Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (21 page)

Clive sank to one knee, grasped the trident in both hands, and faced squarely upward into the eyes of the onrushing monstrosity. "Get down, Horace!" he shouted.

At the very moment that the creature's claws swept through the sulfurous air where Smythe's body had been, Smythe landed with a thud on the surface of the walkway. Tomàs—or the being with Tomàs' face and with the parody of his voice—swooped through steaming air, drove forward with another thrust of its powerful, leathery wings, then reared in midair and plunged razor-sharp claws straight at Clive Folliot's horrified face.

Clive launched himself forward and upward, the hot trident extended before him. With a jolt that ran up Clive's arms and rocked him onto his heels, batwinged monster and sharpened prongs met—and the monster was impaled on the trident.

Fuming, green-black ichor spurted from the monster's torso.

Clive dropped the trident.

The monster tumbled to the walkway and thudded onto its back, the shaft of the trident protruding from its fleshy torso.

Horrified, baffled, yet moved by the pathos of the wounded creature, Clive knelt at its side. "Tomàs? Tomàs? Is it truly you? Why did you—how—your own kind, Tomàs—"

He was halted by the pure hatred that blazed from the monster's eyes. "Better to die in my true form," the voice that was half Tomàs and half that of a screeching beast tore at Clive's ears. "Better to die in my true form than to live any longer as a putrid human, a corrupt Folliot!"

"But you were—" Clive got no further. The face that was that of Tomàs Folliot, the Portuguese sailor, writhed in its final rictus. The mouth pursed; Clive wondered if Tomàs was trying to whistle, but unstead Tomàs launched a gob of spittle. Only it was not spittle, it was the same ichor that still oozed from around the tines of the trident embedded in his torso. The fetid, slimy substance burned where it struck Clive's face, and he wiped it away with the cloth of his sleeve.

Tomàs' eyes glazed, his labored breathing ceased.

Clive felt Horace tugging him gently by the shoulders. "Come away, sah. Come away. He's gone." Clive allowed himself to be drawn to his feet. He watched as Horace placed a foot against Tomàs' corpse and pulled the trident from his body in the manner that Her Majesty's soldiers were trained to use when they retrieved bayonets from the bodies of enemy troops.

"Is there nothing I can do for him?" Clive murmured softly. "He was still of my blood."

"All we can do so, sah. Either leave him here, or…" Smythe gestured.

Clive hesitated for a moment, then nodded, breathing a silent prayer to whatever deity there might be, for the repose of whatever soul Tomàs might have had.

Horace Hamilton Smythe tipped the body over the edge of the walkway, using the toe of his boot to do so. The body tumbled into the flaming pit below and disappeared.

Clive Folliot tried not to hear the shrieks of glee that rose from the pit, nor to think too much about what they meant.

They proceeded along the walkway, Horace Smythe now carrying the trident that he had retrieved from Tomàs's body. How long they trudged, how many miles they covered, Clive and Horace could not gauge. The path that they walked changed in composition, now with a surface like marble, now like basalt. At one point it seemed to turn to metal, a gridwork of girders not unlike the structure of a railroad trestle. Beneath their feet stretched an abyss, and its bottom, lakes of molten sulfur.

Flames and clouds of foul gases rose from beneath the trestle. Clive turned his eyes upward. The hellish pit beneath his feet was duplicated above him, and he saw flocks of the hideous batwinged creatures clustered around pits and glowing mounds of sulfurous lava that rose like volcanoes from the hot rocks beneath their feet.

The creatures had human faces, and Clive saw the hate-filled visages of men and women he had fought on level after level of the Dungeon.

One of the batwinged creatures in particular caught Clive's attention. It was smaller than the others; for a moment Clive wondered if they bred as do humans, and if so, whether this was the child of such a process.

The creature locked eyes with Clive. Its face could have been that of an angel in some medieval painting, yet one filled with such pure malice as to send a shiver down Clive's spine despite the suffocating heat of his surroundings. Suddenly Clive recognized that scene before him. It was not the work of a medieval master, but of the fantasist Hieronymous Bosch.

The demon smiled and launched itself into the air. Its flock of companions followed—dozens of them, then scores, then hundreds. They did not head for Clive and Horace directly, but circled around them, cawing and shrieking in their horrid half-human voices.

"Let's hurry on, sah!" Horace urged. He increased his pace to a steady trot, heading for the far end of the trestle, but one of the demons landed squarely in the center of their path. Another followed, and another, until fully a hundred of the monstrosities blocked the trestle.

"Back, Horace—back the other way!" Clive and his companion whirled and started to retrace their steps, only to find their path blocked by another crowd of the demons.

Hopping like birds, flapping their great leathery wings like giant bats, flexing their talons in eagerness, the twin bands of demons closed upon Clive and Horace.

"It's the end, sah! I've that trident, and I'll take as many of them with me as I can. But still, sah—this is the end!"

Clive clasped Horace's hand in his own. "We'll go down fighting, Sergeant, if go down we must. But—"

He peered into the flaming pit that flanked the trestle. Craters smoked, sheets of flame flared upward, clouds of black, sickening smoke wafted around them. Screams of anguish and shrieks of glee rose to smite their ears.

And in a particularly dark and solid-looking cloud of smoke, a formally garbed human figure danced a jig, tipped his black stovepipe hat, and bowed satirically. From a pocket in his swallowtail morning coat, the newcomer drew a crooked stogie. He bit off its tip and spit it at the monster nearest to Clive and Horace. He placed the stogie between his teeth, leaned into a shaft of crackling flame, and drew it into life.

He blew a cloud of smoke from the stogie, into a crowd of batwinged monsters. Coughing and cringing, they drew away. He turned, drew on his stogie, and blew another cloud of smoke at the monsters menacing Clive and Horace from the other direction.

"Welcome, my friends," he smiled.

"Baron Samedi!"

"Major Folliot. Sergeant Smythe. A pleasure to welcome you to Hades."

"You saved our lives."

"A trifle. These demons are a nuisance. Not to be taken seriously."

"But one of them was my kinsman, the sailor Tomàs. I—I killed him."

"Regrettable."

"We have to get out of here, Baron. Can you get us back to London? Will you join us?"

"Join you? Oh, no, no, no! I'm much too busy. I have my duties here. I seldom visit your world—although I've had some' interesting times in the island of Hayti. And there's a nice city called New Orleans that I visit on occasion."

"I think I know a bit of that, Your Grace." That was Horace Hamilton Smythe speaking.

"Indeed, colleague."

Clive said, "Colleague?"

"I believe that Baron Samedi works with the U.N.I.A."

"Correct, colleague. In Port-au-Prince. And in New Orleans. As I recall, Horace, our paths first crossed in New Orleans. You were in a bit of trouble there."

"Yes, I was, Your Grace."

"You're sure you won't come with us, Baron Samedi?" Clive was wondering, now, whether he had crossed paths with the U.N.I.A. himself, at different levels of the Dungeon. When things had looked hopeless, when he had thought himself lost, only to win through to surprising victories, had it been sheer luck, or sheer grit—or the concealed intervention of the Universal Neighborhood Improvement Association?

"
Non, mes amis
, I cannot accompany you. But you wish to leave Hades? Despite the salubrious climate, the colorful scenery, the active social life, and the presence of famous personages? Very well. You wish to return to London?"

"To see if Sidi Bombay has located Finnbogg—"

"Finnbogg?" Baron Samedi waved his cigar in the manner of a stage illusionist waving his magic wand.

Hell disappeared.

Clive Folliot found himself surrounded by blue trees. Overhead, filtering through the leafy canopy, in the center of a red sky, three green suns blazed downward.

 

He whirled, looking for Horace Smythe, for the Baron Samedi, for the monsters and demons who had surrounded him until a split second ago. They were nowhere to be seen.

The cries of the damned, the gleeful laughter of their tormentors… were gone. Clive was surrounded by silence. The air was sweet, the only sound was the soft rustle of a zephyr in the tall, friendly trees.

Somewhere a bird sang. Its call, a trilling, warbling song, was so beautiful that it brought tears to Clive Folliot's eyes. He raised his hands to brush away the tears, then looked down to discover that he was newly garbed in a soft outfit of green and brown.

He exclaimed aloud, voicing wonder at where he was.

No one answered.

There was no point in standing still. He sighted in on the three green suns that blazed above the leafy canopy, trying to determine a direction by which to orient himself. He was not a tracker by any means. If he could only have the skills of a Red Indian! But he had learned something of geography at Cambridge, and some lore in Her Majesty's service, and once satisfied he set out a steady pace.

As he strode along, he took stock of himself and his clothing and possessions. His garments were made of sturdy cloth, carefully tailored and excellently fitted. There were no pockets in the tight-fitting shirt, the looser jacket, or the trousers. He had neither weapon nor tool in his possession: obviously, then, he had been transported to this place and left with only the proverbial clothes on his back.

But his boots were sturdy, the temperature was comfortable, and he himself was unharmed in any way. A fine escape from Hades!

The Baron Samedi was nowhere to be seen. He'd said that he could not—or would not—leave Hell with Clive and Horace Smythe.

Clive halted. Horace—where was he? The man had accompanied Clive to the establishment that housed the U.N.I.A's London station. Where was he now—still trapped in the realm of sulfur and brimstone? Or returned to the quarters where they had left Sidi Bombay?

There was no way for Clive to find out.

He continued his march, passing through clearings, crossing meadows, but always returning to the woods. This place—this world—might well be a paradise of its own sort, but Clive felt himself growing fatigued, and assaulted by hunger and thirst. He still had no idea where he was, whether this was yet another level of the Dungeon, an exotic realm upon the Earth, or a land of fantasy—even of illusion—into which Baron Samedi had cast him.

He came to a section where the forest was less dense, and where a stream bubbled clear and inviting over a bed of fine sand and small rocks. He halted, lowered himself to the strange, bluish grass, and studied the stream. It
looked
like pure water, but he knew nothing of the local environment, of the life and the materials of this place. For all he knew, the stream did not consist of water at all, but of some deadly chemical that would prove fatal should he imbibe a single sip.

But the Baron Samedi had been friendly. He had helped Clive and his companions on their first encounter in the Dungeon, and he had rescued Clive and Horace from the demons on the trestle in their recent and unexpected reunion. Clive would have to trust that Samedi had not sent him to his death.

He stretched out and plunged his face into the stream.

It was cold, pure, delicious! He drank, then splashed his face and hands.

He sat back on his heels, studying the sky, The three suns stretched away from him. He had no means of gauging their distance, but if he assumed they were all of the same size in actuality, he could infer that they stood in direct alignment. This world, this planet, was circling the nearest of the three—that was obvious. Then, depending on the time of year, the nature of the world's day and night would differ.

When the planet was at one end of its orbit, the three suns would appear in line across the sky by day, and would be hidden by the bulk of the planet by night. As the year progressed, the planet would pass between its own sun and that sun's two stellar companions, and true day would alternate with a ghostly false day as the two companion suns rose in what would otherwise be the planet's dark night.

A net descended over Clive's shoulders.

He tried to spring to his feet, but he was held down by the webwork of knotted cords. He twisted, seeking a look at his attacker, but he managed to obtain only a glimpse of pale hands and dark, ruddy cloth before a sack was placed over his head. He redoubled his struggles, then there was a stunning blow and everything was darkness.

He regained consciousness in a room that could have come out of a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Stone walls, vaulted ceilings, flaring torches, giant tapestries. He found himself facing a familiar visage. Raging, he hurled himself to his feet—or tried to, for he was held to a sturdy wooden chair by heavily knotted cords. And he was staring into a chillingly familiar visage.

"N'wrbb Crrd'f!"

"Indeed," the other hissed. "I thought I would never see you again, Clive Folliot. Our previous encounter was unpleasant enough for me."

The man was tall and slim. Even seated as he was, in a great stone seat more throne than chair, he towered above Clive. Now he stood and strode forward, leaning over his captive. His skin was as pale as an albino's. His hair was black with more than a suggestion of midnight green in it. His eyes burned with the brilliance of dark emeralds.

"You took the Lady 'Nrrc'kth from me, Folliot. And now she is…"

"Dead," Clive supplied. "Dead in the Dungeon. Lost to us both."