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

Chapter 6

It was not long before sunset when Bran came again to the reed-grown marge of Dagon’s Mere. Casting cloak and sword-belt on the

ground, he stripped himself of his short leathern breeches. Then

gripping his naked dirk in his teeth, he went into the water with the

smooth ease of a diving seal. Swimming strongly, he gained the center

of the small lake, and turning, drove himself downward.

 

The mere was deeper than he had thought. It seemed he would never

reach the bottom, and when he did, his groping hands failed to find

what he sought. A roaring in his ears warned him and he swam to the

surface.

 

Gulping deep of the refreshing air, he dived again, and again his

quest was fruitless. A third time he sought the depth, and this time

his groping hands met a familiar object in the silt of the bottom.

Grasping it, he swam up to the surface.

 

The Stone was not particularly bulky, but it was heavy. He swam

leisurely, and suddenly was aware of a curious stir in the waters

about him which was not caused by his own exertions. Thrusting his

face below the surface, he tried to pierce the blue depths with his

eyes and thought to see a dim gigantic shadow hovering there.

 

He swam faster, not frightened, but wary. His feet struck the

shallows and he waded up on the shelving shore. Looking back he saw

the waters swirl and subside. He shook his head, swearing. He had

discounted the ancient legend which made Dagon’s Mere the lair of a

nameless water-monster, but now he had a feeling as if his escape had

been narrow. The time-worn myths of the ancient land were taking form

and coming to life before his eyes. What primeval shape lurked below

the surface of that treacherous mere, Bran could not guess, but he

felt that the fenmen had good reason for shunning the spot, after all.

 

Bran donned his garments, mounted the black stallion and rode

across the fens in the desolate crimson of the sunset’s afterglow,

with the Black Stone wrapped in his cloak. He rode, not to his hut,

but to the west, in the direction of the Tower of Trajan and the Ring

of Dagon. As he covered the miles that lay between, the red stars

winked out. Midnight passed him in the moonless night and still Bran

rode on. His heart was hot for his meeting with Titus Sulla. Atla had

gloated over the anticipation of watching the Roman writhe under

torture, but no such thought was in the Pict’s mind. The governor

should have his chance with weapons—with Bran’s own sword he should

face the Pictish king’s dirk, and live or die according to his

prowess. And though Sulla was famed throughout the provinces as a

swordsman, Bran felt no doubt as to the outcome.

 

Dagon’s Ring lay some distance from the Tower—a sullen circle of

tall gaunt stones planted upright, with a rough-hewn stone altar in

the center. The Romans looked on these menhirs with aversion; they

thought the Druids had reared them; but the Celts supposed Bran’s

people, the Picts, had planted them—and Bran well knew what hands

reared those grim monoliths in lost ages, though for what reasons, he

but dimly guessed.

 

The king did not ride straight to the Ring. He was consumed with

curiosity as to how his grim allies intended carrying out their

promise. That They could snatch Titus Sulla from the very midst of his

men, he felt sure, and he believed he knew how They would do it. He

felt the gnawings of a strange misgiving, as if he had tampered with

powers of unknown breadth and depth, and had loosed forces which he

could not control. Each time he remembered that reptilian murmur,

those slanted eyes of the night before, a cold breath passed over him.

They had been abhorrent enough when his people drove Them into the

caverns under the hills, ages ago; what had long centuries of

retrogression made of them? In their nighted, subterranean life, had

They retained any of the attributes of humanity at all?

 

Some instinct prompted him to ride toward the Tower. He knew he

was near; but for the thick darkness he could have plainly seen its

stark outline tusking the horizon. Even now he should be able to make

it out dimly. An obscure, shuddersome premonition shook him and he

spurred the stallion into swift canter.

 

And suddenly Bran staggered in his saddle as from a physical

impact, so stunning was the surprize of what met his gaze. The

impregnable Tower of Trajan was no more! Bran’s astounded gaze rested

on a gigantic pile of ruins—of shattered stone and crumbled granite,

from which jutted the jagged and splintered ends of broken beams. At

one corner of the tumbled heap one tower rose out of the waste of

crumpled masonry, and it leaned drunkenly as if its foundations had

been half-cut away.

 

Bran dismounted and walked forward, dazed by bewilderment. The

moat was filled in places by fallen stones and broken pieces of

mortared wall. He crossed over and came among the ruins. Where, he

knew, only a few hours before the flags had resounded to the martial

tramp of iron-clad feet, and the walls had echoed to the clang of

shields and the blast of the loud-throated trumpets, a horrific

silence reigned.

 

Almost under Bran’s feet, a broken shape writhed and groaned. The

king bent down to the legionary who lay in a sticky red pool of his

own blood. A single glance showed the Pict that the man, horribly

crushed and shattered, was dying.

 

Lifting the bloody head, Bran placed his flask to the pulped lips

and the Roman instinctively drank deep, gulping through splintered

teeth. In the dim starlight Bran saw his glazed eyes roll.

 

“The walls fell,” muttered the dying man. “They crashed down like

the skies falling on the day of doom. Ah Jove, the skies rained shards

of granite and hailstones of marble!”

 

“I have felt no earthquake shock,” Bran scowled, puzzled.

 

“It was no earthquake,” muttered the Roman. “Before last dawn it

began, the faint dim scratching and clawing far below the earth. We of

the guard heard it—like rats burrowing, or like worms hollowing out

the earth. Titus laughed at us, but all day long we heard it. Then at

midnight the Tower quivered and seemed to settle—as if the

foundations were being dug away—”

 

A shudder shook Bran Mak Morn. The worms of the earth! Thousands

of vermin digging like moles far below the castle, burrowing away the

foundations—gods, the land must be honeycombed with tunnels and

caverns—these creatures were even less human than he had thought—

what ghastly shapes of darkness had he invoked to his aid?

 

“What of Titus Sulla?” he asked, again holding the flask to the

legionary’s lips; in that moment the dying Roman seemed to him almost

like a brother.

 

“Even as the Tower shuddered we heard a fearful scream from the

governor’s chamber,” muttered the soldier. “We rushed there—as we

broke down the door we heard his shrieks—they seemed to recede—into

the bowels of the earth! We rushed in; the chamber was empty. His

bloodstained sword lay on the floor; in the stone flags of the floor a

black hole gaped. Then—the—towers—reeled—the—roof—broke;—

through—a—storm—of—crashing—walls—I—crawled—”

 

A strong convulsion shook the broken figure.

 

“Lay me down, friend,” whispered the Roman. “I die.”

 

He had ceased to breathe before Bran could comply. The Pict rose,

mechanically cleansing his hands. He hastened from the spot, and as he

galloped over the darkened fens, the weight of the accursed Black

Stone under his cloak was as the weight of a foul nightmare on a

mortal breast.

 

As he approached the Ring, he saw an eery glow within, so that the

gaunt stones stood etched like the ribs of a skeleton in which a

witch-fire burns. The stallion snorted and reared as Bran tied him to

one of the menhirs. Carrying the Stone he strode into the grisly

circle and saw Atla standing beside the altar, one hand on her hip,

her sinuous body swaying in a serpentine manner. The altar glowed all

over with ghastly light and Bran knew someone, probably Atla, had

rubbed it with phosphorus from some dank swamp or quagmire.

 

He strode forward and whipping his cloak from about the Stone,

flung the accursed thing on to the altar.

 

“I have fulfilled my part of the contract,” he growled.

 

“And They, theirs,” she retorted. “Look!—They come!”

 

He wheeled, his hand instinctively dropping to his sword. Outside

the Ring the great stallion screamed savagely and reared against his

tether. The night wind moaned through the waving grass and an

abhorrent soft hissing mingled with it. Between the menhirs flowed a

dark tide of shadows, unstable and chaotic. The Ring filled with

glittering eyes which hovered beyond the dim illusive circle of

illumination cast by the phosphorescent altar. Somewhere in the

darkness a human voice tittered and gibbered idiotically. Bran

stiffened, the shadows of a horror clawing at his soul.

 

He strained his eyes, trying to make out the shapes of those who

ringed him. But he glimpsed only billowing masses of shadow which

heaved and writhed and squirmed with almost fluid consistency.

 

“Let them make good their bargain!” he exclaimed angrily.

 

“Then see, oh king!” cried Atla in a voice of piercing mockery.

 

There was a stir, a seething in the writhing shadows, and from the

darkness crept, like a four-legged animal, a human shape that fell

down and groveled at Bran’s feet and writhed and mowed, and lifting a

death’s-head, howled like a dying dog. In the ghastly light, Bran,

soul-shaken, saw the blank glassy eyes, the bloodless features, the

loose, writhing, froth-covered lips of sheer lunacy—gods, was this

Titus Sulla, the proud lord of life and death in Eboracum’s proud

city?

 

Bran bared his sword.

 

“I had thought to give this stroke in vengeance,” he said

somberly. “I give it in mercy—Vale Cosar!”

 

The steel flashed in the eery light and Sulla’s head rolled to the

foot of the glowing altar, where it lay staring up at the shadowed

sky.

 

“They harmed him not!” Atla’s hateful laugh slashed the sick

silence. “It was what he saw and came to know that broke his brain!

Like all his heavy-footed race, he knew nothing of the secrets of this

ancient land. This night he has been dragged through the deepest pits

of Hell, where even you might have blenched!”