by Gustavo Bondoni
in Issue 145, February 2024
Where am I? Junglo thought as he woke. His head pounded and a memory of the previous night’s revelry brought images of luscious flesh, but mostly—and unsurprisingly—the remembrance of thirst, of the need to drink in order to forget and to let himself enjoy the excess around him.
Or, if not to enjoy it, at least to participate enough to fool people into thinking he was enjoying it.
“Ah, the beauty arises. Beguile me not with your dazzling charms!”
Junglo squinted at the speaker, trying to keep the pain in his head from interfering with his focus. A small figure dressed in little but a soiled leather loincloth and copious hair came slowly, blurrily, into view. “Renuk?” he asked hoarsely, the effort of speech making his ears ring. “Not so loud.”
The little old man laughed. Loudly.
Purposely loudly.
Anger pushed away some of the mental fog. “Old man, you’d better run.”
“No need. You can’t reach me.”
Junglo concentrated on focusing his eyes, on seeing what was around him. Slowly but surely, the world came into focus. He was in a cage whose front was made of iron bars, with a rock roof and side walls.
No. That wasn’t right. This cage was open on the back side. Trees grew in a forest just a few steps away. He could leave any time he wanted.
So was Renuk in the cage?
It didn’t look that way. Renuk appeared to be inside the Sorceress’ castle, in a corridor that ended at the wall with the bars.
“What’s happening?” Junglo asked.
“You were a bad boy last night,” the old man replied with a sigh. “Which is unfortunate. I liked you. I hoped you’d be too dumb to fall into temptation. But that Aria… I guess some temptation is too strong to resist.”
“What do you mean?” But flashes of sweaty bodies locked in the throes of deep, thrusting passion came to him. The face was Aria’s.
“I mean that the Sorceress doesn’t take kindly to her toys being seduced out from under her.” The old man laughed as if he’d said something terribly clever. “Or for toys that aren’t smart enough to stay away from other women. I suppose that’s what comes when you have so many muscles that there’s no room left for brains.”
“I was drunk,” he said.
“Which is probably why the Sorceress was merciful. You’re only going to die. What they were doing to Aria when I left… let’s just say you should be thankful for a nice, clean death, without being humiliated in front of hundreds of your former friends.”
Junglo turned to look behind him. “But I’m not dead. I can just walk away.”
The old man shook his head sadly. “This is the back door.”
“The…” Junglo’s blood froze. The Sorceress’ castle was once a fortress meant to keep at bay monsters from the days before time. It was essentially a huge wall that blocked an entire complex of valleys that ran between the mountains.
“You can’t send me out there.”
“I don’t get to decide,” Renuk said, tapping the bars. “Only the Sorceress has the key to this gate.”
“At least give me my sword.” Junglo looked down at his nakedness. “Or some clothes.”
“I would, except then the Sorceress would send me out there with you.” And he winked. “She said to tell you that the reason you don’t get a sword is that she wanted you to learn to be thankful with what you have. She says that life was quite kind with you, and that if you’d been content with that, you wouldn’t be in this position.” The man snickered. “I think she was referring to that sword there.” He pointed between Junglo’s legs.
“I understood that part,” Junglo responded flatly. He wasn’t in the mood for juvenile humor.
“My advice is that you get going. You really don’t want to be caught inside this little room when the ululants come sniffing around here. Well, not unless you want to die quickly.” Then, after a pause. “I don’t know if it matters to you, but I liked you. Good luck out there.”
The man was right. It was time to leave. Junglo grunted his farewell—along with promises of dire retribution for everyone in the castle—and sprinted out of the small space within the walls, into the forest beyond.
It was a brisk day. Autumn had well and truly taken hold and, already, the memories of the soft, wonderful summer spent int the castle and in the Sorceress’ arms were fading, to be replaced by the skills he’d learned surviving on his own in the dark forests to the south.
The first thing he did was to head for the trees. Being out in the open struck him as an excellent way to become monster food.
The trees were thin, scraggly. No branches grew below the level of his head, and no birds chirped or rustled in the branches above. Only the wind moving the leaves created any sound. The sound of lost souls whispering.
The fact that the trees were deeply scored with parallel lines was a disturbing discovery.
Junglo held still, listening. Monsters dangerous enough to cause the inhabitants to block off then entire mouth of a canyon wouldn’t be small things. At the very least, they’d be man-sized, since otherwise, they could slip between the bars of the gate.
“I bet they’re a lot bigger than a man,” he whispered to himself. He’d found that talking to himself when he was alone in empty wastelands was a good way to keep the memories at bay when no strong drink was at hand.
He spotted a fallen branch as thick as his wrist and almost as long as he was tall. It seemed to be recent, strong, without rot, so he picked it up and bent it.
Good enough. He began to pull the smaller branches off of the central one to form a spear-like staff.
“Now, let’s find a rock.”
That was an easy task. The valley ran between two vertical-sided grey mountains, and rocks came through the thin soil all around. He sat beside a boulder that was somewhat hidden from view and searched around its base until, half-covered with moss, he found a nice sharp shard.
Humming to himself, Junglo used the shard to carve his branch into a nice spearpoint.
Now, the trick was to avoid having to use it. Even the muscle-bound imbecile he’d pretended to be for the past two years knew that the easiest way to survive a fight was to avoid it altogether.
A long, piercing scream echoed through the valley. It rose and fell reminding him of a singer he’d once listened to in Harport.
In her case, however, the sound had been caused by the fact that one of the collection of thieves and murderers in the tavern had taken exception to her choice of songs and decided to pin her feet to the table with two daggers.
Much laughter had ensued when he lifted the woman’s skirts just far enough so the other men there could see what he’d done. And then, for reasons that had never been clear, a fight had broken out. It was, as far as Junglo remembered, quite an enjoyable fight.
The sound was answered by another call. A lower one.
A third joined in harmony.
And a fourth.
They seemed to be getting closer.
Junglo studied the nearest trees. They were climbable. Barely.
But would that help? Could the Ululants climb? He didn’t know. For all he knew, they were taller than the trees themselves, though the claw marks seemed to indicate that they weren’t. Just about as tall as two men, one standing on the other’s shoulders, was his guess.
Even if they couldn’t reach him up there, the trees were too far apart to jump from one to the next. He supposed that was because the soil over the rocky floor was too thin to support a dense forest of the kind he was used to. So if he climbed up there, he would be stuck until nearby Ululants moved on… which might be never, since he doubted they would abandon any warm prey that stumbled into this barren valley.
So he’d either need to stay well out of range, or he’d need to find them before they found him.
The valley didn’t seem wide enough to stay completely out of range; his best hope was to get right up against one of the walls and hope the monsters stuck to the center.
Junglo headed to the rocky walls. At some point during the day, he would need to address his lack of clothes: the cool air would be considerably less pleasant after night fell and the autumn cold moved in. The nights up near the mountains would kill a naked man no matter how much muscle he had for insulation.
That, however, would be a problem for later.
He sprinted across the open space between two stands of trees and then headed through the forest to where the walls rose vertically up into the sky. As the echoes of his footfalls went silent, he listened for sounds of pursuit or any noise that might indicate he’d been discovered.
Nothing.
Junglo made his way along the rocks, trying to keep as close as he could, but also searching the cliffs for a way out of the valley.
The stone walls were too smooth for climbing, as if the entire valley had been polished so that nothing could climb out.
He shuddered. The only way to do that was by expenditures of magic on a scale completely different from that practiced by the Sorceress whose charms he’d so recently enjoyed or any number of petty mages he’d threatened with his sword over the past year or two. A mage capable of molding this valley would simply have burned a man like Junglo from existence with a thought and a wave of his hands.
A branch snapped and he froze. The sound had come from behind him, so he turned slowly to see if anything was following.
He saw nothing but the offset trunks of trees and sparse vegetation. Admittedly, he couldn’t see very far before the trunks because—even though they were sparse—they appeared to be planted in such a way as to destroy his line of sight. All he thought he saw was a darker patch near the mountains.
He pressed himself against the rock.
And heard another snap. This one up ahead.
A rustle sounded almost simultaneously, and he turned his head towards it. That sound appeared to come from the center of the valley, in the bare patch.
Surrounded, he thought. But by what?
There was nothing in the trees around him.
Junglo sighed. The best way to survive was to avoid a fight. But sometimes fights couldn’t be avoided.
He pulled his spear into a vertical position, straightened from his crouch and walked into the open.
Then, with a screamed and incoherent battle cry, he charged forward, searching for something to stab.
For the first dozen steps, he saw nothing, and began to fear that, instead of frightening a nearby monster with his noise, he would just attract the attention of creatures farther away.
Then, after slaloming between two trees, he saw it.
“Oh,” he said as he came to a stop, slipping on a patch of moss and landing hard on his butt.
The moss saved his life as a tentacle, black as night, sliced through the air where his neck would have been. It connected solidly with a tree behind him, leaving a respectable gouge.
Junglo reacted immediately. He hadn’t survived in his role as barbarian brawler by freezing in a fight. When faced with overwhelming odds, his standing policy was to attack everything.
Without moving, he thrust his spear upward at the tentacle above him. The point of the pole penetrated the skin and burst out the other side, allowing him to bend the tentacle onto the ground. Then he stood on the branch and crushed the limb beneath him. Dark purple ichor oozed into the dirt.
A long vibrating scream tore through the forest.
He pulled the spear away and rolled to his left, where two trees that stood close together afforded a measure of cover. He stared at the thing he was fighting.
A chitinous lower body stood on six shiny black legs, each the width of his torso. Atop the legs a round armored body was flanked by two pincers busy pulling moss from the ground and throwing it into the center of the creature’s back. Junglo couldn’t see what happened to it there.
Had that been the extent of the monster, he wouldn’t have hesitated to try to attack it. He’d been in fights with overgrown insects and spiders before. The trick was to take down the legs before the pincers or stinger or claws or whatever got you.
He’d never seen an insect with a huge pulpy tentacular mass where its head should have been, though.
The creature ululated, a sound that—this close—made his knees weak and his bladder almost impossible to control.
Junglo rearranged his grip on the haft of his makeshift spear and watched the monster. It circled to his left and he saw that, among the writhing mass, two tentacles remained still.
So he circled to his right and focused on those. They weren’t smooth, like the one he’d crushed, but full of white lumps.
Eyes. Dozens and dozens of eyes.
The creature circled. The eyes watched.
Junglo circled the other way, keeping the distance between them constant.
“So. You didn’t expect me to hurt you, did you? Don’t you hate it when your food fights back?”
Soon, they’d turned so that he was facing the way he’d come from… which was the same direction in which the other creatures he’d heard were located.
Junglo turned and ran, dodging through the trees in the hope that the monster would find the going slow.
It was a false hope. Though at first, the sound of the creature seemed to get further away, after a few dozen paces, it began to catch up. Junglo listened intently and, when he was sure a tentacle would slam into him, he turned sharply toward the mountain, where he’d spotted a slight gradient caused by rock collapsing higher up.
The creature charged past, its enormous bulk—it was twice as tall as Junglo—made it unwieldy and kept it from turning fast enough. Nevertheless, one of its tentacles grazed his leg and sent him sprawling.
Junglo bounced to his feet. “You’ll have to do better than that, ugly,” he shouted back towards it.
He reached the pile of jagged, broken stones and, cursing the Sorceress for sending him out without shoes, began to climb as fast as he could. When he judged himself out of reach of the tentacles, he turned to survey the situation.
His head was about even with the tops of the trees, and the creature stood at the base of the fallen rock. Now, he could see where the creature had been stuffing the moss: its back had an enormous hole—a maw lined with rings of teeth—in the center of it. Its mouth.
Junglo sneered at it. “Not so tough now, are you?”
The creature put a leg on a rock at the bottom of the pile, gingerly testing it. Then, without warning it launched itself at the hill.
“Oh, fu—”
Junglo tried to skitter away, but he nearly fell onto his back, catching his breath as he balanced himself.
The monster had climbed up the bottommost rocks and its tentacles were nearly in range.
In desperation he launched his spear at the monster with all his might.
The branch wasn’t perfectly straight, and its flight was wobbly, but luckily for Junglo, the target was too big to miss. The spear landed right in the quivering mass from which the tentacles emerged, and lodged there, half-buried in the flesh.
It looked really, really small.
But the creature felt it. Another scream shook the valley, and he felt the loose rock beneath his feet vibrate with the ululations.
A tentacle grabbed his spear and pulled it away with an angry screech. Then, almost contemptuously, it threw the spear into the distance. It would have taken Junglo a dozen throws, one after the other from the previous landing spot, to match that careless toss.
Now the creature approached again, the two eye-tentacles watching him intently.
“I’m not going to make it, am I?” he said.
His conviction of forthcoming death was reinforced by the fact that three more of the monsters, only slightly smaller than the first, oozed out of the woods and stood, eye-tentacles gazing at the first creature, then up at Junglo before staring at the creature again. He had the sense that they were studying the terrain before deciding what to do.
He grinned. There was nothing like certain death to galvanize one. Even here, naked and alone, the gods would be watching.
Junglo looked up into the sky. The sun was unblinking, the stars unseen, but the curtain of the heavens would still be there.
He cursed the gods, from the greatest to the smallest, in detail. He told them that they were unworthy—in extremely graphic terms—and then he told them to watch what a real man could do.
If you’re going to go out, you should go out in style, he thought.
The monster was climbing again. This time, it came slowly, checking to see if he would sting once more.
Junglo had no intention of stinging. He selected the biggest rock he thought he could lift, sparing no thought for avoiding injury because he expected to be dead in minutes. He bent down, wrapped his arms around it and, grunting with the strain, he lifted it. With a final groaning push, he brought it up to his shoulder.
He didn’t pause to balance the stone. Had he done so, he would have fallen over, to be crushed ignominiously under the rock.
Instead, he rushed forward three steps to a nearby ledge and released the baby boulder, letting its own momentum—aided by a mighty push from his muscular arms and legs–to send it out over the ledge in a long arc.
It gathered speed as it fell.
And landed with a sickening crunch right in the center of that gaping maw. A fragment of serrated tooth flew out and skittered among the stones.
The creature’s enormous body stumbled with the sudden unexpected weight and a hind leg slipped on a loose rock.
That caused the massive torso to overbalance and begin to slide back.
Unfortunately for the monster, the original slipping leg was trapped in a crevice. The weight moving downward wedged it even further, and the monster began to tip over backward. Its tentacles flailed in every direction, attempting to keep it balanced, but its momentum kept it going.
A forced ululation sounded as that single leg strained to keep the body from overbalancing but then, with a crack that echoed across the vale, the leg snapped off and the monster rolled down the rocks. It shook the floor under Junglo with each impact until it came to rest against the nearest of the trees upside-down, with its legs in the air.
Before Junglo could celebrate the unexpected victory, he saw that the tentacles were wrapping themselves onto trees and pulling the beast. It would be upright within moments, and his only escape routes fell under the watchful gaze of the other monsters.
“So I’m going to die after all. The gods are the goat fornicators I said they were.”
Perhaps the gods were, and perhaps the gods weren’t. One thing was for certain: they had a sense of humor. Because at that precise moment, the three smaller monsters pounced.
Except instead of attacking Junglo, they struck at the inverted creature at the base of the hill. Pincers clipped tentacles and buried themselves in the creature’s soft underbelly. Purple gore flew everywhere, and the mountains shook with ululating terror as the smaller monsters began to feed on the still-living larger one.
Junglo, the barbarian warrior, killer of princes and seducer of sorceresses, former bearer of Trunkal the Eater of Blood, legendary sword of the Gui tribe, slayer of the King of the Ululants was about to scream his battle cry and challenge the gods to send anything else his way.
Then he remembered that there were still three monsters down there and that they wouldn’t be occupied in their feeding frenzy forever. He also remembered that any gods within hearing range would be angry with him.
So he bit back the battle cry and, climbing down as silently as possible, slipped into the woods and ran up the valley away from the Sorceress’ fortress as fast as his bruised and battered feet would carry him. North was supposed to be a wasteland of monsters and unclimbable mountain crevasses, but it was also away from the Ululants.
After a long run, the trees thinned out and he found himself running along the valley floor. Moss had replaced fallen leaves as the surface material, and he loped along, reveling in his freedom. He might have replaced the safety and sensual pleasures of the Sorceress’ palace for a monster-infested wasteland, but he enjoyed the physical exertion. There was a reason people called him Junglo the Barbarian as opposed to Junglo the Pampered Plaything.
He smiled and redoubled his pace, enjoying the burning in his lungs.
Then he stopped. His eyes, which had saved him countless times before, came to his aid once again. A human figure walked along the valley in his direction. It walked steadily, making no attempt to hide.
He stopped. Even if there had been cover around, it was much too late to look for concealment. And if the person hadn’t spotted him, they would definitely see the movement. So he walked a few more paces and then stood in the middle of the valley, posing no threat to the approaching figure.
Junglo allowed the person to approach. At shorter range, he saw that the figure was thin, graceful… and armed. The unmistakable form of a sword—a thin blade of some sort—hung from a scabbard on her belt. It was a puny thing compared to the two-handed longsword Junglo favored, which would have been comforting had that particular blade not been abandoned in the Sorceress’ keep. Junglo wished he still had his spear; as unworthy as it had been it was still better than nothing.
Then he smiled. Though the brown hair was cropped short, and the walk aggressive, the delicacy of the bone structure in the face told him that the person approaching him was a woman.
He could deal with a woman.
She stopped about thirty paces away and studied him, letting her eyes dissect every part of his body.
Junglo took a step forward.
The woman moved so quickly that Junglo almost didn’t see the motion. A glint in the air was all the warning he had before a throwing knife buried itself in the moss right where his foot would have been had he had time to take a second step. It was quite clear that it landed there as a warning; the woman hadn’t missed: she’d merely wanted him to stop. If she’d wanted him dead, he’d have been dead.
“Stop right there,” the woman said. Her voice was low and husky. Then she tilted her head and peered at him. “You do talk, don’t you?”
Junglo bent down and picked up the knife. The workmanship was quite good and he could see the swirls where the steel had been bent back upon itself, the sign of a blacksmith who took pride in his craft.
Then he flicked it back her way. End over end, it flew, and buried itself right between her feet. Two could play her game.
“I can speak,” he said. “Why would you think otherwise?”
Junglo’s reply seemed to surprise her. “Well, you don’t exactly look like a civilized man. Most learned men don’t run around in deserted valleys with half a forest in their hair, covered in blood and stark naked.” She gave me an expression that appeared to be half a grin and half a smirk. “Although I’m not complaining about the last part.”
“I’m the victim of a misunderstanding,” he replied. “But that’s not important. What is important is that this valley isn’t deserted. There are some really big monsters down there. I had to kill one just to make it this far.”
She studied Junglo again. Up and down. “And you went out naked to hunt monsters.” She shook her head. “I see intelligence isn’t one of your strong suits.”
He shrugged. “I never said it was. But what I’m telling you is true. They look like huge insects with tentacles.”
She nodded. “I believe you.”
“Good. Then we need to get moving. That way.” Junglo pointed to the valley from which she’d come.
“I just came from there.”
“Well, you need to go back.”
“Why?”
“Because if you go forward, you will die,” he replied.
“You came from there.”
“I’m Junglo the Barbarian.”
He was disappointed. She didn’t seem impressed. In fact, she didn’t seem to recognize the name at all.
“And I’m Yella the Annoyed. If you can deal with those monsters, so can I.”
“No,” he said. “You can’t.”
“You did. I assume that blood belongs to one of them.”
“I was lucky.”
This time, she looked into his eyes, foregoing the games she’d been playing earlier. Finally, she looked away. “Damn.”
“You won’t be missing much. The Sorceress who owns the castle at the end of this valley wouldn’t like you.”
Her head snapped back up. “Sorceress? How powerful is she?”
“Compared to the Ice Mages? Not at all. Some healing talent. A pain spell or two. Some illusion. Just enough to keep the local yokels awed and keep her grip on the castle. Probably couldn’t magic her way out of it if they came after her with farm implements.” He shook his head. “But even though they hate her, the local population is nothing if not spectacularly dumb.”
“Says the guy walking through the monster park naked.”
Junglo shrugged. “I’m going to walk past you. There’s no need to knife me because I just want to get out of here.”
She watched him carefully as he moved around her, keeping his distance.
He didn’t bother to glance at her. If she wanted to put a knife between his shoulder blades, she could do it at any time. But unless she was a cannibal, she had no reason to do so. It was quite clear he had nothing valuable on his person.
“I’m coming with you.”
The voice came from behind. He ignored it and kept walking, smiling slightly when he heard the sound of footsteps rushing to catch up.
When the woman drew abreast—still well out of reach—he looked over at her.
She glared back. “Just so you know, when I was a little girl, I swore that any man who tried to force himself on me would die for it. And I’ve kept that oath with men larger and stronger than you.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You don’t have to worry about me,” he replied without breaking stride.
She raised an eyebrow. “Why? Are you telling me you don’t like women?”
“On the contrary. I like women very much,” Junglo said.
“Then… oh.”
He sighed. “No. It’s not that either. I can perform whenever I want to. It just takes a certain amount of wine.”
“To make you perform?”
“No. To let me live with myself while I’m doing it. Look. Just leave me alone. I won’t bother you and, to be honest, I’m glad for the company. You can come with me, and you’ll be safe.”
Still walking, still watching him like a hawk, she reached into her pouch and tugged on a large piece of fabric which she to tossed in his direction. “I think we’ll both feel better if you put that on.”
It was a threadbare blanket. He shrugged and tied it around his waist. “I was fine, but if you were distracted…”
“You were not fine. You were pretending not to care because you were embarrassed to be out here naked. Not because you’re ashamed of your body but because you think nakedness is for slaves on sale in markets or on display in noble houses.”
Junglo’s mouth fell open. “How…”
“I can read minds,” she said. “So I also know you aren’t as dumb as you pretend to be.”
Junglo pondered this. “Then I guess it’s all right for me to say that you don’t read minds, because if you did, you would have known I can talk and also that I’m no threat to you. And I also know that you’re very unlikely to be called Yella the Annoyed.” He chuckled deep in his throat, an unaccustomed sound from a man who found it hard to laugh. “At least not to your face.”
They walked on.
***
“So this is why you believed me about the monsters,” Junglo said when they reached the top of the valley a day later.
The chasm they’d been following as it wound up the mountains had opened up into a wide plateau high in the peaks. Instead of unclimbable cliffs, keeping one from leaving, this part of the path had a sheer fall into the valley below. To judge by the clouds floating hundreds of paces beneath them, a fall would not just be fatal but would probably turn you into nothing but red mist upon landing.
The plateau was full of dead Ululants, as far as the eye could see. Chitinous shells creaked in the strong wind.
They smelled of rot, but not as badly as he have expected from the sheer numbers. He’d once stumbled onto a place where a watering hole in the jungle had gone bad and killed a dozen oxen. That handful of carcasses had smelled so badly, he’d lost his breakfast and had to change his route to give the place a wide berth.
The enormous collection of dead monsters here, on the other hand, barely assaulted the senses. All Junglo smelled was the faintest tinge of rot, reminiscent of decaying leaves. He prodded one of the tentacles with a finger, and it felt like well-cured leather.
“What happened here?” he said.
Yella shrugged. “When I came here two days ago, all I could think was how lucky I was that these things weren’t alive. Did you really kill one of them with your bare hands?”
“I injured it enough that it couldn’t fight off the other monsters who wanted to eat it,” he replied modestly.
She studied him. “I believe you’re telling the truth.” She shook her head admiringly.
He shuddered. For a moment he also believed that she could read minds. “I have many faults. Lying isn’t one of them.”
“I thought about it on the way down,” she said. “I think these things froze. They must have been caught out here by some cold snap or storm and they couldn’t make it to shelter.”
“I don’t think so,” Junglo said. “These things have been living up here in these mountains for centuries, if the stories are to be believed. Something else happened to these monsters… and I hope I never meet whatever killed them.” And yet, as he looked around, he saw no obvious injuries, no cause of death. Perhaps Yella was right.
Other than the way they’d come, two trails, both valleys, appeared to lead off the plateau if one didn’t fancy jumping to one’s death.
“We’re going that way,” Yella said, pointing to the one leading east. “I just came from the north and, trust me, you don’t want to go there, even if the fire is out.”
Junglo shrugged. “I just want to get somewhere warmer. I appreciate the blanket and everything, but even in high summer, night is way too cold up here.”
“Nice try, but I’m not going to snuggle up with you tonight, either.”
He sighed and they walked again.
***
The wall at the bottom of the valley Yella had selected was just as tall, just as wide and just as forbidding as the one on the Sorceress’ keep.
But unlike that one, this wall hadn’t been maintained. The stones were covered in moss and trees grew between the stumps.
“I can climb this,” Yella announced, looking up. “Hell, a child can climb this.”
Junglo had his doubts, but kept them to himself. He couldn’t let a woman overshadow him. Better to fall from the wall and die. “Of course. Let’s go.”
Yella didn’t need to be told twice. She found two cracks to put her feet into and started up the wall, her pack and sword hanging carelessly behind. Within moments she was a third of the way up. “Are you coming or aren’t you?” she called back.
Junglo tried to follow the path she’d taken, and found that for every crack in which his feet fit comfortably, a dozen were too thin and tore into the exposed flesh. He found that the best way to climb was to use the trees that sprouted out from the wall, which were easy to grab and which seemed to be well rooted to the stones.
Unfortunately, the second tree, a stout trunk that emerged straight out before turning upwards got tangled in his blanket, which forced him to discard it.
“Great,” he said to himself. “Now I get to do the climb naked.”
Anger fueled the final push. Not determination, not physical prowess, but sheer fury at the undeserved indignity of his position.
Each time he put his hand into another jagged crack, he remembered happiness. The ringing of his hammer against hot steel, the rhythm of the forge, the knowledge that his wife and infant daughter lay just on the other side of the wall. The ancient house he’d turned into a forge that, while perhaps not prosperous, allowed them to live.
Those had been good days.
Days before the seas came and washed the village away.
He didn’t deserve to fall bleeding and exhausted from a wall, his old life lost and his family a memory.
He saw the top of the wall approach and almost regretted the knowledge that he would survive. He certainly regretted the oath he’d sworn never to take his own life.
As his hand came to the top, two smaller hands grasped his forearm and pulled. Yella wasn’t very strong, but he wasn’t sure he would have made that final length without her aid.
He nearly collapsed onto the floor when he went over the crenellations, but Yella held him up, embracing him. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” she said. Then, she pulled away. “And I see you’re naked again.”
Junglo grunted and sat against the wall. “Still not drunk, though,” he said, before he passed out from sheer exhaustion.
***
Junglo woke and blinked. Water had landed on his face. He spluttered: “What—” but a hand covered his mouth.
“Be quiet,” a woman whispered.
He was about to do supreme violence to the owner of the hand when he recognized Yella’s voice. He nodded and she removed her hand.
He glanced a question at her and she pointed to the single door that opened onto the castle wall.
Junglo nodded. There was someone back there.
The door burst open to reveal a pale, emaciated young man holding a halberd. The fellow had red eyes… but Junglo’s attention was on the weapon.
Not taking his eyes off the halberd—more useful as a spear than via the axe-blade in the confined spaces—Junglo held up his hands. “We’re not here to cause trouble,” he said.
The man didn’t appear to hear. He just stood dumbly for a moment and then charged them, blade held forward.
Without thinking, Junglo flattened himself against the rock wall to avoid the spearpoint. Then he grabbed the haft and pushed against it with all his strength.
Their assailant crashed into the outer wall, which hit him about thigh-high, overbalanced him and sent him into emptiness. For a moment, he hung in the air from the haft of the spear, and then Junglo let go.
He didn’t scream as he fell.
“I thought we weren’t here to cause trouble,” Yella said.
“He started it,” Junglo responded. Then he rubbed his shoulder. “I think I tweaked something.”
“Poor baby,” Yella said.
But Junglo had already begun to move. He rushed through the open door to find himself in some kind of guard room. The swords in the place were rusted almost beyond recognition, and a pile of dented armor lay in one corner. He ignored them and, instead grabbed the only weapon in the room that seemed to be of any use: a halberd twin to the one the pale, silent, and now dead guy had attacked them with.
“What the—?” Junglo cursed as he realized that the wooden haft of the halberd had been sharpened into a spear point, which was a good way to stab yourself if you happened to be using your body to support the spear. “Stupid,” he said as he changed his grip to avoid doing exactly that.
Waiting just long enough to check that Yella followed, he put his shoulder to the door and smashed it to splinters. He found himself in a small bedroom with a thick coat of dust over everything. Another door opened into a much larger chamber, bedecked in bright red draperies.
Dog-sized creatures scuttled away into the shadows as they entered.
A huge man—a head taller than Junglo, but so thin he made the pale man seem muscular—stood in the center of the room. He had a neatly-trimmed black beard and long black hair.
He also had red eyes. Except these glowed.
“So,” the man said in a smooth, cultured tone. “You’ve come to take Rengund’s place. Good. He was getting weak.”
Junglo smiled and hefted the halberd. He wasn’t a bumpkin just off the farm, to be cowed by the illusion of glowing eyes. As he tensed to throw the spear, he wondered what the guy would look like without the illusion spell. Well, they’d find out once he died and the magic stopped.
The spear went nowhere. His arm didn’t obey. He couldn’t throw the spear, couldn’t even move his arm. Even his smile was frozen in place.
“And I see you’ve also brought a tidbit to warm my bed,” the man said, shifting the glowing gaze to Yella. “Not perhaps up to the standards that the villagers below bring to keep me from destroying them, but palatable enough. And she looks tough enough to last a few nights, unlike those pampered little princesses.”
Beside Junglo, Yella walked toward the man, eyes blank, and her hands hanging limply at her side.
Junglo strained against the invisible force holding him in place, but to no avail; this was real magic, not the feeble power of the sorceress.
The man turned back to him, hitting Junglo with the pure power of his presence. The cruel mouth curved in a sadistic smile. “I would order you to leave,” the soft tones said, “but I think it might be more fun to make you watch. Stand over there, by the bed.”
Junglo’s legs moved of their own accord. He tried to close his eyes, he couldn’t.
The presence turned from Junglo. “And you,” the voice said. “We can’t have you just standing here silently. What fun would that be? I like it when you puny little mortals scream and rage and promise dire retribution.”
“I’ll kill you,” Yella said.
“Of course you will, dear,” the voice replied. “But first, you’ll undress and lie on that bed.”
Some moments later, Yella walked back into Junglo’s field of vision. Now she was as naked as he was, and she dropped her clothes in a bundle on the crimson bedsheets.
“I can feel your thirst,” the man said. “Drink the wine. Yes, that’s it. Drink all of it. And another glass. Another.”
Cursing the mage and every one of his ancestors, Yella drained the goblet—a piece as luxurious as the rest of the room, with spidery engraving on the glass—again and again and again. Her movements became slower, her hand unsteady.
“Good. Perhaps if you dull the pain, you’ll last a little longer than the others. But I don’t think so. Mortal women are all the same… they give in to the pleasure, and then succumb to the pain.”
Yella laid on her back with her head on the bundle of clothes and one arm under it, like a courtesan awaiting her lover.
Now Junglo could see the tall man. He was still fully dressed in his long, flowing robes of black and red. He approached Yella from the side and leaned down to her exposed neck. Halfway there, he paused to look at Junglo.
No, he paused to show Junglo that his teeth, which had seemed normal when he spoke, were extending. Both the top and the bottom incisors had stretched into jagged fangs, and the face had elongated into a snout-like shape.
Vampire, Junglo thought. But that couldn’t be. The vampires were all dead, cleansed by the virus of Wormseeker, a millennium earlier.
At least that was what the legends said.
But then, the legends said a lot of things. And the other things they said about vampires was that Yella would thoroughly enjoy what was about to happen.
The man smiled and turned back to the reposing woman.
The mandibles opened wide, much wider than a human could manage. It hurt just to look at it. They would encircle half of Yella’s neck.
Yella moaned.
And then her hand came out from under the pile of clothes, so fast that Junglo couldn’t quite catch the motion.
The vampire pulled away, roaring, and Junglo saw that the hilt of one of her throwing knives was buried under its chin. At that angle, it would have penetrated the brain.
“You bitch!” the vampire roared, all semblance of refinement gone. “You think you can hurt me? I was going to be gentle, to treat you with some respect. But now… now I’ll hurt you more than you’ve ever imagined. And you’ll beg me to do it to you.”
With an angry tug, a claw-like hand snatched at the knife and tugged. The vampire screamed, an inhuman sound.
Junglo’s body must have felt something. The finely tuned instincts—honed by years of fights won and lost—must have sensed the relaxation of the creature’s will, because his arms moved of their own accord. The halberd flashed forward and buried itself right in the monster’s breastbone.
Wooden hilt first.
The creature looked down at the long wooden spear, looked up at Junglo, and dissolved into ash.
Junglo threw the charred remains of the halberd onto the pile of dust that had been a monster and turned to Yella.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Kept my oath,” she slurred. “Even though I was drunk. As a skunk. Drunk.” She muttered and grinned and mouthed inanities for half an hour. Junglo responded with his own, relief at having been spared servitude to the vampire almost overwhelming.
Eventually, her eyes closed and she slept.
Junglo covered her with a sheet and kept guard.
***
They explored the castle. Other than a single elderly retainer who’d begged them not to kill him and who’d run out the door, they found nothing. Whatever the doglike creatures they’d seen as they entered were, they’d disappeared.
“I hope those things don’t come after us,” Junglo said as they sat at a table and consumed the bread that, he assumed, must belong to the vampire’s servants. He’d also found some clothes; a tight fit but better than walking around naked all the time. He’d find more appropriate barbarian attire once they got out of there. The place was full of gold, so money wouldn’t be a problem for some time. He’d also found a serviceable longsword in one of the treasure rooms.
“Well, I’m not staying under this roof, so they’ll need to come outside if they want revenge,” Yella replied. “I think we should be able to deal with them. If they’re still alive. A lot of the things that live around vampires draw on them for their strength. We’ll be alright.”
Junglo finally found the courage to ask the question he’d been too embarrassed to voice in the hours since Yella had woken. “How did you resist him?”
“My oath. I swore it to Berenj.”
“Who’s that?”
“A god of another land. But his power must have been enough to reach all the way here, since the only part of my body that could move, the only part that wasn’t desperately screaming to succumb to the pleasures of the vampire was my right arm.”
“I’m glad of that,” Junglo said.
“And you?”
“He was distracted. In pain. He had no control.”
She nodded and seemed to be about to say something more, then hesitated. Finally, with a look of determination she spoke. “And I wanted to thank you. I was at your mercy…”
He nodded, then grinned. “I wouldn’t have risked it. I saw what you do to men who try that.”
“I was drunk, and if you’d asked…”
Junglo shook his head. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Am I that unattractive to you?”
“Not at all. You’re an extremely beautiful woman. But I lost someone. A wife. A child.” He looked away, not wanting her to see him break down. “My happiness.”
Yella put her hand on his. “I understand.”
Looking into her eyes, Junglo felt that perhaps she did at that. Perhaps she’d lost something, too.
Perhaps she possessed the understanding that he needed to heal.
As they left the vampire’s castle, they didn’t even discuss whether they’d continue together. They just argued about which road to take.
And Junglo didn’t feel the need for a drink.
© February 2024, Gustavo Bondoni
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer who writes primarily in English. He has published several novels and two short story collections. He has over two hundred short stories published in fourteen countries. They have been translated into seven languages. His writing has appeared in Pearson’s Texas STAAR English Test cycle, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Perihelion SF, The Best of Every Day Fiction and many others. He placed second in the 2019 Been Memorial Contest and received a Judges Commendation in The James White Award. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery. His website is www.gustavobondoni.com.