James Silke: Prisoner of the Horned helmet

The birds came to rest on the remnant of bridge, then looked back down, their beaks dripping.

The Barbarian found his axe and picked it up. The handle was broken off a foot short of the head. He moved to the first body, drew a knife, bent over, then hesitated as if sensing life. Then he saw it.

Twenty feet away, a serpent colored with gold, brown and black diamonds slithered down a large rock towards a dead arm protruding from a pile of fallen timbers. A Sadoulette, the mother breed of the python. It was not yet fully grown, but big enough to have a squad of Kitzakk scouts for supper.

The reptile approached the arm, saw the Barbarian and coiled back, nostrils flaring. It appeared more than willing to wrestle for its dinner, then suddenly lost all confidence, slithered up the rock and tumbled awkwardly out of sight.

The Barbarian listened to the sounds of crunching gravel and breaking grass made by the retreating reptile, grunted with contempt, then glanced around again. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. He searched through the rubble of the bridge, shoved timbers aside, found the source of what he sensed.

Soong lay on his side, jackknifed over a rock. He still lived, barely breathing with short, wet gasps. One eye was smashed closed. The other watched fearfully as the Barbarian lifted his short-handled axe and moved for him. As the shadowed face of the Barbarian loomed close, Soong’s eye opened wide, white with wonder, and the axe struck.

The dark savage checked the other bodies, but they were dead. What remained was work for vultures and ants.

He stripped each body and made a blanket from their leather tunics. He heaped their armor and weapons along with his broken axe and helmet on the blanket, tied them in a bundle. He drank from the stream in animal fashion, and washed most of the dry blood and gore off his body. Then he picked up the bundle, heaved it to his back, and started down a narrow trail beside the stream.

The family of vultures watched until the man-animal had vanished around a bend, then glided down and came to rest on broken timbers beside the naked dead bodies. They eyed them warily, then the largest screeched, leapt on Yat’s back driving his claws into the flesh, and stabbed his pointed beak at a shoulder muscle.

The other vultures screamed and moved for the meat. There was a loud crack of breaking wood. The vultures, screeching, took flight. Above them, a heavy timber broke loose from the remains of the bridge. It tumbled through the air, hit the side of the cliff and dislodged several large rocks. A small avalanche followed, and covered the birds’ dinner.

Reaching the sky, the vultures looked down and cried out in rage, then flew off, still complaining.

The three men riding the wagon had not intended it to be a shy vehicle. Its flatbed, side boards, driver’s box and shaft were as red as a harlot’s lips and trimmed in a pink and orange so bright they would have made the same harlot blush. The men were Grillards, a clan of outcast and outlawed entertainers. Their wagon was designed to serve as a traveling stage, but at the moment it was on its way to do, hopefully, some serious hauling.

Heading south, it danced through the tall pines at the southern end of the Valley of Miracles, crested the mountain, and raced across a glen that was a riot of greens in the early morning sunshine.

Old Brown John sprawled in the bed of the wagon, and despite the clattering wheels and bouncing boards, dozed comfortably on a pile of ragged blankets beside a clutter of coiled ropes. He was the bukko , the boss and stage manager of the Grillards. He wore a ragged brown tunic with large patches which, in addition to covering holes, were the clan’s sign. He was short, wiry and bandy-legged. At first glance he appeared no more impressive than his patches, but on closer examination, even in his prone and snoring position, he had a surprisingly alert, in-charge and genial manner.

His bastard sons rode the driver’s box.

Bone, the older, held the reins. He wore bright red patches, was big all over and proud of it. Regardless of the role his father cast him in, on- or offstage, he played it as a swaggering, braggart soldier whose brain was just slow enough to make him suspicious of everyone and everything. Dirken, the younger, was short, lean, and favored deep umber patches. He picked his own roles, was always on stage, and cherished playing vile, treacherous villains, so long as he could play them well groomed.

All three men wore leather belts hung with pouches and short swords. Not stage weapons, but working tools which protected them during the cold wet season when they had to survive as thieves.

The wagon rolled clear of the forest, skidded to a stop where Thieves Trail met Lemontrail Crossing, and Brown John glanced over the side board.

His white hair fell in smooth silky slopes down over his large ears and bristled with feathered tufts at his neck. His tangled white eyebrows, rising at sharp angles, gave his face a slightly satanic expression. It was deeply cut with all varieties of wrinkles, but they only gave a vague indication of the complexity of his wrinkled mind.

Seeing the crossing, he chuckled with far more amusement than any bridge, particularly one which had been destroyed, deserved.

Father and sons got down from their wagon, moved onto the battle-scarred remnant of the bridge, and peered down into the gorge at the pile of dirt. The tips of splintered timbers protruded from it.

“There they are,” Brown John said with exhilaration. “Go to it, lads.”

“Now just a minute,” Bone said with grave caution. “If the Dark One and his axe did all this work by themselves, it’s something a man should think on some before messin’ about with it.”

Dirken, barely moving lips as thin as fork blades, asked in a theatrical whisper, “How many did he say he killed?”

“He did not say,” their father said in an instructional tone, “because I made certain there was no discussion of bodies. It would have made him suspicious. I simply inquired, while your brother traded our wine for his meat, as to where he got his new armor. All he said was, ‘Lemontrail Crossing’. Two words.”

“Then where are the bodies?”

“If you were more interested in the work, Dirken, and less in the drama, you would have noticed by now that the hyenas and jackals have already been at work on one of them.”

He pointed at the bottom of the gorge about fifty feet to the east of the wreckage where a gutted rib cage rested among rocks. It was black, and the blackness moved vaguely. Ants.

“Well now,” Bone announced, “that sure enough used to belong to something that drank from a cup, and it sure enough is dead.”

“Not completely,” Brown John corrected him. “His Kaa is exceptionally strong.”

Bone and Dirken hesitated, then nodded thoughtfully. They knew that the Kaa, the spirit of the victor, could be infused within the bones of his victims at the moment of death. It could live there for days, weeks, even months, depending on its strength, and they normally did not question their father’s evaluation of anything. Brown John had “vision”. He saw many small, insignificant things and put them together into great and important things that common people like themselves could not see. Nevertheless, they were wary. Brown John had told them the Dark One’s Kaa just might be strong enough to be contagious, and that kind of strength usually only lived in legends.

Brown John, ignoring their hesitation, pointed at the dirt pile. “You will more than likely find the bodies under that rubble. I’d say you’ll find five, perhaps even six Kitzakk scouts.”

Dirken put two sharp, black, skeptical eyes on his father.