The lancing pain in part drove away the coils of delirium. Bran rolled to his knees, wincing at the agony in his legs. Blood ran warm down his shins and over his ankles, and from the throbbing pain he might well have broken both tibiae. He stared about him-in abrupt clarity realizing this was no dream.
Huge menhirs loomed darkly before him in the lighter grey of the mists. But this was nightmare returning, surely-there was no cromlech within Baal-dor. Yet the pain was reality; the night winds cold on fevered flesh. Had he somehow wandered past the fortress gates?
There was a vague reptilian stench in the night-and now underscoring it, a heavier stink of death.
Bran stumbled warily to his feet. The movement was shot with new agony, but at least his legs bore his weight. He cast about him in the darkness for his sword.
Where was he?…
“Bran! Come to me, king of fools!”
Bran swore wrathfully. So this was still delirium…
“Here I am, my lover!”
Standing between the menhirs. The serpentine-lithe figure with the mockery in her pointed-toothed smile. Atla!
Bran snarled and lunged-goaded to berserk rage. His wrenched legs betrayed him. Once again the Pict sprawled drunkenly into pain-shot darkness, slithering on his belly across slippery stone.
Death hung on the reek, choking his gasping breath. A great pyramidal mass loomed obscenely before his outstretched body. Bran caught his breath and stared at the cairn of horror before which he prostrated.
The vacant eye sockets of two thousand gory heads sightlessly returned his stare.
7
FROM THE SHADOWS
A ripple of hateful laughter.
“Bran, my lover! Why were you so slow to answer my call? Are you no longer so eager to seek the doors of hell? Or were my kisses too cold for your hot barbarian blood?”
Atla swayed toward him, her sinuous grace stirring chill revulsion within him. Bran spared her a quick glance, still gaping at the grisly pyramid before him. Two thousand heads made a considerable pile, impressive even to one inured to the horrors of war.
Bloodless faces still set in final grimaces of agony. Others slack in death, gaping stupidly. Skulls cloven and crushed, many with features mashed beyond recognition, obliterated beneath masks of filth and gore. Some with necks neatly severed; others with hacked and ragged stumps; some with lower jaws shorn away-trophies carelessly taken, or perhaps wrested while the victim still had life enough to struggle. Two thousand butchered heads-a nightmarish refuse heap piled high as a barrow. Sufficient congealed blood remained to ooze in a greasy puddle from beneath the cairn, and the effluvium of new decay did not wholly overpower the acrid reptilian musk.
In a tiny corner of his brain that strove to hold back the flood of madness, Bran found pause to wonder what had become of their eyes…
Nightmare? Delirium? Or the final plunge into madness?
The pain and the cold and the smell of death were real enough. As was the poisonous laughter of the witch-woman of Dagon-moor.
Grimly Bran Mak Morn gathered himself for a leap. His eyes sought to pierce the darkness for his fallen sword. Flesh or phantom, creatures of hell lurked in the mist, and Bran meant to test their substance with cold steel.
“So this is Bran Mak Morn, great King of Pict-land,” sneered a new voice. “I see only a naked barbarian, crawling in the mud.”
The voice was that of a man, and he spoke in Latin. Bran came to his feet in a sudden bound.
“Softly!” warned the voice. “Is this what you were searching about for, my dirty barbarian king?”
Bran would have leapt for the man, but already the swordpoint that pressed against his chest had stabbed a warm rivulet of blood. The blade, Bran saw, was his own.
The compelling menace of stark steel brought Bran to full awareness of his situation. Some final stronghold of savage instinct withstood the onslaught of madness to leave the Pict clear-headed and poised to face the danger that surrounded him.
These were not the menhirs of a cromlech that rose about him in the night, he realized-nor had he left Baal-dor. Rather, he stood within the broken walls of a ruined tower atop the high bluff overlooking the convergence of the rivers. Presumably this had been an ancient redoubt-one of several ruinous fortifications within the enceinte left over from the citadel’s hoary past. Most were beyond repair and had been cannibalized for building blocks. Here the massiveness of its stone was probably the reason Pictish masons had avoided this ruin.
No phantasmagoria was the ghastly cairn of eyeless heads that overflowed the broken walls, nor the cloak-wrapped figure of the witch who laughed at him in the mist.
Bran shifted his weight, drawing back from the jabbing swordpoint.
“Softly, King Bran,” menaced the voice, slurring the Latin sibilants in a manner that stirred the Pict to instant loathing. “We have no wish to harm our potential ally.”
Bran glared, making no sudden moves as the swordpoint did not waver. In the darkness he could barely discern the figure of the man before him, other than to note that it was a slender man of middle height who wore the armor and accoutrements of a Roman officer.
“What devil’s game is this, Ada?” Bran demanded hoarsely.
The witch laughed again at his helpless anger. She made a grand gesture. “Hail, Bran Mak Morn, King of Pictdom! We stand before you in your royal court, bringing gifts to show our loyal allegiance: I, Atla, witch of Dagon-moor, and he Quintus Claudius Nero, legate of the Ninth Legion!”
“Enough of your mockery, witch!” snarled Bran. “The bones of the Ninth have bleached unburied in Serpent Gorge these four score years, nor has Rome ever reformed Legio IX because of its disgrace, so men say. What do you with this Roman?”
“Not a Roman, my king,” Atla told him. “Nor were all of the Ninth left unburied.”
Bran ground his jaws, furious at being the object of the witch’s secret jest. Another instant and he would hurl himself barehanded against the pair.
“Hold!” again warned the officer called Claudius Nero. “You’ll not live to complete that leap.”
The Pict had been tensing his muscles for the effort. Now he relaxed angrily. With a sudden chill he realized the other man had called his move even as Bran had tensed for the rush. Bran was too seasoned a warrior to believe he could have betrayed his intent under the thick cover of darkness. Could this man see in the dark, then?
“There’s no need for this petulance, milord,” Atlas voice was reassuring. “We’ve come to you as friends.”
“Friends who steal upon me in the dead of night?” scoffed Bran.
“An hour circumstances demand,” Atla replied. “But surely these gifts we here bestow upon you must convince you of our amicable intent.”
The mockery of her tone was salt on the Pict’s wounded pride. “How did the whore of serpents acquire such bounty as this?” he retorted, controlling his voice with difficulty.
“Bitter words!” laughed Atla. “Say rather, leman of kings!”
“In a moment,” Bran growled, “I shall call to the guard. I want to see how well you trade jests as the faggots begin to crackle beneath your feet.”
“Bran, you bluster! This night even the dogs of Baal-dor doze placidly, and in this reek a shout would scarcely carry beyond our hearing. But why do you spurn this gift we offer?”