Empty Places by Slawomir Rapala	Table of Contents Chapter 2, part 1 appears in this issue.
Chapter 2: Into the Mountain Ambush part 2 of 2

In this terrible, silent show of mammoth strength, a primal man and an unnatural monstrosity pushed their bodies to the utmost in mortal combat. Mir felt the claws dig deeper into his breastplate, but the vicious snout was no longer before him.

Mir pushed harder, twisting the monstrous head, slowly rotating it on its spine. Sensing death, the acolyte gathered its strength once more and launched another desperate attack, clawing savagely at the Viking’s metal chest plates.

The strength of man could not be surpassed: with a final, savage twist, the beast’s neck snapped and its grip lessened. It voiced one more grunt, this one full of all-too human surprise and pain, and then it collapsed to the ground to lie dead beside its fallen companions.

Exhausted and struggling for breath Mir dropped to his knees. Dark spots danced before his eyes, treacherously clouding his vision. Blood smeared the armor where the beast’s claws had penetrated. The plates on his forearms and legs had suffered, too, and he could not even tell whether his limbs were intact.

All this was unimportant now, he thought, no, he had to aid Aezubah. With a weary hand Mir wiped the sweat away from his eyes and looked for his bati. He saw him standing no more than three sword lengths away.

The slim warrior was leaning over the last of the four creatures, calmly wiping his crimson-stained blade against its thick fur. He turned to Mir and met his exasperated stare. “Not much of a fencer,” his smiled betrayed a hint of disappointment.

“How...?” the Viking gasped.

“You have to be fast,” Aezubah explained matter-of-factly. “And strike in the right places. Their armor doesn’t cover the vital spots. No warrior designed it.”

“A Sorcerer did, though,” Mir slowly rose to his feet and approached his heavy battle-axe, still lodged in one of the acolyte’s heads. “He built them.”

“Bred them, rather. A good job he did, too, you must admit.”

“Curse to hell his wretched beast-kind!” the giant Viking pulled hard on his axe and raised it to his eyes, examining the jagged blade in the growing darkness.

“At least they bleed and die like the rest of us.”

“It’s a good thing he didn’t use them in battle,” Mir mused, resting against the cliff behind him with a sigh of relief. “We would have never stood a chance against a troop of these.”

“His Underworld allies weren’t a fair contest, either,” Aezubah snickered.

“Yes, your spells did well to weaken the Sorcerer’s grip on his minions,” Mir nodded and threw a quick glance at his bati. “Who revealed them to you is still a mystery to us all.”

“I traded my soul to the devil for them,” Aezubah replied evasively.

“That much I don’t doubt,” Mir returned a smile.

“Anyway, as far as these creatures go,” the bati continued, “he only has a few of them, I reckon, and that’s why he never used them in the war.”

“Four less now.”

Aezubah scowled at Mir’s comment.

“What is it?” the Viking leaned against the stem of his long war-axe, the tip of which he had buried in the snow before him. A large rock protruding from the cliff just over his head left his face hidden in shadows.

“Five were sent north,” Aezubah said slowly. “So where’s the last one?”

The answer came in a form of a quiet growl followed by a hushed, mocking laughter that had its origins somewhere in the shadows of the narrow pass. In the next moment a monstrous arm shot down from the rock hanging over Mir’s head and reached for the unsuspecting Viking.

A beastly hand opened to reveal a set of razor-sharp claws. Quicker than thought it sliced the air just under Mir’s chin, chopping off most of his long beard. It then retreated just as quietly as it appeared, hiding in the gathering darkness and leaving both warriors stunned and speechless.

“No,” Aezubah gasped and took a step back, his eyes fixed on his friend. It seemed that Mir failed to notice what had just happened. He slowly raised a suddenly limp arm to his throat and felt the warm trickle of blood.

The razor cut was not deep, but completed with flawless precision. The man’s eyes filled with dreadful surprise as he examined his bloodied hand, so terribly red against the snow all around them. He then turned to face Aezubah and letting go of his axe, he tried to straighten his back. Reaching for his bati as if to embrace him, Mir stumbled forward, but then sank to his knees suddenly overcome with deadly fatigue. The trickle of blood turned into a steady flow and it soaked what remained of his beard, the fur in which he was clad, and the snow in which he knelt.

Aezubah watched with growing horror as the Viking’s giant frame suddenly shrank and sank even deeper into the snow. His eyes, glossed over by the cold hand of death, were fixed on his leader, friend and companion of endless adventures.

“Bastard...” the word was nothing more than a grunt, stifled by the blood gathering in Mir’s mouth. He grabbed the sides of Aezubah’s coat and pulled him closer, clinging for dear life, as if not yet willing to part with this world.

“Kill them...” Aezubah could barely understand the words but the message in his friend’s eyes was clear. Anger grew inside him like a ferocious thunderstorm, clouding his thoughts and sending everything else into oblivion.

He clenched his teeth in exasperation as he watched Mir succumb to the weakness, lessen his grip and finally collapse into the blood-soaked snow. The Viking’s eyes took in one more sight of the frozen world that was all around him, the world he loved and would not have traded for any other. And then he was gone. His eyes looked to the empty skies, but there was no more life in them.

A coarse laughter echoed off the narrow walls of the pass and reached Aezubah from the shadows. The wicked chuckle was followed by a series of grunts and snarls that could not have originated in a human throat.

“Show yourself, slave,” Aezubah whispered as he scanned the nearest surroundings. The wind almost stopped and only the falling snow moved slowly in the stillness of the air. Nothing else moved, but Aezubah could sense his foe lurking just beyond his reach, somewhere in the gathering night, laughing at him and preparing for a fateful blow.

“Come get me!” Aezubah screamed into the shadows, barely able to restrain the fury that slowly claimed his sanity. He stood motionless over Mir’s lifeless corpse with a sword ready in hand.

Every muscle in his body and every one of his senses was in tune with the world. A killing machine no less dangerous than the monster that prowled about, Aezubah waited for his invisible opponent to make his move, a move he was sure would come.

Drohen’s acolytes were designed for nothing more than death and carnage. They could be devious, but they were still nothing more than bloodthirsty beasts, whose muscles were boosted by the Sorcerer’s dark magic.

Primitive and governed by the most primal of all instincts, the beast could not stay hidden for long. Its brutal strength was the creature’s weakness because it ultimately believed in nothing else. The puny human was no match for the moving mountain of muscle and its thin blade no contest for the sharp fangs and powerful claws.

In ghostly silence the giant creature rose out of the snow only a few steps behind Aezubah. Its nostrils flared and it bared its long canines in a hideous and an all-too human grin when it scented the blood seeping into the snow.

It was at least two heads taller than Aezubah and twice as wide, but its gruesome body had no excess fat on it. It was a mountain of flesh tightly packed into series of fluid muscles, a network of cords and knots pieced together into a simple geometric design that was almost beautiful in its monstrosity.

Its body was covered with short dog-like fur and clad in a light metal armor. The powerful hind legs were permanently bent in the knees while the long muscular arms hung low below its slim human-like waist.

A long triangular head was protected by a small cap drilled into the skull, but one that offered only minimal protection. The elongated snout housed several rows of razor-sharp teeth, all bared now in a sickening grin of triumph as the beast hovered above the warrior who still stood with his back turned.

The acolyte was mistaken, however, if a thought ever indeed occur in its small and primitive brain, in thinking that the human had not noticed its appearance. Aezubah had become aware of its presence as soon as it emerged from the darkness behind him.

The beast kept deadly quiet despite the nagging animal urge to growl, but Aezubah did not need to hear it. Instinct alerted him to the silent arrival of his foe and the Viking bati waited only a split moment longer before turning around, assessing the situation in his head and playing out all of the possible outcomes.

In the next heartbeat he stood face to face with the monster, gazing into its bloodshot eyes filled with nothing but hatred and hunger. Oh, it was hungry, hungry for the flesh of this tiny little human. The Sorcerer had fled fast and there was no time to hunt during the escape. The spells binding the acolytes to the Sorcerer were strong and they were blindly obedient to him. They trekked through the snow, the mountains, and the howling wind; night and day they trekked with no time to rest, to eat, or to sleep.

The Sorcerer sustained himself with dark magic, but the beasts had to eat to survive, and precious meat had been denied them for days. Thirst for blood and hunger for human flesh overwhelmed the beast’s tiny brain, and it stood still only for an instant before succumbing to the savage urge.

Anyone who happened to wander by this frozen, gods-forsaken place and witnessed the battle raging amid the bodies of the slain lying on the bloody snow would have seen immediately and clearly that Aezubah, despite his physical disadvantage, would emerge victorious in this duel.

Alas, there was no passer-by to admire the speed and the skill of the Viking bati, no one to be mesmerized by his strength and determination, no one to gaze with horrified fascination upon his silent hunt for vengeance. The gods had long abandoned this realm of ice, the sun was dipping toward the empty horizon, and only the snow remained, a silent witness to the terrible fury unleashed.

His teeth clenched, his eyes locked with those of his victim, Aezubah launched a terribly persistent and mechanically exact assault, its purpose the utter and painful destruction of the creature before him.

Aezubah danced lithely clear of the beast’s powerful limbs and snapping snout. The warrior’s sword sang with deadly precision a glorious song of triumph each time it tore into the body of his opponent. Each wound cut deeper than the one before, ever closer to the vital organs of the beast’s artificially crafted body, each thrust unleashing gouts of blood and tearing painful screams from the monster’s inhuman throat. One by one, its limbs were hacked away, falling to the ground as Aezubah meticulously cut the monster to ribbons with his light, double-edged sword.

Aezubah’s killing rage now exceeded vengeance in a nightmare objective: pain, as much as was within his power to inflict before his enemy succumbed to his onslaught and breathed its last. The beastly acolyte’s howls carried long into the night as Aezubah systematically continued his work, carving the creature’s body into shapes no one had ever seen before...

Proceed to Chapter 3...

Copyright © 2006 by Slawomir Rapala