Dust billowed up out of the pass, and mounted Kitzakk raiders erupted from its mouth, plunged toward the three bridges screeching.
An alarm gong clanged inside the village. The women in the clearing screamed as they drove the children and animals toward the forest. In the village women cried out and raced to find their children, scurrying through men who scrambled for their weapons.
Robin, shuddering, looked back at Gath as he slipped his axe off his back, then turned sharply, hearing the sharp cries of children coming from Weaver Court. She plunged into the flow of bodies spilling out the gate, fought her way through them and ran into the village.
Eighteen
Gath started after Robin, then stopped short and turned toward the charging raiders, slowly, like a nail being bent by a crowbar.
Two metal-clad commanders led the screaming, skull-faced raiders. The pair carried huge weapons that glittered, and they themselves radiated streaking spears of white light from an eerie glow at their groins.
Gath blinked. His breathing became deep, racking and noisy. A vast heat filled his world. Light obliterated sound. Nothing moved for him except the two illuminated, metallic champions. They seemed to plunge slowly as if galloping through a sky of blood. He started for the raiders in a slow steady march, his feet plodding like those of a condemned man. The piercing screech of women cut through his enchanted world, brought him back to the real world of dirt, panic and the smell of fear.
He looked back at the Forest Gate. Animals, men, women and children were spewing out, heading for the safety of the trees in wagons and on foot. Gath’s face became hard and expressionless behind the mask of his helmet, then he again turned back to the raiders, as if held in the grip of an invisible demon.
The Kitzakks had split up into two groups and were plunging across the two closest bridges. The structures shuddered and shook under the pounding hooves dislodging heavy chunks of their earthen bodies into the gorge.
Cytherian defenders, spears in hand and snarling, met the charge at the bridges. Neither their weapons nor attitudes were sufficient. All but two panicked and ran before the steel-shod avalanche reached them. The two remaining took crossbow bolts in their foreheads and dropped in place. Their fleeing comrades died soon after, catching flying steel bolts with their backs and necks.
Hefting his spear and axe, Gath forced himself to turn away and march to the Forest Gate, pushing through the thin remnant of fleeing bodies. Inside, panic had sucked the life out of the village. He could hear sounds of clanging steel and cursing at the opposite end of the village where Cytherian warriors were fighting the raiders. Ignoring the inviting noise, he passed a wagonload of unshaven, leather-clad mercenaries who apparently considered fighting Kitzakks not part of their contract to protect Weaver. He continued through deserted wagons jammed at a crossroads, passed a man holding his dislocated jaw with both hands, and saw another with straw held against the bleeding stump of his wrist. The incessant clanging of the alarm stopped abruptly. He hesitated, listened, then strode on passing open windows and open doors. From the shadows beyond them came the silence of empty rooms, empty beds and empty chairs.
He climbed a zigzagging deserted street at the north side of the village until he was two tiers below the Heights. There he went up a staircase siding a building. It led to a flat roof where a ladder rose to a higher roof. From there he could see the battle unfolding at the south end of the village.
Cytherian warriors, in scattered, unorganized groups, were meeting the Kitzakks’ charge amid the rubble and streets. Their long spears, twice their height, splintered uselessly against the raiders’ steel. The Kitzakks closed with them, trampled them firing crossbows at point-blank range with brutal accuracy. Steel bolts impaled staring eyes, speared open mouths. Farther off, the main body of Cytherians, some forty strong, were gathering at Weaver Court to defend the temple and its sacred maidens.
The Kitzakks joined forces in the Market Square, dismounted and split up. A small detachment ranged through the now almost empty lower tiers of the village, mopping up stragglers. A few remained in the Market Square guarding their horses. The main body, led by the two commanders, charged up the twisting street connecting Market Square to Weaver Court. Huge dye vats stood like massive sentinels along the street’s high dirt walls. At the top of the street the Cytherian defenders met the raiders with swords and daggers, and demon war drank deep of blood.
All Gath could see was the back sides of the wooden buildings surrounding the court. From beyond them came the sounds of hysterical young girls and the clang of steel on iron. Gath leaped down to the lower roof, then into the empty street below. Up through twisting alleys he charged to the Heights.
He wound his way through ranks of drying yellow, gold and orange cloth, heading towards the bedlam of sound. Stepping out from behind a yellow cloth, Gath came across a Skull soldier who failed to notice his arrival. The soldier was preoccupied. He had a half-naked Cytherian maiden pinned under his kneeling body. Handfuls of her blonde hair were clenched in his sweating fists, and protruded between his fingers. Her big eyes were muddy pools bubbling with mindless terror as she stared past the soldier’s metal-clad shoulder. Her expression told the soldier he had company, and he turned to see who it was.
Being a civilized man, the soldier had removed his helmet in order to more fully enjoy his pleasure, but he had not bothered to remove his dagger from between his clenched teeth. It was a poor place to keep a dagger.
Gath kicked the soldier flush on the mouth. He flew off the woman in one grunting piece, landed with a metallic crunch, and rolled five feet clawing down orange bolts of cloth. When he stopped, his head was turned far enough around to look down at his buttocks. Three inches of dagger blade protruded from his left cheek.
Gath stepped over the girl, moved through the sheets of cloth, and stopped in the concealing shadows near the edge of the sheer bluff. Below him was Weaver Court.
The battle was over.
Brutal eruptions of lust, murder, torture and pillage were breaking out spasmodically about the white marble courtyard. The raiders were taking the payments due victors, rewards best collected when the blood was still hot with the kill and the mad terror of death was still fresh on the flesh.
Upended, spread-eagled Cytherian women were being raped both in the shadows and in the sunshine. Nails raked naked backs. Hands groped. Spines were bent over stairs and barrels. Mouths were gorging themselves on wine, cheese, fresh fruit and raw meat. Intransigent prisoners were being kicked to death slowly, while the reasonable were being drowned just as slowly in the well. The dead and dying, sprawled among the living, added to the hellish celebration by spewing fountains of blood and emptying their bowels into the slippery, stumbling chaos. The stench perfumed the rioting passions, and the large wooden temple provided appropriate music. There the screaming was a chorus.
Gath’s stomach bubbled and churned. His muscles throbbed, eager to throw his body into the Kitzakk hell. But he remained motionless.
A group of Skull soldiers burst out of the broken doors of the temple herding bruised and bloody young girls, many with their tunics torn away, clutching the shreds to their naked bodies.
Gath leaned forward, eyes steady and patient.
Robin was at the center of the group, framed by five of the smallest girls, young things from nine to thirteen. They clung to her tunic and arms, sobbing and hiding their faces against her. Robin held them close covering their eyes. Her legs wobbled, but the pressing weight of the girls kept her upright.
The soldiers prodded the girls across the yard toward a lacquered black wagon parked facing the main access street. When the girls reached the wagon, a small, fat priest emerged and greeted them with an unctuous, openmouthed smile. He probed their breasts, teeth, buttocks and flat stomachs with shameless fingers, mindless of their cringing and sobbing. Reaching Robin, he had the young girls driven away from her, and clapped his fat hands in relish.