and to slay. Power was terror.

From out of the night and the forest, the Satakis ringed the city wall. For hours now Erill had listened to their chanting. From her vantage atop a flat roof she could see their torches flickering beneath the massive trees. Torches more numerous than the stars in the cloudless sky, enclosing Gillera as surely as the star-flecked night enclosed the forest.

Erill smelled the soot of their torches, reflected that soon the cloudless skies would be obscured with the smoke of Gillera. Bitterly the girl cursed the lord mayor and his aldermen for their stupidity in believing the city walls could withstand such a siege. Further she cursed the spiteful turn of fortune that had left her carnival troupe caught up in the advance of the Satakis, trapped here in Gillera. As an afterthought she cursed the invidious fate that had destined her to become a mime in a threadbare travelling carnival.

She had seen a lot, lived a lot, for a girl not past her teens; that she would live to see more seemed to her problematical. If hers had been a hard life, its experience had in turn hardened Erill, tempered her with a resourcefulness and resilience that told her when to cringe and when to twist the knife. It was a toughness that served her well in the decade since her dimly remembered parents sold her to a brothel in Ingoldi.

Old Wurdis, who bossed the motley troupe of acrobats, conjurers, grifters and mimes, found her hidden in one of the wagons as they rolled away from Ingoldi and its inhospitable officials. Having no cause to love that city or its authorities, Wurdis let her remain with the carnival. He never forgot to remind the girl that every member of the troupe must do his part, earn his keep, pull his share of the load. His nagging homilies forever in her ears, Erill learned to do one thing and another for him and about the carnival. When someone left an asp in Wurdis' boot one night, another assumed management of the loose-knit caravan, and Erill made her own way.

She was thin, with the flat muscles and agile limbs of an acrobat, and her figure seemed to have attained such fullness as it ever would. She had a firm jaw, a square chin, full lips and straight nose, and the sort of mobile features that remained expressive under a painted mask. Her hair was a close-curled shock of blonde, and her eyes were a shade of green that matched the fillet of jade beads she always wore.

Jade also was the tiny pipe from which she sucked the last tingling lungful of opiated hashish. Erill blew a wreath of smoke toward the wavering torches beyond the wall, coughed softly, and despondently examined the oily lump of ash in the stained bowl. It was only ash, and crumbled beneath the stub of reed taper. Erill cursed again. It was her last.

"You'd be advised to keep your wits about you tonight," admonished Boree, joining her along the parapet. "If the Satakis carry the wall, there's a chance to make a break during the street fighting."

"What the hell difference does it make, Boree?" Erill scowled at the pock-faced fortune teller whose wagon she shared. "There's no refuge in Gillera. We're trapped here. The Satakis will roll over these ancient walls in a single rush--and they'll massacre us all because these damn fools dared to resist them."

Boree shrugged her mannish shoulders. "Where there's life, there's a chance."

"Chance, hell."

Boree drew a flat ebony box from the purse at her belt. She released its lid, slipped the deck of lacquered black squares into her palm. "See what your chances are," she invited, extending the deck to Erill.

Erill made a motion to take the cards, then waved them aside. "Hell, I'll take my chances as I find them."

"Or as they find you," Boree intoned sombrely.

"Go haunt someone else tonight, will you?" Erill snapped. "Whatever's coming, I just want to get enough of a load on so I won't feel it when it hits me."

"Just take the cards," Boree persisted.

If only to get rid of her, Erill accepted the deck of twenty-seven black cards, shuffled them expertly, cut three from the deck and lay them face down on the parapet.

Boree's long-nailed fingers flipped them over. Erill tried to peer past her shoulder, but the older woman's black tangle of hair obscured her view. Silently Boree returned the cards to their ebony casket.

"Well?"

"You're too hashish-sotted to do it right," the dark-haired woman told her gruffly. Not meeting Erill's gaze, she quickly turned and left the rooftop.

Erill swore and hugged her shoulders. She wore only a thin bandeau and slitted cotton skirt of calf length. It seemed suddenly cold, alone here in the night. The last night of her life, most probably.

Damn Boree! Erill had wandered up here for solitude and hashish-tinted oblivion. Boree's gloomy presence had restored a grim sense of reality to the night.

"I don't want to die," Erill whispered to the night.

"Of course not," the night answered.

Erill caught her breath, spun about. The hashish... of course.

"Nor is there need for you to die," the night assured her.

Erill pressed a knuckle to her teeth, felt for the triangular-bladed poniard she wore at her belt.

A portion of the darkness detached itself. It was a figure in a black robe, face hidden in shadowy cowl. Erill had seen the priests of Sataki in her girlhood in Ingoldi. She knew that she looked upon one now.

"Only those who oppose Sataki shall die," the cowled figure whispered. "It is the rulers of Gillera who thus deny Sataki's power, and not Gillera's people. What a pity that the masses must suffer for the sins of their rulers."

Erill stared at the shadowy figure, still uncertain whether this was reality or some hellish apparition born of the opium-tainted hashish.

"The choice is yours," whispered the priest, advancing as she pressed her back to the parapet. "Sataki or death. Choose now, girl!"

Erill's hand closed upon the hilt of the poniard, then froze there. For now the moonlight shone brightly enough to see that there was nothing but shadows without the black cowl.

"Choose!

"Sataki!" breathed Erill in a gasp, as the creature of shadow loomed before her.

"Wisely chosen, girl. But be certain that there is no turning back."

Erill nodded dumbly.

"Take this." A shadow-filled sleeve extended above her outstretched hand. A cold smooth weight fell against her palm. It was a jet-black disc of stone. Vaguely Erill knew it for a replica of the gold medallions worn by the priests of Sataki. Her skin shrank from its alien touch.

"No one will pay you heed," the whisper continued. "You shall serve Sataki in this."

The shadow whispered further commands, made snickering promises and insinuations that burned through Erill's consciousness like acid on bare flesh.

Erill cried out, as one from nightmare. With a dry laugh, the black robe collapsed upon itself, rustled hollowly onto the rooftop, dissolving as it fell. When she gaped in terror at her feet, the roof tiles were barren of cloth or flesh.

A hashish nightmare?

A cold, sinister disc of jet lay clutched in her palm.

Dimly Erill heard a voice within her soul, shrieking for her to hurl the evil medallion into the night. But the shadow had given her certain commands, and she could only obey. With dream-like steps, Erill turned from the parapet and descended into the fear-laden streets.

There had been an attempt to enforce military curfew, but the mobs of refugees seeking vain asylum within Gillera had so overflowed the city that the effort was abandoned. Inns, hostelries and caravanserai were all filled beyond floorspace. When disused buildings and empty hovels were filled to the point of collapse, refugees spilled into streets and squares in makeshift huts, tents, wagons, or whatever fell to hand. Others filled alleys and doorways with nothing but their tattered garments for covering. The city fathers had at first thought to swell the ranks of Gillera's defenders by admitting all who sought shelter within its walls. When they at last closed the gates to all without, the flood of refugees had overburdened Gillera's facilities for food, water and sanitation. While the city's high walls might withstand the Satakis, Gillera could never endure a lengthy siege.

Terror strangled Gillera in a thousand chill tentacles. The city was doomed. All within recognized its inexorability. All that remained was the hour of its coming. The Satakis were merciless. No army, no city could stand before them. The choice was capitulation or annihilation. Gillera had chosen to defy the Dark Crusade.

The chants of the Satakis carried from the nighted forest and over the beleaguered walls and into the terror-haunted streets. A hundred thousand within listened to the voice of doom, knowing in an hour or a day or another day that doom would engulf them.

Dull faces watched Erill without interest as she passed by them. Taverns overflowed into the streets, until their stores of wine and ale were exhausted. Men and women reeled and sprawled along the streets, heedless in the final haze of dissipations. Houses stood barred and barricaded, frightened eyes squinting past shuttered windows. Temples were mobbed with wailing throngs, beseeching Thoem or Vaul to protect them from the terror of the hordes of a far older god. In the hidden recesses of secret fanes, certain horrible mystic rites were performed with anxious speed.

Now and again a voice called out to Erill, inviting the girl to share a cup or an embrace, begging her for food or coin, challenging her to join in prayer or sacrifice in this final hour. Erill passed by, seeming neither to hear their voices, nor to see their fear-twisted faces. A shadow had spoken to her, and all else seemed no more than a dream and the echo of a dream.

The night was cloudless, the stars cold and bright. Yet it seemed to Erill that a legion of shadows marched across the heavens, writher across the lurid moon. Coiling down from the abyss of night, the shadows danced and slithered from beyond the stars, crept behind her in a hellish pack as she followed the winding streets and alleys of Gillera.

The soft scuff of her sandals came distant and dimly to her cars. The rest of the city seemed enveloped in black cobweb, muffling even the throb of her heart. Her skin was pale with the night's chill, but the only thing Erill felt was the cold, evil disc that burned her clenched fist.

The city gate was a glaring brilliance of light that stung her eyes. Erill hesitated a moment, then strode forward.

The relic of wars of past centuries, the gates of Gillera were ponderous valves of cast bronze, heavily fortified from twin barbicans. Grim-faced guardsmen manned the fortifications, knowing that an attack must come from this quarter, unless the Satakis were prepared to sustain ruinous casualties along the wall. While a human wave with scaling ladders might carry a portion of the wall, they would have to cross the outer defenses of dry moat and stake-set earthworks under murderous fire from archers behind the parapet.

Tense figures stared out into the night, watching the growing sea of wavering torchlight. Within the gateway, soldiers and armed citizens milled about, talking in low voices, seeing to various tasks, catching snatches of sleep. A few gave note to the ashen-faced girl who wove a course between the jostling bodies--from her set features, presumably seeking a lover or kinsman amongst the massed defenders. There were many such, seeking a tearful farewell on this night.

Erill's mission was otherwise. Before the brazen gates Erill halted. Cold seeped through her breast, her heart no longer seemed to beat. The hateful blaze of fires and cressets scathed her flesh. A number of heads turned curiously toward the blonde girl who paused before the beleaguered portal.

Moving as in dream, Erill hurled the onyx disc against the massive bronze doors, and cried out the phrases the shadow had whispered to her.

A last-instant presentiment of doom. Shouts as those nearest to the girl whirled to seize her, silence her.

Then darkness smothered the fires and the torches, and from the stars the shadow pack crawled down to slay and to slay.

Erill screamed, fell back--shielding her face in her arms. To see a man writhe beneath the strangling embrace of his own shadow is a monstrous thing, nor does the vision seem less hideous when it is mirrored over a hundred times.

The blackness, riven by choked screams, was absolute, and clotted the area of the portal like some vast and misshapen spider. Erill heard her own voice screaming felt the hypnotic spell of the shadow lift from her soul. It was like an awakening from nightmare, and to reality that offered no refuge from the embrace of horror.