David Smith - Against the Prince of Hell

“Listen!” A hiss from the soldier.

Omeron took a step forward. Yes, definite movement in the forest, there. Definitely a noise, a betrayal of something.

“Indra!” the sentry murmured, tension rising in his voice. “It is Du-jum!”

“No.”

“It is Du-jum, My Lord! It must be!”

“No!” Omeron’s hushed voice was stern.

Nearby, a second sentry overheard, watched, then came towards them. Omeron cautioned him with a sign, then moved ahead, stepping over sleeping forms.

“Something!” whispered the first sentry to the second.

Omeron paused. He drew out his sword.

The moon broke from behind a skirt of clouds, cast brilliant silver upon the campsite. Yet the light did not penetrate the thick brake. Omeron moved closer.

Again, the noise—a very faint rustling. Omeron mentally prided his soldier on keen ears.

The two sentries crossed the campsite in Omeron’s wake, until the three of them stood abreast, all their eyes on the concealing foliage.

Again, the noise.

“Du-jum!” screamed the first sentry, suddenly jumping ahead.

Omeron yelled at the man, then dashed after him, eyes still on the forest. The soldier, running with his sword up, tripped over a sleeping comrade and fell to his belly. Omeron nearly tumbled over him, but still he kept looking at the forest. Then, in answer to the commotion in camp, the brake suddenly gave forth a long writhing or rustling sound, and as Omeron watched he thought he saw two lights, like yellow coals, pass upon the darkness and then vanish with the swiftly receding sounds of disturbed movement.

Cold sweat broke out on his face and arms.

“Did you see it? Did you?” cried the first soldier.

“Mitra!” whispered the second.

Now the whole camp came to life. Sleeping men sat up, calling out. Guards from opposite ends of the site crossed over to help Lord Omeron. Their voices grew into a clamor, a din.

“We are attacked!”

“It is the sorcerer!”

“We’re discovered!”

“Out swords!”

Angrily, Omeron yelled out to his men that they were not attacked, that it was nothing: a forest animal, no sorcerous fiend. But it took several moments for him to gain their ear, and then only by climbing atop a tall rock and holding up a torch and yelling to them that exhaustion and dreams were the cause of their fears, not Du-jum.

“He is waiting for us to attack him!” Omeron yelled out. “Listen to me, men! Listen! It was an animal in the forest—an animal, or a dream!”

Eventually they calmed down, listened to Omeron, began talking sense. The moon returned behind the clouds; a small wind grew, and the stars began to pale low in the east.

The soldiers returned to their posts, to their blankets, to their fires. Omeron stepped down from the rock, eyed the sentry who had started the pandemonium. But the man, ashamed, would not look at him, and Omeron could not find the anger to chastise him.

The camp quieted, and Omeron returned to the cold ashes of his fire. He sat on a rock, dug his feet into the ground, rested his chin on his fists. Around him, those men who could not sleep whispered and talked; some laughed.

Omeron watched Red Sonja. The commotion had not roused her or, if it had, she probably had assumed, deep inside herself, that it was part of a fever dream, and had not had the strength or will to rouse herself.

He watched her, wondering again if she were a symbol or a cryptic message from the gods. And slowly, almost involuntarily, his eyes returned again to that brake at the edge of the woods, and he looked for yellow eyes.

Yellow eyes. . . .

His heartbeat rose, old fears welled up in him, screams sounded silently in him, Yarise mocked him patiently, endlessly.

Yellow eyes.

Animal eyes, surely. Yet, was he sure they were only animal eyes? Had those twin lights in the shadowed brake really been natural forest eyes? If not, whose eyes were they, what eyes were they?

Du-jum stood at an open window of the chamber, looking out upon his city. Across the room, Yarise still slept. Dawn was far off yet. The wild aroma of the city came to him, mixed with the scent of blood and the smell of fear, rising up pungently as incense from an idol’s brazier. And he was deserving of it, of this god-offering of incense of blood and violence from the burning brazier of this trod-upon city.

Du-jum . . . Du-jum . . . Do-ju-umi. . . .

A whisper of sound from the bed. Du-jum looked over, saw Yarise lying on her side, smiling at him with white teeth. Her eyes were shadowed pools in the white of her face.

“Awake?” he asked her.

“I was dreaming,” she murmured pleasantly.

“I, too, was dreaming, though awake.”

“I was dreaming of you.”

Du-jum shut the window, crossed the dim room, slid into the bed beside her.

“You are a great man,” Yarise whispered to him.

Du-jum grunted.

“My greatness lies not only in what we have achieved so far, Yarise, but also in what we will achieve—what we must achieve.”

“I have no fears on that score.”

“I trust,” Du-jum told her, in the darkness of that room, “I trust to myself above all, and to the powers I possess in me and of me.”

“I trust. . . too.” She stroked his long thigh, kissed him on the face.

“But Omeron is not dead.”

Yarise said nothing for a moment, then she spoke. “You know that? Yet, he is dead in all other ways. Dead to me. Is he in hiding somewhere? We will find him.”

“Aye. We will find him. He will come to us, and then we shall finish him.”

“Are you at all afraid?” Yarise asked, arching her fine-penciled brows slightly.

“Of Omeron?”

“Of Omeron. Of what it might mean, him not dead.”

“I fear nothing—nothing that I can control. And soon I will control everything.” He stroked Yarise’s hair, touched the delicate aquiline arch of her nose. “Look you. What other man on earth can do this thing?”

He held up a hand, palm open, and stroked the dark air, as though it were an animal to be coaxed. “Do you feel the darkness?” he whispered carefully. “Do you feel it? It is our darkness, Yarise. It loves us, understands us. We are part of the process of darkness, you and I. The dark does not give way to light; the light gives way to the darkness. Can you feel it, Yarise? Can you?”

She wondered suddenly, with a tinge of fear, if his attraction to the darkness was because he was a black-skinned Kushite, and because the white men of the cities and fields of the west had made him feel as dark inside as he was outside.

“Listen. Listen to the darkness,” he whispered, still stroking the air of the chamber. She wondered if by some process Du-jum had made the light inside himself, the light that all men were said to possess, as dark as the darkness of this chamber. Du-jum continued to stroke the shadowed chamber air. “Listen, Yarise. Lisssten. ...”

No—she would not fear him for it; she would trust him for it. Rather than suppress the darkness within, Du-jum had allowed it to release itself and take command. Yarise would strive to do the same thing. Thus, they would be stronger and more honest than other mortals.

“Here, Yarise. Here—my power. What other man on earth can do this?”

She reached out a tentative hand, felt where his hand, barely discernable in the dimness, was held open in the air. She touched what should have been a naked palm. Something semi-solid, dry and tangible was in his palm—a cold sphere of something. Coalesced darkness—darkness made solid, by the magic which was at Du-jum’s command.

Yarise began to laugh softly, out of nervousness and a kind of fear. Du-jum swept his hand away and slapped his palms together.

“Enough!” he said.