Doom's Break (33 page)

The fear mounted, growing stronger and wilder with each passing second. Beneath him he could hear shouts and incoherent shrieking. Men ran here and there like brainless dolts.

Heuze felt his own mind slip its moorings. Whether his eyes were opened or shut, he experienced a terrifying hallucination.

Enormous creatures, pink-skinned, like men but without heads, surfaced around the ship. With arms that ended in huge nests of struggling tentacles, things that looked like worms writhing on a frying pan, they stood above the water. They had legs as mighty as the towers on the walls of Shasht.

Their huge mouths opened, and they bellowed something unknowable to the sky. The tentacles writhed and revealed that they were tipped with mouths filled with sharp teeth. The tentacles swung toward Heuze. The vision changed in an instant. A gold flash blasted through his eyes, and then he saw into a dark, necrotic vision. Rotting faces drifted slowly down from the sky like ghastly snow. Skulls piled up on the surface of the sea, floating in great drifts. The sun had gone black. Heuze's mother emerged from the skulls and held her arms out to him.

Heuze wept. He would have liked to go to her arms, but he couldn't move. In the next moment, she was blown away in the winds, torn to pieces, shriveled and then gone.

His father's face appeared. A cold man with dark eyes, he had sent Heuze to sea at the age of thirteen. The father frowned, and a shaft of cold passed through Heuze. Then the father faded.

There was a curious implosion of sound.

The enormous manlike things were gone. The ship floated on a sea of blood. White worms the size of whales coursed through the blood. A terrible sense of desolation rose up. All was lost, all was ruined.

Heuze felt overwhelmed, crushed, broken inside. The darkness pervaded everything, and consciousness became blotted out completely.

How long he hung there, lost in the shades of terror, he never knew, but when he came back to himself, he found a scene of panic down below. He was still swinging from the yardarm, and the ship had drifted perilously close to the rocky shore.

Just three hundred feet away the waves were slamming into the rocks. The cliff towered above them, a dirty white mountain of chalk.

Officers were bellowing orders. Feet thundered up the stairs.

The sun shone once more, but the world of darkness lay just behind them. When he looked back, he could see that the edge between the two was clear and hard. Away to the south beneath the black cloud there was just the darkness and an occasional distant flash of purple lightning.

The vast white cliff swung slowly before his eyes as the ship came about. All hands were in the rigging. Sails were furled and unfurled with frantic speed.

Voices continued to bellow orders, but the ship was no longer drifting toward the rocks. The ship was changing course, moving back out into the bay, although one outlying spire of rock was still in their way.

Slowly, rigging creaked as the sails caught the wind. The great ship swung her nose past the rock, and then they were sliding through the waves just fifty feet from doom. Seabirds lifted off the top of the rock with harsh cries.

Ahead, Heuze could see other ships, a great mass of them moving around the chalk headland. Here was the enemy fleet, and ahead was the site where they were going to land their army.

And behind the ship lay the grim, eerie darkness blanketing the world.

Thru Gillo was hurrying up Bear Hill from Warkeen when he first noticed the strange black clouds forming in the southeast. He was carrying yet another reply from Aeswiren to yet another message from Toshak. Being Toshak's messenger to the Emperor was harder work than it had ever been now that the two generals were within five miles of each other.

At times Thru wondered if it wouldn't have been better to just have the two headquarters together in the village, instead of having Toshak on Bear Hill just north of the river and Aeswiren on South Hill on the other side. Certainly that would have made it easier on Thru's boots, which were falling apart again.

Yet, he also understood that keeping the two armies apart was a good idea. The alliance between mot and Man was a very young and tender shoot. Every time he passed through the perimeter of Aeswiren's army and found himself surrounded by men, Thru felt a certain oppression. By instinct his hand strayed to his sword hilt when he caught hard glances directed his way, and as he passed by, he often heard muttered curses and insults. Many men clearly hated the folk of the Land, just as the folk of the Land hated the men.

When next Thru looked up, he saw that the black clouds had slithered farther up the sky. He hurried his footsteps. He'd missed lunch, but he still had hopes of finding something to eat at the headquarters cook fire. If there was bad weather coming in, he'd rather be in the cook tent than out here in the open.

The path up the hill and over to Cormorant Rock had suffered from the passage of Toshak's army. The ground was cut up with ruts, the bushes and trees hemmed back to let the wagons through. The pathway was almost an analogy for the Land itself, torn and beaten ever since the men first arrived.

A shadow fell over him as he crested the hill. Toshak's tents were just ahead. He glanced up and saw the clouds had spread right up the sky. They were like long fingers, each separated by a narrow band of blue sky, but the blue was being squeezed out as more and more of the flat, opaque blackness flowed up from the south.

The clouds rolled on. The light was dimmed and then virtually obliterated by the time he reached camp, delivered Aeswiren's message to the headquarters tent, and got across to the cook fire.

"Got anything left?" he said as he poked into the various pots and cauldrons.

"Oh ho, back for seconds, are you?" said the cook, an older mor missing her right eye. Her fur was whitening at the tips on top of her shoulders and the back of her head.

"No, I wasn't here for lunch."

"Well, in that case, here, take some porridge and some bushpod cake."

She slopped a ladle of porridge into a bowl for him.

"Here, eat it quick. Looks like we've got bad weather coming in. I'll want to close the flaps tight."

"Thanks."

"Odd-looking storm. I've never seen anything like it."

It was very strange. The black fingers had passed on, and the whole sky had gone dark. The sudden flash of purple lightning away in the south dazzled them. After a few moments a heavy boom rolled over their heads.

Thru felt his fur standing up. More lightning flickered out to sea.

"Ooh, this is going to be nasty," said the cookmor.

Thru knew in his bones that sorcery was at work here. He'd seen their terrible enemy. He'd witnessed the demonic dance that summoned the pyluk from the hills. Now it seemed this warlock could summon a storm at his whim.

He ate the porridge in a few gulps, darted out of the tent as the cookmor battened down the hatches, and hurried across to the headquarters tent, still chewing the pod cake.

He was halfway there when a cold wind struck. With it came an overpowering feeling of unease, even of fear. Something dreadful was hunting them, something that promised annihilation.

Toshak had finished the noontime meeting with his regimental commanders. They were filing out as Thru came in. He knew most of them well and exchanged nods and a few handshakes.

"What the hell is happening out there?" said more than one as they stepped out of the tent.

Inside, Thru ran into the Grys Norvory, his one-time enemy. The Grys wore the red pin of a regimental commander. He had given Thru an apology for the misdeeds of the past at an earlier meeting, and now they were on cordial terms.

"So, you got your freedom from the palace," said Thru with a nod to the pin.

"At last. Think I've served my time as a bureaucrat."

Another great boom of thunder rolled overhead.

"This storm seems unnatural," said the Grys with a look out the door at the darkness above.

"Sorcery, I'd wager," said Thru.

"That's what we have to expect, I suppose. May the Spirit preserve us."

"May it keep our sword edge sharp, too."

Toshak appeared from the back of the tent. "Thank you, Grys," he said, taking Thru's arm. "Gillo, come here a moment."

Toshak moved over to the open front of the tent. The sky was pitch-black except for blast after blast of purple lightning out to sea.

"What do you think the purpose of this storm is?"

Clearly, Toshak understood that this strange weather was the work of their enemy.

"Our enemy seeks to frighten us," said Thru.

The wind was increasing in fierceness, and the tent flaps were closed by the orderlies. In short order the papers were slid into the travel binders and the maps into their waterproof tubes. Thru and Toshak went over to a side flap so they could continue to peer outside.

All across the camp, mots and brilbies were hurrying to tie things down. The wind rose steadily until it was fairly shrieking through the trees. All the fires had been put out and covered with shovelfuls of sand. Leaves, branches, and bits of bark were blown out of the forest and right over the tents. The wind rose to a maniacal screech. Here and there a tent collapsed. The tent set up for the orderlies to sleep in lost its pegs at the rear and was torn from its place and hurled away. The orderlies' things went flying after it.

The cook tent was barely holding on. One peg had come up, and a corner of the tent was flapping madly in the wind. Thru could hear the imprecations of the cookmor, even over the general howl of the tempest, as she fought to control the loose corner.

Then came the rain. The first few drops were huge and heavy, making loud splatters on the canvas. A deluge followed. With a sudden drumming roar, the rain lashed down across the Land. Thru hesitated a few moments and was soaked to the fur by the time he pulled his head in and sealed the tent flap.

The noise diminished a little. Inside the tent, the poles creaked as the wind buffeted its walls. Orderlies did their best to hold poles in place. Rain smashed across the top of the tent in violent bursts, as if it were being hurled from the heavens by an angry god.

Suddenly the ring at the top of one of the poles ripped free from the tent. The tent itself ripped along a seam for almost a foot, and water poured in, bucketsfuls in a matter of moments.

"Seal that tent!" came the frantic command.

The orderlies threw themselves at it, but it was a nigh impossible task. Thru and Toshak joined the group, taking hold of the tent pole while an orderly climbed onto a chair and strung a thong through the torn opening and laced it together.

By the time it was done, everyone was wet, and the floor of the headquarters tent was a muddy mess.

Outside, it was still howling. Lightning struck all around them in the forest, huge flashes that lit up the interior of the tent in bright purple light.

The thunder was deafening. It came in peal upon peal, enormous blasts and booms in a continuous roar that obliterated their voices.

Toshak and Thru were now standing in mud, the tent still heaving and starting to leak under the relentless downpour. Several orderlies were showing the strain. One was weeping, terrified beyond sense by it all. Their enemy was showing them his power, and his power was very great indeed.

But not even this storm could keep up its malevolence for long. After a few more minutes, the wind began to lessen and the rain had dropped to a more normal range. The thunder continued, but the lightning was now striking inland, up above Bear Hill for the most part.

Thru was just about to open the tent flap and take a look outside when it was rudely torn open. In stumbled a soaked, blood-stained wretch. Fur matted with mud, eyes wild with fear and exertion.

"They are coming. The pyluk."

The attack had been artfully timed. When the tempest was at its height, a column of two thousand pyluk emerged from the woods of Lupin Valley. They had infiltrated the valley the previous day and night, moving with the utmost stealth, while sorcery had distracted the minds of the scouts on Stag's Head and in the Bell House above Snoyps Pond.

Once hidden in Lupin Valley, less than a mile from Bear Hill, they had hunkered down in glades and stream bottoms. They had remained frozen in place all day, in the grip of the same sorcery that had controlled them since they had first come down from the mountains.

Their stillness had kept them hidden, and the advent of the storm was the signal that brought them back to wakefulness. As one they rose up, took up their clubs and spears, and set off toward the coast.

They swarmed over Toshak's screen of pickets at the base of Bear Hill while the thunder and lightning were still crashing overhead. The pickets barely had time to look up before they were overwhelmed by a solid onrushing mass of the lizard-men. Long spears took those who attempted to flee.

Fortunately, a few mots farther up the hill heard the commotion and saw the horde of pyluk pouring through the trees below. The mots could scarcely believe their eyes, but they had the sense to run for it.

Thus the mots of the Third Regiment got a few minutes' warning, but not much more. The pickets came bolting into the camp, screaming, "Pyluk!" at the top of their lungs.

The Grys Norvory, newly appointed to the regiment, was making a tour of the tents when the word came. He'd expected some kind of deviltry, and here it was. In a matter of minutes, he was getting his soldiers out of their tents and formed into a combat line in the middle of the camp.

The pyluk burst out of the trees. The mots, torn from cowering in their tents under the fear and the overpowering energy of the storm, now found themselves confronted by an overwhelming mass of lizard-men.

Perhaps the abruptness of the attack helped the Third Regiment. They simply didn't have time to panic. Despite everything, they stood their ground.

The pyluk drove forward onto the pikes and spears. Pyluk bulls with three or four arrows jutting from their flesh thrashed against the mot shield wall, before they succumbed to sharp steel. Nowhere did they break the line.