As he approached the Ring, he saw an eery glow within, so that the gaunt stones stood etched like the ribs of a skeleton in which a witch-fire burns. The stallion snorted and reared and Bran tied him to one of the menhirs. Carrying the Stone he strode into the grisly circle and he saw Atla standing beside the altar, one hand on her hip, her sinuous body swaying in a serpentine manner. The altar glowed all over with ghastly light and Bran knew someone – probably Atla – had rubbed it with phosphorous from some dank swamp or quag-mire.
He strode forward and whipping his cloak from about the Stone, flung the accursed thing on the altar.
“I have fulfilled my part of the contract,” he growled.
“And they, their’s,” she retorted, “Look – they come!”
He wheeled, his hand instinctively dropping to his sword. Outside the Ring the stallion screamed savagely and reared against his tether. The night wind moaned through the waving grass and an abhorrent soft hissing mingled with it. Between the menhirs flowed Shadows, unstable and chaotic. The Ring filled with glittering eyes, which stayed beyond the dim illusive circle of light cast by the phosphorescent altar. Somewhere in the darkness a human voice tittered and gibbered idiotically. Bran stiffened, the shadow of a Horror clawing at his soul.
He strained his eyes, trying to make out the shadowy shapes that ringed him. In one place the shadows heaved and writhed and one of the forms was half pushed forward. But Bran got only a fleeting impression of a broad square head, loose writhing lips that barred curved pointed fangs, and a curiously misshapen, dwarfish body – all set off by those unwinking reptilian eyes. Gods, could a human race sink into such frightful depths of retrogression?
“Let them make good their bargain!” he exclaimed angrily, shaken.
“Then see, oh king!” cried Atla in voice of piercing mockery.
There was a stir, a seethe in the writhing mass of shadows, and from the darkness crept, like a four-legged animal, a human shape that fell down and groveled at Bran’s feet and writhed and mowed, and lifting a death’s-head, mewed and howled like a dying dog. In the ghastly light, Bran, soul-shaken, saw the blank glassy eyes, the bloodless features, the loose, writhing, froth-covered lips of sheer lunacy – gods, was this Titus Sulla, the proud lord of life and death of Ebbracum’s proud city?
Bran bared his sword.
“I had thought to give this stroke in vengeance,” he said somberly, “I give it in mercy – Vae, Caesar!”
The steel flashed in the eery light and Sulla’s head rolled to the foot of the glowing altar, where it lay staring up at the shadowed sky.
“They did him no harm,” Atla’s hateful laugh slashed the sick silence, “It was what he saw, and came to know that broke his brain! This night he has been dragged through the deepest pits of Hell, where even you might have blenched, though you knew of the Children of old. The Roman had not guessed the existence of them. Like all his heavy-footed race, he knew nothing of the secrets of this ancient land. Now give them their Black Stone!”
A cataclysmic loathing shook Bran’s soul with red fury.
“Aye, take your cursed Stone!” he roared, snatching it from the altar and hurling it among the shadows with a savage force that snapped bones. A hurried babel of grisly tongues rose and the thick shadows receded, flowing back and away from Bran like the foul waters of some black flood.
“Go back to Hell and take your idol with you!” he yelled, brandishing his clenched fists to the skies, “Gonar was right – there are shapes too foul to use against even Rome!”
He sprang from the Ring as a man flees the touch of a coiling snake, and tore the stallion free, wheeling the great horse about. At his elbow Atla was shrieking with fearful laughter.
“Kings of Pictland!” she cried, “King of fools! You blench at a little thing – stay and let me show you the real fruit of the pits! Ha! ha! ha! Run, fool, run! But you are stained with the taint – you have called them forth and they will remember! And in their own time they will come to you again!”
“The curse of R’lyeh on you, witch!” he yelled, and struck her savagely in the mouth with his open hand. She staggered, blood starting from her lips, but her fiendish laughter only rose higher.
Bran leaped into the saddle, wild for the clean heather and the cold blue hills of the north where he could plunge his sword into clean slaughter and his sickened soul into forgetfullness in the red storm of forthright battle. And forget the horror which lurked below the fens of the west. He gave the frantic stallion the rein, and rode through the night like a hunted ghost until the hellish laughter of the howling were-woman died out in the darkness behind him.
Fragment
Fragment
A grey sky arched over the dreary waste. The dry tall grass rippled in the cold wind; but for this no hint of movement stirred the primeval quietude of the level land, which ran to the low mountains rearing bleak and barren. In the center of this waste and desolation one lonely figure moved – a tall gaunt man who partook of the wildness of his surroundings. The wolfishness of his appearance was increased by his horned helmet and rusty mail-shirt. His lank hair was yellow, his scarred face sinister. Now he wheeled suddenly, his lean hand on his sword, as another man stepped suddenly from behind a clump of leafless trees. The two faced each other, tensed for anything. The new-comer fitted into the desolate scene even more perfectly than the other. Every line of his lean hard body betokened the wild savagery that had molded it. He was of medium height, but his shoulders were broad, and he was built with the savage economy of a wolf. His face was dark and inscrutable, his eyes gleaming like black ice. Like the first man he wore helmet and mail-shirt. And he was the first to speak.
“I give you greetings, stranger. I am Partha Mac Othna. I am on a mission for my leige – I bear words of friendship from Bran Mak Morn, king of Pictdom, to the chiefs of the Red-beards.”
The tall man relaxed and a grin twisted his bearded lips.
“I hail you, good sir. I am called Thorvald the Smiter, and until a day agone I was chief of a long-serpent and a goodly band of Vikings. But the storms cast my ship upon a reef and all my crew went to glut Fafnir except myself. I am seeking to reach the settlements on Caithness.”
Each smiled and nodded curteously, and each knew the other lied.
“Well it would be might we travel together,” said the Pict, “but my way lies to the west; and your’s to the east.”
Thorvald assented and stood, leaning on his sheathed sword, as the Pict strode away. Just out of sight the Pict glanced back and lifted his hand in salute and the impassive Norseman returned the gesture. Then as the other vanished over a slight rise, Thorvald grinned savagely and went swiftly in a course that slanted slowly eastward, swinging along with tireless strides of his long legs.
The man who had called himself Partha Mac Othna did not go far before he turned suddenly aside and slid silently into a brown leafless copse. There he waited grimly, his sword ready. But the grey clouds rolled and drifted overhead, the cold wind blew across the rattling grass, and no stealthy shape came gliding on his trail. He rose at last and swept the bleak landscape with his keen black eyes. Far away to the east he saw a tiny figure momentarily etched against the grey clouds on the crest of a hill. And the black-haired wanderer shrugged his shoulders and took up his journey.
The land grew wilder and more rugged. His way lay among low sloping hills bare except for the brown dead grass. To the left the grey sea boomed along the cliffs and the grey stone promontories. To his right the mountains rose dark and grim. Now as the day drew to a close, a strong wind from the sea rolled the clouds in flying grey scrolls and drove them torn and scattered over the world-rim. The sinking sun blazed in a cold crimson glow over the reddening ocean, and the wanderer came up upon a high promontory that jutted high above the sea, and saw a woman sitting on a grey boulder, her red hair blown in the wind.