Duke looked up to the velvet blue sky above, the second sun only now dipping past the western mountains casting long jagged shadows over the valleys and leaving a blood red wound across the horizon that was quickly fading. Near the center of the valley, a stone obelisk rose up, and like the highest points of the trees was still tinted a fiery orange with the light. Here down below the canopy, however, the world had all but fallen to night, except for the streaks of shadows cast by the trees and tall stones from the guttering flames of the torches. His heart raced as he looked toward the encampment, struggling to restrain the grin from his lips.
He knew he shouldn’t be enjoying this. He knew that the robed figures setting the stakes and quietly chanting would kill him if they got the opportunity. He knew that if he slipped up, or timed it wrong, the woman they had abducted from the trade town three days back would be dead, at best. He admitted he didn’t really know what they took her for, but everyone in town had assured him it was for nefarious reasons.
Nefarious.
The thought of the word hit a part in him that could only be described as child-like glee. He’d lived a lot back home, but nothing like this. He rested one hand on the pommel of the sword slung low on his hip, the other sliding along the handle of the revolver and unclasping it, feeling the cool metal under his thumb as it brushed the hammer. Even in the heat. Even in the danger. Even through the sweat and the discomfort, he couldn’t help but feel exhilarated.
As he had followed the caravan down into the valley, he had noticed large drums on their cart; drums they’d now set up and had begun to begin a slow rhythm on. They were large drums, but the sound was somehow louder than he expected, giving him a jolt at first, but soon covering the clumsiness of his approach.
Duke could see the girl, Omila, sitting quiet and stone-faced on what looked like a stone slab. Her face had no color, and her expression was one of cold neutrality. She had been bewitched, Duke’d been told, but from here she had the look of someone catatonic from drugs. Could be both, he reckoned, as they began to paint markings on her face and down her neck with no response from her, even as they split the seams on her clothes and began to remove them.
Near the camp now, near enough to smell the spices of their incense and to worry about the crinkling of the leaves beneath his feet. He shuffled to a darker, further edge near to the drums, where one of the figures unpacked a cart still. Duke noticed the man was only slightly smaller than him, and under the hoods they wore smooth unadorned masks.
Duke looked in the directions of approach near to the figure, and once satisfied it was clear, slipped from the shadows and striking the figure over the back of the head hard with the pommel of the sword. Something gave way under the hit, and for a moment Duke’s stomach tensed before he came to his senses and grabbed the figure before he hit the ground, dragging him back to the shadows and stripping the robe and mask from him.
The man was visibly younger than Duke, no more than a teenage it seemed, but well built for his age. The skin was marked in numerous places with what looked like ritual scars and brandings, and he was nude beneath the robe, to Duke’s displeasure. The mask was a tight fight, squishing Duke’s nose down and making it hard to breath, and the wetness at the back of the hood against his hair made him tremendously uncomfortable. Duke shook it off, and returned to the boy’s post, miming what he had seen the youth doing.
Cultists, the villagers had called them. Some kind of old world god of some sort. He hadn’t been completely paying attention, if he was honest.
The stone she was sitting on, now being laid down on, was at the foot of the obelisk. It was a glistening dark stone, and the light of their fires danced on the surface in almost hypnotizing fashion. It was like watching an oil-slick dance, and for a moment Duke couldn’t look away.
It was the movement of the one cultist with mask decorations, a kind of gold ivy pattern, moved between the girl and the obelisk, adorning his head with what looked like deer antlers, that broke Duke’s reverie. He caught the sight of a silver-white blade in the man’s hand, moving it in slow motions at the edge of the table, while the cultists began to circle around the table. The drumming stopped, and Duke could hear the voice of the man as if through the mask, whispering in his ears words he couldn’t understand.
It was at that moment he was tackled from behind against the cart by one of the cultists, who bellowed out a warning call to the others. Six in all, it looked like, minus the man in the antlers, at least as best as Duke could guess seeing them now moving towards him. He cursed under his breath at how useless the disguise had been, and at himself for wasting the time when he should be trying to save the girl.
The cultist who had slammed into Duke grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning him to look towards his attacker rather than the ceremony. Duke surprised him by quickly pulling the revolver and unloading a round into the man’s throat.
The sound echoed through the valley, and Duke pictured birds breaking from the canopy into the sky as he wheeled back towards the advancing cultists, blocking out the pained gurgling sounds of the one collapsing to the ground behind him. He couldn’t see their faces, but they were hesitating. Hadn’t seen a gun before, he reckoned. But it wasn’t going to dissuade them long, and the leader hadn’t even flinched in what he was doing.
Duke adjusted himself slightly, braced more, putting a second hand on the gun and bringing it up in eyeline, and held his breath a moment. The leader was barely moving, but something about the obelisk made him indistinct, hard to focus on. Duke blinked the strain from his eyes as he noticed the cultists approaching and turned the gun on one of them.
The mask, and much more, shattered under the impact of the bullet, causing the man to crumple like a broken toy as the others jumped away from him. Duke put the gun back, not wanting to burn all his bullets, and charged at them as he drew his sword, letting out a roar as he did.
They turned their faces back toward him in time for one to catch the heavy short blade to the face, cleaving the mask and driving the hood down into the cultist’s skull in a way that assured Duke he was dead. One of the cultists grabbed him by the arm, another grabbing for the sword itself, and the last moving around behind Duke as he put a boot onto the dead cultist and kicked the sword free of him.
Their hands were feverishly hot, their nails little claws that scratched at his skin where they could reach it. The one on his arm took an elbow to the stomach as he pulled the sword in closer, headbutting the one gripping at his hands, while a thin arm slid around his neck and tried to get him in a choke hold. He brought the blade of the sword up under the arm of the one trying to wrest the handle from him and swinging his body weight around to knock the two he could easily reach off balance, straining his jaw against the one trying to strangle him.
He didn’t have the leverage to leave a good wound on either of them, so he surrendered the blade to the one and redrew his pistol, putting it to the man’s chest and firing. This crumpled the cultist to the ground as the other stepped back, the one on his back still gripping his neck. A second shot collapsed the one who had stepped back.
Duke reached over his shoulder and gripped the hood of the one choking him, pulling the man’s head forward as he swung his own back, wincing at the hardness of the mask but breathing out a hard sigh as the man’s grip loosened and he staggered back. Duke spun on him, putting a bullet into his chest before spinning back towards their leader, whose hands were high above his head with the blade glimmering in the firelight.
Duke couldn’t aim the gun, so instead through the gun hard in the direction of the leader without focusing on him, grabbing his sword as he began to run towards the man. The revolver had clipped the man in the shoulder, breaking his stance and causing him to shift position enough that he seemed to have to right himself.
Duke’s heart was pounding in his ears. His blood was boiling. The light of the fires seemed to whirl and wheel about, as the last cultist stopped his chanting and finally focused his attention on Duke, who was now howling through an unsuppressed grin.
He brought the blade up with both hands, and was quickly dodged, the blade glancing off the obelisk with a vibration that caused Duke’s wrists to ache. Duke let out a hissing cry as the silver blade along his side, cutting his skin effectively and searing him as if the blade was white-hot. He could hear the cult-leader’s chuckle behind the mask as he stepped away from Duke, putting a couple of paces between them.
The cult leader took a stance, with his feet wide apart beneath the robes, bringing the blade up before his face like hands held together in prayer. He said something that Duke guessed was a kind of challenge. Unlike the cultists, the leader gave off an air of confidence. For a long moment, they eyed one another.
Duke straightened his stance, pulling the mask off his face. Behind it, his nose had been bleeding since the first tackle, likely giving him a maddened and wild appearance. He stripped the robes away as the cult leader watched, seemingly waiting for their duel to commence. Duke took a deep breath, gripping the robes in one hand, his sword in the other, the mask lying at his feet. He took a long and measured look at the cult leader, who hadn’t moved since issuing his challenge. A semblance of honor in his posture and standing. Duke glanced at the kidnapped woman, nude save for body paint in strange symbols.
Duke turned, holding the point of the blade towards the cult leader. Their eyes met.
Duke whipped the robe into the air, hurling the lot of it towards the cultist as he moved away from what he had expected to be a sword lunge, the blanket landing on his blade as he moved to catch and dismiss it. The cult leader’s breath caught in his throat when Duke’s heavy boot came up between the leader’s legs finding that even the leader wore nothing beneath his robes. The man reeled from the shot, staggering to regain his balance as his body strained to ignore the shooting pain.
As the man was off balance, Duke brought the blade down across his collar bone with both hands, lodging the weapon several ribs down and releasing the handle with a push to send the man on his back, a loud wailing cry churning up from behind the mask. Duke retrieved his gun from the dirt and the two men’s eyes met one last time a moment before the hammer fell and the valley echoed to silence once more.