Vargas rode up next to the priestess as she watched the pack train pass by on the old trail below. As he did so, Glor, never far from Alyssa’s side, turned in his saddle, hand on the hilt of a wide-bladed falchion.

“Easy.” Vargas said, spitting trail dust from his mouth.

Glor’s face was hostile under a low, heavy brow. He was among the shortest of any in the motley caravan, but his frame and musculature were easily twice that of the largest man.

The three sat on a bluff overlooking the mountain trail that had led them to the little valley below. In the valley sat an abandoned way station on the banks of a stream. Long disused, the palisade that ran around the compound had collapsed in many places, though the gate stood erect. The caravan was stopped there.

Vargas looked at the priestess. Her red-gold hair seemed like a halo in the setting sun. It was, he knew, an illusion. She shifted in the saddle, her sword within easy reach on her belt.

“What is this place?”

“I told you,” Vargas answered. “A disused way station on the trade route. It fell out of favor when the other pass was cleared of the mountain tribes.”

Vargas didn’t add that he knew this because he, himself, had lent a hand in the dismantling of those tribes. It had been bloody work and his memories of that campaign were unpleasant.

“It stinks of death,” Alyssa said.

“I think that’s Glor you’re smelling,” Vargas laughed.

Like Glor, the priestess ignored the comment. The truth was that in his rough tunic of uncured skins, the bodyguard did smell less than appealing. It was also true that the valley and the structures below had about them an air of something intangible but objectionable.

The angry, arguing voices of the men clustered around the freestanding gate below carried up to the trio. Vargas cursed in exasperation and guided his horse down to them, past the short train of pack mules.

He reached the knot of men, calling for them to make way, and pushed his horse toward the front. Siva, his second-in-command, was arguing with one of the men. Most of the drovers were from the sea plain below the mountains and they were damn near useless in the high country. The one disputing with Siva, however, was a dour-faced member of the mountain tribes.

“God’s Eyes!” Vargas snapped. “What is the holdup? Night is coming and it gets cold.”

Siva turned toward the caravan leader, frustration clear in every line on his flushed face.

“This son-of-a-mule is stirring up trouble. He's refusing to enter the compound because of some silly scratch marks.”

“This place is cursed,” the mountain dweller said. He spoke in trade language, heavily accented. He pointed a finger at a rune mark branded in the center of gate’s crossbeam. “That is the mark of warding used by the rune-scholars.”

“No.” Alyssa said. “You are wrong.”

Vargas turned to face the priestess and financier of the expedition. As always, when he looked straight into her coldly beautiful face, his eyes were drawn to the tattoos of crescent moon and the orb of a sun on her forehead. The images were signs of her witch-cult. The drovers treated her with a precise respect that had little to do with the long blade at her side or the glowering bodyguard, Glor.

“The runes of the predecessors were limited. One rune often meant many things. This is the ward of binding, but it is canted to the left,” she said. “It is meant as a mark of protection against outside forces, not to keep some prisoner trapped.”

She’s lying, Vargas thought suddenly.

He pushed the thought away. What did he know of runes and wards? He knew how to travel the mountains, how to ride men down and put them to the sword, how to burn villages. He suddenly wanted a drink very much.

Vargas watched uncertainty flicker across the surly drover’s face. Alyssa kicked her horse forward and rode through the gateposts. Not to be outdone by a woman, even a priestess, the man got back into line, muttering to himself.

"Praying won't help you," Vargas laughed.

He turned to Siva. “Get the animals over to those stables, see if the ruin is good enough to house them for tonight.”

After seeing that his orders were being carried out, Vargas turned his horse and followed the priestess.

The inn was fashioned from cut stone, and only the part that had served as the common room hadn’t crumpled to ruin. Vargas pushed the door open against the resistance of the stiffened hinges and was brought up short as he almost ran full into Alyssa’s back.

“Did you bring me all the way from the capitol to bed me down in a tomb?” Her voice was cool.

Vargas stepped to the side of the shapely woman. Looked up. Blinked. Cursed.

“God’s Eyes!”

The body hung from the rafter by a short length of hemp rope. Familiar with such things, Vargas noted there was no way a man would have had his neck snapped the way the noose was tied. Then he took in the fact that the man’s feet weren’t tied, nor his hands.

“Suicide,” he murmured.

The body was old. The man had worn leather armor studded across the top similar in fashion to what Alyssa now wore, but time and damp had ruined it. The man’s flesh had shriveled tight against his bones. His eyes were sunken black holes and his mouth was drawn back to reveal teeth clenched in death's rictus.

“He’s been here a hell of a long time," Vargas said. “No animal has been at him.”

“Chance?”

“What else? Still, strange.“ Vargas turned back toward the door. Glor pushed the heavy old door on its tight hinges open with a toe, his hands filled with heavy packs. “I’ll get Siva and we’ll cut him down, put him outside.”

“No.” Alyssa said, bringing Vargas up short. “Seeing this corpse will put those fools you’ve hired into a panic. Glor will put him over in the corner and cover him.”

Vargas made no move to help as Glor stalked forward to do his mistress’ bidding. Vargas was not the sort to be easily swayed by beauty. He was as partial to a pretty girl as the next soldier, but unlike many he didn’t allow a shapely form to cloud his mind against the personality inside.

He didn’t like this priestess.

“You don’t mind sleeping with a rotten corpse?”

Her answering laugh was musical and Vargas was almost be-glamoured, but then Glor cut the hanged man free and the old corpse hit his massive shoulders with all the life of a sack of potatoes hitting a cellar floor — and the caravan leader remembered who he was dealing with.

“You don’t care much for my faith, do you Vargas? Or hold respect for my abilities?” She lit a lamp and set it on a dusty table.

Vargas looked her straight in the eyes. And, damn her, they were beautiful eyes. The set of them however, and the fire that burned there behind the cobalt blue, was not inviting.

“I’ve seen women and children begging for help from a dozen gods as they were put to the sword. I’ve never seen a prayer answered.”

“Death is a gateway to the Gods, it is not to be prayed against — it is a prayer itself.”

The body of the hanged man hit the floor with a thump. Glor moved to the door and Vargas suddenly felt very tired.

“You didn’t answer me, whether you believed in my power?” Alyssa pressed.

Quick, unreasoned anger, lent Vargas strength and he turned back toward the tattooed priestess.

“All I know is that when your temple-coven were declared heretics you weren’t carried up to the heavens ahead of the mobs by a golden chariot. You came with the same gold used by the lotus merchants, to a smuggler like me to get you out.”

Glor shuffled outside. For a moment this struck Vargas as odd. He was, after all arguing with the man’s mistress. From what Vargas had seen up until now the bodyguard should be headed toward the smuggler, intent on murder.

Alyssa regarded him as Vargas took a lantern from the pile of equipment brought in by Glor. He took a moment to light it before setting it onto the shelf above the cold hearth. The whole time he was waiting for an outburst from the outlaw priestess. Once the lantern was going he turned back toward the woman.

“It’ll be cold tonight,” he said, to fill the silence.

She ignored him. Her attention was fixed on the rafter, where the cut rope still dangled. In the flickering light of Vargas’ lantern more runes were revealed, carved into the oak crossbeam. Vargas moved next to her and looked up at the markings.

He recognized one of the symbols as identical to the one carved on the gatepost outside. The one he thought the priestess had lied about. The rest of the scratched symbols meant nothing to him.

“What’s that nonsense about?”

“A suicide note, nothing more,” she answered.

“Then why is there the same symbol as on the gate?” Vargas countered.

“I told you, smuggler, the old runes often had multiple meanings. This one — when with the others — is merely a way of saying he is going to a place of protection.”

“Are you sure you’re reading it right?”

“Any other way and it would read that instead of going through the gate, it would mean that he was the gate.”

“I thought you said that death was a gateway to the Gods.”

She seemed about to reply when shouting burst from the courtyard. Vargas spun and used both hands to yank the door wide. He jumped out the cold night and looked around, sword half drawn.

“Siva! What’s wrong?”

“Here,” the man called from the section of the stables where the roof had not totally collapsed.

With Alyssa behind him, Vargas made his way to the stables. For the second time that night he found himself pushing his way through a knot of his own grumbling men. This time he saw the trouble was not simple superstition.

He stepped up next to Siva. The two smugglers looked down. Four of the mules and two of the little mountain ponies favored by the group lay dead, their skulls smashed as if by a war-hammer. Under one of the pack mules lay the body of the drover who'd balked at the rune on the gatepost.

Blood had rushed out of his mouth to stain his beard and thick chest in a crimson apron. His eyes were wide open, but sightless in death. On reflex, Vargas muttered a short warrior’s prayer.

“What did this?” Siva asked.

“I have no idea. Pull him clear. We'll put him under the roof over there. Double the guard.”

“The men think we should leave,” Siva said.

“Riding double? In the dark, down mountain trails? We would be easy pickings for whatever did this.”

“Glor, move the man’s body away from the stable so it doesn’t spook the other horses," Alyssa ordered.

Surprised, Vargas turned toward the priestess. She looked at him steadily, shook her head slightly, something significant in her eyes. He didn’t argue, though it looked bad in front of his men to be ordered about like a vassal.

“Come with me,” Alyssa said in a low voice.

She turned and walked rapidly toward the ruined inn. Vargas made to follow her but was stopped by Siva's amazed swearing. Turning, he saw Glor pick up the dead mule and rest its weight against his hip while he drug the dead smuggler free. The face of the priestess’ bodyguard showed no sign of the effort.

Vargas turned toward Siva. “Get the men into a perimeter and start another bonfire. That damned witch knows what’s happening and I aim to find out.”

“What in the seven hells is happening —” Vargas was brought up short as he came through the door.

The priestess had pulled the hanged man over into the center of the room, where the light burned the brightest. She straddled the corpse the way a doxy straddles a lazy client. Open mouthed, he watched as she used a bit of charcoal to etch symbols on the dead man’s forehead.

“Whatever killed those animals was strong. Damn strong,” Vargas said.

Glor came in through the door behind him and Vargas turned, drawing his blade.

“Glor, outside! Make sure I am not interrupted,” Alyssa ordered. The bodyguard moved to obey, easily pulling the heavy door shut behind him.

Vargas, sword naked in his hand, turned toward the priestess. She leaned over the corpse and spat into its face. Four times she spit, as if marking each point on a compass.

“What are you doing?” Vargas demanded.

Alyssa rose. “You mocked my abilities? My faith? It will be the only thing to save us this night,” she hissed. Vargas saw she was afraid.

“I have enough men to take Glor if it comes to that.”

Alyssa threw back her head and laughed.

“Glor exists only because I will him to do so. His existence is my life. My life is his existence. He would not have attacked anyone without my orders. Believe me when I say he is incapable of it.”

Realization struck Vargas like a hammer blow. “Glor is. . .?

“Yes, mine. His body was a gift from a powerful patron — his reanimation a gift from the faith you mock. He is mine only.”

“Then what killed those animals?”

“Something is in this prison with us.”

“Prison? You did lie! What the hell is it then?”

“That is what I will find out. Now stay silent.”

Alyssa turned back toward the corpse. The clumps of her spit glistened in the yellow light like bits of glass on the dead man’s face. The priestess began to chant in a language that sent chills through Vargas. Her hands were held before her, clasped as though in supplication. Slowly a light began to spill out from between her grip as she raised her arms above her head.

Vargas saw that she held a small orb of smoothest crystal. Light flooded out and the rays knifed into the room, illuminating the shadows like a miniature sun. Her chanting had risen in volume and intensity, until at the pinnacle of her stretch the priestess was shrieking.

Abruptly the light went out and she let her arms fall. Vargas blinked at the sudden gloom, and then fear clutched his pounding heart. He whispered the warrior’s prayer again.

The corpse of the hanged man sat up smoothly. Its shrunken tendons and ligaments creaked like old stairs as it turned its head toward the priestess. The face was still a frozen mask and the teeth were tightly clenched. The eye sockets were still blank, empty pools of shadow. Alyssa spoke in a sharp, sure voice to the reanimated dead man.

“Tell us what manner of power haunts this place. I command you in the name which has called you forth.”

“I have been waiting for you, little sister. I was not called forth, sweet girl. I came.”

Vargas saw Alyssa blanch at the words. He saw her muttering quickly to herself as the corpse-thing began to rise. Vargas heard his men screaming outside, and knew what was happening. He leapt forward and swung his sword like a woodsman’s axe. The honed steel bit deeply into the head of the thing, and when he pulled his blade free from the skull most of it came away in a soup.

The reanimated corpse sagged to the floor. Outside, the screams had reached a fever pitch. Vargas, furious and terrorized, turned toward Alyssa.

“It commands Glor!”

“Impossible,” she muttered. “Only I command him.”

It was silent outside. Vargas leapt forward and thrust a heavy table before the door. Knowing it was hopeless, he piled benches on the table anyway.

A heavy boom suddenly reverberated through the room as blows fell on the door from outside. One of the ancient hinges shot free and arced into the room. It landed with a clatter.

Alyssa screamed then, and Vargas turned back. He felt icy squirts of fear splash into his belly. His lungs felt numb from panic and refused to work properly. A wild thought of taking his blade and slicing his own throat ran through his mind.

A great hand, twice the size of Glor’s even, thrust up through the wound Vargas had dealt the corpse. More of the arm pushed through. It was covered in gray-green hide. Claws like dagger blades tipped thick fingers.

At last Vargas understood what gateway meant.

The demon rose out of the corpse of the hanged man. It was awful and bestial and exuded a raw, evil strength the way a bonfire radiates heat. The corpse was ripped apart by the emerging demon, until the great thing seemed to emerge from nothing more than a grease spot on the old wooden floor.

The barricade behind Vargas began to shift as Glor knocked the door free of its moorings.

Vargas felt his eyes pulled back toward the demon as he heard it laughing deep and low in its grotesquely large chest. It was covered in protrusions of bone-like spikes. Horns rose in a double row from its lizard’s head. Its tongue was long and red and lashed between fleshless lips, while its thick tail swung and curled between tree trunk legs. It threw back its head and roared in glee.

“I have come, sweet girl.” It settled blazing eyes on the cowering priestess. “Come serve your better.”

“Never,” Alyssa hissed.

Her argument seemed to give her strength and she rose. Again Vargas saw light spill from the orb in her hands. This time Vargas saw the light came out of it from burning representations of the tattoos on Alyssa’s forehead.

She thrust the orb out as she stood, and it erupted in a blinding flash. The demon’s laughter turned to shrieks of agony as it was tossed backward before the brilliance. With a sound like the rock from a siege engine bursting against a castle wall, the barricade before the door exploded outward and Glor charged into the room.

A flying stool and a broken length of bench struck Vargas, slamming him to the floor. Glor moved into the room, sword-dripping gore. He saw his new master rising before the light wielded by his mistress.

“Kill her!” The demon shouted. “Destroy the orb!”

“Glor, no!” Alyssa yelled.

Vargas rose and groped for his sword, his eyes never leaving the bizarre triangle of priestess, demon and undead servant. He found his sword even as Glor move toward his former mistress.

The falchion rose and fell, and the snik it made as it severed Alyssa’s hand from her arm was sickening. The delicate, feminine hand tumbled away like a stone rolling down a slope and carried the orb with it. Severed from the living flesh of the priestess, the orb’s light winked out.

Alyssa screamed as blood like a river spurted from her wound. The demon roared triumphantly, leaping forward. It scooped the beautiful woman up in its massive claws. Glor staggered, lurched, then came up again. It stood still as the demon shredded the clothes from her body. She was screaming.

“Kill the man,” the demon ordered. “Her death will be slow.”

Glor turned toward Vargas and lifted the falchion. Blood dripped down the single edge to spill over the crossguard and onto his fist. Vargas realized could never hope to defeat the strength of the undead.

His existence is my life. My life is his existence.

The haughty voice of the priestess spoke in his head. Vargas remembered Glor’s lurch, understood. Or rather, prayed that he did.

Vargas lifted his sword in both hands. Glor stepped forward, leading with the curved tip of the falchion. Vargas pivoted suddenly and went to one knee as he snapped his arms down. His sword hurled from him in a spinning arc. Glor loomed above him.

Vargas’ sword stabbed through the demon’s arm and struck Alyssa deep in her side under the swell of a breast. The woman gasped and blood poured out of her mouth as clean steal sliced through lung to severe the frantic beating of her heart. Death was nearly instantaneous.

Vargas felt Glor crumple forward onto him and knew he had guessed correctly in this gamble for his life. The demon may have circumvented control of the power that animated Glor; but he had not been its source.

Vargas rose, pushing Glor's body from him. He snatched up the dead man's sword as he did so. He lifted the curved blade and cast about.

He felt more than saw the missile coming at him and ducked as Alyssa's corpse sailed past him. The limp body of the priestess hurtled up against one of the thick support beams standing like a pillar in the old common room, and her back broke with a loud crack.

Vargas looked away from her broken form as the demon screamed. He turned to see the great hell-thing rip his sword free of its arm and toss it aside. Enraged, it turned burning, dragon eyes to Vargas. Ropes of saliva hung in the corner of its snarling mouth.

Vargas ran.

He scrambled up and over the pushed-in barricade, diving for the doorway. He twisted over the edge of the oddly canted door and rolled down its length and outside. He felt searing fire race down the back of one leg as the demon caught him with a claw.

Then it was cold, open air as he made it out into the courtyard. He stood and saw the carnage. Carnage wrought by the sword still tightly clenched in his fist. Pools of standing blood saturated the courtyard. Glor's unnatural strength had cleaved heads from bodies, severed limbs, opened guts. Piles of gut and entrails dotted the ground like cattle dung.

Time stretched like a sticky membrane around Vargas. His anguish and guilt struck him in successive hammer blows. Those men had trusted him, following where he. He had failed them, and now they lay torn and rent across the cold ground.

Vargas met the eyes of Siva, his closest comrade. He saw the film of death in them and registered what Glor had done to the man. Sorrow was sharp in his chest.

Vargas heard wood being torn to splinters as the demon fought its way free of the building. The smuggler turned and sprinted toward the gatepost. He made it six steps before the demon freed itself. He made it another two steps before his foot came down on a blue-gray loop of intestine and he slipped.

Panicked and caught off guard, Vargas hit the ground hard. His teeth snapped shut and his mouth filled with the sudden copper tang of his own blood. Refusing to release Glor's heavy sword, he pushed himself up, his feet scrambling for purchase. The soles of his boots were stained red.

He came up and lunged forward like a prize runner at a summer festival. He knew without thinking that the demon was on him now. He felt his lungs working in fear and smelled the miasma of evil that emanated from the grotesque thing. Then the long-armed demon swung out and raked a blow across the running man’s back.

The force of the strike sent Vargas tumbling. He spilled forward and he turned the fall into a dive, the way he’d been taught to roll when a cavalry mount threw him. He somersaulted over his shoulder and came up, his back slick with blood.

He was almost to the gateposts and their strangely carved symbol when the demon struck him again. A hard blow caught his ankle and he tripped forward, throwing Glor’s sword before him as he fell. He landed hard again, but latched onto the gatepost with single-minded determination and pulled himself forward.

Agony engulfed his leg and he screamed as the demon bit deeply into the knotted muscle of his calf, tearing it into ribbons of hanging flesh. Vargas refused to be pulled clear of the post. He rolled onto his back and hammered the hell spawn's snarling mask of a face with his free boot. The demon coiled its limbs beneath it like a panther preparing to spring. It released its jaws as Vargas kicked out.

Vargas drove the heel of his boot into the thing’s face and it felt like he’d kicked a metal wall. The shock of the impact traveled up the bones of Vargas’ leg until it vibrated like a tuning fork. Vargas used the energy to push off and turned himself around, rolling through the gate.

He flipped away from the enchanted gate and came up reaching for Glor’s sword. Frenzied, the demon snarled and sprang. It hit the air between the gateposts and a verdant flash like a sheet of heat lightening dazzled Vargas’ eyes. The demon roared in pain and was thrown back from the geas-warded barrier.

Insane with bloodlust and rage, the hell spawn leapt forward again. It clawed and snarled and the fangs in its mouth flashed -- but again the weird of the green lightening kept it at bay.

Images flashed through Vargas’ mind like shuffled playing cards. He saw Alyssa screaming as her hand was chopped from her arm. Her screaming as the thing snatched her up. He saw the image of her body folding as her back was broken on the pillar. He saw Siva lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard. Saw Siva’s head resting ten feet from its neck, eyes wide in shock.

Even as the demon leapt again to force at the binding, Vargas sprang to meet him. Their screams mingled until one was indistinguishable from the other. Each was filled only with murderous rage to kill the other.

The falchion blade passed unchecked through the barrier as the demon came up hard against it. Steel met flesh made corporeal to exist on this mortal plane and bit deeply. Bloody lava gushed out and splashed toward Vargas. In mid-air, the blood met the power of the geas and hung there sizzling into vapor.

Vargas fell and Glor’s sword ripped from his hand. He fell onto his back and his arm hung, numb from the shoulder down. He looked through the burning blood hanging in mid-air and saw the great demon stagger backward. His blow had half-severed its horrid head from its body.

Vargas had seen spear-gored horses bleed less. The thing fell to its knees, clutching at its wound. For the second time, the demon’s hands worked to pull a blade of Vargas’ free. Snarling, it looked at him through the screen of its own suspended blood.

It fell forward on its face and lay still.

On the other side of the gate Vargas shivered in the cold night air. His lips moved rapidly as he repeated the warrior’s prayer.

Flashing Swords Fund Drive

Help us bring YOU more great fiction!

Show your support with t-shirts, sweatshirts, magnets, mugs, mousepads, and more!

Visit here for Flashing Swords products featuring Storn Cook's art work!

And DON'T miss Storn Cook's own web site!
Craving some swashbuckling? Don't forget Lords of Swords! See for yourself why Black Gate gave it rave reviews!

If you want us to keep bringing YOU sword and sorcery, purchase Lords of Swords! And keep your eye out for Sages and Swords, coming this Spring!

---

---

For more fantastic Sword and Sorcery fiction,
check out Pitch Black Book's Lords of Swords anthology