Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [164]
The figure might once have been a naked man. How it continued to move Elric could not guess, for every inch of skin had been flayed from scalp to feet. The red mouth moved. The throat gurgled with blood. Blue eyes, from which the lids had been removed, stared blindly before it. Every movement must have been a century of agony as it raised bloody hands before it, groping for unseen help.
The party stood stock-still as the flayed man approached. He screamed, leaving a trail of thick strings of blood behind him. Moonglum ran forward with the intention of helping the man. Instantly, an arrow thrummed from somewhere and took him in the shoulder. He fell to his knees, an almost ludicrous expression of surprise on his face. But the arrow had failed to penetrate his mail and dropped to the ground even as he raised his hand towards it. He stood up, sheepishly, drawing his long curved sword.
“Form a square!” Elric, Moonglum and Dyvim Mar took charge, showing the others how to raise their small shields to protect their faces and upper bodies. Moonglum ducked and picked up the long barbed arrow, darting a look of enquiry at Dyvim Mar. He nodded, confirming that it was the same kind of shaft which had killed so many of his men. Then a whole rain of arrows came from the same direction, thudding into their shields.
“I suspect they don’t plan to take casualties or seek confrontation,” said Moonglum. Elric nodded.
“They might even have released that flayed prisoner to encourage retreat.”
Moonglum was puzzled. “Why, when they clearly outnumber us, would they avoid conflict?”
Still screaming, the flayed man stumbled on.
“Use the Black Sword, Elric! Use it now!” cried Dyvim Mar.
Everything in the albino told him to do as his cousin demanded, yet still he resisted. His hand fell to the scabbarded blade.
“No!” cried Moonglum. Then he murmured. “At least, not yet.”
Dyvim Mar made to go after the flayed man. Elric stopped him. “No-one can follow him. If we break ranks we are dead.”
“Then use the damned sword!”
Instead, Elric reached down and pulled a spear from his shield. Now he had a more useful weapon. Stormbringer stirred against his thigh. He heard it murmur but he deafened himself to its voice, to the tones of Arioch, Duke of Chaos, urging him to do as Dyvim Mar demanded. They were looking to him for leadership, even as the bloody figure, still intermittently screaming, disappeared into a jungle opening like a maw to swallow him.
Duke Orogino stood trembling, his eyes blank, maybe mad. The stink of the skinned man’s bloody flesh was in their nostrils. Seeking the best cover, Elric made the small party fall back towards the pyramid and the high-walled annex from which the man had come. He had his own motives for investigating the compound. As they crowded in one of the women screamed and the lad fell back retching.
Princess Semleedaor turned her head away but her twin sister, pushing black hair from her face, forced herself to stare down at the blood-soaked ground. Laid out on it, like a suit of clothes, was the flayed man’s skin, neatly separated from the body by an expert hand, including the hair of the head and the man’s private parts. The operation would have taken a long time. Looking at the pelt they imagined the victim’s horror and pain. But Elric saw something else, pushing its way through the dark mud created by the man’s blood and urine. He barely resisted falling to his knees and staring at the small, dark shoot exactly the same as the one he had seen in a dozen grimoires and herbals. The noibuluscus. The Black Anemonë.
“So your instincts were right.” Moonglum spoke so softly only Elric could hear him. They stood in Soom’s ancient lunarium. From the histories and geographies Elric had read, he had expected something larger. Clearly, the compound, now roofless, had been roofed in crystal, perhaps even a great prism concentrating the moon’s rays, used to grow the sacred flower which blossomed