Worms of the Earth, Robert E. Howard [black authors fiction .TXT] 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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retained a crowded memory of wild feasts where wine flowed in
fountains; of white-bosomed Roman women, who, sated with civilized
lovers, looked with something more than favor on a virile barbarian;
of gladiatorial games; and of other games where dice clicked and spun
and tall stacks of gold changed hands. He had drunk deeply and gambled
recklessly, after the manner of barbarians, and he had had a
remarkable run of luck, due possibly to the indifference with which he
won or lost. Gold to the Pict was so much dust, flowing through his
fingers. In his land there was no need of it. But he had learned its
power in the boundaries of civilization.
Almost under the shadow of the northwestern wall he saw ahead of
him loom the great watchtower which was connected with and reared
above the outer wall. One corner of the castle-like fortress, farthest
from the wall, served as a dungeon. Bran left his horse standing in a
dark alley, with the reins hanging on the ground, and stole like a
prowling wolf into the shadows of the fortress.
The young officer Valerius was awakened from a light, unquiet
sleep by a stealthy sound at the barred window. He sat up, cursing
softly under his breath as the faint starlight which etched the
window-bars fell across the bare stone floor and reminded him of his
disgrace. Well, in a few days, he ruminated, he’d be well out of it;
Sulla would not be too harsh on a man with such high connections; then
let any man or woman gibe at him! Damn that insolent Pict! But wait,
he thought suddenly, remembering: what of the sound which had roused
him?
“Hsssst!” it was a voice from the window.
Why so much secrecy? It could hardly be a foe—yet, why should it
be a friend? Valerius rose and crossed his cell, coming close to the
window. Outside all was dim in the starlight and he made out but a
shadowy form close to the window.
“Who are you?” he leaned close against the bars, straining his
eyes into the gloom.
His answer was a snarl of wolfish laughter, a long flicker of
steel in the starlight. Valerius reeled away from the window and
crashed to the floor, clutching his throat, gurgling horribly as he
tried to scream. Blood gushed through his fingers, forming about his
twitching body a pool that reflected the dim starlight dully and
redly.
Outside Bran glided away like a shadow, without pausing to peer
into the cell. In another minute the guards would round the corner on
their regular routine. Even now he heard the measured tramp of their
iron-clad feet. Before they came in sight he had vanished and they
clumped stolidly by the cell-window with no intimation of the corpse
that lay on the floor within.
Bran rode to the small gate in the western wall, unchallenged by
the sleepy watch. What fear of foreign invasion in Eboracum?—and
certain well organized thieves and women-stealers made it profitable
for the watchmen not to be too vigilant. But the single guardsman at
the western gate—his fellows lay drunk in a nearby brothel—lifted
his spear and bawled for Bran to halt and give an account of himself.
Silently the Pict reined closer. Masked in the dark cloak, he seemed
dim and indistinct to the Roman, who was only aware of the glitter of
his cold eyes in the gloom. But Bran held up his hand against the
starlight and the soldier caught the gleam of gold; in the other hand
he saw a long sheen of steel. The soldier understood, and he did not
hesitate between the choice of a golden bribe or a battle to the death
with this unknown rider who was apparently a barbarian of some sort.
With a grunt he lowered his spear and swung the gate open. Bran rode
through, casting a handful of coins to the Roman. They fell about his
feet in a golden shower, clinking against the flags. He bent in greedy
haste to retrieve them and Bran Mak Morn rode westward like a flying
ghost in the night.
Into the dim fens of the west came Bran Mak Morn. A cold wind
breathed across the gloomy waste and against the gray sky a few herons
flapped heavily. The long reeds and marsh-grass waved in broken
undulations and out across the desolation of the wastes a few still
meres reflected the dull light. Here and there rose curiously regular
hillocks above the general levels, and gaunt against the somber sky
Bran saw a marching line of upright monoliths—menhirs, reared by what
nameless hands?
As a faint blue line to the west lay the foothills that beyond the
horizon grew to the wild mountains of Wales where dwelt still wild
Celtic tribes—fierce blue-eyed men that knew not the yoke of Rome. A
row of well-garrisoned watchtowers held them in check. Even now, far
away across the moors, Bran glimpsed the unassailable keep men called
the Tower of Trajan.
These barren wastes seemed the dreary accomplishment of
desolation, yet human life was not utterly lacking. Bran met the
silent men of the fen, reticent, dark of eye and hair, speaking a
strange mixed tongue whose long-blended elements had forgotten their
pristine separate sources. Bran recognized a certain kinship in these
people to himself, but he looked on them with the scorn of a pure-blooded patrician for men of mixed strains.
Not that the common people of Caledonia were altogether pure-blooded; they got their stocky bodies and massive limbs from a
primitive Teutonic race which had found its way into the northern tip
of the isle even before the Celtic conquest of Britain was completed,
and had been absorbed by the Picts. But the chiefs of Bran’s folk had
kept their blood from foreign taint since the beginnings of time, and
he himself was a pure-bred Pict of the Old Race. But these fenmen,
overrun repeatedly by British, Gaelic and Roman conquerors, had
assimilated blood of each, and in the process almost forgotten their
original language and lineage.
For Bran came of a race that was very old, which had spread over
western Europe in one vast Dark Empire, before the coming of the
Aryans, when the ancestors of the Celts, the Hellenes and the Germans
were one primal people, before the days of tribal splitting-off and
westward drift.
Only in Caledonia, Bran brooded, had his people resisted the flood
of Aryan conquest. He had heard of a Pictish people called Basques,
who in the crags of the Pyrenees called themselves an unconquered
race; but he knew that they had paid tribute for centuries to the
ancestors of the Gaels, before these Celtic conquerors abandoned their
mountain-realm and set sail for Ireland. Only the Picts of Caledonia
had remained free, and they had been scattered into small feuding
tribes—he was the first acknowledged king in five hundred years—the
beginning of a new dynasty—no, a revival of an ancient dynasty under
a new name. In the very teeth of Rome he dreamed his dreams of empire.
He wandered through the fens, seeking a Door. Of his quest he said
nothing to the dark-eyed fenmen. They told him news that drifted from
mouth to mouth—a tale of war in the north, the skirl of war-pipes
along the winding Wall, of gathering-fires in the heather, of flame
and smoke and rapine and the glutting of Gaelic swords in the crimson
sea of slaughter. The eagles of the legions were moving northward and
the ancient road resounded to the measured tramp of the iron-clad
feet. And Bran, in the fens of the west, laughed, well pleased.
In Eboracum, Titus Sulla gave secret word to seek out the Pictish
emissary with the Gaelic name who had been under suspicion, and who
had vanished the night young Valerius was found dead in his cell with
his throat ripped out. Sulla felt that this sudden bursting flame of
war on the Wall was connected closely with his execution of a
condemned Pictish criminal, and he set his spy system to work, though
he felt sure that Partha Mac Othna was by this time far beyond his
reach. He prepared to march from Eboracum, but he did not accompany
the considerable force of legionaries which he sent north. Sulla was a
brave man, but each man has his own dread, and Sulla’s was Cormac na
Connacht, the black-haired prince of the Gaels, who had sworn to cut
out the governor’s heart and eat it raw. So Sulla rode with his ever-present bodyguard, westward, where lay the Tower of Trajan with its
warlike commander, Caius Camillus, who enjoyed nothing more than
taking his superior’s place when the red waves of war washed at the
foot of the Wall. Devious politics, but the legate of Rome seldom
visited this far isle, and what of his wealth and intrigues, Titus
Sulla was the highest power in Britain.
And Bran, knowing all this, patiently waited his coming, in the
deserted hut in which he had taken up his abode.
One gray evening he strode on foot across the moors, a stark
figure, blackly etched against the dim crimson fire of the sunset. He
felt the incredible antiquity of the slumbering land, as he walked
like the last man on the day after the end of the world. Yet at last
he saw a token of human life—a drab hut of wattle and mud, set in the
reedy breast of the fen.
A woman greeted him from the open door and Bran’s somber eyes
narrowed with a dark suspicion. The woman was not old, yet the evil
wisdom of ages was in her eyes; her garments were ragged and scanty,
her black locks tangled and unkempt, lending her an aspect of wildness
well in keeping with her grim surroundings. Her red lips laughed but
there was no mirth in her laughter, only a hint of mockery, and under
the lips her teeth showed sharp and pointed like fangs.
“Enter, master,” said she, “if you do not fear to share the roof
of the witch-woman of Dagon-moor!”
Bran entered silently and sat him down on a broken bench while the
woman busied herself with the scanty meal cooking over an open fire on
the squalid hearth. He studied her lithe, almost serpentine motions,
the ears which were almost pointed, the yellow eyes which slanted
curiously.
“What do you seek in the fens, my lord?” she asked, turning toward
him with a supple twist of her whole body.
“I seek a Door,” he answered, chin resting on his fist. “I have a
song to sing to the worms of the earth!”
She started upright, a jar falling from her hands to shatter on
the hearth.
“This is an ill saying, even spoken in chance,” she stammered.
“I speak not by chance but by intent,” he answered.
She shook her head. “I know not what you mean.”
“Well you know,” he returned. “Aye, you know well! My race is very
old—they reigned in Britain before the nations of the Celts and the
Hellenes were born out of the womb of peoples. But my people were not
first in Britain. By the mottles on your skin, by the slanting of your
eyes, by the taint in your veins, I speak with full knowledge and
meaning.”
Awhile she stood silent, her lips smiling but her face
inscrutable.
“Man, are you mad,” she asked, “that in your madness you come
seeking that from which strong men fled screaming in old times?”
“I seek a vengeance,” he answered, “that can be accomplished only
by Them I seek.”
She shook her head.
“You have listened to a bird singing; you have
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