BAYLEK, EATER OF MEN (Short Story) Mind-Ripping Fantasy!

               

 Lachlan slapped himself to clear the whiskey.

                

It welled in his nostrils, a chemical stink, drowning the fear, the desire for survival. Those things would only suck the pressure from his strikes, cool the blood-fever that must dominate a warrior intent on victory. A man who coveted his own well-being fought with restraint. And temperance had no place in The Pit.

                

“You look afraid, slave.”
                

Lachlan stared at the Slaver: plump and bandy-legged in a derby the color of dragon’s blood; eyes iridescent in the torchlight; every tooth capped with steel. 

He wanted to grip the man's throat, squeeze until the larynx crunched between his fingers ... but he smiled, spitting on his boots instead. “Get buggered, ye fat ox.”

                

The Slaver kicked Lachlan’s stool, almost tipped him over the ledge. “Quick to temper is fast to bleed, Patty. This isn’t Limerick, and you’re not the bare-knuckled poet you were in that tenement of piss. This is my world. My sunken city. And that there is the sound of creeping death.”  The Slaver pointed at the crowd surrounding the sunken stone rotunda behind a wall of fences. “It’s a losing wager you face. Alas, it’s all there is. You won’t see the River Shannon again, but through this fire.”

                

“I never asked for this.”

                

The Slaver smiled. “Your filthy trade asked for you.”

                

“I make a living for my family.”

                

“You punch men to death.”

                

Lachlan stood, lean with muscle and three inches taller. “How about a demonstration?”

                

Four men with daggers stood at the ready, but the Slaver waved them back. “Redemption is what I’ve offered, boy. And you’ll take it with manners, or shovel shit in the dungeons until you’re gray and broken.”

                

Lachlan sat back down, studied the circular walls below him, scarred by chain and blade and the death-crunch of vital bone. “Redemption, y’call it?”
                

The Slaver’s eyes flashed. “Ah, and much more.”

                

A horn sounded through the coliseum. 

The black-toothed crowd barked as one, pressing the wire fences. “Chew ’is throat out, Baylek!” one called; and the other, beside her: “Tear’im open and pour ‘is blood out for d’crows!”

                  

The Slaver’s smile was magnetic. In a heartbeat Lachlan found himself staring at those metal teeth again, the roaring din silenced as if through sheets of ice. Nails of memory drove into the center of his skull, the faces of his daughter and wife. He’d been scheduled for a bare-knuckle match in the cellar of O’Bannon’s Pub, had sapped his ritual whiskey and awoken in the darkness of a railcar, tied and bleeding and guarded by rifles. He’d known they were headed south because the dawn came from his left. South, and no more. He'd been hooded like a falcon, and dumped into the dark. The four months since had evaporated in the Slaver’s dungeons, hearing the screams of pain, and roars of glory, looking up whenever dusty waterfalls sifted from the ceilings to mark the footsteps of the beast called Baylek.

                

“Are you ready to die, slave?”

                

Lachlan snapped his face up. “I am many things. The fire of Ireland. The merciless druid. The roaming Hibernian that stayed the Vikings from wandering beyond their ports. But a slave is not one of them. And I will not die today.”   

                

“That’s good, boy,” The Slaver smiled, “A dreamer to the last.”

                

“Dreams are for whelps.” Another swig. “And if ye’ll shut up long enough for this Patty (as y’put it) to commiserate with the Gods of Scotch yet another swallow or two, I’ll show ye why the British Empire shat’n their knickers when they found themselves face to face with the Children of Danu.”

                

The crowd cheered, pulling Lachlan’s focus outward.

                

He saw them looking at him, daring him, just now aware that the Slaver was holding an amplification device below his mouth. The crude rubber funnel-hose wound its way to a brass Victrola mounted on a post above the The Pit. And the echo of his voice was in the stands.  

                

Cheers of “He’s got balls, this one,” and, ”put yer money where that braggart mouth is,” were heard above the cheers. And Lachlan felt a swell of pride.

                

The Slaver snatched the rubber hose, raised his arms to call for silence.

                

The crowd fell still; but only as Hyenas will fall still when the Lion takes a Zebra in its jaws. Lachlan saw the need in their eyes, the patient hunger.

                

“Gentleman and Ladies, Drunkards and Dolts, Devils and Demigods!” The Slaver swiped off his crimson dirby, exposing a comb-over twisted through with gray. “Welcome to the carnival of carnage! The exposé of evisceration! the Bazaar of backland butchery!”

                

The crowd screamed in frenzy, barking and howling and crawling up the fences, the slaver’s guards moving to whip their fingers until they fell back in the stands.

                

“You’ve heard the words of this contender, this braggart, this pecking parrot of peat-smoke and parsnips and the pride of green midgets with gold! And what of it? What good are words, when there is flesh to demonstrate! In the red COR-NUUUUUHR—“ he paused with a smile, “which is to say the corner most often filled with blood. I give you Lachlan MacSween!”

                

The Slaver’s mist of spit-fervor was met with silence, the faces empty, begrudging, dead of all pleasure save the terrified screams of Baylek’s victims. 

Lachlan took a swig of whiskey, raised the bottle in a toast, and bellowed, “Fuck the lot of ya, and may y’burn in Hell.”

                

They inhaled to scream, but before they could, before even the Slaver could bend his silver tongue to retort and quiet his spectators, a rattling, phlegm-filled growl boomed upward in the silence. It was like hearing the earth tear itself apart.

                

Every face amid the  benches snapped toward the rusty portcullis cut into the south wall of The Pit. Lachlan turned with them, saw thick white fingers probe the crossed iron slats. He felt the Slaver’s boot resettle on his stool.

                

Only this time it pushed.

                

He spun over-under with the bottle in his hand, saw the flicker-flash of torches, and miraculously, tensed himself at just the right moment. His knees bent, and the distribution of his weight passed so evenly that a gasp spread upward through the bleachers, circling the arena until it sounded as a great tire slowly giving of its air.

                

“Impressive, impressive!” the Slaver barked into his Victrola tube, “But it seems the Irish luck has run out. For in the black corner, the winning corner, hails the Beast of Babylon, the Serpent of Sumeria, a plague to end all plagues! Herdsman of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. BAAAAYYYYYLEEKKKKK! Eater of MEN!”

               

If not for the cushion of drunkenness, Lachlan’s ears might have burst from the cheer.

                

It welled up from the crowd, and he— 

                

Saw his wife kissing him goodnight before he jumped on the buggy with Christopher, the wee one at her leg looking up and waving and calling for daddy to win, win the match, bring home a chicken, or a turkey, and the look of his of wife, Sarah, wearing the dress he’d fetched with last week’s winnings, a dress he’d almost torn from her the night before…

                

Lachlan saw the darkness through the bars, heard the metal clanking of a wheel wench being pulled behind the stone, each chainlink rattling—

                

Against the road, the buggy rocked and rumbled, Christopher beside him, looking into his face and asking if he was ready for the fight, to which Lachlan nodded, closing his eyes and pulling the flask from his high socks to sip what little peace whiskey afforded in the moments before he stood to risk his life—  

                

Lachlan watched the steel teeth of the portcullis lift from the dirt, saw a curtain of dust explode with the nostril-blast of a thing yet unseen in the shadow—

                

Overcame him in waves, Lachlan looking down at the bottle of whiskey, aware that he was no longer aware, that somehow he’d been carted from the main fight room to this closet, and that there were men, too many to fight, and the taste in his mouth, chalky and cold, a taste of bitter rose, and the tendrils of darkness came in a flash of closing tentacles, wrapping tighter, squeezing his lungs, his eyes—

                

Lachlan watched the darkness. Only his heartbeat, hard and slow. Every artery, vein, and capillary seemed to shiver with the thunder of it, branches of vital serum, precious, precious blood—

                

Fell from his mouth, his eyes, and there were too many of them, and there in the back was Christopher, counting his money, and waving a hand to say they could have off with him, that he’d be keeping Sarah company while Lachlan was away with whatever business such high-paying men might have for a murderous sot, and Christopher’s laughter was a dagger in his heart, the hot flood of betrayal, the horror, the outrage of it all!; and just as Lachlan dipped to unsheathe the blade forever hidden in his sock, to leap across the room and cut a gill into the white meat of that chuckling throat, the Slaver in the dirby hat blew a palmfull of yellow dust, and he was falling, and spinning.

                Then the dungeon.

                

Until tonight. His chance.

                

The sound of chains dragged through the cave socket. Lachlan listened with a void swelling in his chest. It pressed outward, taking with it all the worries for his life, his bones, his roguish good looks. The cost of survival didn’t matter—so long as he survived.

                

He put the whiskey to his lips and—

Spit it out when the barnacled foot slammed into the torchlight. It was bigger than a bread board, hooked with raven beak nails. Two pearls glimmered high in the darkness behind it, watching him, a thread of red light dancing in their centers.

                

They cheered as Baylek, eater of men, loped into The Pit. The creature hated it, cringing away from the torches, from the noise, cringing and yet coming.

                 

For its meal.

                

It stopped five paces away, lifting arms carved from the porous rock of earth. The ship chains shackled to its wrists whipped up with the motion. Firefly bursts of light sparked down the tunnel behind it. And in those flashes Lachlan saw that Baylek was not unlike himself. A prisoner who shat and ate within the same five feet, who twitched with dreams of lands forever lost, and who, when the hunger grew beyond the shame of exploitation, roused himself to give the crowd a show.

                

Lachlan looked into its face, the nose and mouth so lionlike, the eyes deep-set and burning with white fever. There was a memory in which he saw this thing as a child, unscarred, its claws boring through the earth in innocent exploration, diving into lava pits, perching in the higher caves with its head pitched up in wonder at the diffuse glow of a sun its people had never known.

                

Lachlan stepped back from the sensation, and glimpsed a fading pulse of red in Baylek’s eyes—enough to wonder if the thing wasn't speaking to him.

                 

And then  Baylek was coming, slamming its knuckles into the walls, and tearing chunks loose as it vaulted. Lachlan stood there, unable to move or think.

                

Then he rolled right beneath the creature’s legs.

                

Baylek slammed the wall, torches shivering with the impact. The crowd surged in surprise, then continued on in drunken laughter when the benches held their nails.

                

“What are ye?” Lachlan asked, with quiet pleading, “Why are ye here with such fowl company? And why are ye in chains?”

                

Baylek roared, swiping the tree of his arm. The wind was strong enough to send Lachlan sliding backward on the grit. He took a quick swig of whiskey, his left arm out for balance, smiling now, a little challenge in his eyes. “Ye don’t want to kill me, Big fella. Ye want to eat. Aye. A feast fit for a Baylek.”

                

Baylek yanked the chains coiled near Lachlan’s feet. They snapped up quick and hard enough to shatter the bottle in his hands, and almost take a finger. Lachlan studied the broken bottle neck in his hands, a moue of agony crippling his face, melting hotter, until he turned with a smile fit for the Devil and whispered. “Ye shouldn’t a done that, old boy.”

                

They charged each other, while the crowd shrieked above them, and the Slaver’s laughter boomed through the stands. Lachlan didn’t hear them, didn’t feel the thunder of Baylek’s weight tearing through the floor. He was somewhere else: in that fogland of emerald hills that’s only sustenance was sorrow. And then he saw the monstrosity bend down on its arms and jump, turning sideways, stretching its body lengthwise in a barreling wall of stony flesh that reached the rotunda from side to side.

                

And then the Slaver’s voice: “Behold the Wall! A signature move! Now nears the end of our Pikey! Too soon. Too short! Too—"

                

Lachlan slid on his back, felt the warm wall of mass hurtle over him, saw a species of surprise sweep over Baylek’s face, as he swung his arm in a stabbing motion and buried the bottle-neck into the creature’s eye.

                

A fan of red lava arced from the head of Baylek. Its scream was unlike anything Lachlan had ever heard—wefted of sorrow and longing and the death dreams. It filled him with pity. And as he rolled to his feet, hatred rose in pity’s place.

                

Not for the beast, but its captors.

                

There was an animal innocence to Baylek; an undeniable confusion.

                

And Lachlan had been forced to molest it. 

                

Baylek slammed the ground and rolled, the spinning momentum flinging the poison that was its blood into the crowd. A glob landed near Lachlan’s feet. It crackled, eating through the dirt in a cloud of smoke. Baylek smashed the wall, curling into itself, no longer roaring, only the low and fluting whalesong of its agony.

                

And again Lachlan saw the memory, the tribes of rock-things burrowing the earth, their rules and kingdom and social structure, their peaceful communion, and finally, with horror, the fluting wails of their imprisonment, when Egyptians first learned to mine. And there beneath the deserts, the enslavement of their race, the cool Nile a torture against their burning flesh, submerged in a retracting pulley of ropes while the Pharaohs held public inquisition, pulling from them their secrets, the angles and fittings of the great underground rock kingdoms now empty and barren and alone. And then the chains and vats of water ever present to ensure their loyalty, their strength, the great rearing of stones, and stacking, and shaping, to build the vaulted wonders of Giza and Luxor and Cairo.

                

When Lachlan stepped back from the memory, he was weeping. He shook himself in an effort to clear it, but it clung with the fierceness of a disease. Breathing was suddenly harder. He made himself look up into the Slaver’s eyes, that steel smile now a steel grimace beneath the shadow of his dirby hat.

                

And in the silence of the crowd, who had never seen a beast as fierce as Baylek bested by a man, Lachlan strode across the pit and knelt by the monster’s side, whispering and urging with every pantomime known to him. Baylek lowed as a cow will low when an unseen ditch has claimed its ankle. Then Lachlan was up, screaming invective that made even cruelest of the crowd hang their head in shame.

                

Until Baylek pushed himself up, all twelve feet of his powerful body, chinked and cracked by the scars of old battles, with a fresh wound to add to its list. It's roar was half-hearted, and still the torches guttered against its breath. The brown glass jutted from its socket, now a mess of dripping magma steaming on its chest.

                

“That’s right, ye ugly son of a Gall Stone! Come take yer fill of the Irish birch! And when yer lying on yer back, coughing the last sour breath, we’ll see if I don’t squat over that gorilla face and have me’self a movement.” Lachlan had been walking while he yelled; first to pick up a torch that had shaken loose in Baylek’s stumble, and now to the chains, coiled loosely at his feet. He stood on them firmly, in a half crouch. Then looked down. “Now!”

                

Baylek pulled with all its might. A plume of dust unsettled from the tunnel as the chains whipped tight, and Lachlan sailed into the crowd, angling himself for the Victrola, and tipping an imaginary hat in the direction of the Slaver. He came down with both  feet out, stomping two of the Slaver’s henchman flat. 

Then he was at war, blocking knife blows with the torch, and swinging flaming pitch into their faces. Burning spectators ran from the benches, the old wood logged with liquor and eaten hollow by the bugs. It caught like bale of peat, a harsh blue-white-yellow-red heart that pumped to life and grew in size, until the north wing of the coliseum was chaos of hellish light.

               

Lachlan raced for the Victrola, knocking the teeth from a henchman with a graceful spinning elbow, and catching the man’s axe before it fell. A kick to the solar plexus, and another with an eyepatch folded backward across two benches, a makeshift gangplank between the flames. Lachlan ran over him, pressed both feet to his face in a vaulting jump, and heard the satisfying CRUNCH beneath his boots. 

He threw the torch as hard as he could, watched it spit flames over the Pit and land in the southern bleachers, spreading, engulfing. He laughed as landed, drunk with glory, not minding the awful crunch his ankle gave. He chopped into the Victrola’s post, swinging with mindless fervor, pausing only to stab or punch or bite the fool’s who neared him. And then—

                

The final swing.

                

Lachlan saw the chewed stock wood snap, and he shouldered it in the right direction, whistling with his fingers.

                

Baylek looked up, stretching the chains until they were directly beneath the Victrola’s burnished funnel. Even from the ledge, Lachlan could see the keenness of its edge. 

                

The chains snapped. Lachlan thought it was the sound of freedom, of living marvels released. And when he looked down over the ledge he saw gratitude glowing in the single eye he’d spared. It lasted only a moment.

                

In the next, Baylek leapt, throwing its arms above it and swinging the chains up through the rafters. They collapsed with the sound of colliding ships, fiery galleys upon which Hell itself once sailed, falling into the fire, feeding, and feeding, until, through a pocket of rippling heat, Lachlan saw Baylek scale the Pit’s wall, grab the Slaver by his ankles, and swing him like a mallet, over and again, until there were only a pair of legs clutched in its fist.

                

Lachlan lost sight, rushing into the tunnels now filled with smoke, into the town whose name he’d never know. He couldn’t move well with his ankle, and in the end, at the mouth of a crooked alley that marched away beneath a  bridge, he took refuge in the shadow, starving, afraid now that he would never see his wife or daughter again.

                

He slipped into dreams that quickly turned to nightmares, saw Christopher’s face, smiling, half-lidded, demonic in its pleasure; Christopher straddling his wife, and slapping his daughter. Christopher killing his legend through the pubs of Limerick. He was a coward. Ran off after he threw a fight. A freak now. Lost half his face. Couldn’t bear the shame of it. And so here I am, doing my duty for the women of Ireland, and such sweet rose, Sarah, knows how to tend a man. Does a trick with her tongue that would make the Devil blush—

                

And he was awake, sweating, fevered, ashamed. Night had fallen, or so he thought. But when he looked up into the shelf of blackness…

                 

It moved.

                

A pearl of swirling white opened in the darkness, and then he smelt sulfur, and knew he would die.

               

Lachlan closed his eyes. Let himself be lifted, said softly, “Have at it. But I’ll make a sour meal. I’m rotten, Baylek. My wife. My daughter. Christopher…” It was nonsense he was speaking, a product of exhaustion. And so he thought it strange when he began to move, thought the creature Baylek must have smashed him too quickly for notice, and that this was Hell, or else the churning river that led to its gates. After a time, he drifted off again.

                

When he awoke, they were in the mountains, and a dead deer lay at his feet. A fire was burning in the rock cut, and there in the corner, looking out across the land, was Baylek.

                

“Y’saved me,” it came in a gasp. “Love of Christ, y’saved me.”

                

The civilized beast once known as Baylek turned his head. The single eye glowed with its trace of red, and the words were there, painted in the darkness of Lachlan’s mind: We saved each other. Now…” A faint smile traced its lion’s mouth. “I think we’ll pay this Christopher a visit.”

                

And so it was that when the sun rose that morning, for the first time in history, an Irish barfighter rode on the shoulders of a living rock, toward the business of revenge.

                 

(Thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated! Find Novelist Carson Standifer on Facebook!)