Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (21 page)

WAY OF THE INVADER

T
he horned Barbarian and his strongmen reached the top of the cliffs within the hour. They had clawed their way up the crack without a thought to what they might find at the top. Now they hesitated as the great golden eye of the sun looked down at them to light their stage. The top of the cliff was a bald rock tier worn smooth by wind and rain, and washed clean by the same elements. In the distance, a massive spreading staircase of similar tiers rose to a world dwelling above the clouds, the birthplace of thunder and lightning. The staircase of the Gods.

The huge Barbarian moved his men inland around the side chasm, then returned to the cliffs above The Narrows.

A tumult of confusion and cursing rose out of the gorge. The sun, looking directly down at the Kitzakks trapped on the pass road, drenched them with bright light, making a perfect target. The horned helmet seemed to watch with pleasure for a moment, then the Barbarian hurried forward, leaping crevices, and the strongmen, like a physical appendage, followed.

High above the cataracts, the sun could see that they were headed for a distant crowd of loose boulders resting precipitously on the edge of the cliff above the rear third of the Kitzakk column. The intense golden eye had never found these Barbarians of particular interest before and could not remember much about them. But something about their horned leader’s movements excited it, and it brightened with anticipation, concentrated its attentive light on The Narrows. It had been decades since the golden orb, which had watched the Kitzakk Horde from its infancy and knew it intimately, had looked down on an unfolding drama with such striking possibilities.

The Kitzakk column stretched for miles back up into the narrow pass. The front third consisted of the surviving Skull regiments, the Hammer and Spear regiments, and their supply train. The middle third was made up of commercial companies of Chainmen, Cagemen and a train of huge wagons stacked with empty cages. The rear third was composed of Engineer regiments and a long wagon train bearing precut timbers for a base fort. Each group was separated by a wide interval. Well behind the last group a Wenchmaster led a wagon train of camp followers, a rowdy group of hardy whores, tinkers, magicians dealing in cheap love potions, cooks, gamblers and healers.

Earlier, when the Wenchmaster had seen the tail of the column stop far down the pass ahead of him, he had halted his wagon train. He was now barking orders, organizing a hasty retreat. The horses were unhitched. Both wagons and horses were turned around in place. Then the horses were hitched to the wagons they had formerly followed. This left one wagon without horses. It was unceremoniously shoved into the pass. The Wenchmaster then started his wagon train back up the pass toward the desert.

Several miles down the pass from the retreating camp followers, General Kayat, tire commander of the invading column, still sat his horse at the head of the rear third. He had sent orderlies forward at five-minute intervals to investigate the delay, but none had returned. He had also ordered himself some hot tea. As an aide arrived with it, he dismounted and took the steaming cup. He walked casually to the edge of the gorge and raised it to his lips, glancing uneasily over the rim.

He was standing on the section of the pass after which The Narrows was named, a thin stretch of road barely wide enough for the passage of one wagon. The open mouth of the gorge beside the road was no wider. Both road and gorge were walled by sheer rock cliffs rising toward the watching sun.

The road ahead descended gently as it twisted down through the pass. General Kayat could see the entire middle third of the column with its large wagons of cages and chains, but only the rear end of the front third, a regiment of Spears in bright fuchsia armor positioned at a sharp turn. The soldiers were shouting and arguing. He watched several run back across the gap separating them from the middle of the column and gesture wildly to the commanders of the Chainmen and Cagemen. An argument began to roar loudly up the pass.

Kayat tilted an ear toward these uncharacteristic sounds and carefully returned the half-empty cup to the waiting aide. Behind him, mounted and at attention, waited the three successful old campaigners who had advised General Yat-Feng on the raids against Coin, Bone Camp and the village of the Barhacha. Their eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Dedicated Kitzakk invaders in blood, bone and mind.

Kayat remounted and turned his eyes to the front. His head was shadowed under the wide brim of his helmet, a place of grim resolve. For ten minutes he did not move or speak, then suddenly he stiffened with shock.

At the sharp turn in the road ahead, the regiment of Spears had started moving back up the pass. Behind them a Black Hand regiment appeared around the sharp turn and ran wildly in among the retreating Spears. Both regiments promptly panicked, plunged across the wide interval of empty road separating them from the wagon train of cages, and pushed into and over the wedged wagons. Their drivers, showing no skill at backing up, panicked the horses. Several threw themselves, their drivers and the wagons they pulled off the edge of the road into the gorge. As they fell, they ricocheted off the narrow rock walls again and again. Before they had fallen halfway, there was little left of them for the sun to shine on.

The remaining wagons backed up into each other, and into the side of the road. Wheels broke and wagons collapsed, causing a huge roadblock. It continued to grow as more and more soldiers retreated around the sharp turn, propelled by still unseen regiments retreating down the gorge. It was a formation the sun had never seen the Kitzakks use before, but which it knew well. It was designed by panic.

Blocked by the broken crowd of wagons and cages, the soldiers quickly jammed up all the way back to the sharp turn. There they collided with the surging crowd behind them. Fighting broke out, and bodies began to drop away from the bunch like overripe grapes to fall into the gorge. Others dangled from the road edge, clinging to one another. Suddenly the bunch buckled, burst apart and fell in clusters into the gorge.

At that moment the huge Barbarian and his strongmen began to heave rocks down from the cliffs above.

General Kayat, seeing the shadows cast by the descending rocks, stared up in horror as the young commander of the wagon train of cages reached him. The commander, sweating and shaking, saluted, then started to speak, but stopped as he heard the falling rocks arrive and looked back at his wagon train. His cages and wagons were being smashed by huge boulders. His drivers were being crushed and knocked into the gorge. He turned to General Kayat for instructions.

General Kayat’s saddle was empty. The general was half buried in the road under a large boulder. A bigger boulder hit the general’s boulder and sent it rolling toward the edge of the road taking the Kitzakk with it. Bits of the general’s bloody armor were crushed and wedged in cracks of the boulder. He pounded the rock incessantly as it fell into the gorge.

The young commander, aghast, turned in desperation to the old greybeards. The expressions on their faces made it clear that they would not, could not, consider retreating. The commander could only stare in bafflement, but the sun understood. The golden orb had seen and admired such men before, men who had made the Kitzakk Horde strong, who had built the empire. A Kitzakk never panics. Never turns back.

The young commander groaned with despair and fled past the old men. As he did, a boulder flattened him. A moment later an avalanche swept the greybeards out of their saddles and all four sailed resolutely into the gorge.

As they fell the expressions of the old soldiers did not change. Not until they met the rocks far below. But this was not their decision. It was made by the rocks.

HIGH BRIDGE

I
n the late afternoon, a team of four hauled an olive green wagon up The Narrows. It was well above the section of the pass where the Kitzakk column had panicked. The road was empty except for a cloud of brown dust chasing the wagon. Cool shade now filled the gorge giving it a savage unity and size. The wagon was infinitesimal against the sheer rock cliff, like a roach skittering over the wall of a great hall. Nevertheless there was a plunging vitality to it, as if the same forces of nature which had conspired to wrench open the earth to create the gorge had been brought into play for the single purpose of providing the wagon with a road.

The wagon caromed and skidded around a sharp turn, and pulled up short of Bone, Dirken and the Grillard strongmen who blocked the road with their weapons leveled. The dust billowed over the wagon, concealing it and the driver as he roared with delight within its dusty embrace. The hard faces of the Grillards broke with smiles and chuckles, and they crowded forward as Brown John rose up out of the dust with widespread arms, shouting. “Victory! The pass is ours! From here all the way to the forests!”

He bowed, and they, knowing a cue when they saw one, cheered wildly and began hugging, dancing and throwing caps and weapons into the air. The celebration had begun.

Brown John, in a soaring voice, pronounced over the joyous din, “My brave, brave, brave Grillards, this is a day of days! The world has been turned upside down and we, you, and our champion, have done the work of it.”

He pivoted in a dance to the music of their joy and glory. Then a drumming, pounding beat, rising out of the pass below, joined in. The Grillards rushed to the side of the gorge and looked down into the pass.

The Barbarian Army, draped in the fuchsias, scarlets and vermilions of plundered Kitzakk armor, were tramping up The Narrows at a loud steady pace, a confident one. It now carried weapons of hard steel.

Behind the army trailed horses and wagons heaped with plundered provisions, armor and weapons. In the distance new arrivals were running up the pass to join the victors.

Bone and Dirken climbed up beside the old man for a better view. Brown John threw his arms around them. “The Gods are in attendance, lads, and our cast is swelling.”

Bone and Dirken turned their awed, flushed faces to their father. His cheeks were apple red and his smile as reckless as an infant’s. They had never seen him like this before, and it unsettled them.

“I do not boast,” Brown John continued, “but it is as if the birds themselves had played a part, carrying word of our victory to the world. New volunteers were arriving even before we had time to rebuild Thin Bridge. I truly believe that before nightfall our ranks will have doubled!”

The sons, making sure their father could see them, winked at each other playfully, mocking his childish exuberance. Catching their exchange, Brown John’s eyes twinkled. Then they sobered as he looked thoughtfully at the whole scene: at his clan shouting encouragement, at the advancing army, at the dark stains of blood around the clearing, at a scatter of Kitzakk dead, at two new graves heaped with rocks. Then, solemnly, he raised his eyes to High Bridge. It was still standing, undamaged. His Grillards, by advancing over the cliff tops, had reached it before the escaping Kitzakks and saved it. He caught his sons’ attention and with a calm yet significant gesture, indicated the structure. “You have done a brave piece of work,” he allowed. “Not having to rebuild it is going to save precious time. Now, where is Gath?”

Dirken was quick to answer. “He went on ahead, to the fort at the top of the pass.”

“Oooh!” Brown John’s brow crinkled.

“He’s gone after the girl,” Bone added.

Dirken pointed at a Kitzakk tower mounted above the pass. “They’ve got signal towers all the way to their fort.”

“They’ll see him coming hours before he reaches it,” the old man muttered to himself, “but that may be to his advantage.”

He stepped up onto the wagon seat with extended arms and in stentorian tones demanded attention. When he got it, his voice resounded through the hushed crowd.

“You are to be congratulated. All of you.” Cheering interrupted him, and he paused, smiling, until it stopped. “There is an entire Kitzakk column lying dead back there in the pass. A full sixth of the Kitzakk Desert Army.” There was more cheering, but he continued, shouting over the rapturous response. “The Outlanders have not suffered such a defeat in a hundred years!”

The group went wild, hooting and whistling, and he let them. When the hysteria had subsided somewhat, he raised a triumphant finger to the sky and bellowed, “From this day forth, our champion, Gath of Baal, is going to be known forever for what he truly is. The Lord of the Forest! Invincible.”

The Grillards cheered and chanted. “Gath! Gath! Gath!”

Dirken frowned nervously at his father, and whispered, “That’s crazy. If the Kitzakks are up there waiting for him behind palisade walls, not even a nine-armed god would stand a chance.”

“We will see,” Brown John replied. “We will see.”

There were tears welling in his eyes, and his sons shifted uncomfortably. But they knew why. His Grillards were no longer merely strutting actors, but real men who had worked the brutal stage of life. The equals, perhaps even the best, of all the men in the forest.

Dirken fidgeted, then brought his father’s indulgent musing to an abrupt stop. “Are we just going to stand around and cheer, or do something?”

Brown John blinked, then wiped a cheek with the back of a hand and looked sternly at his sons. “You stay here, Dirken. When the army arrives, keep it moving at a steady pace and don’t let any of the Wowells, Cytherians or Barhacha get ahead of you. They are desperate to rescue their women and children, but if they race ahead and try to do it by themselves, we are lost. The army must be held together.”

Dirken asked respectfully, “What do we do with the prisoners?”

“There aren’t any.” The
bukko
watched with satisfaction as Dirken’s and Bone’s mouths dropped open. They both swallowed hard, then Dirken hurried off to meet the arriving army as Brown John hollered at a group of strongmen, “You five, get up in the wagon. The work’s up ahead.”

The Grillards piled aboard. Bone cracked the whip and the wagon rumbled south across High Bridge waving its tail of dust behind it like a proud banner.