Styx & Stones, page 71
part #1 of Tales of the El Defensor Series
An emergency bail out, the plane and their investment gone in a ball of flame, then those evil dogs, Rodriguez ripped apart and just now, Vieira. This could not be happening; it just could not be.
The hounds around the cage started to get restless again and Rowan stifled her panic with a low moan. The Scintarns agitation meant only one thing. The creature was coming back again. The others in the cage tensed alongside her: Carlos, wringing his hands as he always did when he was nervous. The fat man in the robes who had been pacing the cage until the sound had stopped him in his tracks. Finally, the young one with the injured arm, who had been sitting quietly contemplating some great plan, he permitted no one else to know.
They all understood how the selection process worked. The monster would glide in select his next victim then tear them apart and feed the hounds with the remains. Rowan had also discovered the point of the glowing fans circling the wizened figure. Initially they had made no sense, seemingly random, floating in the air like some illusionist trick. Colours flashing in no particular order. Opening, shutting, spinning and turning.
Click clack.
Vieira had solved the enigma for her, resisted his selection, and earning a serious mauling from the hounds. He had tried to fight them off, to escape, by crawling up to the feet of the hideous figure so he would call the sleek black creatures off. His thoughts of flight had disappeared the moment he had looked up and seen the flickering fans up close. It was as if the swirling pattern of colours had taken all of his resistance away. Flicking a switch and killing all resistance. Almost like a case of powerful hypnosis.
His screams had been all too real when the creature started dismembering him. She remembered how she had jumped when the sound split the air, how she had tried to block her ears as the sounds became weaker, his pleas more urgent, until he was begging at the end.
Click clack, snap, snap.
The hounds moved forwards into the cage, teeth bared, herding them and splitting the group again at a silent signal from their master. Resistance received the punishment of sharp bites and torn bleeding flesh, so they all moved away as the creatures focused in on Carlos.
Rowan hated herself for the feeling of relief that flooded through her mind, her guilt crushing her spirit even further as her last true friend was taken to be eaten alive.
The lights glowed softly in the darkness, the pastel colours slowly changing from their warm welcoming colours into the crimson that had only one end. The hounds moved away from the cage, their attention firmly on the food readied for them. Then the screams began again.
She threw her hands over her ears, trying to blot out the sound, but knowing it was futile. Then she walked as far away from the cage door as possible and sank down onto the dank floor, backing herself into a corner, emotionally drained as her feelings fought the terror within.
The cage seemed much larger now there were less of them in here. The man in the robes had stopped pacing and was now looking around as if he had lost something. What was he looking for?
Then it dawned on her. They were the only two people left in the cage.
The younger man had gone.
Kerian held his breath and gently placed his leather boot down between two sleeping Scintarns. The hounds continued to snore, content now they had fed. He tried to find the funny side to this situation, looking up at the far end of the room and the fifty slumbering creatures that lay between him and the exit.
Movement to the side showed Thomas in an equally perilous position. He stood astride two hounds that were too close to slip a leg between, his wide stances so exaggerated that he could have sat comfortably across Saybier if the horse had been here. A soft lump formed in Kerian’s throat. He fought to swallow it down and tried to understand why Thomas was waving his arms about. Was he about to over balance? Thomas’s glare seemed to indicate that Kerian had the problem.
He looked behind him and froze, noticing his cloak was dragging across the nose of one of the slumbering animals, and even as he watched, was moving up and down with the beast’s breathing. He carefully tried to lift the edge of the cloak, hitching up the dark material, unaware that the far end of his cloak dipped down in response.
Kerian moved forwards and felt his neck pull backwards, almost overbalancing him and dropping him onto the creatures he was stepping over. He looked about in horror to see what his cloak had snagged on, and saw that the paw of one of the Scintarns was now lying across its edge.
He rolled his eyes at his colleague and tried to make light of the absurd situation, but Thomas looked like he was practically having a fit from all the arm waving and jerking he was sending his way. Kerian carefully unclasped his cloak from his throat and started to gather it in, desperately trying to ignore the snores from the first fiend as his cloak settled across its nose again. He was damned if he was going to leave his cloak behind! It was a part of his uniform and he was not prepared to give it up.
Gathering the slack material up, Kerian lifted the trailing edge from ‘Snuffles’ once again, before looking at the trapped edge of the cloak with a critical eye. How was he going to get out of this one?
Thomas continued to dance about in the background, but Kerian ignored him. He had seen this done before; all he had to do was snap his wrists. He gripped the material tightly, slightly lifting the Scintarn’s paw from the floor then counted inside his head.
One… Two… Three.
Kerian snapped the material away with all the grace of a bull dancer from Folicia. The cloak shot up and the hound’s paw came down. He held his breath as the animal shifted into a more comfortable position and resumed its measured breathing then looked up at Thomas’s thunderous face.
What was he so mad about? It was his stupid idea to come in here in the first place. He looked forwards towards the exit, judging his next move, stepping lightly down between three other Scintarns, only to feel a warm squelch under his boot.
Oh, this was just getting better and better!
Aradol had noticed a weakness in the creatures that held them captive.
They were totally attentive and thorough as guards, until feeding time. He had watched it happen twice, both times, when they ate the first two unfortunate victims, they had herded and separated the prisoners, but as soon as the prey moved away, the hounds’ attentions followed the food.
Timing was everything.
When the creatures had taken the last man in uniform, Aradol had been quietly waiting, showing no resistance when the hounds came in to select their victim, keeping his head down, being non-adversarial.
As the Scintarns had turned to follow the latest victim, he had simply stood up and walked calmly out of the cage, straight through the open door. His heart had beat in his chest so loud that he thought it would give him away, but he had managed to hide behind the cage and get a better idea of his surroundings.
The beasts had turned back to the cage once they had received the prize of fresh food, pushing the cage door closed. It took all of Aradol’s nerves to tip-toe away towards the piles of trophies, getting down behind them and out of sight, before he allowed himself to breathe and try to calm the hammering in his chest.
The piles of belongings also gave Aradol an unexpected bonus. His father’s sword lay discarded like a piece of junk amongst the collection, and it had been relatively easy to slide the weapon from its resting place and instantly feel that little bit safer.
He hated leaving Ives behind, but he needed to figure out how they were to escape from here. The young adventurer, who had once hidden in plain sight as a waiter, turned his green eyes towards the small stairwell in the back wall and slowly eased himself towards the opening, pausing for the smallest moment to check the way was clear before setting off up the darkened steps.
The terrace above was devoid of any hounds, enabling Aradol to slip silently along the open space and risk a quick glance down below.
The cage was where he left it; Ives was pacing in an agitated fashion, clearly disturbed at Aradol’s unannounced departure. He could do nothing about this now without betraying his location, and Aradol did not intend to yield such an advantage.
He was going to find the monster that held them and he was going to explain to it the reasons why Aradol of Deane should not to be crossed. He scurried over to the opposite side of the terrace and looked down onto the area where the monster had always come from. The sight froze him in his tracks. It was like a slaughterhouse. There was blood everywhere, some long dried, some still glinting wetly in the flickering multi-coloured lights. Piles of picked clean bones had been pushed away to clear the floor before a mockery of a throne. There were areas of slime on the floor that could have only been rotting offal, discarded by even the hungry Scintarns. The stench was simply overpowering.
Aradol focused his attention on the throne, looking down at the creature perched there, and the loud slurping sounds coming from its lap. The hovering fans glowed brightly with each fresh wet sound, the colours racing from the wide ends of the fans, briefly flashing along fine translucent tubes, back into the main body of the monster they circled. The fans were actually part of its body, not floating freely around it as first thought.
The loud slurping continued; its source not yet apparent. Aradol leaned further forward to get a better view and noticed a thicker tube coming out of the hideous creature’s back. He followed the tube as it curled up over his shoulder and down into what appeared to be a sleeker, but definitely longer fan.
This fan remained folded closed; the end plunged into something currently hidden in the folds of the strange pale body. As he looked, another jagged pulse ran in time with a fresh slurping sound, a ripple of pink colour rising up from the fan, along the tube and back over into the creature’s back.
The slurping suddenly stopped, and Aradol observed the figure shaking the object its fan inserted into. Then it lifted the pale object up high, and Aradol thought he was going to be sick. It held the head of Carlos in its hands, the pulsing fan firmly embedded in the left eye socket, wiggling around and sucking at the remains of his brain tissue inside.
Aradol jerked away from the railing in horror, his hand coming up to his mouth to stop the gorge threatening to spill from his suddenly dry lips. What in the name of Adden was this thing?
The clatter from below made him cautiously approach his viewpoint once more. The empty skull bounced and skittered across the bones to come to rest against the back wall, and the monster below giggled, uttering the first proper sound Aradol had ever heard it make.
It rose to its feet, the translucent body floating down around it, its old wizened face looking around the room with eyes that appeared sightless. The fans started to glow anew, apparently invigorated by their latest feast, and they started to open and shut in the intricate pattern Aradol had come to recognise.
Open close, click clack.
With a speed that surprised the observer, it started to glide from the room heading back towards the cage again. The hounds started to howl in excitement as several began moving into the throne room to sit patiently in a routine that was clearly commonplace.
Aradol suddenly realised with a sinking heart the implications of the sound. They were about to feed again, and there was only Ives and the young woman left to choose from. The hounds may not have noticed his absence, but this monstrosity would not be fooled so easily. It would see he was gone and it would come looking for him.
His time was up. If he wanted to rescue his friend, it was now or never.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Are you sure there is nothing more we can do for you Marcus?” Abilene asked meekly, Plano and Austen standing alongside him, all three looking extremely ashamed and sporting bruises from their run in with Mathius several hours before.
They had been shocked to discover that what they had taken for Sherman had instead been some kind of monster and were even more horrified at the thought of what their mistaken actions had almost led to. As such, they were looking to make amends and ease their guilty minds. They had extended the shaded area beside Colette, getting blankets and pillows to prop the monk up and let him lounge on the deck like an exotic prince. Marcus had made it clear he had no intentions of sitting in the darkness below decks. He wanted to have the light around him no matter how poor the quality of that light was.
Marcus stared out from a swollen face that sported bruises of several impressive hues from black to violet and to yellow. His swollen lips causing his words to be slurred, his eye half closed, but despite the facial pain, the pain in his hand and the discomfort he felt on breathing, Marcus felt epic.
His faith had sustained him in his hour of need, moved him to do the right thing, to save a life and become a stalwart foe against evil. He felt vaguely amused by the attention shown by the three men, who had assaulted him, but he bore no ill will, it was simply a case of misreading the situation and he understood they were trying to remedy it in their own clumsy way.
“I’d like something to read.” Marcus slurred. “Anything you can find that will occupy my mind whilst we wait here.” The three men looked at each other blankly, trying to think where any books were located on the ship.
“I know!” Austen clicked his fingers. “I’ll be right back.” He headed off along the ship running the walkway to head below decks, and passed another bandaged member of the crew coming up on deck.
Weyn Valdeze breathed in deeply, trying to expand his chest and finding it only slightly uncomfortable to do so. The dressings to the arrow wounds on his chest were quite restrictive, but Violetta had been fussing over him and had worked her magical touch, and he was healing faster than expected. He was desperate to get in some bow practice and loosen some of the stiffness he felt in his shoulders. He looked over at the profile of the Rubicon and noticed some life belts, faded with age at various stations along her deck. Yes… They would do nicely.
He wandered over to where Marcus sat propped up and whistled at the different colours of Marcus’s face.
“That must hurt!” he remarked, sliding his bow from its leather case and setting about stringing his bow by putting one end into his instep and bending the polished wood behind his leg to slide the string up and give the bow its normal form and tension. “You look worse than me, and I managed to shoot myself several times with my own bow and arrow! Let me tell you, that takes some doing.”
Marcus tried to crack a smile but it simply hurt too much. He looked on as Weyn pulled an arrow from his quiver, spun the arrow in his palm and then set it to his bow.
The archer turned, checked his target and drew in one smooth motion, letting his arrow fly. The bow hummed as his arrow spun away, arcing high into the sky to slam down into the nearest lifebelt. Weyn smiled despite the discomfort across his chest. It felt good to be shooting again. He repeated the motion, drawing again and sighting at the next lifebelt station further along the Rubicon’s railing.
Again, the arrow flew true, slamming into the target.
Weyn reached for the next shaft and sighted at a dark object right at the far end of the deck. This lifebelt was a good distance away, one hundred and fifty yards easily, and a much harder target to define. He let loose, his arrow speeding unerringly towards the mark, but just before it hit, the target moved, dropping down to let the arrow fly harmlessly overhead.
The archer blinked in surprise, lifebelts did not move! He squinted trying to figure out where the life preserver had gone. As he looked, the dark shape returned to its stationary position and stared back at him.
“I do believe there is a dog watching us from that ship.” he remarked, turning to discuss his discovery with anyone who cared to respond.
Abilene and Plano continued fussing over Marcus, Colette was in some spell-induced trance, and Ashe was operating a set of bellows and pumping fiercely, whilst Commagin was staring over the edge of the ship at the sea.
Did anyone know there was a dog up there? The arrows slowly returned to his quiver, one by one, as he set off to voice his discovery.
He wandered over to join Ashe and Commagin and looked over the engineer’s shoulder at the stream of bubbles rising from the water, and then he took in the patched pipe Ashe was pumping the bellows into, as it jerked and moved along the side of the ship as if being pulled by something under the sea.
“Are they biting?” Weyn asked, attempting to start a conversation.
“Are what biting?” Ashe asked, pausing in his frantic pumping. “There isn’t a crabby thing on my head is there?”
“What are you doing?” Weyn asked Commagin, ignoring the mad reaction of Ashe rubbing his hands through his hair and whipping around as if something was crawling on his back. “What’s on the end of that tube?”
“My apprentice of course.” Commagin replied deadly serious, his normal scowl turning into a troublesome frown as the air bubbles suddenly stopped popping to the surface of the seawater.
Weyn laughed. They had to be playing a joke on him… Weren’t they?
Commagin started yelling at Ashe, calling him a buffoon, and that he needed to get pumping again. Ashe started yelling back that it was not fair and he had not signed up for this, reluctantly picking the bellows up and pumping once more, whilst the patched pipe jerked and wiggled as if something was agitated on the far end.
Weyn decided to slide slowly away and look for someone with a little more sense. He wondered where Thomas or Scrave and his hairy bodyguard were. He decided to try his luck below decks to find out where everyone was, and headed for the cabins below, just as Austen came back above decks with a pile of books in his arms.
“Do you know where Thomas is?” Weyn asked the rushing sailor.
“Can’t stop now!” Austen replied, flustered and panting from his run to collect the books Marcus wanted. “Have to give these to Marcus.”
Weyn watched him run by and shrugged his shoulders. Was no one going to give him a straight answer today? He wondered what was for lunch. Maybe he would talk to Violetta. She always seemed to know what was going on.
