Karl Edward Wagner - Lynortis Reprise

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Lynortis Reprise

Karl Edward Wagner

Prologue

High above the blighted wasteland Lynortis broods in gloomy majesty. Lofty

eyrie on a fang of sandstone, the fallen citadel stares out over the silent

wilderness of desolation far below. Lynortis. Fortress city whose walls no

army could overwhelm. Tyrant lord of the limitless forestlands sprawled at its

feet.

Lynortis, your eyes are sightless now, and the rich rolling valley over which

you reigned is the boneyard of two hundred thousand souls. Lynortis is dead,

and there are no mourners. No longer do carrion hawks nest in your gutted

halls; even the jackals have abandoned your dunes of bleached bones. Alone and

silent, you are the funeral obelisk for your unburied tens of thousands--and

for the bones of your conqueror. When slayer kills slayer, all are one with

the slain.

Two nations died here although one was hailed victor. Ask the dead whose side

won the war.

Hunters in the Forest

The girl's breath came in ragged sobs, and her stride was a broken stumble.

Hours before, her long legs had run swift, sure as a deer beneath the

misshapen trees. A deer is swift, but hounds are patient. Since noon they had

hunted her through that insane nightmare of moss-grown destruction. Now her

tanned legs were scratched and bruised as they pumped wearily beneath the

thorn-laced branches, and her bare feet left smears of blood upon the gnarled

roots. Her long brown hair was disordered with twigs and moss; her

thigh-length shapeless gown hung in grimy tatters about her lithe figure. The

only sound she uttered was the jagged rhythm of her breath.

"Not here!" The hoarse drawl came dimly front a hundred yards to her right.

"Not here!" An answering bail from her left, and closer. There echoed a stamp

of hooves and jingle of harness.

She darted into the wreckage of a huge trebuchet. A tent of saw-briar overgrow

the rotting beam of its counterweight, and the shadowy shelter within was

tiger-striped by the declining sun. Heedless of tearing thorns, she wriggled

closer to the charred timbers of the mammoth siege machine. Smeared with soot

and leaf mould, her tanned limbs and shift of coarse brown cloth merged with

the rotting timbers of the apparatus. Against her thin face her brown eyes

seemed large as those of some nocturnal creature. She froze--motionless save

the fast rise and fall of her high breasts and the quick, hunted flicker of

her eyes.

At first there had been hounds. They had almost caught her then. But she had

slithered breathlessly through a debris-choked tunnel, and when the baying

pack had followed, the rotted shoring had given way. Now men's eyes had to

search out her trail, and it was enough to hold a scant lead.

A moss-grown skull stared up at her, the rest of its bones still crushed

beneath the throwing arm of the trebuchet. Two skeletons in rotting mail lay

half-buried in the earthworks, ensnared in a nest of saw-briar. Near her feet

lay a rust-pitted dagger; a mouldering swordhilt protruded from beneath the

wreckage of the throwing arm. The rusted weapons gave her comfort no more than

the rotted bones caused her fear. Her terror was of the present, and of the

savage men who hunted her.

"Here! Fresh blood!"

From behind her--and close. She had been unable to bide her trail. Her

concealment was no refuge.

Hopelessly she broke from cover, flinging herself past the shroud of thorns.

Their excited shouts were close--in a few seconds they would reach the ruined

siege engine. Rank brush and twisted second-growth trees promised scarce cover

to bide her flight.

"Yo! That's her!"

Terror urged another burst of strength to her aching legs. She dashed headlong

through this graveyard of a battle three decades silent. Each breath was

agony, and still her lungs could not draw breath enough.

They were following close to her heels, confused in the war-scarred forest,

making too much noise themselves to catch the sound of her flight. But they

had horses.

She hurtled the fallen beams of a smashed springald, stumbling over the piled

rusted fragments of its iron-headed bolts. It brought her up just short of a

weed-grown trench that lay hidden a stop beyond. But this was a region of the

battleground she did not recognize, and she dared not chance shelter that

might instead be a cul-de-sac.

A tangle of yellowed bones filled its bottom, she saw as she leaped scrambling

across. Then into a brush-grown ravine a dozen painful strides beyond. Wriggle

snake-like down its slope, where bones line the eroded dirt like cobblestones.

They are stopping by the trench, making certain their quarry doesn't hide

there...

The gully emptied into a wash of detritus and sparse scrub. Beyond lay a thick

stand of broken trees--cover, if she could reach it. She darted onto the wash,

keeping low.

"Yee-hee!"

She skidded on the loose rubble of the clearing. Half a dozen horsemen broke

through the patch of woods ahead. They had encircled her.

"Here! We got her!" They pounded toward her.

She spun, but there was no escape behind. The others were pelting down from

beside the ravine she had quitted. She stood in full sight in the low scrub of

the wash. Again she whirled. She was trapped.

Fear twisted her face. They laughed as they closed on her, this band of forest

outlaws who would take their time before letting her die. Hard-faced killers

whose plundered gear was as mismatched as the men who wore it. They moved in

slowly, tempting her to try to run through their circle.

She sobbed a curse at them--half-crouched, backing away as one moved closer,

spinning about as another crept still closer from behind. They were playing

with the prey who had cost them so much toil. A circle of grinning wolfish

faces, casually moving in across the space of washed stone and dry bones.

The lead horse of the group that had waited in the timber stalked toward her.

Its fat rider was the bandit chief, Grey--who had let his men drive his quarry

into his dread grasp. His blubbery lips twitched in a triumphant grin.

Then his horse stumbled, its hoof breaking through the gravelled crust with an

eerie brittle smash.

Man and steed screamed in tearing agony. From the splintered bubble beneath

the wash erupted a spewing mist of black vapor, flowing heavily across the

barren space.

The horse plunged to the ground, spilling its rider in a writhing heap that

spared him the mercy of a broken neck. She could see the blackened skin slough

away from blistered features as the outlaw leader screamed mindlessly for a

moment longer. And already the black mist had billowed over those who were

with him.

Those who yet could, fled in desperate panic. The black vapor swirled like a

hell-driven cloud, flowing across the wash--breathing its searing death upon

all who were near.

The wind was blowing back toward the ravine, she saw, and carefully gauged the

spreading cloud. Of those with Grey, all lay shrieking on the bone-strewn

gravel. Those who had hounded her were trying to outrace the mist, in their

terror forgetting their prey.

Somewhere she found strength for a final burst of speed. Perilously skirting

the advancing cloud of vapor, she escaped its withering tendrils and reached

the patch of forest that lay upwind. The vapor would slowly dissipate, but by

the time the survivors regrouped it would be dark--if any still had heart for

their game.

On failing legs she stumbled into the shelter of the gnarled trees. And into

the grasp of the man who stood watching from their shadow.

She opened her mouth to scream, but already one spade-like hand smothered her

lips, while the other enclosed her wrists. With desperate strength she

struggled against him, but he held her fast with casual strength.

"Quiet!" His voice rumbled in her ear. "I won't hurt you!"

She shuddered and hung limp in his arms. Her heart hammered painfully, but it

was useless to try to break away.

He removed his hand from her lips, but retained his grip on her wrists. "Don't

worry, I'm not with them," he told her. "Let's just rest easy now, and let the

survivors distance between us. I think they're too demoralized for any more of

this."

He added, "What's your name?"

"Sesi," she admitted, after a pause. She twisted about to get her first good

look at the man who held her.

No wonder she had not seen him as she plunged into the trees--he might have

been one of the gnarled and massive trunks come to life. While he was not much

above the average height of a big man, he was built on the solid scale of an

ancient oak. Chest and torso broad and hard as some mighty bole, pillar-like

legs, arms thick with corded muscle--all gave him an aura of massiveness more

than size, of awesome and irresistible strength. The long-fingered hand that

pinned her wrists was large and sinewed; coarse red hair furred its back and

the thick forearm. He wore a leather vest trimmed with tufted wolf fur and

silver conchos, laced half-open, and a shirt of light mail beneath. Tight

leather trousers flared to cover high riding boots. A heavy knife was sheathed

at his belt, and the curiously wrought hilt of a broadsword protruded from

behind his right shoulder. Sesi had never known a man to carry his sword

strapped diagonally behind his back, and she judged him an outlander.

A short beard rusted his coarse-featured face and nape-length red hair was

tied by a leather band sewn with bright bits of girasole above the craggy

brow. His eyes... Sesi shivered. Cold, blue. Eyes of a killer... eyes that had

watched many a man die, had absorbed a fragment of each death, and the

essence of death flamed within their blue depths.

"I am called Kane."

And Sesi tore her eyes away, wondered for a moment whether her escape from her

pursuers had been good fortune.

Kane released her, and she pulled away from him. Her wide eyes regarded him

nervously, as she tried to gather the edges of a tear that opened her shift

halfway up her side.

"Who were they?" He asked casually.

"Bandits. Scavengers. Their sort prey on travellers in the mountains nearby.

Sometimes they slink into the battlefield to steal from the dead. Masale

decreed that this all be left untouched as a monument to his victory--but no

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