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  RAGE

  James

  Alderdice

  RAGE Copyright 2018 James Alderdice

  Cover typography/design by: http://indieauthordesign.com/

  Map by Anna Stansfield

  Digital formatting by: Hershel Burnside

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  LOSTREALMS PRESS

  Lands relating to this tale…

  And for my departed friend JC Johnson, who gave me a whole helluva lot of inspiration.

  Til we meet again…

  Contents

  Gift of the Waves

  Two for the Price of One

  Gods of the Mountain

  The Loss and Gain of Chalco

  Feast of the Flayed God

  Deal with the Devil

  Winners Never Leave

  The Bloodletting

  Summon the Thunder

  Dark Visions

  Kill the King

  The Door to Midnight

  House of the Serpent

  Coils of the Serpent

  And the Wheel Turns Round

  Beauty and Terror

  Breath of Life

  Blood Hunt

  The Pool of Sacrifice

  The Giant and the Dwarf

  Revolution Out of the Underworld

  The Old Black God

  The Coming Wave

  The Bloody Bay

  Follow the Roving Star

  About the Author:

  Gift of the Waves

  He was drowning. Gathelaus’s eyes opened in the briny deep, and suffocation came with awareness of depth. The lighted surface above shimmered like sword blades dancing for a brief second as lightning gave him a glimpse of his surroundings. Dark bodies joined him in the gloom, but he was not sure if they were his crew or feasters of the deeps looking for a meal. He kicked up and strained for that ceiling. A great dark hulk of a thing rushed with a driving swell behind him. Turning, he latched on, holding with the same indomitable grip of the moon upon the sea.

  He held to the shattered mainmast as it cascaded down the waves and back up again. Time and again spitting out the salt water that threatened to fill his lungs. The arc of lightning and rolling thunder was primordial and malevolent as sin. He couldn’t help but wonder at the sudden storm and its cataclysmic genesis. Did strange foreign gods dice with his fate as Rogliano had warned before they set sail?

  With titanic strength he clung to the mast despite the gale force winds and the deadly kiss of the waves—resolved that he would survive. It turned into a rhythm, plunging into the water and bursting forth to breathe again. If his strength remained, he could wait out the storm. The rigging and cross beams upon the mast kept it from tumbling over and wet hours passed.

  Night fell upon his crippled ship. Something alive brushed his dangling leg in the darkness, that it did not make him for a meal was a blessing.

  Morning brought the sound of breakers. Gathelaus spied gray stones beaten by the surf, and beyond, a lagoon encircled by tentacled mangroves. White beaches just beyond invited as surely as any winsome milk-maiden of Vjorn. He let the waves carry the mast closer to shore until he felt ready to swim. The torn coat was light by his standards but any amount of soaked clothing threatened to sink him. He still wasn’t sure how he had forced himself up when the ship capsized. He should be dead at the bottom of this alien green sea. He tore away the ripped garment down to his breeches and slipped into the water.

  Gathelaus had lost a decent ship, the Gilded Saber, his ragtag crew of both slaves and pirates, and his hard won weapons. Any treasure he had now lay at the bottom of an uncharted sea. He possessed nothing but his boots, a dragon emblazoned tunic of Kathul and the dagger strapped to his belt. Still it was more than he had when sold into slavery.

  He struggled to make it to the beach, even in just the few feet of water. He splashed and tripped in exhaustion. He knelt a moment, murky salt-water dripped from his long hair and beard. Damn, had it been so long? He hadn’t a beard when this began. He’d been clean shaven on the morning of the coup.

  Two score of lean, dusky people stood at the edge of the forest, watching him. They wore only loin cloths and simple copper jewelry. Gathelaus’s gaze skipped over their appearance, focusing on the obsidian-lined spears they held. He stood up and offered a greeting.

  They ignored the greeting and stared and pointed at the red Kathulian dragon upon his white tunic. “KuKulacan,” they muttered. More excited words came but he understood none of it. None of them came too close. He stood a head taller than the next largest man and none had even the thin wisp of beard that he began as a boy of summers. Several of them rubbed their own chins in wonder.

  “Is there a chief?” asked Gathelaus. He asked again using his crude butchering of the Kathulian tongue and then again in the common language of Vjorn.

  No one responded, but a small boy ran down a trail toward a village almost hidden beyond the thick trees—hopefully to fetch the chief.

  A young dark-haired woman appeared from behind a palm tree. Dark tan and beautiful, she seemed to be a slightly different race than these villagers, being somewhat taller and of a different dusky tone. Gathelaus’s eye was drawn to the small green stone that hung upon her bosom. She clasped it tight in her fist and asked him in the perfect tongue of Vjorn, “You have blue-gray eyes. Who are you?”

  “My name is Gathelaus. I come from Vjorn, far across the sea.” He looked at the zenith of the sun and gestured to the north and east. “My ship was thrown off course in a storm and destroyed.”

  When he pointed to the east the people grew more excited. All of them except the young woman. “Are you KuKulacan?”

  “Who?” he asked. “I told you my name is Gathelaus. I am king of Vjorn.”

  “A king? So you are the East Star Man, KuKulacan.”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  She gave a look of concern. “His servant then? A herald of his prophesied approach.”

  He was still groggy from the journey and his head hurt. He didn’t want to be confused with anyone else. “No. I know not this Ku-Ku-La-Can.”

  Truly puzzled, she pointed at the red dragon on his tabard. “But you wear the image of KuKulacan upon your chest, the plumed serpent. Are you not KuKulacan?”

  “I do not know any Ku-Ku-La-Can. This is the clothing of my enemy, Kathulian pirates. I had naught else to wear.”

  “You are not a servant of KuKulacan,” she repeated with a quizzical look arcing over her face. She turned toward the apprehensive villagers and shook her head sadly.

  “No. Who is that? How do you speak my tongue so well? You are surely no woman from the Ring of the World that I know.”

  The ebony-eyed beauty wasn’t listening to him anymore, she looked toward an older fat man with a tall multi-feathered headdress. She turned and spoke to the chieftain and Gathelaus could not hear what was said between them. The chieftain responded to the rest of the villagers with a wild frenzy of animated lunacy.

  The villagers became agitated and one or two argued with the girl before succumbing to th
e rest of the mob. They raised their spears and flint-lined paddles. Some held thick ropes, stretching them taut.

  “Devil woman! What did you tell them?” shouted Gathelaus.

  “The truth. That you are both an impostor and a gift from the sea, a slave to be sold to the highest bidder.” She turned away. The dusky men looked on Gathelaus greedily and came at him with their spears and flint-lined paddles.

  Gathelaus roared defiance, but dire thirst and exhaustion sapped his strength. He grasped a broken shaft of oar lying in the sand. “Come a little closer,” he said, beckoning.

  The mob charged and Gathelaus swung the improvised club, knocking teeth loose from jaws and blood free from the constraints of skin and vein.

  He batted aside a fist-sized stone thrown at his head, sending it crashing into another man. This grabbed the attention of the feathered chieftain and he shouted orders at the crowd of men who now reluctantly backed away a few paces. Several men picked up stones.

  Not to be taken in the open like a game hen, Gathelaus charged the beach, surprising the crowd with his indomitable will. They had thought him a near beaten man, and indeed, he should have been, but the will to survive would not diminish. When the gods of the sea could not extinguish his flame, what were mere men in comparison?

  The crowd spread out and gave ground. Wherever they clustered, Gathelaus charged and struck. The villagers hesitated to throw stones into their brethren but individually the strange man from the sea was besting them.

  The only person who didn’t run was the woman. She stood her ground, curiously appraising Gathelaus as he fought. She would have been an easy target for him to strike down, but she was not fighting him, nor was she commanding the others. But he had little time to contemplate more as the villagers assaulted him.

  He knocked two of them back with a long swing of the broken oar, then raced about a tree, beat three more senseless before the mass could force him back to the beach.

  Furious, the chieftain shouted at them. Those who had been holding back bombarded him with their projectiles. One hit Gathelaus in the back, but he again swatted several more away and toward his attackers.

  A brave few of the villagers charged into the water to surround him, but Gathelaus’s fighting skills proved too much for them, even when encircled. His length of hardwood licked out in every direction and slammed against men’s necks and arms like a serpent’s strike, dazing his foes and breaking bones.

  A villager tossed a net, and this caught Gathelaus’s right arm and the broken oar, somewhat disarming him. Men rushed in as he fought to untangle himself.

  The chieftain shouted again in his incomprehensible language, bringing more men to assault Gathelaus with ropes and sapling clubs. They appeared to want him very much alive.

  Gathelaus fought on, but would soon be overwhelmed by the sheer number of beating, forceful hands.

  The ebony-eyed woman cried, “Behind you!” as a villager struck Gathelaus in the head with a stone.

  Dazed, he dropped to his knees and they swarmed him. He groggily wondered at her warning in Vjornish, for his ears alone—why? Clearly none of these people spoke his language.

  They roughly stripped the red dragon tunic from him and then his breeches and even his ox-hide boots. His steel dagger went to the chief. Bound, they carried him on a pole between them back to the village. The ebony-eyed woman looked on, seemingly indifferent to his predicament. But at the last, did she flash him a remorseful glance?

  “I am no impostor to a man I have never heard of. I am Gathelaus and I will not stay bound too long!” he spouted in a frothy anger.

  “I know,” she said softly, before being shoved back by the men so they might all be able to crowd and strike him with open palm slaps. It was a small relief these people did not use fists.

  Lost in a barrage of battering limbs, he remembered her lithe form clutching the jade amulet. A dozen thoughts raced through his mind. Who were these people? How could he escape? Why didn’t they kill him? Why were they unsure of who he was when he first approached? How did the woman speak his language? Was she a witch? A queen? A prisoner?

  The villagers carried him a few hundred yards into the trees and before a rocky escarpment. There they threw him into a pit with a shout of unknown jeers, and blocked the opening with a great rolling stone, encasing him in the darkness of earth.

  And the dark heathen gods smiled at his doom, sure this time that he was out of the game.

  Two for the Price of One

  While he slept heavy and sure as time, they released him of his bindings, but still he was trapped in the manmade pit. Corn, eggs, and water in small gourds was left for him once a day in a carved slot in the stone. For days they kept Gathelaus in the dank prison.

  After what he perceived had been a week, the stone rolled back and the woman who spoke his language told him to come out. The light nearly blinded him and he struggled to see in the brightness.

  Gathelaus wondered if he could run to the beach, steal a canoe and escape, but four men with spears stood beside the woman, and his legs shook from the cramped pit. He didn’t know if he could run.

  “What do you want of me?” asked Gathelaus.

  “It is what the village chieftain Culhua wants. He seeks to sell you to the lord Tezomoc. He thinks you would be a good ball player for the sacrificial games,” she said, without looking him in the eye.

  Gathelaus was puzzled, she spoke flawless Vjornish but the guards obviously understood every word she said. Did everyone here speak Vjornish? No, she was the only one, but how?

  “What is your name? How do you speak my tongue?” he asked as a guardsman bound his hands once again with a stout rope.

  The guard nearest him struck him with the butt end of his spear, knocking Gathelaus to the ground. He barked at the girl in the same curious tongue, while the others leveled their spears at their prisoner.

  The sudden attack left Gathelaus stunned, his head flared red pain and rage but he could not charge the spears, not yet. The girl let her jade necklace drop from her grasp and she shouted at the one who struck Gathelaus. The guard backed away and muttered. She clasped the jade in her fist again. “He is about to be sold! Am I to tell Culhua you are damaging his property?”

  The guard murmured and she glared at him.

  “I am no one’s property,” Gathelaus snarled.

  “I had to say something to keep them from striking you again,” she said.

  Another guard helped Gathelaus stand and brushed dirt from his knees, speaking jovially—not that Gathelaus could understand a word of it.

  “Thanks. What is your name?” he asked her.

  The brutal guard shouted something in reproach but then retreated a few steps away.

  She stared daggers at the attacking guardsman and said, “Here, I am called Xilitiaxacoco. I have the gift of the gods to speak the tongues of all men.” She looked directly at Gathelaus and smiled. “Even your heathen tongue.”

  “I can’t say that name. I’ll call you Coco,” said Gathelaus, as he wiped away the hint of blood from his mouth where the guard had hit him.

  “That’s fine, it’s not my real name anyway.”

  The antagonistic guardsman shoved her and snarled something decidedly unpleasant.

  She spun about like a coiling viper ready to strike. “I am no witch!”

  The guard stopped, fear in his eyes for just a moment before he regained his composure. Coco still glared at him, but it was apparent to Gathelaus that was as far as she would take it. She was a slave too. He finally noticed the tattoo on her hand, the same mark upon some of the slaves he had seen on the island of cannibals. Peoples captured by the flesh-eaters must have been taken north to be sold on the coasts, all had the blue rope-like tattoos designating binding submission.

  She held her head erect at whatever the guard cursed at her. When she didn’t respond, he laughed in a mirthless mocking sound of cruelty. She spat at him. Gathelaus could respect her spirit—even if it brought her a
strike like his own.

  Gathelaus tried to gauge how he could take a spear and gut the man before the others did him in kind. It didn’t seem that there was a way with his hands bound as they were.

  “There is the chief Culhua and the Lord Tezomoc, if you are wise you will respond kindly to all questions presented you,” said Coco, as she matted her own hair in a futile attempt to look less presentable. She let the blood from her own mouth flow freely while wiping away Gathelaus’s. “Tell me no lies,” she said, looking him deep in the eye.

  Gathelaus had to wonder if her being struck in the mouth was another way for beautiful Coco to look less desirable to this Tezomoc.

  Culhua stood with his feathered adornments and copper baubles in pale shadow compared to the dusky lord Tezomoc who wore a lustrous cloak of scarlet feathers held by a golden chain. Turquoise and jet adorned his fingers and wrists, deep jade on silver chains hung about his neck accented by gleaming pearls. He held a short staff with hair on the end for fly swatting in his hand. Not even his face was free of wealth, lip plugs of jade hung there as did a golden ring in his long nose. It only accentuated the feature making him resemble a gaudy bird of prey. Dark eyes looked Gathelaus over and he snorted in disgust before speaking to Culhua.

  The chieftain gently challenged the remarks and asked the guardsman to verify his claims. He mimicked the gestures of Gathelaus swatting with a club and extended his hands broadly and laughed. He finished by rubbing his hands together quickly and exclaiming something before pointing to the east and then gave a half-hearted laugh in hopes to induce the same from Tezomoc.

  But the frowning lord remained silent. He circled Gathelaus and eyed him up and down, prodding him once in the small of his back with his fly swatter. He then spoke to Gathelaus, who could only look at him.

  Culhua snapped at Coco, who then repeated, “The great Lord Tezomoc wishes to know how a foreign barbarian with skin like a dead worm could hope to compete in the ball games against true men.”