King of the Bastards (17 page)

Almost on cue, the dead hairy beasts sprang to life and swung
their arms, braining a few braves that got greedy and went in to strike close.
Rogan snarled as he directed the wedge to sweep across this bizarre force of
hairy ape men. They killed that which was already dead, beheading a few, sure
that a headless beast cannot fight. Soon, Rogan learned he had to extract the
legs to insure this, as they kept going even with their brains disconnected.

Many Kennebeck warriors perished, but the attack and addition of
the outlanders proved more numbers than the zombies could take.

Rogan peered around the side of the lodge, seeing mounds of
bleached skulls by the drums and told Javan. “Arm them with arrows again. Take
them from the bodies. Have them dispatch these damned giants down there. Fill
them with arrows. They seem fixed on the caves.”

Javan instructed the Kennebeck savages and then said, “Hear that
terrible sound in the cave, sire? What is it?”

Rogan shook his mane of graying hair. “I know not, Javan. It
sounds like steel on steel or the grinding of great millstones.”

Zenata held her ears and said, “It is the teeth of the gods!”

Rogan frowned. “I hope not, but too much for me to think on, for
sure. The giants on the drums will be easy pickings if they are so devoted to
calling…whatever is in the cave. Lead these savages at them with axes after the
arrows, Javan. I must go in the lodge.” He hoped Akibeel would back him up as
he promised.

Javan did as instructed. He led a new wedge, flanked by the
women. They released a volley of arrows and started forward beyond the lodge.

WITH A GREAT
effort, Rogan pulled the heavy flap of
the lodge open, and scarlet smoke filtered out. Out of the corner of his left
eye, Rogan saw the mouth of the cave disturbed in the distance. A terrible, red
colored, shambling horror appeared in the distance. It was not human in shape
or gait. Deciding to let Javan and the savages have at this new arrival, he
pressed on to his task at hand.

Rogan ducked and entered the lodge, ready to cut down the shaman
Amazarak from his hanging pose. Indeed, the shaman hung suspended from the
ceiling, pectoral muscles impaled through with bony spikes. Amazarak looked nearly
to be a twin of Akibeel, only a great deal younger. A deep, throaty roar came
from the shaman as a glowing, disembodied head rose from his face. It was as if
a helmet overshadowed the wizard’s head and had come to life. Rogan almost
swung his sword and then looked down. All around the perimeter of the lodge
stood tiny jars of clay. So many that Rogan froze, astonished at their number.

He moved forward and bounced back, as if a rubbery barrier unseen
threw him back. Again, Rogan tried to attack and once more got repelled. He
cursed the shaman and sliced with his sword, as if that could break it. To no
avail, he couldn’t go further.

Suddenly, in his mind, Rogan could feel the flood of a fire he
feared so much. He felt the presence of magic and his barbarian nature
bristled. The voice was not that of Amazarak, but Akibeel.

“I am in your mind, King of Albion! Destroy the jars. They
contain the souls of those stolen. They are how he controls the hairy beasts
and feeds the power beyond.”

When he tried to raise a boot or move toward the jars, he found
them behind the barrier he couldn’t cross. Rogan cursed and tried again, then
cussed himself for being foolish.

From outside the lodge, Rogan could hear panicked voices of the
Kennebeck people. Perhaps Javan and the new warriors could not easily best the
giants or the horror they called from the cave. He stepped forward, feeling the
invisible push of Amazarak and the evil he played host to, but found himself
almost paralyzed. Knowing the consequences if he failed, Rogan drew back his
sword and prepared to attack the jars again. With a sizzling blanket at his
back, he felt his body crushing into the invisible barrier to his front.
However, the rubbery wall gave a little, bending, but not much.

Amazarak hissed from inside the disembodied face, “Look, lost
King of Albion!”

Rogan stared at Amazarak, and on the shaman’s belly appeared a
glowing orb of green light. In this orb, he saw a vision like a moving drawing
of what looked like fair Albion. He could see a bloody altar and a dark
skinned, bony wizard chanting over the grisly bits of an infant.

Eyes shut tight, Rogan growled, “Begone, swine!”

“That is your grandchild, a boy, I would guess,” Amazarak cooed,
his voice sounding as if it were doubled in tempo. “I ate his soul up,
barbarian, a soul fresh from the melting pot of the mountain all of you
barbarians look to—Zenghaus! I ate him and shat him in a jar.”

“Shut up,” Rogan hissed, struggling, sandwiched between the
invisible walls.

“Now, he is my slave, serving me with his power to help bring
chaos to his realm.”

Rogan’s heart raged, wondering if this image was a deception, or
if the shaman had really absorbed his grandson’s life-force as Wodan imparted
it with the spirit to fight. He waited too long and hesitated, thinking of the
sacred mountain Zenghaus beyond Thule, Wodan’s home. Rogan’s body froze and he
couldn’t fight against it any more.

Akibeel shouted in Rogan’s mind. “Your son Rohain still lives,
barbarian! Rohain escaped the sacrifice, but your grandson did not.”

Rogan felt the dour sadness of loss, a pull on the heart that
made him want to drink and fight badly. He felt it seldom, only when a loved
one perished, but the sensation returned now. He swallowed hard and even that
took effort, still imprisoned in the forces about him.

Akibeel shouted, “Fight on! There is always hope. Reach out with
your mind into the mind of Amazarak! Join with your grandson!”

“How?” Rogan groaned, confused by the words in his head.

Another voice hissed in his brain, “
WITH ME!
”

Though he closed his eyes, Rogan saw the speaker in his mind, a
tall, wise figure, with features like a statue formed in the sands near Shynar.
Imperious and arrogant, clothed in a cloak made of a single, seamless sheet,
Rogan understood he saw the one who called himself the Doorkeeper earlier.

His mouth didn’t move, but Rogan’s mind wondered,
What are you
doing in my head?

Just here, waiting for you.

Can you destroy this magic force?

This isn’t magic. Pissing into the wind and not getting wet,
that’s magic. This is just energy, like warmth from the sun yet stronger,
malleable and thick.

Rogan thought,
Can we pray for moonlight?

We? You can pray all you like, but use your brains, not your
back for once.

I’ll use anything to crush this bastard.

That’s the spirit, no pun intended. Now then, each time you
move, you fail, correct?

Fucking brilliant, Doorkeeper.

Yet, your sword falls ahead, but doesn’t bounce back and hit
you.

The Doorkeeper’s words rang true. However, he couldn’t strike out
now, and the force had kept him from striking the wizard in the first place.
Angry at the thought of him once able to throw his sword and be done with it
all, Rogan thought,
Why do you aide me with words and not actions?

You know the riddles of iron and steel, don’t you? It is
deeper than the weapon. Besides, once you finish here, I need you as a weapon
inside the cave.

Rogan struggled but could not move his arms or legs. He cursed
himself, for the wizard Amazarak used Rogan’s passion and instincts to distract
him, to trap him thus. Outside, he could hear the inhuman squeal of a horror
unnamable.

Then, Rogan’s eyes opened and he glanced down. He pondered the
tales of iron and steel and grinned. Rogan relaxed and opened his hand. His
heavy broadsword fell. As the mind of Akibeel burned around the skull of Rogan,
he heard the Doorkeeper give out sarcastic applause. The mighty sword tumbled
and crashed into the clay jars.

Amazarak stopped laughing as several of the jars broke. The rage
of the evil shaman exploded in a howl that sent a wind around the interior of
the lodge. As this wind traveled, the covering of the lodge peeled away. Rogan
took a single step, froze again, unable to proceed, but saw several of the
hairy beasts scattered about dead.

Rogan concentrated, uncomfortable with thinking of fighting in
such a way, but felt a dim, weak part of this Amazarak. Suddenly, he realized
what the shaman was. He was nothing but a crossroads, a conduit for traveling
materials. When Akibeel roared in Rogan’s mind, a sudden burst of light spewed
from his head and into that of Amazarak. As this beam of light focused on him,
the shaman swung on his supports and raged, “Good try, Akibeel! His dark gods
never show him favor save for at birth. You have chosen a poor servant in this
barbarian for his god never intervenes!”

The covering of the lodge blew away completely and the sun grew
dim as a swirling wind of dust started to surround them. Rogan fell flat on the
lodge floor, free from the invisible walls. Before Amazarak could face him,
Rogan rolled over, arm slapping out lazily, disturbing the jars further.
Realizing where he lay, Rogan swung down his fist, shattering a couple of the
jars, and then arose. He stomped like a wobbly baby with his feet, crushing
more of the jars. Amazarak reeled and screamed.

Akibeel sang out in Rogan’s mind, “Destroy all of the jars,
Rogan! They are the souls of the beasts he controls! Without them, he is
naught. This is his reward for bringing the thing from beyond
flesh
!
Croatoan has no need for souls! He wants flesh so the shaman takes the bits
left over.”

In a wild frenzy, gaining more power as he stomped, Rogan went
feral, destroying the jars. Each time he struck, in the war against Javan and
the Kennebeck folk, a hairy beast lost its resolve to fight. Whatever danced
out of the cave also stopped, but he couldn’t see what that was exactly.

Rogan thought the savages from down the mountain would be gone by
then, but then saw his error. The force of red savages, his tribe of new
barbarians, grasped the spears they left at the lip of the settlement and
charged back again. Their fleeing was a ploy to draw the hairy beasts into the
open and away from their drumming. The savages pierced the beasts, running them
through and killed many. Those no longer under the spell of Amazarak fled into
the forest.

The dark shaman came down from his perch and stood over the last
jar, a tiny vessel. Amazarak scooped up this jar and ran toward the cave,
howling, “That is the soul of your grandson, Rogan! Crush it and all is lost
for him!”

Broke from his frenzied spell of death dealing, Rogan scooped up
his sword and ran after the wizard.

§

When Rogan chased Amazarak into the cave, something else
bolted out, passing him by at a different angle, not even looking his way.
Javan saw Rogan take note of the new arrival, but didn’t do a double take.
Javan, nonetheless, did.

At first, he mistook the running figure for another of the hairy
beasts with big feet, save for that by the breasts and anatomy tagged it as
female…and the beast was hairless from the waist up. Beast? Yes, he thought as
she stomped out and made a bead on their clustered group, partially human
wasn’t enough. Like a fawn or satyr, her lower portion curled back like a
deer’s hindquarters, legs ending in cloven hooves that stabbed into the ground
like she held a grudge on the earth. Though her stomach looked full of squared
muscles like an athlete, her breasts, though tiny, numbered more nipples than
Javan could count. Her elongated head, almost horse-like, held a mouth of fangs
and came crowned with long tresses, braided and waxed in long locks that
extended to her waist.

While he took up his bow and shouted for the others to do
likewise, she planted her hooves and shook her head about. That’s when Javan
saw the tail. When the thing extended out from behind her, swaying in the air,
he half expected it to rattle. When the sunlight showed a gleam off its tip, a
hooked sickle like that of a scorpion, Javan wished it had rattled.

At this revelation, a few of the Kennebeck turned and ran for the
forest. As they ran each shouted the word “Giwaka,” so that’s what Javan named
her. It only took a few moments as she charged forward at the few Kennebeck
braves who did stand their ground to fight for Javan to comprehend the others’
horror. He’d never seen a giant female satyr cannibal, nor had he heard of such
a beast in his bedtime tales, but after witnessing the arrows blunt on the
beast and seeing her leap onto the braves and take a bite from the face of one,
he wouldn’t soon forget her.  

Her hooves crushed into each one as she landed, stomping through
the left thigh of one brave and burying another’s foot into the turf. Her long
fingernails sank into the chest of the one sporting a ruined leg, as she
grabbed a handful of the other brave’s face, yanking him in close to bite his
cheek off. All stood dumbstruck in terror as she didn’t just spit out the
grisly piece, but immediately went in for more mauling, the brave screaming,
biting off his nose and rutting in the nasal cavity. She dropped him and came
up with a gray piece of slime in her mouth — Javan wondered if it was brain —
and sucked it in. A long tongue slathered out, forked on the ends, and she
turned to the other brave in full, biting mouthfuls of his shoulder off and
tearing his chest open like she opened shuttered doors of a saloon.