The Wanderer's Tale (54 page)

As he struggled vainly for his life in the unyielding grip of his captors, many thoughts and images flashed through his mind. They were like a pictorial diary of all the time he had spent with the forest giant: one blood-drenched page after another, an unending succession of flickering images of young animal lives snatched away in savagery and terror, without mercy or thought. And yet more unrelated pictures followed: the buffalo calf torn to pieces by waiting predators as soon as it slides from the womb; the struggling beetle stuck to the earth by its own insides; the wheel-crushed coney bleating uselessly against the crows that are eating it alive . . .

. . . And, the very final image of this sanguinary picture-book of Nature’s everyday atrocities, though he had never witnessed it personally, a newly hatched turtle floundering clumsily, comically, upon the strand in that first, desperate race towards the sea, being dragged under the sand by the clicking, snapping claws of crabs . . .

The End.

His end. No, it was not injustice, any more than it was for all the lives he and the Gyger had taken. It was simply Nature. He was the hatchling turtle, clawing desperately but uselessly with his flippers at the sides of the tunnel down which he was being relentlessly dragged.

Fate vomits down my throat once again!
he cursed as he fought. But he knew the truth: he had only himself to blame. At least baby turtles do not throw their lives away by loitering around waterfalls that they have been explicitly warned to avoid.

Deeper into the lair of the Jordiske he was carried. He could see nothing of his oppressors in these blacker-than-night tunnels, but he could feel them only too well. Their bony talons gripped him firmly with the strength of giant mandibles, and dug painfully,
mercilessly
, into his tender flesh. Slick with rancid sweat was their oily, bristle-covered hide where it rubbed against him. And the
stench
! It brought to mind a slaughterhouse, or a tannery – maybe even a plague-pit.

And all the time they chittered, screeched and warbled in their strange, alien tongue. Gapp had heard insects make that same noise, he was sure.

Soon a dull red glow began to brighten the tunnels till Gapp could just about make out the grotesque silhouettes of his captors. Wherever it was he was being taken, it might not be far now. But his arms felt constantly as if they were being pulled from their sockets, and he was going limp with the pain. Soon he would have no more strength to fight back. He had to do something fast. Had to wait for exactly the right second to strike. There would be only one chance.

Swinging himself sideways, he managed to briefly press his right hip against one of his carriers. There was an angry flurry of insectoid noises from the Jordiske, followed by a savage rake of claws across the boy’s face. He cried out in shock, and began heaving convulsively.

But it had been worth it; for, in pressing himself against the Jordiske, he had felt the reassuring solid length of his sickle-headed fruit-pruner dig into his thigh. In their haste to flee from the Gyger and his hunting pack, they had not had time nor thought to disarm their captive. His jaws clenched hard, and he paced his breathing; perhaps he would get that one chance after all.

Moments later Gapp could feel on his face a cool current of air, moist with the icy vapours of underground streams. He breathed it deep into his lungs, not yet guessing what it might presage. Then suddenly he was released from the sharp grip of his captors and fell to the ground, where he lay unmoving in a crumpled heap.

He could sense a wide space all around him now, a black void of vast proportions. All around, the sound of running water could be heard echoing. His hand stole down towards the fruit-pruner . . .

‘TCHRRRK! GHRRRTHNNK!’ clicked one of the Jordiske in a voice that echoed sharply through the void, and bounced off the rock-faces to dwindle into the distance.

‘Ygthrrrx! Spfx!’ came the disembodied reply from somewhere in the blackness ahead of them.

The sound of hasty shuffling. Talons grasping at him once more. Before he could gather his thoughts, Gapp, still prone, was trussed up in ropes and thongs supporting him under his armpits. From some way up above him came the creaking of wooden beams. It brought to mind a gibbet. From below came the far more distant sound of a stream, rushing and churning through the lightless depths.

Then, for a moment, the Jordiske nearby stopped whatever they were doing and froze in silence. There were no sounds Gapp could hear that gave him a clue as to why they had halted, but in that short pause, he had the distinct impression they were keenly sniffing for something. Hurriedly, they continued with their activities, only this time Gapp could tell something was worrying them.

He lay there thinking. His brain raced. Their worry was his boon: another chance? As his face pressed against the hard, rocky ground, he knew he must not waste that chance. He had to act soon, but he had to get it right. Stealthily his nimble fingers sought out the length of wood still strapped to his hip. His heart beat faster on locating it. Adrenalin streamed through his system and he could feel his entire body tensing . . .

Abruptly he was yanked to his feet and pushed forward. He could not see a thing, but sensed with alarm that he was standing on the edge of a deep chasm. Something terrible was about to happen. His hand went down again to the cutting tool . . .

Then a howl of demonic fury rent the air of the caverns, froze them like limestone pillars and echoed far, far into the distance. Every one of them, Gapp included, remained rooted to the spot. Eyes glazed. Hair bristled with dread. Blood hammered.

Then there came the barely audible sound of something large flying through the air, followed by a sickening crunch right next to Gapp. A second later, the body of one of his captors fell, severed in two.

Shlepp!

To Gapp’s mind that name suddenly seemed the fairest, most melodious and poetic of appellations, chiming triumphantly in his soul. His chance had come! The fruit-pruner momentarily forgotten, Gapp moved back from the chasm’s edge and shouted the hound’s name above the clangour of babbling voices and liquid growling.

‘Shlepp! Shlepp! It’s me, Gapp! Over here, boy!’

Shrieks arose from the Jordiske all about him, and the sound of ripping flesh continued with renewed frenzy. There was a flurry of bewildered shouting and warbling from over the other side of the abyss. Pandemonium reigned.

‘Shlepp!’ Gapp called out again, slipping and almost losing his balance in a widening pool of gore at his feet. ‘Over here! Over here!’

Something collided heavily with him, knocking him to the ground. He leapt back to his feet without hesitation and again called out.

‘Shlepp! Over here! Over he-
earrghh
!’

A sharp blow raked across his already lacerated face and his head was wrenched back by the hair. Then, beyond belief, he was thrust violently over the lip of the chasm.

Mouth gaping wide in a scream that could not emerge, Gapp plunged headfirst into the blackness of the void. There was no up, no down; just emptiness, and a rushing of wind that ripped the air out of his lungs. Time stood frozen. The battle above was no more.

A pressure began to build under his armpits, and Gapp realized he was moving through the air in a sweeping arc. He had been attached to some sort of loose harness suspended from the beams far above, and he was now swinging across the abyss to the other side!

He rose to the zenith of his arc and, just as he felt himself reach a point of weightlessness, rough hands snatched him from out of the dark. Once again he was slapped across the face, this time so violently he believed his entire face had been ripped off. For a few seconds he blacked out, then through a morass of pain he heard shrieks of damnation from the other side of the chasm as the lost souls were torn apart.

His chances! Where had his chances gone?
As he was hastily unfastened from his bonds and borne off down yet another tunnel, his mind reeled in disorientation.
What of his promised chances?

Held in sharp pincers by his useless, floundering flippers, he knew that Hope was behind him now, on the far side of a bottomless chasm, and he felt the crushing despair of one realizing he will never see the world of men again.

As Gapp was hauled away deeper into the earth, the hound of Yulfric finished his grisly work. But too late. Shlepp’s final howl, an elegiac dirge for the damned, followed turtle-boy down the tunnels, then echoed into silence.

Blood-pounding, hammer-sounding, bounding along tunnels resounding with rasping gasping, mile after mile, sharp bile in the throat, dried throat, dried by noxious air, nightmare-weaving, heaving gulps of air, scorching the lungs, his frail casing of human flesh ready to explode, little boy wandered too far into the woods, pushed along these wormholes of stone, all alone, moan and groan . . .

Barely conscious now, Gapp’s mind had been left far behind. There was that dull red glow visible again, and it became all he was aware of. This time, though, it was stronger. Getting stronger with each moment that passed.

Soon Gapp could see a little more clearly. The walls around him were a garish red, and he wondered if this was because they flowed with blood. The Jordiske, too, burned with the scarlet fires of a demon.

Ahead, where the light originated, a dull, rhythmic pounding could be heard, its
thump
,
thump
,
thump
matching the beat of his heart. Before long the tunnel all around him reverberated strongly. As it thundered through his stomach, Gapp began to feel very sick. It brought to him primordial, ancestral memories. Tribal memories. Palaeolithic. Old fears laid bare. Was he about to be sacrificed? Eaten?
Alive
, perhaps? Or did they have something even worse in store? The nausea rose up in him, and it would not be held down.

It was warm, now. No, not warm – hot! Ivy creepers of noxious steam snaked up his nostrils from their unravelling garlands below. They smelt of mud; of boiling mud. The corn dollies were coming alive.

Louder than before, the pounding shook the whole tunnel and the red glow waxed into a bright orange glare. A moment later, they emerged from the stifling confines of the
vena cava
and into the great open atrium of the Heart of Jordiske-Home.

Here, after the darkness of the tunnels, the light was blinding and the heat insufferable. The pounding reached a climax, and was joined by the roar of a hundred bestial voices echoing deafeningly throughout the cavern. With the feel of lead in his guts and a memory of some dreadful familiarity at the back of his mind, Gapp stared through the swimming in his eyes at his surroundings.

It did not look good. It did not look good at all. He had been dragged down to what must surely be the most enormous cavern in the whole world. At least to his eyes it was, though to be sure his eyes were not up to much at the moment. The various susurrations and distant echoes from all around did suggest an immense space about him. And the air currents – bringing with them the odours of boiling mud, sweat and meat gone bad – were almost like the wind. As he tried to focus he began to make out globes of firelight all over the place, near and far. Firepits? Some were near enough for him to see the shapes of the Jordiske within their glow; others, more distant, were mere points of light. There must have been an infinite number of floor levels in this cavern, for the fires were everywhere, up, down and on every side, each suspended in the darkness like an orange star in the sky.

Towards the nearest of these he was dragged: a small group of Jordiske with torches around a flame-pit. The fire seemed to give off more smoke than light, and lit up only its immediate surroundings. Beyond that, all was darkness, so that to Gapp it looked like a tiny world of dancing red light, inhabited by only a dozen or so Jordiske, which hung all alone in the vast emptiness of space.

Some of the creatures leant or squatted against boulders, picking at their various facial orifices with long, grimy claws, or else combing the teeming insect life out of their matted hair. Gapp was reminded of the spiders in Yulfric’s wine cellar. Two were fighting, ignored by the others, butting each other viciously with a sound like a hammer striking an over-ripe melon; they rolled about the floor, occasionally disappearing from the halo of firelight, until eventually one of them did not come back. Another Jordiske, aided by a smaller assistant, was crouching upon all fours while building up the firepit. Judging from the leathery flaps of hide that hung from its chest to drag along the ash-covered ground, this one must have been an old Jord-Hag.

The rest of them watched Gapp approach and salivated. Claws twitched. Eyes bulged. Lice crawled. And then others began to appear in the circle of firelight.

He was shoved headlong towards them, and instantly they were upon him. Long fingers snatched and grabbed at him from every side, while harsh voices hissed evilly. The horrible little devils were swarming all over him, till he felt his sanity drowning in a murky swamp of death-fear.

He was flung down onto his knees beside the firepit, and once again his head was yanked back by the hair. Skull-like visages leered and spat at him. He could feel their cold saliva running down his face like itchy tears.

Wild-eyed, he was forced to behold the Jord-Hag that now approached. In one hand she held a little stone pot, in the other what looked like a painting brush. She grinned insanely at him, and even from here he could smell the slugs that crawled over her cold skin. But what held the young Aescal’s attention most was the primitive stone knife slung at her waist. It had that look of painful tearing to its rough, jagged edge, and Gapp’s neck felt dreadfully exposed. The blood pumping madly through his arteries had never before seemed as precious as it did now.

The others gathered around. The breath rattled strangely in their throats. Some hissed or growled like cats. All were eager, all expectant, all anticipating. Their stinking exhalations hit the boy’s face like a cold, acidic vapour. They watched while the old witch swayed about before the victim, a mantis taking time before the strike, savouring the dish before the meal.