EDITOR’S NOTE
Indiana Jones is perhaps the foremost icon of Pulp Adventure in the modern zeitgeist. From five films (Yes, there are five), a tv series, comics, novels, and a multitude of video game adaptations, the cultural impact of the Fedora donning archeologist is hard to deny.
In fact, when diving into CLIFFHANGER! I had Dr. Jones at the front of my mind. Not as a point of reference, per se, but as a character I didn’t want to emulate. I knew that advertising submissions for a Pulp-themed Adventure Magazine would attract a influx of Indiana Jones-inspired stories, something I didn’t want. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Indiana Jones, but the breadth of Pulp Adventure is so broad, I wanted to highlight other kinds of stories. That is, in part, the reason for my relative hardline stance on Supernatural and SciFi elements in accepted stories.
That said, Chuck Clark has crafted one of the most fun Indiana Jones-inspired stories I’ve yet read. Clark writes with a palpable passion for fun and genre. Fans will no doubt spot Clark’s nods to Jones via a few twists on his typical accountrements. Likewise, some familiar villains raise their ugly heads. What I think is most special about this story in Clark’s ability to combine real historical legend with Lovercraftian Cosmic Horror while still maintaining a sense of adventurous fun.
THE PRISONER OF SOLOMON
by Chuck Clark
Henry Bowsprit had a rule about Nazis and dancing girls, and this rule had saved him no end of grief as he wandered the far-flung edge of the British Crown’s influence. This rule simply stated that if there were more Nazis than dancing girls in a place, it was time to leave.
The town of Tikan Tepe, in its little valley in the Persian mountains, did not have much in the way of dancing girls. The old woman who ran the small boarding house he had been staying at smoked more hash than any sailor he had ever met, and that had to count for something. Maybe a half. The staff car that had just pulled up, however, had more than half a Nazi in it, which was enough to tip the balance over toward leaving.
Unfortunately, the car pulled straight up to the small cafe where he sat drinking his evening tea. The driver got out stiffly, precise as a mechanical extension of the vehicle, and came about to open the door for his passenger.
The other man was slender and fussy, wearing a fine linen suit and carrying an elegant silver handled cane. He immediately set Henry on edge, and it wasn’t just the swastika armband on his sleeve, although that was bad enough. Something about the man’s demeanor put Henry in mind of a Persian leopard.
“Herr Bowsprit, I presume.” the man said. It was not a question. The man’s accent was Swiss, polite but dismissive.
“I am Henry Bowsprit, yes.” he answered, cautiously. There was a Nepalese khukri at Henry’s belt and a Webley revolver in his pocket, but the sense of menace the other man gave off was something more than the mere threat of violence. The man sat at the table uninvited.
“I am Doctor Gerhardt Tanzen, an archaeologist from the Sorbonne. I understand that you are the man to speak with about the ruins of Adar Gushnasp?”
“I have been working there, yes.” Henry said, his mind racing. He was indeed documenting the ruins outside town at the request of an American professor from the University of Chicago. There were fascinating indications that the Zoroastrian ruins scattered across Persia’s northern mountains were built atop older foundations that predated current estimates by centuries, if not millennia. The theory was not entirely unknown to the antiquarian community. There was a Russian, a gentleman named Boris Kotov, traveling on honeymoon with his bride Natasha. Henry had taken a few meals with the couple, and Boris seemed more interested in Henry’s work than in his new wife. The ruins, far from the stuffy drawing rooms and requirements of English high society, had afforded Henry some respite from the ugly tide of European politics. The powers of Europe, however, were growing less distant by the day. He had already received a letter from one of his old professors at Oxford inquiring about his findings, and now the Germans were showing up. His peaceful little corner of nowhere was becoming rather busier than he liked.
“I can appreciate the trouble you must have gone through to come all this way, but my findings, meager as they are, will be available as soon as Dr Raven-“
“The German people,” Dr Tanzen said, his chill voice cutting through Henry’s words as if they were not there, “are quite keen to learn more of the Aryan origins of the great empires of West Asia’s ancient past. Although I would not expect you to have found evidence of this yet, I perhaps know a few things that might help narrow down your search. Your family is not unknown to me or my superiors, Herr Bowsprit. You will find the Fatherland a most welcoming place for a man with your heritage and education, to say nothing of your reputation for achieving results in the uncivilized corners of the world. I have heard you compared favorably to your famous Lawrence of Arabia. He died just recently, in a motorcycle accident. Most tragic, but the world could use another such man, and the Fuhrer could as well.”
Henry was now acutely aware of the weight of the Webley in his pocket. He kept his voice even and calm. “I was well acquainted with Colonel Lawrence. He fought against the Central Powers in the Great War, and I cannot imagine I would do differently.”
“A pity.” Dr Tanzen replied. On the balcony above, someone cried out, and a teacup fell over the railing. With a deliberate, almost insolent motion, the archaeologist reached out and caught it in midair, scarcely a drop sloshing above the rim. He had not broken eye contact for so much as an instant. He placed the cup on the table and stood up.
“You disappoint me, Herr Bowsprit. I think it unlikely you will have the chance to do so again.” Having made his offer, he turned and walked back to the car. His driver let him in and drove off, still ramrod straight. The doctor did not look back.
Harry put a few coins on the table and got up without finishing his tea. He put his hand to the revolver again, its solid weight a reassurance. He considered simply leaving town, but concluded that if the Germans were interested in his research, then the notes in his room were too valuable to leave for them to find. He had no idea what use they might be, but anything that might be of use to the Reich was best moved beyond their reach. He started back to his room.
He circled a back alley before coming to the front of the boarding house, and his stomach tightened as he looked across the low roof of a warehouse and saw a light in his room’s window. A shadow moved across the wall. At least one person in the room, maybe more. The only question now was if he should cut and run or head up and find out more about who was looking for what in his room. The smart thing was certainly to leave, and now, but something made him hesitate. Too many nations had become interested in this little corner of the world, and Doctor Tanzen worried him. The Nazi was slender and seemed the academic type, but the way he had caught that cup was deeply unsettling. He had moved like a predator, and gave off a quiet arrogance that had every mark of being entirely justified. This was not a man that would be sent on any small errand. Whatever he sought here in Tikan Tepe, Henry did not want him to find it, and certainly did not want him to take it back to Berlin.
Doctor Tanzen was not the only one who could move like a leopard. Henry eased into the shadows, hugging the wall of the warehouse until he was out of sight from the window. A large basket allowed him to reach a window ledge, which gave him the handhold that put him within an easy leap of the roof. From the roof, he stepped to the top of the high wall around the boarding house, and across to the window of the room next to his own. It was latched shut but gave a place to listen to the movement in his own room. He took the Webley from his pocket. Henry was not a killer by nature, and he was not looking to become one, but a gun was a formidable argument, bluff or not.
The muttering voices were too quiet to determine a language, but it wasn’t English, and it wasn’t the local dialect either. One of the voices was feminine, and based on that, he was fairly certain that the nice Russian couple from down the hall were in his room, and they probably weren’t asking to borrow a picnic blanket. Leaning out on the small ledge, Henry peered into his room. He could see Boris, facing away, looking though the papers on the room’s small table. Natasha was not in view. Stupid to do anything without knowing where she was. For all he knew, she could be covering the window with a gun. She finally stepped into view, unarmed, and joined Boris at the desk. A heartbeat more to make sure that he heard no other voices in the room, and Henry rolled his shoulder into the fragile wood slats, crashing into the room with his revolver pointed at the two Russians. They turned and froze, hands low and visible, and for a long moment, nobody said anything.
“I assume that you will have questions, yes?” Boris said. His enthusiastically polite but comically bad English was now considerably less accented. Natasha said nothing.
“Well, friend Boris.” Henry said, “I suppose an explanation of why you are rummaging through my belongings would answer a few of them.” He kept his eyes on Boris, but the barrel on Natasha. Something about the relaxed readiness of her limbs didn’t sit right with him.
“I swear, we are here to protect and help you, with the knowledge and mandate of your government.” Boris said, keeping his hands very still.
Henry’s eyes bored into the other man, but he did not flinch.
“If you have any proof, this isn’t the time to stay quiet.” he said, keeping the revolver aimed at Natasha. He didn’t hold with pointing guns at women, but his gut told him she was dangerous.
“Unfortunately, I carry no proof on my person, but I can tell you that a Nazi officer from Ahnenerbe has come to Tikan Tepe in search of information about the ruins of Adar Gushnasp, and that these ruins are just now of critical importance to the potential conflict with Germany. The Kremlin does not want them to fall under German control. They have extended the favor of sending myself and my dear wife to watch over you at the request of an acquaintance of yours from your British Code and Cypher School.” Boris smiled. “Natasha and I really are newly married, only a few weeks ago.”
Henry considered this. “I don’t have any friends in Code and Cypher.” he said, cautiously. “And I haven’t heard of this Ahnenerbe.”
“You have now.” said a new voice from the hallway, and the door swung open. Henry stepped back and covered the door, taking his eyes off Natasha. She was suddenly inside his guard, crossing the double arm’s reach and more between them so fast that he could not react. Shoving her hip into his own, she took his balance and dropped her elbow through his wrist, kicking the revolver away before it hit the ground. By the time he realized that she was there, he was down, with his hands twisted behind his back and her knee on his neck.
“This was not necessary, Natasha.” Boris said, his hands relaxing. “I am thinking that when the honeymoon is over, I will have to be careful indeed to keep my wife happy, yes?”
The man who had come in through the door spoke again. “Let him up, Natasha. This is hardly becoming of a lady.”
“I think myself the better judge of what becomes a lady, as I rather more resemble one than you, Major.” she said coolly, rising from Henry’s neck and smoothing her skirts. Henry rolled onto his back and saw one of the very last people he would have expected in the high Persian mountains.
“By Jove, it’s Billy Walker- I haven’t seen you since Oxford! I thought you’d be hard at work in your cousin’s whisky business, not sporting a Major’s Crown!”
The man at the door smiled thinly. “Alexander is my second cousin, and no, the blending business wasn’t for me. Apparently, someone at Number 10 took an interest in my career before I even had one, and when they tell you you’re hired, you don’t really get a say in the matter.”
Reaching down, the other man helped Henry to his feet, dusting him off and setting him right. Henry clasped his hand warmly.
“My god, William, is that a ring on your finger? What woman of value could possibly think so little of herself?”
William laughed, a smug satisfaction lighting his face. “The Lady MacKai finally succumbed to my charms several years ago, and became Mrs. Walker, in spite of what certain classmates of mine thought of my chances.”
“Old Bronson’s daughter?” Henry asked, amazed. He held his hands a considerable distance from his chest by way of confirmation. William coughed delicately, as did Boris. Natasha rolled her eyes and sighed. Henry put his hands down, embarrassed, and with considerably more seriousness and respect than before, said “You are to be envied and congratulated. Good show, old chap.”
“Well then,” William said, closing the door and pulling a bottle of scotch from behind his back, “pull up a chair and have a seat. There are things to talk about, and questions to answer all around I wager.”
Henry sat at the edge of the bed, leaving the Russians to take the two chairs. William produced glasses from somewhere and splashed whisky into them.
“I thought you said that you didn’t work for your cousins.” Henry said.
William smiled. “I’m still family, and family has privileges. This is a twenty-two-year-old single malt from Cardhu, a distillery my uncle bought out ages ago.”
The four of them drank, and for a long moment, the only sound was the quiet appreciation of very excellent scotch.
Refilling the glasses, William began.
“You just heard the word Ahnenerbe, and doubtless for the first time, as the organization was established barely a month ago. They are a sort of Nazi propaganda research society, looking to prove that the ancestors of the German people built or invented everything under the sun. For the past year, the Nazis have had teams of archaeologists running around the world looking for all sorts of religious artifacts. Hitler’s a nut on the subject. He’s…”
“He’s crazy,” Henry finished, “and obsessed with the occult. I’ve heard all this before. I was visited just a while ago by a Nazi archeologist, who wanted me to tell him about the ruins.”
“That would be Gerhardt Tanzen,” William said, “an archeologist, and an Olympic fencer, who has been sent here by Ahnenerbe. We had eyes on him in Finland when he simply dropped everything and came here, so we followed. Our friends in the Soviet Union had already indicated that the ruins of Adar Gushnasp were of some significance to Hitler, and the Americans had sent someone already. You, as it turned out. These ruins seem to have become quite the hot spot. When I heard that you were here, I asked our Soviet friends to have someone to keep an eye on you and let us know if anything happened. Well, something is bloody well happening now. Everyone seems to have theories, but you have been the man on the ground, so to speak, so I would love to hear if you can shed any light on things.”
Henry took a sip of scotch and thought.
“All I know is that the ruins here are considerably older than anyone had previously thought. The Zoroastrian ruins themselves are perhaps fifteen or sixteen centuries old, but there is a layer of foundations underneath them that are easily a thousand years older, and under that another layer, more ancient still. Local legend holds that the volcano west of the ruins was a jail built by King Solomon. He imprisoned a demon who had stolen the name of God there. The Zoroastrians themselves thought that it was a Mediterranean demon who was imprisoned in the volcano, a demon of lightning and terrible carnal appetites. In short, Zeus. Or Ammon-Ra, the Egyptian deity that Zeus was based on. It is believed that the Greeks inherited Egyptian mythology, but innovated by not just destroying rival faiths, but dominating them. They would record this with stories of Zeus impregnating every local goddess and geographical feature in sight. The carvings in these ruins may indicate that both Greek and Egyptian religion were borrowed from a much older myth structure.”
Natasha rubbed her temples. “Then,” she said, “Tanzen will claim that these older ruins were the work of ancient Aryans, and thereby prove that Germans were the originators of both Egyptian and Greek civilization?”
Boris nodded. “Tanzen is a true fanatic, and he takes his work very seriously. It would be unwise to underestimate his credulity, and dangerous to underestimate his resources. If he thinks that he can prove the German people were the creators of the classical empires of the ancient world for his Fuhrer, then he would do anything to make that happen.”
William shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if its complete rubbish or the bloody Ark of the Covenant. I will not let anyone at Number 10 say that I let Nazis get comfortable this close to Mesopotamia.”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “Are things that bad?”
William sighed. “They are, and too many seem to think that pretending otherwise will make it all go away. Hitler is a nut, but that doesn’t make him harmless. He’s a monster, and he will have a war whether we want it or not.” The British officer finally took a seat on a steamer trunk.
“At any rate, I am here now, with enough men to quietly find out what is happening and hopefully discourage any poor sportsmanship on Tanzen’s part. We cannot discount the possibility that the ruins may be a cover for some more practical ambition, and a Nazi foothold so close to the Soviets is no good to anyone either.”
There was a discrete knock on the door. William stood up.
“That would be my cue. Henry, would you be a saint and collect my coat from the hallway? I need a moment with the sergeant before I head out.”
“Of course, William.” Henry answered, letting the soldier at the door into the room and heading up the hall. The coat lay on a low table by the rickety stairs. As he picked the coat up by the hem, a photograph slid partway out of an inner pocket. Henry pulled out the photograph and received an unexpected eyeful.
It was William’s wife, the former Lady MacKai, in every bit of the glory that Henry so fondly remembered. The photograph made clear, if nothing else, that her admirable bosom was no trick of memory. Neither was it augmented by whalebone or padding. She wore neither. In fact, she wore nothing at all.
Henry shook himself. This photograph was not for him, and looking at it was no different than stealing it outright. He put it back.
Hearing William’s voice, Henry quickly returned the coat to him.
“Boris and Natasha will stay here with you. I will go see to our friend Tanzen, find out what he’s doing, and stop him doing it. God willing, I’ll be back in a few hours with something interesting to tell you. Barring that, at least the satisfying news that Tanzen has been frustrated.” Picking up his coat and patting the pocket over his heart, William walked out the door with the soldier, leaving them to pass the time.
It was perhaps a half hour later that Henry raised his last sip of scotch.
“On the balance,” he said, “breaking into my room aside, I can say that I am glad to have made your acquaintance.” The two Russians raised their glasses as well.
It was the thick bottom of the glass that saved his life. A solid inch of fine crystal, it deflected the bullet just enough that Henry was left with a tingling handful of bloody skin instead of a mouthful of lead. The Russians rolled away even as the door was kicked in, two more shots missing them as well. Boris pulled a small pistol from his coat, but Natasha was already on the man, a dervish of woolen skirts and fists. The masked assailant tried to bring his pistol to bear, but she kicked it out of his hands and it sailed toward the window, just in time to hit a second assailant in the face, pitching him back into the street below. Boris leapt to the window and fired his pistol as Henry surged to his feet and fumbled for his own.
Neither of the two men could get a clean shot, and fast as she was, Natasha wasn’t doing enough damage to put the man down. Wading through the swarm of punches and kicks, the man threw his weight forward, bearing her down to the ground. Unable to roll clear, she went to the ground awkwardly, her leg still too far forward. As the two combatants fell, her leg folded and snapped with an awful crack. Bellowing with rage, Boris charged, dropping his pistol and hauling the larger man off his wife. The assassin pulled a viciously curved knife, stabbing down toward the Russian’s neck. Boris twisted away, but still took the knife deep in the shoulder as Henry grabbed the man from behind, pulling him back. Producing a second pistol from his coat, Boris aimed it at the man, but his eyes were already glazing, bloody pink foam frothing up from his mouth.
“Cyanide.” Natasha said, her teeth clenched, breathing in short gasps.
The door creaked again, and everyone whirled around, guns raised, to see the old landlady. She shuffled in on a cloud of resinous smoke, reeking of hashish, oblivious to the dead men and blood in her boarding house. Her eyes were still closed. She stopped in front of the three, and after a long moment, spoke.
“The men have all gathered at the temple, but the man with the stick has gone to the prison to wake the prisoner. The prisoner must not be woken. The man with the stick must be stopped. You must go to the prison and stop him.” Having said her piece, the old woman turned and shuffled back out of the room.
Her voice was high and sweet, the voice of a child. Nothing like the low, gravely rasp she normally spoke in. The words were also English, which Henry knew that the old woman did not speak or understand.
“I did not know that our host spoke Russian.” said Boris, confused.
Henry looked at the two Russians. “She was speaking English.”
The two Russians looked up at Henry, their eyes large. Boris pulled himself up to his feet.
“We have a horse in the stable. Something tells me you should hurry. We will patch ourselves up and send someone to warn Major Walker. The old woman is right. Tanzen must be stopped.”
Natasha grabbed his arm, and spoke through her pain. “Be careful. If you get a chance to shoot Tanzen, do it. He is an excellent fencer, but he is a killer above all else. He will not seek to score points or show off if he gets you at the point of his cane. He will kill you.”
Reflecting on Natasha’s words as he rode into the darkness, Henry could not argue.
Galloping across the moonlit valley, Henry leapt off the horse and scrambled up the steep path of the volcano that locals called Zendane Soleyman.
Solomon’s prison.
It was not really a volcano, but looked much like one, forming a steeply scarped hill perhaps three hundred feet tall, with an enormous hole at the top. Two hundred feet across and two hundred and fifty feet straight down to the bottom, the hole was a perfect prison. Locals said the demon would exhale noxious poisons that could kill any man who climbed in. Some years ago, someone without the local fear and superstition had climbed down. Vultures had brought most of his bones back up. Henry ran up the slope, not stopping until he reached the rim. He looked down into the prison, and his head swam. He grabbed at the stone under him, his stomach lurching.
He had never been a man with an undue fear of heights. Not a week ago, he had sat with his feet dangling over this very spot while eating a lovely lunch with the Russians. That was last week, before Nazis and demons and his old friend William’s quite excellent scotch. It was the scotch that gave him strength. He was not going to be sick and lose twenty-two-year-old scotch to empty air. He simply was not.
Willing steadiness back into his hands and his balance, Henry took hold of the rope ladder he found, no doubt anchored in place by Tanzen. Steeling his nerves, he swung out over the emptiness and began climbing down.
Two hundred rungs on a rope ladder is an awful lot of mistakes waiting to happen. Henry was perhaps halfway down when one of those mistakes got tired of waiting.
With a sickening pop, one side of the ladder lurched, and a shower of grit and hempen fiber fell down his collar as he looked down, protecting his eyes. His pistol, jostled from his pocket, fell, and counted long seconds before landing below. The bottom of Solomon’s prison swam beneath him, still well over a killing fall’s distance below. After the grit had finished raining down, he looked up. One of the two sides of the rope ladder had snapped, perhaps fifty feet above. This put all the tension on a single rope, when the other had already failed.
Henry Bowsprit was an athletic man, and well acclimated to hardship, but not more so than any other man in good health. In situations like this, when death loomed near, it was not his size and strength, or even his keen mind that brought him through. It was guts. His American friends had told him he had yards of the stuff, and in countless instances where better men would call off, he found he simply could not. Panic was not in his nature, and when things went to hell, he rose to the occasion, as his storied ancestors before him.
He let his feet slip off the slackened rungs, and began lowering himself down, hand over hand, on the remaining rope. His arms and sides began to burn, then ache, then finally cramp, but he continued to lower himself down at a steady pace, keeping the rope taut, the tension unchanging. He kept this awful hand over hand pace for an eternity, every fiber of his being locked down on the grip of his hands, still bleeding from the broken whisky glass. Finally, the ground rose up to meet his boots, and he let go, falling in an undignified heap, his hands and sides spasming in agonizing cramps. The smell of sulfur closed around him, thick and awful. As he slowly regained use of his arms, he became aware of chanting, down in the darkness under the edge of the stone wall that rose high above him.
The bottom edge of the wall fell away on all sides, and the rock shelter formed under the lip of stone surrounding the prison floor was deepest where the rope ladder ended. The moonlight did not reach here, but a wavering firelight reflected off the stone overhead, beckoning him deeper into the shadows. As he crept down into the sulfurous miasma, the stone overhead pressed lower, until he had to crawl. Even in the dim light, he saw unfamiliar marks carved deep into the stone, figures and sigils stranger than anything he had ever seen or studied. A deer with many arms for antlers, holding spears and clubs. Something that might have been an elephant, but with too many tusks, and too many trunks. And everywhere, again and again, a closed spiral, a maze with no exit. The broken ground finally sloped away from the lowered ceiling, and brighter light shone below. Henry crawled down into a large chamber.
Tanzen stood beneath him, before a rough sarcophagus, the heavy stone lid supported by a rough block and tackle. The firelight seemed to be coming out of the sarcophagus itself, brighter than the torches around it. Tanzen looked up.
“Ah, Herr Bowsprit. I see that you have come around at last. The men I sent to see to you were not as competent as I had believed, but you are alone, so they must have been of some use at least.” The slender man shrugged, unconcerned. “Tell me, Herr Bowsprit, are you familiar with the Herr Doctor Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt?”
Henry shook his head.
“This is a shame. I had hoped you a more educated man than that. Von Junzt’s Black Book, his Unaussprechlichen Kulten, speaks much of the keys that can open ways to the so-called dark man, an ancient god-king of your own British Isles. My colleagues are obsessed with him, for whatever reason. They failed to consider what it said about this.” Tanzen placed his hand on the edge of the sarcophagus.
“According to Von Junzt, what lies buried here is a being from beyond the sky, a terrible creature with wisdom and power beyond any god of the ancient world. It took what it wanted, and no one, nothing could stop it. Von Junzt claims that it took a third part of the women of Eurasia for its pleasure, and that particular excess was what finally exhausted it, and then it slept. Priests from every faith in the world gathered and locked it away while it slumbered, deep in this poisonous prison, away from the sky it came from.” Tanzen’s voice grew thick with wonder. “Its power is why the Greeks told stories of Zeus, of his furious strength and savage appetites. But it was no god, no spirit. It was flesh and blood, just not flesh and blood as we know it.” Tanzen looked at Henry, and the Nazi’s eyes did not contain an ounce of reason. “It was an alien, something from another world, another galaxy. Studying it will give the Third Reich a scientific advantage that no one on this world could ever hope to overcome. Enlisting it to our cause would make even the idea of opposing us a simple impossibility.”
Tanzen lifted his cane, holding it low, pointing straight at Henry.
“I had said that you would not have another chance to disappoint me, Herr Bowsprit, and I was sincere. It is time for you to die.”
Tanzen began walking toward Henry, calm and collected. Henry quickly squirmed out of the low entrance to the chamber, desperately pawing for his revolver, remembering too late that it had fallen. He pulled the khukri from its sheath instead, but although a fearsome chopping weapon, its foot of reach was woefully short of the Nazi fencer’s cane. Desperately looking about, he found a wooden dowel, perhaps a yard long, and grabbed it.
Tanzen laughed. “You cannot possibly think to overcome me with a mere stick? I have fenced with the world’s masters, and my father was one of the finest instructors of Savate and Canne D’arme in Paris before the Great War. I have defeated more men in single combat than you have had hot meals. You have no chance.” He spun his elegant black cane in a lazy circle, inhaled deeply, and shouted, “I know how you are called! Sabazios and Asman, you are called! Dagr and Latobius, you are called!”
With these words, the torches flickered and danced lower, and the light from within the sarcophagus blazed brighter. Laughing maniacally, Tanzen came up the slope at Henry.
Keeping the heavy knife up high and the stick’s tip in line, Henry tried to bring the fight to Tanzen, and immediately understood that Natasha had been correct. He was entirely outclassed. Like any son of the English gentry, Henry was exhaustively drilled in singlestick, and had fought for his life in more than his fair share of tight spots, but Tanzen was a class apart. The Nazi came in without any flourishes, just a terrifying speed and precision. The silver ferrule of his cane darted in and out like the piston of some diabolical engine, fast and brutal and unerringly accurate. It was all Henry could do to fend the cane off with his stick. He could not hold his ground for so much as an instant, forced back toward the lowering ceiling where he had entered the chamber.
Tanzen shouted again, although his machine-like onslaught was uninterrupted. “Zojz and Dyeus, you were called! Sky Father and Stormbringer, maker of lightning and taker of women!”
Although it had been mere moments, Henry’s arms were like lead, spent by his long climb down the rope, and the cane was coming in too fast, far too fast. Natasha had advised him not to fence Tanzen, but to shoot him if he got a chance. That chance had not come, but that did not mean that fencing with this poor stick was his only option. It was a poor stick indeed, weighted neither to the hand, like a sword, nor to the tip, like a cudgel. But being poorly suited to both functions, it was also no worse at one than the other.
“So you are called, but it is not so that you are named!” screamed Tanzen, spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes crazed. “I name you! I restore you, I fulfill you, and I command you! Rise, and serve the Third Reich, and drown the world in lightning!”
As Tanzen inhaled to scream further madness, the stones behind Henry clattered, and a voice called out as someone crawled through the opening. Tanzen looked up for a bare instant, giving Henry the only chance he would get. He took it.
Pulling his stick back, Henry slid his grip part way up its length, and stepped forward, flinging its tip forward like the extension of a punch, as an Irish classmate had tried to teach him all those years ago back at Oxford. Awkward but beautifully timed, it passed just inside Tanzen’s guard, barely grazing his cane and striking his hand. Staggering back, Tanzen fell to one knee, his cane clattering to the ground. Exhausted and at the end of his resources, Henry was still a Bowsprit. He lunged forward, bringing the stick around to strike again.
Still too fast, Tanzen brought his arm up to block, breaking the stick. Laughing wildly, Tanzen pulled a pistol from his coat, and fired. A man fell down the slope, sliding to a stop next to Henry. It was William.
With a curse, Henry desperately applied pressure to William’s bleeding stomach, as Tanzen leapt to the sarcophagus, screaming again.
“I name you by the Third Key, and the Greater Key, and the Key that opens the Earth! I name you your true name! I name you Dyeh-Dharo!”
The air thickened with ozone, displacing the sulfur stink, and thunder boomed in the chamber. A hand with too many fingers rose above the sarcophagus, followed by a face. It must have been a face, although Henry’s confused eyes told him that it wasn’t really a face at all.
“I name you, I command you! The women of this lesser earth will be yours once more, but only if you rise and obey your Master!”
The face that wasn’t a face turned to regard Tanzen, and the hand with too many fingers writhed like plants under quick running water, reaching toward the Nazi. For an instant, Tanzen’s wild face relaxed, glowing with a beautiful, beatific light, as though every dark part of him were made clean and pure. In the next instant, he was gone, a light sifting of ash in the light of that terrible thing that wasn’t a face.
Henry knew that he was watching the end of human civilization awakening, and that nothing he could do would stop it. He didn’t even know if he could stop William’s bleeding.
The crinkle of paper under his hand as he put pressure on William’s wound brought Henry back to the moment. With a quick apology to Mrs. Fraser, formerly the Lady MacKai, he pulled the photo from William’s pocket and flung it at the sarcophagus. The hand with too many fingers reached out, plucking it from the air. The thing in the sarcophagus gazed on the photograph, and as it did so, Henry staggered to his feet, stumbling to the block and tackle that held up the stone lid. As he passed the being, he closed his eyes, afraid that looking down upon that thing’s body would drive him mad. Reaching out blind, he caught hold of the rope, and swung his khukri down, parting it. The lid fell, and for an instant, lighting crackled down his legs and light seared his closed eyes, but the shuddering boom that nearly knocked him off his feet was not thunder. The lid had fallen square on the sarcophagus, and when he at last opened his eyes, the only light was a ghost of reflected sunlight from the passage behind William. Striking a flint to one of the torches so he could see, he dressed William’s wound as best he could, and the man came to as the shouts of British soldiers began to filter down from above.
“So sorry.” William coughed. “Tanzen had apparently left his men at the ruins as a diversion. Boris and Natasha told me to follow you as fast as possible. I guess I was not as much help as I had hoped to be.”
“On the contrary.” Henry said. “You distracted Tanzen at a critical moment, and your wife distracted the prisoner as well.”
“Whatever do you mean by that?” asked William, patting at his coat pocket, grimacing in pain.
“For all his fury, under any name, Zeus always had a reputation for being distracted by the fairer sex.” said Henry, as a soldier with a first aid pack pushed through to the chamber.
THE END.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chuck Clark is an author of horror, sword and sorcery, and other speculative fiction who lives and writes on the edge of the driftless region of southwest Wisconsin with his amazing wife, many children, and assorted animals. He is an associate editor at Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery, and has published stories there, SNAFU: Holy War, Book of Blades: Volumes 1-3, and the upcoming Battleborn Magazine. He has been a college librarian, an apprentice jeweller, a bottom rung social worker, an AEGIS FC in the Navy, and a confocal microscope repair technician, but he has always been a writer.
Return Friday, November 7th for sword-swinging action in “DEATH FROM THE STEPPE!: Part 1” by Kevin Beckett!
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