H'ard Starts: The Early Waldrop, page 4
He saw that his “friend” at the gate was still on duty. Then he spurred his horse, came charging out of the darkness leading the girl’s horse. Halberds came up and crossbows levelled at them.
“What’s the meaning of this! Oh … it’s you,” said the guard; then he lowered his voice. “Does the desert call?”
“Mine enemies have found me. My sister and I must leave. If any come looking, you have never seen me. Understand? Hurry!” said Wanderer, taking on the gruff tones he had used before.
The guard signaled to open the gates. They began swinging open, showing the desert under the cold stars. Nothing ever looked better to Wanderer.
A horn blew. The guards stiffened. Clanks of mail and spears and the sounds of running men filled the air. “No one leaves the city. The girl has been stolen!” yelled a guard rounding a corner at the head of a dozen others.
The guard looked into Wanderer’s eyes. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to stay! We … ” He never finished. Wanderer shoved with his foot, and the guard went tumbling onto his back.
The gates were beginning to close. Wanderer spurred, and his horse leaped through the narrowing aperture. His arm was almost jerked off as the reins of the girl’s horse became tight. She leaned low and kicked. The horse flew through an instant before the gates clanged shut. Off they went into the darkness of the desert, quarrels and spears showering around them. Something hot and wet trickled down Wanderer’s left arm. He looked and was surprised to see a quarrel buried in the muscle. No time to worry about that …
Five days later, Wanderer lay in the shade of a date palm, surrounded by grass. They had stopped after a day-and-a-half of riding and had gone into a fitful sleep. Both were rested as were the horses. There only remained the short trip to Alexandria. Wanderer’s arm was still sore, but was healing. Somewhere, they had shaken the hordes that had poured from Fata el Ercha after then. Now, he sat in the shade, with the water tricklingfrom the spring in the middle of the oasis. The girl was sitting beside him. He put his arm around her almost before she knew it.
“You know, girl, that I don’t even know your name. Here we’ve been together for the better part of a week! And I’ve been too busy to really notice you, something I shall never forgive myself for.” Then: “It seems strange that a girl like you should want to live with some old fool, even if he does run the greatest nation in the world. Why … ”
The girl giggled; something she hadn’t done before.
He went on. He knew she wouldn’t be able to resist his next line. “Why not stay with me a while? I could offer you the desert stars, the burning sands, wine, ale, anything your heart desires and I can steal. You won’t get that when you’re locked up in a stuffy castle with rats and worms and cold stone, and an old man for a consort.”
Then he kissed her. Almost. She pulled away at the last instant. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she said quietly.
“Why, am I that bad?” he asked, moving closer again.
“No, but General Nayak and fifty of his men are watching you,” she said matter-of-factly.
Wanderer looked up. Somehow, the Pharaoh’s brother and his men had come within fifty feet of them and were looking on with quiet amusement.
“Ha! I see he brought you back, Tula. We didn’t think he’d make it. No one did,” said the general, grinning from ear to ear.
Tula ran up to the general, put her arms around him. “It was the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done, Uncle.”
Wanderer was confused. Tula? He’d heard the name many times. Who was named – Uncle Nayak!! But Nayak was the …
“Don’t worry, Wanderer. Daddy’s said lots worse things about you that I shouldn’t have heard,” she said, mounting her horse.
All the way to Alexandria, during the triumphal procession, and the banquet in his honor, Wanderer was in sort of a pinkish haze.
He smiled when he should, had good manners, spoke when he must, but he didn’t remember any of it afterward.
When he finally went to sleep that night, he dreamed of a girl with brown eyes and hair cut short, even though the girl resting on his arm had green eyes and blond hair that hung down past her shoulders…
The Well of Chaos: A Wanderer Story
“In this time of turmoil, though it be two centuries since the fear and superstition following the Great Fire Wars broke out, demon cults have sprung up, devoted to dark gods and hideous rites involving human sacrifice and mass orgies. The Pharaoh has tried to detain them, his Civic Police have taken thousands prisoner, but to no avail. Where a cult is destroyed, another springs up, sometimes worse than the first. The cults draw their following by way of fear rather than through devotion. This is prompted by certain disappearances among the unfaithful. These cults practice taking chosen ones to be given to the gods in the rites on the dark of the moon.
“To one of these worships came that sand-footed rogue The Wanderer, to do dating aces while attempting rescue … ”
Chapter II, The Canticles of Chimwazle
Down, down into the mouth of the pitch black well wound the grim procession, their chanting tunes carrying the feeling of impending evil. Smoking torches gave only enough light to dispel the Stygian darkness a foot or two before them. Their steps echoed on the slime-covered stairs where rats and lizards grudgingly scurried away into the fungus-crusted rocks. Darkness here was never broken save at noonday, then only the top of the hundred-foot mouth of the well was lighted to any degree. It was as if night took refuge here during the daylight hours and flowed out over half the earth at night. The circular stairway wound ever downward for nearly two hundred feet to stop at the edge of a platform fifty feet wide.
It was towards this platform that the procession moved, the priests sweating under their cowls in the thick black robes they wore. Masked priests followed, stripped to the waist, and carrying in their hands the ceremonial axes of the cult. The golden blades gleamed evilly when struck by torchlight. Following these wound the sacred dancers, musicians, lesser priests, and finally the faithful, their voices lifted in chanting.
Down they came, perhaps two or three hundred in all. The priests stepped onto the platform, causing eerie echoes to reverberate evilly across the slimy, stagnant pool of water which took up the other half of the well. The priests continued onto the altar, which strangely faced the well instead of the congregation. The faithful formed a rough line behind the altar and stood. It was then that one other person was roughly pulled to the raised dais. The sacrifice.
She was a girl of nineteen or so, pretty in her way. Her eyes red from crying, she did not struggle, but went with a sullen defiance to the platform beneath the altar. Her hands were tied with leather bands and she had found long ago this night that struggle was useless. The girl trembled as the ceremony began, knowing that she was the ‘chosen one’ tonight and destined to meet the dark god Gresh in his lair of slime and muck.
The priests began chanting a strange, birdlike cry, punctuated by the musicians’ eerie tunes and wild drum beats. Faster, faster went the music, louder and louder became the chant. The congregation took it up and echoed the priests.
Then it stopped. The entire gathering stood frozen in the nerve-shattering silence. The high priest mounted the altar and looked out over the slimy, dark water. His face was wrinkled with age and his eyes showed malevolent reflections from the twin torches which lit the altar. A horned skull cap of the high priest of Gresh adorned his head. He raised his withered arms to the sky, facing the altar and peering into the water.
“Oh mighty Gresh, lurker of the Deep Well, we bring you this night a Chosen One, so that you may appease your hunger and need not come from your lair. Take her and show us your mercy, Oh Mighty One. Hail, Gresh the Destroyer.”
The girl was pulled to the altar by two brawny masked priests, who then dragged her to the edge of the platform. As she looked down into the water and remembered all the tales of her childhood, she wept and fell limp.
“Gresh, whose wrath be vented hopefully upon this chosen one, take thee this offering we give. Long live Mighty Gresh.”
Upon these words, the two masked priests bent slightly, then rocketed up, flinging the girl outward and upwards over the slimy, stagnant pond which Gresh made his home and waited for offerings.
Her limp body reached the apex of its flight and started to arc downwards. Then … it stopped with a jerk in midair, swung left to right dizzily, and began a slow, deliberate movement towards the starlit sky above the well mouth.
Cursing himself, Wanderer heaved for all he was worth on the rope at the end of which the girl dangled perilously, several feet above the water. Sweat broke out on his body under the light purple tunic he wore and his hands were being chafed to ribbons by the rope he tugged on.
Three days ago he had come into this country from Alexandria, and had been ill-received by the people. Then, one night at the tavern, he had been sought out by an old man named Galt, who offered him all his worldly belongings if only he could save his daughter. It seemed that Nila, that was her name, was to be the sacrifice to the pool-god Gresh. The old man told him that long ago. Gresh had been born in the pool at the bottom of the well, in the dark days following the Great Wars and the Silent Death. In the years following he had ravaged the lands, seeking blood to satisfy his devilish thirsts. Upon finding its lair in the huge well, men had kept it fed with animals. Of this had come the cult, which fed it each day but had begun to use rites once a month at which humans were thrown to the thing called Gresh. The cult had drained the lands of cattle and people had begun to live in fear of each other, lest the priests choose them for the dark god’s hunger. Such it was when Wanderer had come to this cursed place.
He had known he was a fool to get involved in devil worships, but had believed the old man’s tale, strange as it was. The old man had said there was growing unrest, but that all were too afraid of Gresh’s wrath to openly defy the cult.
So this night, with hundreds of feet of rope on his shoulder, he had made his way to the Well of Gresh with the foolhardy idea of rescuing Nila from the clutches of the demon-worshippers. He had, while the elaborate ceremony began, come halfway down the spiral steps in darkness, perhaps fifty feet above the heads of the celebrants. There he had attached his rope contrivance to one side of the well. He then crossed to the other side, perhaps thirty feet higher up the spiral stops, and had attached the other end of the rope. Dangling from the middle was another length of rope, which he had pulled in and looped. As soon as the girl left the arms of the priests, a snakelike noose had flown silently downward from his hands, neatly catching her across the middle. A dangerous chance, but it had worked. Now, he panted as he drew her up by means of a third rope attached to the noose. Wanderer had made it look dramatic. It did.
The priests stood, paralyzed, peering into the darkness above, and seeing nothing. Gasps came from the faithful. Axe-wielders began swarming up the stairs. Someone had the sense to light an oil-soaked arrow and fire it upwards into the gloom. Its dim light showed Wanderer straining at the rope. Cries went up.
“Blasphemers! Kill him!” rose from the priests. “Death to the unfaithful! Sacrilege!”
Wanderer pulled the girl’s limp body to the steps beside him. She began to move, awakening. He cut her bonds with his throwing knife, shaking her to movement. She looked at him dazedly, then shook her head to clear it.
“Come, Nila!”
The axemen had already come one flight below them. Arrows whizzed up, knocking loose chunks of bricking. He tugged at her, pushed her in front of him.
“Make it to the rope, two flights up!” he yelled at her. “Then they can’t possibly get you! Run!”
The girl ran. Around the spiral they went. Halfway. One flight. The girl was nearly two flights up when she dropped to the fungus-crusted steps, panting.
“I – I – ca – can’t make – ”
Wanderer didn’t let her finish. He bent, snatched her up from the steps and ran. His tired muscles bulged and his arms hurt from that eighty-foot pull. He lifted her and ran for the rope which leapt up to the top of the well. It would save them three flights of steps – if they could make it. Already the axemen were across the well from them and gaining in their fanatical haste.
Wanderer stumbled to the rope, set the girl down, then lifted her once again.
“Climb, Nila. At least make it to the second stairway. Then run as far as you can. They won’t get by me. Pull the rope up behind you; don’t let them get to it or they’ll catch you. Climb!”
He shoved her upward. She caught at the rope, began to inch her way up towards the next flight of steps. He helped as much as he was able, pushing her until he could reach no higher.
Then Wanderer turned and drew his short, thick sword Boarkiller. His eyes began to gleam. Wanderer in the midst of a fight was a fury, a human machine of destruction. He crouched low, waiting for the first axeman to reach him.
The high priest had wasted no time on the chances that the axemen would overtake the fleeing pair. He turned, and paused statuelike, his arms upraised in a sign of invocation. His cracked lips gleamed evilly in the light of newly lit torches.
“Oh Great and Mighty Gresh. See you these blasphemers, and know them for what they are. Come forth, Gresh! Destroy them. Kill! Kill! Arise, Gresh!” he cried hysterically.
For a few seconds the faithful awaited, eagerness in their eyes. Gresh had never been seen since the cult had arisen. Never had he been called forth before.
The stagnant water, evil, stinking, was placid. Scum and algae floated on top, undisturbed. Slimy fungus grew at the water’s edge, over onto the platform. Then, slowly, the water near one edge began to swirl, as if a school of fish had been startled. Scum floated to one side. Bubbles began to rise. The water seemed to turn darker, danker at the spot.
Gresh appeared.
A great yard-wide head came up, crusted with slime and algae, dripping slaver and black rot out from the long, daggerlike teeth in its open mouth. One claw lifted out of the water. Handlike, it had webs between the fingers, and six-inch claws for nails. It swam forward ponderously, a bulky, loathsome thing unused to travel. Gresh came to the edge of the pool. It clawed the wall of the well, began to inch its way up. Its hind legs appeared, manlike but deformed; too short for its twelve-foot body. The feet, too, were webbed. It had a short, stocky tail. Leeches and suckers clung to its body, where there was no fungus. Its body, greenish in the dim light, was huge – too fat and bulky. It stank. Gresh looked above, saw Wanderer, and began to climb its way up the well’s wall.
Wanderer played havoc with the sacred guards. The first’s axe had looped over his head, ready to send a blow that would split Wanderer from head to navel. Boarkiller went between his ribs and through his spine before the swing half formed. The second parried Wanderer’s sword, swung a blow that brought blood from the swordsman’s arm. He got a blade in the throat for his trouble. The stairs were too narrow for more than one at a time.
The axemen had no room to swing, while Wanderer thrusted and parried with ease.
One axeman abandoned his axe for a sword. It snaked in for Wanderer’s ribs, caught on Boarkiller’s hilt. Wanderer’s sword flashed too quickly to follow. Back and forth they danced, in and out went the swords in playful death-games. Then, Boarkiller’s point appeared on the other side of the axeman’s head and the fight was over.
Wanderer waited. But the others had run, screaming, away from him, throwing away their weapons in panic.
Wanderer looked down, and saw Death groping upwards.
He went up the rope with a bound, climbing in a haste he didn’t know he had. Up, up to get away from that loathsome thing that followed him. For one of the first times in his life, Wanderer was afraid.
Nila had reached the second flight. She pulled herself over onto the steps as Wanderer came up, panting from his climb. She tried to stand and nearly fell. Wanderer groped his way over to the edge.
Just as he reached her, she half-stood and looked down. At the sight of Gresh she screamed, her eyes rolled in fear and exhaustion, and she slid over the edge.
Somehow, through a haze, Wanderer grabbed her wrist with his left hand. They hung there, supported only by the strength in Wanderer’s right arm, dangling while the dripping horror climbed ever towards them. Tiredly, Wanderer got his legs on the rope. Tiredly, he inched his way up to the edge of the steps. Dazedly, he pulled Nila up onto the stairway and pulled her onto the slimy steps, away from the edge.
This is the way all heroes die, thought Wanderer, as he pulled his throwing knife from its sheath. He thought of the camels he had stolen, the money he had squandered away, the girls he had rescued, the swordsmen he had conquered. His mind went to his days as a cut-purse, his first getting his sword Boarkiller from the wizard. Through a daze, he finally saw the monster’s gleaming toad-like face below him. Its mouth opened, and a stench of death rose into Wanderer’s face.
“This is the way heroes die,” he thought again. He kicked himself away from the wall, flew out towards the evil, slimy thing below him. Its mouth gaped in anticipation. Wanderer’s knife arced down. The blade buried itself in the thing’s eye to the hilt.
It clawed – the knife flashed again – slime flew – the claws again – falling … falling – the knife again – spattering blood … falling … falling …
Wanderer jerked up in bed and gasped for breath. The thing, where was it? Then he saw Nila and Galt who had started when he had come up.
“Oh, swordsman, the fever broke. You will live.” Wanderer hoped so.
“How did I get here?” asked Wanderer, feeling his bruised, clawed, and cut body.
“ ’Twas most heroic, Wanderer,” said Galt, “to see you launch yourself upon the god Gresh, and slay him as you fell. Never had I or anyone else seen such bravery. And it broke the fear over us. As one, we rose up against the demon-cult.
“The monster was not dead yet. Its death throes were terrible to see. Some of us fished you out, while the others fed the priests to the leeches. I myself had the pleasure of tossing the high priest in on his ear. The once-god Gresh, in its madness, bit him into separate parts before it died. The whole place stank for days afterwards. You … ”
