He added, “It’s gotten louder since.”
Bran scowled. The vibration was more clearly felt through the soles of his sandals, rather than actually heard. It was a constant scraping, grinding rumble-Bran thought of the grating of millstones-and it came from far below the walls of Baal-dor.
“I think we’d best pull back from this section of the wall,” Bran cold him. “See to it.”
The other hastened to relay the command, and Bran stood a moment in thought. Baal-dor was built on a knoll of solid rock. He remembered the Tower of Trajan-and the broken walls of the Roman camp. Bran shivered. No more could he think of the earth beneath his feet as solid rock.
Grimly the king of Pictdom paced the walls of his citadel. The night winds rippled his wolfskin cloak, and the crescent moon touched with silver his shirt of mail and sword scabbard, evoked a rubrous glow from the strange gem of his iron crown.
Old Gonar had returned the crown with a mordant smile. “None other came to claim it, Wolf of the Heather. You’ll find that kingship is not so easily cast away.”
That was yestereve. Food and rest and a bath in a chill Highland pool had done much to restore Bran Mak Morn to full strength, since crawling forth from the barrow beneath Kestrel Scaur and into the warm brilliance of the westering sun of the previous day. The heather had been a wonder to look upon once again.
The vibration beneath the wall drew his thoughts back to those who burrowed below. So Claudius Nero had chosen to strike swiftly. Bran had expected the move.
With Ssrhythssaa dead, Nero would have met little resistance from the serpent-folk. The serpent-wizard had plotted to his own downfall. Once the halfhumans were effectively armed, it was only a matter of choosing the moment before the legion turned on its masters. If any of the People of the Dark yet lived, they would have had to flee far to escape the massacre.
Based on what Morgain had told him, Bran knew that Claudius Nero had massed a potent fighting force in Legio IX Infernalis. Freed of Ssrhythssaa’s tyranny, Nero no longer had to deal with the Picts in terms of potential allies. Instead, Nero could carry out his obsession with his Roman heritage-so that he would not only view Bran Mak Morn as a danger to his schemes, but he would also seek to avenge the massacre of eighty years ago.
Nero would bring his legion against Pictdom-it was only a question of when. Bran, whose army was reduced to only a few thousand by the attrition after the abortive raid ten days previous, had not expected to wait long for Nero’s attack.
Liuba had ridden to rally the Pictish settlements immediately upon emerging from the burrows of the serpent-folk. Bran had heard no more from her since yesterday. He hoped the strange swordswoman was meeting with better success than the others he had sent out. A few warriors had trudged into Baal-dor by this sunset, but it would be days before he could gather significant reinforcements.
The scraping beneath his feet told him he would not be granted those days.
Gonar joined him on the wall, listened thoughtfully to the sounds from below. “They’ll undermine this section of the wall, mount a charge for the breach along the slopes here,” he mused, echoing Bran’s own reasoning. “Tunneling up to us through solid rock. I wonder what burrows beneath us here. Could Nero have spared sufficient of the Children of the Night to do his bidding?”
“Perhaps,” Bran answered. “But I’m afraid it’s something far worse that gnaws its way into Baal-dor.”
“The hell-worm?” Gonar pondered. “Can any but Ssrhythssaa control the monster?”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Bran told him. “Nero has the Black Stone. It may be he and Atla have some understanding of its powers.”
Bran studied his defenses. Even if the wall were breached, his men could still hurl back those who rushed up the slopes beyond. But the arrows and swords of the Picts would avail little against the hell-worm, judging from the brief glimpse Bran had had of the leviathan. Heavy siege engines might be able to hurl missiles that would be more than as a cloud of gnats to the monster. Bran had only a pair of scorpions to pit against the thing.
An hour dragged past. And another. The grinding vibrations from below were strong enough to rattle a sword blade laid flat on the wall.
Bran withdrew his men from the entire section of the wall. In the darkness, those in the watchtowers had as good a view of the forward slopes as was possible. At full alert, the Picts moved restlessly along the walls or milled about the area below. The relentless sound of burrowing strained everyone’s nerves to the breaking point.
Then word came up to Bran Mak Morn from those on point. A considerable body of troops moving up the strath on Baal-dor. Men in Roman armor. They marched behind the eagle standard. They were not Romans.
Claudius Nero marched by moonlight.
Bran gave urgent commands to those who manned the wall. A thin mist drifted from the rivers below, cloaking those who advanced along the strath. Otherwise the night was clear, and the crescent moon would show the archers their targets as the enemy climbed the forward slope.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the imminent battle, Bran Mak Morn found he was thinking of Liuba. He wondered what luck she had in raising the scattered clans, whether she would return tomorrow to find Baal-dor a raven-haunted ruin as was the Roman camp. Bran wished he had her deadly blade to aid him now, wished for her companionship in this hour. Bleakly he realized he still knew almost nothing at all about this enigmatic woman. He prayed to have the chance to know her better.
Another report. Nero had halted near the foot of the slope. His men were forming attack units. No torches from below-the moonlight was sufficient for Nero’s soldiers. Under the veil of mist, the legion waited.
They would not have to wait long. A sudden crash from the evacuated section of the wall. Under the constant vibration from below, several yards of the dry stone revetment let go, crumpled inward with an avalanche of packed earth and rock from the rampart.
Those nearest murmured anxiously, shuffled farther away.
More rock clattered down. Bran could see loose stones dancing across the rampart from the transmitted vibrations. Now the massive blocks of the original foundation seemed to shift from the beds they had settled into lost centuries ago.
But the undermined wall did not collapse upon itself.
An incredible explosive wrenching from below, then the night erupted, and the proud wall of Baal-dor burst apart from the horror leagues of rock could not contain.
Great fragments of earth and crushed rock were flung scores of feet into the night skies. The menhir-sized blocks of the cyclopean foundation bounded end for end across the enclosure, crushing those who had no chance to run. A fifty foot section of rampart and wall rose in ten thousand broken shards into the night, seemed to hover in an insane slow-motion before leisurely raining back to earth-a deadly hail that swept the nearby ramparts of defenders.
Rearing out of the crater it had blasted forth from the earth-its head towering a hundred feet to blot out the stars, its nether coils still hidden within the rock it had burrowed through like soft mud… the hell-worm.
Bran at last got a clear look at the Great Old One, and the Pict was glad the moon was but a crescent. He had expected a giant serpent, but this abomination from the pits beneath hell no more resembled a serpent than a narwhal is kin to trout. It resembled nothing that had ever walked or crawled or swam upon the surface of the earth. Even in the monstrous past of Elder Earth, when alien horrors descended from beyond the stars to wage their unimaginable wars with other shambling shapes of cosmic dread, such blasphemies of demented creation as the hell-worm was a survival never left their crypts beneath the cellars of hell. Miles from the sun, creation took place first within the earth, as pockets of decay fester beneath the unblemished surface.