Had the bull-horned beastmen been the last wave of the enemy force that was
attempting to storm the storehouse, the battle to defend it would probably have
been won within a few more minutes—but they were only second-line forces,
little more than human battering-rams intended to sow confusion and gain space.
It was impossible to read expressions in their unhuman faces and horrid eyes,
but they fought more like automata than men, with dour purpose but no real
fervour.
The creatures that came after them were very different, far more frightening
and vastly more dangerous.
Even when they had all contrived to clamber up from the boats that had
brought them, the newcomers were no more than six in number, sent against a
company of defenders that still numbered nearly a hundred, but these were
monsters of a far more extravagant kind than any the defenders had seen before.
They were six-limbed, their hindquarters being reptilian, save for the fact
that they had massive stings like scorpions. Their forequarters had the merest
hint of humanity about the articulations of their arms, but these were clawed
like those of the horned beastmen. Their heads were insectile, with large
compound eyes, but their mouths were like circular sphincters from which huge
tentacular tongues extended like writhing snakes. They were huge, longer and
taller than horses.
These enemies, unlike their predecessors, were silent—which allowed
Matthias Vaedecker the opportunity to be heard again.
“Blademen fall back!” he was screaming. “Bowmen, shoot! Flood the fiends with
arrows! Now! Now!”
Reinmar had hardly had time to take note of the multifarious stink that had
permeated the storehouse during the earlier phases of the fight. His nose had
been numbed by the sharp odour of the burning chaff, and while he had been
panting with exertion he had been breathing through his mouth. The odour of the ichor
shed by the horned beastmen was far less sweet and cloying than the scent of
blood, and its malignity had undermined the disgust that normally attached to
other odours typical of mortal combat. Reinmar became briefly aware of that
obscene odiferous chorus now, though, because it was suddenly compounded and
swiftly overwhelmed by something infinitely sweeter—something which
immediately put him in mind of the shock he had experienced in the underworld
when the riot of the spilled wine of dreams had assaulted his nostrils.
That shock had been further compounded when he had sniffed the nectar from
which the wine of dreams was made—and so was this one. Reinmar felt as if he
had been struck in the chest by an invisible blade, and that something had
reached into his chest cavity to take a taloned grip upon his heart.
Vaedecker was still shouting at the men on the storehouse floor, commanding
them to retreat from the things he had called fiends. It seemed to Reinmar that
the order ought not to have been necessary, especially as the crossbowmen were
already making rapid inroads into their reserves of bolts, but it quickly became
obvious that not everyone was capable of obeying. The men who were closest to
the monsters moved towards them, not away, and not with any obvious aggressive
intent.
Reinmar realised, almost as if he were looking at himself with distant and
alien eyes, that he was among the company that was moving forward instead of
falling back. He understood well enough, as the cloying odour made his head
swim, what must be happening. Here was an animal perfume that was related to the
flowery nectar from which the wine of dreams was made: luxurious, entrancing,
instantly addictive. Its effects were immediate, although they might well turn
out to be transient, but anyone who breathed in enough of the scent would lose
their mind to it long enough to rush towards the open arms of the monsters,
there to await the ultimate untenderness.
As the captivated men moved helplessly forward, the six massive stings struck
out again and again, not striking at them but at those who came to help them and
drag them back. The clawed arms occasionally lashed out like skilful sabres, but
the serpentine tongues seemed equally avid and almost as dangerous. The strokes
administered by the fiends’ tongues were by no means violent—indeed, they
seemed lascivious in their delicacy—but they were effective nonetheless. Such
lickings did not seem to strike their targets dead but anyone who was touched by
the snaking tongues, however lightly, either fell unconscious or lurched stupidly
aside, apparently incapable of further intelligent action.
Reinmar wanted to shout to the men behind them that they should let him be
and save themselves, but it would have done no good. Sigurd was in service with
the Wieland family, and nothing in the world could have persuaded him to retreat
while Reinmar was in mortal danger. Sigurd grabbed Reinmar with one arm, while
the other dropped the staff and picked up a discarded half-pike.
Reinmar could not help struggling against the restraining arm, and he felt
his strength grow as he did so, as the strength of madmen was reputed to do—but Sigurd was a giant and he, when all was said and done, was still a boy. If
the monster’s magic was irresistible, so was Sigurd’s resolve, and Sigurd was
determined that the monster which had made Reinmar captive could not keep him.
As the sting lashed out, so did the half-pike, and it was the exoskeleton
supporting the sting that cracked and splintered.
The claws were already scything forward, and Sigurd had not time or space to
avoid them. He had to bring both his hands into play then, but as it released
Reinmar the giant’s arm spun him round like a top, sending him spinning and
sprawling to one side, unable to follow the imperative that had asserted itself
upon his mind.
The awful perfume still filled Reinmar’s head, refusing to let any impulse
form in his brain but a determination to throw himself at the monster, but the
fall jarred and bruised him, and knocked the breath out of his lungs, so that he
had no alternative but to lie there like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
In the meantime, Sigurd attacked the monster with all the fury of which he
was capable. One claw shattered, and the blade of the half-pike slashed through
the creature’s bulbous eye—but the remaining claw clamped itself upon Sigurd’s
neck like scissors, and squeezed with terrible force. A lesser man would have
been beheaded in a trice, but Sigurd’s neck was as sturdy as the rest of him, and he had a second or two to react. The blade of
the half-pike cut again, at the monster’s own neck.
It was the last stroke Sigurd made, but it had all the power of a conclusive
blow. As the giant’s windpipe was crushed and the arteries to either side of his
neck fountained blood, the loathsome creature that had killed him died in its
turn, its horrid head half-severed from its compound body. Reinmar had thought
that his inability to move was the worst of his utter subjection to the power of
the creature’s vile musk, but now he found that it was not. What was worse, by
far, was the alien emotion that exploded in his consciousness as he felt the
rush of the fiend’s exultation in the destruction of Sigurd—and,
simultaneously, the searing flash of Sigurd’s death-agony.
Like a cockroach deprived of its head the monster did not die immediately,
but raced forward like a runaway carriage—but it no longer had the power to do
any physical harm.
Alas, the power of its perfume was not so easily dissipated, and Reinmar felt
as if the shock of its death was running through him from top to toe like a slow
and turgid lightning bolt. The compulsion to hurl himself into the creature’s
gaping embrace was gone, but its absence only made his senses reel, and he had
to fight with all his mental might simply to remain conscious and to take stock
of what was happening within the storehouse.
Within two or three minutes, fifteen or twenty men had been killed or
disabled, while only one other attacker had fallen under the hail of crossbow
bolts. The bolts had momentum enough to pierce the creatures’ natural armour,
but whatever organs they struck within were not sufficiently vital to cause them
to fall.
“Spears!” Vaedecker was shouting. “Throw anything that comes to hand—but
stand clear! Stand clear, if you value your lives!”
Reinmar judged that Vaedecker’s own position was by no means remote enough,
and as the monsters fanned out and rushed forward they moved swiftly enough to
ensnare many of those who were trying to obey his order and move away from them.
In their hurry to escape, men were bumping into one another and stumbling over
fallen bodies. Some still tried to haul their victimised companions to safety,
but for every one who succeeded another was captivated.
Still the arrows struck home, three and four at a time, but still the
monsters did not fall.
Matthias Vaedecker picked up a spear, and hurled it with all his might at one
creature that was heading straight for him. It seemed a do-or-die move, for he
had to brace himself to do it, and the creature was scampering forward so
swiftly that he had to leave himself within range of its deadly perfume—but
the spear struck it squarely in what would have been its breast had that part of
its anatomy been human, and the point passed clean through to jut out behind.
Reinmar’s vision was blurring, but there was no mistaking the expression of
sheer joy on Vaedecker’s face. He had never seen a man so exultant. Remarkably,
it called forth an echo in Reinmar’s captive soul: a renewal of the sensation
that had flooded him when his subjection to the first fiend had forced him to
share in the ecstatic quality of its murderous delight.
Vaedecker’s spear-thrust had done more damage than even a creature of that
kind could take, and the monster collapsed—but it was not dead, and it
continued to exude its seductive secretion.
Vaedecker should have moved back, but instead he moved forward, helplessly
drawn. The exultation in his face collapsed into fear, with such astonishing
alacrity that Reinmar could not help wondering whether exultation was anything
more than terror in disguise. Reinmar wanted to get up, to race to the
sergeant’s aid no matter how foolish the move might be, but the moment he
managed to shift his arm slightly he was overwhelmed by the flood of pure
pleasure that drowned his mind all over again and made him helpless.
Had the monster not been hurt Vaedecker might have died immediately, for the
sting could have stabbed him—but the muscles controlling the creature’s sting
seemed to have lost their power, and its claws were also flat on the ground,
sabrelike no longer. All that remained to be faced was the writhing tongue,
lashing reflexively back and forth. Reinmar contrived, in spite of his
captivity, to fix his eyes on that tongue, and saw that Vaedecker would be
drenched by its loathsome saliva within a matter of seconds.
Again, Reinmar struggled to rise, fighting the drug that had laid him low. He
told himself that he had already tasted the wine of dreams, and had dreamed in
consequence, but that he was not its slave, and that the resistance he had so far exerted against the
wine must come to his aid now.
It did not.
It was left to one of Vaedecker’s own men to race forward, hurriedly but
purposefully. If his expression was any guide, he too felt a rush of pure joy as
he struck at the lashing tongue with his sword, severing it from the dilated
mouth and sending it writhing out of harm’s way, like a worm cut by the plough.
That stroke should have saved Vaedecker’s life. In a fairer world, it would
have—but there was one more monster yet to be struck down, and its sting was
still busy. The creature scrambled over the body of its fallen ally, and while
Vaedecker was still falling, unable to take control of his limbs, the point of
the sting hit him squarely in the face, slicing through his cheek and into his
jaw.
This time, mercifully, there was no echo in Reinmar’s own being; he was
allowed the freedom to be anguished as he saw his friend die.
The monster was immediately hit by half a dozen spears and arrows, and it
fell no more than ten seconds after its final victim, but Reinmar knew that
Vaedecker was finished, and would never rise again. The battle for the
storehouse might leave sixty or eighty survivors on Eilhart’s side, who would
surely reckon themselves heroes and victors, but neither Sigurd nor Vaedecker
would be among them—and that, to Reinmar, was defeat.
The entrancing perfume did not disappear when the sixth and last fiend fell,
but its subjective meaning underwent a sudden shift in Reinmar’s fugitive
consciousness, utter foulness replacing its seductive force so abruptly that he
retched helplessly. He tried yet again to raise himself up, but yet again he
failed. This time he lost his vision entirely, and with it any sense at all of
time or space. He did not fall unconscious, but he could not locate himself, in
the storehouse or within his own body. It was as if he had been snatched upwards
to a great height, from which the whole world would surely seem tiny, if only he
could see.
When sight of a sort came back, though, all he could see was Eilhart: Eilhart
in flames, falling into charred ruins as the heat surrounded him; Eilhart with
ogres and ghouls rampaging through its streets, the luckier fraction of its
population put to the sword; Eilhart reclaimed by leprous vegetation and slimy vermin, naught
but a scar on the land gathered about the stagnant marsh that had been the proud
terminus of the Schilder’s trade. It was mere illusion, of course, no more real
than that dream-castle in the clouds to which he had climbed after first tasting
the wine of dreams.
When he found his body again, it was staggering to its feet, with nothing in
its nostrils but the reek of blood and the stink of shit. He shook his head,
attempting to clear it, but his vision was still blurred and he could not see
where he ought to go, or what it was from which he needed to withdraw. For
several seconds he was quite helpless—and then he felt strong arms grab him
and draw him away.