"Mount Vanish"
May. 19th, 2022 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Mount Vanish"
10/3/2019
I.
Bane hated feeling so vulnerable. Parking his Subaru in front of the Harwen County Jail at nine-thirty that morning, he wore plain sneakers, jeans and a black polo shirt. For so many decades, he had been reassured by feeling the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes, the matched silver daggers on his forearms, the weight of the .38 Smith & Wesson holstered behind his left hip. This morning gave him the unsettling feeling of as being exposed as if he was walking around in public without his pants on. But this was the simplest way to deal with the situation.
At sixty-two, the Dire Wolf was showing more and more grey in the short black hair but otherwise he had not changed much over the years. The pale grey eyes remained sharp and alert. Still in peak condition through Kumundu training, living on the Tagra tea regimen of Tel Shai kept him standing straight and walking briskly across the lot. Inside the lobby, a dozen assorted visitors sat in two rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Bane went over to the desk where he signed the register, said who he was coming to visit and surrendered his driver's license for the duration. In one corner was a bank of small lockers and he inserted two quarters so he could leave his car keys and his slim wallet in there for the moment.
Going to sit in the rear, Bane wondered again what this was all about. The Iron Ronin! Calling him unexpectedly and asking for a visit. Bane had immediately agreed and started the long drive up here from Manhattan three hours earlier. Bane had never liked the man, to be honest, since the Ronin's loyalty was to money and nothing else. But he had been a useful informer and a few times had joined Bane's team in desperate battles with the White Web or Winter Snow where an extra fighter made a difference. They had parted as enemies. He had not heard from the Ronin in maybe fifteen years and the phone call had been a jolt from the past.
One of the sheriffs announced slowly and clearly that visitors would not be allowed to have anything like barrettes or clips in their hair, no jewelry except wedding rings or religious symbols, that hoodies were forbidden and shirts had to be fully buttoned up. At ten o'clock, a buzzer sounded and everyone stood up to form a loose line. One by one, each visitor passed through the arch of a metal detector and then had a handheld device waved over them. A beautiful chocolate Lab sniffed them for drugs. The dog seemed to take a unprofessional liking to Bane for some reason and kept staring at him with what amounted to a smile. This had happened before. Sable had told him that their Tagra diet gave their skin a faint minty tang that animals enjoyed.
In a few more minutes, they were ushered into the visitation room with its rows of chairs facing each other over a long table. This was only a local jail, not a high security prison. The inmates were allowed to stand and shake hands or hug over the foot-high plastic partition on top of each table. Seeing Bane enter, Mikage rose to offer a firm handshake before both sat down. The nearest guard was well within earshot and gave them more scrutiny than the other inmates and visitors were receiving.
Mikage Tatsuo had not aged well. The once-feared Japanese mercenary was only a few years older than Bane but he had visibly gotten shorter by an inch or two, the thinned hair was a dirty off-white and the wide face had started to wrinkle like a dried apple. The Iron Ronin shook his head and clucked. "I am disgusted by how little you have changed, Dire Wolf. So unjust."
"Retirement doesn't seem to suit either of us," Bane replied in a low voice. "I still seem to be accepting challenges and starting investigations every chance I get."
"Except now you do not get paid for it, har har! You never charged what you were worth. I had trouble locating you, old friend, I had to ask around the badlands for your number."
"Don't give me that 'old friend' line," said Bane. "I haven't forgotten what happened in the war between John Grim and Wu Lung. You changed sides as soon as enough money got in your hand."
"There is no disputing that," Mikage admitted without any regret or shame. "You knew when you hired me that I work for gold. It's too bad we never had a conclusive scuffle."
Despite himself, the Dire Wolf eased up his voice. "Yeah. Two fights, one win for each of us. I guess we should have gone for best two out of three at some point. What the hell are you doing locked up in a town in upstate New York?"
"Nothing. A probation violation. It is not important. We must speak of more serious matters," Mikage said. "Surely more than one pair of ears is listening to us. Abruptly he switched over to what sounded like Mandarin but with more multisyllabic words and subdued inflection. >"Your own Argent and Blind Archer came from there to this real world. The ancient winds of trouble blow in Chujir and the senile old Emperor idly toys with his concubines and lingers over his feasts rather than deal with real crisis."< He paused, watching his old foe's face for reaction.
A strange eager glint came into the grey eyes under heavy feral brows. Bane leaned forward, hands flat on the counter between them, and urged, >"Don't be dramatic, you fool. Go on!"<
>"On the desert's edge in the north of Chujir, an unbelievable sight has appeared. Demonic horsemen ride forth at night from a dark mountain to burn villages and slay and take slaves. After generations, the Keeper of the Flame has brought back Mount Vanish."<
II.
In his house in the quietest Forest Hills neighborhood he could find, Bane sat and thought. He was still stubbornly refusing to convert one of these rooms into a new office. When he had closed the Dire Wolf Agency and moved out of his apartment in Manhattan, Bane had seriously thought he was retiring for good from the Midnight War. He had been through so much grief and loss in a short time with the deaths of Bleak and Lieutenant Montez, then the trauma that had humbled Windcatcher. Bane had intended to live quietly for a year or so before joining Cindy at Tel Shai. It was time for him to stop running through the darkness chasing monsters and maniacs.
But maybe he had been fooling himself.
He was not certain how long he had been sitting on his couch, facing the silent TV he seldom watched. It was getting dark outside. The living room was so neat and bare that it hardly seemed anyone lived here. There were no decorative nick-nacks, no framed photos or prints on the walls, no plants. A small bookcase by the door mostly held an assortment of local newspapers he checked regularly for any stories which hinted at Midnight War activity. This had been his habit for decades.
After a few more minutes, the Dire Wolf got up and began pacing. He knew Sable had her KDF team in New Zealand on some investigation and they would not be back for a few days. He had already called Sheng's Fist For Hire Agency, where the eccentric Uncle Pao had informed him that Sheng was in Texas, "probably wasting time idling in the sun and eating that vile Mexican food." Bane had thanked the old man and said he would call back soon before Pao could launch into a rant about Sheng's bad habits.
There was no one else he could turn this Mount Vanish case over to. He had no idea where Sulak or Valera were. Karina, either. Bane found himself getting ready without having made a conscious decision. He took off his sneakers, stood in the center of the living room and bowed from the waist to his Teacher Chael farther away than miles could measure. Beginning with increasingly difficult stances and poses, he moved into combination kicks and blocks and punches. In a few minutes, he was whirling around the room in constant motion as he fought one imaginary opponent after another. Eventually, the fighting moves eased down again into stances and then he was bowing again in gratitude for the knowledge Tel Shai had given him.
Bane felt grudgingly satisfied. The Doh Ra dance was modified for each Kumundu student to stretch and tone while fixing muscle memory in firmly, and he had not felt any strain or weakness during his performance just now. There were no aches or pains. His breathing was only slightly faster than when he had started, he felt warmed up and alert. But Bane worried that he was not improving daily as he used to. He was staying at peak but not moving up to the next plateau. Ah well, he thought sadly, Chael had warned him of this. All things pass. Even so, Chael had said that Bane still had a few years before he moved down to normal Human levels, let alone became
incompetent.
Picking up his sneakers, Bane went down to the furnished basement. It was rather small, with wood paneling and overhead fluorescent lights but it held little more than the furnace, water heater and washer-dryer. A glimmer of excitement made him move more quickly. Bane knelt and undid hidden latches which made the dryer swing around on casters. Beneath it was a pit three feet deep that he had chiseled himself into the concrete. Here he kept his Midnight War gear. Bane hauled up a wooden chest and placed it away from the edge of the pit and then stripped off his clothing.
Nude, the Dire Wolf was still an impressive specimen of wiry steel-hard muscle. He had zero fat, his abdomen was flat and there was no sagging on the tanned skin. He looked like a runner rather than a body-builder. Over plain cotton shorts, Bane pulled on a bodysuit of what resembled wet dark silk, leaving only his hands, feet and head above the neck exposed. This Trom armor dispersed impact over its entire surface so that even high-powered rifle bullets only felt like a poke from a stick that didn't leave a bruise. Then came the heavy boots, the snug trousers and long-sleeved shirt.
Before he put on the waist-length jacket, though, Bane fastened two soft leather sheaths to his forearms. These held the matched silver daggers with hilts down toward his wrists, ready to draw. The jacket came on last, zipping up the front, with its own inner lining of the Trom armor. The entire field suit held a dozen miniaturized gimmicks hidden in small pockets and slits. Even the boots held a single-edged razor blade in their tops, useful in escapes. Finally, he examined and loaded the long-barreled 38 Smith & Wesson revolver which was holstered at his right hip beneath the lower hem of the jacket.
Modern technology worked fine in Chujir, unlike in many adjacent realms where not even a cigarette lighter would function.
Lowering the chest down into the pit and swiveling the washer back into place, Bane left his regular clothes folded on top of the machine. He snapped off the lights and went back upstairs. The Gateway crystal was kept hidden by the front door, under a wooden panel that seemed like part of the cabinet on the wall. Again, the Dire Wolf unlatched the catches and swung the cabinet over to reveal a palm-sized gem of a delicate pale blue tint mounted on a silver setting.
Before he pressed his fingertips to the Eldar talisman, Bane hesitated. He felt an odd lack of enthusiasm for this exploit. All his life he had been eager to tackle the creatures of the night, to confront mystic cults and heartless serial killers. His instincts had always been to rush right into the worst dangers he could find. Now, for the first time, the threat didn't seem so urgent. Maybe Sable and her team could handle this when they returned. Maybe he should wait for Sheng, so he would have a partner who looked Chujiran and would be accepted as he himself wouldn't.
But that moment of doubt was enough to infuriate him. He was not dead yet. Bane touched the Eldar crystal, concentrated, focused on drawing a forty-eight hour charge and visualized Chujir as sharply as he could. In silent flare of blue light, he was gone from his house.
III.
In an identical azure burst, Bane appeared on a wind-swept chilly plain of short sparse grass. Far to the West stretched a low line of hills but otherwise there was only drab flatness to the horizon. The Dire Wolf found himself in the middle of an encampent of a hundred round huts made of animal hide over branches. Fires burned dung with a surprisingly less noxious odor than might be expected. Many stocky horses with long hair nibbled on the grass or dozen where they stood.
And the inhabitants of that camp reacted as if a dragon had dropped out of the sky among them. Heavily wrapped in long fur garments, the women snatched up the children and urged the elderly into the rounded huts through flaps which pinned shut. A few mangy yellow-hided dogs snarled from a safe distance. The men of fighting age all without exception seized their short spears or curved swords and hurried to form a circle around this weird all-black visitant who had come to them in a blue light.
Bane held up both empty hands to head level, showing he held no weapon. In perfect Chujiran, he called out, >"Good folk of the Northern Plains! I am a knight of Tel Shai, sent here to help you if I can."<
Fortunately, that had the reassuring effect he had hoped for. The Order of Tel Shai was known in every realm from millenia of service. One of the warriors swung his spear around to stamp its butt on the hard ground and several others followed his example. The fighting man stepped forward, showing he was older and more grizzled than most of his fellows. The mustache which drooped down over the corners of his mouth had turned white. >"Tel Shai, is it? I once met a woman who was a Tel Shai knight, she lived far to the South."<
>"Sifu Tang Ming,"< Bane replied. >"A good friend and a wise woman of deep learning. She was teaching martial arts and philosophy in a village not far from the Harbor of Dreadful Night."<
>"What name did her student have, the youth who left to the world outside this realm?"<
>"Sheng Mo-Yuan, known as Argent,"< said Bane. <"I have worked with him many times. He captures bandits and killers to be imprisoned."<
The oldest warrior there thought this over for a moment, clearly not convinced. >"I see that you have strange eyes the color of iron, as it is said her friend Dire Wolf did. You may be who you claim to be, but these are unhappy times."<
Bane bent and picked up two large clods of near-frozen earth, one in each hand. >"Your archers are famous for their steady hands and sharp eyes. If you will, ask two of them to drive these clods from my grips."<
This produced an excited murmur from the camp. Many faces were beginning to peek out cautiously from within the tents. Two of the short stocky came forward, each hold a recurve bow and bearing a sheaf of yard-long arrows tied to their belts. Within the thick cowls, little of their stern faces could be seen. At a nod from their chieftan, the two notched arrows, drew and loosed without hesitation. At close range, those bolts would hit hard and fast as bullets.
Bane dropped the clods of earth and casually caught the oncoming arrows by the middle of their shafts as if it was the easiest feat possible. He twirled them for everyone to see. >"I am indeed the Dire Wolf," he said. "It is time for us to parley."<
With his final word, a punishing gush of wind nearly knocked them all down. Thunder detonated near overhead, making their heads rattle. From nowhere, standing two thousand feet high, the black stone crags of Mount Vanish had appeared on the plain within yards of them.
While the villagers were stupefied at the unbelievable sight a huge slab of stone slid up to create an opening in the side of the mountain. Forty men on horseback galloped full tilt at such a rate that they must have begun their charge while still inside Mount Vanish. In the split-second before the Raiders trampled into the villagers, there was a confused impression of huge muscular men with gleaming bronze breastplates and wearing bronze helmets topped with wide bull-horns. A few brandished curved swords but most thrust forward a bronze staff topped with a globe that blazed painfully bright, hot enough that the air shimmered around them.
As the nearest Raider thundered straight at him, Bane leaped up and wrapped an arm around that thick neck, taking the warrior off the steed as they both tumbled down. The Dire Wolf intended to snatch two of the dazzle grenades from inside his jacket as soon as he took care of this armored man. They both rolled and leaped back up on their feet. Sudden unexpected agony shot into Bane's chest. The Raider had jabbed his staff forward and its shining globe had seared right through the tough field jacket and two layers of Trom armor to burn into the muscles of Bane's chest. It was as much the surprise as the pain that stopped the Dire Wolf in his tracks for a moment, because he had come to count on the Trom armor against any weapon. For an instant, his defenses were not on point. The Raider whirled the staff to crack against the side of this stranger's head with murderous intent and, as Bane reeled, two more of the horsemen dismounted to join in thrashing him as hard as they possibly could.
Any normal person would have been murdered by that attack. Even with his Tagra-enhanced healing factor, the Dire Wolf came close to passing out.. He heard screams and wild laughter as if from a distance, the stink of burning flesh and the slashing of swords. Bane tried to regain his senses without success. He could not focus his eyes or do more than get up on hands and knees before he was being roughly tied hand and foot to be dragged behind a horse.
>"Slay no more of them!" bellowed a voice speaking Chujiran with a guttural accent. "The Holy One needs sacrifices and slaves. Herd them along like the cattle they are."< One of the warriors kicked Bane on top of the head as he passed, and for a few minutes, everything was a vague haze of pain.
IV.
As roughly as possible, the Raiders threw Bane into a corner of the inner chamber of the Keeper of the Flame with the evident intent of breaking a few bones. Bound with rawhide strips, his hands behind him and his ankles tied together, the Dire Wolf managed to lessen the impact by going limp. Even as he fell to the polished marble floor, he managed to squirm around so he was sitting up with his hands behind him and his legs drawn up underneath. This was not just to position himself facing his captors.
The Raiders had managed to remove his helmet and tug his jacket off, they had gone through the obvious pockets in his shirt and pants. His revolver was gone but he did not see how they would figure how to make ammo for it anyway if they start shooting it by trial and error. So much planning had gone into the field suit by experts. The rushed slap-down by these demonic Raiders had missed a dozen concealed slits and inner pockets which were padded to camoflauge the gadgets they held. Most important, the silver daggers were still on his forearms. The high-density silicone over the sheaths felt exactly like normal human muscles to all but the most discerning searcher. These Raiders had been fooled in their haste.
No one else was in the chamber as the bronze-armored killers took positions flanking the high polished wooden door. Bane took in his surroundings quickly. In one corner was a long couch covered with silk cushions and light blankets, with a stand that held a goblet, a wine bottle, a shallow dish of dried fruits and nuts. Niches in one wall held many scrolls identified by colored ribbons. There was also a writing table with bottles of ink, quill pens and blotting paper. Everything was brightly lit by several of the blazing bronze rods held in wall clamps.
In the back of his mind, Bane wondered where the copper and tin came from to make all this bronze. Chujir was a huge land, largest of all the adjacent realms but did it contain sufficient deposits of both copper and tin? And since Chujirans had long since learned how to forge good quality steel, why would the Raiders of Mount Vanish continue to use bronze? At the moment, it did not seem he would have an opportunity to ask anyone these questions. The hateful scowls on the Raiders' faces suggested that they were aching to kill him and only held back by their orders.
The pain was easing up in his chest where his shirt and even part of the Trom armor had been seared away to burn his skin. So were the many aches and bruises from the beating he had survived. Bane's enhanced healing from the Tagra tea diet enabled him to recover quickly from trauma that would be fatal to ordinary people, but it had its limits. Tel Shai knights were neither indestructible nor immortal, and enough damage would kill him as surely as anyone else. The way these Raiders enjoying cutting off heads meant he was in imminent mortal peril and he knew it.
Long minutes passed. Apparently wriggling to get into a more comfortable position, Bane actually managed to get his fingertips to the top seam of his boots. He was noticing the crennelated pattern of bright red stripes on their scarlet tunics was matched by a similar pattern in red against lime green which ran around the walls. These people had a color sense which seemed garish to him but that was not important in any sense. The symbol of a bull's head with wide curving horns also became apparent as decoration in many places... on the breastplates and helmets of the Raiders, carved into the head of the couch and painted in black to take up most of one plastered wall.
The door creaked slowly open and the two Raiders swung around to face the tall gaunt figure which entered. This was a man wrapped in a loose white linen robe which reached to the floor, and which had long sleeves that ended in bronze cuffs. Fastened at the right shoulder was a short cape of bright red silk trimmed in green, and one of the ubiquitous bull's head symbols was sewn on the front of the robe in red and green threads. Danging from a cord at the waist was a wavy-bladed ceremonial knife. The man was leaning slightly on a slim black cane topped with an ornately carved knob.
Nothing of the man's head could be seen. He wore a bronze helmet crafted in the bull's head likeness, with an opaque linen veil hanging down to conceal his face.
Both the Raiders clapped their free hands to their breastplates and shouted, "We stand at your service, Holy One!"
"Leave us, our faithful sons," rasped a husky voice from beneath the veil. It sounded forced, as if speaking was painful. As the armored men closed the door behind them, the robed man lowered himself gingerly to a carved ebony stool by the writing desk.
"So I guess you're the Keeper of the Flame," Bane said. "Excuse me for not bowing, you can see it would be awkward."
"Ah, you do speak Chujiran, although your accent is hopeless," came the hoarse reply. "You ARE the Tel Shai knight called Dire Wolf. Your sacrifice will bring us great honor from the gods Margoth and Draldros."
"I recognize the power you're using," said Bane. "That bright white energy, the way it cuts through steel and stone so easily. You have tapped the secrets of ancient Zhune."
"That is dangerous knowledge," the Holy One rasped. "We are not Chujiran, as you can see. Nor are we descended from the Zhunians themselves but from one of the nations that suffered under their heel. For countless ages, we have preserved the talismans and devices left to us from the Zhunians, themselves long vanished into history."
The Dire Wolf shifted his weight slightly, forcing himself up on his knees, getting ready. He distracted the Keeper of the Flame by continuing, "And I bet that when you were younger, you had a secret guest here. A huge man with a shaved head, right? He charged up your Zhune artifacts and took most of them when he left, whether you wanted him to or not."
"What! How could... Speak with caution, foreigner, your life hangs by a thread about to snap."
But Bane went on as if he had invited to explain further. "Oh, I knew Karl Eldritch. We fought a dozen times. Eldritch was the only warlock who rediscovered the ultimate secret of Zhune... how to convert energy to matter and matter to energy. Nobody else could have charged up the Zhune devices you were guarding. I'm right so far, huh?"
"I warn you, these are matters not for careless ears to catch," the Holy One gritted as he forced himself up to his feet, using his cane as a lever. "Hold your tongue."
"No. Let me guess, you hid one Zhune device so well that Eldritch overlooked it. This is how you power up those torch sticks your killers use against their victims. And you are the only one who knows all this, right? It's the basis for your status with this cult you run."
The Holy One glared at his prisoner, then hobbled over to a wall which held a low bronze counter incised with symbols of both the bull's head and the six-pointed sun. He pulled up a lever on one side of the counter and depressed a button on its end. In response, a panel slid up to reveal the strange sight of archaic machinery of copper-colored metail, built with a spout from which a shaft of pure white light blazed up TWO feet across and six feet high. The chamber abruptly filled with a glare that was painful to look upon and the air turned hot and stuffy.
"The magician called Eldritch told me this was the primal energy which fuels the Sun and all the realms," the Holy One whispered. "He called it 'atomic fire.' Into this will be you be cast, and nothing will remain of your body, not even ashes in the breeze."
"Yeah, you were talking to Eldritch all right," Bane said. He was ready to act. As he had several times before, he had managed to pull the single-edged razor blade from its slit in the top seam of his boot. Practice and experience enabled him to slice through the rawhide binding his hands and ankles with only a few tiny nicks. "You sound just like him." With that, he surged up from the tiled floor and pounced on the Holy One like a real wolf. The Keeper of the Flame already had one hand resting on the ceremonial dagger slung from his belt and he barely tightened his grip before Bane seized that arm at elbow and wrist and drove the blade directly into the man's heart. With a few shudders and a wheeze as air was expelled from dying lungs, the Holy One sagged to the floor. Bane kept the body from making a thud by slowly lowering it.
That time Bane had been satisfied with his performance. Despite the pummeling he had taken not an hour earlier, he had moved without stiffness or uncertainty. The Dire Wolf glanced over to make sure that the atomic fire still blazed over the Zhune artifact in the wall, then bent to strip the dead man. He never liked doing this business of getting on clothing from a dead enemy but it was a necessary tactic sometimes. The Holy One was revealed to be a bony old man in late middle age, with the left side of his face badly twisted and scarred from burns. The left arm and hand must have been almost useless after the damage they had taken.
That explained the weird harsh voice. Not only were several muscles of the Holy One's face unresponsive, there had likely been some some searing of the throat and vocals chords as well. That primal energy that Eldritch had unleashed was dangerous to meddle with. Bane draped the priestly linen robe over himself, adjusted the short cape and then cleaned off the ceremonial knife rather callously on the Holy One's skin. Finally, with great distaste, he lowered the bronze bull's-head helmet and its veil over his head to make the transformation complete.
The Keeper of the Flame had not bled much from his wound, which made dragging his body over to the wall without leaving a trace easier. The Dire Wolf lifted the frail corpse up overhead, averted his own head and squeezed his eyes shut, then tossed the body directly into the atomic fire. Everything flashed an intolerable white for a second. Even with his head turned away and his eyes shut, Bane could see nothing but vague blurry afterimages. He worried he might have suffered permanent harm but in a few minutes his sight began to come back to his tear-streaming eyes.
Nothing at all remained of the Holy One. Bane had expected that. As his vision returned, he blinked furiously and examined the Zhunite relic. They usually had simple controls and sure enough, on one side of the atomic furnace was a cylindrical lever topped with a oval bulb. Bane cautiously pulled the lever back toward him and saw the white fire dim and lessen. He pulled it all the way until it locked into place with a click and the primal energy snuffed out. Suddenly the chamber lost its stifling stuffiness and he breathed easier.
That's a step in the right direction, he thought. Even if he was killed in the next few minutes, the torches held by the Raiders would soon lose their charge and Eldritch was no longer alive to bring them back to power. Mount Vanish had moved for the last time. Let it sit where it was as a mountain by all rights should.
Then the hanging knocker on the other side of the chamber door rapped three times. A hesitant voice ventured, "Oh Holy One, we await your orders."
V.
Remembering the cane at the last second, Bane assumed a bent over stance and croaked, "Enter then!" Despite taking lessons in vocal imitation over the years, he had never become an expert. It was one of the skills that eluded him. But the late Keeper of the Flame's hoarse whisper was easy enough to fake.
The two Raiders swung the door outward and came into the chamber, peering about. "Holy One, where is the outlander?"
"He has gone into the White Flame," Bane rasped from behind the veil. "Before he died, he revealed that the Emperor is sending his army to these plains. They number in the thousands and are near already. These are my words. You two will remain here to guard the new prisoners but the other Raiders must ride at once."
"Speak and we all obey," said one of the huge warriors.
"The Raiders will ride toward the setting sun and stop only at dawn. They will await the Mountain, which I will bring to meet them."
"But why Holy One...?" began one of the men, cringing away from wizened elder half his size.
"The Keeper of the Flame has spoken!" Bane rasped, stamping his cane in what he hoped was a feeble gesture. "Go! Now! The White Flame is still hungry."
As the Raiders withdrew and closed the door behind them, the Dire Wolf straightened up and let out a relieved sigh. That had been some quick improvization on his part. Now he wanted to wait until he was certain that the forty horsemen had galloped away. He sat down on the couch and began eating the dried fruits and nuts. One price for his enhanced speed was an appetite that never let up. He poked around, found a thick slab of black bread as well and devoured that dry. Beneath his feet, he detected a rumbling vibration. Bane rose and cautiously cracked open the door to the chamber.
Not far down the corridor, the echo of hoofbeats faded. His impromptu plan was working so far. Now to locate the villagers who had been taken prisoner. Bane gazed up and down the hallway with its walls brightly painted in recurring geometric patterns and saw no one. He took the silence to mean that the main body of Raiders had left. Stepping out through the doorway, he slowed his breathing in a Tel Shai technique that sharpened hearing and was satisfied.
But a harsh voice bellowed, "When did our Holy One last stand so straight? And without his walking stick for support?"
"It must be the outworlder!"
Well, that was a mistake, Bane thought as he wheeled around to face the two charging Raiders. Both were big, heavily muscled men with bronze breastplates and greaves, each raising one of the curved short swords in his right hand. There was more free space to his left, so Bane plunged in that direction faster than they could have possibly expected and bodyslammed one Raider into the other. The warriors tangled each other up for a second. Drawing his daggers and leaping around behind them, the Dire Wolf sliced open the windpipe of the nearer fighter with a clean swipe and then shoved the gagging man hard onto his partner. These Raiders were experienced in war but it was no help to them now. The unwounded man broke away backwards instinctively, got his footing and thrust his sword at Bane with deadly precision. Barely swiveling aside in time to let that blade pass, Bane shattered the Raider's knee from the side with a low kick, forced him down to the tiles and dropped to kneel on the middle of the man's back. Slashing that neck was an instant's work, and Bane hopped back out of reach to give both Raiders a few seconds to die. He hadn't enjoyed what he had done but it was part of the Midnight War he had long ago accepted.
Yanking off the bull's-head helmet with its veil, casting away the priestly robe, Bane listened and watched but decided no one else was coming. He knelt to clean his silver daggers on the Holy One's linen garment. His hands were trembling visibly. This worried Bane more than tackling two armed and armored men had. Maybe he WAS starting to lose that total focus in combat that had always been there for him to rely on.
No time for doubts now. Bane stood up, slid his knives back into the sheaths under his jacket sleeves and strode quickly down the corridor. Before he left Mount Vanish, he was determined to retrieve his field jacket and the gimmicks that had been in it, they were too dangerous to leave with people who would not know how to use them. Or worse, who might figure out how to use them. He found a few chambers with tables for meals or with hard-mattressed bunks lining the walls. Finally, he unbolted a door at the end of the hall and stared down at sixty pairs of startled eyes. Two of the atomic torches high up out of reach illuminated the bare stone dungeon. Many of the male villagers had bound up their wounds with their own garments, and the bruises on the shamed faces of the women show how they had been mistreated. Seeing the black-clad figure standing in the doorway, everyone cried out in confusion and tentative hope.
"Rejoice!" Bane called out. "The Keeper of the Flame is dead. The forty riders are far away by now. Listen, we all must leave Mount Vanish, we must get some distance between it and us before the Raiders come back. I want you all to find as much food and drink in this citadel as you can carry, some weapons as well, but not so much that it would slow you down."
"This is good news beyond all hope!" shouted one of the villagers. "How can this deliverance be?"
"No time to explain right now. Let's get moving." Bane ordered. He waved for them all to start up the steps toward the doorway. He saw the wall torches flicker and dim slightly. "The White Flame is dying as well. Even if the Raiders find us, by then their weapons will be useless. If you face them again, it will be on more equal terms."
"How have you done all this?" cried a youngster. "Why have you come here to Chujir to help we who are strangers?"
Bane did not answer for a moment. He felt a sudden weariness as the adrenalin ebbed in his system. "I don't know myself," he said at last. "I guess it's what I was born to do."
10/11/2019
10/3/2019
I.
Bane hated feeling so vulnerable. Parking his Subaru in front of the Harwen County Jail at nine-thirty that morning, he wore plain sneakers, jeans and a black polo shirt. For so many decades, he had been reassured by feeling the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes, the matched silver daggers on his forearms, the weight of the .38 Smith & Wesson holstered behind his left hip. This morning gave him the unsettling feeling of as being exposed as if he was walking around in public without his pants on. But this was the simplest way to deal with the situation.
At sixty-two, the Dire Wolf was showing more and more grey in the short black hair but otherwise he had not changed much over the years. The pale grey eyes remained sharp and alert. Still in peak condition through Kumundu training, living on the Tagra tea regimen of Tel Shai kept him standing straight and walking briskly across the lot. Inside the lobby, a dozen assorted visitors sat in two rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Bane went over to the desk where he signed the register, said who he was coming to visit and surrendered his driver's license for the duration. In one corner was a bank of small lockers and he inserted two quarters so he could leave his car keys and his slim wallet in there for the moment.
Going to sit in the rear, Bane wondered again what this was all about. The Iron Ronin! Calling him unexpectedly and asking for a visit. Bane had immediately agreed and started the long drive up here from Manhattan three hours earlier. Bane had never liked the man, to be honest, since the Ronin's loyalty was to money and nothing else. But he had been a useful informer and a few times had joined Bane's team in desperate battles with the White Web or Winter Snow where an extra fighter made a difference. They had parted as enemies. He had not heard from the Ronin in maybe fifteen years and the phone call had been a jolt from the past.
One of the sheriffs announced slowly and clearly that visitors would not be allowed to have anything like barrettes or clips in their hair, no jewelry except wedding rings or religious symbols, that hoodies were forbidden and shirts had to be fully buttoned up. At ten o'clock, a buzzer sounded and everyone stood up to form a loose line. One by one, each visitor passed through the arch of a metal detector and then had a handheld device waved over them. A beautiful chocolate Lab sniffed them for drugs. The dog seemed to take a unprofessional liking to Bane for some reason and kept staring at him with what amounted to a smile. This had happened before. Sable had told him that their Tagra diet gave their skin a faint minty tang that animals enjoyed.
In a few more minutes, they were ushered into the visitation room with its rows of chairs facing each other over a long table. This was only a local jail, not a high security prison. The inmates were allowed to stand and shake hands or hug over the foot-high plastic partition on top of each table. Seeing Bane enter, Mikage rose to offer a firm handshake before both sat down. The nearest guard was well within earshot and gave them more scrutiny than the other inmates and visitors were receiving.
Mikage Tatsuo had not aged well. The once-feared Japanese mercenary was only a few years older than Bane but he had visibly gotten shorter by an inch or two, the thinned hair was a dirty off-white and the wide face had started to wrinkle like a dried apple. The Iron Ronin shook his head and clucked. "I am disgusted by how little you have changed, Dire Wolf. So unjust."
"Retirement doesn't seem to suit either of us," Bane replied in a low voice. "I still seem to be accepting challenges and starting investigations every chance I get."
"Except now you do not get paid for it, har har! You never charged what you were worth. I had trouble locating you, old friend, I had to ask around the badlands for your number."
"Don't give me that 'old friend' line," said Bane. "I haven't forgotten what happened in the war between John Grim and Wu Lung. You changed sides as soon as enough money got in your hand."
"There is no disputing that," Mikage admitted without any regret or shame. "You knew when you hired me that I work for gold. It's too bad we never had a conclusive scuffle."
Despite himself, the Dire Wolf eased up his voice. "Yeah. Two fights, one win for each of us. I guess we should have gone for best two out of three at some point. What the hell are you doing locked up in a town in upstate New York?"
"Nothing. A probation violation. It is not important. We must speak of more serious matters," Mikage said. "Surely more than one pair of ears is listening to us. Abruptly he switched over to what sounded like Mandarin but with more multisyllabic words and subdued inflection. >"Your own Argent and Blind Archer came from there to this real world. The ancient winds of trouble blow in Chujir and the senile old Emperor idly toys with his concubines and lingers over his feasts rather than deal with real crisis."< He paused, watching his old foe's face for reaction.
A strange eager glint came into the grey eyes under heavy feral brows. Bane leaned forward, hands flat on the counter between them, and urged, >"Don't be dramatic, you fool. Go on!"<
>"On the desert's edge in the north of Chujir, an unbelievable sight has appeared. Demonic horsemen ride forth at night from a dark mountain to burn villages and slay and take slaves. After generations, the Keeper of the Flame has brought back Mount Vanish."<
II.
In his house in the quietest Forest Hills neighborhood he could find, Bane sat and thought. He was still stubbornly refusing to convert one of these rooms into a new office. When he had closed the Dire Wolf Agency and moved out of his apartment in Manhattan, Bane had seriously thought he was retiring for good from the Midnight War. He had been through so much grief and loss in a short time with the deaths of Bleak and Lieutenant Montez, then the trauma that had humbled Windcatcher. Bane had intended to live quietly for a year or so before joining Cindy at Tel Shai. It was time for him to stop running through the darkness chasing monsters and maniacs.
But maybe he had been fooling himself.
He was not certain how long he had been sitting on his couch, facing the silent TV he seldom watched. It was getting dark outside. The living room was so neat and bare that it hardly seemed anyone lived here. There were no decorative nick-nacks, no framed photos or prints on the walls, no plants. A small bookcase by the door mostly held an assortment of local newspapers he checked regularly for any stories which hinted at Midnight War activity. This had been his habit for decades.
After a few more minutes, the Dire Wolf got up and began pacing. He knew Sable had her KDF team in New Zealand on some investigation and they would not be back for a few days. He had already called Sheng's Fist For Hire Agency, where the eccentric Uncle Pao had informed him that Sheng was in Texas, "probably wasting time idling in the sun and eating that vile Mexican food." Bane had thanked the old man and said he would call back soon before Pao could launch into a rant about Sheng's bad habits.
There was no one else he could turn this Mount Vanish case over to. He had no idea where Sulak or Valera were. Karina, either. Bane found himself getting ready without having made a conscious decision. He took off his sneakers, stood in the center of the living room and bowed from the waist to his Teacher Chael farther away than miles could measure. Beginning with increasingly difficult stances and poses, he moved into combination kicks and blocks and punches. In a few minutes, he was whirling around the room in constant motion as he fought one imaginary opponent after another. Eventually, the fighting moves eased down again into stances and then he was bowing again in gratitude for the knowledge Tel Shai had given him.
Bane felt grudgingly satisfied. The Doh Ra dance was modified for each Kumundu student to stretch and tone while fixing muscle memory in firmly, and he had not felt any strain or weakness during his performance just now. There were no aches or pains. His breathing was only slightly faster than when he had started, he felt warmed up and alert. But Bane worried that he was not improving daily as he used to. He was staying at peak but not moving up to the next plateau. Ah well, he thought sadly, Chael had warned him of this. All things pass. Even so, Chael had said that Bane still had a few years before he moved down to normal Human levels, let alone became
incompetent.
Picking up his sneakers, Bane went down to the furnished basement. It was rather small, with wood paneling and overhead fluorescent lights but it held little more than the furnace, water heater and washer-dryer. A glimmer of excitement made him move more quickly. Bane knelt and undid hidden latches which made the dryer swing around on casters. Beneath it was a pit three feet deep that he had chiseled himself into the concrete. Here he kept his Midnight War gear. Bane hauled up a wooden chest and placed it away from the edge of the pit and then stripped off his clothing.
Nude, the Dire Wolf was still an impressive specimen of wiry steel-hard muscle. He had zero fat, his abdomen was flat and there was no sagging on the tanned skin. He looked like a runner rather than a body-builder. Over plain cotton shorts, Bane pulled on a bodysuit of what resembled wet dark silk, leaving only his hands, feet and head above the neck exposed. This Trom armor dispersed impact over its entire surface so that even high-powered rifle bullets only felt like a poke from a stick that didn't leave a bruise. Then came the heavy boots, the snug trousers and long-sleeved shirt.
Before he put on the waist-length jacket, though, Bane fastened two soft leather sheaths to his forearms. These held the matched silver daggers with hilts down toward his wrists, ready to draw. The jacket came on last, zipping up the front, with its own inner lining of the Trom armor. The entire field suit held a dozen miniaturized gimmicks hidden in small pockets and slits. Even the boots held a single-edged razor blade in their tops, useful in escapes. Finally, he examined and loaded the long-barreled 38 Smith & Wesson revolver which was holstered at his right hip beneath the lower hem of the jacket.
Modern technology worked fine in Chujir, unlike in many adjacent realms where not even a cigarette lighter would function.
Lowering the chest down into the pit and swiveling the washer back into place, Bane left his regular clothes folded on top of the machine. He snapped off the lights and went back upstairs. The Gateway crystal was kept hidden by the front door, under a wooden panel that seemed like part of the cabinet on the wall. Again, the Dire Wolf unlatched the catches and swung the cabinet over to reveal a palm-sized gem of a delicate pale blue tint mounted on a silver setting.
Before he pressed his fingertips to the Eldar talisman, Bane hesitated. He felt an odd lack of enthusiasm for this exploit. All his life he had been eager to tackle the creatures of the night, to confront mystic cults and heartless serial killers. His instincts had always been to rush right into the worst dangers he could find. Now, for the first time, the threat didn't seem so urgent. Maybe Sable and her team could handle this when they returned. Maybe he should wait for Sheng, so he would have a partner who looked Chujiran and would be accepted as he himself wouldn't.
But that moment of doubt was enough to infuriate him. He was not dead yet. Bane touched the Eldar crystal, concentrated, focused on drawing a forty-eight hour charge and visualized Chujir as sharply as he could. In silent flare of blue light, he was gone from his house.
III.
In an identical azure burst, Bane appeared on a wind-swept chilly plain of short sparse grass. Far to the West stretched a low line of hills but otherwise there was only drab flatness to the horizon. The Dire Wolf found himself in the middle of an encampent of a hundred round huts made of animal hide over branches. Fires burned dung with a surprisingly less noxious odor than might be expected. Many stocky horses with long hair nibbled on the grass or dozen where they stood.
And the inhabitants of that camp reacted as if a dragon had dropped out of the sky among them. Heavily wrapped in long fur garments, the women snatched up the children and urged the elderly into the rounded huts through flaps which pinned shut. A few mangy yellow-hided dogs snarled from a safe distance. The men of fighting age all without exception seized their short spears or curved swords and hurried to form a circle around this weird all-black visitant who had come to them in a blue light.
Bane held up both empty hands to head level, showing he held no weapon. In perfect Chujiran, he called out, >"Good folk of the Northern Plains! I am a knight of Tel Shai, sent here to help you if I can."<
Fortunately, that had the reassuring effect he had hoped for. The Order of Tel Shai was known in every realm from millenia of service. One of the warriors swung his spear around to stamp its butt on the hard ground and several others followed his example. The fighting man stepped forward, showing he was older and more grizzled than most of his fellows. The mustache which drooped down over the corners of his mouth had turned white. >"Tel Shai, is it? I once met a woman who was a Tel Shai knight, she lived far to the South."<
>"Sifu Tang Ming,"< Bane replied. >"A good friend and a wise woman of deep learning. She was teaching martial arts and philosophy in a village not far from the Harbor of Dreadful Night."<
>"What name did her student have, the youth who left to the world outside this realm?"<
>"Sheng Mo-Yuan, known as Argent,"< said Bane. <"I have worked with him many times. He captures bandits and killers to be imprisoned."<
The oldest warrior there thought this over for a moment, clearly not convinced. >"I see that you have strange eyes the color of iron, as it is said her friend Dire Wolf did. You may be who you claim to be, but these are unhappy times."<
Bane bent and picked up two large clods of near-frozen earth, one in each hand. >"Your archers are famous for their steady hands and sharp eyes. If you will, ask two of them to drive these clods from my grips."<
This produced an excited murmur from the camp. Many faces were beginning to peek out cautiously from within the tents. Two of the short stocky came forward, each hold a recurve bow and bearing a sheaf of yard-long arrows tied to their belts. Within the thick cowls, little of their stern faces could be seen. At a nod from their chieftan, the two notched arrows, drew and loosed without hesitation. At close range, those bolts would hit hard and fast as bullets.
Bane dropped the clods of earth and casually caught the oncoming arrows by the middle of their shafts as if it was the easiest feat possible. He twirled them for everyone to see. >"I am indeed the Dire Wolf," he said. "It is time for us to parley."<
With his final word, a punishing gush of wind nearly knocked them all down. Thunder detonated near overhead, making their heads rattle. From nowhere, standing two thousand feet high, the black stone crags of Mount Vanish had appeared on the plain within yards of them.
While the villagers were stupefied at the unbelievable sight a huge slab of stone slid up to create an opening in the side of the mountain. Forty men on horseback galloped full tilt at such a rate that they must have begun their charge while still inside Mount Vanish. In the split-second before the Raiders trampled into the villagers, there was a confused impression of huge muscular men with gleaming bronze breastplates and wearing bronze helmets topped with wide bull-horns. A few brandished curved swords but most thrust forward a bronze staff topped with a globe that blazed painfully bright, hot enough that the air shimmered around them.
As the nearest Raider thundered straight at him, Bane leaped up and wrapped an arm around that thick neck, taking the warrior off the steed as they both tumbled down. The Dire Wolf intended to snatch two of the dazzle grenades from inside his jacket as soon as he took care of this armored man. They both rolled and leaped back up on their feet. Sudden unexpected agony shot into Bane's chest. The Raider had jabbed his staff forward and its shining globe had seared right through the tough field jacket and two layers of Trom armor to burn into the muscles of Bane's chest. It was as much the surprise as the pain that stopped the Dire Wolf in his tracks for a moment, because he had come to count on the Trom armor against any weapon. For an instant, his defenses were not on point. The Raider whirled the staff to crack against the side of this stranger's head with murderous intent and, as Bane reeled, two more of the horsemen dismounted to join in thrashing him as hard as they possibly could.
Any normal person would have been murdered by that attack. Even with his Tagra-enhanced healing factor, the Dire Wolf came close to passing out.. He heard screams and wild laughter as if from a distance, the stink of burning flesh and the slashing of swords. Bane tried to regain his senses without success. He could not focus his eyes or do more than get up on hands and knees before he was being roughly tied hand and foot to be dragged behind a horse.
>"Slay no more of them!" bellowed a voice speaking Chujiran with a guttural accent. "The Holy One needs sacrifices and slaves. Herd them along like the cattle they are."< One of the warriors kicked Bane on top of the head as he passed, and for a few minutes, everything was a vague haze of pain.
IV.
As roughly as possible, the Raiders threw Bane into a corner of the inner chamber of the Keeper of the Flame with the evident intent of breaking a few bones. Bound with rawhide strips, his hands behind him and his ankles tied together, the Dire Wolf managed to lessen the impact by going limp. Even as he fell to the polished marble floor, he managed to squirm around so he was sitting up with his hands behind him and his legs drawn up underneath. This was not just to position himself facing his captors.
The Raiders had managed to remove his helmet and tug his jacket off, they had gone through the obvious pockets in his shirt and pants. His revolver was gone but he did not see how they would figure how to make ammo for it anyway if they start shooting it by trial and error. So much planning had gone into the field suit by experts. The rushed slap-down by these demonic Raiders had missed a dozen concealed slits and inner pockets which were padded to camoflauge the gadgets they held. Most important, the silver daggers were still on his forearms. The high-density silicone over the sheaths felt exactly like normal human muscles to all but the most discerning searcher. These Raiders had been fooled in their haste.
No one else was in the chamber as the bronze-armored killers took positions flanking the high polished wooden door. Bane took in his surroundings quickly. In one corner was a long couch covered with silk cushions and light blankets, with a stand that held a goblet, a wine bottle, a shallow dish of dried fruits and nuts. Niches in one wall held many scrolls identified by colored ribbons. There was also a writing table with bottles of ink, quill pens and blotting paper. Everything was brightly lit by several of the blazing bronze rods held in wall clamps.
In the back of his mind, Bane wondered where the copper and tin came from to make all this bronze. Chujir was a huge land, largest of all the adjacent realms but did it contain sufficient deposits of both copper and tin? And since Chujirans had long since learned how to forge good quality steel, why would the Raiders of Mount Vanish continue to use bronze? At the moment, it did not seem he would have an opportunity to ask anyone these questions. The hateful scowls on the Raiders' faces suggested that they were aching to kill him and only held back by their orders.
The pain was easing up in his chest where his shirt and even part of the Trom armor had been seared away to burn his skin. So were the many aches and bruises from the beating he had survived. Bane's enhanced healing from the Tagra tea diet enabled him to recover quickly from trauma that would be fatal to ordinary people, but it had its limits. Tel Shai knights were neither indestructible nor immortal, and enough damage would kill him as surely as anyone else. The way these Raiders enjoying cutting off heads meant he was in imminent mortal peril and he knew it.
Long minutes passed. Apparently wriggling to get into a more comfortable position, Bane actually managed to get his fingertips to the top seam of his boots. He was noticing the crennelated pattern of bright red stripes on their scarlet tunics was matched by a similar pattern in red against lime green which ran around the walls. These people had a color sense which seemed garish to him but that was not important in any sense. The symbol of a bull's head with wide curving horns also became apparent as decoration in many places... on the breastplates and helmets of the Raiders, carved into the head of the couch and painted in black to take up most of one plastered wall.
The door creaked slowly open and the two Raiders swung around to face the tall gaunt figure which entered. This was a man wrapped in a loose white linen robe which reached to the floor, and which had long sleeves that ended in bronze cuffs. Fastened at the right shoulder was a short cape of bright red silk trimmed in green, and one of the ubiquitous bull's head symbols was sewn on the front of the robe in red and green threads. Danging from a cord at the waist was a wavy-bladed ceremonial knife. The man was leaning slightly on a slim black cane topped with an ornately carved knob.
Nothing of the man's head could be seen. He wore a bronze helmet crafted in the bull's head likeness, with an opaque linen veil hanging down to conceal his face.
Both the Raiders clapped their free hands to their breastplates and shouted, "We stand at your service, Holy One!"
"Leave us, our faithful sons," rasped a husky voice from beneath the veil. It sounded forced, as if speaking was painful. As the armored men closed the door behind them, the robed man lowered himself gingerly to a carved ebony stool by the writing desk.
"So I guess you're the Keeper of the Flame," Bane said. "Excuse me for not bowing, you can see it would be awkward."
"Ah, you do speak Chujiran, although your accent is hopeless," came the hoarse reply. "You ARE the Tel Shai knight called Dire Wolf. Your sacrifice will bring us great honor from the gods Margoth and Draldros."
"I recognize the power you're using," said Bane. "That bright white energy, the way it cuts through steel and stone so easily. You have tapped the secrets of ancient Zhune."
"That is dangerous knowledge," the Holy One rasped. "We are not Chujiran, as you can see. Nor are we descended from the Zhunians themselves but from one of the nations that suffered under their heel. For countless ages, we have preserved the talismans and devices left to us from the Zhunians, themselves long vanished into history."
The Dire Wolf shifted his weight slightly, forcing himself up on his knees, getting ready. He distracted the Keeper of the Flame by continuing, "And I bet that when you were younger, you had a secret guest here. A huge man with a shaved head, right? He charged up your Zhune artifacts and took most of them when he left, whether you wanted him to or not."
"What! How could... Speak with caution, foreigner, your life hangs by a thread about to snap."
But Bane went on as if he had invited to explain further. "Oh, I knew Karl Eldritch. We fought a dozen times. Eldritch was the only warlock who rediscovered the ultimate secret of Zhune... how to convert energy to matter and matter to energy. Nobody else could have charged up the Zhune devices you were guarding. I'm right so far, huh?"
"I warn you, these are matters not for careless ears to catch," the Holy One gritted as he forced himself up to his feet, using his cane as a lever. "Hold your tongue."
"No. Let me guess, you hid one Zhune device so well that Eldritch overlooked it. This is how you power up those torch sticks your killers use against their victims. And you are the only one who knows all this, right? It's the basis for your status with this cult you run."
The Holy One glared at his prisoner, then hobbled over to a wall which held a low bronze counter incised with symbols of both the bull's head and the six-pointed sun. He pulled up a lever on one side of the counter and depressed a button on its end. In response, a panel slid up to reveal the strange sight of archaic machinery of copper-colored metail, built with a spout from which a shaft of pure white light blazed up TWO feet across and six feet high. The chamber abruptly filled with a glare that was painful to look upon and the air turned hot and stuffy.
"The magician called Eldritch told me this was the primal energy which fuels the Sun and all the realms," the Holy One whispered. "He called it 'atomic fire.' Into this will be you be cast, and nothing will remain of your body, not even ashes in the breeze."
"Yeah, you were talking to Eldritch all right," Bane said. He was ready to act. As he had several times before, he had managed to pull the single-edged razor blade from its slit in the top seam of his boot. Practice and experience enabled him to slice through the rawhide binding his hands and ankles with only a few tiny nicks. "You sound just like him." With that, he surged up from the tiled floor and pounced on the Holy One like a real wolf. The Keeper of the Flame already had one hand resting on the ceremonial dagger slung from his belt and he barely tightened his grip before Bane seized that arm at elbow and wrist and drove the blade directly into the man's heart. With a few shudders and a wheeze as air was expelled from dying lungs, the Holy One sagged to the floor. Bane kept the body from making a thud by slowly lowering it.
That time Bane had been satisfied with his performance. Despite the pummeling he had taken not an hour earlier, he had moved without stiffness or uncertainty. The Dire Wolf glanced over to make sure that the atomic fire still blazed over the Zhune artifact in the wall, then bent to strip the dead man. He never liked doing this business of getting on clothing from a dead enemy but it was a necessary tactic sometimes. The Holy One was revealed to be a bony old man in late middle age, with the left side of his face badly twisted and scarred from burns. The left arm and hand must have been almost useless after the damage they had taken.
That explained the weird harsh voice. Not only were several muscles of the Holy One's face unresponsive, there had likely been some some searing of the throat and vocals chords as well. That primal energy that Eldritch had unleashed was dangerous to meddle with. Bane draped the priestly linen robe over himself, adjusted the short cape and then cleaned off the ceremonial knife rather callously on the Holy One's skin. Finally, with great distaste, he lowered the bronze bull's-head helmet and its veil over his head to make the transformation complete.
The Keeper of the Flame had not bled much from his wound, which made dragging his body over to the wall without leaving a trace easier. The Dire Wolf lifted the frail corpse up overhead, averted his own head and squeezed his eyes shut, then tossed the body directly into the atomic fire. Everything flashed an intolerable white for a second. Even with his head turned away and his eyes shut, Bane could see nothing but vague blurry afterimages. He worried he might have suffered permanent harm but in a few minutes his sight began to come back to his tear-streaming eyes.
Nothing at all remained of the Holy One. Bane had expected that. As his vision returned, he blinked furiously and examined the Zhunite relic. They usually had simple controls and sure enough, on one side of the atomic furnace was a cylindrical lever topped with a oval bulb. Bane cautiously pulled the lever back toward him and saw the white fire dim and lessen. He pulled it all the way until it locked into place with a click and the primal energy snuffed out. Suddenly the chamber lost its stifling stuffiness and he breathed easier.
That's a step in the right direction, he thought. Even if he was killed in the next few minutes, the torches held by the Raiders would soon lose their charge and Eldritch was no longer alive to bring them back to power. Mount Vanish had moved for the last time. Let it sit where it was as a mountain by all rights should.
Then the hanging knocker on the other side of the chamber door rapped three times. A hesitant voice ventured, "Oh Holy One, we await your orders."
V.
Remembering the cane at the last second, Bane assumed a bent over stance and croaked, "Enter then!" Despite taking lessons in vocal imitation over the years, he had never become an expert. It was one of the skills that eluded him. But the late Keeper of the Flame's hoarse whisper was easy enough to fake.
The two Raiders swung the door outward and came into the chamber, peering about. "Holy One, where is the outlander?"
"He has gone into the White Flame," Bane rasped from behind the veil. "Before he died, he revealed that the Emperor is sending his army to these plains. They number in the thousands and are near already. These are my words. You two will remain here to guard the new prisoners but the other Raiders must ride at once."
"Speak and we all obey," said one of the huge warriors.
"The Raiders will ride toward the setting sun and stop only at dawn. They will await the Mountain, which I will bring to meet them."
"But why Holy One...?" began one of the men, cringing away from wizened elder half his size.
"The Keeper of the Flame has spoken!" Bane rasped, stamping his cane in what he hoped was a feeble gesture. "Go! Now! The White Flame is still hungry."
As the Raiders withdrew and closed the door behind them, the Dire Wolf straightened up and let out a relieved sigh. That had been some quick improvization on his part. Now he wanted to wait until he was certain that the forty horsemen had galloped away. He sat down on the couch and began eating the dried fruits and nuts. One price for his enhanced speed was an appetite that never let up. He poked around, found a thick slab of black bread as well and devoured that dry. Beneath his feet, he detected a rumbling vibration. Bane rose and cautiously cracked open the door to the chamber.
Not far down the corridor, the echo of hoofbeats faded. His impromptu plan was working so far. Now to locate the villagers who had been taken prisoner. Bane gazed up and down the hallway with its walls brightly painted in recurring geometric patterns and saw no one. He took the silence to mean that the main body of Raiders had left. Stepping out through the doorway, he slowed his breathing in a Tel Shai technique that sharpened hearing and was satisfied.
But a harsh voice bellowed, "When did our Holy One last stand so straight? And without his walking stick for support?"
"It must be the outworlder!"
Well, that was a mistake, Bane thought as he wheeled around to face the two charging Raiders. Both were big, heavily muscled men with bronze breastplates and greaves, each raising one of the curved short swords in his right hand. There was more free space to his left, so Bane plunged in that direction faster than they could have possibly expected and bodyslammed one Raider into the other. The warriors tangled each other up for a second. Drawing his daggers and leaping around behind them, the Dire Wolf sliced open the windpipe of the nearer fighter with a clean swipe and then shoved the gagging man hard onto his partner. These Raiders were experienced in war but it was no help to them now. The unwounded man broke away backwards instinctively, got his footing and thrust his sword at Bane with deadly precision. Barely swiveling aside in time to let that blade pass, Bane shattered the Raider's knee from the side with a low kick, forced him down to the tiles and dropped to kneel on the middle of the man's back. Slashing that neck was an instant's work, and Bane hopped back out of reach to give both Raiders a few seconds to die. He hadn't enjoyed what he had done but it was part of the Midnight War he had long ago accepted.
Yanking off the bull's-head helmet with its veil, casting away the priestly robe, Bane listened and watched but decided no one else was coming. He knelt to clean his silver daggers on the Holy One's linen garment. His hands were trembling visibly. This worried Bane more than tackling two armed and armored men had. Maybe he WAS starting to lose that total focus in combat that had always been there for him to rely on.
No time for doubts now. Bane stood up, slid his knives back into the sheaths under his jacket sleeves and strode quickly down the corridor. Before he left Mount Vanish, he was determined to retrieve his field jacket and the gimmicks that had been in it, they were too dangerous to leave with people who would not know how to use them. Or worse, who might figure out how to use them. He found a few chambers with tables for meals or with hard-mattressed bunks lining the walls. Finally, he unbolted a door at the end of the hall and stared down at sixty pairs of startled eyes. Two of the atomic torches high up out of reach illuminated the bare stone dungeon. Many of the male villagers had bound up their wounds with their own garments, and the bruises on the shamed faces of the women show how they had been mistreated. Seeing the black-clad figure standing in the doorway, everyone cried out in confusion and tentative hope.
"Rejoice!" Bane called out. "The Keeper of the Flame is dead. The forty riders are far away by now. Listen, we all must leave Mount Vanish, we must get some distance between it and us before the Raiders come back. I want you all to find as much food and drink in this citadel as you can carry, some weapons as well, but not so much that it would slow you down."
"This is good news beyond all hope!" shouted one of the villagers. "How can this deliverance be?"
"No time to explain right now. Let's get moving." Bane ordered. He waved for them all to start up the steps toward the doorway. He saw the wall torches flicker and dim slightly. "The White Flame is dying as well. Even if the Raiders find us, by then their weapons will be useless. If you face them again, it will be on more equal terms."
"How have you done all this?" cried a youngster. "Why have you come here to Chujir to help we who are strangers?"
Bane did not answer for a moment. He felt a sudden weariness as the adrenalin ebbed in his system. "I don't know myself," he said at last. "I guess it's what I was born to do."
10/11/2019
