Worms of the Earth, Robert E. Howard [black authors fiction .TXT] 📗

>almost until the last, I read in his eyes the hope that I might aid

him. Gods and devils, is Rome to butcher my people beneath my very

eyes? Then I am not king but dog!”

 

“Not so loud, in the name of all the gods!” exclaimed Grom in

affright. “Did these Romans suspect you were Bran Mak Morn, they would

nail you on a cross beside that other.”

 

“They will know it ere long,” grimly answered the king. “Too long

I have lingered here in the guise of an emissary, spying upon mine

enemies. They have thought to play with me, these Romans, masking

their contempt and scorn only under polished satire. Rome is courteous

to barbarian ambassadors, they give us fine houses to live in, offer

us slaves, pander to our lusts with women and gold and wine and games,

but all the while they laugh at us; their very courtesy is an insult,

and sometimes—as today—their contempt discards all veneer. Bah! I’ve

seen through their baitings—have remained imperturbably serene and

swallowed their studied insults. But this—by the fiends of Hell, this

is beyond human endurance! My people look to me; if I fail them—if I

fail even one—even the lowest of my people, who will aid them? To

whom shall they turn? By the gods, I’ll answer the gibes of these

Roman dogs with black shaft and trenchant steel!”

 

“And the chief with the plumes?” Grom meant the governor and his

gutturals thrummed with the blood-lust. “He dies?” He flicked out a

length of steel.

 

Bran scowled. “Easier said than done. He dies—but how may I reach

him? By day his German guards keep at his back; by night they stand at

door and window. He has many enemies, Romans as well as barbarians.

Many a Briton would gladly slit his throat.”

 

Grom seized Bran’s garment, stammering as fierce eagerness broke

the bonds of his inarticulate nature.

 

“Let me go, master! My life is worth nothing. I will cut him down

in the midst of his warriors!”

 

Bran smiled fiercely and clapped his hand on the stunted giant’s

shoulder with a force that would have felled a lesser man.

 

“Nay, old war-dog, I have too much need of thee! You shall not

throw your life away uselessly. Sulla would read the intent in your

eyes, besides, and the javelins of his Teutons would be through you

ere you could reach him. Not by the dagger in the dark will we strike

this Roman, not by the venom in the cup nor the shaft from the

ambush.”

 

The king turned and paced the floor a moment, his head bent in

thought. Slowly his eyes grew murky with a thought so fearful he did

not speak it aloud to the waiting warrior.

 

“I have become somewhat familiar with the maze of Roman politics

during my stay in this accursed waste of mud and marble,” said he.

“During a war on the Wall, Titus Sulla, as governor of this province,

is supposed to hasten thither with his centuries. But this Sulla does

not do; he is no coward, but the bravest avoid certain things—to each

man, however bold, his own particular fear. So he sends in his place

Caius Camillus, who in times of peace patrols the fens of the west,

lest the Britons break over the border. And Sulla takes his place in

the Tower of Trajan. Ha!”

 

He whirled and gripped Grom with steely fingers.

 

“Grom, take the red stallion and ride north! Let no grass grow

under the stallion’s hoofs! Ride to Cormac na Connacht and tell him to

sweep the frontier with sword and torch! Let his wild Gaels feast

their fill of slaughter. After a time I will be with him. But for a

time I have affairs in the west.”

 

Grom’s black eyes gleamed and he made a passionate gesture with

his crooked hand—an instinctive move of savagery.

 

Bran drew a heavy bronze seal from beneath his tunic.

 

“This is my safe-conduct as an emissary to Roman courts,” he said

grimly. “It will open all gates between this house and Baal-dor. If

any official questions you too closely—here!”

 

Lifting the lid of an iron-bound chest, Bran took out a small,

heavy leather bag which he gave into the hands of the warrior.

 

“When all keys fail at a gate,” said he, “try a golden key. Go

now!”

 

There were no ceremonious farewells between the barbarian king and

his barbarian vassal. Grom flung up his arm in a gesture of salute;

then turning, he hurried out.

 

Bran stepped to a barred window and gazed out into the moonlit

streets.

 

“Wait until the moon sets,” he muttered grimly. “Then I’ll take

the road to—Hell! But before I go I have a debt to pay.”

 

The stealthy clink of a hoof on the flags reached him.

 

“With the safe-conduct and gold, not even Rome can hold a Pictish

reaver,” muttered the king. “Now I’ll sleep until the moon sets.”

 

With a snarl at the marble frieze-work and fluted columns, as

symbols of Rome, he flung himself down on a couch, from which he had

long since impatiently torn the cushions and silk stuffs, as too soft

for his hard body. Hate and the black passion of vengeance seethed in

him, yet he went instantly to sleep. The first lesson he had learned

in his bitter hard life was to snatch sleep any time he could, like a

wolf that snatches sleep on the hunting trail. Generally his slumber

was as light and dreamless as a panther’s, but tonight it was

otherwise.

 

He sank into fleecy gray fathoms of slumber and in a timeless,

misty realm of shadows he met the tall, lean, white-bearded figure of

old Gonar, the priest of the Moon, high counselor to the king. And

Bran stood aghast, for Gonar’s face was white as driven snow and he

shook as with ague. Well might Bran stand appalled, for in all the

years of his life he had never before seen Gonar the Wise show any

sign of fear.

 

“What now, old one?” asked the king. “Goes all well in Baal-dor?”

 

“All is well in Baal-dor where my body lies sleeping,” answered

old Gonar. “Across the void I have come to battle with you for your

soul. King, are you mad, this thought you have thought in your brain?”

 

“Gonar,” answered Bran somberly, “this day I stood still and

watched a man of mine die on the cross of Rome. What his name or his

rank, I do not know. I do not care. He might have been a faithful

unknown warrior of mine, he might have been an outlaw. I only know

that he was mine; the first scents he knew were the scents of the

heather; the first light he saw was the sunrise on the Pictish hills.

He belonged to me, not to Rome. If punishment was just, then none but

me should have dealt it. If he were to be tried, none but me should

have been his judge. The same blood flowed in our veins; the same fire

maddened our brains; in infancy we listened to the same old tales, and

in youth we sang the same old songs. He was bound to my heartstrings,

as every man and every woman and every child of Pictland is bound. It

was mine to protect him; now it is mine to avenge him.”

 

“But in the name of the gods, Bran,” expostulated the wizard,

“take your vengeance in another way! Return to the heather—mass your

warriors—join with Cormac and his Gaels, and spread a sea of blood

and flame the length of the great Wall!”

 

“All that I will do,” grimly answered Bran. “But now—now—I will

have a vengeance such as no Roman ever dreamed of! Ha, what do they

know of the mysteries of this ancient isle, which sheltered strange

life long before Rome rose from the marshes of the Tiber?”

 

“Bran, there are weapons too foul to use, even against Rome!”

 

Bran barked short and sharp as a jackal.

 

“Ha! There are no weapons I would not use against Rome! My back is

at the wall. By the blood of the fiends, has Rome fought me fair? Bah!

I am a barbarian king with a wolfskin mantle and an iron crown,

fighting with my handful of bows and broken pikes against the queen of

the world. What have I? The heather hills, the wattle huts, the spears

of my shock-headed tribesmen! And I fight Rome—with her armored

legions, her broad fertile plains and rich seas—her mountains and her

rivers and her gleaming cities—her wealth, her steel, her gold, her

mastery and her wrath. By steel and fire I will fight her—and by

subtlety and treachery—by the thorn in the foot, the adder in the

path, the venom in the cup, the dagger in the dark; aye,” his voice

sank somberly, “and by the worms of the earth!”

 

“But it is madness!” cried Gonar. “You will perish in the attempt

you plan—you will go down to Hell and you will not return! What of

your people then?”

 

“If I can not serve them I had better die,” growled the king.

 

“But you can not even reach the beings you seek,” cried Gonar.

“For untold centuries they have dwelt apart. There is no door by which

you can come to them. Long ago they severed the bonds that bound them

to the world we know.”

 

“Long ago,” answered Bran somberly, “you told me that nothing in

the universe was separated from the stream of Life—a saying the truth

of which I have often seen evident. No race, no form of life but is

close-knit somehow, by some manner, to the rest of Life and the world.

Somewhere there is a thin link connecting those I seek to the world I

know. Somewhere there is a Door. And somewhere among the bleak fens of

the west I will find it.”

 

Stark horror flooded Gonar’s eyes and he gave back crying, “Woe!

Woe! Woe! to Pictdom! Woe to the unborn kingdom! Woe, black woe to the

sons of men! Woe, woe, woe, woe!”

 

Bran awoke to a shadowed room and the starlight on the window-bars. The moon had sunk from sight though its glow was still faint

above the house tops. Memory of his dream shook him and he swore

beneath his breath.

 

Rising, he flung off cloak and mantle, donning a light shirt of

black mesh-mail, and girding on sword and dirk. Going again to the

iron-bound chest he lifted several compact bags and emptied the

clinking contents into the leathern pouch at his girdle. Then wrapping

his wide cloak about him, he silently left the house. No servants

there were to spy on him—he had impatiently refused the offer of

slaves which it was Rome’s policy to furnish her barbarian emissaries.

Gnarled Grom had attended to all Bran’s simple needs.

 

The stables fronted on the courtyard. A moment’s groping in the

dark and he placed his hand over a great stallion’s nose, checking the

nicker of recognition. Working without a light he swiftly bridled and

saddled the great brute, and went through the courtyard into a shadowy

side street, leading him. The moon was setting, the border of floating

shadows widening along the western wall. Silence lay on the marble

palaces and mud hovels of Eboracum under the cold stars.

 

Bran touched the pouch at his girdle, which was heavy with minted

gold that bore the stamp of Rome. He had come to Eboracum posing as an

emissary of Pictdom, to act the spy. But being a barbarian, he had not

been able to play his part in aloof formality and