The Creatures of Man (39 page)

Thus he rode into the presence of the enemy with a feeling of calm and confidence such as he had not known for years. This, it occurred to him, was what he had been seeking for a long time.

"Hold!"
bellowed the officer of the warriors. "What business have you here, swordsman?"

"The business of the god," Basdon replied brashly, his hand on his sword hilt.

"Ah?" The officer looked past him to give Jonker a fleeting glance and Eanna a lingering stare, under which the girl flinched. The officer grinned. "And who are these?" he demanded.

"Who do they appear to be?" Basdon snapped back.

The officer grimaced with quick anger, then seemed to think better of it. "Very well, you may pass. You will not need a guide, I trust." He gave the ruins behind him a fearful glance as he said the latter.

"We can find our way," Basdon replied almost automatically. In an astonished daze, he jogged his horse forward as the warriors drew apart to make way for him and his companions.

When they had ridden into the edge of the ruins, well out of the hearing of the warrior guards, Jonker murmured in amazed admiration, "Beautifully done, swordsman! I thought you were baiting the officer into the immediate slaughter of us all, but instead . . . here we are! But I confess that I'm totally mystified!"

"So am I," grumbled Basdon, still in a condition of shock at being alive. "I expected no better than you."

Jonker stared at him. "There must be some explanation."

Crossly, Basdon replied, "I don't even know why warriors would be here, much less why they would let us pass."

"I know where we are!" exclaimed Eanna, the fearful encounter with the guards pushed from her mind by the sight of familiar landmarks. "The gold thing we want to get is in that building, deep down!" She was pointing to a hulking structure most of which still stood among the crumbled wreckage of the city.

They directed their mounts to it, and when they were in its shadow Basdon saw why it had not been pulled down with the others. It was constructed of stones too massive to move without extreme difficulty and much labor, and too tough to pound down with ordinary rams.

But when Basdon got off his horse and led the way inside, he saw that it was a hollow shell from the ground up.

"We must uncover a stairway or tunnel leading downward," said Jonker, looking around at the thick rubble as if he had no idea where to begin.

A darker than average pile of stone caught Basdon's eye. He picked his way through the litter to its side, where he bent and picked up a rock.

"Damp," he said to the others who had followed him. "Someone else has tried to uncover something here, very recently." He dropped the rock, drew his sword, and crept around the pile until he reached the edge of a gaping black hole. "Stairs," he said softly to Jonker.

The magician peered into the darkness. "Who could be down there?"

"I know of one way to find out," said the swordsman. He took a step down into the darkness, ducked his head away from the overhanging ledge of loose rock, and continued down the stairs. He could hear the magician and the girl following close behind him.

For a brief moment he mused on the fact that he was acting with the foolhardiness of a man angered because death had passed him by. A man the sting had missed on the first try, now eager to give death another chance.

The darkness underground was not complete, even though the stairs doubled back as they descended three flights. At the bottom Basdon saw why.

"Light down this hallway," he muttered over his shoulder.

"Yes, but neither firelight nor daylight," Jonker whispered.

A muffled, regular thudding sound suddenly started up in the direction of the light.

"I . . . I think that noise is close to where the thing is," Eanna said shakily.

"Then that's where we're going," said Basdon. He strode down the hallway, which was longer than he had judged from the apparent dimness of the light. The thudding was almost thunder loud and the light nearly blinding in the darkness when he reached the door from which the illumination poured and stepped through.

The glistening figure with the heavy sledge whirled away from the wall which he was beating down and glared ominously at the swordsman.

"Sacrilege!"
he stormed. "No man enters the god's presence unbidden! Prepare to die, warrior, and for your spirit to burn lingeringly in . . ."

The tremendous voice fell silent for an instant as Jonker and Eanna came into the light behind Basdon.

The swordsman stepped aside for them, never taking his eyes from the unbelievable figure before him.

The sledge-wielder was man in form, but to a man as a horse is to a pony. The difference was not so much in size as in molding and strength. Heavy muscles on thick-boned arms and legs seemed almost to glow with power, and the mighty chest gave the feeling that it could suck the room empty of air in one quick breath. The shape of the breechclout, the sledge-wielder's only garment, evidenced a maleness as vast as the musculature.

Now he displayed his formidable white teeth in a broad smile as his eyes gleamed at Eanna.

"So!" he rumbled: "The travelers from Nenkunal have arrived, unwittingly bringing me a well-prepared tidbit!"

Basdon glanced at the staring magician and girl. "He's the god Vishan," he muttered.

"The renegade god-warrior still recognizes his god," remarked Vishan in high amusement, leaning on the handle of his sledge. "It is well, criminal, that you thoughtfully dispatched the spirit of one Laestarp to the keeping of We Who Own All. And well too that those of Us who received him mistook him briefly for one of Ourselves. Their examination of him revealed that evil still remained in my realm, buried in these ruins . . . and also that evil lurked in the craven soul of a lard-bellied magician and a bloodshot-eyed deserter."

"Why, he's one of the Great Necromancers!" muttered Jonker in dismay.

"I am one of We Who Own All," Vishan reproved sternly.

"You don't own me," the magician retorted with a show of courage Basdon had not expected.

"Ah, but I will very soon. You and the deserter. Already I own the tidbit." Vishan laughed. "Look at her!"

The swordsman glanced at Eanna and found her gazing raptly at the face of the god. Her expression stunned him, and his eyes felt like twin flames.

"Come stand before me, tidbit," the god commanded.

The girl moved forward like a sleepwalker. Basdon lurched to grab her and pull her back, but was detained by the sudden firm grip of the magician on his wrist.

Rapidly Jonker hissed in his ear: "I
do
lust for vengeance, swordsman! Will you help me get it?"

Basdon swallowed hard and nodded, only half attentive to the magician's words as he watched Eanna approach the carnate god.

"Then we will
attack him as we did Laestarp," whispered Jonker. Again Basdon nodded, gripped his sword tightly and moved forward.

Vishan's eyes moved from the girl to the swordsman, and glittered with impatience. "You would interrupt my pleasure, trivial mosquito, for as long as it takes to swat you? Very well!
Die!"

Basdon stumbled momentarily as a blast of energy swirled at him and around him. He was not harmed. He lurched forward once more.

Jonker bellowed furiously, "You are embodied, necromancer, which limits your magic to such as I can counter!"

"Presumptuous upstarts!" roared Vishan, now thoroughly enraged. "Very well, renegade, my muscles and hammer against your stringy tendons and childish blade! Come to the first of a thousand miserable deaths I mean to watch you suffer!"

Eanna said in a voice ringing with passion: "I am yours, my god and master!"

Vishan looked aside at her as he raised his sledge against the swordsman. "Yes. I'll enjoy you at my leisure," he said, returning his attention to his enemy.

"Your joy will be my delight," Eanna almost sang, "the pain you inflict my glory, my degradation and destruction by you my pride and uplift, the ruination of my body the salvation of my spirit, the . . ."

She had unfastened her dress and now let it drop to the floor. Basdon gasped, and Vishan himself seemed surprised when she suddenly pressed her bare body against his side.

In a blind rage Basdon lunged. The agile Vishan moved his sledge up quickly and the swordsman's thrust was deflected with a sharp clang of metal on metal. As the god brought his weapon down, he shoved the butt of the handle hard into the pit of Eanna's stomach. She stumbled back to fall to the floor, choking for breath, while the god snapped at her, "Stay out of the way!"

But even as Vishan was knocking the girl aside, Basdon was lunging again, this time to bring blood. His sword pierced the god's right forearm, and passed between the two bones. Vishan's roar of pain was deafening. He raised the sledge, jerking Basdon, clinging grimly to his stuck sword, completely off his feet. The pain that movement created brought another howl from the
god as the blade suddenly slipped free and was flung, along with the swordsman, into the rubble six feet away.

Basdon, stunned and badly bruised, leaped staggeringly to his feet, trying to set himself for the god's assault.

But Vishan was not attacking. He was gazing in tortured wonder at his bleeding arm.

"It's only a wound," Basdon snarled hoarsely. "Come get another."

From across the room Jonker chortled, "How does it feel, necromancer, not to be allowed out of a body in pain? The strength of my art has shrunken, but the power of my rod is still sufficient to keep you trapped in your body! You cannot shift an inch away from its pain, and direct it from outside! So
suffer,
spawn of darkness,
suffer!"

Vishan's eyes darted frantically between swordsman and magician for an instant, then he made a dash for the latter. Basdon ran after him and slashed at the mighty left arm, which was just launching the sledge in a one-handed swing at the magician. The weapon slipped from the god's numbed fingers to slam clatteringly against the wall twenty feet away.

Vishan was disarmed.

He backed away, making strange guttural sobs, as Basdon advanced on him. The swordsman's lips were drawn tight in the vicious grin of a killer at work.

"Not quick!"
Jonker shouted demandingly. "Slay him slowly, swordsman! Much may depend on it!"

Basdon did not know or care what depended on the slowness of Vishan's death, but he liked the idea. He was a small cat with a sharp claw, torturing playfully a giant, fearful mouse. First one leg, then watch and listen while the mouse screeches and tries to hop away. Then slash the metal claw into the other leg. The mouse screams and falls. It looks up at the small cat with glazed eyes, and lays still. Rake the claw shallowly across its belly! Ah! That makes it an active toy again!

"That's enough, Basdon!" Jonker was shouting in his ear. "That's enough!"

Slowly the little cat faded and Basdon blinked his scorching eyes and let tension flow from alert nerves. "All right," he mumbled thickly.

He looked around the room and saw Eanna painfully pushing herself up to a sitting position, where Vishan had knocked her. She did not give him a glance as her attention focused on the dying body of the god.

Jonker was saying: "Total physical death won't come for perhaps ten minutes yet, but his spirit would already be gone if I would allow it. Did you know, swordsman, that a soul hardly ever stays with a body to the point of death? It almost always departs seconds or even minutes ahead of that, to escape the trauma." He chuckled. "When Vishan tries to rejoin his colleagues beyond earth, this should leave him such a gibbering idiot of a spirit that he won't be able to explain what happened to him! Why, they might not even recognize him, and think he's merely another poor, battered human soul!"

"No!"
screamed Eanna.

She was on her feet suddenly, launching herself at the magician.

"Evil murderers!"
she lashed as she tried to tear Jonker's rod from his hands.
"Let him go! Release my god!"

Jonker twisted, trying to put his body between the rod and the violent girl.
"Eanna!
Stop it!" he yelped. "Pull her away, swordsman!"

Basdon quickly sheathed his sword and grasped the girl's wrists, tightening his grip until she let go of the rod. Then he drew her away, kicking and screaming, from the magician.

"Keep her away from me until this is finished," said Jonker. Basdon pulled her across the room where, after futile efforts to kick and bite him, Eanna stopped struggling and lapsed into soft sobbing. Fearful that he was hurting her, the swordsman eased his grip on her wrists.

Immediately she was a flurry of motion. She jerked free and ran toward the door to the hallway.
"God-warriors!"
she screamed.
"Come quick!"

"Catch her!" bellowed Jonker.

Basdon dashed after her and caught up with her a short distance down the dark hall. This time he clamped an arm around her waist and held her tightly. She yelled as she squirmed frantically against him.

"Be quiet!" he warned. Her fists were pounding against his bruised chest, and he pulled her close to leave her no room in which to strike.

Then, with her bare body pressed against him, he became indifferent to her weak blows and to her screams.

He carried her down to the floor. Her screams changed in quality but continued as he took her in savage haste.

When it was over, he lay on his back and lifted her limp form onto his, to get her off the rough, cold floor. She lay there in comatose apathy, too exhausted to cry. Basdon, too, was exhausted, and bitter with self-disgust, and with pity for the girl.

Only now, for the first time since he had been the appalled observer to Eanna's reaction to the god Vishan, did the thought occur that her actions were not of her own choosing, but had merely followed the dictates of the universal geas. She could not help but consider herself the property of the gods, of the We Who Own All—property to be kept inviolate from the touch of mere human masculinity.

He hated to think what a lost broken creature his violation had made her. And he wished he had the heart to rise up, seize his sword, and drive it through her heart, thus sparing her a month that his deed of lust could only make a thousand-fold more grievous for her. But he could not.