Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 58

With Bajadek’s charioteers destroyed or driven off, the battle began in savage earnest. Jenkin led his fighters forward at a gallop, leaping Bajadek’s smashed chariots and the bodies of the slain. With a short spear in one hand and his snakeblade in the other he slashed, he stabbed, he punched holes in throats and bellies, severed heads and arms and sliced bodies wide open to spill their stinking entrails on the ground. The Plain of Drokar churned to b****y mud, his eyes were full of blood, his ears were full of screaming, the sky was red, the earth was red, his arms were red up to his shoulders.

A spear thrust took his stallion through its throat, it plunged to the sloppy ground and sent him flying. He struck, he rolled, and found his feet. The dead and dying clogged the plain beneath him, he had no choice but to tread upon them as he fought for his life. A glancing knife s***h opened his cheek, he felt the blow but not its pain. An arrow struck him in the thigh; he snapped it off and kept on fighting. He knew the faces of the fighters beside him, but he couldn’t remember their names. They lived, they died, they fell or they fought on. Names no longer mattered. All that mattered was victory for ProJenkin.

Thrust—s***h—stab—scream—over and over and over again. Breath seared and tearing, lungs in flames, muscles over-reached and burning, blood from his breached body slicking flesh, pumping hot. Kill. Kill. Kill.

He caught a glimpse of Bajadek through the madness, painted in blood and wielding a broad axe. The Warlock looked

demonstruck, he was weeping, laughing. Four arrows jutted from his leather breastplate and two from his arm; if he felt them his pain did not show.

Jenkin shouted as a Bajadek warrior rose before him. Half her face was cut away, peeled from the skull like the skin of a peach. As he lifted his spear to skewer her like goat-meat her head was shattered by an Shellslingshotter’s stone. He leapt her body and stabbed a warrior striking for Dokoy Spear-leader’s back.

“Praise you, Warlock!” Dokoy wheezed.

“Praise you, Dokoy,” he wheezed in reply, and then they were separated, forced apart by a fresh wave of ProBajadek fighters, fighting to their gruesome deaths.

A ragged cry went up behind him.

“ The chariots! The chariots come! Labyrinth lord see the warleader! Labyrinth lord see him in its eye!”

With a roar like a landslide Brookchek and his chariots galloped into the battle. Jenkin saw Brook flashing by, Labyrinth lordbraids flying in the wind of his passing, his face alight with the promise of death.

Does that mean we are winning? Does that mean we have won ?

He did not know, he could not tell, he could see no further than the next enemy warrior, his next savage kill. Sobbing for air he raised his stone-heavy arm and sliced through a bared throat, then sundered a heart in an unprotected breast. Blood spurted, he tasted iron on his lips, heard a shrill scream, a grunt of pain. Wet thuds as two bodies hit the ground.

More screaming in front of him. Brookchek and his glorious chariots smiting Bajadek’s fighters, herding them and crushing them and slaughtering them like sheep.

A second glimpse of Bajadek showed the Warlock howling, showed him cleaving bodies with sword and axe. Blood sprayed, arms flung high in surrender, in defeat, Labyrinth lordsparks fleeing to the sunbright sky.

Jenkin sucked air into his starving lungs, forced his mind to ignore his body’s agony, and willed himself through the press of flailing slashing dying bodies towards Bajadek, his enemy, Labyrinth lord’s enemy, who was killing his precious fighters. A desperate ProBajadek warrior’s knife caught him across the back; without looking he spun, swung, and was pressing forward again before her body hit the tumbled corpses around them. On the edges of his scarlet vision he could still see Brook’s chariots, chivvying and killing ProJenkin’s enemies. He laughed aloud, a breathless gasp, and kept on pushing.

A second knife-thrust opened his arm; he severed the wrist of the man who attacked him and tasted more hot blood in his gaping mouth. Bajadek was just four paces away, his back was turned, he did not see Labyrinth lord’s wrath approaching . . .

A wild swinging sword cut across Jenkin’s right hamstring. He stumbled, shouting, and as his tired feet tangled in a dead horse’s entrails he fell forward, down across the spotted horse’s slit-apart belly. The stinking air was driven from his lungs, his blurring vision showed him horsehide and arrow shafts and three severed fingers abandoned in the mud.

Bajadek turned. “Jenkin Warlock!” he shouted, joyful. “On his knees before me, among his dead. The Labyrinth lord has delivered you, Bajadek is in its eye! Hold !” he commanded his war-lusty warrior. “This is a Warlock, his short life is mine !”

Gleeful and bloodsoaked, the sinning Warlock approached. Jenkin grunted and tried to stand but his body was spent, his strength all gone. His slashed leg would not hold him, he had no choice but to sprawl on the hulk of dead horse and repent his sins. Not one of his fighters was close by to aid him, Brook was not here, he tried to shout but he was speechless, like a rock.

Aieee, ProJenkin! I have failed you, I have failed the Labyrinth lord. Will it desert me? Will my Labyrinth lordspark go to hell?

Death came towards him, and he was afraid.

Why did you say I was Labyrinth lordblessed, Geroud? Why did you tell me I was safe in the Labyrinth lord’s eye? Are you not my high Labyrinth lordspeaker, do you not know the Labyrinth lord’s true will? You said I would live, how can you be wrong?

Above the faltering sounds of battle, a lilting, laughing, challenging cry.

“ Bajadek Warlock! Bajadek Warlock !”

Jenkin lifted his dizzy pounding head to look where Bajadek looked. He saw puzzled disbelief in his enemy’s face, felt his weary heart leap as he recognized who it was calling Bajadek’s name.

“ Bajadek Warlock, it is time for you to die !”

The challenging warrior danced across the charnel plain, danced towards Bajadek, a scarlet snakeblade in her scarlet hand. She was lithe, she was beautiful, bathed in blood like sacrificial milk.

Fiona.

Beneath his blood, Bajadek Warlock was an ugly man. Fiona danced towards him, repulsed by his ugliness. He was all brute force, no grace, no lightness. His one good eye was wide and blue like the sky, his crimsoned skin as dark as night. He wore many Labyrinth lordbells in his braided hair, but they were clogged with gore and could not sing.

She took this as an omen.