Star of doom v1 0, p.10
sTAR OF dOOM V1.0, page 10
“What is it, Daron?”
“The jewel. It’s hot!” But within a moment he was calming down again; he let go of his belly, retrieved his sword, and ran down beside her.
“What was that?” Sonja demanded angrily.
“That—jewel. The amulet. It was burning hot for a moment. But I felt something else…”
“Felt what?”
“It’s—Osylla. Damn it, I should have known she wouldn’t let us just ride away! These things, Sonja—coming at us—they’re other souls trapped by Osylla in animated corpses. Do you understand? Sonja—if these things slay us, she’ll own our souls! We’ll be trapped!”
“Like hell!” Sonja growled. “Those sons-of-bitches aren’t getting any closer to me than a sword-length!” She glanced about, noticing a large oak off to Daron’s left. “Make for that tree! Get your back against it!”
“But the horses! They’ll attack the horses, too!”
“Erlik’s teeth! Get going!”
Daron ran towards the oak just as one of the creatures in the forefront went for him. Quickly, frantically, he whipped his blade around him like a scythe. With a wild shriek the swamp-thing fell back, gashed across the chest, and it collapsed in the mud, kicking and writhing.
Another came after it, but now Daron had his back to the tree and was calling the thing names, poking at it with his sword and daring it to come ahead.
Sonja had freed two of the horses and slapped their haunches to send them galloping away—but by the time she reached Daron’s horse, one of the swamp-things was dangerously close. Furiously, she swung her blade and hacked the creature in the side. It wailed eerily, clawing at its burst ribs, and flopped backwards. But in that instant a second creature attacked Daron’s horse. The animal reared and shrieked as its foul assailant’s talons and teeth ripped into it. Sonja rushed at the thing.
“Damned hell-spawn!” she howled. As the thing turned a snarling, bloody mouth full of teeth at her, she swung her sword in a savage arc and lopped the head free. It flew high and then splashed down into a pool of stagnant water, still snarling. The body reeled stupidly, then rocked back, tilted and flopped twitching to the ground.
Three of them stopped—
No, four—for just then Daron lunged and caught one in the bowels, ripping it open with the length of his sword. The thing cried out hoarsely as its entrails spilled out in a tangle at Daron’s feet.
He kicked it away barely in time to meet the attack of a fifth thing…
.…While two more came at Sonja. Jumping back and dropping to a crouch, she snatched up a rock and hurled it. It struck the foremost creature in the forehead with a loud crack. Dazed, it tripped backwards. Sonja yelled a Hyrkanian war cry and lunged for the other one. It clawed the air wildly in a mad attempt to catch her by the arm or neck. Sonja’s blade flashed, and a hand went flying. The thing shrieked. She dodged to one side as the thing hurled itself forward, the talons of its remaining hand groping, and swung again. Her sword sheared away half its head, splattering its rotten brains about the grass.
Daron yelled in furious glee as the last of his attackers went down with a severed spine. It writhed on the soggy ground, head and arms moving feebly.
But the one which Sonja had struck with the rock rose up and came at her again.
“Sell your soul to a witch, would you?” she snarled at it. “Filth! Swamp dung! Come on—just try and get hold of me!”
Daron watched, wondering at Sonja’s performance. She was furious—not simply at the swamp-creature, surely; no, she was furious about some great grievance or passion within herself.
The swamp-thing eyed her venomously, hissing, its whitish eyes shifting from her face to her sword arm to her midsection.
“Stinking scum!” Sonja yelled at it.
The thing lunged with quick, taloned hands. Sonja screamed with rage. With two deft sword strokes she lopped off an arm and cut it through the groin.
As it fell, kicking and mewling, she brought her sword down in a final sweep and cut its head free.
In the heavy silence that followed, gnats and mosquitoes buzzed. Sonja felt her heart pumping in her breast like a thunderous storm.
Daron approached her, carefully. “Done?”
She looked up at him. “Are you sure she isn’t sending more?”
He grinned darkly and shrugged. “I don’t think—Mitra!” He looked beyond her.
Sonja pivoted.
Daron’s horse, wounded, lay on the muck, bleeding and thrashing its legs. Its mouth foamed; its eyes had turned a muddy white. Even as Sonja and Daron watched it, its bared teeth began to coat with slimy saliva and distend into long, wicked fangs. Then, incredibly, its eyes blazed with a yellow light. It moved weakly to gain its feet; then it growled, a sound no horse had ever made.
“I must kill it,” Daron told Sonja. “We have no choice.”
He moved forward, paused a step away from the poisoned brute and brought his sword abruptly down on its throat. The horse shrieked, red blood shot out, its movements stilled, the mad light faded from its eyes; so it died, its life-force uncaptured.
Daron looked behind him. “The other horses—?”
Sonja was staring at the ground, not saying anything.
“Sonja, are the other horses all right?”
She looked at him, a burning intensity in her eyes. “What the hell are we doing here, Daron? Look at this! Look at all this! Tell me, damn you—who the hell are you, anyway?”
He walked towards her, sheathing his sword. “Sonja. The other horses?”
She took in a deep breath, studied her blade, then scabbarded it. “The other horses are all right, Daron.”
“Good,” he said. “Good. That’s all I really wanted to know.”
He lifted a hand and gently touched her hair.
Sonja kept staring at the ground.
By nightfall they were free of the swamp, on dry land, in a woodland with reasonably fresh air and trees spaced well enough so that they could see the stars and the moon.
They built a fire, unconcerned, or uncaring, that someone or something out there might be drawn to the light. And while they sat there in the darkness beneath the stars, as they had on so many nights before, each with private guilts and worries and memories, Daron began to speak of Osylla and Urrim, and then of destinies and deaths, of pathways and choices, of uncertainties—of all that it might mean when a star falls from the sky and the land around it where it strikes the earth goes mad.
As he spoke, he paused sometimes to gather his thoughts, and in one of his pauses, the heretofore silent Sonja spoke up. Some of her heart’s chill eased as she listened to his grave words, and so at last she told him of the previous night. “Was it only last night? Yes—it all seems so long ago…Last evening, then—when you and Osylla were in the hut and I was outside with Urrim…”She told him of Unim’s strangely found voice, eloquent and prophetic, and of the blue glow in the woods.
Daron was all attention.
“It was the same blue being,” Sonja confessed, “that appeared to me years ago on the night my family was murdered and I was raped—the thing that infused me with my destiny. Daron…can you understand it? Why should this happen?”
“I—I’m not sure, Sonja…”
“It isn’t my imagination, although sometimes in the years since then I’ve thought that it might have been. And now—now after all this time, after I’ve set myself upon my trail and come to know myself—when I am myself, Red Sonja of Hyrkania and all that means, or so I thought—the being reappears, and speaks of something I cannot understand or accept—something that feels contrary to everything it gave me to learn years ago—and my heart breaks in half and I go to war with myself.”
“And that is why you’ve been disconsolate all day long. So angry.”
“Yes, yes. Osylla…Urrim…I can’t deny my hatred of that. Daron! All these things at once! What does it mean?”
“All these things,” he whispered, “since our paths have fallen together.”
She looked at him, into his dark eyes. “Don’t, Daron.”
“There is something between us, Sonja. You can’t deny it. You know it’s there.”
“Something. But…”
“It may stretch through many lifetimes before and after us, Sonja. We may deny it, but it’s still there. Sometime before, when you and I weren’t Sonja and Daron—and sometime hence, when you’ll no longer be Red Sonja nor I Daron kos Odurac—this will still be, between us, this small part of the great storm, the great wind of the All and the Eternal.”
“Now you sound like*the son of a sorcerer.”
“Do I? Or do I sound, rather, like a man who believes in greater things than man? For I do—while still believing in the greatness of man—believe also in the Order, the Whole.”
Sonja looked into the fire. “I believe in myself, Daron. That blue being must have been myself, that’s all—some conjuration from my mind, some creation of my own emotions.”
“That is all that life is,” Daron said.
There was something in the air this night. *The moon rose high and still they talked, though often they treated serious subjects in a cursory fashion, out of exhaustion or hesitating wonder.
“I admire your outlook on things,” Daron admitted to Sonja. <4I wish I had more of it myself.”
She scoffed, making a face.
“But it’s true. You know you can’t deny the Entire—and you don’t—but rather than worry about it fruitlessly, you spend your time doing just what you can to keep yourself whole and productive.”
“That’s all anyone ever does.”
“No, no, I don’t think so. Not as you do. I’ve never met one so—successful—as you are.”
“Successful?”
“You never doubt yourself when it counts. You depend upon yourself. You know yourself—trust yourself.”
“But, I’m lonely—and alone.”
“Are you?”
“Incredibly, Daron. Sometimes I wonder if I wear my armor to shield more than just my body—if somehow I mean it to shield all of me, my person, my dreams, my memories, my hopes…”
“And for what do you hope, Sonja?”
“I can’t answer that. I have pondered it and pondered it—almost endlessly some nights. And I cannot answer it. For, whatever answer I find, it makes no sense in the morning. I have put myself upon a path, and I wonder if I lead my own way upon that path, or if it leads me.”
Daron nodded, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. The flames limned his features, which in that moment seemed full of both sadness and nobility.
“I, too, am alone,” he told her. “Sometimes I feel as though I am a damned soul, being a sorcerer’s son. These things within me—I can’t depend upon them. I have strengths, but I’m not sure where they lie. A witch, a mean a witch like Osylla, can mock me and frighten me. Yet my powers, my dreams—almost my memories of things I may have done or accomplished in other lives, as well as my future dreams—these things haunt me. My identity haunts me, my blood haunts me. You’re the daughter of a swordsman, Sonja, and see how well you wear your sword? I am the son of a wizard, but how well do I wear that? Sometimes I am frightened of myself—of what I can do, and of what I cannot do. Sometimes I feel that I am only half a person, and yet twice any other person I meet.”
“That,” Sonja told him, “is just how I feel, too, Daron…”
She stared into the fire, and Daron looked at her, at her beautiful face warmed by the glow of the campfire’s flames.
Later, as the firelight died and they sat gazing up into the clear night, they saw a streak of light against the deeps of the eternal heavens. It vanished as quickly as a thought. A falling star…
Daron was sitting close to Sonja. They felt one another’s presence strongly. Their hands were pressed together.
“The fire is getting low,” Daron commented.
“Don’t,” Sonja said to him, a quickness and frailty in her voice.
“Don’t what? Sonja?”
“Don’t kiss me, Daron. Don’t…kiss me.”
“As you wish.”
She looked to the sky again, but saw no other falling star.
Chapter 6
Crosscurrents
They continued on in the morning, and by noon came upon a deep creek in the middle of a flowering valley, The sun, still and golden far above, wrapped Daron and Sonja and the flowering field in a haze of light and warmth. Their mood lightened as they left Osylla’s poisoned land, and even Sonja, turning her face to the heat of the late summer sun, found the thought of Urrim less painful than it had been.
She tethered her horse to a crab apple tree, ate some fruit and drank some of the water from the creek. Daron voiced an intention to bathe, and so Sonja lay down on the bank to chew on a stalk of grass and study the faraway gray clouds. In a short time, she fell asleep. Vague dreams came to her, as clouded and insubstantial as the hazy skies she had gazed upon. She could not identify anything in her dreams, for phantoms floated there and did not approach her, although there was a witch in them, and a temple, and her father, and a sorcerer’s son, and a star that fell from heaven—as well as a tall, white woman dressed in flames, trapped in a bleak corridor.
How long she had dozed Sonja did not know. She awoke to the sound of Daron sitting down beside her. He was undressed save for his breeches, and was slapping the wet from his hair. Sonja, lying on her side, was impressed by the ruggedness and compactness of his 99 physique; it had never concerned her before, although she had seen Daron half-naked many times in Bo-ugan’s village.
He caught her looking at him and smiled.
“Did I sleep long?”
“Long enough for me to take a quick bath. No, not long.”
“Is the water warm?”
“Just. It’s a bit nippy where it sprays up from the rocks. Stick to the middle of the stream; there’s a warm undercurrent. And minnows.”
She sat up and began taking off her mail. “Are the minnows fun?”
“Best part of the bath.”
She wondered at herself even as she undressed before Daron. Modesty did not bother Sonja; what did bother her was, simply, her being disturbed at all. Knowing men as she did, she had never made it a point to bare herself around them. On the other hand, if circumstances found her undressed, so be it. Nudity for her was nothing to be ashamed of. Depending on the circumstances, it could be a threat or an advantage.
On the other hand, sometimes it was the first step towards trust…
She removed her soft leather tunic and boots and laid her sword on top of them. A glance down showed her just how grimy the trek through the swampland had been. She looked at Daron, then walked gracefully down to the stream and stepped in.
Daron, reclining on the grass, watched her admiringly, no lust in his thoughts. Then, while Sonja bathed, he began walking upstream along the bank, carrying with him his and Sonja’s saddlebags. The creek bank led him into a wooded copse where stood a variety of fruit and berry trees, and Daron plucked those which had not quite ripened and thrust them into the bags. This kept him happily occupied until he noticed that the sun was beginning to dip in its arc; then, throwing a saddlebag over each shoulder, he made his way back through the copse and along the bank.
As he cleared the trees, he noticed Sonja lying again in the grass beneath the crab apple trees. She was still nude; the golden sun colored her body, and her flaming red hair was fanned out around her upon the grass.
Listening to himself, watching himself as though from afar as another person, Daron approached the Hyrkanian quietly. Within a few paces of her, he found that she was asleep. Silently he deposited the heavy saddlebags on the ground and knelt beside her.
Aye, she was beautiful. He knew her to be beautiful and strong in spirit, temperament and soul, and she was also beautiful in form, and that awakened powerful feelings in Daron. His memories of spending time with Sonja on the road, of fighting beside her in the cold shadows of the Temple, of traveling with her through the perilous swamp, of angering her and arguing with her—all melded, fused in this one moment, into a total perception of her. Red Sonja—Red Sonja of Hyrkania, the swordswoman. Nearly a goddess, judged Daron—imperfect yet completely herself, fiery and valorous, hard as steel yet hiding a core of warm and human simplicity.
Aye, he loved her.
Her hair, tossed upon the grass, one curl caressing her chin…the highness of her cheekbones and the curve of her long eyelashes…her full lips, half-parted in slumber…the soft line of her throat as it curved down into her shoulders and arms…her breasts, full and finely contoured, shuddering gently as she breathed…her supple belly rising and falling…her red-gold pubic hair, as vivid as the long tresses that fell over her face…and her strong, shapely thighs and calves that had flexed countless times in contest with warriors, in perfect coordination with sword-arm and wrist and eye. All of her—her physical beauty, and more. How could he have angered this woman, have argued with her? How could he not admire and respect her temper, her mind, the life she had led and the grievous sufferings she had known, the many evils she had endured and fought? This woman, this individual spirit, housed in this exquisite form—this living woman.
“Sonja—I love you.”
She did not reply.
“I love you, Sonja. Do you not love me?”
It was a suddenly new Sonja who lay there, a Red Sonja strange even to herself, a Sonja who, with a quaking voice, answered Daron without looking at him, “Yes, Daron. Yes, I love you, Daron.”
He leaned toward her, making a slight noise in the grass.
And Sonja, then, with this betraying sound, stood up quickly, looked down at him. “Yes, I love you. Ask of me no more than that, Daron. Give me time to—ponder myself.”
The sorcerer’s son felt anger rise within him—and then, it disappeared, and acceptance took its place. For, what else had he asked of her for himself, surely—whether he had voiced the asking or not?
