James Silke - Prisoner of the Horned helmet

The nomads jumped up, spears in hand, as the headless body of the guard at the north wall staggered into view and fell to the ground. Bodies crouched, the nomads nervously jabbed their spears in front of them as if they could draw blood from the body of the night.

Behind their wagons, the merchants found a shadow big enough to hide in, and glanced about trembling. The Barbarian boys rattled their cages, and the girls and women wrestled their chains, then gasped and became silent.

Out of the bowels of the night appeared a menacing living darkness, a warrior mounted on a black stallion. His horse picked its way through the rubble easily, as if it had always grazed on the short, hard growth of destruction. The rider carried an axe decorated with streaming blood that glittered in the slashing firelight. A masked and homed helmet crowned his wide shoulders. The eye slits, like windows to his nature, glowed red, as if his bones and brain were ablaze.

The Kitzakk merchants began to sweat and whimper. The Barbarian captives stared openmouthed. The shouting nomads converged behind their main fire with their spears protruding like the quills of a porcupine.

The intruder dismounted, and strode into the firelight seemingly oblivious to the obstructions blocking his path. He kicked over a low wall as if it were a pile of brush. His shoulder took out a section of still-standing doorway. He pushed a second wall aside with the flat of a hand, and it obligingly fell on its back, kicking up dust which swirled reverently around his tramping feet. He marched up a pile rubble, looked down at the nomads, and raised his axe with two hands over his head. His muscles bunched, and he charged, an avalanche of steel.

A stride short of the waiting spear tips, he planted his foot and, pivoting on it, swung his axe in a wide sweeping arc. The blade carved a half moon out of the spears. The power of the blow propelled his heavy body into the blunted poles. Wood splintered and snapped. Spear tips caught in the Barbarian’s chain mail; others gouged his legs and slashed his forearm. He did not appear to notice. His axe was back over his head, coming down fast. This time it fed itself on meat and bone. Slavers fell spouting blood from necks, chests and arms. Blue-grey bodies writhed in wet red fountains. The axe kept at its task as a howl of savage pleasure rang out from the horned helmet.

The Kitzakk merchants watched with spellbound terror, then covered their eyes as the horror took on a new dimension. The black-clad warrior was slowly rising on a growing mountain of the dead and dying. Terror gave way to panic, and the merchants fled.

They raced down a footpath and into the shadow-filled southern desert beyond. They stumbled blindly past Brown John as he was hurrying up the footpath. He stared at them uncertainly, then dashed along the rubble of a wall, reached a rise behind the cages and stopped short. His eyes widened with shock, and he sat down before he realized he had to.

Gath of Baal stood on a pile of dead bodies working his axe. The surviving nomads surrounded him. Splattered with blood, they mindlessly charged up the bodies of the fallen into the Barbarian’s slashing axe. Bodies and pieces of bodies tumbled in the air, tossed on fountains of blood, and still they charged. Gath was knee-deep in carnage, slipping on bloody chests and heads. Dying men clung to his legs, bit them, struggled with the last of their strength to pull him down into their mire of gore.

Brown John did not see Bone and Dirken arrive until they, and the group of volunteers they led, reached the clearing. The same thing that made them stop short made the old man relax enough to notice their arrival.

The battle was over, and Gath had disappeared. Nothing remained but bodies stacked as high and wide as a haystack. Shuddering feet protruded from it, and bleeding faces and twitching hands.

There was a slight movement at the top of the pile. A severed tail fell away, tumbled down indifferently to dangle for a moment against a sword, then rolled to the ground and twitched fitfully until it finished bleeding.

No one breathed.

Slowly the stacked gore parted at the top and horns arose, bringing large pieces of carnage with it. The black steel mask appeared with its eye slits flaming. Shaking off bodies, Gath of Baal climbed out of the pile, axe in hand. He ripped spears out of his chain mail, then staggered toward the Barbarian captives.

He searched through the chained women mindless of the fact that he was bleeding on their trembling faces. His blood mixed freely with their flowing tears and splattered against the hair of their bowed heads. Not finding whom he hunted, he growled with frustration, severed the women’s chains with his axe, then ripped the cages apart and moved into the night.

The boys fought clear of the wreckage of their cages and fled into the waiting arms of their mothers and sisters as the volunteers broke rank and hurried to them.

Brown John greeted his sons and they pointed with pride at the desert. To the north a line of flickering torches had appeared across the horizon. The Barbarian Army.

The old man smiled with rare pleasure, then saw a dark, horned silhouette moving up a wide path of rubble. Reaching the top, the figure stood against the night sky at the heights of Chela Kong staring south. Whiffs of vapor swirled about his legs. The vapors thickened until they enveloped his body, as if the rocks themselves were breathing. Brown John trembled with a sudden chill. It was not any man he had ever known, but a demon.

Brown John rubbed his arms until the chill was gone, then bravely marched himself toward Gath. When he reached the heights, he found the dark man slumping against a piece of wall. He did not look at Brown John or greet him. The helmet’s eye slits still glowed as they stared south.

Anguish and disgust rushed through the old man, but he made himself squat, then asked warily, “What’s happened to you?”

“I must see her,” Gath said. His voice was a distant, desperate rumble. “I must look on her face and touch her.”

A vague expression of recognition crept through Brown John’s wrinkles as he watched the red glow die behind the eye slits. He said, “I think I begin to understand, but not nearly enough to help. What is the nature of this magic that possesses you?”

The great metal headpiece dropped forward, and Gath caught it with his hands, held it with his elbows resting on his knees.

Brown John edged closer until his eyes could discern the dark figure, then sat down beside it. He reached to lay a comforting hand on Gath’s shoulder but hesitated. He suddenly felt unequal to the task confronting him, unable to draw forth the energy, skill and friendship the night demanded. His wrinkles fell slack, and he felt a thousand years old. It was a long moment before he spoke.

“My friend, we have two choices. Advance with the army and battle the Kitzakks until you are dead of exhaustion… or try to find her ourselves, secretly enter Bahaara and take our chances. Your helmet will be difficult to disguise, or perhaps it will not even permit such an adventure, but I believe it’s our best chance. What do you think?”

The shadow made no reply.

“I think we must face the fact that if you die, then she surely will.”

The shadowed figure shifted restlessly.

Brown John waited, then grunted mockingly at himself. “What an arrogant fool I’ve been. Two days ago, I asked you to confide in me because I thought that if I knew what the pieces of this puzzle were, I might fit them together. But I had no conception then of the magnitude of the players in this game. This whole affair has gone far past my poor powers of understanding, and if you are as aware of the presence of evil as I suspect you are, there is no way I could expect you to give me your trust. There is simply far too much darkness within me, even a man with only a particle of your powers could see it.”