James Silke - Prisoner of the Horned helmet

“You were there! You helped him!”

“We were not. We only saw the results of his work, and I will tell you, I have never seen better work done by man and axe.”

“And just how, bukko ,” demanded Vitmar, “did you know it was the Dark One’s work?”

Brown John squinted up and muttered, “I… ah…1 see things. In entrails. Clouds. That sort of thing. He… he was one of the things I saw.”

Golfon grunted with foul disgust, lifted his spear.

“Wait!” Sharatz intoned in a devout register. The Kaven waited until every head turned toward him, then dismounted with regal solemnity. He leveled a long finger at Golfon and Vitmar, and said, “If you choose to soil your weapons by killing this trash, you will ride without my company.”

“You have a better idea?” grunted Golfon.

“Naturally,” Sharatz said with quiet disdain. He advanced to Brown John, smiled down at him so pompously he was in danger of falling over backward. Then, ceremoniously, he unbuckled his leather codpiece and urinated on Brown John’s hip.

The Grillards gasped. Vitmar, Golfon and the men-at-arms grinned, then laughed out loud. Here and there suppressed titters erupted from the crowd.

Sharatz buckled up, then said to Brown John, “We do not need your help, clown. We have the Dark One’s wolf.” He indicated the caged wolf on the back of the pack horse. “With the beast’s quite involuntary cooperation I can guarantee you that your benefactor, Gath of Baal, will be dead before sundown. That, of course, means your totems will then be totally useless.”

The Grillards, shocked, made signs on their bodies while the customers looked at the totems they had purchased with distrust.

The three chiefs chuckled, remounted and rode out the southern end of Rag Camp in a whirl of stifling dust. They were headed in the direction of The Shades.

Brown John, the red flush on his cheeks spreading as low as the backs of his hands, rose onto all fours. He stared after the departing Barbarian chiefs, muttering, “Idiots!”

Bone and Dirken jumped up and, with the aid of some Grillards, helped their father up. Over the babble of the outraged, humiliated, sympathetic clan, Dirken spoke to Brown John. “You know what they’re going to do! They’ll make his wolf howl like the lord god of Pain himself. And when it does, Gath will come fast. He’ll be wearing their spears before he even sees them.”

Brown John, still staring at the departing riders, said flatly, “It’s not his wolf.”

The Grillards grinned with relief.

Brown John turned to them. He wasn’t smiling. “But it will make no difference. He’ll go to it anyway.” He turned to Dirken and Bone. “But this will all take time, perhaps time enough to warn him. Get the horses. Quickly!” The reckless twinkle was suddenly back in the old man’s eyes.

As the two bastards hurried off, the Grillards crowded around their bukko and gaped at him with astonished eyes.

Brown John was standing in the sunshine. The dark wet spot at his hips steamed. He smelled of urine. And he was laughing.

Brown John, Bone and Dirken rode south through the spare trees and green glades of the Valley of Miracles. Two miles from Rag Camp they reached Summer Trail and headed west. It was a wide dusty avenue between the trees, filled with summer sun. An hour later they entered The Shades. Here the trail narrowed, and the soil became dark, moist. Shadows populated the dense foliage of the rain forest, and the undulating ground rose and fell as the trail twisted between massive firs, hemlock and spruce. The three men had not seen the six riders, nor any sign of them.

They plunged on, leaping over fallen trees, ignoring the pain as their suntanned faces whipped through overhanging ferns.

Summer Trail became muddy; small creeks cut across it, murky ponds hid it. It almost vanished altogether within clusters of elderberry before it widened again and rose toward Calling Rock, a massive stack of house-sized boulders which stood several hundred feet above the tops of the trees. Creepers and shrubs crowded the base of the rock at the eastern end. Gulleys and cracks cut up into the rock, twisted under overhanging rocks and over fallen boulders as they thrust towards the heights.

The three Grillards rode across the wide clearing of bald earth at the southern side of the rock, then left the trail moving north along the western side. They turned up a wide, open gulley which rose almost two-thirds of the way to the top of the rocks. They whipped their horses up into the gulley until their mounts bogged down in loose earth, then dismounted and scrambled forward on foot. They cut their way through rope-thick cobwebs, reached a turn in the gulley and bulled up it through a tangle of fallen boulders five times their size.

Reaching the heights of the rock they stood gasping for a moment. There, boulders, shrubs, and trees surrounded an open flat shelf of rock. At its far edge stood a naked, black thorn tree. Its branches, burnt to sharp points, thrust like giant spears at the belly of the pink-gold sky. The three men hurried across the clearing to the base of the tree. There was an oval opening in its charred shell.

Brown John muttered, “Hurry! Hurry!”

Bone poked around inside the tree with his club. Satisfied that no spider or snake lay in wait, he reached in and came away with a bullhorn as thick as his thigh. Hurriedly he dropped his club against the tree, took the horn in two hands and, taking a deep breath, blew. Two long, resonant, shrill blasts, one short. Bone waited as Dirken counted to one hundred, then repeated this short performance.

They sat down to wait.

Time passed.

No sounds of breaking branches or rustling leaves. No flurry of birds to indicate someone approaching silently, and no sounds of the six riders in the distance. Only the quiet steady drip of dew and the wind singing through the trees.

More time passed, then a sudden terror-fed howl of pain pierced the peaceful murmur of the rain forest, then again and again.

Brown John, Bone and Dirken jumped to their feet, raging.

The howl came once more, terrible and prolonged. From the south.

Brown John led the way back across the clearing. Reaching their horses, they mounted on the run and bolted down the gulley kicking up dust and rubble. They headed south, following no trail. They plunged through openings in the forest, rode down ferns and shrubs, twisted through thick fallen trees, jumped others. The distant sounds of battle, cursing men, the clang of metal, spurred their reckless charge.

Their mounts faltered, but they drove them on through thornbushes and across vaporous ponds tangled with creepers and possibly quicksand. Then the clamor stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Brown John reined up hard. His sons found their way through the thick undergrowth to his side and consulted him silently.

“Wait here.” It was a whispered command.

Brown John prodded his horse forward, cautiously picking his way through the rain forest.

Reaching a sun-drenched clearing, Brown John rose in his stirrups, astounded.

Gath stood at the center, his axe in one hand, the door of Sharatz’s cage in the other. The cage rested on the ground in front of him. Inside it the wounded she-wolf trembled and bled. Her left foreleg was broken. There were cuts about her eyes, hide hanging in strips from her throat, and mangled bloody clumps of fur on her rump.

Suddenly the she-wolf leapt out of the cage, stumbled, rolled fitfully and struggled upright on three legs. She circled wildly, spinning with her wounds bubbling red. Abandoned to her agony, she lurched in one direction, then in a second. Fear still hard in her, she picked a third direction and dashed on three legs past Sharn into the surrounding dense shadows.