The Black Stone slipped from nerveless fingers, struck the cavern floor with a crash that resounded throughout the burrows of hell. Ssrhythssaa fell with a dry rustle of silk and disjointed bone.
Claudius Nero stood over the broken form of his master, strange blood oozing from the edge of his sword.
For a long moment the tableau held.
Then, as the outraged cries of the serpent-folk hissed like a rising wind, Nero spurned the butchered corpse with his sandalled foot-raised his sword on high.
“Soldiers of Legio IX!” the legate shouted, drowning out the hissing surge of wrath. “The tyrant lies dead! No more shall we, men of Roman blood, be slaves to this race of degenerate weaklings!
“I have slain their master! Now let us together slay his minions! Death to the Worms of the Earth!”
At the death of Ssrhythssaa, the shock of seeing one of their race cut him down with cold steel-the smouldering hatreds flamed to incandescence. They were Romans by descent-that proud remembrance was their cult-not slaves to these reptilian dwarfs.
“Death to the serpent-folk!” the cry echoed bloodthirstily. “Hail, Nero! Death to the Worms of the Earth!”
In close ranks the legionaries marched forward. They were but a few hundred-Ssrhythssaa had summoned only a fraction of their number for this demonstration of power. The serpent-folk were gathered here in their thousands. But they were a naked horde; only a few carried the flint weapons their degenerate race had all but forgotten to use. The legionaries were well armed and trained in close combat.
His legionaries rallied to the cry of rebellion, rushed to their legate’s position-then marched in disciplined ranks into the serpent-horde. Shields came up; short Roman swords chopped down.
“Death to the Worms of the Earth!”
Then slaughter-hellish slaughter beneath the Roman blades in the half-human fists of Nero’s legionaries.
For a space, the serpent-horde almost threw them back-through sheer press of their clawing bodies. But the wave of ophidian wrath broke upon the locked shields and hacking swords of Legion IX In-femalis. These were the warriors who had defeated a camp of Roman legionaries. For all their numbers, the Children of the Night were little more than a weaponless pack of dwarfish vermin, now without a leader. And each stunted body that smashed to the stone beneath the relentless blades was another broken link in the shackles of fear and taboo that had bound the progeny of the Ninth.
For decades the hordes of the serpent-folk had held power over the tiny, helpless band of part-human slaves. Even as the ranks of the legion had swelled, the tradition of subservience-and Ssrhythssaas dread powers-had kept the shackles upon the necks of the descendants of the Ninth. But in a blast of fury, Claudius Nero had done the unthinkable-had slain Ssrhythssaa with common steel. Now the puny brethren of the ancient wizard could die the same way.
Ignored in the crush of the fighting, Morgain huddled in the center of her cage-safe from any thrusting blades. The shock of that first phrase left her stunned and sick with horror. In that brief instant something unclean had seemed to embrace every pore of her body in tentacles of iniquitous foulness, to seek to wrench apart her screaming flesh with irresistible strength. That obscene contact had broken the instant it began, with the gory cessation of the wizard’s spell. That fleeting brush with the coils of alien horror left Morgain too shaken to care about the battle that washed past her iron island.
The door of her cage resounded at a blow. Morgain lifted her ashen-face to stare at the figure in Roman armor who beat against the bars.
24
RIP TIDE
The run through the darkness to the cavern of the Black Stone was one of the most harrowing moments in Bran Mak Morn’s memory.
He knew with an urgency that bordered on panic that he must hurry-a sense that only deepened as Liuba tersely made her chilling report as they dashed along the rising passages. But no amount of desperate energy could overcome the impenetrable darkness that choked these burrows. Blindly Bran followed Liuba’s unseen lead, stumbling and blundering in his frantic haste to reach his sister in time.
In time to do what, Bran had no idea. Liuba told him that the cavern was filling with the hordes of the serpent-folk and the ranks of the legionaries-that Morgain waited in a cage before the altar of the Black Stone for whatever evil Ssrhythssaa intended. It seemed to the Pict that he could do no more than let Morgain face her doom with the howls of the slaughtered serpent-folk singing her dirge-and the knowledge that her brother had not abandoned her here on the threshold of hell.
“Here!” Liuba skidded to a halt, clutching Bran’s shoulder as he bounded past her. “Earlier I dragged these two back behind this niche-thinking I would bring their weapons and accoutrements to you after I had made closer reconnaissance of these vermin. It may be that we can make good use of them now.” Impatiently Bran knelt where the swordswoman drew him aside. Cold flesh met his questing fingers. Two of the legionaries lay dead in this covert. Liuba had carried out her mission well.
“No time for that now!” Bran grunted.
Liuba checked him. “It may buy time for us later-unless you’re bent on throwing away your life long before you can reach Morgain. The cavern of the Black Stone is aswarm with the vermin. In Roman guise we might pass through them to where our blades may slay to better purpose.”
Bran cursed the delay, but Liuba’s reasoning carried weight. Swiftly they stripped the two corpses, drew cuirass and apron over their shirts of mail. Bran touched a faint trickle of blood along a dead throat, felt a slight wound there. Liuba must have garrotted her victims, Bran decided, to keep from besotting their gear with the betraying stigma of gore.
In the darkness, Liuba’s deft hands assisted him with the unfamiliar fastenings, so that the change was quickly effected. Bran knew they could never pass close inspection, but in the milling throng they might escape immediate notice. The helmets and bulky armor imparted considerable anonymity, and the rectangular shields afforded another barrier to detection.
No one challenged them as they continued their gruelling dash for the cavern of the Black Stone. Bran wondered at this good luck, until after a desperate interval of plunging through the stygian maze under the added burden of the Roman armor, they at last burst into the cavern of the Black Stone. Surely every one of the crawling race of vermin had congregated here in the vast buried fane of their alien god-thing.
Morgain’s soul-tearing scream had echoed down the last section of passageway, spurring Bran to headlong rush for the lambent tentacles of light that crept from the cavern beyond. They gained the cavern just as Claudius Nero turned firom the broken corpse of Ssrhythssaa to hurl his legionaries against the outraged serpent-folk.
Instantly the two Picts were embroiled in a howling battle. Bran had only the half-formed realization that Legio IX Infernalis had turned against their dwarfish masters-that their Roman gear now branded the two of them as enemies in the minds of the serpent-folk-then the quicksand of hissing fangs and clawing hands was dragging them down.
Only the feet that Bran and Liuba had burst into the cavern with every anticipation of sudden combat saved them in that first explosive contact. In the thick press Bran found the deadly use of the unfamiliar Roman weapons-the rectangular scutum both a defense and a smashing bludgeon, the short-bladed gladius perfectly suited for close quarters.