Giants (21 page)

Herrek smiled tiredly. “We’ll die if we battle the sabertooths.”

 “And we’ll die if we don’t find water.”

“Yes.”

“Do not the warrior codes of Elon say it is better to die facing the enemy?” Joash asked.

Herrek swung his makeshift mace.

“You’ve said before that your scars are on your front, not on your back,” Joash said. “Shall we not then face these final enemies?”

 “Wait.” Adah said. “There is a better way.”

“Your poisoned arrows are gone,” Herrek said.

“Is it not better to tell of what we’ve seen than to let the secrets die?” she asked.

Herrek admitted it was so.

“Then any tool should be used, yes?” she asked.

Herrek pondered that.

“The giant and First Born are evil,” Adah said, “and what they plan is evil.”

“What is your strategy?” Herrek asked.

She smiled at Joash and told Herrek, “Fire.”

Herrek scowled.

“Notice the wind,” she said. “It blows toward the sabertooths. Look at the yellow grasses, they will burn if fired.”

Herrek studied the terrain. “Your idea has merit.”

“If we’re lucky,” she said, “we can follow behind the prairie fire all the way to the lake.”

“We don’t have enough water,” Gens told her.

“Should we lie down and die then?” she asked.

“No,” Joash said. “We have too much to live for.”

Adah smiled. It made Joash realize the truth of his words, and it thrilled him to be smiled at like that.

Joash used his kit, which he’d cached with the water-skin. Soon his torch burned, as well as chariot splinters. They each carried two torches and spread out, until forty feet separated them one from the other. Carefully, they approached the snarling beasts.

“Do not approach them too closely,” Adah warned Joash.

Herrek dashed toward the sabertooths and hurled a torch at one. The second torch he hurled to his left. The others followed his example, throwing torches in a pre-determined line. The dry grasses immediately caught fire. The wind blew the fire into a crackling blaze and the sabertooths snarled with a note of fear.

The four humans backed away from the blaze. The heat was too much. A shift in the wind forced them to race back to the rocks. Shortly however the wind shifted to its regular pattern, and now the fire was about a hundred feet in length. With a strong gust of wind, it leapt toward the beasts. They snarled and retreated.

Herrek ran back to the water-skin and slung it over his shoulder. They waited. The fire grew. In time, it roared and began to advance faster than a man could run. They watched it chase the sabertooths. As the fire advanced it also grew longer. In the hope that they could walk on hotter ground, each of them tied slabs of wood to their sandals.

“That was a good idea,” Joash told Adah.

“Thank you.”

“Do you think we’ll make it?”

“I hope so.”

Joash glanced at Herrek. The warrior judged the fire and the distance the sabertooths had run away. With his heart thumping, Joash took Adah’s hand and squeezed it. “I think we’ll make it.”

She squeezed back, and in that moment, she almost seemed as young as he did. A tired smile curved her lips, and she pecked him on the mouth.

Emboldened, he kissed her back.

“Joash,” she chided, “not in front of the others.”

He grinned and squeezed her hand once more, then let go.

“Now!” Herrek shouted.

They advanced into the sooty area. Heat radiated from the blackened earth, drenching them with sweat.

“We must ration the water carefully,” Herrek said, his voice ringing with hope. “Thus, unless you are staggering and seeing visions, I will not allow you to drink.”

For the first half-hour they endured the heat and the fast pace. After an hour of walking, they constantly asked the Champion for a drink. He never complied. By the second hour, with the entire horizon ablaze and with the heat a staggering burden, they looked on Herrek as an enemy.

“Water,” Gens whispered, pawing at Herrek.

Herrek, with his hardened face never looking back, trudged one foot ahead of the other.

Adah moaned softly. She limped, falling behind. Joash had checked her feet at the last stop. The right one had badly blistered.

“Lean on me,” he whispered.

“No,” she croaked. “I won’t burden you. Someone must take our message.” Her limp increased. She fell farther behind.

“Slow down,” Joash told Herrek.

The Champion seemed to be made of granite. He didn’t appear to have heard.

Joash’s mouth was dry; his skin was hot and clogged with black ashes. The very earth robbed him of precious strength. He could hardly think.

“Water,” Gens moaned, pawing at Herrek.

“March,” Herrek whispered, his lips cracked.

Joash turned. Adah had fallen even farther behind. He waited until she limped even with him. Without a word, he took one of her arms and put it over his shoulder. She was so light, so small. After a hundred yards, however, the extra weight had caused more sweat to leap onto his skin.

“Let me march by myself,” she whispered.

Joash couldn’t force his lips to move or his tongue to form words. Both were too dry. When she tried to move away he held her wrist and refused to let go. At last she relented, and they continued to trudge together. Soon, in a delirium, Joash considered using his knife to try to slay the carrier of the precious water. At last, at the third hour, Herrek let them sip. The trickle of liquid never tasted so good. Joash wanted to smile at Adah, but his cracked lips would bleed if he tried.

“More,” Adah whispered.

Herrek let them sip a little more and then capped the water-skin and arose. “We must keep marching. Once we run out of water, the race is over.”

“I can’t go on,” Gens said in a pitiful voice.

“My feet hurt,” Adah said.

Joash had looked at them an hour ago. He didn’t understand how she could walk.

“If you want another drink of water,” Herrek whispered, “you’ll have to march after me.” He turned toward the distant lake and began moving.

Gens made a ghastly sound of despair, but arose and followed. Joash and Adah did likewise.

In such a manner the day dragged on. Ashes rested in their mouths. Their faces were black, and their clothes sooty. By nightfall, they’d consumed all the water. Still, somehow, they staggered. Herrek would not let them halt. Gens at last succumbed and fell onto his face. He raved about his slain stallions. Herrek and Joash helped him up. Adah walked like an automaton, now using the sides of her feet. The journey was bitter agony, and they feared least the sabertooths return.

“Run!” Herrek whispered.

What he saw, the others didn’t see, but by the light of the moon, they staggered faster. At last, they sprawled onto the heated ground and heaved air. Every muscle hurt. Somehow, Herrek made them stand again and stagger for the lake.

Around midnight, as Joash hallucinated about Ard and a water-spring, he staggered unknowingly into the lake. He fell and sucked water, not even aware that he’d dragged Adah down. Herrek yanked him by the hair and pushed him to shore. Adah shortly lay beside him.

When they had slept and rested for an hour, they crawled to a bonfire where men slept. To their amazement, and croaks of joy, they found Lord Uriah and a war party of charioteers.

At last, they were safe.

Chapter Fourteen

The Trolock

Woe to him who says to wood, “Come to life!” Or to lifeless stone, “Wake up!”

-- Habakkuk 2:19

He waited in the darkness. The others who had awakened had been brutally slain. But he had watched and waited, and had judged the prowess of the grave robbers. A First Born had dared to handle the Master’s weapons, and had turned the weapons against those the Master had loved best. The First Born had dared to profane the awesome lich, and had dared to lay his hands on that which was inviolate.

Such sacrilege
must
be avenged.

Thus, he waited, even though he ached to move again, to lift his stony arms and to look once more upon the forgotten world of men.

So long, so very long ago he had been chosen, taken down a dark cave and then…

He moaned, and dared to move.

Once he had been Lord Skarpaler, a blond-haired warchief of the Bloodspillers, a champion who had marched south together with the Nameless One’s Niflmen. But
his
master had been Draugr Trolock-Maker. And with the sudden approach of Arioch the Archangel...

His moaning increased. He adjusted his limbs, making the sound of grinding stones as he did. He lifted his head, but saw nothing in the crypt’s eternal murk. He sensed, however, released spirits. Perhaps that is what had awakened him.

For millennia, he had waited. For millennia, he had listened to the Master rave about those who had entombed him. They had all quailed before Draugr’s rage, and they had all worshipped him in unholy terror. He had bidden them to make terrible promises. And they had made them. In the end, the Master disdained movement. He glared at them, and they discerned over time that his life seeped away. At last, he expired to go to a place of greater torment.

But,
they
couldn’t leave.

Nor, because of their horrible oaths, could they slay each other. They waited. They went mad. They grew drowsy. At last, they grew still as the Master had grown still, and they pondered in hellish silence the exchange they had once thought so glorious.

He had once been called Lord Skarpaler, the warchief of the Bloodspillers. The shores of a cold northern lake had been his home. His wives had loved him. He’d had many children, and he’d been accounted a mighty warrior, a champion.

That was lost, gone forever. It was dust to dust, ashes to ashes. He was an abomination, a trolock, a servant bound to a departed master. Only one goal, one thought, one mission, dominated his awakened spirit. He must punish the trespassers. He must slay the profaners of the crypt.

Inch by inch he moved about the crypt. His stone hands roved over his slain brothers. His anger grew. He bowed low before the Master, and then he rose and straightened the bones the trespassers had so rudely moved.

The broken weapons he touched brought back painful memories. Lord Skarpaler—

“No,” he said. “I am not he. I am the Avenger. I am the Doom from the Crypt. I am no longer a mortal man.”

He gathered his courage, and for a time he felt the fleshy corpse. It was strange, so very strange. He shook his head, marveling that an age ago he had been made out of such weak substance. It was madness. The Master had bestowed a great gift on him. He clenched his hands. After an age of slumber, he was awake. He must learn who the new powers were. He must be wary of them until he understood their strengths. But first he must slay the profane First Born and his companion giant.

After his courage and rage boiled to a frightful pitch, he went to the door and forced it open. He trod up the steep incline and came to the cave entrance.

Outside, the stars blinded him by their brightness. He had forgotten that such wonders existed. For uncounted centuries, the Shining One-made wall had barred them from the living world. How could he have forgotten such beauty? He could almost remember the touch of his long-lost wives. Such thoughts, however, would lead him to madness.

It was several hours before he moved. His awe of the stars and the soft waft of a breeze—he moaned, wondering once more upon the price of his exchange. He looked at his stony body. It still seemed so strange.

“No,” he rumbled. “I am strong, indestructible, a foe to all those who hate or hated my Master. I will survive until the end of the Age. I will destroy all who deserve death.”

By a facility given him upon his making, the trolock followed the trail of the First Born who had robbed Draugr’s Crypt.

Chapter Fifteen

The Seraphs

No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite.

-- Judges 13:5

Joash bolted upright, his face sweaty. He looked around and saw grooms on night-duty. He frowned. A moment ago, trolocks had held him down, waiting for Tarag to slash him with the adamant sword. He sagged back onto his mat. The stars overhead blazed with glory, and he was exhausted. Every muscle and joint ached. Maybe that’s why he’d had the nightmare. He rolled over and fumbled among his belongings, found his water-skin, uncorked it, and drank his fill. Unfortunately, the movement woke him up more than before, and he was so exhausted that he was almost too tired to fall back asleep. He’d been sleeping fitfully for half the night.

After putting the water-skin away, he noticed that Adah sat at one of the fires, staring into the flames. She’d wrapped herself in her colorful cloak, and her head nodded. She must be exhausted, but something kept her up. Maybe she had nightmares, too. Maybe after all she’d gone through in Poseidonis, being in the presence of a First Born again had shaken her all over again. He felt sorry for her. Maybe he should go over and console her, put his arm around her. As he pondered about getting up, he drifted back to sleep.