The Serpent Kings, Page 2

  Donavan opened his eyes, coming back to himself and his situation. He waited for the rocks pounding his flesh, but they did not come. The voices had grown quiet. In fact, now that he listened, the whole village had become eerily still. He lifted his head, but did not see anyone standing around him as they had been only a moment before.

  Feeling the back of his head with his hand, Donavan came away with congealed blood on his fingers. The bleeding had already stopped. Still, he could feel a sizeable knot where he’d been struck.

  He moved, getting his hands and knees under him. Donavan could feel bruises all over his body. His jaw was still hurting. He hoped it wasn’t broken where the man had punched him. Rocks of various sizes lay around him in the street along with broken clods of dirt.

  Donavan raised his head, noticing the sky for the first time. The sun had been high overhead during his preaching. Now, it was hovering just above one of the distant mountains in the west. Dusk was approaching. Soon the sun would be down completely. Had he really been unconscious for hours?

  Villagers should have been quite busy right now, trying to complete the day’s tasks and preparing for the evening meal before darkness swept across the land. Donavan stood to his feet. The only thing active right now was a steady breeze blowing dust and light debris down the streets of the little town.

  Perhaps the citizens of the village had already gone indoors leaving him for dead out in the street. It wasn’t a comforting thought, or an unexpected one. After all, Ezekiah had been right about the response the preachers would experience as they traveled throughout the kingdom spreading the good news.

  Donavan brushed at some of the dirt encrusting his shirt and jacket. The best thing he could do at this point was probably to move on. No one would likely grant him a room after so warm a reception. Still, the thought of trying to travel through the wilderness toward the next town at this late hour was not a very promising prospect.

  A lamp was burning inside the local general store. Donavan could still feel the coin pouch hidden beneath his belt. At least the villagers hadn’t robbed him. He began walking across the street toward the store. He might at least purchase some provisions for his journey before setting off in search of a place to make camp for the night.

  As he approached the store, Donavan noticed that several of the small square panes making up the whole front window had been smashed. There was no one stirring within, as far as he could tell from the street. A wagon with no horse sat in front of the store. However, when Donavan came upon it, he noticed that part of a torn harness was lying before it in a pool of blood that trailed away from the wagon down the damp street.

  Donavan’s eyes followed the trail until he spotted the dark figure of a horse lying on its side near the edge of town. It was not moving. No driver could be found. Fear crawled up Donavan’s spine. What had happened while he was unconscious in the street? Had the angry group gone on some bloodthirsty rampage?

  He stepped over the crimson trail, coming to the door of the general store. It was hanging on one hinge half open. Donavan pushed past it, trying to make as little noise as possible. He crept inside. His feet crunched on the broken glass lying on the dusty wooden floor. He paused, grimacing. But no one appeared to have noticed. Nothing moved. He noticed that some of the goods had been knocked off the shelves. Sacks of grain had been torn open, spilling their contents out onto the floor. A shelf near the back wall had been overturned.

  He spotted a bloody handprint on the wall behind the counter. The stain was smeared as though the hand that had made it were sliding downward. Donavan tiptoed to the counter and looked behind it. There, lying on the floor was the body of the shop keeper. His neck was twisted almost completely around and his abdomen had been torn open—not at all like a blade had done the work.

  This looked like some beast had gotten to him without care for the carnage it wrought. Flies had begun to buzz around his open wound, and Donavan thought he might be sick if he didn’t get out of there immediately. He backed away from the counter holding his hand over his nose and mouth.

  As he started to turn for the door again, Donavan noticed something out of the corner of his eye. A man was standing at the rear of the store in the shadows looking at him. Donavan knew he had not been standing there before. “You there, do you know who did this to the shop keeper?” he asked the man.

  There was only a low gurgling sound, then the man shuffled forward a few steps, coming more into the light. Donavan had been about to ask again, but was horrified as the light revealed the man’s blood stained clothing. His nose and mouth were covered in fresh blood; not as though he’d been injured, but more like he had been feeding. He had the appearance of a man who drops his face into his plate, eating ravenously.

  Donavan caught sight of his eyes then. They were black as night even where the white sclera should have been, like two opals set into the man’s skull. Donavan realized he was trembling, barely containing his own fear. He wanted to run, but instinct told him it was unwise; like standing your ground with an angry dog, knowing that if you run it will think of you as prey and come after you.

  His eyes scanned the room. Donavan spotted farming implements and tools laid out on a table nearby. He looked back at the man who still hadn’t moved toward him. Donavan edged toward the table, letting his hands creep over it, taking hold of a hatchet in his left and a machete in his right.

  The bloody fiend had followed his movements over the table. His gaze returned to Donavan’s face as he straightened with his makeshift weapons in his hands. Even though he was armed now, Donavan was still terrified. The fiend grinned at him, as if smelling his fear in the air. It licked its lips hungrily and started toward him.

  Donavan backed away toward the awkward hanging door, crunching broken glass beneath his feet again. The fiend picked up speed, lumbering toward him despite being unarmed. The man raised his gore-stained hands, reaching for his next victim. Donavan turned, running through the half open door.

  He began to sprint away from the doorway when the fiend smashed through the remainder of the large front window. The creature slammed down upon Donavan, driving him to the street in a shower of broken glass. The machete fell from his hand, landing a few paces away in the dirt.

  The fiend kept Donavan’s hatchet-wielding hand at bay, scrabbling over him; its blood-streaked teeth bearing down upon his throat in an attempt to rip it out. Donavan was pushing with his feet, trying to reach the machete. He threw his weight one way then another, hoping to keep his neck and face away from the frothing gurgling mouth of the creature.

  The beastly man lunged for his throat as Donavan’s hand closed around the handle of the machete. He brought it forward desperately. The silver blade sank into the creature’s skull with a sickening thwack, like cutting into an unripe melon. The man moaned loudly, now straddling Donavan’s torso as he tried to remove the machete from his skull.

  Donavan was still holding onto the handle of the machete when the fiend finally got the blade out. But Donavan reached back and let the machete fly again. This time it landed in the softer flesh of the creature’s neck, biting better than halfway through with his first swing.

  The head bobbed sideways, teetering on the remaining muscle and sinew, and then the grisly man-thing fell away from him into the street. Donavan hoped severing the creature’s spinal cord might stop it. After all, legends said that the only way to kill a death walker was to sever the spinal cord, separating the creature’s tortured mind from the body it controls.

  Donavan kicked the twitching body away from him, rolling back to his feet with the machete at the ready. Death walkers were not technically dead. They could be killed; only it was usually very difficult. They ignored much of the injuries that would kill a normal person. The legends said they were created by the dragons; a punishment upon those who offended them. There were worse things than death.

  For these poor creatures death was a release from their torment. It was said that spirits haunted the
ir minds and took over their bodies; inhabiting the living. Insanity quickly resulted. They were driven into the wilderness, scavenging on carrion or whatever they could kill. It was unheard of that one should come into a town on a killing spree.

  The body stopped moving. Donavan’s heart stampeded inside his chest. He tried to calm his breathing, then turned to see if anyone had heard the commotion and had come running to investigate. Another death walker was standing down the road. What appeared to be entrails were dangling in its right hand, dripping onto the ground.

  Probably a fresh kill, Donavan thought. The creature was staring at him, much the same way the other death walker had been just before it attacked. This time he didn’t bother with easy movements. Donavan lunged for the hatchet, arming himself against what he knew was coming.

  Another walker appeared on the opposite side of the street, shuffling out of a home, dragging a small corpse by the hand. Donavan shuddered at the grisly sight. He was nearly frozen with fear. Three death walkers? Death walkers coming into a civilized area? What was happening?

  The dragons had never allowed such a thing before. The tormenting spirits that inhabited death walkers were supposed to be under their control, driving their victims away from society to wander in the wilderness alone. Donavan seemed to have found a pack of the creatures hunting together; killing men, women and children without any regard for the Serpent Kings’ authority.

  Another blood covered fiend wandered into the street behind the others. Three pairs of pitch black eyes stared at him, hungering for another victim. Donavan knew he couldn’t possibly take on two, let alone three, death walkers at once. No one could.

  He turned and ran in the opposite direction, heading north the way he had come from. With fresh prey in sight, the death walkers came running like a pack of hounds. They may have been gaunt with malnutrition and ravaged by disease in their flesh, but the spirits pressed them onward, energizing their sinewy frames with unnatural strength.

  Donavan turned his head, checking to see how close his pursuers were. They were running after him at different speeds; the last in line loping along with a bad leg. He turned back the way he was going and smashed right into a death walker who had appeared out of nowhere. It was a woman.

  Her skin was weathered and brown, her hair stringy and sand colored. Donavan’s momentum combined with the woman’s slight weight bowled her over in the street. He had tumbled one way, her another. Donavan was so startled and terrified that he managed to scrabble quickly back to his feet. If he remained on the ground even a moment, the horrifying ghouls would swoop down upon him, tearing him apart before he could get away.

  A wooden fence sprang into view as he ran toward the edge of the town. Another death walker was feeding upon the carcass of a dead horse, pulling its innards out onto the ground, gleefully taking its fill. Another pony was pacing near the backside of the fence, clearly terrified of sharing the fate of the slaughtered animal.

  Donavan came up with a plan as he reached the fence and climbed over. The feasting death walker had not even noticed him yet, still kneeling before the horse with its back to him. He ran upon the fiend before it could react, using the machete to slice the creatures head cleanly away from its shoulders.

  Leaping over the horse carcass, Donavan charged toward the other pony. He had neither bridle nor saddle, but Donavan had always been a good rider. The pony did not try to get away, instead appearing relieved that someone normal had come to help it get away. Donavan grabbed the mane trailing down the pony’s neck and swung himself up onto the beast’s back.

  Looking back, he found the death walkers coming over and under the fence. They ran at him as Donavan kicked his heels into the pony’s sides. The animal took off, directed by Donavan’s clutch of mane within his hand. He had dropped the hatchet, but kept the machete. Two of the male death walkers were knocked aside by the pony’s shoulders. Donavan struck a final blow to the female as she tried to flank him.

  The machete cleaved a hunk of skull away from her head, sending her tumbling into the horse manure littering the pen. Donavan didn’t look back. He urged the pony on toward the fence. At the last moment, they leaped as one over the top rung of the wooden fence, barely clearing it with the pony’s hind hooves.

  Horse and rider left the remaining death walkers in their wake, galloping away from the village at top speed. Donavan patted the pony’s neck, whispering a prayer of thanksgiving under his breath to Elithias. They had no food and no water, but they did have their lives. And both horse and rider were, in their own ways, grateful for that much.

  TOBIAS

  The first snow of the season had fallen a week ago, followed by another yesterday. Tobias tried unsuccessfully to blow vapor rings with his breath in the cold air. The scent of pine was everywhere in the forest bordering their village. Trees that had shed their foliage in autumn creaked under the weight of ice and snow.

  Tobias looked back at the sled attached to his shoulder harness. It was half full of pine logs. He was hungry and wanted to get home to their cabin where his sister, Anne, was cooking supper. The pleasant aroma could be discerned even out here in the woods mixed with all manner of food smells from the village.

  “Father?” Tobias called. His father had gone the rest of the way down the path and over the hill where another cache of logs had been cut and stacked between the trunks of two adjacent trees. Tobias was harnessed to the sled, but it was almost too heavy for him. Even at twelve-years-old he hadn’t grown as stout as some of the other boys he played with.

  There was no reply from his father after calling three times. He should have been able to hear him even beyond the hill. Something was wrong. Perhaps, he’d fallen on the ice. Tobias slid the harness over his head and let it drop. He looked at his father’s sword in its scabbard on the sled. He almost reached for it, but then decided against it. His father didn’t like him messing with it. “Next year, if you’re bigger,” his father had said. “I’ll allow you to train with the other boys in the village.”

  He turned from the sled and began his trek down the path winding its way through a patch of pines. Tobias stopped when he smelled something odd. He found scattered logs in the small clearing around the cache of firewood. Walking into the clearing a little further, he found blood upon the ground mixed with the snow. “Father?”

  He heard moaning nearby in answer to his cry. Tobias found his father lying half obscured by pine branches. The snow was bloody around his body. He looked up as Tobias knelt next to him, tears beginning to fall upon his cheeks. How could this be?

  “Father, what happened?”

  “Tobias?” His voice was weak.

  “Father, there’s so much blood. I don’t know what to do!”

  A roar erupted from the branches over his father’s body. Tobias looked up in terror as his father reached for him, trying to form one last instruction for his son. “Run!”

  Something snatched his father’s body back among the fir branches. Tobias screamed, backing away from the bloody drag trail in the snow. He scrabbled to his feet, slipping in the slush, falling, getting up again. Desperately he got his feet under him as the last anguished cries of his father died away in the brush behind him.

  Then, the body flew through the fir branches, smashing into Tobias. He fell under the two hundred pounds of his father’s dead weight. He tried to roll out from under the man, but wound up staring into the blood-streaked face of his father’s corpse. His cheek down to his neck had been torn open by a massive claw. Tobias screamed again. Blood was pouring out of the body onto him, soaking his clothing and the ground around him.

  From the firs a massive shadow rose, looming over him. The brown bear was one of the biggest Tobias had ever seen at nearly ten feet tall. The creature’s maw was matted with his father’s blood; foaming with rage. It padded down on all fours, coming toward Tobias as he struggled frantically to pry himself free from his father’s body.

  The bear stood over him, its wild eyes homing
in on the panicked boy. Tobias couldn’t stop himself from screaming, prompting the bear to roar its outrage yet again. It pounced down on him; paws pounding his father’s body to grind him into the icy earth. His scream was driven from his lungs as the bear added its weight to the body covering him.

  In its mounting anger, the bear swiped at Tobias, hitting his father’s body. Instantly, two hundred pounds was flung away by the bear’s paw. Tobias gasped for breath and took his last opportunity. As the body was flung aside, he rolled in the opposite direction, throwing a scoop of brittle ice and snow up into the bear’s muzzle.

  The bear turned its head, pawing the snow away in frustration. Tobias leaped away on all fours, driving his feet beneath him, gaining traction with his straining muscles by sheer force of will and the terror flooding his body with adrenaline. The bear realized its prey had taken flight and tromped after him in pursuit.

  Tobias launched himself down the path toward the sled full of firewood. His father’s sword was there. If only he could get to it, he might have some small chance of survival. He did not waste time looking over his shoulder for the bear. He could hear its heavy breathing as it plowed through the trees like a juggernaut coming after him.

  Hitting the end of the path, Tobias reached the sled. He scrambled over the pile of pine logs, wanting to keep the sled between him and his pursuer. Tobias grabbed the scabbard, but the strap was still lashed to the frame of the sled. The bear was already upon him.

  Frantically, he pulled the broadsword free from its sheath. It felt so heavy, but he had to lift it. Tobias strained to raise the sword, placing the point at the bear’s chest as it rose up on its hind legs to face him. He didn’t know exactly what to do now. At the very least, he wanted the sharp end toward the bear, keeping it at bay. Only the bear didn’t understand that concept.

  With lightning speed it batted him with a massive paw. Tobias, his sword and the sled full of firewood were knocked into the air. Tobias slammed into a snow bank that swallowed him almost completely, the sword spun wildly then plunked down blade first into the snowy earth, while the pine logs scattered before the overturned sled.

  Behind the angry bear, more bears appeared. Dozens of beasts padded around the place where Tobias had fallen. They sniffed at the firewood, the sword and Tobias lying unconscious half buried in the snow. They all caught the scent of food cooking on the wind. Stretching before them lay the village of Conroy with its many log cabins huddled in the meadow. Beyond that, about a mile away, the Laurel River wound its way down from the mountains, watering a lush valley where the villagers caught salmon and took their water. The bears left Tobias in the snow, disinterested in such a small thing. Sweeter smells lay ahead.