The beating rush of great batwings surged up behind them, shattering Gonji’s reverie. All in the party craned their necks and fought their panicked steeds into control as the wyvern soared by. Its shrill cry echoed through the foothills as it flapped toward the castle on its monstrous leathery wings, then orbited the walls in a slow, wide arc.
“Welcome, delegates,” Gonji said to the others, grinning nervously. The old fear was rekindled, the hatred for the beast and the fear of the loathsome death it carried in its glands and bowels. Gonji ground his teeth at the fleeting memory of his mad ride from its first strafing attack at the monastery.
Then he noticed that it still carried the broken shaft of his arrow in its belly, and his eyes narrowed. He nodded and patted Tora to calm him. Round one was the wyvern’s; round two had been his. He wondered again why it hadn’t fried him when it had alighted behind him with devilish stealth that night and only hoped that it wouldn’t recognize him today and finish the job.
“All right, the king awaits,” Julian called back to them. “Let’s go!”
The road steepened and the surrounding terrain grew rockier as they neared the castle. They swung left and right through hillocks and delves and craggy outcrops of granite or shale, now and again losing sight of all but the tallest towers of the fortress.
Then they emerged onto a flat table of land, the castle yet a kilometer distant, and took in a sight that set their stomachs churning:
“Misericordia!” Milorad cried.
“Great God in heaven!” Flavio gasped, reining in.
The stench was stultifying.
Bodies of Baron Rorka’s soldiers, the castle defenders, had been heaped into a shallow common grave to the east of the road. The grave was rimmed by crucified forms hanging on leaning gibbets. A party of mercenaries, their faces covered by bandannas so that only their eyes could be seen squinting out from under chapeaus and helms, was toppling the crucified corpses into the grave. Oil was hauled to the grave in buckets and sloshed over the piled liches, while one man readied a torch for the funeral pyre. Judging by the condition of the bodies—some already bursting with corruption—they were none too soon in getting around to the grisly task.
They pushed on, each man casting a last ambivalent glance at the wretched charnel scene.
Just before the final rise to the outer bailey, the castle road became paved again with cobblestones, and they clattered up a sparsely-treed tor to be greeted by the spectacle of Castle Lenska’s dwarfing facade.
Gonji’s eyes were alight with anticipation, and he clenched his teeth to suppress his undignified thrill. “An aerie on a wind-lashed precipice,” he had heard it called, and it lived up to its reputation. Swirling mountain winds churned about the jagged peak they had surmounted, tugging at their clothes and flapping the column’s pennons. Atop the central keep’s spires, Klann’s banners fluttered wildly. But for the road they traversed, the castle was unapproachable to horses or siege engines. It rose from a depression in the crag on the south and west and backed against a steep incline on the east and north sides. Attack via the latter two directions was out of the question: The slopes were all shale and scrub and bramble, the rushing river rapids at their base, and foot-soldiers scrabbling up their uncertain purchase were target game for the archers on the battlements. On the south and west sides, rocks had been heaped so that besiegers would be forced to mount them, again becoming easy targets, the prize for survival being a plunge into the wide moat that gleamed with oily scum from the southeast corner to the northwest.
They rode past lines of wagons and staring troopers and finally rumbled over the drawbridge and through the raised portcullis of the barbican, the outer gate. A squad of Llorm saluted Julian and the Llorm captain at the head of the column. Gonji began calculating troop strength and committing the castle’s defensive deployment to memory when the bellowing roar echoed from around the corner on their left.
Gonji’s hand shot to the hilt of the Sagami in reaction to the flaring of his spine. From beyond the southwest drum tower in the outer ward came another awesome bellow of rage, this time mixed with hoofbeats and slapping footfalls—then laughter, both from the approaching clamor and from the escort.
Three mercenaries with pole-arms, only one on horseback, tore around the base of the tower toward them, peering back over their shoulders with a curious mixture of terror and mirth. The hulking shadow came fast behind them, then the monstrous bulk that tumbled head over heels with a resounding thud that boomed dully in the ward. Soldiers on the ramparts laughed and pointed, but the delegation from Vedun could only stare in shock. For here was their first glimpse of Tumo, Mord’s cretin giant.
“Cholera,” Gonji whispered hoarsely, still gripping the Sagami’s hilt.
The giant pushed himself aright on short stubby legs the thickness of barrels at the thighs. At full height he must have been nearly a rod, but it was difficult to judge because of his stooped, apelike posture. Hairy arms like cannon barrels hung to his knobby knees, which were coarse and callused like the knuckles on his ale-cask fists.
He leaned forward on a fist and peered around him dimly with a face out of a child’s nightmare. Then he lurched toward the mounted party on all fours like a gorilla. The horses that were unused to the bestial apparition began at once to demivolte and sidestep, some curvetting and jostling their riders, neighing and snorting nervously. The three mercenaries who had tormented the giant had split up, one rider and one footman now angling toward Julian soberly and penitently, while the other foot-soldier crept backwards along the middle bailey wall. Tumo caught sight of him and made an idiotic caterwauling cry, pushing toward him with a vengeance.
The mercenary screamed as Tumo cornered him, roaring through his yawning, flaccid mouth. The man broke from the wall, but the giant batted him back with a gnarled hand. He hit the wall, breath gushing from his lungs. Tumo tapped him again with a short open-handed blow that knocked him on his side.
“Tumo!” Julian cried out, then said something to the giant in an unknown language. The great beast looked to the captain, bellowed once more at the mercenary, then lumbered over to the delegation party.
A free companion’s horse bucked and threw its rider over. It was all the Vedunian party could do to keep their mounts in line. Even Tora, who had seen his share of the unnatural, tossed fretfully under Gonji.
Tumo stopped a short distance from them upon Julian’s command. The cretin giant stood erect on his massive bowed legs and regarded them vapidly.
“This is Tumo,” Julian said with amusement over the noise of the whinnying steeds. “Tumo is one of our...deterrents.”
Gonji relaxed his grip on the Sagami as the captain remonstrated with the soldiers who had been prodding the giant into his rage. The samurai could see the disheartening effect Tumo had on the others. The chord it struck in the human heart was difficult to define in all its terrifying complexity, for its appearance had been well designed by whatever dark power had formed it: Slavering lips and grinding splay teeth were continually worked at by an overlong red tongue. The face was broad and squat at the base, the skull so small as to be almost pointed. The giant’s brow lay low and heavy over dim, angular eyes. His nose was no more than a tiny stub with pinpoint nostrils. The mouth was the focus of the monster’s face. Its body was a great mass of rolling layers of blubber; its weight beggared the imagination. It was naked and hairless, but for knotty tufts on its head and arms and genitals. The overall impression was of some unholy mutation of an idiot child, a perverse mockery of human misery that caused one to flinch in terror and repugnance.
Gonji recalled that Jocko and Jacob Neriah both had spoken of a giant traveling with this army. He had been hoping the tales were exaggerated. Then he remembered the words of the drunken soldier at the inn: Hey, Cap’n, he reminds me o’ Tumo.... He felt the anger over the insult working up inside him.
“Tumo will be feasting tonight, too, only he likes his meat raw, don’t you, Tumo?” Julian said portentously. The giant ground out a few subhuman syllables that sounded like reproductions of the captain’s speech. Milorad shuddered