Worms of the Earth - Robert E. Howard (best novels for beginners txt) 📗

Chapter Five

The were-woman turned swiftly as Bran approached her door. Her

slant eyes widened.

 

“You! And alive! And sane!”

 

“I have been into Hell and I have returned,” he growled. “What is

more, I have that which I sought.”

 

“The Black Stone?” she cried. “You really dared steal it? Where is

it?”

 

“No matter; but last night my stallion screamed in his stall and I

heard something crunch beneath his thundering hoofs which was not the

wall of the stable—and there was blood on his hoofs when I came to

see, and blood on the floor of the stall. And I have heard stealthy

sounds in the night, and noises beneath my dirt floor, as if worms

burrowed deep in the earth. They know I have stolen their Stone. Have

you betrayed me?”

 

She shook her head.

 

“I keep your secret; they do not need my word to know you. The

farther they have retreated from the world of men, the greater have

grown their powers in other uncanny ways. Some dawn your hut will

stand empty and if men dare investigate they will find nothing—except

crumbling bits of earth on the dirt floor.”

 

Bran smiled terribly.

 

“I have not planned and toiled thus far to fall prey to the talons

of vermin. If They strike me down in the night, They will never know

what became of their idol—or whatever it be to Them. I would speak

with Them.”

 

“Dare you come with me and meet them in the night?” she asked.

 

“Thunder of all gods!” he snarled. “Who are you to ask me if I

dare? Lead me to Them and let me bargain for a vengeance this night.

The hour of retribution draws nigh. This day I saw silvered helmets

and bright shields gleam across the fens—the new commander has

arrived at the Tower of Trajan and Caius Camillus has marched to the

Wall.”

 

That night the king went across the dark desolation of the moors

with the silent were-woman. The night was thick and still as if the

land lay in ancient slumber. The stars blinked vaguely, mere points of

red struggling through the unbreathing gloom. Their gleam was dimmer

than the glitter in the eyes of the woman who glided beside the king.

Strange thoughts shook Bran, vague, titanic, primeval. Tonight

ancestral linkings with these slumbering fens stirred in his soul and

troubled him with the phantasmal, eon-veiled shapes of monstrous

dreams. The vast age of his race was borne upon him; where now he

walked an outlaw and an alien, dark-eyed kings in whose mold he was

cast had reigned in old times. The Celtic and Roman invaders were as

strangers to this ancient isle beside his people. Yet his race

likewise had been invaders, and there was an older race than his—a

race whose beginnings lay lost and hidden back beyond the dark

oblivion of antiquity.

 

Ahead of them loomed a low range of hills, which formed the

easternmost extremity of those straying chains which far away climbed

at last to the mountains of Wales. The woman led the way up what might

have been a sheep-path, and halted before a wide black gaping cave.

 

“A door to those you seek, oh king!” her laughter rang hateful in

the gloom. “Dare ye enter?”

 

His fingers closed in her tangled locks and he shook her

viciously.

 

“Ask me but once more if I dare,” he grated, “and your head and

shoulders part company! Lead on.”

 

Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom. They passed into the

cave and Bran struck flint and steel. The flicker of the tinder showed

him a wide dusty cavern, on the roof of which hung clusters of bats.

Lighting a torch, he lifted it and scanned the shadowy recesses,

seeing nothing but dust and emptiness.

 

“Where are They?” he growled.

 

She beckoned him to the back of the cave and leaned against the

rough wall, as if casually. But the king’s keen eyes caught the motion

of her hand pressing hard against a projecting ledge. He recoiled as a

round black well gaped suddenly at his feet. Again her laughter

slashed him like a keen silver knife. He held the torch to the opening

and again saw small worn steps leading down.

 

“They do not need those steps,” said Atla. “Once they did, before

your people drove them into the darkness. But you will need them.”

 

She thrust the torch into a niche above the well; it shed a faint

red light into the darkness below. She gestured into the well and Bran

loosened his sword and stepped into the shaft. As he went down into

the mystery of the darkness, the light was blotted out above him, and

he thought for an instant Atla had covered the opening again. Then he

realized that she was descending after him.

 

The descent was not a long one. Abruptly Bran felt his feet on a

solid floor. Atla swung down beside him and stood in the dim circle of

light that drifted down the shaft. Bran could not see the limits of

the place into which he had come.

 

“Many caves in these hills,” said Atla, her voice sounding small

and strangely brittle in the vastness, “are but doors to greater caves

which lie beneath, even as a man’s words and deeds are but small

indications of the dark caverns of murky thought lying behind and

beneath.”

 

And now Bran was aware of movement in the gloom. The darkness was

filled with stealthy noises not like those made by any human foot.

Abruptly sparks began to flash and float in the blackness, like

flickering fireflies. Closer they came until they girdled him in a

wide half-moon. And beyond the ring gleamed other sparks, a solid sea

of them, fading away in the gloom until the farthest were mere tiny

pin-points of light. And Bran knew they were the slanted eyes of the

beings who had come upon him in such numbers that his brain reeled at

the contemplation—and at the vastness of the cavern.

 

Now that he faced his ancient foes, Bran knew no fear. He felt the

waves of terrible menace emanating from them, the grisly hate, the

inhuman threat to body, mind and soul. More than a member of a less

ancient race, he realized the horror of his position, but he did not

fear, though he confronted the ultimate Horror of the dreams and

legends of his race. His blood raced fiercely but it was with the hot

excitement of the hazard, not the drive of terror.

 

“They know you have the Stone, oh king,” said Atla, and though he

knew she feared, though he felt her physical efforts to control her

trembling limbs, there was no quiver of fright in her voice. “You are

in deadly peril; they know your breed of old—oh, they remember the

days when their ancestors were men! I can not save you; both of us

will die as no human has died for ten centuries. Speak to them, if you

will; they can understand your speech, though you may not understand

theirs. But it will avail not—you are human—and a Pict.”

 

Bran laughed and the closing ring of fire shrank back at the

savagery in his laughter. Drawing his sword with a soul-chilling rasp

of steel, he set his back against what he hoped was a solid stone

wall. Facing the glittering eyes with his sword gripped in his right

hand and his dirk in his left, he laughed as a blood-hungry wolf

snarls.

 

“Aye,” he growled, “I am a Pict, a son of those warriors who drove

your brutish ancestors before them like chaff before the storm!—who

flooded the land with your blood and heaped high your skulls for a

sacrifice to the Moon-Woman! You who fled of old before my race, dare

ye now snarl at your master? Roll on me like a flood now, if ye dare!

Before your viper fangs drink my life I will reap your multitudes like

ripened barley—of your severed heads will I build a tower and of your

mangled corpses will I rear up a wall! Dogs of the dark, vermin of

Hell, worms of the earth, rush in and try my steel! When Death finds

me in this dark cavern, your living will howl for the scores of your

dead and your Black Stone will be lost to you forever—for only I know

where it is hidden and not all the tortures of all the Hells can wring

the secret from my lips!”

 

Then followed a tense silence; Bran faced the fire-lit darkness,

tensed like a wolf at bay, waiting the charge; at his side the woman

cowered, her eyes ablaze. Then from the silent ring that hovered

beyond the dim torchlight rose a vague abhorrent murmur. Bran,

prepared as he was for anything, started. Gods, was that the speech of

creatures which had once been called men?

 

Atla straightened, listening intently. From her lips came the same

hideous soft sibilances, and Bran, though he had already known the

grisly secret of her being, knew that never again could he touch her

save with soul-shaken loathing.

 

She turned to him, a strange smile curving her red lips dimly in

the ghostly light.

 

“They fear you, oh king! By the black secrets of R’lyeh, who are

you that Hell itself quails before you? Not your steel, but the stark

ferocity of your soul has driven unused fear into their strange minds.

They will buy back the Black Stone at any price.”

 

“Good,” Bran sheathed his weapons. “They shall promise not to

molest you because of your aid of me. And,” his voice hummed like the

purr of a hunting tiger, “they shall deliver into my hands Titus

Sulla, governor of Eboracum, now commanding the Tower of Trajan. This

They can do—how, I know not. But I know that in the old days, when my

people warred with these Children of the Night, babes disappeared from

guarded huts and none saw the stealers come or go. Do They

understand?”

 

Again rose the low frightful sounds and Bran, who feared not their

wrath, shuddered at their voices.

 

“They understand,” said Atla. “Bring the Black Stone to Dagon’s

Ring tomorrow night when the earth is veiled with the blackness that

foreruns the dawn. Lay the Stone on the altar. There They will bring

Titus Sulla to you. Trust Them; They have