The Sword and the Sorcerer (11 page)

Along the beach in front of the cave were one hundred of General Sade’s crack Red Dragon Archers—Cromwell’s pride and joy. Their steel-tipped arrows were lodged in polished Corinthian long bows and aimed at the mouth of Skull Cave, ready to fire. Moonbeams and torchlight from the vassals nearby made the archers’ hauberks, helmets and armor glitter like gold. One word from Sade, who was sitting on the backs of two girlish and scantily clad slave boys off to the side, and any of the trapped rebels inside trying to escape would be felled in a rain of arrows. And until he did give the order to fire the archers would remain resignedly though uncomfortably standing in this rigid tableau of readiness. For it was well known among Sade’s men that the slightest deviation from his orders could and often did cost the miscreant his life. Sade may have been more of a woman than a man in bed with the pretty boys he preferred over women, but he was the most savage of men when it came to meting out punishment.

Still sitting on his human divan, luxuriously softened by two fat pillows strapped to the boys’ slender backs, Sade watched the arrival of a wagonload of casks of oil. He smiled, his eyes shifting from the oil to the long formation of archers and then to the black gaping mouth of the cave. The smile turned into a mean grin. The fun was about to begin.

A delicately featured aide of some twenty-odd years sauntered up beside the general. “Perhaps the time has come for you to speak to the rebels, your eminence.”

Sade nodded, affectionately slapped the youth’s round bottom under his short tunic and rose.

The long line of archers tightened like a drawstring as Sade bearishly strode in front of them to the cave entrance, stopping far enough to dodge any hurled missile but close enough to be heard inside.

“Come out and live!” he shouted to the trapped rebels. “Or stay and die! The choice is yours. You have only five minutes to decide!”

The fifteen insurgents inside were chilled by Sade’s ultimatum. It was like the voice of doom, booming, inexorable and without a modicum of human compassion. For the most part they were simple, hardworking young farm boys. Their clothes were in tatters from the last fray with Cromwell’s soldiers and they carried crude, homemade weapons—pitchforks, shovels, picks, scythes and hand axes. But they were far from being stupid. The option Sade had given them was no option at all. They had no illusion of being spared if they went outside, for everyone knew Cromwell had issued a blanket order to hang, quarter or in any other way kill every last one of the rebels. And if they chose to remain inside it was only a matter of time before Sade’s soldiers stormed the cave and crushed them by sheer force of numbers.

With the exception of Kabal, posted to guard the mouth of the cave, the rebels were assembled a good distance inside Skull Cave, most of them standing. Torches held by a dozen men filled the cave with weaving and elongated shadows of their figures, and the orange flames highlighted the fatigue, anger and hopelessness on their glistening faces.

“Well,” Rodrigo, their hotheaded leader, addressed his men. “You heard the jackal outside. Do we fight or do we surrender?”

He was as lean and slick in movement as he was agile with his sword. He was twenty-eight and older than most of these strippling but dedicated soldiers. For a while he had been pressed into Cromwell’s army. He stayed only long enough to master the art of soldiery, instantly deserting when he heard Mikah was mustering a rebel force. Having witnessed firsthand the barbarous cruelty inflicted upon his fellow Eh-Danians under Cromwell’s reign, he despised the tyrant king with every fiber of his soul. As for the question he had just tossed his men, it was purely rhetorical, for he was certain of their answer.

“I repeat, do we surrender or fight?”

A murmur spread among the rebels, rapidly swelling into a chant, which exploded in one unified cry of, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Rodrigo almost broke into tears with heartfelt pride in these makeshift, inexperienced warriors. What they lacked in expertise they made up for a thousandfold in valor—and it would be a privilege to die with such brave men.

Now that the rebels unanimously agreed to a last ditch fight they worked themselves into a lather of battle-readiness by shouting war cries, jumping up and down and rattling their puny weapons over their heads. They would have continued in this vein had not a shriek from Kabal at the mouth of the cave broke through the din, instantly silencing them.

“Oil!” Kabal shrilly cried, rushing into view, terror stamped on his callow face, for he was only seventeen. “They’re pouring oil outside the cave!”

“Dogs!” Rodrigo bellowed, grabbing a homemade spear of flint and wood from the nearest rebel. “Wait here, men!” he commanded, dashing to the front of the cave and flattening his back against the sweating wall. He peered slowly out of the cave like a turtle lifting its head out of its shell.

Damn! Just as Kabal had reported, there in front of an impregnable wall of Red Dragons was one of the notorious pederast’s boy vassals, pouring oil in the form of a long black snake in front of the cave, and it was slowly creeping toward the cave entrance. Sade planned to roast them alive. There was no time to hesitate.

Rodrigo’s sure hand gripped the middle of the spear and he leaped into full view of Sade and his men just long enough to hurl the spear at the vassal and run back inside. The spear shot through the air like a bolt of lightning, piercing the boy’s ribs and vitals. His screams were earsplitting as he fell on the sand flaying his arms and legs like a crippled insect. Rodrigo had acted so fast that the archers didn’t have time to fire. His men cheered and clamored about their leader.

Outside, Sade was erupting like a volcano. Furiously marching back and forth in front of his archers, he gesticulated wildly while rebuking them. “Asses! Donkeys! Toads! You let that slippery eel escape!”

He now turned his wrath upon the two frightened vassals cowering by the wagonload of oil. They were trembling and couldn’t unglue their eyes from their comrade twitching in the sand with a spear sticking out of his shattered ribs. “Don’t just stand there—fools! Pour more oil!”

Fearing the same fate that had befallen their friend, they panicked and tore off hysterically down the beach, away from the scene.

“Feather the cowards!” Sade shouted, and a dozen archers broke formation to discharge a volley of zinging arrows after the fleeing youths. They toppled forward and hit the sand on their faces, arrows still quivering in their backs.

Sade now climbed onto a boulder overlooking the cave and the Red Dragons, marking that the spilled oil had already snaked to within twenty feet of the cave. “There’s enough oil to do the job! Prepare to light your arrows!”

The Red Dragons lowered their bows and arrows as one of the torchbearers ran to each man and ignited the tip of his arrow.

Behind another cluster of boulders in the sand, not far from the wagonload of oil, Talon had watched the daring rebel’s spear throw, the senseless slaying of the fleeing youths, and now the eerie spectacle of the torching of arrows. One by one the tips of the deadly missiles flared into life and soon a hundred separate flames danced in a long row like fire spouting from the heads of the archers. It would have almost been pretty had not Talon known the grisly purpose of those arrows. The moment that sliding river of oil reached the cave Sade would give the order to fire—and the interior would become an inferno. If he was going to do anything at all he had to act fast. But what in the name of Jove or the new Christian God Christ could he do? He was only one man against a hundred of the most feared archers in the world. Moreover he wasn’t even carrying his tri-bladed sword; it was strapped to his horse back in the city with Darius and the rest of his men.

“This is your final chance!” he heard Sade threaten the rebels. “Surrender now or roast!”

Talon flogged his mind in search of an answer to this dilemma. Then his eyes alighted upon the wagonload of oil again and he smiled. How went the old saying? “Sometimes one must fight fire with fire.”

Sade felt hot blood course through his veins. The prospect of witnessing the devastation of large numbers of men always excited him; an excitement that was almost akin to how he felt when buggering some comely lad. He looked from the shimmering glow encompassing the Red Dragons from the flaming arrows and he was very pleased with them. They looked fierce, invincible, handsome. “Ready!” he shouted, and the archers raised their bows again to the proper trajectory. “Aim and fi—”

His sentence was cut short by the wagonload of oil suddenly hurtling toward his men at breakneck speed—as if being pushed by an unseen force. A rope on fire was tired to one of the casks of oil. The next second the wagon rammed into the battle line and exploded into a billowing holocaust of fire, shooting up into the sky and engulfing most of the archers. Sade was nearly sucked into the conflagration himself, for a long arm of fire reached for him on the boulder, but he jumped out of its grasp to the sand.

Rut most of his men were not so lucky. They had become human torches and were now either rolling in the sand or running into the ocean to extinguish the fire. The sound of their screams and the sizzling of flesh coupled with the flapping and belching of flames was deafening.

As Sade lay on his belly in the sand watching this incandescent horror and confusion, he noticed the band of rebels cautiously nosing out of the cave to observe the fiery chaos. And as if it weren’t humiliating enough to see his own men turning to cinders, the rebels started to laugh and cheer.

Sade scrambled to his feet and looked left and right down the enflamed shoreline, wondering which way to run. It was then that the long shadow of a leaping figure crossed the periphery of his vision. When he looked in the direction of the shadow he saw a very large man standing on top of the highest boulder, his muscular legs spread wide apart, his arms akimbo and his thickly tressed head thrown back in an eruption of raucous laughter. The swine was derisively laughing at the destruction of his beloved Red Dragons. To add insult to injury he heard the rebels join him in the mockery.

“Ho, all you rogues and rascals!” he shouted to the rebels who were still more in than outside the cave. Talon made a general motion toward the half-dozen dazed archers who had survived the flames. “Do you expect me to do all your killing? Come outside and split some skulls!”

Rodrigo signalled that his men obey the stranger and the motley warriors came charging out of the cave to quickly vanquish the straggling archers—but sparing the handful of weaponless vassals.

Sade watched this perverse turn of events, at first incredulously and then going mad with murderous rage. He yanked his sword into view and went scaling and cursing up the boulders to the one where Talon held fast. Below, beyond the still roaring fire, the rebels looked up at Sade and the grinning barbarian who had saved their lives. They were enthralled with the clash that was about to take place between these two titans, the firelight silhouetting their bodies with a grotesque glow.

As Sade crouched and stalked the seemingly fearless and mocking young hulk, he kept inching away, moving circularly. Occasionally he would take a whack at the handsome dog with his sword but missed; the youth moved with the speed of quicksilver. If he could only take that youthful head back with him to Cromwell perhaps the king would not deal too harshly with him for his defeat here. “I don’t know who you are or how you did this,” he said, gesturing toward the flapping flames, “but you’ll pay for your tricks, pig!”

He swung his sword at Talon again, but Talon ducked. As the sword whistled over his head Talon kicked the blade out of Sade’s hand and immediately grabbed him by his sprained wrist with one hand, wedging his other one between the general’s legs. With one swift lift he hoisted Sade high over his head with the ease of lifting a child. The rebels below murmured in awe of this show of strength.

“To h-e-l-l with you!” Talon droned out, as he hurled Sade into the cauldron of fire below.

The rebels were ecstatic to see the murderous and depraved Sade dispatched this way and they cheered Talon accordingly. But when a number of overly enthusiastic rebels started to climb the boulder to embrace and thank him, he jumped down to the sand and began rapidly walking away from the fire. He wasn’t up to being fawned over or extolled, and the image of sweet Alana and the question of how to depose Cromwell still overshadowed whatever he had accomplished here. Besides, he still faced the challenge of liberating Alana’s brother and he had better get on with it. Certainly these young, bedraggled insurgents weren’t going to do him any good; they looked as if they had been through ten sieges in a row and needed a week’s sleep. He would enlist his own men for the rescue of Alana’s brother—that is
if
he could locate the particular brothel they were no doubt whoring in.

But the euphoric rebels would not let him escape so easily. They surrounded him, blocking his path and showered him with praise. Rodrigo pushed his way through the milling crowd to the stranger. “Please wait, sir!” he implored. “We owe you our lives! How can we ever repay you?”

“For the moment, by getting out of my way. I have another equally important mission to handle.”

Rodrigo motioned that the throng part and Talon continued along the beach. But Rodrigo walked by his side, determined to find out more about this mysterious man. The rest of the rebels trailed close behind the pair, both Talon and Rodrigo taking long, measured strides.

“I’m Rodrigo, leader of this group of rebels. Who are you, my friend?”

Talon kept up the fast pace, still reluctant to break his anonymity.

Rodrigo was perplexed by this handsome warrior’s reticence to talk. But all the great leaders were known to be moody and unpredictable. And there was no doubt in his mind that this young man of wonders could prove to be the decisive catalyst in overthrowing Cromwell. Or was he already in Mikah’s and Alana’s service?

“What should we do?” Rodrigo asked, suspecting that the stranger just might have orders from the heir apparent to the throne.