KAMAZOTZ

KAMAZOTZ, by Greg Mele, artwork by Justin Pfeil

 

I.

Bronze helm glittering in the new day glow of the risen sun, the man plunged from atop the truncated tower’s sloping walls like a spear hurled by an angry giant, narrowly missing rocky slopes of the low crag upon which it stood. He hit the water feet first, pain searing through the heels of his feet, spiraling through his ankle as the bone gave way, twisting and writhing through the muscles of his legs and low back and lancing through the pair of ribs that broke on impact. The wind driven from his lungs, the man gasped reflexively, his mouth, his throat, immediately filling with seawater, as the force of his plunge carried him down towards the seabed.

Desperately, perhaps futilely, he struggled against death, kicking out with broken ankle and tortured flesh against the consuming sea, chest burning, sparks of light burning hotly at the sides of salt-stung eyes. He was dying, taken by a sailor’s greatest fear – the painful, terror-filled death of drowning.

A death, in all its awfulness, that remained a thousand times better than the one which awaited him above.

 

II.

The sun’s sullen red disk dropped down below the western horizon, staining the waters of the Altkalli Sea a mottled blood-gold. The day was dying into night, but the men’s work dragged on – literally – as sweaty limbs strained to haul the longboat up onto the narrow beach, its outriggers dragging low furrows in the sand.

They were a wild and mangy lot, even for sailors. Most were renegade subjects of the Four Kingdoms, lithe and copper-skinned, their black hair cut square at the neck and across their foreheads in a fringe. Scattered among them were Chok Mayaab from the jungle-choked, southern cities; short, stocky men with darker skin, round faces and hooked-noses, many of which were pierced and ornamented at bridge or septum with stegodont ivory, silver and gold. Whatever their nation, nearly all the sailors had cast their sleeveless tunics cast aside, working in the humid dusk air wearing only thick, cotton loincloths, the long front flaps catching against sweat-sticky thighs.

“Pull harder, damn you! We’re losing the sun! You let the tide float her back out to sea and see what the Captain does to us all!”

The man who gave the order was neither of the Four Kingdoms, nor Chok Mayaab, but obviously of mixed-race. An aquiline nose, green eyes and wavy, reddish-brown hair bespoke his Naakali heritage, but otherwise he looked little different than most of the men he ordered about. He was dressed in a hip-length war-shirt of quilted cotton, and a plain, bronze sword swung at his side, but he was armoured with naught more than a pleated kilt and serviceable sandals. A bronze helm lay forgotten in the sandy grass at his feet.

Grumbling was a sailor’s favorite pass-time, and these men were masters of their craft. Rubbing sore biceps and shaking blood back into their wrists, the muttering pirates turned back to the ship, which still lay half in the shallows. Bare toes dug into white sand, as the men on the beach heaved harder on their ropes while more of their fellows, up to their waists in the surf, pushed on the stern. With a wet slurp, the ship slithered ashore, wobbling on its outriggers like a giant, ungainly seal.

“That’s it boys! Now, get her out of sight.”

At their leader’s command, the crew manhandled the boats across the narrow beach and into the dense shrubbery at the jungle’s edge, where verdant trees crept out of the interior, twisting, leafy limbs reaching hungrily towards the sea. Scavenging fallen branches for a makeshift covering, it quickly became clear there was not enough brush to make even a passage attempt at concealment. The men walked deeper into the treeline and began hacking down palm fronds with copper hatchets and long, bronze knives. One of the sailors chose his tree poorly, his axe’s second blow set its limbs trembling, accompanied by an explosion of life, as a colony of bats rose angrily from the tree, filling the air with angry chittering at having been woken early for their night’s hunting. Staggering backward in surprise, the sailor tripped over his heels, landing hard on his rump at the base of the tree, to the raucous amusement of his fellow crewmen.

 

Once they’d had their fill laughing at his misfortune, the corsairs returned to their work, and soon the twin craft lay hidden under a crosshatch of palm fronds and repurposed underbrush. The camouflage would fool no one walking along the beach, but from a distance, it should serve, especially in the hours of darkness; if all went according to plan, worries of concealment would be irrelevant by dawn, anyway.

“Well done, Sarrumos,” called another man, walking out of the jungle to join them. The newcomer was Naakali, but unlike his first mate, looked the part: tall, broad-shouldered and lean, with olive skin, angular features and a voluptuous mouth that seemed forever turned up in either a half-smile or a sneer. Like Sarrumos, he had a small, pointed beard that descended from the corners of his mouth and covered his chin, but his was carefully curled and glistened with freshly applied palm-oil.

“Thank you, Captain Khossos,” the shorter Naakali replied, “but it is the men who do the work.”

“Yet they work with more alacrity when you give orders — even the Wahtēmallek’ — which is more than can usually be said for such a debased people, eh?”

His first mate frowned.

“I have never known the Chok Mayaab,” he took care to emphasize the Naakali name for the natives’ nationality, as if reminding the captain that the Naakali word ‘Wahtēmallek’ could refer to a number of southern people, as different in appearance, language and lifestyle to one another as they were to northern folk, “to be less industrious than any other people.”

Khossos glanced down his long nose with bemusement. “That has ne’er been my experience. But perhaps you do better with the Maize Folk, because they see their blood in your face, hmm?”

Sarrumos bit off an angry reply, keeping his expression neutral. Khossos was baiting him. Again. For the past six months they’d sailed together; for the last two he’d been first mate. They were the only two Naakali in the entire crew, and, despite their appearances, it was Sarrumos who came from the aristocracy. Khossos was a bronzesmith’s second son who’d wanted a life more adventurous than sweating over molds in his father’s forge. Following a lackluster career in the Imperial navy, he’d turned pirate. Sarrumos, on the other hand, was a lord’s legal son, but his mother had been a concubine; her Maize Folk heritage there for all the world to see in his dark skin, round cheeks and middling height. Such an inheritance was no burden anywhere else in all Tehanuwak, other than amongst the xenophobic Naakali of Azatlán – his own people.

Sarrumos might be a noble’s brat, but Khossos was the one who men looked upon and saw the ancient blood of distant Iperboritlán, long lost beneath the Great Ice. He took great delight in never letting his better-born first mate forget it.

“Mayhap, Captain,” Sarrumos said mildly, “or mayhap men are as energetic or lazy as the gods – or the ability to live off others – has made them.”

If the veiled insult registered with Khossos, he did not show it.

“Time is passing, and every moment is precious. Get the men together, pick a few to guard the ship, and follow me.”

Sighing, Sarrumos nodded and turned to wave the corsairs over; but a touch on his arm halted him. Turning he saw a sailor, clearly a barbarian, and a homely one at that. Of middling height but rangy enough to seem taller, his pox-scarred face had a hooked nose and small chin that gave it a certain owl-like quality. A long crest of crimson-dyed hair decorated an otherwise shaved head and fell down his back. He wore only a deer-skin breechcloth, and long, fringed, deerskin leggings that tied to the former’s waist cord. A formidable-looking, curved war-club hung from a beaded baldric, and swung at his side.

“Ollad, what is it?”

“The Wavespeaker smells danger,” the barbarian sailor said, as if that explained everything. Sarrumos, frowning, turned to look at the gray-haired, round-shouldered Chok Mayaabi man that stood beside Ollad.

“Well?” Sarrumos demanded. “What is this about?”

Leaning on a mahogany staff decorated with strings of shells and osprey feathers, the older man chewed his tattooed lips nervously. “As the barbarian says. The waves whisper doom as they beat upon the shore, the stench of death drifts on the wind.…”

“Hush, you fool, before you panic the men!” the first mate snapped. The corsairs were a superstitious lot –they would not even consider setting sail onto open water without a Wavespeaker who could paint their ship’s prow with the proper charms and propitiate the capricious spirits of storm and sea. All it would take was a few of the men to hear this man babbling about ‘death and doom’ and he and Khossos would find themselves in the midst of a mutiny. “What do you mean, ‘death on the wind’? Speak sense! Quietly.”

The magician glanced about furtively, his face oddly ageless against the green paint and blue-black tattoos it wore. “Last night, as we approached the island, I dreamed that we all sat about a great fire that gave off more smoke than flame. No one spoke, and then —”

“A dream?” Sarrumos said, shaking his head incredulously. Once, he’d reverenced dreams and omens, once he’d trusted in and trembled before the gods like most men. But then he had learned wisdom. The gods did not care. “If some dream –”

“Please, Sarrumos,” the rangy outlander said, “hear him out.”

“Very well, spit it out. You dreamed we sat about a smokey fire.”

“Indeed! In my dream we sat brooding, silent, none disturbed by the smoke, which billowed forth and filled our camp like a black mist!” He said this last as if it revealed the most profound of secrets.

Sarrumos sighed. “Go on.”

“Once the mist grew thick, a shadow came, slipping from out of the jungle, jaguar silent and owl-wise. He was a man, taller than the Captain, taller than any mortal man, and wrapped in a long black cloak that swathed him the way a shroud envelops a corpse. The stranger was a shadow among the shadows — naught more of him than this could I see, and yet, I knew that below his cloak he was no normal man at all!”

“Yes,” Sarrumos snorted, “we are all very wise – in dreams.” Ollad scowled at the mockery, but the Wavespeaker kept on, too agitated to notice.

“Yes! ‘tis true! And this shadow moved about between our men, weaving among them as easily as a serpent slithers between two close-grown trees. Each man it passed, its cloak unfurled and a hand – it was no hand, as men have hands! – touched them lightly, like a caress, here,” he tapped the side of his neck where the pulse was found, “and they wordlessly fell dead! I tried to rise, to scream, to call out a warning, but the evil of that nameless shadow was so great that I could not move.

“At last, the shadow-man came upon the Captain, who sensing nothing, poked at the dying fire. Then, the cloak hurled wide with a sound like a thunderclap, and I could see it was held open by long, corpse-grey fingers tipped in hooked talons. I screamed, but no words came, and that horrible shadow fell upon the Captain, enfolding him in its cloak. They toppled to the ground without a sound, but when they struck the forest floor, all those who still sat at the fire, even the dead, screamed as one! Suddenly, I could move. I hurled myself at that terrible shadow, though I cannot say what I might have done to repulse him.”

“Hmm, no indeed.” Sarrumos said, rolling his eyes. “And I assume, that is where you awoke?”

“No! I fell upon the demon and then it was no demon at all, but a flock of…of bats! Hundreds, swarming and biting at the Captain. They took wing at my coming, but what they left behind…,” the Wavespeaker shuddered, vigorously shaking his head as if to drive away the memory, “what remained was no man, not even fit to put in a grave.”

“It was a nightmare, old man,” Sarrumos said. “A bit of ill-digested dinner or a malaise from too-many days of salt air without stepping ashore, combined with the knowledge of this adventure the Captain is taking us upon. Such things play with all men’s minds, from time to time.”

“So I said to myself last night! But we are not on this wretched island even an hour, and already its omens begin proving true,” he gestured with his staff towards the concealed ships. Sarrumos frowned, not understanding.

“The bats,” Ollad explained. “Yes, islands at times have bats, and they grow active both at dusk, and when some clueless fool sinks an axe into their tree.”

“That is true,” the barbarian agreed. “But a sailor strikes just the right tree, on his first blow? As you say, often a dream is just a dream. But sometimes, the gods speak through them. Perhaps we should be less quick to doubt.”

“Oh, I do not doubt the will of the gods, Ollad. I doubt their benevolence. No, I –”

“I tell you, the dream is true!” the old Chok Mayaabi protested, his eyes wide with panic, voice cracking. “We must leave this place! You must say something to the Captain! There was so much blood…”

Exasperated, Sarrumos looked about, worried at being overheard. “I told you to keep your voice down!”

“You must say what to the Captain?” snapped Khossos, striding back out of the trees to join them. “Sarrumos, what part of ‘every moment is precious,’ was unclear?”

Ollad and the Wavespeaker looked at their captain, then back to their mate. Sarrumos ignored the silent question in their eyes.

“The magician is ill, Captain. His insides are soft – bad shellfish, most like. He’s afraid of slowing us down, nor do I relish the idea of dragging him along while he’s shitting himself. I thought he might stay here with the men we leave behind to guard the ship.”

“Bad fish? A weak liver, most like! Truth be told, I can’t see what use you’ll be inland, anyway, my water-charming friend. Stay here then!” The matter already out of his mind, he turned back to his mate. “There’s at best an hour of daylight left and I don’t much care to stumble blindly through the jungle so it can kill us ere we ever reach Tomek. Get the men moving. Now.”

“Of course, Captain,” Sarrumos said. Turning back towards the ships, he saw the corsairs had drawn their tunics and sandals back on, and taken up their motley collection of spears, war-clubs and bows. They were as ready as they could be. He looked about one last time, but all he saw was a white sand beach and the foam of a clear, blue-green sea, drawing dark in the dying sunlight. Shadowed by the dusk, the forest looked ominous, but the jungle was a dangerous place, in the way that the wild is ever at odds with the arrogant tramping and tampering of man.

Once he had trusted in the gods, deeply. Once but no more. They had played him false; no, in Their never-ending demands for blood and worship, They had not cared about him at all. But his anger did not make the worlds Above or Below less real. The old magician was clearly terrified, and Ollad, whose bravery was beyond question, credited his dream. Was his own bitterness towards the heavens playing him false?

“All right, old man, you stay here; you aren’t off the island, but you’re barely on it. And you,” he turned to look at Ollad, “go fetch your bow. If a swarm of bats are going to try eating us, you’re the only one who can shoot worth a shit.”

The barbarian studied him for a long, silent moment, then, with a shrug, turned back to the ship, where his gear lay waiting.

Stopping, Sarrumos picked up his tall, bronze helmet, with its long, horsehair crest, and brushing away sand, slipped it on his head and fastened the chin strap. He checked the hang of his sword on its baldric. Islands this small rarely harbored predators more dangerous than birds or snakes, and the latter were quick to avoid being stepped on by men. As to men…well, those were the greatest danger, and they knew at least a ship’s worth, each as hard and sanguine a band of cutthroats as they, lay ahead.

But that was why they had come.

 

III.

Whatever the Wavespeaker’s dire prophecy, the actual journey across the island proved neither difficult nor dangerous, unless one counted the stomping and snorting of a fat peccary, unhappy to have been disturbed in his efforts to rut with a female, who took the interruption as an opportunity to bound into the underbrush and avoid motherhood. After rolling his eyes and digging at the ground with hoof and tusk, the hog looked at the number of men and reconsidered his own bravado.

By the time the sun-disk had gone down into the Underworld, the corsairs had hacked their way through the lush vegetation and gained the island’s eastern shore. The ease of their journey through the jungle put Khossos in a fine mood, and he congratulated himself on a well-laid plan. He had dropped anchor on the island’s far northwest shore, sailing well away from the view of any who might be watching from the ruined tower that sat like a slumbering sentinel over the small eastern bay, and they had traversed the jungle at twilight – a fool’s journey, less bold men would say — without more than few nettle-stings and a stubbed toe in injury. Even the superstitious fools he called his crew were cheered at the ease of the approach, dour faces giving way to wry jokes and grandiose boasts of what they would do to their enemy if they caught them abed.

Khossos encouraged the men with boasts of his own. Privately, he was not so sure – Tomek was snake, a murderer and double-crossing bastard, but those were virtues in their trade, and over the years the Naakali’s wily rival had plied that trade very, very well.

Sarrumos noted their easy progress as well, but him it filled with a growing apprehension. He stubbornly refused to give account to the Wavespeaker’s dreams, but he could not deny his growing sense that Khossos should never have brought them on this adventure. Seeming to sense his unease, Ollad agilely slipped over a fallen fern and sidled up beside the first mate.

“The men’s fear abates.”

“Hmm. Maybe. They also know a fight draws near. Sometimes anticipation makes men …boisterous. A way to calm the stomach, I think.”

“Yes. But they were loath to come here. To go there,” he nodded forward with his head at nothing in particular, but they both knew he meant the stout, ruined tower that lay ahead.

The first mate hacked at a particularly troublesome branch that was determined to whip across his knees. “That tower is the work of the Godborn – the Tehanu. Their ruins dot the islands and are found scattered throughout the Empire as well. The Naakali may venerate the Old Ones, but few others in Tehanuwak remember them fondly.”

“These Old People were bad men?”

Sarrumos frowned thoughtfully.

“Who can say? Legends say that in form they were like other men, if tall and pale with a few strange casts to their feature, but long-lived and adept in sorcery and the working of metals. In black ships they came, refugees from Iperboritlán — a lost land, far to the northeast, across the Altkalli Sea. Led by the brothers Tzeos, Posedowas and Hatteos, they came to this land, and from exiles, became conquerors – which is why we call this land Tehanuwak, ‘the Place of the Tehanu’?”

“What became of them?”

“Revolution. The Tehanu were never many, and while mighty, it is said that their women were slow to quicken. Ouch,” he snarled as another branch whipped back and caught him across the neck. He watched in envious annoyance as his woods-wise companion lithely slipped between the trees untouched. “The ancestors of the Maize Folk rose up, burned the Tehanu’s cities, and drove them back into the sea, so that only the islands of the Altkalli Sea, such as this one, remained in Tehanu power. Over time, they intermarried with the native folk of the Isles, and their offspring became the ancestors of my own people. ‘Naakali’ means ‘the children’. We are the Godborn’s children; the heirs to their lost empire. Or so the priests teach us in the kalmekak-schools.”

Ollad pushed his lip forward and nodded his head. “So, when your fathers sailed to the Big Land, you were taking back what their forefathers had taken – and lost – before them.”

Sarrumos laughed at that and patted his shipmate on the shoulder, “I think that is the story, more or less, of all peoples! Anyway, both people of the Four Kingdoms’s and the Empire’s peasants are descended from the Maize Folk. They remember the legends of the Godborn and avoid their ruins — such as those on this island.”

“What are these ruins? A temple, a fortress?”

The Naakali shrugged noncommittally. “Who can say? The Godborn have been gone a thousand years and more! That’s what, fifty generations? The corsairs tell as many different legends of this island as there are species of shark – and all equally terrible.”

“And you? What do you think?”

“I think Tomek was a brave and brilliant rascal to realize that a haunted island, complete with a stone tower waiting to be inhabited, situated only two day’s sail off the shores of the Four Kingdoms and midway to nowhere besides the Sea Isles, was a perfect home for an ambitious corsair.”

“And the Captain wishes to take it from him.”

“Ow! Gods damnit, how are you not getting caught in these branches? Truth: I think Tomek has out-maneuvered Khossos more than once and stolen a few fat prizes he considered his due. He wants Tomek’s skin more than anything. If –”

“If my first mate knows my mind so well,” the Captain’s mocking voice interrupted, “then he knows I will be happy to take Tomek’s haunted hideaway as well! Now, if you old ninnies are finished gossiping,” he threw an arm out ceremoniously towards the thinning tree-line. “We’re here.”

***

 

No doubt the tower’s builders had originally cleared the trees and vines back from the small fortification’s walls, but over the long generations of abandonment, the rain forest had grown bold and sent out its leafy tendrils to reclaim its own. Only a dozen or so yards now separated the trees from the wall, making it particularly startling to suddenly stumble upon the work of men as the jungle came to an abrupt end.

The moon had climbed to its zenith, a silver fingernail whose lambent glow illumined the dark silhouette of their objective. From the sea, the Godborn’s tower seemed nothing more than a simple, truncated cone with steep, slightly sloping walls, perhaps five or six times the height of a man as it sat out on a rocky cliff-face overlooking the sea. Now, from the landward side they could see that a low curtainwall of close-fitted cyclopean stones encircled the tower, ending in a tall archway, whose wooden gates had long since fallen and rotted away.

“Where did they find such stones on this island to build a tower?” Ollad wondered aloud.

“What matter?” Khossus snapped. “It’s there now, and we need to capture it.”

“Yes, but perhaps not just yet,” Sarrumos added.

“How so?” his captain demanded.

“Well, look. It is well after dark and still well-before dawn. There is neither sign of light nor life coming from within. But the wall has no gate. Captain, if you were Tomek and were making this island your home, wouldn’t you have either built a new gate of some sort, or posted a sentry there? And some light by which they might see?”

“Fire keeps animals away,” Ollad mused, “but it can blind one’s eyes when there is good moon and stars to see by.”

“Perhaps…,” Khossos demurred. The tower did seem untenanted. “So, we need to expect a trap.”

“Captain, I think we needs see three possibilities. First,” Sarrumos held up a thumb, “Tomek is a bigger fool than even you maintain and is relying upon the isle’s reputation to keep watch. It seems hard to credit that he could be as successful a raider as he has been, were that the case.” He lifted his index finger, “This is indeed a trap, which presumes that he would know we were here. Presently, I can’t see how that could be true.”

“And third?” Ollad asked.

“Third, they aren’t here at all, and we are the only men on this island.” He looked back to the captain and shrugged. “I don’t see an obvious fourth possibility.”

Khossos snorted. “Well, it easy enough to eliminate your third theory first. Let us leave a few men to watch the tower, while we slip down this hillock to the beach. If Tomek’s here, then his ship will be there, because we currently control the only other place a corsair might make anchor.”

Leaving Ollad with a pair of their men to keep watch from safely behind the tree-line, Khossos led the rest of his raiders along the jungle’s edge, skirting the lonely promontory upon which the tower sat. Picking their way down its screed-covered slope, the men soon found themselves looking out through tall dune grass upon the darkling sea. Crouching low, Sarrumos and Khossos’s eyes were intent on the long, low shape that lay anchor on the stone beach, below.

“I told you that bastard Tomek was here,” Khossos whispered triumphantly, uncannily white teeth gleaming as brightly as the night stars. “I can’t wait to see the look of surprise in those crossed eyes of his when he looks out from his stolen tower and sees the Wave-Serpent a-blaze in the water!”

Sarrumos looked at his fellow exile in alarm. “Captain, we will do what you wish, of course, but I think you might reconsider.”

“And why would I do that? I’ve wanted to make that bastard suffer for years!”

“Right enough. But if the goal is Tomek’s head, and he isn’t sitting on that ship now – which clearly, he isn’t – then why waste a good ship in revenge? Why not become captain of two vessels, eh? How many Altkalli corsairs can boast of that?”

Greed was as natural to any pirate as breathing, and twice so for Khossos. “Two ships…We’d need to win over some of his crew to pilot them both.”

“As you’ve done before,” Sarrumos said, nodding his head back over his shoulder to where the other pirates crouched in the tall grasses. “We all know these dogs’ loyalty is good only so long as they fear their own captain more than another. Once Tomek and his mates are dead, his sailors will sign on quick enough.” “Yes…alright, you little mongrel, you’ve convinced me. We leave the Wave-Serpent sitting at anchor. But that still leaves Tomek sitting behind a stone wall.”

“Well, as yet it still seems safe that our presence is unknown. That is our best weapon. But we’ll have to force whatever door is on the tower, and that could be some grim fighting, Captain, if we can’t get in quickly.”

“Agreed. Well, we’ll need everything and everyone we have, then. Back up the beach,” Khossos said to the men. “I’ll send a runner or two back to the ships for both the rest of the men and better tools. The rest of us will wait well within the jungle, lest some unseen watch in that tower spots us. If we’re quick about it, we can still hit them before for dawn.”

 

IV.

The pirates set up camp in a sheltered spot well away from the tower. Khossos dispatched a pair of men to the far shore whereon their own ship lay hidden. They were to round up the other men and bring hammers and chisels to force any doors, and more rope and other useful tools to aid in their attack upon the tower. Meanwhile, Khossos set his men to find and fell a hardwood tree hidden among the many ferns and palms, which were all too soft or flexible for their purpose. The tree fell easily enough, the trick was lowering it to the ground silently, lest the sound carry to their human quarry. Copper hatchets cut small notches into its thick trunk, to which the hacked away limbs were lashed as makeshift rungs.

“There,” Khossos said happily, “we have both ram and ladder, depending on what we find waiting for us.” Sarrumos was less optimistic about the once-tree’s utility for climbing and silently vowed not to be the first to try it.

Their immediate work finished, there was little to do but sit and wait for the others to return from the ship. With nothing to keep them busy the jungle grew ominous under the willow-wisp appearance of the waning moon through the tree cover. Men grumbled about sitting hungry and miserable in the dark, and the captain judged that they had retreated far enough back into the jungle that a small fire, kept low, was unlikely to produce any visible light, and little enough smoke to be seen.

As the others fell asleep beside the dying fire, Sarrumos set the watch and then found a place off to the side, where he could rest with his back to a thick-bole tree. Sliding his baldric over his head, he lay the sword beside him, wrapped himself in his light, cotton cloak, and soon fell to brooding over the night’s events. As he would not openly give credence to the old Wavespeaker’s prattling, a sense of foreboding had been building steadily, and he could not deny the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Beyond the chittering and buzzing of insects, the jungle was quiet, eerily so, devoid of the many night sounds that transformed the rainforest into a raucous place at sundown. Letting his breath out heavily, the first mate settled against the tree to take what little rest he might before the men returned with their supplies.

Then a cry of terror shattered the night’s silence.

Bronze blade hissed from wood and hide scabbard as Sarrumos sprang to his feet with a curse. There was a loud crashing as something sizable – far bigger than a peccary – came crashing through the underbrush. All about him, corsairs scrambled to their feet, bronze, copper and obsidian glinting hungrily in the firelight.

The jungle shadows revealed a man, one of their own, running-stumbling into the clearing to stop, panting and speechless, his eyes wide with terror.

“Captain…Captain…Mizotl…he…,” he gasped, trembling hand pointing back into the twisting foliage and night shadows.

“What? Mizotl what?” Khossos demanded, stepping forward to grip the terrified sentry and shake him. “Spit it out, man!”

Ollad looked to Sarrumos and gestured with his head. When the mate nodded wordlessly, the forest barbarian slipped into the trees and disappeared.

“From the trees … he leapt from the trees and took…took Mizotl’s head clean off…,” the sentry rambled, his entire body trembling now. Khossos was still trying to make sense of his words when Ollad emerged.

“Captain. Sarrumos. You should see.”

Ordering the others to remain, Khossos and Sarrumos followed the woodsman back up the narrow jungle trail they themselves had cleared only hours previously. They had gone no more than a hundred yards, perhaps less, when Ollad stopped and pointed to a pair of bloody, twisted shapes lying sprawled upon the ground.

Stepping forward, sword held before him like a talisman, Sarrumos bent and rolled the corpses over, already certain that they were – or, had been — fellow crewmen. The first was a wiry Wahtēmallek sailor – Sarrumos forgot from which of the many southern kingdom he hailed — one of the two men sent back to summon the others, which meant the other must be Miztol. This was something of a guess, for there were neither tools, nor rope — nor a head — to be found about his body. Sarrumos frowned and knelt, dabbling his fingers in the spray of gore that had sprayed outward from the neatly severed stump of a neck to spatter all within three paces. The blood was fresh and warm, the body itself only cooling because so much of its life sap had been spilled.

“Hatûm’s light!” Khossos cursed. “Someone took his head clean off with a sword.”

“No, no sword…,” Ollad said pointing to the other man, ominously. The commanders looked at the mauled corpse.

“His face and throat is half-torn away,” Sarrumos gasped.

“Some animal…a jaguar…,” Khossos mumbled.

“A jaguar might do this,” the first mate said, gesturing to the ruin of the dead man’s face, “but not what happened to Mizotl. Not so cleanly, leastwise. And, look, despite the way this one’s throat is mauled, there is almost no blood.”

“Where are the others?” wondered Khossos. “Only two men, where there should be half a dozen, and hardly any of the supplies for which I called.”

“Nor is the Wavespeaker to be found,” Ollad said to no one in particular, but Sarrumos felt the unspoken accusation and winced guiltily.

“Perhaps those answers lie with our sentry, Captain. I think we should go back and try making sense of his words.”

“Yes…yes, let us do that,” Khossos said, still staring down at the gruesome corpses. He was clearly unnerved, not that Sarrumos could blame him.

The three men hurried back to their makeshift camp in the little clearing, and found the crew huddling about the sentry, who had not only found his tongue, but was quick to tell any who would listen what he had seen.

“Bored out of me wits, I was, when I heard ol’Mizotl’s voice crying out for help. Snatching up my spear, I called out, but held back – in case it was a trap or some such. And he called back, swearing and shouting that there were murderers about.

“‘Course there are,’ I said, ‘we are here!’ But then he and Tal Kuup came into sight and I knew weren’t no jest. They was runnin’ like all the demons of the Underworld was after them, and blood was spattered across Tal’s chest and face. And they were cryin’ that all the men back at the beach was dead, murdered by demons.”

“Demons? What do you mean, demons?” Khossos demanded.

“That’s what I says,” the sentry exclaimed, eyes wide, as he turned to face the captain. “If they hadn’t looked so scared, and been sprayed with blood, I’d accused them of just wandering off to get drunk on balché. But then…,” his voice trailed away, and he shuddered.

“Then?” Sarrumos prompted.

“A man, a tall man in a great black cloak leapt down out of the trees. He landed right in front of Miztotl and, spreading his arms wide, slashed the head clean off his shoulders – like a little one plucks the head off a flower!”

“What? Did he have a sword – a Naakali sword? Obsidian blades?”

“No…no…Captain. That is…it looked like he just used his…his hands!”

A commotion broke out among the men. When Khossos held up his hands for silence, they ignored him, so he had to yell for quiet.

“How tall was he?” asked Sarrumos.

The sentry shook his head uncertainly. “A giant! Taller than the Captain by more ‘an a head, and half-again as wide in the shoulders. He slashed out with the back of his hand, and off went Mizotl’s head. I was just a dozen feet away, I’d have seen if he had a blade. Then, quick as a jaguar, he had Tal Kuup by the neck and was liftin’ him off his feet.”

“What did you do then?” Khossos demanded. “Seeing your companion under assault?”

“Me? I…well…it was so fast! And he was…chewin’ on Tal Kuup’s throat, like some animal. I…”

“You ran, and left Tal Kuup to die,” the captain said in disgust.

“What could I do?” the sentry protested, wetting dry lips. “A man can’t fight no demon with obsidian and bronze!”

That set the men off once more, and this time, it took cuffs to the back of ears for their captain to regain control.

“There’s no ‘demon,’” he snarled. “I don’t care what this spineless worm says – what can you expect a man to say, after he’s left two of his fellows to be murdered in the jungle? No, the only monster on this island is that treacherous bastard Tomek! He knows we’re here, and the Underworld’s blessed him with a killer in his crew who is clearly a master of woodcraft, whereas I have this –,” he gestured in disgust at the sentry, whose protestations were cut short by Sarrumos’s hand on his shoulder.

“Well, Khossos of the Alteroi is no shivering llama, waiting to be slaughtered! I’ll take a party of men back to the boats for the rest of our supplies myself, and then we’ll take the fight to Tomek, if I have to tear that tower down stone by stone!”

“Captain,” Ollad interjected. Heads rubbernecked about in surprise; the barbarian usually kept his own counsel. “You should stay and plan for the attack. And whoever did this, may still be down at the beach. I am used to the deep woods, if not these woods. I have the best chance to move unseen and return the same way. If there are enemies at the ships, I shall see them ‘ere they see me. If not, I should still be able to carry enough supplies by myself to make do for what you plan here.”

Khossos seemed ready to protest, then reconsidered.

“Alright, let us do as you suggest. You see men! The savage has no fear of night-bogeys; nor should you!” The corner of Ollad’s mouth twitched at the word ‘savage’, curling ever-so-slightly downward.

The corsairs again found themselves seated around a fire, waiting someone’s return, only now, they were engaged in a debate as to how to best attack the tower. Khossos was not one to encourage debate, but Sarrumos noted that tonight he did – perhaps to take the men’s minds off their fears. The unfortunate sentry sat beside the fire, hunched in a borrowed cloak, staring morosely into the flickering flames of their guttering fire.

“It is as Mizotl said,” came Ollad’s voice out of the darkness, setting nervous hands to scrambling for weapons. Stepping to the firelight’s edge, the left side of his body remaining in shadow, the rangy barbarian threw a satchel into the clearing, where it landed with a clatter and a ‘thunk.’ A long coil of tightly woven cotton rope hung diagonally across his torso. “Not a man remains alive. The ships, however, are unmolested.”

The corsairs received this grim proclamation with downcast eyes and sullen muttering, all but Khossos, who launched into a stream of cursing.

“The manner of their deaths – the same as Mizotl and Tal Kuup’s?” Sarrumos asked, while the captain fumed.

“That I could see. Throats sliced; sometimes the neck cut halfway through if not severed clean. Otherwise…it was hard to tell.”

“And why was that?” Khossos demanded petulantly. “Isn’t that why I sent you?”

Ollad’s dark eyes studied the corsair captain in bemused silence for a long moment, then he shrugged.

“Bats were feeding on the blood. Many, many bats. My presence did not deter them, so I left them be.”

“You lie, savage!” someone cried. “Bats, even the blood-drinkers, do not behave so!”

“If you say they do not, then it is so,” Ollad said calmly. “In the forests of my people bats do not drink blood at all. But I am more concerned with this,” his shadow-concealed arm came into the light, holding aloft a gory prize. Sarrumos, seeing the head swinging by its long, greying hair, lowered his head in shame. It was the Wavespeaker’s. “This was not at the beach. I found it lying in the trail we made as I entered our camp. Waiting for me to find.”

Khossos’s mouth fell open in dawning, horrified realization. “The killer saw you leave. He never left after he slew Miztol and Tal Kuup.”

“Yes, Captain. Something is out there. And it is stalking us.”

 

V.

Pandemonium broke out among the corsairs. Some shouted they should fly back to the ships and escape before Tomek and his men attacked in earnest, while others seized instead upon the “forest demon” story the sentry had told, echoing the call to flight. Their bigotry quick to supply a scapegoat for their misfortune, a few sought to accuse Ollad of treachery, insisting against all reason that he must be colluding with their tormentors. Only a few were hot-blooded enough to cry out for vengeance, but it was these words that Khossos seized upon.

“Men! For we are men, aren’t we? I say again, there is no demon beyond those of the mind – the fear that laughing bastard in yon tower wants us to feel. Meanwhile, more than half a dozen of my crew – your brothers – are dead. Do we let their ghosts go down to Lord Xokolatl’s Obsidian Halls without a fight? No!”

Through bold words, ridicule, and force of will, Khossos slowly turned the corsairs back to their original path. No man wanted to admit to being afraid, even though the truth was, even the most bloody-minded of them wanted to lash out and kill for no better reason than to calm their hammering hearts against the helplessness they felt. Sarrumos knew what his captain required of him, and dutifully lent his voice to Khossos’s, but his mind was turned inward, guilt slicing open wounds of the spirit, as their hunter expertly made wounds of the flesh. As the debate raged among the men, he sidled beside Ollad.

“I…should have listened to you and the oldster,” he murmured sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

“It would not have mattered. The Captain’s soul sings for Tomek’s blood, and nothing you could – or can – say matters.”

Likely true, but Ollad’s words were little comfort to Sarrumos’s conscience. He had held his tongue because he did not want more of Khossos’s ridicule. So why did he still keep the dead man’s dream’s silent now? He either could not, or with a young man’s desire not to question his own motives too closely, perhaps would not, say, even to himself.

“Then I suppose there is little we can do but charge a red toll for the dead one’s lives when we take the tower.”

Ollad’s wordless nod left more unsaid than said.

He thinks we are dead men.

Having whipped his remaining crew back into something resembling a fighting force, Khossos declared there was clearly no longer any purpose in delay. Fetching up their twin-purpose ladder and battering-ram, the band made their way back to the tower with grim determination, proud boasts forgotten.

 

***

 

Silence and shadow hung over both the walled complex and the squat, ugly tower it contained. The corsairs stalked out of the woods like hunting jaguars, passing through the open gateway and into the courtyard beyond.

They did not find what they had expected.

The lambent starlight revealed the ruins of a small building set near the entrance, perhaps it had once been a guardhouse or small barracks, perhaps nothing more menacing than a storehouse, but its roof had long-since fallen in and it was now merely a pile of tumbled stones. The tower loomed beyond with a small, roofed enclosure standing before it. In the courtyard itself, Tomek’s men had erected a pair of simple tents made from canvas ship’s tarps and fresh-cut saplings. The tents were empty, and clearly had been for some time; an upright on one had collapsed, so that it dragged listlessly against the remaining support, while the other sagged, half its ropes and stakes having pulled free. The remains of a firepit stood between the tents, but it was cold, and looked to have been so for days, if not longer.

Quietly, the men paced through the courtyard, and examined the abandoned camp. Besides the sagging tents, there were crates, casks, a blanket laid out with a cook’s knives and forks, the copper showing signs of tarnish – all as if the rival corsairs had begun setting up a camp, and then abandoned it in haste.

“This…is not good,” Sarrumos muttered to himself, his pulse quickening.

Khossos stood silent for a moment, the breeze ruffling his cloak as he chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. “They must have retreated within the tower, once they knew we were here,” but he sounded unconvinced by his own words.

“An’ leave all this here?” one of the crewmen asked, incredulously, as he held up an obsidian-edged spear. “Makes no sense.”

“Shit’s been here awhile, too,” opined another.

“Captain,” Ollad’s voice called out, “you should come see this.”

He was standing before the enclosure that fronted the tower. The structure lacked any walls besides one at its rear, which along with two, stout columns of black basalt, supported the sloped, slate-tiled roof – wholly unlike anything in the men’s experience. Drawing closer, the men saw that the pillars were richly carved with baroque creatures: writhing, squidlike monstrosities, twining serpents with tentacled mouths, and screeching, winged things that were neither bat nor crocodile nor wasp, but a portion of them all. Sarrumos did not study the supports carefully, because his attention was drawn immediately to what lay at the enclosure’s heart: a massive block of black obsidian, as tall as a man’s waist and twice its height in length, its rough-hewn facets glinted and glimmering in the night. The center of the vast, glassy table had been carefully knapped away to create a wide, basin-shaped depression, at least a hand deep.

“Kamazotz!” one of the Chok Mayaab gasped, pointing with a trembling hand.

Sarrumos followed the man’s finger. A large, stone pedestal sat behind the obsidian block, and set upon it was a loathsome idol. Although the centuries had treated the basalt eidolon harshly, its form was still clear. A stout, manlike body crouched on folded, toad’s legs with wide talon-tipped feet that clutched a headless corpse. Severed heads hung from a girdle about the waist, and bat-like wings splayed menacingly outward. But it was the idol’s own head, a terrible visage that twined the form of man and long-eared bat into something wholly distinct and alien, that caught and held the eye with terrible fascination.

 

 

 

“Kamazotz? What does that mean?” Khossos demanded.

“Devil-Bat, in several southern tongues, I believe,” Sarrumos said, looking to the crewman for confirmation. The man nodded slowly, but his eyes would not leave the malevolent statue. The monstrous face glared at them with half-empty sockets; evidently the idol itself may have been too large to carry away, but the carnelians that had served as its eyes were not – only one remained. “I think the name speaks for itself.”

The corsair’s fellow countrymen were pointing at the eidolon and rapidly talking among themselves, too quickly for Sarrumos to follow. Finally, one of them turned to the captain and first mate and spoke, his words clearly echoing his companions’ thoughts.

“Kamazotz is the Lord of Sacrifice. The Taker of Heads Who Rules the Night. We must be gone from here, Captain. Now!”

“Pah! He couldn’t protect His own idol from being pilfered. A paltry god, indeed.”

“No!” Another sailor interjected. “E’en tonight, He has taken revenge! Mizotl! Tal Kuup! Our Wavespeaker! All are His.”

“We will be too, if we don’t get gone!” a third man agreed.

“You superstitious fools,” Khossos sneered, “Tomek is to blame. Not a god, but a man! Nothing more. He’s preyed on –”

“No!” the first corsair interrupted, throwing his arm behind him to the abandoned camp. “Tomek’s head hangs, too, from Kamazotz’s belt! Die here if you want, but I am going.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the other Chok Mayaabi. They turned into gasps of shock as bronze flashed in the darkness and blood spurted from their companion’s throat. Grasping his ruined neck, the dead man wordlessly toppled to the ground.

“You see, you spineless dogs?” the captain snarled angrily, “It does not take a demon to open a man’s throat; only courage – and a good edge! The next man to make move or utter word of flight I will kill just as swiftly. Who shall it be? Hmm?”

The mortal threat they beheld triumphing over the immortal one they merely suspected, the men fell silent. Sarrumos fingered his own hilt nervously.

“Captain,” he interjected, hoping to defuse the tension, “we should be about this. Some abandoned fane is not why we came. Nor,” he looked at the Chok Mayaabi, “is making demands beyond our station.” The last words had been for his captain’s benefit, and to reinforce the man’s ham-handed quelling of the crew’s insubordination, but Sarrumos suspected that the effectiveness of such methods was coming to an end. Khossos’s arrogance was marching them to a precipice with their increasingly skittish crew. For now, greed and indecision possessed enough of them to forestall a mutiny. But when that mood finally shifted…

“Agreed. Let’s see the way into Tomek’s perch.”

Slipping out of the shrine, they came to the tower’s base. There they halted, gaping in wide-eyed disbelief, for the tower had neither doors nor windows. Sleek, black basalt walls rose from its foundation, sloping slightly inwards to the small, crenelated parapet that crowned its summit. As the tower was set in the seaward side of the compound, and the compound itself sat on a shelf of naked rock that jutted out into the sea, there was no possibility of it having an entrance to the rear.

“Lilaké’s immortal tits,” rumbled Khossos, “did the Godborn have wings? Too tall for the ladder to get at them. We’ll need to either build a taller one or devise a grapple.”

“But, Captain, think you,” Sarrumos said, shaking his head. “How did Tomek and his men get in? And to what purpose?”

“Perhaps they have a rope ladder, and they pull it in at night. A miserable way to get in and out, no doubt, but damned secure once you are in!”

“Yes, but impossible to sally out of, if attacked. A nightmare to bring in supplies…”

“Gods alone know why the Old Ones built such a place, nor why Tomek wishes to hold it now. But since he has so decided, and since, as you say, there is no more an easy way out than there is in,” Khossos smiled wolfishly, white teeth gleaming. “Let’s smoke them out.”

His first mate shook his head. “It won’t work – the tower’s stones are close-set and mortared, not like those of the wall. It would take a fair bit of fuel, and a great deal of time – “

“We have a jungle! Tomek clearly isn’t going anywhere.”

Just then, a cry went up among the men. Looking up, Sarrumos gasped.

A tall figure the color of dull granite hunched atop the tower, leaning out over the parapet like a lord surveying his demesne. Between the height, and the all-encompassing cloak, the Naakali realized at once who this must be.

“There’s the bastard murderer now!” Khossos shouted.

A bowstring hummed, a long shaft sped from Ollad’s bow, and the cloaked figure staggered at the arrow struck its skull. The man stumbled back drunkenly, then disappeared. The corsairs cheered and clasped arms. Khossos was ebullient.

“Hah! One already on his way to the Nine Hells. Alright, men, let’s start gathering wood and –”

“Captain! He’s back!”

Looking up, they could see the cloaked figure had returned and was glaring down at them once more.

“Barbarian fool, you missed!” Khossos snarled.

“I did not miss.”

“Clearly you did. Let’s put a flight into him. Men, make arrows ready and – Hatûm’s Light!”

As they watched, the man stood upright, and spread his arms wide, as if to jump to his death. Then Sarrumos saw that he was no man at all! What he had mistaken for a cloak was a pair of vast, bat-like wings, adorned with long, hooked claws; what he had thought to be a hood were the tall, twin peaks of long, up-thrusting ears. The creature peered down with amberine eyes, up-turned nose sniffing the air. Suddenly, terribly, all that had transpired since they had first made landfall — the Wavespeaker’s dream, the deaths, the bats feasting on the corpses, this doorless, windowless tower with a monstrous shrine built before it — all fitted together like the pieces of a mosaic.

“Kamazotz,” one, maybe more, of the corsairs screamed.

Those vast pinions stretched wide, massive shoulders pounding them against the air. Then it dove.

Plunging on wings greater than any mortal bat or bird, the demon hurtled toward them, the air filled with a bat-like chitter, only a hundred-times as loud, that boomed from that mighty chest. Someone yelled. Another man screamed. The air filled with the hum of strings and the whistle of fletching. Twisting, turning, legs out-stretched like a striking hawk, its naked, gray body plummeted with such speed that the men’s hastily fired shafts missed their mark.

Khossos of the Alteroi did none of the fine deeds of which he’d boasted. He did not so much as lift his sword; only stared dumbly as taloned feet sank into his skull and the bat-demon’s great mass drove him to the ground. The nearest corsair fled without so much as a word, while the man beside him thrust out with his spear, more in reflex than courage. A great wing lashed out, the wing-claws that corresponded to human hands slashing wide his throat. Then with a screech, massive muscles pulsed, translucent, leathery wings flapped, and the bat-demon was taking to the sky once more, though not before Ollad had sunk an arrow into its broad, fur-covered chest.

If the arrow had an effect, Sarrumos could not tell, for the demon winged skyward, and prepared to dive once more. One of the archers had fled, but the others stood their ground, nocking and firing with more haste than accuracy. Ollad, two arrows clenched between the fingers of his bow-hand, ran towards the shrine, seeking to give himself cover against the monster’s next dive.

He chose wisely. Circling about the tower, the demon banked, then swooped down once more, its claws tearing off a bowman’s arm as he nocked an arrow. There was a whistle and a thud, as Ollad’s next shaft sank into the monster’s hip, and it whirled about, yellow eyes squinting blindly, short, wrinkled snout sniffing at the air.

Sarrumos roared, in fear, in rage, in desperation, and leapt at the monster, his sword’s point driving towards the base of the heavy, elongated skull. The point bit, then stuck and twisted, the metal bending against uncannily hard bones. Wings flapped, hand-talons scrabbling at the blade lodged in its neck, claws seeking the antagonist behind it, but Sarrumos held on. A talon struck his bronze casque and, with a loud clang, the metal scored and tore. Fighting desperately, Sarrumos realized his best defense was to remain behind the creature, where its wings were largely useless. Throwing an arm about his adversary’s neck, he sought to push his damaged blade deeper into its spine. The bat-demon’s skull slammed back into his helmet, denting the already compromised bronze and tearing open his forehead. Blood dripped into the Naakali’s eyes, joining the stars that already filled them.

Now what do I…shit!

Shouts and screams rang out all around him, and for a moment, Sarrumos saw a corsair beside him, slashing with an obsidian-edged, club-sword. He must have done some harm, because the creature’s wings began flapping furiously, and crouching, it leaped skyward.

Sarrumos heard Ollad cry his name, and nearby, impossibly, someone was screaming. Realizing his life was about to end dashed into the courtyard below, the Naakali scrambled to throw his legs about the monster’s narrow waist. The archers held their fire, lest they hit their leader as the monster spiraled upward. Only as they drew near the parapet atop the tower, did Sarrumos realize the screaming was coming from him.

The creature flew out over the tower, and Sarrumos saw that the “roof” was merely a walkway, no more than a few feet wide, with the rest a dark shaft, open to the air. An overwhelming stench of urine and rancid meat that wafted up to batter his senses like a physical blow. He gagged, fighting not to retch. Only then, did Sarrumos see the dark red-brown stains that covered parts of the walkway and disappeared over the side into the darkness. He knew now where the missing bodies from Tomek’s crew had gone and had no intention of joining them.

Gripping the hilt of his sword, its point still lodged in the monster’s neck, Sarrumos let go of the creature, dropping towards the narrow walkway below, the weight of his falling body tugging his sword free. He landed badly, his feet going out from under him, his upper body flailing out towards the yawning aperture, arms and head slipping over the side. His chin hit hard, skin tearing against the stone, blood immediately flowing into his short beard. Sarrumos’s left hand managed to scramble and find the edge of the walkway, while the other fumbled to maintain the grip on his sword, catching it by the mushroom-shaped pommel.

Talons click-clacked upon the flagstone walk, as the Naakali corsair regained his footing; the demon had landed, and begun advancing on him, its half-folded wings curled forward obsidian-sharp claws angled towards him. Regaining his feet, bent sword held forward as a feeble barrier, Sarrumos prepared to sell his life dearly.

Suddenly, with a screech of pain, the monster lurched sidewise, and one of its wings fell limp, the shaft of a long, flint-tipped arrow transfixing the wiry, fur-covered dorsal muscles. Ollad!

If an arrow can hurt it, then a sword can kill it. I can kill it.

“Alright you pug-faced monstrosity,” Sarrumos shouted as a manic humor born of fear and exhaustion consumed him. “Let’s see which of us is the better killer!”

Perhaps the demon could understand his words, perhaps not. But it sprang at him, and the Naakali leapt forward at the same time, with whatever speed he could marshal. As its one good wing lashed out, he dropped to one knee. Black talons raked empty air, as a bronze point, bent but still sharp, drove up and under its breastbone, the creature’s own lunge carrying it forward onto the blade, driving it in up to the hilt. There was an ear-splitting screech, then a vomit of thick, blackish blood spattered them both. Knees buckling, the tall creature stumbled away, wrenching Sarrumos’s sword from his hand. It tried to take wing, failed, staggered along the walkway, and then collapsed, striking the raised parapet hard, the stones crushing its uninjured wing. The fallen monster lay still, draped half over the edge like a fallen banner.

Sarrumos lay gasping, as he wiped demonic heart’s blood out of his eyes and nose. He stumbled to his feet and warily approached the fallen creature. There were no signs of life. Summoning his courage, Sarrumos leaned over the monster and gripped his sword’s hilt. The demon’s almost comical death throes had carried it to vary edge of the parapet walkway and the looming blackness below. He pulled on his sword, but it would not come free. Bracing his foot against the fallen creature’s chest, he heaved, then again, harder. The bronze blade came loose with grinding sound as its edge dragged along bone. Sarrumos staggered backward, striking against the tower’s far wall, his vision swimming with vertigo. For a moment all he could see were the rippling green-blue waves lapping against the rocks almost directly below. Regaining his balance, he looked back towards his fallen foe just in time to catch a glimpse of broken wing and taloned-foot as the monster’s body slipped over the edge, tumbling down into the darkness of the tower’s central shaft.

Wearily, clutching the parapet for support, the Naakali corsair walked back around to the courtyard side of the tower. He leaned over the edge and an arrow whizzed past his face, while another clattered against the stones below. He leaped back with a curse and tried another tact – waving his sword over the edge while shouting out “It’s Sarrumos!” Cautiously, he leaned out again, and this time, no over-eager archer shot at him.

“Captain! Are you alright?” Ollad called out.

Captain? Khossos was dead…

“It’s dead!” Sarrumos called back down. “It stinks like a war-host’s latrine up here! I bent my sword and the damn thing puked blood on me, but otherwise, I am more-or-less unharmed.”

“How are you getting down?”

Damn.

“Honestly? I have no idea.” Sarrumos walked back to the parapet’s edge and looked down into the dark shaft of the tower. The sun was rising quickly now, and the early morning light confirmed both the many streaks of dry blood that ran over the edge and disappeared down the side, and the absence of any sort of stair or ladder leading from the roof down into the tower’s depths, which clearly extended well below the building’s ground floor. No windows, no doors, no way to rise or descend to whatever lay below.

It’s not so much a building, as just a giant shaft.

Looking over the side, Sarrumos gagged at the acrid stench. Realizing there was no way down, except by climbing the wall from the outside, he was about to go back to the parapet to start devising a plan with the men when a glimpse of movement in the shaft caught his eye. Peering more closely, he felt a rush of wind, and heard loud, high-pitched tittering…

Bats were not solitary creatures.

Scrambling to his feet, Sarrumos ran to the courtyard side of the tower, leaned over the edge and screamed, “Ollad! Everyone! Run!”

“Captain? What? Why?”

Dark grey shapes on clawed pinions stretching twice the length of a man burst into the early morning air, their hissing, chattering screeches decrying their hate for both the morning sun and those who had disturbed their sleep. Once clear of the tower’s roof, the angry colony of kamazotz – devil-bats – circled like vultures, seeking their tormentors with their sun-sensitive eyes. Seeing the men gathered below, they began to dive.

Sarrumos watched in horror as the monsters plunged down upon the fleeing corsairs like hawks hunting rabbits. He stood frozen in mouth-gaping horror for long heartbeats until a screech reminded him that some of the creatures were still unoccupied, and he was trapped atop this tower, with no way down…

Yes, there was.

Running back to the parapet Sarrumos looked down at the glistening waves far below. Between the tower and the hillock on which it stood the water must lie a good hundred feet below. Could a man even survive a dive that far? He was a strong swimmer, but that wouldn’t matter if his body shattered as it hit the water. And if the water was shallower than it looked…

Another bat-like screech resonated behind him.

Sarrumos jumped.

 

VI.

Pain seared through the heels of his feet, spiraled through his ankle, twisted and writhed through the muscles of his legs and low back before settling with a vengeance in several very unhappy ribs. Salt-swollen eyes flickered open to find a scarred face with a blood-soaked crest for hair leering at him, the hunched, simian monstrosity that owned it looming over him menacingly.

“There now, he’s coming around”

I know that voice.

Blinking away the salt crusting his eyes, Sarrumos peered at his demonic tormentor more closely. Scales faded to pockmarks; the bloody crest transformed into the dyed and shaved hair of the northern barbarians; the leer became a familiar frown of worry and disapproval, its reaching claws, a pair of strong hands helping him to sit up straight.

“Ollad? Where in the Nine Hells…?” he was sitting on something hard. A wooden deck…a tall pole before him…oar banks, empty…to either side. A ship.

“Easy Captain, easy! Your right foot’s broken and needs setting, the other ankle is already swelling, but I made the joint pop and straighten. I think it is just twisted. You must have dropped straight into the water. Feet-first. Likely saved your life.”

As the morning sun accosted Sarrumos’s bleary eyes, consciousness and coherence returned via a myriad of bruised muscles, sprained joints, broken bones and a staggeringly potent headache. He took in his surroundings. They were at sea, wind and tide carrying them away from the cursed island and its death-winged habitants.

“This isn’t our ship.” Willing his vision to steady, the Naakali counted his companions, including Ollad, at no more than eight. “Nor most of our men.”

Ollad shook his head sadly. “It is all of our men, now, Captain. Those who followed me down to the beach, where Tomek’s ship lay at anchor. Men enough to cut her free and put her to sail, not so many to row, should the wind abandon us. We found you spat up on the shore.”

“A bit of the gods’ own flotsam and jetsam,” the Naakali snorted. Looking back to the island, Sarrumos did not ask what had happened to those who hadn’t followed Ollad’s lead. Even now, the answers flew on dark wings, returning to the tower – to the aerie – they called home.

Gods Below, there are towers like this one scattered all across the Isles.

With atavistic certainty, Sarrumos realized now what they had witnessed. The Tehanu had called themselves “Godborn”, attributing their great height and odd features to a divine heritage; a bloodline of which the Naakali fancied themselves inheritors. But the priests taught that this was the time of the Fourth Sun; there had been three ages – and people – before this one, and the gods had beheld them all. Ancient, alien Kamazotz had children of Its own, living relics born during one of the earlier Suns. Whatever long-ago compact they had forged with the Tehanu, the People of the Bat had been forgotten by men and clearly desired to remain so.

“Khossos came here seeking Tomek’s death. He found it, and his own.”

“And many o’ ours,” one of the corsairs grumbled.

“Yes. Far too many.” He grimaced at his cracked ribs, as he forced himself onto his elbows. “There is nothing we can do but remember them with a jar or three of balché-mead, once we are far from this place. Life is for the living, my boys! We have ours, we have this ship, and we have the wind. We’ll sail into Balanchán, take on a full crew, and then remind the men of the Four Kingdoms that there are some sharks who hunt atop the waves, as surely as those who hunt below!”

Bold words were undermined by a sudden cough that set his broken ribs afire once more, which in turn elicited more coughing. But they were enough to give the remaining corsairs some desperately needed cheer. As they whooped and cheered, Ollad, ever dour – or at least, ever-practical – leaned closer to his new captain. “Forgive me speaking the obvious, Sarrumos, but hiring a crew, taking on supplies – these things cost money. All we had lies abandoned on a beach behind us.”

“All we had? Yes. As lost and gone as Khossos’s head. The Bat God’s booty, eh? But where one door closes, another opens. We have Tomek’s Wave-Serpent, and she’s a damn fine ship. And, if the sea didn’t swallow it, we have this…,” he rummaged inside his tunic, face scrunching in pain as he brushed bruised and battered flesh. His fist came free and opened, revealing a palm-sized carnelian, set in a gold fitting, and nearly three fingers thick and its center. “I think we can afford supplies.”

“What is…Sarrumos! Are you mad? You stole the god’s other eye?”

“Stole? Really, Ollad! Aren’t you the one who keeps telling me to give the gods their due?” Green eyes sparkled with wicked humor. “I would say we made offering enough at Kamazotz’s altar to purchase this and all eight of the Spider-God’s eyes besides!”

 

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Gregory D. Mele has had a passion for sword & sorcery and historical fiction for most of his life. An early love of dinosaurs led him to dragons, and from dragons…well, the rest should be obvious. From Robin Hood to Conan, Elric to Aragorn, Captain Blood to King Arthur, if there were swords being swung, he was probably reading it.

Since the late 90s, his passion has been the reconstruction and preservation of armizare, a martial art developed over 600 years ago by the famed Italian master-at-arms Fiore dei Liberi, that includes the use of the two-handed sword, spear, dagger, wrestling, poleaxe and armoured combat. In the ensuing twenty years, he has become an internationally known teacher, researcher, and author on the subject, via his work with the Chicago Swordplay Guild, which he founded in 1999, and Freelance Academy Press, a publisher in the fields of martial arts, arms and armour, chivalry, historical arts and crafts.

Greg lives with his very tolerant family in the Chicago suburbs.

Justin Pfeil is an IT Guy, draws a Webcomic,  and fences with Medieval swords.  He’s an Old-School RPG player and has been married to hiswife for 22 years. Check out his website for more!