"King Holmir's Treasure House"

"King Homir's Treasure House"

4/19-4/21/1987

I.

Wearing Melgar clothes, Jeremy Bane is in Androval on the trail of the ancient Alchemist Melchius. By chance, he spots the renegade Avathor at a low tavern. Peering in through an open window befor entering, Bane discovers Avathor is meeting with high mountain bandit chiefs,and he finds Human adventurerss Ruffian spying there as well (and also posing as a Melgar, although she is Myrrwhan). Ruffian is tall, five feet seven and athletic. She has darkened her distinctive auburn hair to dark bown to fit in better. Over the previous five years, Ruffian has built a reputation as a bold and inventive thief with acrobatic skills

Identifying Avathor's fmous golden horse hitched to a fence by the tavern, Bane plants one of his tracking discs under the saddle. Then he enters, slugs some of the bandits and breaks up the conference. Avathor runs outside. While getting Ruffian ready to flee, Bane is knocked out by Avathor's Korean mercenary Bronze Ronin. This is Mikage Tstsuo, top street fighter with a healing factor. Bane recovers in time to follow the tracking signal to a shack a few miles away where he finds Ruffian beaten, stripped and bound, with the Melgar symbol for "dog" in shallow cuts across her body. He smashes Avathor's men before they can kill her and takes her to safety.

Ruffian explains to Bane about Avathor's plan to rob King Holmir's Treasure House. This is a single vast chamber cut into the side of a sheer mountain wall, with no known entrances or exits other than the massive woodem gate. staffed with a permanent garrison, it holds a vast treasure of gold, silver and gems. Holmir also is known to store valuable statues, paintings and chronicles there for safekeeping.

Following the tracer disc he planted inside the Melgar's saddle, Bane trails Avathor to a remote part of Androval not far from the Royal Treasure House, bringing along the bruised but furious Ruffian, who vows to assassinate Avathor. Both being extremely skilled in stealth, Bane and Ruffian sneak into Avathor's camp in the mountains and overhear him conferring with Dolomir, an agent of Melchius. Avathor is pleased with the compressed air bomb filled with Alchemical poison gas potent enough to kill an army. Modern technology will function perfectly well in Androval but it is taboo culturally and legally.

With Ruffian beside him, Bane overhears Avathor explain his plan. A labor gang of Trolls under Melgar supervision will be headed to the mines with their wagons to fill with ore. This is a common sight in the mountains. Avathor explains the Trolls will wheel away as much gold and silver as they can. But the two are discovered and Bronze Ronin kills Ruffian with his lethal fists. Avathor intervenes, using his electrical powers to stun Bane into helplessness. Bane is captured and strapped to a table with a sharp-edged cabre poised near his neck. A Gralic Leech, Avathor wants to siphon off Bane's speed for his own but has to wait a few days because his body is already holding as many powers as it can for one time.

While Bronze Ronin is busy elsewhere, Bane escapes his cell and witnesses Avathor's second meeting with the Melgar bandit chiefs, who are supplying horsemen to accompany the Trolls for the assault. Avathor plans to breach Treasure House by releasing a deadly Alchemical serum into the atmosphere, killing the personnel. This serum will be sprayed from the air by Melgar mercenary Beldor and her five Air Maidens riding rare winged horses from Okali. Then the Trolls will fill their wagons with as much treasure as will fit and hurry to their tunnels in the mountains.

The bandits scorn Avathor's scheme, particularly one named Khuthir who demands to be paid immediately so he can leave. Avathor admits that since the caravan of Trolls is already on its way, he doesn't need the chiefs anymore. Stepping into an airtight cell, he gasses them to death with an Alchemical potion and rants to himself that he will do the same to any who might tell his tale.. Bane is captured by Beldor and taken back into custody. Bane confronts Avathor over the logistical implausibility of moving tons of gold, silver and gems. The Trolls will only be able to carry off a fraction of the treasure. As Avathor laughs and says he has a more subtle agenda, Bane deduces from the presence of the minion that Avathor has been offered a deadly gas bomb by Melchius the Alchemist to detonate inside the vault and poison the gold for decades. Avathor doesn't care much for claiming the treasure, he wants revenge on King Holmir.

III.

Again trying to escape, Bane engages in a fight with Beldor that ends with them both battered and willing to talk. He tells her that Avathor killed the Melgar bandits and will soon have no use for her. The next day, on the rare winged horses, Beldor's maidens spray the gas over Treasure House, seemingly killing the guards and workers. The garrison is so surprised and fascinated by the flying horses that no arrows are loosed until it is too late. The heavier than air gas quickly forms an ankle-high mist that can be walked through safely for short periods of time. Wheeling overhead, the Air Maidens fly back in the directon from which they had come... except for Beldor, who suddenly breaks away and speeds off to the South.

Avathor's Troll press gang breaks through the outer gates of Treasure House and beats down the door to the inner vault as Avathor arrives with the poison gas bomb. In the vault, Melchius's henchman Dolomir, ties Bane down across the bomb with ropes. This gives Avathor great glee and he can't stop laughing. The Trolls and the bandits loot with frantic haste, loading crates of gold and silver coins, leather bags of jewels and some heirloom weapons on to the carts while also filling their pockets.

"Androval will fall!" gloats Avathor to the stoic Bane. "With no gold or silver that can be handled, with nothing to back it up, Androval's money will be worthless, the economy will collapse and this realm will collapse into raw panic. Holmir will be deposed as he deserves to... and a new, stronger man will claim the throne." Bane says nothing and Avathor leaves him. Bronze Ronin is ordered to remain behind until the last minute to be sure the well-known tricky Bane doesn't get loose somehow.

Unknown to Avathor, Bane's talk with Beldor convinced her to change sides. She diluted the Alchemical solution to harmless levels. So the Alchemical serum has knocked all the Melgarin soldiers out and left them sick but still alive. Avathor locks the inner vault leaving Bane and Bronze Ronin trapped inside. The bomb itself is still fatal and ready to blow.

IV.

As the Troll wagons roll away as quickly as they can manage, Avathor withdraws to a hilltop to observe from a safe distance. Bane frees himself with the razor blades hidden in his cuffs, but Bronze Ronin tackles him before he can stop the bomb. Bane quickly manages to defeat Bronze Ronin then forces the lock off the serum bomb and figures out how to disarm it. He sits down with a bad case of the shakes after realizing how close he came to being killed.

A deep rumbling outside draws him to the ruined gate. One hundred Melgar calvary on their great war horses thunder by in pursuit of the fleeing Trolls. Bane realizes that the fighting will be brief and merciless. Unarmed, facing mounted Melgarin with lances and sabres, even the powerful Trolls will have no chance. Some of the riders stay to safeguafrd the Treasure House. Their captain dismounts. He and Bane fill each other in on the situation, and the captain thanks Bane for saving Androval from ruin and a coup. Beldar is a prisoner at the nearby lancer fort. She had landed her winged horse and informed the officers in charge of the ongoing attack at Treasure House, so her life is safe for the moment.

For her service in preventing all the deaths, Beldor will be pardoned all her crimes by the King. Bane is told he will be the first non-Melgar to be awarded the Green Star medal for heroism. The poison gas bomb is hauled along until a way can be found to safely destroy it. Both are escorted by a squad of the calvary to the Royal Court for audience with the King, but Avathor and his surviving fighters attack the group. In the struggle, Avathor's sword chops open a seal on the gas tank and sprays Avathor with the gas. Bane and Beldor get back safely from the deadly fumes but the Gralic Leech withers into a mere mummy.

12/31/2022

"Twilight Riders"

"Twilight Riders"

12/11-12/12/1898

I.

Strange flickering red flashes rushed horizontally across each night sky. During each day, grey gloom overcast the sky so that even at noon nobody cast a shadow. Winds were heard howling constantly but somehow the air remained still and stifling. Birds were seen fleeing south in great flocks. Animals went into hiding across the Northwest, people either quarreled murderously over trifles or sank into depressed stupors where no chores were done and no meals made. It was like nothing no one had ever seen before, perhaps the very End of Days.

Hurrying up from across the plains and deserts, seven riders began to assemble near a Miscagowie reservation at the Canadian border. They had not planned to meet up. Some had never met any of the others before. But those who would be called the Twilight Riders found themselves forming a camp on a flat-topped hill and asking each other for answers none had. Most notorious among them was Johnny Packard, the Brimstone Kid still living under his curse.

Still looking like a beardless youth despite being forty, the Brimstone Kid was wiry and active as a bobcat. Just five feet six and barely one hundred and fifty pounds, the Kid wore all black except a red work shirt. His black stetson was pulled low over sullen green eyes. In the beaded band of that hat was tucked a copper-colored coin older than the West itself, the curse of his life. If he was in contact with the Darthan coin after dark, he would become the demonic Brimstone Kid in reality as well as name.

Past sixty by then, Tom Pinto had gotten grizzled and weathered by a hard life. His untrimmed beard and hair had as much grey as blond in them, and deep furrows ran down his cheeks like dried creekbeds. Pinto's darkly tanned skin looked tough as worn leather and his deepset blue eyes were sullen. His jeans and shirt were brown, with a short spotted vest over them. It was this black and white vest, made from the hide of a Pinto pony once owned by the famous Indian chief Osawayatotha, that had given him his name. Buckled around his waist was a gunbelt with a single-action .44 tied down low on his thigh. Swinging down off his own horse, he greeted the assembly politely enough. He and Johnny Packard had crossed paths several times.

"Howdy, Kid," he said, "Appears we all came up this way because the weather's been a might dodgy lately."

Johnny Packard snorted from atop his black stallion Terror. "Hallo,Pinto! Red fires in the sky at night and this godawful haze blottin' out the sun all day. You doesn't suppose this might be one of them volcanoes kickin' in?"

"I don't know know much about them things," Pinto replied. He turned in the saddle and nodded at the shirt, rather stocky black man who was sitting on a chestnut mare nearby. "What's your take on all this, friend?"

Sundown, a brooding black ex-soldier who got his name by insisting on walking the streets of "sundown towns" after dusk, carried a Model 1873 Winchester repeater chambered for the .44-40 cartridge. This was a durable and powerful weapon that he handled as lightly as if he had been a walking stick. He rumbled in a deep voice, "I'm not one for omens and superstitions, hard-headed as I am. But a fellow would have to be willful blind not to worry about all this. Have any of you heard or seen a bird or a squirrel this week? I haven't."

"You are wise to feel uneasy," said the sole woman among them. She was known as Copper-Hair, a bounty hunter skilled with the gun but much deadlier with her hands and feet. Tall and slim in a long duster coat and black slouch hat, she was the latest Karina, a immortal warrior spirit who incarnated each generation in the body of a willing living woman. The woman had bright auburn hair, glossy and much brighter in tone than Johnny's darker brick-red shade. In a strong-featured face with a wide jawline and full lips, her grey-green eyes caught the sunlight with a flash like a cat's. "Deep down beyond words, you sense we stand at the edge of an abyss and our footing is uncertain."

Clay Hawk, Federal Marshal Agent, was neglecting his orders to answer the mysterious summons. Formerly known by his tribal name, Little Clay Hawk, the lawman was nearing fifty by then. Dressed in formal townsfolk clothing, black trousers and a white shirt with a floral-pattern vest and a string tie, Clay Hawk wore a flat-brimmed low-crowned hat. His Indian blood showed clearly in the glossy black hair, the strong eagle-beak nose and the deepset eyes which were always watchful. Strapped to his right hip was an old-fashioned Navy revolver. Hawk swung his arms in a casual way as he walked, not keeping his hands near the gun butt more than was natural. He had been watching and waiting, in his career he had heard much about all of these strangers.

"You've got a poet's way with words, ma'am, and that's for sure," he said as the others watched for his response. "What purely troubles me is that the air is still and yet I hear gale winds blowing somewhere. Tain't natural."

Wai Cho-Lan had come walking in from the forest without a horse or indeed without much more than a bedroll and what he wore. He was a tall, lanky man in plain long-sleeved work shirt and pants, with heavy walking shoes that had seen a lot of wear. His head had been shaven but showed a five-o'clock shadow across it. The hair growing in was white. He seemed Northern Chinese, with a single eyelid fold and a long solemn face whose tawny skin was darkened by severe sun exposure.

Several of the other riders had heard wild stories about Wai. Called by some the Tiger Fury, he was said to be able to catch arrows without being cut, to fight a half dozen men at the same time, to recover from wounds that would kill a mule. He himself made no such claims and spoke little. He said only that he would help in any way he could. The taciturn exile from mainland China, was in fact a Kumundu master and knight of Tel Shai. He alone carried no gun and refused to accept one. His unarmed combat skills had become well known campfire tales across the plains. Never one for unnecessary talk, he remained as silent as possible.

Peligroso came from Northern Mexico, an aristocratic Castilian with a driving restless taste for violence. He wore two revolvers butts forward and carried both a whip and a dueling sword with him. Peligroso was normally quick to laugh or sing, but the uncanny gloom and whistling winds had dampened his spirits. Surprisingly, the young bravo did not dress in obviously Spanish-flavored clothing but wore plain brown pants, a yellow silk shirt and short brown jacket, with a bowler derby rather than a sombrero. Nor did he affect a thin mustache but was clean-shaven and kept his glossy black hair short and neat.

Peligroso would not reveal his true name, but then neither would Tom Pinto or Sundown. Peligroso did say he came from a prominent Madrid family which he had disgraced by dueling even after stern warnings. When he killed the governor's son, he was quickly shipped to California to stay out of prison. Tall and excessively handsome, well-dressed and eloquent, he often claimed it would be unchivalrous to turn down the young women who swarmed to him. With so many outraged fathers and husbands out for his blood, he had taken to living on the trail. With sudden seriousness, Peligroso told the other Riders he had never taken much seriously in life... until now. He feared this was indeed The End Days and his soul was not ready.

( the rest of the story )