James Silke - Prisoner of the Horned helmet

Robin, whose eyes had not left his, nodded once more. “Two long and one short.”

A distant note, like the cry of an elephant, rose above the sounds of the wind in the trees and the dialogue of the crows and sparrows. Gath, standing in the clear track in front of his root house deep within the southern part of The Shades, heard it clearly.

His dark brow furrowed and his sweating face lifted slightly, but he did not turn in the direction of the sound. He was busy.

In front of him Sergeant Yat’s helmet was wedged over the stump of a root. Its wide brim had been hammered off. All that remained was the steel bowl. Attached to it by two bands of Kitzakk steel was his own crude iron mask. The iron was blunted and black. The new steel was grey-blue, bristling with highlights in the afternoon sun.

Gath looked down at the helmet, spread his feet.

He was wearing Yat’s forearm guards and chest- and back-plates. Like the helmet they had been hammered to raw steel and refitted to the Barbarian’s thick-muscled chest and back. Holes had been drilled through the sides of the plates, and hide thongs joined them. The plates, being too small, left wide unprotected areas at his sides.

He edged sideways to get the best angle from which to deliver a blow and test the helmet, then raised the axe high over his head. Determination drew down the sides of his upper lip, making short vertical lines. He struck, putting no more muscle into the blow than would be required to end the careers of three men and a wagon.

The axe caught the curved steel of the bowl, glanced off, buried itself in the dirt up to the haft. Gath shook from the impact. He rubbed numbed fingers, took hold of the axe and pulled on it. He had to wrestle with it some before the dirt was willing to let go.

A second distant note came out of the north but quickly lost force, sputtered to silence.

He glanced to the north, wiped the sweat off his lips with the strip of violet cloth which was now tied around his left wrist. Setting the axe aside, he plucked the helmet off the still-shivering root. The iron bands sprang loose from the bowl and fell to the ground.

That brought a scowl. He studied the steel bowl, found only a slight dent in it, and a grin replaced the scowl. He picked up his axe. A portion of the axe blade’s cutting edge was flattened, wide enough to reflect a bar of sunshine and a piece of clear blue sky. That brought the scowl back.

Gath put the helmet back over the stump, repositioned the iron bands. Using the blunt end of the axe like a hammer, he beat the bands down over the steel bowl until their studs locked in small holes rimming the bowl. This done, he sat down beside an uncorked wine jar, slid a thumb through the handle and held it in the cradle of his arm as if it were a girl instead of a piece of cold crockery. His eyes were steady, judgmental, as uncompromising as grey slate. Staring at his new helmet, he lifted the jar to his mouth and poured. Suddenly he lowered the jar.

The trumpeting sound had come again, a long note. It was now followed by a long wavering note, then by a short one. A stranger was blowing the bullhorn, and knew the signal.

Gath stared north, then whirled toward a subtle movement at the vine-covered entrance to his root house. It was the wolf, ready to go for a walk.

An hour later Gath and Sharn spotted the brown boulders of Calling Rock above the treetops. They moved warily to the clearing at the south side and stopped in the concealing shadows.

Thirty strides across the clearing, beyond Summer Trail, the sheer southern face of Calling Rock rose fifty feet. Creepers and vines fought against fallen rocks and dirt spilling out of crevices to embrace the lower boulders. Above this foliage, the late day sun caressed brown stones with an orange glow. In the gullies, caves, jagged cracks and crevices of the rock were deep shadows, black places of mystery designed for demons and unseen hands to hide. But they were not responsible for the brightness that entered Gath’s eyes.

A small figure at the top of the rock knelt over a smoking fire at the base of the blackened thorn tree. It looked no more vulnerable than a bite of meat on the end of a fork.

Frowning, Gath looked around. At the eastern end the rock broke apart in a tangle of massive boulders penetrated by three deep crevices. They zigzagged and grew narrower as they approached the heights. There they vanished among shrubs and thorn trees. Except for an unusual silence there was no sign of anyone hiding among the crevices or within the surrounding forest.

The man and wolf shared a wondering glance, and looked back up at the figure. It was a girl. She had moved to the thorn tree, and, climbing halfway into its burnt-out shell, came away with the bullhorn. It was as thick as her waist at the bell end. She wrestled with it until she had the bell propped on a branch, then took hold with two hands, inhaled deeply and blew hard. A clear strong note left the horn, and a covey of crows lifted out of the trees to the east to spatter the gold sky with black-winged specks. With resolve, she blew again. The note started strong, then lost force and whined like a lonely dog.

Gath grinned, then laughed as the girl, gasping for breath, collapsed in a lump against the tree, bringing the horn with her. It banged her knee, escaped from her hands, and defiantly rolled out of reach while the girl held her knee and rocked painfully in place.

Gath, with his eyes on the girl, stuck his leaf-bladed spear upright in the ground, lifted the waterskin slung on his back along with his axe, and poured a long drink into and over his grinning mouth. The girl glanced at the bullhorn as if it were deliberately picking on her, and he laughed again and choked.

Sharn looked at him with critical eyes, as if he were suddenly a stranger, then turned to leave. Gath drew in his grin, whispered, “Hey!”

The wolf looked back at him as if he were as useless as a dead leaf dancing on the wind, then vanished behind shrubbery.

Gath glared after the wolf, but the amusement was still at play behind his eyes. He ripped his spear out of the ground, glanced down their back trail, then headed for the eastern end of the rock keeping to the forest. Reaching the eastern end, he quietly moved up through one of the crevices to the top. There he found a shadowed recess in the sprawling boulders. From its shadows he peered through shrubs, saw the girl sitting quietly under the tree about thirty strides off.

She was dressed simply in a bone-colored tunic, a cloak of harvest yellow. Her walking stick rested on the ground beside her. The girl looked like she had neither the will nor the strength to stand. Then she stretched and sat up with renewed vigor, as pleasant and as promising as a budding daffodil.

Gath found a spot behind some shrubs and watched as the girl placed rocks around her fire, then removed a hen from her shoulder pouch and prepared and cooked it. She drank from her waterskin, dined on the hen, and cleverly made herself a cozy bed of needles between the exposed roots of the thorn tree. When the daylight died, she rebuilt her fire, covered herself with her cloak and a blanket, and lay down to sleep. When sleep did not come to her, he watched her scratch her nose, raise her eyes to the first star in the night sky, then count the needles in her pillow, smelling each one. He watched her get up, pace around the tree, haul the bullhorn back to its hollow, then try to sleep again. This time she drew her knife from its sheath and held it tight in her small fist.

Gath continued to watch.

When sleep came to her it was fitful. She twisted, rolled onto her back, arched her soft supple neck, exposed a length of thigh, twisted and rolled again until she was a ball of soft shadows exposing only a pink earlobe, warm, tender and inviting.