Beyond the Hell Cliffs (44 page)

“You’ve always had a special thing for me, haven’t you, Brimgor?” she asked, pulling her shirt up over her head.  “I’m ready to find out how special that ‘thing’ is.”

“As if I would fuck a Stone Worshipper!” Brimgor laughed.  “I may be old, but I’m not desperate.”

“I can out-fuck any piece of ass you’ve ever had, you old geezer,” Helkree said, stretching out her muscles as if she were about to start a brisk workout.  “You need help getting it up or something?  Why don’t I tell you all the things I’m going to do to you and then tell me you don’t want
me bouncing all over your hard…”

“Gods, stop it!” Brimgor shouted, sitting up quick and shaking his head.  “Oh how great that kind of talk sounds until it comes from you.  I’m never going to be able to visit a brothel again.”

“Are… are you fucking kidding me?” Helkree screamed, livid at the man’s refusal.  “You miserable son of a bitch… I’ve killed men for less of an insult!  What is wrong with you?  Am I really so disgusting to you, that you won’t take me up on a casual, stress-free power-fu-“

“Stop talking like that, Helkree!” Brimgor commanded.  “I am not bedding you, just leave it at that.”

“Why not?” she asked, standing her ground even as he shielded his eyes from her topless body.  “I’m not leaving until you say the words, you miserable old codger.”

“Because… your mother was Kreea of Edge.”

Helkree laughed, leaning back against the door.  “Isn’t this a sight!  An old, drug-addled and dishonored Agillean that no one remembers or gives a shit about, yet somehow he thinks himself too good to hump the daughter of a disgraced noble.  You stupid asshole, I barely even knew my mother!”

“But I did,” Brimgor replied.

Helkree stopped shouting and just stood there, unmoving.  Her thoughts sped up, whirring around in circles and going nowhere.  She suddenly wished her mind would just shut down altogether; that she could avoid hearing anything else.  It was just too strange that Brimgor would be so disgusted by the thought of screwing her, no matter who her parents were, unless…

“Not too many Rathgar have those eyes, Helkree. 
Blue, grey, even purple… but the color of freshly-spilled blood?  You might not have run into any other Rathgar with those eyes in all your years… except for old Brimgor.”

“I… I think I’m going to puke,” Helkree mumbled.  Sh
e remained like a statue at the door to the room.

“Why don’t you put your shirt back on, huh?”

“Fucking hell…” she said, snatching the tunic from the floor and nearly ripping it in half in her hurry to get it over her head.  As soon as she started moving, she found her voice again… and her anger.

“How fucking long
have you known this, you… asshole!  You’ve been using me to get drugs for you, taking my money and never paying me back… I helped you get laid by that cranky bartender that one time in the Chengis Outpost!  Ugh… I feel so fucking weird right now.”

“I was already disgraced at the time and had just defeated the second Agillean to come take my shield from me.  I had no idea how many they would send for me
and I thought you would be better off knowing only of one dishonored parent, instead of two.

“When you finally found me, I was in such a poor state… I couldn’t bear for you to find out.”

“All of those stories she filled my head with about Brimgor the Agillean… all of your battles and myths… that’s why.  She was telling me who you were all along.  She probably even thought it was your fault that I would not stop trying to become a warrior.”

“I’m so sorry, Helkree,” Brimgor said.  “You should have had a normal childhood; a normal life as a noble, feminine Rathgar woman, not a vicious outlaw.  Now you’ve carved such a deviant image of yourself that even Grass-hair thinks of you as a warrior.  He wanted me to train you to fight like an Agillean, so that you can stand at his side once he gains the power of the Junrei’sha.
  I didn’t quite know how to turn him down…”

“Fuck you, you’re not turning him down!” Helkree said, drawing closer.  “If Raegith needs me at the level of an Agillean in order to stay at his side, then you’re fucking training me as an Agillean, Brimgor.  You owe me that much!”

“I am not training my daughter to be a warrior,” Brimgor replied.  “I’ve done enough damage to you already.  I’m not helping you ride off to your death, especially now that we’re both aware of this.  You’re a female and it’s not right for you to fight alongside men.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Helkree said, pulling a knife from the counter.  “I won’t be left behind by Raegith.  You’ll train me or I’ll kill you.  Don’t think this revelation changes the way I see you, Brimgor.  To me, you’re just a washout that may or may not still have enough fight in him to take me on.  You either commit to training me or get ready to kill your own blood.”

“And what if I would rather have a dead daughter than a disgraceful one?” Brimgor countered, getting to his feet and towering over her.

“Fine by me,” she answered, gripping the knife before her, ready to strike.  “I’d rather be dead than have to live knowing what a piece of shit my father is.”

The two Rathgar stood poised for attack in the room, both of them ready to end the other.  No more words were exchanged.

Chapter 40

Raegith
lay in bed across the small room from Fenra.  The Urufen girl wanted to lay with him, but he was not in the mood for it since Helkree left.  He could not share a bed with her feeling the way he did.  He knew the minute he said it that he had gone too far with Helkree.  He deserved to get punched the way he did, but it only confused him even more instead of knocking any sense into him.

Helkree was never like the other girls.  She was not voracious in her sexual appetite for him and never argued with the other Helcats over who was to spend the night
in his bed.  The few times they had slept together it seemed almost an afterthought to her; as if she had only considered it five minutes before ordering the others out of the room and pouncing on him.  She certainly never flirted with him the way that Hitomi and Kimura did or cling to him like Fenra was apt to do.  She was more like a companion than the other girls.  She was ready to fight or drink at a moment’s notice and always had a comeback to anything he said to her.  He only thought of her as a woman when they were going at it.

Was that what she was getting at?  Does she want me to see her differently than I do now?  Why the hell couldn’t she just say that?  Why does she have to act like a raging bitch all of the time and then take it out on me the moment I treat her like one?

Raegith was still trying to figure out if he had a right to be pissed off at her when Helkree came back into the room.  Her face was a bit swollen and her lip was busted.  A bloody rag was wrapped tight around her hand, but she did not look as if she were in pain.  She did not look angry, either, but resolute and slightly drunk.

“What the hell happened to you?” Fenra asked.

“I went to go see Brimgor,” Helkree replied.  “He beat the shit out of me.”

“He’s drank his last beer,” Raegith said, grabbing his coat and pushing past Helkree.  She grabbed him and yanked him backwards to the bed.

“I appreciate that, but it’s not necessary.  He doesn’t look so great right now, either, but that’s not the point.  The point is, he’s agreed to train me while you go find the Junrei’sha.”

“You guys had to fight so hard to figure that out?” Raegith asked.  “And now you’re fine with staying here?”

“No, I’m not fine with it,” she replied.  “I should be going with you, nothing will change the way I feel about that.  But I won’t get anything out of going to the Junrei’sha except for a shit-ton of boredom in a weird land among weird people.  When you get back and this thing kicks off with Rellizbix, you’re going to need real power beside you.

“Kimura’s training with Goji to be a Naga and if I know Fenra, she’s already decided to learn how to turn into one of those beasts like the old guy did.  However long you’re gone is how much time I’m going to be spending getting my ass kicked by the strongest Rathgar this land has ever seen… and after that, I won’t be left behind again.”

“I don’t expect any less,” Raegith said with a smile.

“Also,” Helkree said, frowning, “I found out that Brimgor is probably my dad.”

Chapter 41

Raegith did not take anyone else with him through the cave.  There was no need for them to make the journey and he did not want any of them seeing his first, awkward, unsteady steps off of the cliff as the wind raged and screamed past him.  It was embarrassing enough having the rugged old chief there.

“She’s a hysterical bitch, ain’t she?” Thorin called to him three feet below as he looked for a place to hook his boot.  “That’s about as far as you’re going, Grass-hair.  Here, take my hand.  Let’s get you back up here and back to your friends.”

“I’m not done yet!” Raegith yelled.

He was done, though, and the old man knew it.  The mountain face was nearly sheer and the wind threatened to dislodge him.  It was everything he could do not to hang there and focus on the clouds a hundred feet below him and think of how long he would fall before he even hit anything.  He had climbed the walls of Forster’s Keep and even scaled the walls of the Pit up to the surface, just to see if he could, but neither place had the wind and weather of the Alfhildr.

“You go any lower and I can’t help you.”

“That would be better,” Raegith replied.  Then he spotted it.

Just to his right, hidden behind a crag, was a huge split in the face.  It was wide enough for his body to fit inside and slide down at least twenty or thirty feet.  Just inside the wall, he saw something scratched into the rock.  It was a circle around two smaller circles; a full and a new moon.  It was the symbol Noriko showed him in the Pit as she explained the duality of man’s actions.  She had passed through here, unknown to the Urufen or at least hidden by them.

“Tell Helkree and Fenra to wait for me,” Raegith said.  “I’ll see you in a few years, Thorin… if you don’t die before then.”

Raegith pushed off of the rock he stood on and swung himself inside the split.  Taking only a moment to gain his balance and not waiting for his fear to stop him, he pulled his hands away from each side and slid on his soles.

The trip was quick as he maintained his balance in a controlled slide down to the bottom of the split.  It was only another ten feet before he was able to drop down to the first landing.  He looked up and could barely make out Thorin as he peered over the edge
at him and shook his head.  Then the elder was gone and Raegith was on his own.  He took a small rest and then eased himself out past the landing and began descending again.

The going was slow, but after several hours, Raegith finally hit the bottom of the cliff face and was on more level terrain.  He was breathing way too fast at that point and his hands were so cold that he was having trouble flexing them.  He took shelter from the wind on the other side of a ridge, but snow began to fall on him and he had to keep moving to stay warm.

His parka and gloves did little to fend off the brutal temperature and his lungs burned constantly.  After an hour of hiking at an even pace and taking breaks, he looked back to see that he had only traveled a hundred yards from the spot he took shelter.  He could not slow his breathing; his body moved on its own to pound his lungs open and closed almost as fast as his heart.  He was also drinking too much water, burning through one of his canteens already.

This is ridiculous!  I can’t breathe, despite the exercises at the Lupa Tribe!  I’m losing all the moisture in my mouth to the wind.
  He scooped up snow and shoved it in his mouth, trying to get water from it as it melted, but he was breathing so heavily that he almost sucked the whole snowball down his throat and he choked. 
Fuck… I’ve got to slow my breathing down or my heart is going to explode.

Forsaking his pace and ignoring the wind, Raegith sat down in the snow and meditated.  He forced his body to obey his command, just as Noriko showed him.  His body jerked and shuddered, trying to override his mind in its desperation for air, but he denied it.  He breathed out slow and steady, pulling as much
air into his lungs as he could and then slowly letting it out.

It hurt, at first, but eventually he got it under control.  He focused on his breathing and let go of everything in front of him.  One foot after another, he breathed as he walked, timing it out to match his pace.  He pushed on even as the snow stopped around him, descending the mountain at an even pace.  His jaw set and his nostrils flaring with controlled breath, he dropped below the clouds before the day was over and took refuge in a nook just big enough for him to fit his upper body in.  He was below the tree line and the temperature had warmed enough that he wasn’t in danger of his skin blackening, but sleep was still a difficult task and he was never comfortable.

The next day he was met with more rock faces that left his hands cut even beneath his gloves and he had to stop several times to get his breathing under control.  It continued like this for the rest of the day; a steep face followed by more treacherous slopes followed by hours spent traversing the mountain just to find a place to rest.  Everything blurred, Raegith noticed none of it.  When the clouds broke for just a few moments at dawn, he barely registered that he could see the forest of mushrooms and vines far below him that stretched on for miles.  The beauty before him was nothing in his constant state of cold, mind-numbing pain.

At times he considered, just tumbling down the slopes and hoping he did not hit anything too hard.  He even tried it once and nearly slid right off a ledge that dropped off into nothing but mist.  He had drained and tossed his canteens before the end of the second night and used the snow to get water, but he had to stop and slow his breathing each time and each time he lost an hour at the least.  There were no more signs from Noriko; nothing to tell him he was going the right way.  There
were only rough paths and easy paths and the easy ones almost always forced him to backtrack at some point and take the more dangerous one.  Then the beast found him.

He never heard
it approach and if not for a passing shadow he would have been dead before he knew it was there.  A massive, long-furred cat with tusks curving down from his upper jaw, it crept along the ledges, waiting for him to get close enough to pull him up to it with its paws the size of a dinner plate.  It was almost as large as the thing Thorin turned into and at first Raegith thought it might be an Urufen.

He tried to call out the beast as it stalked him along a ledge fifteen feet over his head, but there was no response.  The cat was not a mystical creature with a person hidden somewhere inside; it was a predator running on instinct and hunger.

Raegith ran from it, hiding in cracks too small for it to fit, but it did not let up.  He could not rest, meditate or focus on his breathing while it was out there.  The cat hunted him relentlessly, always just behind him.  Several times it had a clear path to him and nothing stopping it from charging and tearing into him, but it just watched him.  That’s when Raegith realized that it was not waiting for the first opportunity to kill him; it was waiting for Raegith to collapse.

The cat had probably never seen something like him before and did not want to risk injury openly attacking something so strange.  Unlike a mindless night beast, this predator was smart and cautious.  It kept the pressure on Raegith, not allowing him a moment’s peace, always pushing him onward.  Eventually, Raegith would succumb to dehydration
or exhaustion and slip, falling off a rock or breaking a leg.  Then the cat would take it’s time, teasing the lines of his defenses until it got through.  Then it would rip his throat open and no one would ever see him again.

“Enough!” Raegith howled at the beast.  His frustration was peaking, as the predator would not even allow him a moment to close his eyes and slow his breathing, much less eat or drink anything. 
“Stop being such a coward and come for me, already!”

Raegith reached the bottom of the mountain on the fifth day after spending the entire night awake inside the small space between two boulders.
  The beast had finally disappeared for a time and Raegith took advantage of its absence.  He spent some time below, among the thickets and rigid stalks of the oak-like mushrooms, then he climbed back up onto the mountain.

When the cat finally found him again, he was lying in place, screaming over his injured leg
.  Just as the beast had planned, he had slipped and hurt himself and as the cat approached him, all he could do was edge his back up against the heavy rock behind him and wait for his hunter to get close enough.

The cat stalked slowly towards him, its yellow eyes searching him for any dangerous weapons or defense mechanisms.  It kept its discerning eyes on him during the entire approach, but it should have been watching the snowy ground below it as well or it might have noticed the divot Raegith put a few yards in front of him and right in the cat’s path.

As soon as the predator’s face was over the divot, Raegith dug his heels into the ground and pushed his back hard into the rock behind him, knocking it over the ledge and down the cliff.  A thick vine popped up out of the snow it was buried under and the cat dropped down into a defensive crouch, uncertain of what was happening.  The snow around the cat shifted quickly as a circle shrunk around its paws.  The vine slid against the knot as soon as it hit the cat’s legs and cinched inwards.  The cat was able to get three of its legs in the air, but one of its hind legs was not quick enough and when the vine went taught the big animal was yanked sideways into the snow and zipping toward Raegith. 

It tried to dig in; to stop itself from following the rock over the cliff, but there was no purchase for its claws in the fresh snow.  It turned and swiped as it closed in on Raegith, but he was quick enough to lean back and the massive paw passed over his face as the beast was pulled over the edge.

Raegith laid back into the snow and listened to the yowling as his hunter fell for several seconds.  Then there was a hard impact followed quickly by a sound that was more crunchy-sounding and then silence.

“I
won’t be stopped... not by you… not by anything,” Raegith whispered to the mountain.

The cat was all tough muscle and gristle, but it was still food and Raegith was grateful for it.  He skinned the cat, but could not carry the heavy pelt with him and had to abandon it.  He did the best he could to clean out the stomach and use it to wrap up as much cooked meat as he could.  He also ripped one of the long tusks from its jaw and kept it with him before setting off toward the south under the expansive canopies of the tree-sized mushrooms.

It took two days for Raegith to find a way through the swamp he found within hours of setting off through the forest.  It was a quagmire in the valley of the mountain and the humidity was unreal.  After the first night he spent sweating through his clothes, he longed for the cold of the mountain.  He could not understand how the temperature could be so incredibly different in such a short distance.  His body did not adjust well and sickness took him, but he pushed on.

In his feverish state, he saw Onyx.  One moment he was marching along the only dry path between bogs he could find, keeping his eye on this particularly greenish mushroom in the distance to keep himself straight and the next instant she was beside him.

“You’re going the wrong way,” she said.  She wore the
rags of her caste, but she was just as beautiful as the day he first saw her.  Her slender form glided atop the water of the bog on his left, not disturbing the surface at all.

“Are you… real?” Raegith asked, stopping.

“Of course not, sweet Raegith.”

“Why can’t you be?” he asked, his voice wavering in her presence.

“You know why, Raegith.  I’m still there, Raegith… beside that road.  No one has touched me; they all avoid my bones just as they avoided my body in life.  Everyone has avoided me, except you.”

“You’re just here to haunt me.”

“You still have not found a place for us, Raegith.  You have not carved a place for those like us, as you promised me.”

“I’m lost, Onyx.  I thought I was supposed to find this girl… to gain power… I don’t know where I’m going.  I might just lie down here with you.”

“I’m not real, Raegith.  You can’t spend the rest of your life here with me.  You have to find someone else.  Look for the firefly.”

Onyx began to fade into the mist as the night came upon him.  He made his way up the trail, wavering and staggering with sickness.  When the shrieks started, he thought they were just another hallucination until one of the shadows at his feet came alive and grabbed his leg.

It dragged him for a few seconds before he was able to right himself and kick free.  Suddenly they were everywhere in the dim light of dusk.  He turned and ran, flailing his arms to rid himself of the dark creatures. 

Tiny, emaciated bodies like those
of a malnourished baby and overly large heads, beaming with glowing yellow eyes and steely, saw-toothed grins; their black, leathery skin was loose and flapped as they squirmed.  They screamed like frightened children and chased after him.  They were not strong enough to drag him down to the ground, but they were able to scratch and tear at him.

He ran on, tossing the black, frenzied things off of his back and
screaming fanatically into the night.  They were innumerable and the more agitated they became, the quicker they scurried in their jerking, twitchy movements.  He was being overwhelmed and probably becoming even more lost in his panic.