Prisoner of the Horned Helmet by James Silke, Frank Frazetta Read Free Book Online Page B

The Shades to strike down the evil invaders and defend the forest tribes.
    As the boy sang, the players performed in the same spirit of modesty.
    Bone, in the role of Gath, wore a black fur cloak and black helmet, and stood at one end of a shallow bridge defending it with a wooden axe as the Kitzakk scouts attacked. Dirken, in the role of Sergeant Yat, looking as dark and sinister as possible, led the Kitzakks. Bone wheeled about, slashed and hacked. The Kitzakks, upon being hit, spit up mouthfuls of red syrup, then rose up shuddering terribly and announced their impending deaths with prolonged screaming. Then they pitched off the bridge and died acrobatically.
    Brown John, who had staged this drama, had, of course, embellished it. There were now sixteen scouts instead of eight. Among them were two clowns and a barking dog, who managed to get mixed up and do each other more damage than they did Bone. In addition a large cage had been erected at one end of the bridge. Inside the cage five dancing girls clung to the bars and screamed almost musically for the Dark One to save them.
    At the climax of the story, Bone broke open the cage, and the girls leaped alluringly around the stage. As they did, they managed to lose most of their clothing to artfully placed protrusions of the cage and bridge. What was left was pillaged from their tawny, oiled bodies by the clutching fists of the dying Kitzakks. Naked, the girls circled the bridge as Bone hammered it down. He was helped in this effort by a mechanical lever which made the bridge collapse in two. Dirken, of course, was standing at its center v/hen this happened and plunged three feet to a howling ignoble death which he would have prolonged indefinitely if the impatient dancing girls had not run over him to swarm around, the proud, magnificent Bone and drop at his feet in prone adoration.
    The audience cheered, howled, clapped.
    Bone, grinning widely, was bowing for the fifth time when Brown John strode abruptly on stage, raised his arm and shouted for silence. The players and audience, startled and suddenly afraid, looked around, then off at Stone Crossing, and went silent.
    Six armed riders on large groomed stallions were coming ever the crest of the crossing in a steady, determined pace towards the camp.
    The main body of the crowd stepped aside, making way for the riders, while others fled with their precious totems clutched to their breasts. The Grillards gathered up the blankets and carried them out of sight.
    The performers edged back to the yellow wagons, their eyes moving back and forth from the riders to Brown John. Bone and Dirken, who remained at the front of the stage with their father, now held real swords in their hands.
    The riders reined up in front of the stage. Their large, chesty horses pummeled the ground with their hooves, raising clouds of dust which billowed around them, and swirled over Brown John and his sons as they bowed slightly in recognition.
    The three lead riders were powerful Barbarian lords. The following trio were their men-at-arms. One of these held the lead rope of a pack horse with a wicker cage mounted on its back. It held a large, smokey-grey she-wolf.
    Golfon of Weaver, chief of the Cytherians, had the middle position. He was a wine-flushed, fatty piece of meat in a scarlet tunic and too much brass armor for a man with a weight problem. Vitmar, lord of the Barhacha woodmen, rode at Golfon’s right. He wore fur and hides, had lots of muscular sunburned flesh, and displayed the mild expression of a man who killed without emotion. Sharatz of Coin, Lord Master of the Kaven moneylenders, was the third chief. He wore a violet tunic and jewels. His narrow face was as pious as a religious relic.
    Brown John let the dust clear, then bowed again in greeting and in a generous tone said, “Welcome, mighty lords of the forest. How may I…”
    “Shut up, clown!” Golfon spat the words. “Tell your bastards to drop their weapons, then get down off