Chapter 33 - The Cave of the Gray Stone People part 13

His voice alone was terrible enough to send us scurrying. The volume of it was so great that it was like a blast of thunder on the mountaintop. Small rocks shivered down the stony slope. Dust devils spun at the mouth of the cave. It felt as if my head had been seized by invisible talons and squeezed near to bursting. I cupped my hands over my ears and cried out at the pain but my voice was lost in the crashing.

My father was the only one who did not break and run. He stood his ground while the rest of us fled. He stood, strong and brave, the gray-headed warrior. Blood trickled from his nostrils and ears, tears wept helplessly down his cheeks, but he stood.

Then my maker flew from the cavern of the Gray Stone People, a dark blur, and my father rose up off of his feet in a cloud of his own blood, his head gone, just an empty space between the broad shoulders I once laid my cheek on to sleep.

The blur coalesced.

Ancestors, how I loathe that creature! That murderer! That leech! Even now, separated from that moment by unimaginable gulfs of time, my hatred still glows white hot.

How can I even begin to describe the abhorrence I feel for that creature? If you have ever witnessed a beloved parent struck down right before your eyes, you might begin to understand the kind of hatred I'm talking about. You might understand that no amount of time can extinguish such flames. Even thirty millennia later, it burns in me as fiercely as if I were living that moment right now.

But what did he look like? Who, or more precisely, what was he exactly? I'm sure you're terribly curious about the monster I've been hinting about for the last one hundred pages or so, so I will try very hard to choke back my bitterness and describe to you the wicked creature who murdered my father and stole my mortal life away.

The being that murdered my father was a powerfully built creature, almost as tall as I, and as broad in the shoulders as the half-breed Tavet. Like his smaller companion, my maker adorned his body in human bones. He wore a breastplate made of ribs and a headdress made from shaped skull fragments, all the osseous segments drilled and linked together with strips of leather. He wore a thick and crudely made cloak of animal fur. His face was painted white but for two circles of black pigment around his gleaming eyes, giving him an even more skeletal appearance. He did not adopt the animalistic postures of his smaller companion but stood as a warrior would stand, chest thrust out, shoulders back, legs slightly spread.

As my father's body toppled to one side, my maker halted amidst the billowing cloud of his vaporized blood. My father's body hit the ground with a meaty thud, limbs convulsing violently. Blood jetted from the ragged stump of his neck. His fingers clawed at the ground for a moment or two before drawing up and falling still. His head was nowhere to be seen. It had been struck off, sent bouncing away, probably halfway down the side of the mountain. My maker smiled viciously, enjoying the sight of my father jerking in the dust. As the blood cloud settled around his face and shoulders, he looked to us, fleeing down the mountain, his eyes narrowing, his fingers curling desirously.

His lips peeled back from his teeth and he laughed.

All this I saw before Tavet bolted past me, face white with superstitious fear. I saw it, and then Tavet was hooking an arm around me, dragging me toward the forest.

I was too stunned to do anything. I was paralyzed with shock. I remember one of my boots coming off as my heels dragged across the ground.

"Father! No!" I yelled hoarsely.

Brulde reached the woods ahead of us, diving into the tangled underbrush. He vanished into the foliage without a backwards glance. Tavet was only a few paces behind him, still towing me along. I began to push against Tavet's arm, trying to break free of him. To what end I do not know. I cannot tell you whether I intended to flee on my own, run to my father's aid or attack the creature that had decapitated my father. I was not thinking rationally.

The master vampire blurred into motion.

I tried to cry a warning to Tavet as the fiend rushed toward us, but there was no time to form the words. There was hardly enough time to even think the words. My maker sprang on Tavet as the stocky half-breed pelted desperately down the scree. He brought my big companion down like a speartooth pouncing on a buck deer, and me along with him.

For a moment we were cheek-to-cheek, my maker and I, and I felt the cold of him, the chill radiating from his body as though he were a being composed entirely of ice, not a thing of flesh and blood.

And then I was thrown free.

I went down hard on the rocky slope and rolled several feet before coming to a rest in a cloud of dust. The impact knocked the wind out of me. I gulped, trying to draw breath into my lungs, trying, and failing, to rise to my feet. I clutched at my throat in panic, thinking I was strangling.

Tavet cried out once and then the skeletal figure began to pummel him.

My maker's assault was awful in its violence. Tavet's sturdy Neanderthal bones cracked like brittle sticks beneath the vampire's storming. His blood flew in bright red splashes as the Foul One rained down one blow after another. Tavet tried to rise and buck the fiend off, but my maker clamped onto him with his knees, clinging to the man's back like some hideous parasite. Another vicious blow drove the half-breed to his belly. Tavet tried to shield his head with his arms but his attempts at self-defense were equally ineffective. My maker straddled Tavet's back, muscular arms rising and falling with a savage rhythm, lips curled back from his teeth in a terrible, ape-like grin of murderous joy.

I was trying to rise, trying to get my feet beneath me. I meant to go to Tavet's aid, throw myself upon his attacker, but I was still breathless and dizzy. I couldn't seem to get my legs under me. Black spots were dancing in my vision. I tried to push myself up to my hands and knees and the ground tilted drunkenly to the left.

"Get off him!" I managed to croak, and then I tipped over. Dirt in my nose. Dirt in my mouth. I managed to rise back up in time to see the monster finish him off.

As I clambered drunkenly to my feet, my maker grabbed a bloody fistful of the half-breed's hair and wrenched the big man's head back. The bones in Tavet's neck gave with a muffled popping sound, much like the sound your knee makes when you rise on a chilly morning. Tavet yelped once, his limbs falling limp. My maker tilted his head back, jaw unhinging like a snake preparing to devour a hare, and then he whipped his body forward and clamped onto the Neanderthal's neck.

The vampire's cheeks caved in as he sucked on Tavet's neck. I could hear him gulping greedily, and the moist smacking sounds his lips made as he fed on Tavet's blood.

Tavet's eyes had fixed. Already his skin was blanching. I could tell by the way that his head was twisted around that it was hopeless. The thing on his back was feeding on a corpse.

There was nothing I could do to help him, no recourse but escape, and pray the ancestors I got word of this to the People before it was too late. Our valley was cursed. The demon of the Fat Hands was real. There was nothing we could do now but flee. Flee from our homes and hope we eluded the beast that had slaughtered our neighbors.

How could we resist a being that could howl loudly enough to make a man's ears bleed, that could move faster than the eye could follow, that could strike a man's head from his shoulders with one blow? It was impossible!

So while the monster was occupied, I turned and shambled down the scree.

The wilderness enfolded me. The image of my father's head vanishing in a haze of blood played over and over in my mind. I was running so fast my feet barely touched the ground, but it did not seem fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. In my shock, it seemed I was falling through the wooded landscape rather than running. Perhaps I would continue on, skidding down the side of the world until I fell right off into the sky. And why not? The world did not make sense anymore. Why should anything be as I was accustomed to it being?

I caught sight of Brulde further down the mountainside. The speed at which he was running might have been comical if we weren't fleeing for our lives. His arms and legs were pinwheeling crazily. His hair was streaming out behind him. He leapt a fallen tree without even breaking stride.

I put on a burst of speed, trying to catch up to him, but I was battered and winded, and the wound I had received from the speartooth two days before had reopened and was bleeding profusely down my hip and thigh. I clutched my side and ran raggedly on, puffing and wheezing. Any moment I expected to feel the brutal claws of the Foul One catch me by the neck.

Brulde cut to the left and I veered that way after him. He did not look back, though he must have been able to hear me by then. Perhaps he thought me the fiend who had defeated us.

I shouted after him once, but he did not seem to hear me, and then I only tried to keep up with him, too breathless to shout again.

We fled. Our retreat had been purchased with the lives of my father and Tavet, but we did not have time to think about that. No time to mourn. No time for shame. We scurried like mice from the shadow of the hawk.

I ran until I thought I couldn't run any more, and then I found one last reserve of strength and was able to press my body on just a little bit further.

As I stumbled through the woodland, I waited for the Foul One to pounce upon me. I imagined his teeth at my throat with such vivid detail that it was like a waking nightmare. I didn't dare slow or turn to check if he was following. Either of those things, fear whispered in my ear, would be the surest way to summon the fiend.

For some reason, the Foul One did not follow us into the woodland. Perhaps he was suspicious of a trap. There were no more of us left. We were the last two who still lived, but he did not know that. For all he knew, there could have been a hundred of us in the woods, lying in ambush for him. Perhaps, glutted on Tavet's blood, he sought his comfort in the darkness of the Fat Hands' cave, as sunlight is so vexing to our sensitive eyes. Perhaps he simply planned to take us later. Whatever his reasons, he did not pursue us immediately. Brulde and I had managed to make good our escape.

I caught up to Brulde just on the other side of a low hill. We were not far from the marshy lowlands that marked the border of the Fat Hands' hunting grounds. He had collapsed beside a muddy rill, sprawled on his back like a dead man. He raised his head and looked at me as I trudged over the hill, and though he smiled in relief, he did not call out to me. I don't think he had the wind for it. His chest was rising and falling like a bellows, his face flushed bright red. I'm not sure how long we'd been running, but I knew that I could not take another step. I fell onto my knees beside him, wheezing and slick with sweat.

After a while, I cried out in anguish.

"Oh, Brulde! That demon killed my father!"

Brulde could only watch, chest heaving, as I grieved.

"Father, forgive me! Your son is a coward!" Hot tears coursed down my cheeks as I rocked on my knees beside the brook. I prayed to my father, to all of my ancestors, begging their spirits for absolution. I thought my heart would burst with shame. "Coward!" I seethed, clawing at myself suddenly. I hooked my fingers and furrowed my cheeks with my nails, scourging myself, trying to draw blood. "I am a coward, Brulde! That monster killed my father and all I did was run away!"

Brulde rose and grabbed my wrists to stop me. "No, Gon, this is not the way," he said.

"I want to kill that thing!" I choked.

"Stop it, Gon! We don't have time for this. We have to warn the People before it is too late."

I nodded. "Yes. Yes, you're right. This valley is cursed. We have to flee south like the Fat Hands did, before that creature comes looking for us." Brulde had risen while I talked. I allowed him to drag me to my feet.

"It will be dark before long," Brulde said, looking toward the west. "Can you run?"

"Yes."

He started away.

I stumbled after my tent mate, clutching my wounded hip. Brulde noticed the blood seeping down my thigh and stopped.

"You're bleeding," he said, dropping to a knee. "Are you injured anywhere else? How badly are you hurt?"

"I am fine," I said, pushing his hands away. "We can lick our wounds after we get home."

Brulde nodded and rose without argument. He cast a worried glance over his shoulder, toward the land of the Gray Stone People, then set his eyes forward and leaned his body into a trot.

Clutching my hip, I stumbled after him.

I thought that we had escaped with our lives, but the demon of the Fat Hands was not finished with us yet.

My maker came for us shortly after nightfall.