Rage Page 5

  Priests drug the fallen jaguar knight off the field, and a new attacker appeared. This one wore the skins of a wolf and his face, too, looked out from its ravenous mouth. His attack differed, he was slow and deliberate and he was left-handed, making the strikes against the slave that much harder to defend against. Once he had slashed the slave’s arm enough that he could not defend himself, the wolf knight struck a fatal blow upon him. The priests came and repeated the ritual, using the kokopelli creature and afterward giving the remaining blood to the wolf knight who did the same as the eagle knight, but he did not wait to wear the skin of the fallen man, instead going back to the other side of the arena.

  “Your turn,” said the priest to Gathelaus, as he unlocked the collar and bindings, all but the ankle manacle. A guardsman stood behind Gathelaus with his spear in his back. They led Gathelaus out into the arena where he could now fully see the size of the place.

  Hundreds of people thronged to get a good view, they were stacked upon each other but for a small box where Tezomoc and a few other nobles sat, fanned by slave girls. Coco was not among them.

  They marveled at his pale skin and curiously short hair. Everywhere he looked, Gathelaus saw people bartering back and forth amongst each other, all exchanging bets based on his performance.

  The young priest Gathelaus had spoken with earlier said, “It is customary for you to select the god you would be sacrificed for.” He handed Gathelaus his buckler and helped attach it to his left forearm and then handed him his weapon, the same broken oar shaft he had fought with when he’d landed in this strange land.

  Gathelaus grinned. “If you have time priest, bet on me.”

  “Don’t be silly. Which god will you be serving here?”

  “Which does the red dragon signify? I heard it once,” said Gathelaus, swinging his arms to stretch his corded muscles.

  The priest paled. “KuKulacan? You cannot be sacrificed to him. He is forbidden at these rituals.”

  “I will slay for KuKulacan!” shouted Gathelaus, holding his buckler and club high. The crowd roared in all emotions at once and Gathelaus drank in the unleashed fury like a sweet wine.

  “You cannot do that,” slurred the priest. “You dishonor the games. This is for Xipe-Totec and the blood gods, not for the glory of the feathered serpent.”

  “And I told you to bet on me priest. That’s the name of the game,” said Gathelaus, poking the priest in the chest, making him stumble off the gore covered block.

  The opposing jaguar warrior faced Gathelaus, eyeing him cold as frozen hate for the mention of the enemy god. His shield was ornate and larger with feathered decorations running down the center, his club’s obsidian edge glistened black death. His narrow face curled in a snarl.

  “Found a way to get to you did I? Come a little closer,” taunted Gathelaus.

  The jaguar knight charged, trusting his shield to protect him from Gathelaus’s blows, but he grossly underestimated his opponent’s speed and power. The first blow knocked him off balance and the second took his jaw off. He collapsed in a howl of pain, still within reach and found his neck broken.

  “That was cruel,” muttered the priest, coming to drag the defeated jaguar knight away.

  “Did you see his face? What I gave him was mercy.”

  The priest clicked his teeth in doubt and put his arms under the dead knight and hauled him out of the grand gallery.

  The murmuring of the crowd rose. Gathelaus decided he would up the stakes. “KuKulacan! KuKulacan!” shouted Gathelaus, infuriating a large portion of the crowd. But some grew excited at this twist of expectations and were clearly now on his side.

  More goods exchanged hands as the broad shouldered foreigner was reevaluated by the crowd and the bets negotiated yet again.

  A scream alerted Gathelaus to a charging eagle knight. He bore no shield but had a flint lined club in each hand. The wide paddles seemed extensions of his winged costume. He whirled them with bravado and eased into his attack with fluid motion. The two blades chipped away at Gathelaus’s shield and oar haft eating them like a devouring demon. Each blade slammed in timed unison, hammering at his defenses.

  Bringing in his shield and oar to a tight center, Gathelaus backed away from the eagle knight, forcing his opponent to strain his own reach across the slightly elevated block. Timing it just right, Gathelaus swung his shield arm against the flat of the knights attacking left arm forcing its shearing cut at the extended right arm. The force took the eagle knight’s right arm off at the elbow. The knight fell screaming and Gathelaus stood waiting for the next slayer.

  Again the crowd roared and shouts fired back and forth as the unpredictable gambling excited them. Tezomoc leaned forward on his fists, glowering at Gathelaus.

  The third knight that entered the arena was bigger than the others by a large span, he stood taller than Gathelaus by a head and broader by far. His costume, covered in long fur dyed blue, had a short reptilian looking tail trailing behind. Short ram horns decorated the side of his open-faced helm and a mane of green hair erupted from the backside. He looked altogether monstrous, even without the costume of some unknown animal. Approaching slow and deliberate, it was obvious the blue knight was a favorite of the audience. The crowd cheered louder for him than any Gathelaus had previously heard. He carried a single weapon, a club riveted with obsidian along four edges rather than the usual two, it was also much longer and broader than the others. No matter how far on the block Gathelaus might retreat, that weapon could reach him.

  “I will feed your flesh to the gods of the underworld,” spoke the knight, before he laughed in a cavernous tone. He swung his awful club against a skinned corpse, utterly smashing it to a gory pulp.

  Gathelaus knew that club would break his shield and likely the arm behind it. Then he noticed the four heavy wooden balls resting near the edge of the block. The crude missiles were for his use as the earlier slave had used them, too. He picked one up and slugged it with his oar at the big man’s face, but the monster man batted it away. Gathelaus tried a second and it struck the horn, knocking it loose of the helm, leaving it dangling beside his face—and still the blue knight came on. A third ball went wide of the mark and then the blue knight was upon him.

  The saving grace for Gathelaus was the blue knight’s lack of speed, if the brute connected a strike something was bound to break but he was lighter on his restrained feet than the attacker. Gathelaus smashed his oar against the enemy’s head with a solid thud, the heavy armor proving to be too much for his oar. Gouges from near misses bit into the solid stone beside Gathelaus as he dodged right and left to avoid the crushing blows. Obsidian chips from the near misses lay all over the block amid the congealing gore. Gathelaus noticed the dangling short horn beside the brute’s face as he exerted himself with the blows.

  Going right and then a quick hard left, Gathelaus used the flat of the oar blade to knock the short curved horn into the blue knights face. The horn’s point pierced his skin and the big man hesitated, blinded with his own blood. He fell forward against the block, crying out in a rage.

  Gathelaus launched a new attack and hammered the horn into the blue knight’s skull. The big man dropped and the crowd cheered—this time for Gathelaus.

  Tezomoc stood and clapped though his face betrayed his unhappiness. He raised his arms and the lusty crowd went silent. “Mixamaxtla!” Tezomoc cried. “It seems you finally have a worthy opponent. Show him the gods will not be denied.”

  The wolf knight exited the side gates and waited as priests struggled to move the dead blue knight’s body. He faced Tezomoc and said, “I have already slain ten today and demand my rights, let the Amon-Gahela destroy him. As deadly as he may be, I have no desire to slay the pale man. It would sway the gamblers too far.”

  “You have spoken wise and just, noble Mixamaxtla. I will have the Amon-Gahela released and let it feast upon this blasphemer’s bones,” answered Tezomoc. He clapped his hands and a large number of guardsmen disappeared from their st
ations.

  The majority of the crowd seemed ill at ease with the mention of the Amon-Gahela, several from the safety of the crowds’ anonymity shouted insults at Tezomoc. He ignored them and sat again, staring daggers at Gathelaus.

  Whatever this Amon-Gahela was, it took time to retrieve, giving Gathelaus a much needed rest. He sat down on the stone block, ignoring the gore. The sun, now at its peak, blazed fiercely down on him. Sweat stung his eyes but better that than wounds stealing his life. Gathelaus spied the young priest he had spoken with earlier up in Tezomoc’s covered balcony. The nobleman stared hard at Gathelaus as the priest spoke.

  The crowd grew restless waiting and soon called for some amount of reward for Gathelaus’s performance thus far. Tezomoc relented and allowed a slave boy to bring Gathelaus more Pulque and water. He also had corn cakes and a handful of Chia.

  “This is from the silent lady,” said the boy.

  “I don’t know any silent lady,” said Gathelaus, as he took the handful and swallowed them with a mouthful of Pulque.

  “She knows you.”

  Gathelaus grunted and helped himself to the water and the corn cake. “Boy, what is this Amon-Gahela?”

  The boys eyes went wide with fear. “One of the old ones. A Quinametzin.”

  “What’s that?”

  The boy couldn’t answer, Tezomoc was addressing the crowd and the excited cheers and screams drowned out anything the boy tried to say. “Now heed me, all of you holy witnesses. The Amon-Gahela comes!”

  Thunder at the gates.

  The boy’s eyes widened in terror, and as the gates at the far end of the arena banged alive with two sudden thumps, he pissed himself right there before Gathelaus.

  Astounded at the heavy dirge pounding the gates, and the boy’s smelly fear, Gathelaus stood and swung the club once to stretch his arms and remind himself that he was the real slayer, a fighting man to be feared.

  The boy and his dripping loincloth stared back at the gate. He could not take his eyes off of it.

  “Go on, get out of here boy,” snapped Gathelaus. But the boy remained frozen in place. Gathelaus rapped him on the head with the flat of his club and the boy came back to his senses. “Get out of here!” The boy nodded and ran, disappearing into the slaves’ entrance.

  The banging on the gates continued and they burst open with the force of a hurricane. Gathelaus stared in awe.

  A mountainous misshapen head peered into the arena. One eye was larger than the other or it was perhaps because a drooping flap of skin concealed most of the other. The ears and nose were small in comparison to the other facial features. It was nearly hairless and wore only a scrap of breech cloth about its loins, but this breech cloth would have been a full blanket for another man. It had to get down on its haunches to make it through the gate. The skin was pale and flabby, covered in scars, and Gathelaus imagined this great being was indeed starving.

  The Amon-Gahela was a man, or looked like the form of a man but perhaps the biggest man in all of creation. It stood at least twice the height of Gathelaus—perhaps even two and half his height. He would have dwarfed even the grey-skinned titans from above the Spine Mountains. The enormous man growled and bellowed turning once to face its keepers who prodded it with long spears and whips.

  Once through the gap and into the arena, the Amon-Gahela lolled its head back and forth gibbering at the mass of people. Its nearly toothless mouth, so like the jaws of hell, drooled obscenely. A whip brought a cry of pain from the giant and it flung its hand backwards, barely tagging the keeper who was thrown against the wall and knocked senseless.

  Squinting against the sun, the giant blinked its one good eye at Gathelaus. Its tongue rolled across its lips as more saliva dripped in yards long strings of bile. It stood fully erect and roared an inhuman cry of despair and rage.

  The brute strength of such a behemoth was beyond imagining and Gathelaus stared, trying to find a weakness in those spindly, long arms. Each hand and foot bore six digits with the nails extended. Each ponderous step shook the ground and the colossus wheezed as it shambled closer.

  Gathelaus, at a loss on how to fight the thing, noticed one last heavy wooden ball at his feet. Stooping to pick it up, he whispered a prayer to his own nearly forgotten god. He knew he could throw better than hit with the paddle, so he coiled back his right arm and roared his own defiance at the Amon-Gahela in an attempt to get it to answer him.

  It did.

  The Amon-Gahela opened its maw wide and roared an anger that knew no right or wrong, only pain.

  Gathelaus threw hard and true, the ball flew into the creature’s mouth and down its gullet. The howl stopped cold and the giant’s long cold hands clutched at its throat. It gasped and choked and stumbled backward, stomping a horrified keeper to death in the process. It stared at Gathelaus with its one good eye, and then it wobbled and pitched forward upon its face. The right leg jerked for several moments before going still.

  The roar of the crowd was deafening. “Gathelaus! Gathelaus! Gathelaus!”

  Deal with the Devil

  Hawkwood attacked and burned almost a dozen ships off the coast of Derenz as he hunted for Tariq of Dar-Alhambra and Gathelaus, all with little to no information of value beyond what he had already learned from Rogliano’s first mate. He took his ship, The Kraken, out to the edge of the Invisible River current and watched as both the clouds above and stark contrasting sea itself raced in a southeasterly direction. Swirling eddies of water forced the Kraken to turn about as Hawkwood pondered his next course of action.

  “How long shall we wait here, Captain?”

  “As long as it takes,” barked Hawkwood, over his shoulder. After that, they did not trouble him any further as he stared out at the vast sea.

  Nearing the midnight hour when most of those aboard slept, Hawkwood produced a large iron brazier and brought out his alchemical supplies. Though he was known foremost as a mercenary captain of some renown, he was also sorcerer, but he kept that information to himself.

  Lighting the coals within the brazier he added a few other items—frankincense, quicksilver, and the spleen of an unblemished cock.

  Black jets of smoke sprang from the low burning brazier like gouts ink from a fleeing squid, an unfathomable voice issued forth from the acrid concoction.

  “Three questions you have bargained with me and two you have already asked. The price comes quickly, even for a man of your lifespan. What would you have of me?”

  “I seek a certain man. He is lost to my earthly contrivances,” answered Hawkwood.

  “His name?” asked the smoky god. A gigantic mouth and teeth from which it spoke now visible.

  “Gathelaus, famed Sellsword from the north. A named and infamous man who had usurped the crown of Vjorn and then had it taken from him in turn. He has been lost out upon the sea and crossed the great deeps.”

  The smoke pursed its lips as if deep in thought.

  “Well, Azmodeus?” prodded Hawkwood. “If you have no answer, we have no bargain.”

  The voice snorted in contempt. “You made the bargain, you cannot break that. But I have found him.”

  “Where?” asked Hawkwood.

  “He is marked for death upon the continent of Tultecacan. He is housed within the city of Chalco, in the palace of princeling Tezomoc Vy Dey Otumblioc. Cousin to the king of that land. Many forces are at work to slay the man you seek.”

  “I seek for proof of his head and death, not to preserve his life,” replied Hawkwood.

  “Then it may be possible for you to accomplish that which you seek.”

  “How then might I take my ship across the great deeps and cross that great divide?”

  Azmodeus chuckled and the smoke billowed twice as large as it had been. “You have only bargained for three questions of me and now we are done.”

  “A new bargain then?”

  “You have nothing I want, I already have your soul.”

  “Others then?” offered Hawkwood.

 
“You cannot deal in that which you do not own.”

  “Give me a price,” demanded Hawkwood. “I live life that I keep my word and I always do what I say I will do, even to the dogs beneath my heel. Life lived in fear is no life at all.”

  “Very well. A year lost and a year taken for each crossing,” answered Azmodeus.

  Hawkwood furrowed his brow. “I’ll do it.”

  “You know what to do.” The north and south winds came up and wrestling from both the east and west, the smoke dissipated and was gone. The once burning red coals faded away and went instantly cold and still as the breath of the dead.

  Powerful sorcery always exacted a price, but he would pay it for the sheer personal satisfaction of accomplishing what he said he would do. Hawkwood was quite amoral, but when he made a commitment, he kept it regardless of the price and danger.

  Hawkwood strode to the starboard deck and lay his bare and corded muscle of a right arm out over the waves. With his left hand, he took a dagger and made a long cut upon his right forearm and let a stream of crimson blood fall toward a black sea.

  A hush fell upon the night and as the salty drop touched a salty ocean, a booming ripple washed out in all directions. A price paid, a bargain met, a compact sealed.

  Hawkwood glanced out into the gloom overhanging the ocean and somewhere far to the southwest as a glimmer caught his eye and led toward his goal.

  A sudden force drained from him and he grunted in agony. The red hair upon his head remained but his temple became frosted with grey and the bearded points upon his chin below the bottom lip became ashen too. It looked as if he had suddenly aged a very hard three years.

  “My captain, to do this is too much,” cautioned his first mate.

  Hawkwood shrugged him off. “To live without risk is not worth living. I will bring down the usurper king if it is the last thing I do. Sail on through the gale and we shall meet our destiny.”

  The Invisible River to his south became a curious swirling mass, even the clouds above twisted inwards and an inexorable current pulled the Kraken southward toward the lost continent of Tultecacan.